Jim Greenwood

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on International Relations. (Mr. GILMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson).

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, rigid ideological dogmatic rhetoric always turns logic on its head and always brutalizes the truth. Let me describe reality outside of the realm of such dogmatic rhetoric. In March of this year, I traveled to India and to Bangladesh, and in those countries, I visited family planning clinics; and let me tell my colleagues what I saw. We went to India, New Delhi, to one of the most terrifyingly brutal areas of poverty I have ever witnessed, down dirty roads filled with dung, poor children with their hands out, starvation, disease, flies everywhere, into a little brick clinic. In that clinic I saw impoverished Indian women on their knees getting a lecture about how to use family planning services. Sometimes women in this neighborhood come to this clinic in search of an abortion. Why do they do that? They are not pregnant because of irresponsible sexual conduct. They are pregnant by their husbands, and they are there sometimes desperate for an abortion because they have already more children than they can feed, and they tire of watching their children starve to death. Abortion is not their first choice; it is their last choice. In my vision, when those women, as the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. Johnson) said, come in such desperate straits to that clinic, I want American dollars, small amounts of American dollars to be used there to say to that woman, you have had several abortions, there is a better way. We have family planning services available to you, so you need not again become pregnant when you cannot feed the children at your breast as it is, and your body suffers from hemorrhaging because you have had too many pregnancies too closely spaced together. The impact of the language that we are trying to strike is to make this situation worse, because the President will exercise the waive, and $12.5 million that could have been spent for family planning to prevent the 1,600 women from dying every hour, to prevent the millions of children from starving around the world, to prevent the millions of abortions that happen for lack of these services. Some of that money will be cut, and women in places like India and Bangladesh and around the world will not get these services, and some of them will die. Many of them will have abortions, and many of them will give birth to children who will starve to death. That is the result of what is happening on the floor today. It is unconscionable, and it happens every time Members of Congress try to impose their own personal religious beliefs on the women of the world. It is wrong, and it is un-American; and it should not stand. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley).

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell).

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, I once heard an old African American woman, much wiser I think on this issue than anyone who has spoken in this Chamber today. She lived through the time when abortion was illegal in the United States. And she said that when a woman knows in her heart that it is right to have a child, she will risk her life to have that child; and when she knows in her heart that it is wrong for her to have that child, she will risk her life not to have that child. Women have sought abortions legally and illegally all over this world for as long as we can remember. They do so under the most desperate circumstances. In Bolivia, not too long ago, it was not only illegal to have an abortion, it was illegal to seek family planning services. And when they did a survey of their hospitals in Bolivia, they found that 50 percent of the beds were occupied by women suffering from botched illegal abortions. That is what this language does. The language that we move to strike promotes abortion in the name of limiting abortion. That is the twisted logic. It sacrifices the lives of young women, and it sacrifices the lives of little children on the altar of blind rigid dogma. It is the logic that says we must burn to purify. That logic has been wrong throughout history every time it has been applied. Millions have suffered from that blind brutal logic. That is the moral low ground. We stand on the moral high ground. I urge the Members of the Congress to use their hearts and their minds and put aside the politics of this issue for the moment; put aside the pragmatism of moving this bill, and adopt the Greenwood amendment.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I am very conflicted by the vote on this rule. As has been referenced, I took to the Committee on Rules last night an amendment to amend the amendment of the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) because I have a difference of opinion with him with regard to the policy. The gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn); and I tried to work out our differences last night and cooperate, so we decided that what we would do is each have our opportunity to debate on the floor. The Committee on Rules denied me the opportunity to bring my amendment to the floor this evening, and I do not like that. My normal inclination when the Committee on Rules denies me one of the few amendments that I take to the Committee on Rules is to oppose the rule. That was my inclination. However, the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell) has been made a promise, and that promise is that his bill would be debated on the floor. I think he deserves it. He worked hard to have his day, his night on the floor, and I think he is deserving of that. More importantly, there are thousands and thousands of physicians across this country who have felt frustrated by the present situation and whether we agree with their position or not, whether we agree with the position of the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell) or not, they went to the United States Congress, and they said, ``Please debate this issue. We think it is deserving of the greatest deliberative body on earth. Please take our issue to the Congress and have a debate.'' If this rule is defeated, imagine all of those physicians all over the country saying the Congress does not work. We are frustrated. We get a bill. We get over 220 cosponsors on the bill; and for something to do with abortion, we are not even allowed to have our issue debated after all of these years. I think it would be a tremendous disservice to those advocates of those bills and, frankly, those opponents of the bill to deny the opportunity for this Congress to do its work, to take these issues important to our times, and to debate them.

Mr. GREENWOOD. I yield to the gentlewoman from Colorado.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, those of my colleagues who are supporters of this measure really have to vote against the Coburn amendment, and they have to do it for a reason of substance and a reason of process. The substantive reason is that if they argue that this is all about freeing doctors, freeing doctors to use their individual liberty to go and negotiate with their plans, then they cannot have it both ways, they cannot say except in this one instance and be consistent. Secondly, if they are for the bill, they cannot vote for the Coburn amendment. Because if we look at the people who voted for the rule to allow this to happen at all, nearly half of them are pro-choice Members and they will kill the bill with the Coburn amendment. So to be consistent and support the right of doctors to individually and collectively argue for good care for their patients and to be consistent and say they want the bill to pass, they must vote against the Coburn amendment unless they are going to go home to their doctors and let them know they tried to have it both ways.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I would like to read from a letter I received recently from a 70- year-old widow who has been widowed for 14 years. She writes, ``I am in pain daily, and I cannot correct this problem because of financial difficulty. I have stopped taking Prilosec, Zoloft, Lossomax, Zanax, and Zocor. I need these drugs filled monthly and simply cannot afford them. I also am in need of a pain pill, and I have not been able to purchase it. I have cried myself to sleep over this dilemma.'' I think if this lady from my district were here today, she would cry to witness this process. Because over and over again Members from the Republican side of the aisle have stood up and talked about how to solve the problem, and over and over again Members from the Democratic side of the aisle have walked to the microphone with nothing more to offer than blasting away at the plan we have tried to put together in a bipartisan fashion. We have been criticized for partisanship. Early last year the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) and others put together, extended a wide invitation to Democrats to join Republicans to work out a plan. A few Democrats came over. Some of them have stayed with the bipartisan plan. Most of the others have been driven off by leadership, told not to participate with Republicans in writing a bipartisan bill. Why? It has been obvious from day one. The plan is that the Democrats want power back, and they think the way to get power back is to stop everything that gets done in this House. And so my colleagues on the other side will say anything and do anything to do it, including denying senior citizens prescription drugs, including my constituent's prescription drugs. And she ought to cry herself to sleep over this process. There is a heck of a lot more in common between these plans than there is different, and we ought to work on the difference. What did the AARP say? ``We are pleased that both the House Republican and Democratic bills provide a voluntary prescription drug benefit in Medicare, a benefit to which every Medicare beneficiary is entitled. And while there are differences, both bills describe the core prescription drug benefit in statute.'' The AARP, the most respected seniors' organization in the country, says we ought to work together and stop fighting in a partisan way.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank my colleague from the other side of the State of Pennsylvania, from Erie, Pennsylvania, for organizing this Special Order. Mr. Speaker, we come here to Washington and we talk about the issue of Medicare prescription drugs, as we have for months and months; and sometimes the discussion, the dialogue, gets fairly arcane and complicated and seems to go far from the flesh and blood of the people we are trying to represent; and the gentleman from Erie just talked about the fact that seniors should not have to at that stage of their lives be worrying about whether or not they can afford their prescription benefit. I want to read a letter that I received recently from just such a senior in my district, who certainly is worrying. She is from Holland, Pennsylvania, which is the little town that my family moved into in 1955. She wrote this letter to me just a few weeks ago, a couple of weeks ago. ``Dear Congressman Greenwood, I never thought that I would come to this time in my life and find myself neglecting my health out of sheer necessity. I am a widow, 70 years of age. My medical problems require drugs that amount to over $1,000 per month. I am enrolled in Aetna U.S. Health Care which has a cap on prescription drugs of $500 a year. After filling out the prescriptions, my cap was met. ``I am in pain daily and I cannot correct this problem because of financial difficulty. I have stopped taking Prilosec,'' which costs her $285 each month, ``Zoloft, approximately $100 a month; Losomax, another $100 a month; Xanax, approximately $100 a month; and Zocor, $100 or more. I need these drugs filled monthly, and I simply cannot afford them. I am also in need of pain pill, Vioxx, which costs $89; and I have not been able to purchase it. ``I have cried myself to sleep over this dilemma. I had to visit my pulmonary doctor, who diagnosed me with full-blown asthma and chronic bronchitis. My doctor told me that I cannot miss a day taking my medication for my lungs. I take Zevent, two puffs twice a day; Flovent, two puffs twice a day; and Albuterol, 2 puffs every 4 hours. ``The prescription for each is $98 times three, lasts 2 weeks.'' So $98 every 2 weeks for each of these three medications. That is $600 per month right there. ``I cannot stop taking this. I tried and ran into breathing problems again. ``I also must take Zithomax for chronic infection, $89. I must keep this on hand always. ``Also my ophthalmologist prescribed Xalton for glaucoma, which I must take faithfully, nightly, another $89. ``The drugs I must take average about $800 per month. The other drugs I need for osteoporosis, reflux and hiatal hernia, anxiety and depression, high cholesterol and nerves, I had to eliminate them; and I can feel my health declining each day. ``I tried a generic brand drug for my lung infection, and I had to end up taking three Zithromax, as the generic did not help me. ``My problem is that I make $200 too much per month to qualify for assistance. You figure this out. I have two friends who make $200 and $250 less than I do per month. They are paying $6 for all their prescriptions because they qualify for the program. They are getting help with their electric bill, they are being well taken care of, they are able to go out to dinner weekly and on a bus trip now and then. I can do none of this. My money is going to prescription drugs. ``I just pray that some good Congressman like you could make the guys in Washington see what this drug problem for the aged is doing to us. We worked hard all of our lives and then have to come to this.'' Mr. Speaker, that is a pretty persuasive argument, I think, a pretty poignant letter from a real woman who lives in my district, a 70-year- old widow who is only able to use every penny of her income simply for the drugs that she has to have to stay alive, and then she neglects her other needs; and so her cholesterol problem, her anxiety, her depression, her pain, her osteoporosis, all of those conditions go unchecked because she does not have this benefit. That is why all of us in Washington who care about this issue are trying so hard to get this done, and that is why we have come here tonight to talk about the bipartisan bill. If this issue is not handled in a bipartisan fashion, my constituent, this 70-year-old woman, will not get relief. It is absolutely the case. The people of the United States have elected a Republican House and a Republican Senate, and they have a Democratic President in the White House. For us to get this done this year, we have to exercise bipartisanship, and that is why this bill that we are supporting is bipartisan. Now, unfortunately, in the Special Order that came before us, my friend, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), and I will give him credit for this, he comes to the floor every night just about and makes a speech about prescription drugs; but what is so discouraging to me is the level of partisanship. There are reasons for there to be differences between the President's plan, the Democrat's plan, and the Republican plan, because this is a hard problem to solve; and it takes different kinds of thinking from different perspectives. There are reasons why the Republican plan is different. This is a complex issue. One of those differences between the two plans is that we think that you need catastrophic coverage. We think that it is important that when some of these drugs that can cost $10,000 to $20,000 per year, you cannot stop the coverage at $2,000 and let the individual be on their own, because that is not going to help my constituent. My constituent will not be helped by that, because she will run out of money; and not only will her insurance coverage not be sufficient, but now the Medicare coverage will not be sufficient, and that is not good enough. When you look at the President's plan and when you look at the Republican plan, there are differences. I happen to prefer the Republican plan, but the fact of the matter is they are more alike than they are different. What we have got to do this year is we have to be bipartisan and make sure that the bipartisan bill is adopted by the House, that we take ideas from other Members, we negotiate this with the President and get it done. When you see Members of Congress come to the well of this House or sit in committee hearings and meetings, and when you hear them looking for common ground and looking for a bipartisan approach, when you have Republicans and Democrats supporting the same kind of legislation, then you know these are serious Members who care about 70-year-old widows from Holland, Pennsylvania, who cry themselves to sleep at night. Conversely, when you see Members of Congress come to the well of the House and you listen to them in the hearings and they spend most of their time emphasizing the differences, contrasting the Republicans and the Democrats, this lady does not care whether the bill is a Republican bill or a Democratic bill. She wants a bipartisan approach that gets the job done. When you see Members constantly emphasizing partisan differences, then you have to conclude that these are Members who are not interested in solving the problem. They are interested in winning elections, they are interested in political gain and leverage, and I think that is what is shameful. We need to get this done in a bipartisan fashion. The bipartisan bill we are here to talk about tonight will do that. I urge my colleagues in the Congress to support that. Mr. Speaker, I would again thank my colleague from Erie for organizing this event tonight.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, this evening my colleague, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), and I are going to do a special order on the Medicare prescription drug benefit. As most Americans know, 1965 was a critical moment in America's health care history. That was the year that the United States Congress and the President of the United States enacted Medicare. Prior to that time, if you were elderly or if you were disabled, you could not provide for your health care. You did without health care. You had no regular doctor's care. You had no access to hospitalization and you suffered and you died early. In 1965, America proved its humanity and proved the level of its civilization by caring for its elderly and eventually extending that Medicare benefit to the disabled. When it did so, it did not include a prescription drug benefit. It did not, because it was an awful lot to accomplish just to get the physician coverage and the hospital coverage. At that time, prescription drugs were not nearly as utilized as they are today. But, today, the miracles of modern pharmaceutical industry, the miracles provided by the work on the human genome and biological products have brought us to a point where if you do not have access to a pharmaceutical drug benefit, you do not have access to first rate health care, you do not have access to the best health care in the world. For years, we folks in Washington in the Congress and White House have talked about how terrific it would be if we could create and add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, but it has been all talk for a lot of years, and now it is time for action. The reason it was all talk and no action heretofore was because this country was not in any state financially to provide a Medicare benefit. We were adding a $250 billion to the national debt every year, we were spending money like drunken sailors in this town, and there was no way that we could continue that practice and then add to it the addition of a prescription drug benefit. But, since 1994, the Republicans in the Congress have changed the direction of the country. We have reformed Medicare itself to make sure that it will last well into the future. We have reformed welfare, removing ultimately half of the welfare recipients from dependency to work and to independence. We have balanced the Federal budget for several years in a row now. And in the current fiscal year, we have taken Social Security off budget and made sure that never again would the Social Security surplus be spent for other causes than Social Security. We are now finally paying down debt. By the end of the current fiscal year, we will have paid down $250 billion in debt; and we expect, at the rate we are going, to have the United States national debt paid off by about the year 2015, if not sooner. We have done all of this, and still we have a surplus, so this millennial year is the year we can step up to the plate; and we can provide a prescription drug benefit to America's elderly and America's disabled. While two out of three Medicare beneficiaries in this country do have access to some kind of prescription drug benefit, that coverage is often scant and shrinking. Many of our seniors on Medicare-Plus Choice have seen that their plans have had to pull back their benefit and now, for instance, are only providing for generic coverage and not providing for the brand coverage, unless there is a very expensive extra payment paid by the beneficiary. For those without coverage, the choices are grim. There are miracle drugs available to humanity today, but if you are an elderly woman, an elderly widow, living on a small Social Security stipend, and you have Medicare but you have no access to prescription drug coverage, there is no miracle in that miracle cure. If you are an elderly gentleman in the same position, there is no miracle in the miracle cure for you. That is the same with the disabled in this country. These folks are pressing their faces up against the glass windows of the drugstores knowing that while inside a prescription that their physician could write for them exists that could relieve their suffering, that could extend their lives, that could improve the quality of their life, that is not available to them. This is the year for the United States Congress to act and to do it in a bipartisan fashion. Mr. Speaker, I would like to now yield time to my friend, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), who has been working with me and other members of the Committee on Commerce as well as the Committee on Ways and Means to craft this proposal that we hope to have introduced in the very near future. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Burr).

Mr. GREENWOOD. They were not very happy about that. We all remember Chairman Rostenkowski's car being rocked by a group of seniors because essentially what the Congress was saying is that if you already have this benefit, we are going to make you pay for it anyway. As we said earlier, two out of three beneficiaries already have some kind of coverage.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, we have 300,000 participants in our program.

Mr. GREENWOOD. All supported by our lottery.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, that is one of the problems. They say, where there is a will, there is a way. There is a will to get this done. Republicans want to do it. We happen to be Republicans; we have been working hard with our Republican colleagues. Democrats on the other side of the aisle sincerely want to do it. House Members want to do it, the Senate wants to do it, the President wants to do it, the elderly want us to do it, the disabled want us to do it, their families want us to do it, the pharmaceutical industry wants us to do it. Everyone is for this. What there is is a legitimate set of differences of opinion. The gentleman is talking about one right now. The question is, do we want to give this program, this new benefit, to the same bureaucracy that has been administering the current one? I do not think there is a beneficiary on Medicare who can tell us or anyone else, they certainly do not tell me at the senior centers, that they understand the paperwork that they get related to their Medicare and they would like to have more paperwork related to their Medicare and they would like the decisions made about their health care to take as long as ones do today. The fact of the matter is that what is available at the drugstore is changing at the speed of light. Every day, practically, we can find new products out there in the drugstore. What we are concerned about, the gentleman and I are, is that we do not want it to be the case that the Food and Drug Administration approves a new cure for arthritis or a new treatment for colon cancer or a new medicine that will relieve suffering. The doctor says to the Medicare recipient, boy, this is a great drug for you, I wish I could give it to you, but the bureaucrats in Washington, it is going to take them a long time, as it would a bureaucracy, to get around to figuring out how much to reimburse for this product and so forth. So we are looking at a different system, a system that would create a separate board that could make those decisions quickly so that these beneficiaries do not have to wait and suffer in hospitals, or maybe die, while they are waiting for a Federal bureaucracy to get around to making sure that this product is available for them.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, there is no reason why we cannot do that. It is oh so easy in politics to point fingers and bash the other guy for political gain, but the fact of the matter is that the gentleman and I have both discovered that all of the intelligence does not lie in one party or another here in Washington. It is not all in the House or all in the Senate. It is not all in the Congress or all in the White House. But in fact, there are good, decent thinking people in all of those places that really want to get this job done. To the extent that we can recognize that we have some different ideas, some people want to go strictly to a price control mechanism, some people want to attack the issue of what happens when one goes across a border to Canada or Mexico, some people, as the gentleman and I do, want to create an insurance model where we think for a very reasonable amount we can create a system where every American, regardless of income, will be able to afford this benefit, and for the lowest income, the Federal Government would pay for all of it.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, our staff, and we with our staffs, have been working very hard at this for a long time. The goal is clear, but the way to get there is complex and it is difficult and it requires some very complex calculations about if we raise the eligibility level, for which the Federal Government will pay for anything, what does that do to the cost, and where can we put the stop loss benefit for the insurance industry so that it is willing to sell the product at a price that everyone can afford. That is complicated stuff. But we can get there, and we can get there working across the aisle; we can get there working with the White House. I would hope that anybody watching C-SPAN this evening would take from listening to us this evening that number one, it is time to do this; number two, the country is financially in a position to do it; number three, there is universal desire and commitment to do it in Washington. Number four, it is complex. Number five, anyone who demagogues this issue is really doing a disservice to his country. I have heard so many speakers, unfortunately on this floor, pointing fingers at one party or the other saying their plan is better than ours or our plan is no good or nothing is being done, or I distrust the motives; I think this special interest is being served or that special interest. I would hope that as this debate moves on and as we hopefully get to the point where we can put a product on the President's desk and that hopefully he will sign it, that those who are frequent callers to C- SPAN, for those who are frequent correspondents to their Members of Congress or phone their Members of Congress, that they call to task any Member of Congress or the President, if they see those Members or those politicians try to take political advantage on this issue. This is not the time to do this. This is the time for bipartisanship. This is the time for putting our heads together and getting something good done for the benefit of the country, and I think we can do that.

Mr. GREENWOOD. If I can refer to this chart here, the gentleman referred to the difference between us and the seniors, and despite the color of my hair I am hoping to continue to be able to see that difference between myself and my parents. And yet if we look at this chart, we will see that in 1999, and this is probably very much the case now, medication is used by about 33 percent of seniors today. So about 1 out of every 3 beneficiaries needs a drug product on a regular basis. By the time this gentleman is about 80 years of age, and I expect to be alive and kicking at that time, 51 percent of the seniors, of our generation, will be medication dependent. So this is not an issue of importance only for those who are above 65 years of age today or who are retired. It is an issue for us because they are our parents today. We love them, and we care about them. But it is also an issue because in the relatively near future it will be, the gentlemen and I, in our retirement, very much not only in need of these prescription drugs but having available to us prescriptions that certainly are not available to our parents today.

Mr. GREENWOOD. These prescription drugs, as miraculous as they are and as beneficial as they are, are increasingly expensive. Not only are they expensive, it is not simply that the price of a particular medicine goes up and up and up; but as this chart here shows, the total pharmaceutical spending between 1993 and 1999, the annual increase in those costs, continues to go up. So it is not just, if we look at these pink indications here, the CPI, the Consumer Price Index per year, has been pretty low; but because of the addition of new products on to the market, the increases in some of those products once they get on the market, what is being spent, the costs for all pharmaceuticals paid by individuals and hospitals and insurers continues to skyrocket. It is a situation that demands our response.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure today of hosting an organization of young people in from my district who call themselves ``What If?'' What if young people knew how to create their future every day through the goals they set and the decisions they make? What if today's youth were given opportunities to become team members, to solve problems and to resolve differences clearly and effectively? What if the youth of today created an expectation for leadership and accountability, and in doing so, create a shift in the way they view themselves and the way they are viewed by others? What if a generation, this generation, decided to empower itself by giving itself a meaningful name, the Possibility Generation? What if the mass youth movement to spread that name around the globe taught participants in that movement to produce actions founded on choice, personal and social empowerment, integrity, and responsibility? In a world where young people feel that the road ahead is so bleak as to require dramatic and violent means of self-expression, in a fast- paced world of uncertainty and change greater than any other time in history, we must empower youth to become visionaries, and to invite new choices for their future, to make responsible choices, and to take responsibility for the choices that they make. In a world in which the mere sustainability of our planet cannot be taken for granted, we must encourage and produce socially, environmentally, politically, and commercially conscious youth leadership. The What If Organization, founded to address these very issues, is an an educational, training, and networking organization which provides unique emotional and intellectual development through innovative programs that train youth and young adults to become productive in the workplace, in their lives, and in their communities. The skills acquired through What If interactive programs provide long- term solutions with broad implications by training students to make responsible choices and consciously operate as the CEOs of their lives. Youth leaders of the What If organization have renamed their generation. Formerly known as Generation Y, the Possibility Generation. They are creating history as the first generation to name itself, and through that act, they are declaring their leadership. Unwilling to be labeled by others, these youth are creating a shift in the way they view themselves and the way they are viewed by others. Representatives of the What If Organization, founders of the Possibility Generation, and their peers are here today to share in the creation of new possibilities for generations to come. As I read the Possibility Generation, written by these young people,. ``The Possibility Generation Proclamation: We, the youth and leaders of the future, hereby proclaim our self- fulfilling right to choose our name, to be accountable for how we are perceived, and to be responsible for the manner in which we relate to ourselves and others. We are shaping our future by naming ourselves the Possibility Generation, a name consistent with the future we are creating. We are actively forming the Possibility Generation by taking ownership of the future today. We know through our own initiative we can design our lives and future, building on the knowledge and experiences from previous generations. We willingly seek partnership in creating our future based on the recognition of our unlimited possibilities and what we can accomplish by virtue of our strengths, our openness, our quest to explore uncharted territory, our willingness to accept and to be proud of who we are, and our ability to accept others for who they are. We commit to being a model for the generations to follow, thus creating a future for our children and providing a choice to lead a life by a path of self-determination and celebration. We commit to creating a world that accepts all people and provides an equal right to explore given potential. In so doing, we become the possibility of goodness, peace, and humanitarianism for all. We, the members of the Possibility Generation, pledge to each live our possibilities in the manner that will empower us as individuals and thus positively influence society as a whole.'' I am delighted, Mr. Speaker, to host this group of fine young people in Washington today, where they will meet leaders from our Congress and from the administration, and wish them well as they take on these glorious endeavors.