K. Conaway

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman for yielding me this time tonight. I have spent 30-plus years as a CPA, professional background. I know a little bit about budgets, and we work them from two sides. One is the revenue side; the other is the spending side. Tonight we are talking about spending. To put the spending in perspective, it is a 5-year plan that reduces that spending by some $50 billion, which is a lot of money under any circumstance. But spending over that 5-year period in mandatory spending will be $8.5 trillion. If we do the math, that is not quite a rounding error. It is just a little bit more than a rounding error in the overall spending. So what we are hearing in the rhetoric on the other side is that America is on a razor-thin edge of disaster, a \1/2\ percent razor-thin edge in mandatory spending. Yesterday's USA Today showed what spending will be like in 2050, a time when my children and grandchildren will be trying to bear this burden that we are currently after. Albert Einstein said the most powerful thing in the universe is compound interest, and that is great if you have got a savings account that you are adding to periodically and you are rolling that interest in there. But compound interest on the spending side is a disaster of biblical proportions. We will see in 2050 what compound spending growth will do. What we are doing tonight with this original first step, modest first step, is to try to rein in the growth of Federal spending. It is not cuts, as my good colleague from Florida has said. It is simply a reduction in the growth of spending. Everybody can spend it any way that they want to. I would ask that we keep our comments tonight in a manner that behooves this body that we stick with the facts and that we be responsible for things we say here tonight. It is important. This is an important debate. Families cannot operate at a deficit. Small businesses certainly cannot. My clients certainly could not. About the only entity that can is the Federal Government. And because the Federal Government can operate at a deficit does not mean that it should operate at a deficit. So I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this rule and this bill.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to set the historical record straight. As my colleague Jeb Hensarling recently stated, ``Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own set of facts.'' Prior to the war, Members of Congress had access to the same intelligence as the administration did, and it was determined that Saddam Hussein posed a serious threat to the United States. The 2002 resolution authorizing the use of force received overwhelming bipartisan support, but now some make it seem otherwise. Charges being leveled at this administration that somehow prewar intelligence reports were manipulated are false and unworthy of this body. The facts are clear. The 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report stated that there was no evidence of manipulated intelligence in relation to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities. The bipartisan Robb-Silbermann commission in 2005 reached the same conclusion. Attempts to distort these facts are an attempt to revise history. Doing so undercuts the efforts of our troops and undermines our national security.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize two of San Angelo, Texas' most dedicated and patriotic citizens, Stanley and Deanna Mayfield. On November 21, 2005, they will be honored by the Concho Valley Council of the Boy Scouts of America with the Distinguished Citizen Award in recognition of their contributions to scouting and the citizens of San Angelo. John Stanley Mayfield and Deanna Lee Gilmore Mayfield married on August 22, 1964. They moved to San Angelo after Stanley completed 5\1/ 2\ years of service as an Air Force F-111 pilot. Since then, they have been active volunteers in San Angelo and throughout Texas. They have dedicated their lives to the service of others and deserve to be recognized for their contributions. In addition to volunteering as members of and on the board of directors of many charitable and community development organizations, both are active members of the First Baptist Church and have served as appointees of Governor George W. Bush, Deanna as Vice Chairman of the Texas Real Estate Commission and Stanley on the State Bar of Texas. The proud parents of three children and seven grandchildren, their giving hearts have been inspirational to many, and they have truly led by example. I personally know of no two people more worthy, who have worked harder, donated more time or who have been as valuable to their community as Stanley and Deanna Mayfield. They serve as an inspiration to all those who are lucky enough to be around them, and I am honored to represent them in the 11th Congressional District of Texas.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Virginia and also the gentleman from Texas for having hosting this special hour. I would like to make a couple of points of a general nature and talk about some specific things. I am a CPA. I have spent 30-plus years in business watching what happens when tax rates go up and businesses have to deal with increased taxes. I have also helped businesses as their tax bills go down and what they do with that money. They put that money back into their business, they reinvest it in equipment, they hire people. They do things that create jobs for this economy. We have got a growing economy. One of the things that got lost in some of the noise up here is that in January of this past year, the CBO estimated the tax collections for the Federal Government to be $2.057 trillion. The other side makes an awful lot of talk about raising taxes, that we need to raise taxes. Well, I would submit that this Republican-led House has raised taxes the correct way. We have raised taxes because we have got more people working in America than have ever worked before. We have got more people paying taxes than ever before. As a result of that, the numbers that came in for out of the CBO for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2005, was in fact $2.154 trillion, or some $97 billion more than we thought we were going to have. We kind of got lost in our Katrina efforts of $60-plus billion, which were unexpected expenses. What we probably should have done is looked at those unexpected revenues and said that is a good place to pay for those Katrina expenses. We reduced the deficit by some 23 percent. So we have a growing economy, and that growing economy is important to the continuing fiscal responsibility of this House. Cutting spending is difficult to do. Family budgets cannot run on a deficit very long. Businesses cannot run at a deficit very long. About the only entity in the world that can run on a deficit for any length of time is the Federal Government. Simply because the Federal Government can do it certainly is no reason why the Federal Government should do it. Let me put it in perspective. The budget that we passed in April and we are chewing on right now called for us to spend some $2.56 trillion. Now, under any circumstance, that is a lot of money. It is just a lot of money. But it really does not mean much to us in those terms. Let me give you a term that kind of helps put it in perspective. In the fiscal year we are in right now, which started October 1, 2005, this government will spend $81,177 every second. I am going to wait about 4 seconds here and well run up about $320,000. A lot of that money is spent correctly, but much of it is spent in ways that we probably ought to leave that money with our taxpayers. My colleague from Texas said earlier, every single dollar that the Federal Government collects came out of somebody's earnings, some business' earnings. We have got people all over this country that go to work every day to try to make money, they try to figure out a way the services they can provide to an employer or some product they can build and sell for a profit, use their ingenuity, use their sweat equity, use the hard work to make that money, and the Federal Government comes in and takes a slice of that to help run this Federal Government. That is just the scheme we have in place. But do not lose sight of the fact it is taken away from those taxpayers really at the point of a gun, because we require that they collect those taxes from you. The other side always makes a lot about tax cuts and quote-unquote paying for those tax cuts. Money that is collected in the general revenue, general income taxes, goes into one large bucket. Let us put a disconnect, as we should, between the way we collect the money and the way that money is spent. So when the other side talks about this reduction in spending as a result of this tax cut, that is really illogical in the sense you really cannot connect those dollars. We do not put in an increase in capital gains to pay for some extra program. We do not do it that way. So let us make sure we disconnect the tax connection scheme from the way the money is being used. Finally, let me give you one quick anecdote and help put some perspective on this. I helped raise money in West Texas through the United Way for a number of years, and generally every year we were blessed with the philanthropy of that community giving more money to the United Way and its agencies each year than it did the previous year. Well, we went through a string of about 15 years where we raised more money than we did the year before, all the agencies got a little more money. But we had a catastrophic year, it happened about the time that the price of oil went to eight bucks a barrel back in 98-99, and we actually raised less money. So all of the agencies that were dependent on those United Way collections actually got a real cut; not a reduction in the growth, but a real cut in their spending. So they had to go back and look at everything they did. They had to go back and make hard choices between what were programs that they decided they had to set a priority on. They had to force themselves through a catharsis of having to readjust how they spent money. Today, every single one of those agencies is still around, they are still after their core mission, they are still doing the great work they have done, but they are better at it as a result of having gone through the tough times. So when people talk about reducing the amount of funds available to an agency, what we are really talking about is asking that agency to figure out a way to do your mission better and more effectively. So, the gentleman from Texas is great to have hosted this hour. We have chewed up an awful lot of it. I suspect the gentleman has a lot of things you want to say.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, let me say one more thing, if I might, and the gentleman said it already. A free Iraq, an Iraq that is at peace with its neighbors is no longer a sanctuary for the bad guys, will make the Middle East a safer place to be; and by extension, this country will also be a much safer place, as will the world. So I agree with the gentleman's assessment, and we will finish the job.

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding to me. It is an honor to serve with him on the Committee on Armed Services. Of all the committees in the House, if our country is at war, there is not a better place to serve if one is too old to do anything else. But this is a great committee to serve on. He leads this committee well, and it is a great honor for me to learn this business, working with him on that committee. I went to Iraq in July, and I want to talk a little bit about that. I grew up in west Texas. It is an arid desert. As we drove around some of the places in Baghdad and Kuwait, the territory, the scenery was remarkably similar to west Texas. I grew up where summers were hot, and the weather was bad, and the heat and blowing dirt, dust storms sometimes so bad that the street lights would come on at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. So I am a reasonably informed consumer about hot, bad weather. I got off the C-130 in Baghdad on that July day and stepped out into the meanest, nastiest weather I could have ever imagined. It was so much worse than anything I had ever experienced in west Texas. And we have got the finest group of young men and women, and some not so young, leading this country's fight in Iraq against the terrorists, doing an incredible job. I found a group of men and women whose morale was incredibly high. They knew they were doing the right thing. They knew they were well equipped. They knew they were well led. They knew they were doing a job that has to be done to protect this country. And they are accomplishing great things. The other side, it is almost as if they have got their fingers in their ears and their hands over their eyes because they do not see this march to progress that we are doing. The elections last week that we got the official word yesterday 78 percent of the country voted for this Constitution, an Iraqi Constitution, not an American Constitution but an Iraqi Constitution. The march, the votes we have had, the votes we will have in December. We are making progress. The stories that are not told is the electricity that is flowing, the commerce that is going on, the health care system that is reemerging, the stock market that is reemerging. All these good things that happen in this country get ignored, and it is partly our fault because we are not doing a very good job. Ever since I have gotten back from Iraq, every speech I have made, every talk I have given, I have included a piece of why it is important that we stay the course. And I hate to use that phrase. Let me rephrase that: that we finish this job, that we do not break faith, as our colleague just mentioned, with the young men and women who have led this fight. Liberty is not cheap. It comes at an incredibly high price. It is easy to be a hawk, but we hawks ought to know the cost. Every one of my colleagues has been with me and others to Walter Reed and to Bethesda to go out there and hug the necks of those young men and women whose lives are forever changed, in some instances in a blink of an eyelash, to hug their necks, to thank them. I have had three casualties since I have been elected. The first was a young man that was killed in November of last year, Brian Baker; another young man killed this summer, Mario Castillo; a young man who was killed from Odessa. I go see those families. There is nothing one can say. One cannot make the pain any easier, but I go hug their necks and tell them thank you, thank you on behalf of the country for their sacrifice. I was sitting that evening with young widow Amy Baker, pregnant with twins who would not see their dad. It is a high price we are paying, but liberty is not cheap. Through that crushing grief that only a young widow can feel, she looked at me with tears streaming down our her face and she said, You make sure you tell President Bush to finish this fight. Do not let Brian have died in vain. Do not, in effect, break faith with Brian, because he knew he was doing the right job. He knew he was there getting something done. The gentleman mentioned earlier the ``greatest generation,'' and it was. My dad is in that generation. He fought World War II. He fought in Korea. And they accomplished great things. But the men and women who have done this fight in Afghanistan and Iraq can lay claim to having freed over 50 million people. We can argue about weapons of mass destruction and why we got where we are and all that kind of stuff, and there is a place for that. Let us do that. But at its core, they have freed 50 million people. Twenty-five million people in Afghanistan have gone to vote, created a democracy there. It is not perfect, but they are free today. They were under the Taliban, one of the most horrible regimes we can imagine, where the women were chattel. If I did not like something my wife did, I would just cut her head off, slit her throat, and let her die on the side of the road. They are no longer in charge over there; Karzai is. And a democracy is emerging there. Twenty-seven million people are free in Iraq today, out from under the jackboot of Saddam Hussein, arguably the most ruthless, cold- blooded killer of any generation. He is in jail on trial for his life, as he should be. So let us do not lose sight of the fact that we have accomplished great things, and we will stay in Iraq and get this job finished. Let me close with a story in Afghanistan. We went from Iraq to Afghanistan, and we went out to a forward operating base, flew out of Kabul on a Chinook helicopter for about an hour, across a landscape where the way of life had not changed in 1,000 years: nomadic herders, tents, mud huts, sheep, those kinds of things. We landed in this forward-operating base, and this lieutenant colonel in charge there told us this story about they were on patrol one day, mounted in Humvees, and they were going down this dirt path because there are no paved roads in this part of the world. A young 10-year-old boy comes running out of a village that they were approaching, waving his arms and screaming and hollering, trying to get their attention. They stopped and waited for him to get there. And he breathlessly told them that the bad guys had come the night before and put a bomb in their path just ahead of that Humvee. So our guys dismounted, got out there. Sure enough, there was a bomb, bad enough that it would have killed everybody in that lead Humvee. They disarmed it. And as they were getting ready to proceed, the lieutenant. colonel asked that young man, why did you risk your life to come tell us this, because obviously you are a marked individual now for having helped the other side. The 10-year-old little boy, in that innocence of youth, simply looked at him and said, well, when the Americans came, I got to start going to school. So the anecdotes are full of these types of stories all over the place, what wonderful things our country has done on behalf of these people in Afghanistan and Iraq. It has come at a high price, but liberty always comes at a high price; to get it originally and to keep it comes at a very, very high price. I want to thank each one of those moms and dads and husbands and wives and children tonight who grieve over the loss of a loved one, who grieve over the injury of a loved one. I thank you. It sounds awful trite and there is not much more we can do, but each one of us who expresses it does it from the absolute core of our being, to tell these families thank you so very much for your sacrifice. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for letting me participate tonight. I appreciate that. God bless each and every one of our men and women in uniform tonight, wherever they are serving, whatever their responsibilities are, and particularly bless their families as they make sacrifices that most of us do not have to make, that we are not called upon to make. So we simply want to make sure that every single day somebody somewhere thanks them and their loved ones for their service to this country. God bless each one of them, and God bless this great United States of America.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Price) for yielding. Let me make one comment about your chart. I am a CPA. I have spent 30-plus years assisting clients in dealing with our very complicated, very convoluted Federal income tax code, whether it is individually or corporations or other businesses. Any system that is based on a ``fair concept'' is flawed because what is fair to one person's view is not necessarily fair to somebody else's point of view. When you base a public policy this broad and expansive and quite frankly invasive on ``fairness,'' then you set yourself up for a constant argument and constant battle about what is and is not fair. Clearly, your chart shows a differential between the wealthiest folks in this country and the folks that are on their way up to, hopefully, becoming the wealthiest in this country. Certainly, they have got that opportunity with hard work and applying themselves to that. So I would just like to point out that maybe we need a different system. Maybe sometime next year let us have this conversation about a different way to collect the minimum amount of money needed to fund this Federal Government, and we will have that conversation. I would like to comment, though, on health care and individual responsibility. I think it is universally recognized, and that is a hard thing to state with a straight face, but I think it is universally recognized that Americans enjoy the finest health care delivery system in the world. You yourself have been an integral part of that as an orthopedic surgeon, and your wife, I believe, is an anesthesiologist, members of the delivery system that this country enjoys. We have got a flawed payment system, and I am not sure how we got to this point and place, but we are here. We have got a system that if you ran your car insurance program the same way we run health insurance, then each time you needed to change the oil in your car or new tires, you would file an insurance claim. That is not how we work our cars. We figure out a way to operate our automobiles out of our normal monthly budget. We budget for that and take care of those incidentals. We do have car insurance for the catastrophes, for wrecks, for destruction and theft, those kinds of things, those catastrophic deals. Our health care system is flawed in that, quite frankly, I get the services, you provide me the services, and someone else pays for those services. In that scheme, I am not as concerned about the cost of those services as I ought to be because I am not writing a check to help out with that. So I have no incentives, so to speak, to ask you are there alternatives to what you have proposed, is there another way to do this or cheaper way. Can we do it at some other hospital that can be a little less expensive than the one you typically practice at, because I am writing those checks. Getting personal responsibility back into the health care system, getting a system in which I have a viable interest in asking that question. We may ask that question on every other single thing that we do, how much is that going to cost. We may not ask it out loud, but we make a cost-benefit analysis each time in our head each time we make a purchase on something such as how do I want to pay for that. We do not do that in medicine, and it needs to be communicated to all of us that that is okay to do in medicine. There are some things in medicine you do not ask: emergency or catastrophic kinds of things. You go get that thing. There is an awful lot of medicine that I think is subject to a circumstance where we can ask what that costs, and I think just doing that would begin to drive down those costs. As the example, I went for an annual checkup a year or so ago and had an issue. The physician said, well, I can prescribe a course of antibiotics that is about $300 a month and 3 months from now that condition will clear up. I have got a prescription drug card so it was going to cost me $15 or whatever. I said $900? He said, yeah. I said, well, what happens if I do not do that? He said in about 3 months it will clear up. I made a cost-benefit analysis and decided that I would forgo the antibiotic treatment and go with the professional judgment. It was my decision. I need to stand behind that decision, and if 3 months later my condition had gotten worse and I had other problems that may have been fixed if I had taken a different tack, I cannot go back on the doctor or should not and sue the doctor or the pharmacy or whatever, sue anybody that is still breathing because of a decision that I made. Personal responsibility is not only taking responsibility for paying for health care but also reclaiming your health care decisions because those are yours. You are responsible for that, and you yourself know there will be the occasional bad outcome to any procedure, to any field, and that is just nature. Doctors are not perfect or hospitals. None of us are. Those legitimate just bad outcomes is just the system, and we ought to take personal responsibility for that. I had several doctor clients, and to a person, if they did something wrong, if they created an issue or made something that aggravated something with a patient, they were going to fix it, period, no matter what it was. But in many instances, they used their absolute best professional judgment to treat a patient and they just got a bad outcome. That is life. So this personal responsibility issue that I am talking about is decisions for what health care you do get or you do not get, and the costs. I think the health savings accounts that we have instituted in certain instances will help us do that, so that putting away money in a health savings account; if you have a normal monthly kind of an expense come up, I have to decide do I take that money out of my health savings account that is growing, or do I figure out a way to do it out of this month's budget or my normal operating budget. So bringing that personal discipline back to the table in the arena of health care is not the absolute overall magic bullet, but it is a piece of the fix that is health care costs. I appreciate this opportunity to share this hour with the gentleman, and I look forward to hearing the remainder of the gentleman's comments from a learned colleague in an arena that is obviously of vital importance to all of Americans.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to announce the selection of former Lamesa resident Ms. Morgan Matlock as Miss Texas 2005. She will represent the State of Texas in the 2005 Miss America Pageant. Although she currently resides in Forth Worth, Texas, Ms. Matlock was born in Lamesa and hails from a long line of Dawson County residents. Morgan is a talented and dedicated young woman and is active in public service. She is a National Task Force leader for the Words Can Heal organization, and she will use her opportunity as Miss Texas to promote putting an end to verbal abuse. She also founded the Hearts Across Texas, a motivational organization for students from kindergarten to 12th grade as a staff member and columnist for Teen Scene and Pageantry Magazine, and a member of the Colleyville Chamber of Commerce. The Texas values that she has exhibited throughout her community service and career in pageantry are honorable. It is my great privilege to represent her here in Washington. She is a bright example of the difference that one can make when civically oriented. I would like to wish Morgan good luck in the Miss America Pageant and in all her future endeavors. She has made not only District 11 proud, but all of Texas.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, but I do need to correct the record. I was not the mayor. I should have been, perhaps, but I thank my colleague. Mr. Speaker, the issue is about refining capacity and the ability for us to convert crude oil into gasoline and other products. The record is pretty clear on both sides that we have not built a new refinery since 1976. In 1981, we had 324 refineries in production. Today, we have 148. We refine about 17 million barrels of gasoline a day, and we use about 21 million. We are importing gasoline; and, obviously, one of the choke points in the supply system is the ability to convert crude oil into gasoline. What this bill does, and I am speaking against the substitute and in favor of the underlying bill, is that it removes a regulatory burden that many folks who want to build a refinery have to submit themselves to. It takes about 3 years to build a refinery, exclusive of the permitting process. Major investments are needed in order to construct a refinery, and businesses simply are not willing to put those dollars at risk subject to a regulatory approval permitting scene that is disjointed at best. Under the bill, we allow the Governor to designate a particular site subject to these provisions. We put the DOE in charge of shepherding the permitting process, not making the decisions on behalf of the State and the Federal regulators, but simply encouraging them to get it done on a timely basis. Most businesses can deal with an answer, but a maybe or a give me more information or a delay is what is killing us. So I am standing in favor of the original bill, the manager's amendment and speaking against the Stupak substitute.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, due to a death in the family, I missed rollcall votes on September 6th, 7th, and 8th. Had I been in Washington, I would have voted: ``Yea,'' on rollcall No. 454, H. Res. 360, commemorating the 60th anniversary of V-J Day and the end of World War II in the Pacific. ``Yea,'' on rollcall No. 455, S.J. Res. 19, calling upon the President to issue a proclamation recognizing the 30th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act. ``Yea,'' on rollcall No. 456, H.R. 365, to allow United States Courts to conduct business during emergency conditions, and for other purposes. ``Yea,'' on rollcall No. 457, H.R. 3169, to provide the Secretary of Education with waiver authority for students who are eligible for Pell Grants who are adversely affected by a natural disaster. ``Yea,'' on rollcall No. 460, H.R. 3673, further Emergency Supplemental Appropriations, Hurricane Katrina, 2005. ``Yea,'' on rollcall No. 461, H.R. 3669, to temporarily increase the borrowing authority of the Federal Emergency Management Agency for carrying out the national flood Insurance program. ``Yea,'' on rollcall No. 462, H.R. 3668, student Grant Hurricane and Disaster Relief Act. ``Yea,'' on rollcall No. 463, H. Res. 428, expressing the sincere gratitude of the House of Representatives to the foreign individuals, organizations, and governments that have offered material assistance and other forms of support to those who have been affected by Hurricane Katrina. ``Yea,'' on rollcall No. 464, H. Res. 427, relating to the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, today, I voted against the H.R. 3132, The Children's Safety Act of 2005. As a cosponsor and ardent supporter of most of the important provisions in this bill, I reluctantly voted against it. Most legislation of any substance contains both good and bad provisions. As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, I continually use my best judgment to determine whether the good provisions outweigh the bad provisions of a bill. I could not, in good conscience, vote in favor of a bill in which the ``bad'' of creating hate crimes law, outweighed the ``good'' of strengthening protections for our children. The Conyers Amendment added so-called ``hate crimes legislation'' which is bad public policy. This provision has no place in a bill that was designed to address violence, sexual abuse and other exploitation of children. I believe that every crime is a hate crime, and therefore, no individual or group of individuals deserves special treatment under the law. I am also concerned that ``hate crimes'' legislation such as the Conyers Amendment, may lead to the creation of ``thought crimes'' in the not too distant future. My plea to the members of the Other Body is for them to not include the Conyers Amendment in their version of the Child Protection Act. I also urge for the House Conferees to strip the Conyers Amendment from the final bill.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to memorialize a friend and a true hero of our country. Americans honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom through a variety of methods. Most of the times we talk about this sacrifice in terms of all of those brave men and women as a group. While this is entirely appropriate, I encourage everyone to make the issue personal by thinking about a specific individual. Every soldier has their own important story, and every American should have one story that pulls at their heartstrings and personifies the ideals of our young men and women in uniform. For me that story is Rex Young. Rex graduated from Odessa Permian High School in 1965 and attended Odessa College for 1 year before joining the Army on September 15, 1966. He took basic training at Ft. Bliss in El Paso, and he had been serving in Vietnam for 10 months when he was killed. Rex's mother, Marilyn, said Rex planned to attend Texas Tech University in Lubbock following his service. I would like to read from the citation that describes Rex's heroism: ``For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Staff Sergeant Rex Young distinguished himself at the cost of his life while serving as a squad leader with Company C. While conducting a reconnaissance mission in the vicinity of Ben Cui, Company C was suddenly engaged by an estimated regimental-sized force of the North Vietnamese Army. ``During the initial volley of fire, the point element of 1st Platoon was pinned down, sustaining several casualties and the acting platoon leader was killed. Staff Sergeant Young unhesitatingly assumed command of the platoon and immediately began to organize and deploy his men into a defensive position in order to repel the attacking force. ``As a human wave attack advanced on Staff Sergeant Young's platoon, he moved from position to position encouraging and directing fire on the hostile insurgents while exposing himself to the hail of enemy bullets. ``After receiving orders to withdraw to a better defensive position, he remained behind to provide covering fire for the withdrawal. Observing that a small element of the point squad was unable to extract itself from its position, and completely disregarding his personal safety, Staff Sergeant Young began moving toward their position, firing as he maneuvered. When half way to their position, he sustained a critical head injury, yet he continued his mission and ordered the element to withdraw. ``Remaining with the squad as it fought its way to the rear, he was twice seriously wounded in the arm and leg. Although his leg was badly shattered, Staff Sergeant Young refused assistance that would have slowed the retreat of his comrades, and he ordered them to continue their withdrawal while he provided protective covering fire. ``With indomitable courage and heroic self-sacrifice, he continued his self-assigned mission until the enemy force engulfed his position. His gallantry, at the cost of his life, is in the highest traditions of the military service. Staff Sergeant Young has reflected great credit upon himself, his unit and the United States Army.'' For his service to his country and tremendous valor displayed in battle, Rex was awarded the Medal of Honor, and I believe he is the first individual to receive that honor from Odessa, Texas. Like so many of the bravest men and women that our Nation has to offer, Rex Young lived the life unfinished. But he provided an outstanding example of service beyond self and brought credit and honor upon the United States Army and our country. As the 37th anniversary of Rex's death arrives on August 21, I would like to thank Staff Sergeant Young and his family for their sacrifice to our great Nation.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman yielding me this time, and I rise tonight to support this rule and also the underlying document that we will vote on later on tonight. We have heard it is important for national security issues, and it is. Strengthening these six democracies, fledgling though they may be, makes America a safer place to be. We have heard that it is good for immigration control, and it is. Prosperity and jobs created in Central American countries will lessen the pressure of those folks trying to percolate up through Mexico and trying to get into America to get a job here. We have heard it is good for trade, and it is. Our manufacturers and producers will no longer pay the tariffs and duties we are currently paying. Manufacturers like Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and breakfast cereals will now be able to be sold in these Central American countries with that trade. It seems odd to me if I have a job, and a group comes to me and says we want to help you get a better job, we want you to earn more and we want the labor standards to be improved, but we want you to keep that job, well, that is the kind of idea I would like to have help with. But if I have another side that says I want to help you with labor standards and I want to help you have a better job, but in the meantime I want you to be unemployed, that does not make a lot of sense to me. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to vote for this rule and the underlying bill.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Houston, Texas for yielding to me and for hosting this hour tonight. And in addition to all of his other great attributes, he is one of the all-time best second basemen to play for the Republicans in the annual baseball game. Mr. Speaker, many of the points have been made tonight, and I would like to continue with some of those, one of which is labor standards. We have an awful lot of criticism of the CAFTA agreement based on labor standards. The other side seems to take the position that a trade agreement can be used to cure labor issues and labor ills in a country that would, in effect, bring their labor standards and their labor conduct up to that of the United States. I think that is really misplaced. In addition, the argument seems to be that if the labor standards or the labor conditions or the pay wages or whatever is going on, it seems that if a fellow is out of a job, he is in a better position to, in effect, change or make improvements to those conditions than if he has a job. Well, I think that is really wrong-headed. I think that no matter how bad the standards are, no matter how bad the pay or the working conditions, if I have a job, I will take that job and take whatever money is available to me, and I will feed my family as best I can, and then I will work to try to improve those conditions. But while that is going on, I at least have a job that I can make some money at; maybe not as much money as some would like me to make or I would like to make, but I will be able to continue to work and feed my family while those conditions are being addressed. Under CAFTA, we have negotiated the strongest labor protection and labor improvement agreements of any of our trade agreements, and going forward. The signatories to this agreement have agreed that if we sign this CAFTA agreement, that they are committed to enforce those standards; which has always been one of the issues with trade agreements is that we will put these agreements in place. But, the other side, the leadership of those countries will not enforce those agreements the way they are supposed to. Those commitments in enforcing labor standards, improving labor conditions and wages in those countries, those commitments simply evaporate if we do not sign this CAFTA agreement. In addition to that, the administration has pledged $610 million over the next 4 years to improve enforcement, to improve economic assistance to the rural areas, and most of these countries would qualify as rural, to help build that capacity, and to help these countries put in place the enforcement processes that will raise labor standards, that will raise wages, and enforce this agreement, and that has to be a better circumstance than those folks being unemployed. We have had in place what is called the Caribbean Basin Initiative; it dates back to the 1980s. With that agreement we created basically a symbiotic relationship between agriculture interests in this country and jobs in Central America. What happens is, as my colleague already mentioned, when you buy a shirt that says it is made in Honduras or made in Costa Rica or Nicaragua, 60 percent of the inputs into those shirts, those garments, come from the United States. Well, in west Texas that input is another word for cotton, because we grow and harvest a lot of cotton. It is far better for our cotton farmers to be able to sell that cotton into Central America and have it spun into thread and woven into clothes, garments, and cut and sewn and brought back to this country and sold to consumers in America than it is if we have to try to figure out a way to sell that cotton to China. Because if that shirt that you are wearing, and I would challenge my colleagues when they get home tonight to take their shirts off, take their clothes off and look for that label. It says, made someplace, and find out where it was made. If that label says ``Made in China,'' less than 1 percent of the input into that cloth that came from the United States. It does not take a rocket scientist to know that is not real good for Texas cotton farmers. So this idea of creating this agreement, it does improve labor standards, it enforces labor standards, but it also helps keep in place this Caribbean Basin Initiative which creates a symbiotic relationship with these countries in Central America. My colleague has already said that there is clear evidence that if these jobs do not stay in Central America, they are not coming back to America. As harsh as that is for our good colleagues in North Carolina and Virginia and other places to talk about, having lost those jobs, those jobs, cutting and sewing and weaving and looming jobs, they are not coming back to America. We cannot compete in that arena anymore. Those jobs are going to China, those jobs are going to Thailand or the Philippines. If they go there, they are not going to be using American input as that work is done on those clothes that are shipped back to Americans to purchase. Let me give an example. I heard recently, earlier today, about the impact that tariffs have on American consumers, or actually American manufacturers. All of us would agree that the manufacture of airplanes is a manufacturing job that we want to keep in America. Now, we can argue about some of the lower-end manufacturing jobs may go places, but no one would argue about outsourcing the manufacture of an airplane. Last year, Cessna, based out of Kansas, lost $43 million in a competitive bid to Embraer, which is based out of Brazil, for sales into these countries. Now, the reason they lost it, one of the reasons they lost it, there is a 15 percent tariff on Cessna airplanes that are made in America and sold into these countries. Embraer does not have that same tariff. Brazil has already initiated or already negotiated a bilateral agreement that dropped that tariff. So head-to-head competition, if it is just on price, and I have a 15 percent competitive advantage against anybody else, I want to use some of that 15 percent to make sure I win the bid. And that is $43 million worth of airplanes that would have been manufactured in Kansas or in America that instead were manufactured in Brazil; somewhere else. Our colleagues on the other side talk about the 44 million customers in these countries not being able to afford our high-end merchandise. Well, it probably makes for good rhetoric and sound bites, but if you really think about that, it really does not have much of a place in this argument. Quite frankly, I cannot afford all of the high-end merchandise that is manufactured in the United States, so to say that somebody in Central America cannot afford a Cadillac or something like that, and that is a reason to not pass CAFTA, is certainly misplaced in the extreme. We have also talked about immigration and that impact. Let me say it the way I typically say it, some of the other colleagues have already talked about it, is that everywhere I go in District 11 and talk to folks, they are concerned about border security. In my mind, you cannot separate border security and immigration reform. We have to protect our borders; we need to know who is coming into this country. One of the long-term best interests of the United States is for opportunities in Mexico and, as this phrase is used, OTMs, other than Mexicans, for countries, for opportunities to be created in those countries, because that is who is coming to America. It is not just Mexicans, but it is OTMs, other than Mexicans, percolating up through Mexico and coming into this country. CAFTA will help keep jobs in Central America. If somebody has a job in Central America, they are going to be less likely to want to try to percolate up through Mexico and come into the United States. So I thank my good friend who has hosted this hour tonight. I am supporting CAFTA, I am voting for CAFTA. There are a lot of reasons; we have heard them on national security and immigration and trade. All of these are good reasons why we should support CAFTA, and I would encourage my colleagues across the aisle and on our side of the aisle to vote for CAFTA. Let us put this trade agreement in place. Let us take advantage of the opportunities for dropping the tariffs that our manufacturers currently face like Cessna in selling and trying to operate in these Central American countries.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to recognize a friend and constituent, Colonel Charles E. Powell, retired U.S. Air Force of San Angelo, Texas. On June 14, 2005, Colonial Powell received the Road Hand Award from the Texas Department of Transportation, presented by Texas Transportation Commissioner John W. Johnson. The Road Hand Award was created in 1973 by Luther DeBerry, a former State highway engineer of the Texas Department of Transportation. It is designed to honor public servants throughout Texas who have dedicated themselves to improving public transportation safety. In 32 years, only 198 awards have been given, an average of about six per year. Previous Road Hand Award winners include former mayor of San Antonio and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros, and former Congressman Jake Pickle, who recently passed away. Colonel Powell is the seventh recipient from the San Angelo district and the first honoree ever to receive the award for their dedication to Texas aviation safety. Honorees have their names inscribed on the Road Hand Hall of Fame plaque, which is displayed in the foyer of the DeWitt C. Greer Highway Building in Austin, Texas. Colonel Powell's career of service brings credit to all Americans and pride to his hometown of San Angelo. Colonel Powell served as commanding officer at Goodfellow Air Force Base from 1980 to 1984. In 2000 he was appointed to the Texas Aviation Advisory Committee, where he helped increase grants by 44 percent. As a member of the San Angelo Chamber of Commerce, Colonel Powell was a great advocate for local transportation issues, including to our State government, and helped secure funding for the U.S. Highway 67 Houston Harte Freeway through San Angelo. Texas has over 79,000 miles of roadway, the most in the United States, and it takes a lot of work to keep Texas safe in our many transportation systems. To a long list of honors and awards reflecting a lifetime of public service, Colonel Powell has added the Texas Department of Transportation Road Hand. Colonel Powell represents the best of District 11 and the State of Texas, and I am proud to be his Congressman and his friend.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, passing the Central American Free Trade Agreement will not necessitate any changes in U.S. immigration law or U.S. visa policy. Congressional power over immigration policy will go unchanged when this important trade agreement takes effect. However, CAFTA will help prevent illegal immigration in the long run by improving economic conditions in the Central American countries. By stimulating their economy and creating jobs, the tide of illegal immigrants from these nations will decrease. Most individuals and families who come to the United States legally and illegally are simply seeking economic opportunity. The best long- term solution to illegal immigration can be achieved by encouraging economic freedom, as well as sustained growth, and the creation of sufficient opportunities and securities in their respective homelands. I support CAFTA because it will create new economic opportunities domestically and internationally by eliminating tariffs, opening markets, permitting transparency, and establishing state-of-the-art rules for 21st-century commerce. By supporting and passing trade agreements such as CAFTA, the United States allows for greater economic incentives and opportunities in other countries. In turn, we will reduce the number of immigrants attempting to enter the United States illegally. CAFTA is a trade agreement providing great opportunities for all nations involved.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time. Mr. Chairman, I am 12 days back from a trip to Baghdad. Twelve days ago I sat during a briefing with the State Department to assess what was going on in that country. We were assured by the State Department representatives that the drafting of the constitution, an integral part of setting up an Iraqi style government, an Iraqi style democracy, was ongoing. At that time they had 15 Sunnis who had joined the negotiations. Two of those Sunnis had since stepped down because of threats to themselves and their families, but the Sunnis were having input, which is important that they be in the deal. The State Department folks are relatively confident, as confident as they can be in this arena, that the August 15 date will be met, or shortly thereafter; that 60 days later a referendum vote will be held on that constitution, and that the Iraqis for themselves will go to the polls one more time, as they did so courageously in January, to vote, something we take very much for granted many times. Sixty days after that, in December, national elections will be held, and then the Iraqis will have a chance once again to exercise the freedoms that we in America enjoy. The violence between now and then will increase. In all expectations, the insurgents see this as a last-gasp opportunity to derail the democratization of Iraq. It is unfortunate that that is going to happen, but it is going to. The high profile, the high publicity events, the murder of the Egyptian ambassador which occurred while we were there, the callous, heartless murder of 24 young Iraqi children in an attempt to kill one American soldier, as regrettable as that soldier's death was, those 24 lives were just as precious. This violence will continue. We have to stand strong. We have to understand what their end game is. I support the amendment. It sets out a good plan for how we are going to get out of this. All of this criticism that we do not have a plan to get out, here is a plan. It is one that makes sense. To set a fixed date obviously flies in the face of common sense. I stand in support of this amendment.

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate my good colleague yielding me this time. I have just come back from Guantanamo Bay about 3 weeks ago. In part of my former life, I served with the 256 MP Company at Fort Hood, Texas. That company had, in addition to traffic responsibilities at Fort Hood, responsibility for the stockade. We have asked our military, through the civilian leadership, to do two things at Guantanamo Bay: one, keep those detainees in a safe and humane manner. And we are clearly doing that. And, two, to conduct interrogations against standards set by the civilian leadership of this country to glean from these detainees whatever information they have left to help us with conducting this war on terror. Both those missions are being accomplished well. We have great leadership there, and the men and women who are serving there. Some 10,000 of our soldiers, sailors, and Marines who have circulated through, have undergone extensive training, sensitivity training, which is a phrase I hate, but training to allow them to be more sensitive to the Arab culture. Not to the Islam religion, which we ought to respect, have respect for the Koran and the religious practices, but the customs of the Arabs are respected in a way that does us honor, because we are going to such great extent to accommodate these detainees. We cannot out-nice the meanness and the hatred of our enemies. We just cannot be so nice to the rest of the world that they will say, in that case, I will not hurt you. They are going to kill us loudly or they are going to kill us softy, but they are going to kill us. As an example, one of the detainees that we let go presented to us with half his leg blown off. We nursed that person back to health, as we should. We ought to set the gold standard for prisoner treatment. We nursed this person back to health; we fitted him with a prosthesis; and then, after evaluations, we let him go. We put him back in the fight. He has been implicated in the death of a Chinese engineer, kidnapping of another. He has been indicted in the blowing up of a bus with journalists on it, and he has also been indicted in a hotel bombing. We cannot out-nice our enemies. We have to treat them with respect, but we have to kill them where we have to. The mission going on at Guantanamo Bay is done right, and it is in the right spot. We put those prisoners anywhere else in America, and that spot then becomes a terrorist target. I would rather have that terrorist target and those attentions aimed at Guantanamo Bay, where our Marines man that wire, where the Army conducts this detaining function and does it well. That is the best spot for it. There is absolutely no reason in my mind we should think about closing Guantanamo Bay. The whole idea of closing it is a red herring. It is meant to distract us from the work we should otherwise be doing. The folks we have there are doing it well. They are well led, well trained, and I support my good colleague's amendment.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I wish to express my strong support for H.R. 458, the Military Personnel Financial Services Protection Act. This legislation protects the men and women of our armed forces from predatory lenders that target service members. There are a number of companies known as ``military lenders'' that offer our troops ill-advised and costly products, such as loans with exorbitant rates and hidden fees. They often cluster around military installations and aggressively target service members and their families, who are uniquely vulnerable to these abusive marketing and collection practices. As an example, the zip code 76903 of San Angelo in my Congressional District borders Goodfellow Air Force Base and has 11 banks and eight payday lenders. Unfortunately, a large number of our young troops have limited experience dealing with financial matters and many fall victim to abusive lending practices. Additionally, they often have relatively low incomes which may lead them to borrow in order to pay current expenses and debts. This is especially troubling in a time when we are experiencing extended troop deployments and families at home are struggling to make ends meet while the service member is deployed. The problem has become so pervasive that the Pentagon has launched a new effort aimed at educating our troops and warning them about the dangers of abusive military lenders. Not only do these predatory lending practices affect the financial well-being of the men and women of our armed services, but it also threatens the operational readiness of our military. The last thing we need is for service members who are putting their lives on the line for our nation to be overwhelmed with financial stresses back home. H.R. 458 addresses this problem by imposing certain restrictions on various types of specialty lenders that target service members. Additionally, it protects the interests of service members by requiring additional disclosures with regard to these types of loans. H.R. 458 is responsible legislation that protects the rights of the men and women of our military while still affording them options with regard to their finances. Mr. Speaker, I commend the House of Representatives for passing this legislation and addressing an issue that is vitally important to our nation's dedicated troops.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Kentucky for hosting this hour tonight. These chambers are home to an awful lot of rhetoric, and I hope that our ours tonight will add to the understanding that Americans have of how important it is that we finish this job, we finish this work in Afghanistan and, more importantly, in Iraq. There were a couple of anecdotes earlier this evening by one of the speakers about folks opposed to the war. I, too, had an opportunity this past week, last Wednesday a week ago today, to attend the service for Lance Corporal Mario Castillo in Brownwood, Texas. I flew back to the district in order to do that. The church, as my colleagues might expect, was full that morning in Brownwood, Texas, and the tribute letters that were read as a part of that service from Lance Corporal Castillo's colleagues and comrades-in- arms are very instructive as to the attitude that our military has. To a person, to a man, these letters talked about what a wonderful person Mario was. His nickname was ``Happy.'' The picture of Mario on the front of the program for the funeral showed a young man in full battle gear, helmet, goggles, but the most incredible white-toothed smile you had ever seen. Obviously, an individual loved by his comrades, respected for the job he was doing, respected for the risks he took. To a person, they talked about what a wonderful fellow Mario was, what a great job he was doing. They also talked about what they were doing there and why and how important it was that we stay the course and how important it was that we did not let Mario Castillo's and his family's sacrifices go in vain. As we left the church that day, the good citizens of Brownwood and Early, Texas, literally lined the route, the 5-plus mile route from Brownwood's church out to the Early Cemetery. This was a bright blue Texas day. It was noon, a blazing white sun, precious little wind. It was hot and uncomfortable, and many of these people had stood in that heat, in that sunshine for almost 2 hours, waiting for the procession to move through. An incredible display of support and honor for this family. These were not people who were hired to come out and stand with the flag and with their hands over their hearts. These were people who loved and cared for Mario Castillo, who did not even know him until this event, young men and women, babies in strollers, teenagers, moms and dads. This was a working day, Wednesday. Working families were out manning these roads, many of the businesses allowing as much of their staff as they could to go man the roads with the flags. It was just the most incredible site that anyone could have experienced. I also had the opportunity last November, just after I was elected, to sit with Amy Baker. Amy Baker is the young wife of Brian Baker. Brian was killed in Iraq in early November. I sat with Amy and cried with Amy and her mom and dad. Amy was pregnant with twins, about 7 months old, as they have since been born. We have an obligation to help that family. But as I sat with Amy during the worst grief period you can possibly imagine, she looked at me with tears in her eyes, her eyes and my eyes, and she said, you tell President Bush under no circumstances is he to back away from this fight, because to do so would dishonor my husband. We have an obligation to stay this course. We have plenty of blood on the battlefields of Iraq. Our treasure is there. We are winning this battle. A couple of other things I want to talk about. One of the previous speakers this evening talked about loving our enemies out of their position. I do not think I have ever seen that happen. It may be scriptural, but it just does not happen. As an example: my colleague, I have spent some time in Guantanamo Bay. One of the detainees there, one of the early detainees, who has since been, for all intents and purposes, been awarded an academy award for his act because he was able to convince our people in Guantanamo Bay that he was not in fact a threat; that he just got swept up in the battlefield and was one of those people that should be returned to Afghanistan and Pakistan because he was not a belligerent; he was just an innocent who had gotten swept up in an event beyond his control. When he presented himself he had suffered a battlefield injury, losing a leg. We nursed him back to health, fitted him with a prosthesis. We loved this individual and we let him go, turned him back to Pakistan and Afghanistan, whereupon he changed his name. He is now referred to as Mohammad Masoud. He has been implicated in the kidnapping and killing of two Chinese engineers, killed one of them; he has been implicated in the car bombing of a bus carrying journalists; he has been implicated in the bombing of a hotel. He is a bad guy. We loved him. We did the right thing. We should have done what we did for him, fix his wounds and fit him with that prosthesis, but it did not change his heart. He is a bad guy and he wants to hurt us, and so we have to stay the course. Let me finish up by talking about something that happened earlier this afternoon. We have a life here in America that is relatively fear free. It is fear free because we have good men and women manning the wire, manning the walls, planning the threat points to our country and doing greats work in Iraq, and so we rarely have fear enter into our lives. We stand in the center, the epicenter of democracy not only of the United States but of this world. These hallowed Chambers are home to democracy. Early this evening, we had some sort of alarm go off. Immediately, Members, our colleagues, began to flee these Chambers. And as I walked out of here, I was struck by the fear and the panic in some of our colleagues. It was not Republican or Democrat. It was just that there were folks on both sides of the aisle who looked scared. There was fear in their eyes. They wanted to get out of this building, period; and they were running past me towards the door. And it struck me what an odd event that was. Here we are in the epicenter of democracy, as I said, and yet a wayward airplane, a twin engine plane, was causing the elected Members of this body to run fleeing out of these Chambers, and what a rare occurrence that is. What if that was an everyday event? There is a possibility that could be an everyday event, with the threats that we are constantly getting from al Qaeda, from the terrorists around this world. They would love nothing more than to be able to be setting off car bombs and to have suicide bombers blowing up sidewalk cafes, and all the kinds of things we see happening in Iraq. They would dearly love to be doing that inside this country, putting a real threat to the fear that some of my colleagues felt this afternoon as they fled these Chambers, on a regular basis instead of the odd occurrence that happens every once in a while. With that, Mr. Speaker, I will yield back to my good friend, the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Davis), and appreciate his hosting this hour tonight.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I was detained and unable to cast a vote on H.R. 2985, the Legislative Appropriations Act for FY06, on June 22, 2005. I was in Brownwood, Texas attending the funeral of Lance Corporal Mario Castillo, a Marine from the 11th District of Texas. Please let the Record reflect that had I been here, I would have voted ``yes.''

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the fifth grade students of Hillander Elementary School in Midland, Texas for raising $4,200 on Saturday, April 30, 2005, for the honorable men and women of the Midland-based Texas National Guard Company C, 2nd Battalion, 142nd Infantry, who have been deployed in the Middle East for some 5 months now. Mary Clare Holmes, a student at Hillander, devised plans for a fundraiser after hearing stories of children who raised money for the victims of last year's tsunamis. With these fellow youngsters in mind, she enlisted her classmates to raise money through a bake sale for their hometown troops. They devoted their time to helping our men and women fighting for freedom abroad by making items such as salsa, bundt cake, and cookies for the sale. They set a positive example not only for our Nation's youth but showed the American spirit of giving that should be an example to everyone. The noble efforts of these students were well received in the community and the items for sale were quickly purchased. With the resounding success of the bake sale, the students wanted to make sure the proceeds were used in a way that would most benefit the soldiers and their families. With the advice of local army officials, the students decided that the money they raised would be best used to purchase phone cards. The efforts of the fifth graders at Hillander will allow the brave men and women defending freedom abroad to spend more time in touch with their loved ones. The students at Hillander set a wonderful example of how a small unselfish effort can greatly benefit our military personnel. I am proud to have compassionate and caring youngsters in my district, and I know our soldiers abroad will greatly appreciate their efforts.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I was detained and unable to cast a vote on H.J. Res. 10 on June 22, 2005. I was in Brownwood, Texas attending the funeral of Lance Corporal Mario Castillo, a Marine from the 11th District of Texas. Please let the Record reflect that had I been here, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I was detained and unable to cast a vote on H.R. 2475, the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY06, on June 21, 2005. I was enroute to Brownwood, Texas to attend the funeral of Lance Corporal Mario Castillo, a Marine from the 11th District of Texas. Please let the Record reflect that had I been here, I would have voted ``yes.''