Phil Gingrey

Mr. GINGREY

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I point out to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Matsui) that just recently in the homeland security funding bill that we passed last month, we provided for $3.7 billion for first responders. The House-passed bill included grants to high-threat areas, firefighters, and emergency management. Since September 11, 2001, the Congress has provided $32.4 billion to our first responders in funding their needs, such as terrorism prevention and preparedness, general law enforcement, firefighter responders, training 811,275 police, fire, and emergency medical personnel, and, yes, in this bill that we are talking about this morning, $520 million for the COPS Program. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, of course we represent that the President's request for State and local law enforcement was not sufficient. That is why the committee took the necessary steps to restore funding in a responsible manner. As an example, the gentleman from Indiana was just talking about some of that restoration. The committee restored approximately a billion of the $1.4 billion reduction that the President requested. This bill provides $2.6 billion for crime-fighting initiatives, including the following restorations in funding: $355 million to reimburse States for criminal alien detention; $334 million for juvenile delinquency prevention and accountability programs; $387 million for violence against women and prosecution programs; $348 million for the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grants Program; $520 million for Community Oriented Policing Service, the COPS Program; and yes, $60 million for meth hot spots. I would suggest to the gentleman in regard to his question about the point of order, the gentleman's amendment would not be subject to a point of order if the gentleman would alter his amendment to include offsets for his increase from within the programs under the jurisdiction of SSJC Appropriations Act. The amendment would then comply with the rules of the House and could be considered and voted upon by Congress. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GINGREY. In response to the gentleman's question, I do not know the exact number of waivers that were granted.

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise again in support of this rule and in recognition of the importance of the underlying bill in funding and providing for the necessary tools for our law enforcement that defends the American people against crime and terror from sources both foreign and domestic. H.R. 2862 funds our law enforcement needs, and it funds them responsibly. While some on the other side have called out for more funding of this program or that program, they fail to realize the limited funds available in the Federal budget. Again, H.R. 2862 supports and provides for the operations of the Department of Justice with $5.8 billion for the FBI, $1.7 billion for the DEA, and $800 million for the United States Marshal Service. Without question, this bill funds those who put their lives on the line every day to make sure the American people are secure and safe as they go about their daily activities. Mr. Speaker, this appropriation also provides the necessary funding for the Department of Commerce to strengthen economic growth and protect the intellectual property rights so essential to technical and societal development, and because of the importance of technological strength, this bill also includes a responsible level of funding for NASA and the National Science Foundation. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 2862 not only supports our law enforcement agencies here at home, but it also supports the State Department and our needs abroad. From funding to reinforce our vulnerable embassies to funding for improved training of State Department personnel, this legislation provides $9.5 billion to strengthen our relationships overseas and wage the diplomatic war on terror. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentleman from Virginia (Chairman Wolf), the ranking member, the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan), and I would also like to thank the gentleman from California (Chairman Lewis) and the ranking member, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), for all of their labor and time on this bill. I want to encourage all of my colleagues to support both the rule and the underlying bill.

Mr. GINGREY

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commend Congress on its successful, pro-growth economic agenda. In the last month alone, the United States economy created 78,000 new jobs. Take the last 2 years into account, and our economy has created more than 3.5 million jobs. Mr. Speaker, this growth can be partially credited to the good legislation Congress has passed, legislation that lowers taxes, lets Americans keep more of their hard-earned money, reduces unnecessary regulation, supports our small businesses, and, above all, it encourages economic growth. Our policies are working. More Americans hold jobs today than ever before. Homeownership is at a near record level, with nearly 70 percent of American families owning their own homes. Small businesses continue to flourish, and our economy is showing steady growth. Mr. Speaker, it is clear that our economic agenda is the right solution for American families. We will continue passing good legislation to build a stronger economy for all Americans.

Mr. GINGREY

Mr. GINGREY. Madam Speaker, the smallest State in the Union has now replaced the biggest State in the Union as one of those States in a crisis state in its medical liability insurance. Okay, there may be those in this body who would argue that Texas is no longer the largest State in the Union; but, Madam Speaker, the good news is that 2 years ago Texas faced up to the challenge of medical liability reform and passed a law on the State level, affirmed it with a constitutional amendment that put a cap on non-economic damages and medical liability lawsuits. This allowed more insurance to come to the State, and, more importantly, Texas Medical Liability Trust, the largest medical liability writer in the State of Texas, has reduced liability fees by 17 percent. But in the State of Rhode Island, which recently joined the other States in the Union that are in crisis, doctors there are experiencing liability insurance premium increases from 175 to 200 percent since 2002 and fully one-half of their physicians, 48 percent, responded to a recent survey saying they were thinking about doing something else. Madam Speaker, we passed a good bill in this House 2 years ago that nationwide put a cap on non-economic damages of medical liability lawsuits. I urge this body to take it up, and I urge the other body to pass it as well.

Mr. GINGREY

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I want to, first of all, thank the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett). And I want to tell my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, how enthused I am to be an original cosponsor on H.R. 2574, the Respect for Life Embryonic Stem Cell Act of 2005. I think that the gentleman has an excellent idea of solving this moral, ethical problem that we spent so much time talking about on the floor of this great body yesterday in the passage of those two pieces of legislation, the one, of course, to expand the opportunity for obtaining umbilical cord blood with up to 150,000 umbilical cord banks that would communicate with each other in regard to trying to match the stem cells obtained in that blood to the specific recipient who is suffering from one of these terrible diseases that we have heard so much about. I am talking about things like juvenile type I diabetes. I am talking about spinal cord injuries, Alzheimer's, leukemia. That was the one bill. And, of course, also in that bill would expand the banking ability of bone marrow where adult stem cells are plentiful. That bill I think passed this body with maybe one dissenting vote out of 435. That does not happen very often that you get such a unanimous support. The other bill, of course, the Castle/DeGette bill, is the one that caused a great controversy, consternation. Not partisan concern, because we had Members, both Republican and Democratic Members, for and opposed to that bill. Indeed, the authors were the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), a Republican Member, and the co-author, the gentlewoman from Colorado (Ms. DeGette), a Democrat; so it was a very, I think, in some ways it was a good thing even though I was very, very much opposed to the bill and disappointed to be on the losing side. There were 194 of us, though, who felt very strongly that we did not want to go in that direction of destroying embryos, even though the proponents, Mr. Speaker, used the term, hey, these are throwaway babies. I even heard somebody say in their time in the well, Mr. Speaker, that these embryos, these frozen embryos were just going to be flushed down the toilet. Well, as we know, my colleagues know this week we had, I do not know how many of the hundred snowflake babies, the babies that infertile couples have adopted, the frozen embryos with the permission of the natural parents and carried these precious children to term. I think 22 of them were roaming around Capitol Hill yesterday and had an opportunity to be over at the White House with President Bush. You ask one of those moms or dads if those were throwaway babies. Indeed, they were not. They were precious lives. And I am just so thankful that that opportunity is there. I will say this, if my colleague from Maryland will permit me to digress just a little bit on this subject, reproductive endocrinologists are superspecialist OB/GYNs. Their work involves primarily infertility. And they are wonderful doctors. They are so well trained and it is amazing the things that they can do with infertile couples, whether the infertility is a female problem with a sparsity or lack of sufficient number of eggs or whether it is a male infertility where the sperm count is extremely low, and maybe like in 25 percent of the cases you just do not know. But the success rates that they achieve is remarkable. One of the most exciting things that they do and have been doing now for, gosh, 15, almost 20, years is in vitro fertilization. But when they first started that technology of actually stimulating a woman's ovaries to produce multiple eggs, not without some risks because when you do that with injections, the ovaries swell, they get quite large, and of course there is some danger there, as all of us in the medical profession, especially the OB/GYNs know, Mr. Speaker. But they do. It is called hyperstimulation when it gets to the dangerous stage. But even before that, it is superstimulation so that they can obtain multiple eggs. So then there is this fertilization in the petri dish, whether it is the husband's sperm or the donor sperm if the husband is azospermic, has no sperm. So you are getting really so many of these fertilized eggs, many more than you can safely put back into the uterus. And that has created, really in a way, somewhat of a dilemma with these so- called throwaway frozen embryos, some 100,000 of them. I think I want to hopefully sometime soon talk to my colleagues in that specialty of reproductive endocrinology and say, first of all, there should be a limit to the number of embryos that can actually be implanted in a woman's uterus, and you should never put more in than they can safely conceive. What has been done in this country and others is if all of the sudden six or eight are implanted with the hopes that two or three or maybe just one will take and be a successful pregnancy, in those situations where lo and behold five or more take, then what is typically recommended is something called ``pregnancy reduction'' where the doctor is able to go in actually at a certain stage with a needle and destroy two or three or four sort of indiscriminately. Not knowing whether you were getting the boys or the girls or an equal mix of the same or the most intelligent or the least intelligent, the one that will grow up to be a doctor or the one that will grow up to be a lawyer. Pretty unethical in my estimation, Mr. Speaker, a pretty unethical procedure to be doing or recommending to a couple. And I think that we need to get away from that. We need to be a little more careful and only implant a total number so that if every one of them took, that it would be safe for them to carry to near term so that all of those children would survive. And also in getting into the situation that maybe, Mr. Speaker, couples need more counseling when they go to their reproductive endocrinologist and they sign up for IVF, in vitro fertilization, maybe they need a little more counseling as to, well, how many children do you hope to have. And if they say, well, only two; I would certainly not want to have more than two children, then I think it is unethical to do this egg retrieval process and get 10 or 12 eggs and fertilize all of them and then freeze the extras when the couple had absolutely no intention of ever having a family of six or eight or 10 children. Now, some people do. We have a Member on our side of the aisle, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Renzi), who has 12 precious children, and he is still a young man. But it is an amazing thing that we have really created this problem ourselves by not regulating this specialty. So I have digressed a little bit and I hope the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) will understand. I wanted to make that point because I think it is very important. But what the gentleman recommended here, this is not some mad scientific proposal. Not at all. The gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) is one of the most thoughtful Members of this body, Mr. Speaker, and I think colleagues on both sides of the aisle recognize that. He is serving in his seventh term. He is not a rookie. He is a very, very bright Ph.D., physiologist, who taught in medical school. He has taken advanced course work in embryology, so he does understand, Mr. Speaker. He is thinking about what can we do to solve this problem where we in this country do not have to fight about this moral, ethical divide. He does not want us to have to cross that divide and we do not have to. So I really commend the gentleman, and this bill I have great support for because we need some studies and we need Federal funding of those studies and we are not destroying a human life in the process. So his allowing me to come and spend a few minutes here to be with him to discuss this is most appreciated on my part. I plan to stay here for a little while and if the gentleman would like for me to comment further, I would be glad to do so.

Mr. GINGREY

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, today I rise in support of the Blumenauer amendment that would shift funding for the 2005 BRAC round into accounts that would be used to finish the cleanup of all the installations closed in previous rounds, all of which, by the way, occurred over 10 years ago. The Department of Defense is currently conducting a review of the military's overseas facility structure as well as the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review, the QDR. These are important and very telling studies that have not yet been completed that will give us in Congress a much clearer picture of our military's future landscape and needs; and meanwhile, we should take the time to finish the job we started in the late 80s. Mr. Chairman, yesterday morning I flew home to Marietta, Georgia, in my district, where I had the pleasure of meeting one of the nine BRAC commissioners as he toured Naval Air Station Atlanta in the 11th district. While we were there, a comment was made that the commander of the facility would like to have rolled the 40-plus planes, Humvees, and Cobra helicopters out on the tarmac for review, but they were all deployed in the war on terror. Mr. Chairman, the DOD has recommended that these assets be realigned elsewhere; yet I am concerned that proper due diligence has not been paid to consider the overall force structure needs of the military, the very purpose of the QDR that will not be completed for months. If BRAC is to occur, I believe that it can be carried out in a much more effective manner once we have a better idea about what the future holds. So for that reason, I believe that we should allocate our scarce resources to completing the cleanup necessary for those communities already impacted by BRAC to reclaim the land and put it to good use. Once again, Mr. Chairman, I fully support the Blumenauer amendment.

Mr. GINGREY

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, I rise again in support of this rule and in recognition of its importance to the men and women who have and who continue to serve and protect America. Mr. Speaker, our service men and women sacrifice so much for the safety and security of this Nation, and we have the responsibility to ensure that they have everything that they need, not only to succeed in their duties, but also to enjoy the quality of life that they deserve. This bill represents the culmination of a lot of hard work and a lot of cooperation to not only completely support our service men and women but to also do so in the most helpful and fiscally responsible way. With a total amount of $121.8 billion, this bill includes an overall increase of $5.8 billion in discretionary spending from last year. Specifically, the Department of Veterans Affairs will receive $2.3 billion more than the previous year. The VA medical care increase from 2005 to 2006, I gave the number earlier for the previous 5 years, another 8.5 percent increase. They will receive, they the VA medical services, an increase of $1.6 billion. And again, I emphasize that there will be no new fees for either veterans medical services or for prescription drugs. Today represent a victory for our service men and women in all stages of service from recruitment to retirement. And I appreciate all of my colleagues who have spoken on behalf of the rule and in support of the underlying bill. Mr. Speaker, I would again like to thank the subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh); the ranking member, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards); and the chairman, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis), for leading the way and ensuring the necessary funds to provide for the quality of life of our service men and women. I want to encourage my colleagues to support both this rule and the underlying bill for the sake of those who spend their lives defending ours.

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham).

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. In regard to the comment about the waiting time for our veterans to receive care, we had several years ago, and I want to respond, of course, to the gentlewoman from California about her concerns, but there was a waiting time of greater than 6 months for up to 350,000 veterans. I think most of those were in Category, priority level, 7 and 8. But because of increased funding and policy change, that number was reduced to 36,000. We do not want to have, Mr. Speaker, any of our veterans having to wait 6 months or more. But to cut that down from hundreds of thousands to 36,000, I think, is significant progress. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham), a member of the subcommittee.

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. In regard to the gentleman's comments about mental health care for our veterans, for the first time ever, the President proposed and Congress provided a dedicated pool of resources, actually $2.2 billion, to provide specialty mental health care to veterans, particularly those who are returning from the combat area, as so many are now. In order to better serve combat veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs is directed to do a comprehensive study on post-traumatic stress disorder, focusing on improving mental health, mental health research, mental health care and access to information. In addition, in encouraging better cooperation and care of veterans and active military personnel, VA and the Department of Defense are directed to develop a plan to improve seamless transition on internal and external obstacles to transition and recommendations that would continue to enhance the continuity of care. Mr. Speaker, in regard to total spending on VA medical care, let us just go back to 1999 and come forward to 2005 over the last 6 years. In 1999, VA medical care appropriations were $17.8 billion. In fiscal year 2005, that number was $29.9 billion. The increases over those 6 years: 1999 to 2000, 9.2 percent; 2000 to 2001, 11.3 percent; 2001 to 2002, a lean year, as we all know, because of the economy and 9/11; nevertheless, a 4.6 percent increase; 2002 to 2003, 11.9, an almost 12 percent increase; 2003 to 2004, another 11.4 percent increase; 2004 to 2005, a 6.2 percent increase. The commitment is there. Absolutely the numbers show it. I do not see how anybody could refute that. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 298 is an open rule providing for consideration of H.R. 2528, the Military Quality of Life and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act of 2006. The rule allows for 1 hour of general debate, equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Appropriations. It waives all points of order against consideration of the bill. It waives points of order against provisions in the bill for failure to comply with clause 2 of rule XXI, prohibiting unauthorized appropriations or legislative provisions in an appropriations bill. It authorizes the Chair to accord priority and recognition to Members who have preprinted their amendments in the Congressional Record, and it provides one motion to recommit with or without instructions. Under the rules of the House, the bill shall be read for amendment by paragraph. Mr. Speaker, today I am proud to present for consideration the rule for the very first Military Quality of Life and Veterans Affairs Appropriation bill. This important subcommittee was formed to take an all-inclusive look at the programs related to the quality of life for the brave servicemen and -women who currently serve America in the Armed Forces, their families and those men and women who sacrificed so much for our freedom in the past. I also believe the bill before us achieves this important goal in a fiscally responsible manner. The new subcommittee held 14 hearings this year covering a wide range of issues pertaining to their new jurisdiction, and I believe their product is a strong one. The underlying bill totals $121.8 billion of which $85.2 billion is discretionary and $36.6 billion is mandatory. The discretionary funding level represents a $1 billion increase above the President's request and $5.9 billion above last year's enacted level. The bill funds the Department of Veterans Affairs at $68.1 billion, $2.3 billion above the fiscal year 2005 enacted level, and $635 million above the 2006 budget request. Particularly important is the $21 billion for veterans medical services, $1.6 billion above the 2005 enacted level and a billion dollars more than the budget request. This is an 8.5 percent increase over last year's level, and an 18.2 percent increase in medical services from fiscal year 2004. Perhaps most importantly, and what I heard the most about from the veterans back home in northwest Georgia, is that this bill does not contain any new fees for veterans medical services or prescription drugs. The bill restores funding for long-term care to the level it was in the fiscal year 2005 appropriation legislation, and the bill directs the Secretary to work with the National Association of State Veterans Homes to generate an agreeable policy to make the program function more effectively for the veterans and for the taxpayer. Mr. Speaker, there are two State veterans homes in Georgia that are hugely important to many aging citizens and their families, and I am personally grateful for this measure. Additionally, the bill includes language directing the Department to spend more than $2.2 billion on specialty mental health care in fiscal year 2006, an important issue that many Members of Congress brought to the attention of the chairman. The subcommittee also included report language directing the VA to double the funding available for mental health research. For the Department of Defense, the bill provides a total of $53.5 billion, and within this total is funding for military construction, for family housing construction and maintenance, basic allowance for housing payments, facilities maintenance, modernization, and environmental restoration. Also included in this bill is $20 billion for the Defense health program. This is an increase of $1.8 billion above the fiscal year 2005 enacted level, and it is $192.3 million above the 2006 Presidential budget request. This amount will sufficiently allow for ongoing preparation of our brave soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines while caring also for their families at home. Finally, the subcommittee has allowed for greatly enhanced interaction between the Department of Defense and the VA to explore joint ventures that can enhance a continuity of services provided between the two departments. Mr. Speaker, in a tough budget year such as this, we have a responsibility to make sure that scarce resources are allocated in the most effective and efficient manner possible. This bill achieves that goal. Mr. Speaker, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge Subcommittee Chairman Walsh, Ranking Subcommittee Member Edwards and, of course, Chairman Lewis for their vision and hard work on this bill. I look forward to this debate, and I encourage my colleagues to support the rule and the underlying bill. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 298 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Foley), a Member of the Committee on Ways and Means.

Mr. GINGREY

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to honor the life and career of Marietta teacher Rose Lee Wing, who passed away on April 30. She will be deeply missed by a grateful community and scores of former students who were fortunate enough to call her teacher. Mr. Speaker, I want you to focus your attention not on my words so much, but on this portrait of this beautiful, beautiful person. Born the youngest of seven children in Kingston, North Carolina, Rose graduated from Meredith College. After completing a master's degree in education at Temple University, she moved to Marietta, Georgia in 1938. She married Steve Mosher Wing and was blessed with two children: Rose, an attorney, and Steve, Jr., a physician, my friend at the Medical College of Georgia. She was later blessed with two grandchildren, Jennifer Wing and Molly Wing Kintz. Mrs. Wing taught in the Marietta School System for 47 years, instructing students at Waterman Street Elementary, Marietta High School, Westside Elementary School, and Hickory Hills Elementary School. She taught social studies and organized the annual school social science fair. When she finally retired in 1987, she had touched the lives of hundreds of students. My daughter, Phyllis, was lucky enough to be among those students. In fact, I remember how hard Phyllis worked on her social science project, ``The History of Kenneth Stone Hospital,'' for Mrs. Wing's class. Mrs. Wing expected hard work from all of her students. Former pupils will tell you how she insisted that they recite all 50 States and capitals in front of the class. You see, Mrs. Wing did not just teach the facts; she wanted her students to learn how to stand up and be outspoken. Rose Wing organized her classroom to make everyone feel included. She did not stand in front of the class and lecture, but instead she taught from the center of the room with the desks surrounding her. It was these smaller decisions that truly showed Mrs. Wing's dedication to helping students learn. The brilliance of her teaching method was that it provided students with the opportunity to participate, while at the same time teaching discipline and respect. After teaching four generations of children, Rose Wing always had a plethora of stories to share, many memories, and memorable students. Her students included Georgia State Representative Steve Tumlin; former State Representative Fred Bentley; Actress Joanne Woodward, the wife of Paul Newman; former State Representative Jack Vaughn; and former Marietta mayor, Ansley Meaders, sat in her classroom to learn. Mrs. Wing loved seeing her former students, hearing about their lives and seeing how they developed. She often said that there was no more rewarding experience than teaching because teachers have the ability to directly affect a community. She enjoyed seeing her students grow up to become community leaders. She felt appreciated in the process. On the day she retired in 1987, Mrs. Wing was welcomed to school by rows of her students holding red roses in the form of an arc. As she walked through, the students cheered. Even after retirement, Rose Wing kept on giving. She became a community volunteer. In fact, she was the first volunteer at the Marietta Welcome Center. Rose Wing was a fixture not only in our schools but in our community. Mr. Speaker, Rose Wing will be missed, but not forgotten. Her legacy lives on in the Marietta school system with the Rose Wing Award for Tenure; and without question, Rose Wing's memory lives on in the students she taught, who continue to strengthen the Marietta community through leadership and involvement, and in the appreciative parents of those students. Mr. Speaker, I ask that you join me in honoring the memory of a great teacher and a great lady.

Mr. GINGREY

Mr. GINGREY. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong support of the Bradley amendment that would postpone the BRAC recommendations until 1 year after several important actions by the Department of Defense occur, including the recommendations of the Review of Overseas Military Facility Structure are implemented by the Secretary of Defense and the Armed Services Committees receive the quadrennial defense review. These are important and very telling studies that have not yet been completed that will give us in Congress a much clearer picture of our military's future landscape and needs. For example, Mr. Chairman, I just returned a few moments ago from my district where I had the pleasure of meeting one of the nine BRAC commissioners as he toured Naval Air Station Atlanta in my district. While we were there, a comment was made that the commander of the facility would like to have rolled out the 40-plus planes, Humvees, and Cobra helicopters on the tarmac for review, but they are all deployed in the war on terror. Mr. Chairman, the DOD has recommended that these assets be realigned elsewhere. Yet I am concerned that proper due diligence has not been paid to consider the overall force structure needs of the military, the very purpose of the QDR that will not be completed for months. If BRAC is to occur, I believe that it can be carried out in a much more effective manner once we have a better idea about what the future holds.

Mr. GINGREY

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take my Special Order at this time.

Mr. GINGREY

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the majority leader for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening in opposition, strong opposition, to H.R. 810, not as a physician, not as an obstetrician-gynecologist, but as a pro-life Catholic who firmly believes in the sanctity of life. I have sat here for almost 3 hours listening to every word of the debate as part of my job as a member of the rebuttal team, and here is my legal pad of notes and rebuts. Most of those rebuts are against people on my side of the aisle, because this issue is clearly a bipartisan issue. You have Members, Republicans and Democrats, who are for the bill, indeed the authors, and you have Republicans and Democrats who are in opposition to the bill. So I have got plenty of rebuttals that I could make, but very briefly, I will just mention one or two. One of the gentlemen on my side of the aisle said that we need the Federal Government, we need the Federal Government involved in embryonic stem cell research and the funding of that to provide ethical guidelines to the States. You remember that comment, maybe an hour or so ago? Well, if the Federal Government is involved in a program where taxpayer dollars are spent to destroy human life, what ethical advice can they give to my State of Georgia, I ask? I think none. You see, I firmly believe in the sanctity of life, and I believe that life does begin at conception, and these embryos are definitely living human beings. The gentleman just said a few minutes ago that ``I can't imagine that a 14-week blastocyst has the same value as a human being.'' Indeed, it does. Mr. Speaker, I would ask my colleagues to look at these charts and what we know with these so-called frozen throwaway embryos that nobody wants. Well, there are hundreds today of these snowflake children, and there will be many more when people realize this is available to them. Yes, it starts as an embryo, just a few cells, and then a blastocyst. But then here is a 20-week ultrasound with a beating heart and brain and limbs and moving, and then here is the final result. Let me just say in conclusion, the gentleman from New Jersey talked about his development, his growth and development, and going backwards in his life. He stood in this well and said, ``I am an adult man today. But yesterday I was a teenager, and before that I was a toddler.'' But he did not go the opposite direction and say ``In 20 years I will be a senior citizen, and after that I may be in a nursing home and I may have Alzheimer's. I may be a vegetable.'' You would not want to destroy those lives, any more than the embryos at the beginning of life.

Mr. GINGREY

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith's) Stem Cell Therapeutics and Research Act of 2005, and commend the gentleman for his courageous and principled stand for the sanctity of life. As a physician Member, I know that significant successes are being reported from the use of umbilical cord stem cells in the treatment of 67 diseases, including sickle cell anemia, leukemia, osteoporosis and lymphoma. There is great promise in this research. Umbilical cord stem cells, unlike embryonic stem cells can be matched to a recipient by blood type, gender, ethnicity, that results in fewer tissue rejections. Compare this to embryonic stem cells. Aside from the fact that harvesting embryonic stem cells results in the destruction of innocent life, embryonic stem cells are gathered without knowledge of blood cell type, without assurance that they are free from infection, and without screening for genetic defects. These embryonic stem cells may be mismatched, carry infection, or have genetic defects with cancer- producing potential. There is a better way, Mr. Speaker. It is H.R. 2520, which enhances Federal funding for expanding the already successful use of umbilical cord stem cells. When you consider the ethics and the science and the debate, it is clear that cord blood stem cells are the right choice for our Federal funding and scientific support.

Mr. GINGREY

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank my friend, the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne), for being here with us tonight and for his very, very pertinent remarks in regard to where do you draw the line as far as life. I have heard people on the other side of this argument say, well, we are talking about getting these stem cells, and they are not really embryos, they are pre-embryos. Maybe our Ph.D. physiologist knows about the definition of pre- embryo, but I never learned that in embryology or any medical school course I took or in my obstetric and gynecology training and my 30 years of experience in the field. An embryo is an embryo. An embryo begins at the moment of conception when that sperm and egg come together. That is the embryonic stage. Really, an embryo, that stage lasts until the birth of the child. Now, you can differentiate and say at 8 weeks or 10 weeks we start calling it a fetus, but there is no, to my knowledge, definition of a pre-embryo. I wanted to just kind of follow on the gentleman from Nebraska's remarks. We are hearing a lot now about we have to catch up, Mr. Speaker, that we are behind. The South Koreans have come up with therapeutic cloning and they have cloned an embryo and they are going to get embryonic stem cells from a cloned embryo, and we are getting further and further behind. The thing that the American public maybe does not understand is that when they are asked the question, are you for embryonic stem cell research that can cure some of these dreaded diseases, my colleagues have talked about, naturally the response is going to be, oh, yes. And use Federal funding for that? Sure. We are going to cure juvenile type I diabetes, and Christopher Reeves, God rest his soul, we are going to restore the function of his limbs, and we are going to cure Alzheimer's. But I think so many people, Mr. Speaker, and even some of our colleagues, need to understand that in getting those embryonic stem cells, the life is destroyed. And when you ask that question, well, wait a minute now, if you are talking about sacrificing one life to get these cells in hopes that they might lead to at some point in the future a cure, no, I am not for that. So I think we need to be very clear by it, Mr. Speaker. We need to make sure that people understand that the harvesting today and the way it is done and the way it is proposed and the way we are hearing from the Castle-DeGette bill we are going to discuss tomorrow is using Federal dollars, taxpayer dollars, where people had no choice, they had to pay their taxes, we are going to use those dollars to fund research that involves the destruction of human life, a little, tiny infant, who with a little bit of luck and ingenuity could grow up and be a Member of this body some day. We were all, were we not, embryos at one time. Of course we were. And when you get this and you start down this slippery slope in regard to what the South Koreans are doing, suppose, Mr. Speaker, that the harvesting of these stem cells from these cloned embryos that the results are not very good, as they have not really been very good in the embryonic stem cells we have retained from these so-called throw- away babies, these 400,000 in these fertility clinics. The results have not been that good. That is why the gentleman from Nebraska said that most of the private funding is going toward adult stem cells. But what I am saying, and I will wrap this up pretty quickly because I know the gentleman's time is running short, in these cloned embryos, if it is not working too well with the fetal cells, the embryonic cells, why not let these babies develop, maybe to the point 26 weeks, the stage at which my precious twin granddaughters were born, and then you have got an organ that you can transplant, a liver, a pancreas, and you can then just simply destroy the child at that point and take their organs? This is a slippery slope upon which we are about to start if we do not defeat this bill tomorrow, and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) has an alternative to this, and it is something that I think is timely and it is good and I commend him for his efforts.

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland for yielding to me. And I think particularly at this point I wanted to interject some thoughts. First of all, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett), as he pointed out just a second ago, is a Ph.D. physiologist who taught years ago in medical school and taught physiology but, more importantly, has also taught the subject matter, which is difficult to understand. I know. I was there in medical school. And that is the subject of embryology. Embryology. Medical students get maybe in a 4-year period of time, 6 months' worth of embryology; and of course, to hear my colleague from Maryland explaining the embryologic process, it sort of takes me back to those days. But I realize, of course, how difficult it is to understand for Members of the body. There are 435 of us, of course, and just a handful have ever taken any embryology. There are no embryologists other than maybe the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) in the body; so it is not an easy concept to understand. But what I hear my colleague tell us, Mr. Speaker, is that it is possible to get stem cells from an embryo without destroying the embryo. Is it being done today? No, it is not being done today because, quite honestly, it is easier to scramble an egg than to do one over easy. It is a little more difficult. It will take some study. And we are not talking about long, many years, science fiction at all; and the gentleman from Maryland explained it very clearly. We are close. We need a little research, nonhuman primate research, but we are a lot closer to this possibility than a lot of our colleagues and the general public understand. Mr. Speaker, I want to share with my colleagues, as an OB/GYN physician, there is a procedure that probably has been done for at least 10, 12, maybe 14 years now. There is an acronym; everything has an acronym. It is called ICSI, intracytoplasmic sperm injection. What do I mean by that? An infertile couple where the problem is male infertility and a low sperm count. A normal sperm count is 60 million. That is a lot. When we get below 1,000, it is very difficult and the chances of a natural conception are markedly diminished at that point. But with this ICSI technique, they literally can obtain sperm by a biopsy in someone who has just a few sperm, not 1,000, not 60 million, but maybe just a few; and take one sperm from that biopsy and under the proper laboratory techniques, maybe a specialized microscope, take the wife's egg and inject that sperm with a needle, with a very fine needle, under the microscope. Intracytoplasmic sperm injection, and all of a sudden an embryo is created. Life is created. A child is created. And after several days in cell multiplication, as the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) was explaining, then that is implanted in the mom's uterus, and the miracle of birth can occur for that couple. We are not talking about a procedure, ICSI, that is being done exclusively at the National Institutes of Health. This is being done right in my community of Marietta, Georgia, by reproductive endocrinologists, those doctors who specialize in infertility and doing those kinds of things; and it has been going on for 10, 12 years now. So this is an opportunity to come and share this time with my colleague and say that this is not Star Wars. For goodness sake, we put a man on the moon in 1969. There is a way to do this. That is to obtain embryonic stem cells without destroying or indeed even harming the embryo, and that analogy, that explanation of twinning and how the mono-zygotic single egg identical twin that the egg divides at a certain stage; and indeed, they are taking away 50 percent of the cells, and in most instances, if the division is complete, they have two perfectly identical, beautiful children that develop. I know. I have got two precious identical twin granddaughters now who are 7 years old, Mr. Speaker. They were born at 26 weeks, right at that point where it is perfectly legal with very little prescription in our respective States to destroy those lives. So this is a hugely important thing to me, and I thank my colleague for pointing out the fact that we are not that far away. With a little study, a little funding to be able to develop this technique of obtaining these stem cells, these totipotential cells, as he described, without scrambling the egg and doing it the easy way, the simple way, killing the embryo, which is destruction of life. It is not necessary. And we are going to be talking, Mr. Speaker, tomorrow in this Chamber about the great successes that we are achieving today with stem cell technology, but not embryonic stem cells. The results there have been pretty dismal. We are talking about the great success, 58 different research endeavors where progress has been made in these various diseases that the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) described, utilizing either stem cells obtained from umbilical cord blood or from adult stem cells, bone marrow and other tissues. So this is why it is so important for our colleagues to hear from the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) and to think about this, to understand exactly what he is saying, because I think it is really on point and very timely.

Mr. GINGREY

Mr. GINGREY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the life and legacy of my late friend and the former Mayor of Marietta, Georgia, Mrs. Ansley Little Meaders. Known for her quick wit, gracious hugs and dedication to her community, Ansley committed herself to making a difference for the City of Marietta and its schools. Born on one of Marietta's oldest families, Ansley graduated from Marietta High School in 1964 where she was a star on the girl's basketball team. After attending the University of Georgia, she married her high school sweetheart, Frank Meaders, and followed in her father's footsteps and spent more than 20 years in banking. Upon the passing of former Marietta Mayor Joe Mack Wilson, Ansley was drafted by many to seek election for the city's top job. She won a special election in the summer of 1993, and was reelected twice more, thus serving for more than 8 years, making her the third longest serving Marietta mayor. Ansley had a different approach to politics. She was determined not to allow any sort of partisanship to label her. When asked whether she was a Republican or a Democrat, she was quick to respond that she was a Presbyterian. While mayor of Marietta, Ansley was known for her love of and dedication to the city's school system. I had the honor, Mr. Speaker, as serving as chairman of the Marietta School Board during that time, and I experienced firsthand the compassion and commitment she had for the schools. In 1984, Ansley conceived the idea of Marietta's Schools Foundation, an organization to support the teachers and the students of Marietta. As the organization's president, Ansley presented the Distinguished Alumni Award at nearly every Marietta High School graduation ceremony for more than 20 years. And each year she urged graduating seniors to be loyal to their alma mater, to their community, and to the valued friendships created at Marietta High. As the city's leader, Ansley was successful in lowering taxes and improving city services, building a new courthouse, adding two new fire stations, and constructing a new police headquarters. Even with all of her accomplishments, she remained a gracious and humble leader. Two weeks ago, on May 4, 2005, Ansley Meaders suffered a fatal heart attack while cooking dinner in her home. This devastating news fell over the community like a dark cloud, Mr. Speaker. One of our greatest community members had slipped away from us. She leaves behind her husband of more than 40 years, Frank, two children, Mary Ansley and Robert, and four precious grandchildren, Rosser, Georgia, Trey and Hunter; and an entire community who loved her dearly. After only 59 years, Ansley's life and physical presence in her beloved Marietta, Georgia, has ended. But, Mr. Speaker, her passing leaves Marietta with a legacy of service, dedication, and humble leadership that will remain for generations to come. God bless Mayor Ansley Meaders.