Jim Greenwood

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Chairman, I simply rise to support the amendment of the two gentlemen. It is consistent with the flexible provisions and with the other provisions that encourage cooperation between communities and schools. We support it heartily and look forward to its passage. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, among the allowable uses of funds of the Juvenile Justice Act are funds that can be used to create programs to prevent hate crimes, to prevent crimes that are based on prejudice. It is a good program. The Federal Government, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, contracted with an organization to create a curriculum, and some of my friends in the various religious communities looked at some of that curriculum, and they said, ``You know, we think they went a little bit too far. In this curriculum they were meant to say that there are ways that religious organizations can become intolerant and promote intolerance, and it appeared to some that that curriculum was generalizing in a way that some folks felt offended by, as if religion implied some kind of intolerance and bias. So I worked very hard with the Traditional Values Coalition, with the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) and with the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) and with my good friend, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), and we crafted language, language in the Goodling amendment that we will offer tomorrow. It has been accepted by the Republican side, it has been accepted by the Democratic side, and it has been accepted by the administration. It is only marginally different than the language that the gentleman from Indian (Mr. Souder) offers, and the gentleman is gracious in his comments to acknowledge that. Mr. Chairman, we think that we need a ``no'' vote on this Souder amendment tomorrow, because we think that eliminating that amendment and taking the agreed-to language to conference is the simplest and most direct way to resolve this very contentious issue, and so we will be asking Members on both sides of the aisle tomorrow to vote in the negative.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, I also rise in support of the Missing, Exploited and Runaway Children's Protection Act; and I do so with a deep sense of gratitude. As a former caseworker who worked with abused and neglected children, I understand the importance of this legislation. I would like to focus my remarks on that part that I worked on, and that is the study that we are asking the National Academy of Science to conduct with regard to school violence. Mr. Speaker, the Nation has been horrified and people have been saddened and perplexed and to some extent we have been divided over the issues of these school shootings. America asks the question, ``Why? Why would children take firearms to their schools and shoot their classmates and shoot their teachers?'' America then quickly responds with the command, ``Do something. Somebody do something.'' And, as policymakers, that is part of our responsibility. Mr. Speaker, I think, for the most part, the short-term efforts to prevent school violence must be community based and they must be school based and they must be home based. But there are some things that the Congress can do and there are things that we need to do in terms of a long-run strategy. This legislation will direct the National Academy of Sciences to do a study on the antecedents of school violence. Researchers, the best social scientists and child psychologists that we can gather in this country, will literally travel to Pearl, Mississippi, to Paducah, Kentucky, to Jonesboro, Arkansas, to Springfield, Oregon, to Edinboro, Pennsylvania, to Fayetteville, Tennessee, indeed to Littleton, Colorado; and, regretfully, most recently we have had to amend this language to include Conyers, Georgia. The scientists will interview, when they can, the perpetrators, the actual shooters. They will interview their parents, their siblings, their neighbors, their classmates, their teachers, their guidance counselors, any professionals that have dealt with these young people, to try to find out what were the early childhood experiences of these kids, what were their school experiences, what were the relationships between the perpetrators and the victims, how did the perpetrators gain access to firearms, and what were the impact of cultural influences and exposure to the media, video games and the Internet. They will report back to America about their findings. And, hopefully, in a sober and thoughtful and disciplined way, America will understand how some of our communities impacted some of our children in ways that made them so inexplicably violent. Mr. Speaker, it is my experience that the left-most of our political spectrum tends to look at this issue and turn immediately and almost exclusively to guns and the right-most of our political spectrum tends to look exclusively at the cultural impacts. It is my belief that we need to look at the children. We need to understand how our children are affected by experiences in their home, in their schools and in their communities and how we as a society can value our children more than we do so that all of our children are uplifted by our actions. I would like to thank the chairman, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling), for his help and cooperation with this. I would like to thank the subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee), the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) and the Speaker for his condolences, his help as well.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to introduce the Clinical Research Enhancement Act, which has been endorsed by more than 80 associations and universities. The bill begins to address the disincentives that are steering young physicians away from research careers. The legislation improves our commitment to clinical research by: improving the peer review process for clinical research grants; establishing new training awards that focus on clinical investigators; establishing support for structured academic training in clinical investigation; and expanding the existing intramural loan repayment program so it will be available to clinical investigators in academic medical centers around the country. Clinical research at NIH has dropped from 3% of NIH's budget to 1% over the past 30 years. Combine this decrease in applied research with the diminished capacity of some managed care organizations to subsidize clinical investigation, and it is easy to see why translating laboratory breakthroughs to the bedside are in jeopardy. Because clinical research is the pathway that links basic science to human health, we may endanger the hard fought increases in the NIH budget by failing to arm our scientists with practical applications. Twenty years ago, Dr. James Wyngaarden, a former director of the NIH, brought the scientific community's attention to the issue when he described the clinical investigator as an endangered species. In 1994, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences reiterated this problem and offered solutions for the declining numbers of American physicians pursuing research careers. And again in January, significant data have come to light that documents this dramatic drop in physician scientists. At the National Institutes of Health, the number of MD postdoctoral trainees has dropped by 51% between 1992 and 1996. In addition, the NIH has seen a \1/3\ drop in the number of first time MD applications for grant support in just three short years between 1994 and 1997. This historical and continuing decrease in the number of physicians pursuing careers in applied biomedical research must be reversed. I am including in the Record letters of support from the American Federation for Medical Research and the American Medical Association. In addition, I have included a list of supporters. My hope is this important legislation is considered and passed by this Congress. I encourage my colleagues to support it. American Federation for Medical Research, Washington, DC, May 12, 1999. Hon. James Greenwood, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Congressman Greenwood: I write to express the strong support of the American Federation for Medical Research for the legislation you will introduce to enhance clinical research programs at the National Institutes of Health. The AFMR is a national organization of 5,000 physical scientists engaged in basic, clinical and health services research. Most of our members receive NIH support for their basic research but are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain funding for translational or clinical research studies through which basic science discoveries are translated to the care of patients. In the past, academic medical centers provided institutional support for this research through revenues generated by patient care activities. However, as the health care marketplace has become increasingly competitive, academic centers have all but eliminated internal subsidies for clinical research or the training of clinical investigators. In fact, the Association of American Medical Colleges has estimated that these institutions have lost approximately $800 million in annual ``purchasing power'' for research and research training within their institutions. This loss of support for clinical investigation has had a large effect on young investigators and medical students considering a research career. The number of medical school graduates indicating an interest in a research career has fallen steadily in the 1990's according to the American Medical Association. The number of first time physician applicants to the NIH for research support has fallen by thirty percent between 1994 and 1997. The Clinical Research Enhancement Act would seem to be an extremely modest investment in a much-needed program to reinvigorate our nation's clinical research capabilities. There is a strong consensus among the 80 scientific and consumer organizations that have endorsed this legislation that Congress must stop the deterioration of the U.S. clinical research capacity. In addition, we must assure that the American people and the American economy benefit from the translation of basic science breakthroughs to improved clinical care and new medical products. The American Federation for Medical Research is pleased to have the opportunity to express its strong support for this important piece of legislation. Sincerely, William Lowe, President.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to an outstanding organization in our country called Students In Free Enterprise. Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE), is a nonprofit organization located on over 600 college campuses across the United States. SIFE has continually encouraged the free enterprise system through educational programs since its inception more than 20 years ago. Students in the organization dedicate their time and resources to helping others. SIFE's mission is to provide college students the best opportunity to develop leadership, teamwork, and communications skills through learning, practicing and teaching the principles of free enterprise. SIFE is not only involved with the encouragement of free enterprise, but has also worked closely with international charitable organizations. Students involved in this organization gain valuable leadership, communication, and business skills by teaching others, especially at-risk youth. The Students In Free Enterprise organization is a valuable asset to the citizens of our country. In honor of their many charitable and civil contributions, I join my colleagues in the House of Representatives in recognizing May 18, 1999 as the third annual National Students In Free Enterprise Day I especially congratulate the Bucks County Community College SIFE chapter as they continue their mission of helping people achieve their dreams through free enterprise education.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. I want to stand in support of this legislation particularly because the managers saw fit to include a provision of mine which exempts the vessel, The Pride Of Many, from Section 27 of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920. It is popularly referred to as the Jones Act. As my colleagues know, the Jones Act prevents all foreign-built vessels from participating in domestic, coastal and intercostal trade. In 1975 the Youth Services Agency of Pennsylvania was established. This is a not-for-profit agency, and it runs four alternative community-based high schools for at-risk youth. The students who are referred to the agency either by their home high school after having established a pattern of negative behavior or by court order. The mission of the agency is to expose at-risk youth to a variety of activities and opportunities in an effort to help these students overcome social and/or personal hindrances so that they can achieve their full emotional, physical, intellectual and spiritual potential. In an effort to provide the 500 students in this program with a sense of accomplishment, self worth and the need for self-discipline, they are being taught how to man a Canadian-manufactured tall ship similar to the famous Nina, Pinta and the Santa Maria which they christened The Pride Of Many. Additionally, the vessel will assist in the youths' involvement in port-to-port community service activities. Not only will the nearby communities benefit from their efforts, but it will also contribute to the youths' realization of the importance of community. In order to assure that the goals of the Youth Services Agency of Pennsylvania are realized, The Pride Of Many needs to be allowed to participate in commercial activities that will offset the expense of the vessel. Mr. Chairman, the Youth Service Agency of Pennsylvania has already provided many tangible benefits for the local community and its students, and I know that The Pride Of Many will help continue their effort of good work. I ask all Members of the House join with me in support of this legislation. Recorded Vote

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me, Mr. Chairman. I think it is constructive that earlier this afternoon the Pennsylvania delegation met with Governor Ridge, a former member here. The first question that our Governor asked is, When are you going to move this Ed-Flex bill? We absolutely have to have it. This is what he said was the primary reason, that 40 percent of the bureaucrats working in the State Department of Education are employed filling out Federal forms, only to qualify them for 7 percent of their total educational package. So the notion that the Castle amendment, joined in with the Ed-Flex bill, will give the Governor of Pennsylvania the opportunity to put some of those 40 percent of the educational bureaucrats to work doing something productive is reason enough for both the Castle amendment and the bill.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Madam Speaker, let me begin by saying that it is the wisdom of the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Chairman Goodling) that has brought us to this point. I remember 2 years ago on the floor of the House I came up to the gentleman and said, if we could do one thing for education that would really make a difference, what would that be? He said, ``Fully fund special education,'' and I have been a soldier in that army ever since. Madam Speaker, the times that I feel best about being a Member of Congress are the times when, first off, we take serious actions that actually affect real people in very real ways. And secondly, it is a time when we kind of transcend the usual partisanship that prevails so often in the House. We transcend the notion that for one of us to win our agenda, somebody else has to lose and we have to do battle here for competing interests. Fully funding special education meets both of those tests. It meets the test of really helping Americans who need it and also we can do it in a win/win fashion. Let me elaborate on that. We Republicans have a tendency to talk about dollars and cents too much and in trying to figure out how to balance the budget and we forget sometimes to talk about the human impacts. We are talking here about 5.8 million children. Children with mental retardation. Children with learning disabilities who have the heartbreak of going to school and being excited and finding out that no matter how smart they are, they cannot quite read up to speed right away. Children with physical disabilities and children who have difficulty hearing. Children who have difficulties with speech. Madam Speaker, we have the opportunity and we have the program under IDEA to help change the lives of these precious children. By fully funding IDEA, we get to make sure that the Federal Government and the Congress lives up to its obligation. But secondly, this is an issue that enables us to transcend the win/ lose scenario that often prevails. This is an opportunity for us to share a broad agenda on education so that my colleagues in the City of Philadelphia, who are particularly worried about school construction and think that should be our priority, well, we say to them, just imagine if the Philadelphia School District or the New York School District or the Chicago or the L.A. School District has fully funded from the Federal Government their special education mandate. They would be rolling in millions of dollars to build schools. My colleagues who want to focus on technology and computers for the classroom, the same thing occurs. All of those extra unbudgeted dollars could go to that. And for those school districts that want to reduce class size, here is the golden opportunity. We take the special ed. burden off of their backs and let them use the surplus for reducing class size. And if communities want to reduce taxes in their district, the opportunity is here to do that. This is what my kids call a ``no-brainer.'' This is an obvious thing to do. And the question occurs, well, then why would we not all immediately agree and why would the President not agree? When Secretary Riley, the Secretary of Education, was before our committee, I asked the Secretary, ``Would you like to see us fully fund special education?'' He said, ``Yes, I wish we could do that.'' And I said, ``Well, do you advocate that?'' He said ``No, I do not advocate that we do that.'' He just wishes that we do it? Why is that? Madam Speaker, I think the answer is that with a bureaucracy as big as the Federal Department of Education, every little division in there has to have its pet program. And I think the President is at fault to some extent in trying to be all things to all people in the education arena, so that he creates nine new programs, expands the plethora of programs that we have, and now we do too many things with too little effort. We are forcing the school districts to beg for little pots of money, targeted money specialized with all kinds of strings attached, instead of trusting the school districts to take the special education funding and free their budgets up to do what is important in their school district. I think we can do that. I think we should do that. It is the right thing to do for these children. It is the right thing to do to engender a spirit of bipartisanship across the aisle and to work cooperatively with the President. I hope that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in the House and the Senate and the President will understand the wisdom of the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) in this regard.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) made reference earlier in the debate to last-minute arm twisting of the undecided, and I feel compelled to comment. I made a commitment to myself and my colleagues, an unusual one, and that is to come to this debate with my mind still available to persuasion. I am one of the last few holdouts undecided in this debate, and it needs to be said that not once, not once in this entire ordeal, has a single member of my leadership, has a single colleague, has a single member of the Committee on the Judiciary, not only not asked me to vote one way, they have never even inquired as to how I would vote. We have big differences of opinion here, but it does the process an injustice to argue that there has been arm twisting. I think the Whip has been maligned in this process. It has been alleged that he is twisting arms. I spent 3\1/2\ hours in the company of the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Livingston), the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey), the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) and the entire elected leadership this week, and not once did any of them say a word to me about impeachment.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment. (The portion of the bill to which the amendment relates is as follows:) Sec. 220. (a) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no provider of services under title X of the Public Health Service Act shall be exempt from any State law requiring notification or the reporting of child abuse, child molestation, sexual abuse, rape, or incest. (b) None of the funds appropriated in this or any other Act for any fiscal year for carrying out title X of the Public Health Service Act may be made available to any family planning project under section 1001 of such title if any provider of services in the project knowingly provides contraceptive drugs or devices to a minor, unless-- (1) the minor is emancipated under applicable State law; (2) the minor has the written consent of a custodial parent or custodial legal guardian to receive the drugs or devices; (3) a court of competent jurisdiction has directed that the minor may receive the drugs or devices; or (4) such provider of services has given actual written notice to a custodial parent or custodial legal guardian of the minor, notifying the parent or legal guardian of the intent to provide the drugs or devices, at least five business days before providing the drugs or devices. (c) Each provider of services under title X of the Public Health Service Act shall each year certify to the Secretary of Health and Human Services compliance with this section. Such Secretary shall prescribe such regulations as may be necessary to effectuate this section. This title may be cited as the ``Department of Health and Human Services Appropriations Act, 1999''.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Chairman, this is a virtual reality debate as we know. This bill is not going to go anywhere. This is a debate that should have occurred months ago, and the opponents of free debate on the floor held us up for months, but now we will have the debate. I think we can and should do it in a civilized way. This is the issue. The gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook) in the Committee on Appropriations inserted language into the title 10 program, the program that provides family planning services to Americans, to lower income Americans, so that they can avoid pregnancy and provide services so that they can avoid sexually transmitted diseases. The language of the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook) says that, when a minor, a 17-year-old teenager who has been sexually active for a long time, as is usually the case, comes into a clinic. The clinic counselor must send a letter to the parents and the child. The minor cannot receive services for 5 additional days. I understand the gentleman's intent. I am a parent. But it is wrong- headed. The result of that language, the result of that policy is that if young people do not go into centers and clinics, they do not get the services they need, they become pregnant, and they get diseases. Our language makes it clear that every family counselor, every family planning counselor has to encourage family involvement in the decision of minors to seek family planning services and provide counseling to minors on how to resist coercive sexual relations. It requires them to expressly inform all minors that abstinence is the only certain way to avoid pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV. It requires further that every counselor have state of the art training to encourage, to learn how, and teach kids to involve their parents with these decisions and to abstain from sexual activity. I urge a ``no'' vote on the Istook amendment and a ``yes'' vote on the underlying Greenwood amendment.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Stokes) for purposes of control.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds. In response to the previous speaker, one cannot conduct this debate by using the most exaggerated, extreme cases. In the real world, it is 16- and 17-year-old kids who have no parent at home to talk to, who will have no counseling unless the Greenwood amendment is adopted. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle).

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds. Mr. Chairman, the gentlewoman who just spoke said that we need more than contraceptives. That is why the Greenwood language is so focused on abstinence, abstinence counseling. That is why we are so focused on getting the families in. The problem is that not every kid has the right parent to do that. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella).

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I believe I yielded 4 minutes, and I would be delighted to yield another 4 minutes.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, is it the case then that the time is not entirely fungible, but that there will be another 8 minutes yielded on the Greenwood underlying amendment? Is that correct?

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson).

Mr. GREENWOOD. One, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, this is one of those debates where real good friends look at each other and say, ``How can you think this way? How can we come to such different conclusions?" Mr. Chairman, these are my two pretty little girls and I love them and I want to make sure that nothing ever happens to them. And they are so lucky. They are so lucky because their mother and I talk to them, and we are going to talk to them about their health and their sexuality and their personalities and the strength of their character. And when they come to this decision, they will have us. But walk out the door of this building. Walk out the door of this building and tell me how many minutes it takes to find the first teenage girl whose parents could care less about her; if they knew where she was, if she knew where they were. Tell us what value it is that we are accomplishing when we send a letter into that home, we send a letter into that home from an agency. Do my colleagues know what happens? The girl says, Do not send that letter there. I do not want this service, if that is what it means. And so where does she live? She lives in a world in which she has predators. She could be 15 or 16, and there are guys in those neighborhoods all over America, all kinds of neighborhoods, preying on her, putting her at risk of pregnancy, putting her at risk of abortion, putting her at risk of HIV. She has got nobody. She does not have a parent. She does not have, if the Istook language prevails, a counselor. She has got nobody to teach her what is right. And if we want these values taught to these poor kids, just like we want them taught to our kids, vote for the Greenwood amendment and please vote ``no'' on the Istook amendment.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Madam Chairman, I rise to oppose the bill, and I do so filled with regret, because the gentleman from Utah is a gentleman. He is a friend. He called me a couple of weeks ago and asked me if I would help him negotiate this bill, and the reason he called me is that one of the roles that has been assigned to me by the majority leader has been to try to build bridges between Republicans, Republicans who some of us come from the Northeast and have one orientation with regard to the environment, and some of our colleagues from the West and other parts of the country who have different perspectives. The process that we have tried to establish to do that is to say, if the goal is to make law, then that should be an easy process, because if this President is going to sign a bill, and if the goal is to get him to sign the bill, then we can certainly work out our differences. We tried that. I gave my staff the assignment to spend an awful lot of time on this measure. It did not work. We could not get the bill anywhere close in these negotiations to where it could be signed into law. If we had, we would have come out here, and the gentleman from New York and I would have done what we done on other occasions. We would say this is not really what we want. We are uncomfortable with this. We are going to take some criticism from some of our environmental supporters. But it is the right thing to do. It is a compromise. We cannot have it all. But that is not what this process yielded. This process did not yield a bill that looks like it has a prayer to become law. So the question then becomes what is the point of going through this exercise? Is it simply a test of egos? Is it a test of strength? Is it done for political purposes? That is not why I came to Washington. I came to legislate. Legislating means we compromise, we give up the battle one day to fight it on another day. Maybe we can still do that. I address my remarks to my friend, the gentleman from Utah. Maybe before this session is over miraculously in the little time that remains, we can do that. But we are not there yet, and as a matter of honor, I cannot support the gentleman today.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin) for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, and I also rise to support the Child On-line Protection Act. In the Greenwood house, we have a small room. It is the playroom. And as my two little daughters, Laura and Katy, have grown up, it has been kind of fun to watch the transition of the toys in their playroom. When we got our computer, we put it in the playroom, figuring that as time goes by and they grow, they will shift from the toys and spend more time with their studies and computers. At any given time, I can walk in the playroom and see one of my daughters on the computer and another playing with her dollhouse or maybe some of her toys inspired by Disney movies. As the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Oxley) said, the terrible problem is that if my daughter sits at the computer and types in a word like ``dollhouse'' or ``toys" or ``Disney'' even, she could find herself at the direct access to pornographic sites. The Communications Decency Act was our first effort to try to stop this problem, a problem that every parent in America wants us to address. Of course that was struck down first by a circuit court in my area, Philadelphia, and then by the Supreme Court. So, we looked for a new standard, and we found the standard that meets the Court's guidelines in H.R. 3783. The principle is very simple. The First Amendment certainly protects the right of people to have any kind of literature in their adult bookstores, but it certainly does not mean that proprietors can open an adult bookstore in a mall and display their merchandise on the windows of their store visible to shoppers, including children, in the store. It is common sense. That is what this legislation does on the Web. There are adult movie theaters, so-called adult movie theaters, where there are pornographic films, but the purveyors of those films cannot display their videos on the marquee visible to people on the sidewalk. This legislation, by simply requiring adult access to these sites, is consistent with the First Amendment rights outlined by the Supreme Court and certainly consistent with the will and the wishes of every parent, including this parent, that our children be protected from that material and that it be accessible only by adults with the correct code or Visa card. Mr. Speaker, I urge support of the legislation.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support S. 2073, as amended. More than a year ago this House overwhelmingly passed H.R. 3 and H.R. 1818. H.R. 3, the Juvenile Crime Control Act of 1997, sponsored by Congressman Bill McCollum, focused on the punishment of juvenile offenders. H.R. 1818, The Juvenile Crime Control and Delinquency Prevention Act, provided a balance to punishment by focusing on prevention of juvenile delinquency. H.r. 1818 was designed to assist States and local communities to develop strategies to combat juvenile crime through a wide range of prevention and intervention programs. The Senate has yet to pass companion legislation and we have a limited number of days remaining in this session. I support the procedure we are using today to allow us to get to Conference with the Senate to produce legislation that provides both appropriate punishment for juvenile offenders and the development of intervention and prevention programs to prevent our children from becoming involved in delinquent activities. H.R. 1818 is a bipartisan bill--it was the result of many hours of discussions between Congressmen Riggs, Martinez, Scott, and myself. The bill represents good policy. In developing this bill we attempted to strike a balance in dealing with children, young people who grow up and come before the juvenile justice system, and tried to recognize that some of these children, at ages 16 and 17, are already very vicious and dangerous criminals. Other children who come before the juvenile justice system are harmless and scared and running away from abuse at home. It is an extraordinarily difficult task to create a juvenile justice system in each of the states and in each of the counties that can respond to these very, very different young people caught up in the law. We recognized that we needed to build some flexibility into the system, enough flexibility to allow the local officials to use their own good judgement based on the realities of each situation, and yet not give them so much flexibility that harm could be done to the child. We dealt with very sensitive issues like the deinstitutionalization of status offenders, how to address the over representation of minorities in the juvenile justice system, and determining the correct balance between block granting funds to the states and keeping some strings attached. I believe we found that balance. We have found a way to provide the additional flexibility that our local officials need, still protect society from dangerous teenagers, while protecting scared kids from overly harsh treatment in our juvenile justice system. A few months ago I chaired a Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Youth and Families hearing on ``Understanding Violent Children'' for Chairman Riggs. Most witnesses testified to the need for early intervention and prevention programs directed at students with a potential for violence. This legislation will allow for those activities. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall vote No. 385, the Scott amendment to H.R. 4276, the fiscal 1999 Commerce, Justice, State and the Judiciary Appropriations Act, it was my intention to vote ``no''. I ask unanimous consent that my statement appear in the Record immediately following rollcall vote No. 385.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Connecticut for yielding this time to me. Throughout this debate the opponents of Shays-Meehan have tried to argue that our limitation on soft money is breaking new ground. It is not. I believe it was in 1912 that Congress decided to eliminate corporate and labor union money from going to congressional candidates because that is not government of the people and by the people and for the people. It was government by the special interests. We close that loophole that has allowed that special interest money to go right to the parties and thereby influence congressional elections at the local level. This is a return of the power back to the communities and away from the special interests. Vote for Shays-Meehan.

Mr. GREENWOOD

Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time. I would like to get back to the original intent of the maker of the amendment which I think is to preserve the right to give legislative alerts. I do not quarrel with the gentleman's motivation. I think the motivation is proper. I do think that the bill protects that right, because there is clearly a voting record or voting guide exception. The term express advocacy does not include printed communication that presents information in an educational manner solely about the voting record or positions on a campaign issue. I think that the gentleman's concern is well covered in the bill. Let me tell Members the problem I think we are trying to solve with this legislation. I think the laws of this land with regard to campaign finance and campaign communication worked pretty well until the relatively recent number of years. And the intensity of the fight across the country for this Congress, for this House in particular, has been such that it has distorted the laws. It troubles me that whenever there is a special election in America now, we no longer rely upon the people of that community to listen to a good debate among the candidates, to identify who stands for which issue, participate in the campaign and they go vote. Instead, immediately out rushes Planned Parenthood, out rushes the Family Research Council, out rushes the AFL-CIO, out rushes the business organizations, term limits, every organization in America rushes out and starts dumping millions and millions of dollars into these sham ads which are just sham ads. They are sham ads not because, as my friend from Kentucky said, we do not agree with them, because they masquerade as something they are not. They masquerade as information when in fact they are the most clever and deceptive and nonproductive and nonsubstantive attacks on character and the record of the candidates, and they need to be managed as free speech does throughout our society. I ask for a negative vote on the DeLay amendment.