Jim Greenwood

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson).

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, do I have the right, the entitlement to close this debate?

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, my good friend, and he is my good friend the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), said that he hopes that his language remains in the conference committee report. It is a false hope. It is an ardent hope, but it is a false hope. It will not and it has not, year after year, this year being no exception. It received 228 votes, but it will not remain in the conference committee and it will not become law. So the question before us now is what will remain in the conference committee? If we adopt the Greenwood amendment, we will have some restrictions that we should all support. What are those provisions? The organizations that receive these funds have to certify, as my language does, that they will not use funds to promote abortion as a method of family planning or to lobby for or against abortion. We all support that. Every Member of this House supports that notion. It says that they will use these funds that are made available for family planning services to reduce the incidence of abortion as a method of family planning. We all, 435 of us, stand for that premise. It says that these organizations must certify that they will not engage in an activity or effort in violation of applicable laws or policies of the foreign government, or alter the laws or policies of such where pregnancy was carried to term. In the case of rape or incest, it is with that exception. And it says, the funds appropriated for family population planning activities must only be made to organizations that agree not to violate the laws of any foreign country. So why would all 435 of us not vote for something that all 435 of us believe in? The gentleman from New Jersey said his legislation makes a statement and it does. He said it will make a difference and it will not. It will not become law. So if you want to make a difference, then you vote for what is left. It is a compromise. It is wise, it is fair, it is something in which we all believe. And so the only reason, Mr. Chairman, to vote against this amendment is to make the statement that we are so divided by our ideology that we cannot work together and stand together on the basis of our shared intentions. That is what is left to fight about. The gentleman from New Jersey said this language looks like it is pro-life language. It is pro-life language in the way that most Americans think of. This supports the notion that we care about the 585,000 women, mothers, sisters, daughters who hemorrhage to death because they do not have the availability of family planning. It supports the life of the tens and hundreds of thousands of children who die of starvation and for lack of medical care. That is the pro-life it is for. That is why we should all vote for it. I urge my colleagues to get together and do the right thing.

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

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing the Land Recycling Act of 1999 along with a strong bipartisan group of co-sponsors. The Act will remove Federal barriers to the cleanup of brownfields across the country. Removing these barriers will spur investors, benefit cleanup contractors and provide tools for state and local governments to tackle this longstanding problem. These efforts will provide for more livable, secure and vibrant neighborhoods. The blight that has dominated both urban and rural areas should not continue. My bill will bring about aggressive state reclamation and cleanup of brownfields--abandoned or underutilized former industrial properties where actual or potential environmental contamination hinders redevelopment or prevents it altogether. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] estimates that there may be as many as 500,000 such sites nationwide. In my own congressional district, the southern portion of Bucks County is estimated to have 3 square miles of abandoned or underutilized industrial property. These well-positioned, once-productive industrial real estate sites pose continuing risks to human health and the environment, erode state and local tax bases, hinder job growth, and allow existing infrastructure to go to waste. Moreover, the reluctance to utilize brownfields has led developers to bulldoze greenfields, which do not pose the risk of liability. Development in these areas contributes to suburban sprawl, and eliminates future recreational and agricultural uses. The Land Recycling Act will help stop urban erosion, and provide incentives to the redevelopment of our cities and towns across the country. The brownfields problem has many causes. Foremost among them is the existing Federal law itself. Under the Superfund law, parties who currently own or operate a facility can be held 100 percent liable for any cleanup costs regardless of whether they contributed to the environmental contamination and regardless of whether they were in any way at fault. Because of the potential for this kind of liability, it is simply not worth dealing with the environmental exposure as long as developers have the alternative of building in rural areas where they are not exposed to liability. Owners can't sell and instead simply mothball them indefinitely. Clean-up contractors face uncertain liability. Unrealistic standards and one-size-fits-all remedy selection also prevent voluntary actions and leave sites in years of red tape. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act [RCRA] poses nearly identical concerns. Under section 7003 of that law, for instance, EPA has broad authority to order a current owner-operator to address environmental contamination, again, regardless of fault. Thirty-two states have launched so-called voluntary cleanup programs. We must help these programs thrive. Under these initiatives property owners comply with state cleanup plans and are then released from further environmental liability at the site. The subcommittee has received testimony in the past from a variety of states and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], demonstrating that these state voluntary cleanup programs have been responsible for the redevelopment of hundreds of brownfields. In the first year the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania enacted its brownfields program, it succeeded in cleaning 35 sites. Although many of these state laws have proven successful, states, businesses, and other experts have testified that the possibility of continuing Federal liability despite an agreement to limit State liability--the so-called dual master problem--seriously diminishes the effectiveness of State voluntary cleanup programs. Because redevelopers face the potential for cleanup obligations above and beyond what a State has decided is appropriate to protect health and the environment, they may hesitate to enter into agreements with sellers to purchase idle properties. The testimony establishes, in my mind, that if brownfields redevelopers could be confident that the cleanup agreements entered into with States would not be second-guessed by EPA, then they would be far more likely to agree to conduct a cleanup. The Land Recycling Act of 1999 is based on the input of all of the stakeholders in the brownfields debate--the federal government, states, local governments, clean-up contractors, sellers, buyers, developers, lenders, environmentalists, community interests, and others--and in particular based on my own experiences in my district. Among other things, the bill provides ``finality'' for brownfields cleanups done pursuant to, and in compliance with, State programs, releasing buyers and sellers from liability and litigation under federal law. This certainly is number one on the wish list for developers and Rust Belt businesses. It will also provide liability protection under federal law for a number of nonpolluters, including: innocent landowners, prospective purchasers, contiguous property owners, and response action contractors--thus removing disincentives to cleanup and reuse. This legislation will streamline the federal cleanup process and employ sound and objective science. Finally, the Land Recycling Act of 1999 will provide brownfield grants to states, local governments, and Indian tribes for the inventory and assessment of brownfield sites and the capitalization of revolving loan funds for cleanups. I believe these straightforward solutions will provide an aggressive antidote to the wasteful burden of brownfields in America and are part of the overall set of solutions we must pursue to reform the nation's broken hazardous waste laws. I reemphasize this is a bipartisan effort. Reform efforts that are strictly Democrat or strictly Republican mean the group has a point to make but is not serious about enacting legislation in the 106th Congress. While I am confident that the Land Recycling Act will go a very long way, we in Congress also have a larger task at hand--overhaul of the Superfund Program to ensure that we do not perpetuate the brownfields problem across the country. The Congress needs to address fairness and liability issues for small business recyclers and others. The Land Recycling Act of 1999 is only a piece of the puzzle. I look to the chairman of the Commerce Committee, Mr. Bliley, and the chairman of the Finance and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee, Mr. Oxley, for continued leadership on Superfund reform to address the areas that we can and must address. These two chairmen have fought for Superfund reform and continue their interest in real solutions. The bill last Congress, H.R. 3000, The Superfund Reform Act, had 19 Democrat cosponsors and represented a strong bipartisan effort. I hope that 1999 offers more promise, and that they will again consider including the Land Recycling Act as part of their Superfund reform effort.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Blunt).

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I also would like to commend the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson) and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin) for their excellent work on this legislation. The Committee on Ways and Means had primary jurisdiction for this legislation. I am here as a member of the Committee on Commerce because in the Committee on Commerce we have jurisdiction for Medicaid, and this bill quite intelligently and compassionately extends the opportunity for States to extend Medicaid eligibility to foster children during their 18th, 19th, and 20th years. I am also here because prior to my commitment to public service, I was a foster care worker. I worked with these very children. It was my job to identify children who were physically abused, who were neglected, who were in many cases sexually abused. If it was not safe or in the children's interest for them to remain with their biological parents, we went to court and got custody of these children, and tried our best to find good foster homes. The foster care system in America is the system that we use to compassionately come to the rescue of these children, who have had the most, in many cases, horrific and tragic childhoods. But the problem with our foster care system, as good as it is up until that 18th year, is that suddenly and arbitrarily we withdraw support from children. I have watched these children age out of the system. I have seen how one day, up until their 18th birthday, they are in a foster home, they have a bedroom, they have a refrigerator, they have a mom and a dad, and the next day they are on their own, they are out into the cold, fending for themselves. Maybe they have a low-paying job, maybe they do not. Maybe they have a place to live, maybe they do not. It is sad. When we think of ourselves as parents, how many of us with our children, who have the fortune to have had good, stable upbringings where they are loved, how many of us say, here is your 18th birthday card, hit the street? We do not do that. Certainly for those kids who are most vulnerable, who have the most emotional and sometimes physical scars, we should not be so callous, as well. This bill reverses that. If we look at any of the dysfunctional characteristics of people in America, over and over again the data shows that the primary predicter for all kinds of dysfunctional behavior, substance abuse, criminal behavior, mental health problems, is a childhood of trauma and abuse. We know these children coming out of foster care very frequently are the kids who most need help in transition. Many of them have been involved in much needed and very important mental health therapy. They have been going to a counselor to talk about their sexual abuse that they have received at the hands of a parent, or their physical abuse. And again, at the age of 18, without this legislation, we stop that arbitrarily and not only send them out into the streets without any physical help, but without any psychological help as well. Again, this legislation wisely would permit the transition for these children to continue to have mental health therapy, if that is what they need. Mr. Chairman, I have not been a caseworker since 1980. That is 19 years ago. I still have some of my kids call me. They call me at home on holidays, they come into my congressional office. Most of them are doing okay. Some of them are still, 20 years after being released from foster care, still on the streets, still struggling because they did not have the help that they needed in making that transition. This legislation is consistent with other changes that we have made in social welfare policy, where we no longer encourage or even tolerate people to remain with lives of dependency, but nor do we suddenly and arbitrarily pull the rug out from under them; but rather, we help people who are in need to transition from the time in their lives where they need support from others to a time in their lives where they can successfully transcend their dependency and become independent. Again, I commend the authors of this legislation. We think this legislation is wise and compassionate. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I would like to return briefly to the foster care issue. I think it is important to underscore who is an 18-year-old foster child. Some of us think of a child coming into foster care at a very early age and remaining there for 18 years. That should not happen and rarely does happen. Usually a child who comes into care early is either reunited with their biological family after they have overcome some of their difficulties, or, if that is not possible, the child is adopted. An individual who turns 18 years of age in foster care probably came into foster care relatively late. It underscores the abruptness, when one had a horrendous event in a child's life, where one finally detects a bad home life at the age of 13 or 14 or 15, one brings that child into foster care. It is very difficult to find an adoptive home who will adopt a teenager. So, again, these kids have come into care abruptly. To release them from care abruptly does them a terrible disservice. This bill corrects all of that. It is a tremendous bill. Mr. Chairman, since the Committee on Commerce has no additional requests for time, I ask unanimous consent to yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson).

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Roukema). (Mrs. ROUKEMA asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling), the chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce for yielding control of the time to me and for his kind words as well. Yes, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) and I are a team and as you will see, our words are very similar. Mr. Chairman, the issue before the House and the title of the amendment for which I speak is the Juvenile Crime Control and Delinquency Prevention Act. The purpose of this legislation is to reauthorize and to reform the 25-year-old law which was designed to ensure that juveniles, children under the law who are accused of breaking the law, are treated firmly and fairly. Its purpose is to ensure that to the best of society's ability, these young people are redeemed from lives of crime and instead provided with opportunities to turn their lives around and to become good and productive citizens. To understand why Congress wrote this law 25 years ago, one needs to become familiar with the problems Congress was trying to solve back then. Prior to 1974, in many States, children were frequently imprisoned right alongside adults. The unfortunate ones were physically and often sexually abused. The more fortunate children were simply tutored by their cellmates into the ways of crime and converted into hardened criminals at a very tender age. What was worse was that a large percentage of the incarcerated children had not even committed acts that would have been considered criminal had they been adults. Children were routinely locked up for running away from home, for truancy or for simply being deemed incorrigible. Before anyone is tempted to believe that those were the good old days when young people were held accountable for their irresponsible conduct, it needs to be noted that many of these kids were running away from terribly dysfunctional homes where they were being abused in the worst of ways. In the old days before the Juvenile Justice Act, alcoholic abusers could molest their daughters and their stepdaughters and then have them arrested for running away until they agreed to go back home to be subjected to more abuse. The sins of the parents were visited upon their children and then the children were punished all over again. So in 1974, the Congress enacted the Juvenile Justice Act and offered to States financial carrots to reform their ways of dealing with the troubled children of their States. The law establishes core requirements for State juvenile justice systems that States must adopt to qualify for Federal delinquency prevention funds. And since others have specified those core requirements, I will not repeat them. Most of yesterday's debate centered on the Committee on the Judiciary's piece of juvenile justice law, the so-called sanctions part. The amendment before the House now is the work of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. It is the prevention and the protection part. This year I have had the honor of serving as the prime sponsor of the delinquency prevention legislation. For many months, I have worked with my Republican and my Democratic colleagues to modernize and reform this statute so that we could reauthorize it for another 4 years. My primary counterpart on the other side of the aisle has been the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott). He is a good man. He is a committed advocate for his point of view and for the point of view of his party but he has always been available to my point of view and to the point of view of my party. He has consistently put the welfare of children and the safety of society above partisan advantage, and he has never once succumbed to ideological rigidity. I also wish to commend the ranking member of the subcommittee the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) for his constant spirit of collegiality and bipartisanship and I want to thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling), the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle) and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) for working consistently in good faith to achieve a bipartisan bill. Our bipartisan work product encapsulated in this amendment recognizes that prevention is the key to reducing juvenile crime. It streamlines current law, provides appropriate flexibility for the States and replaces overly prescriptive Federal requirements with prevention block grants. The amendment also reauthorizes the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act and the Missing Children's Assistance Act, making them more effective in locating missing children and reuniting them with their families. Mr. Chairman, in the wake of the tragic shootings at high schools in places like Littleton, Colorado; Pearl, Mississippi; Paducah, Kentucky; Jonesboro, Arkansas; Springfield, Oregon; Edinboro, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, the Congress has chosen the Juvenile Crime and Delinquency Prevention Act to serve as the legislative vehicle to debate and to enact an extraordinarily wide range of proposals aimed at preventing youth violence and keeping our children safe. From gun control measures to new prohibitions on selling violent entertainment to children to establishing the right of children to pray in school, it is all in the mix, Mr. Chairman. We will, in the herky jerky ways of democracy, sort our way through it all. But I hope it is not lost upon us all that in the midst of this emotionally and politically charged environment, Republicans and Democrats on the Committee on Education and the Workforce worked through our differences and crafted this bipartisan legislation that we offer in the form of this amendment, convinced that within its 103 pages lies reliable and tested wisdom about how best to steer America's troubled children away from crime and how to reclaim these young people who go off on the wrong track. As we speak in this Chamber, we need to remember that in every community in America, employees and volunteers in juvenile probation programs and in detention facilities are busy at the hard work of reaching into the hearts and minds of children hardened by abuse, neglect and disappointment and they are giving them hope and the esteem, the skills and the confidence to turn their lives around and to go straight. That is what this amendment is about. We think it is among the most important work that we will do in these 2 days of debate. We commend it to the House for its support. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. GREENWOOD. Yes, Mr. Chairman, in general there should be no contact, physical or otherwise, between juvenile and adult offenders. However, this provision establishes law for the rare occasion where a juvenile would be in physical proximity to an adult offender. We expect these occasions to be accidental and unforeseeable in nature. In these situations, the juvenile must be supervised by a corrections official. We would also expect that States and localities which exceed this authority by allowing these occasions to happen on a regular basis to be found out of compliance by the Office of Juvenile Crime Control and Delinquency Prevention.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton), a very active member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum).

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo). (Mr. Tancredo asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. DeMint), a member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood), another member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, we have spent much of yesterday and today trying rather desperately to devise a wide range of responses to the school shootings. Some of those we have supported; some of those we have rejected. One other component of the amendment that is before us, that I would like to mention, is the effort of the committee to actually try to understand precisely what happened in each of these terrible school shooting tragedies. This language before us contains funding, a nominal amount of funding, to get to the National Academy of Sciences, which will put together a group of the country's greatest experts on child development and on the impact of media on the development of children; other specialities in the social services. They will travel to each of the towns where these terrible school shootings have taken place, and they will interview, where possible, the shooters. They will interview their siblings, their parents, their teachers, their friends, their neighbors. They will pay particular attention to trying to understand the perpetrators' early development, the relationships with their families, community and school experience; the relationship between the perpetrators and their victims; how the perpetrators gained access to firearms; the impact of cultural influences and exposure to the media, video games and the Internet; and other issues that the panel deems important. What we hope, Mr. Chairman, is that at the conclusion of that study we will have a report that will be useful not only to our committee and to the Congress but to every community and school in the country, as every community tries to grapple with those issues that trouble our youth and to make sure that our children are safe and well nurtured. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon).

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt), in yet another demonstration of the bipartisan nature of this work.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, let me add one word of personal thanks. Members on both sides of the aisle have congratulated our staff on both sides of the aisle on the committee and personal staff, and I would like to take that opportunity as well. Judy Borger, my legislative director, has worked day and night on this issue for many months, not only this year but last year. So often the American public has negative thoughts about what happens here in Washington, and I only wish they had a fuller understanding of the gargantuan and Herculean efforts that our staff make when they devote their long evenings, well past midnight and often their weekends, and Judy Borger on my staff has been as instrumental as anyone in the process of perfecting this legislation, and I want to personally thank her. Mr. Chairman, not only have we provided a bipartisan product but we have done it in less than the time allotted to the debate. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time otherwise reserved for a Member in opposition.