Alcee Hastings

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, please inform both sides the remaining amount of time.

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, no prevention and public health funds are or can be used to pay for abortions, and this bill has absolutely nothing to do with that. What it will stop, this bill as offered by the ruling Republican House, is immunization for kids and seniors, programs to stop childhood obesity and to prevent heart disease and diabetes. That's what they are stopping. Please don't be misled. No dollars from this fund will be used for abortion. If we as legislators are to be about the business of helping Americans live healthy, productive lives, we must change our fundamental approach to health care by investing in illness prevention, not just treatment. The Prevention and Public Health Fund is the key to a coordinated, comprehensive, sustainable and accountable approach to improving our Nation's health outcomes. I would also add that at a time when Americans are looking to Congress for leadership, the Republican ruling majority in the House are continuing their assault on comprehensive health care reform that expands coverage to 32 million people instead of focusing on job creation. It's time to stop playing games with the health of the American people and get down to business. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question so that we can debate and pass a jobs bill without any further delay. I also urge a ``no'' vote on the rule. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Ms. Carolyn Jackson Herring, who died on April 12, 2001 at the age of 46. Ms. Herring was a selfless mother, sister, daughter, and friend. She was also a dedicated public servant in the Tampa Bay community. Ms. Herring stands apart as an ideal citizen and was a living testimony of resilience, patience, and love. Ms. Herring was born on July 26, 1954 to Johnnie and Mildred Jackson in Jasper, Florida. In later years, the Jackson family relocated to St. Petersburg, Florida. Ms. Herring later graduated from Lakewood High School in 1973, where she was a member of the first integrated graduating class. In 1977, she received her Bachelor of Science degree in Education from the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. While attending the University of Florida, Ms. Herring was an active member of the Crossroad Christian Organization, as well as several advocacy groups for those suffering with sickle cell anemia. For over fifteen years, Ms. Herring dedicated her life to assisting the lives of the mentally ill. She served as a Counselor and Residential Director for Boley Centers for Behavior Health Care, Inc. After her passing, Boley Centers dedicated their main lounge area in her honor in recognition of her steadfast commitment to public service and advocacy for the mentally ill. Prior to working with Boley Centers, Ms. Herring was a headstart teacher in the Pinellas County School System. Ms. Herring was also an active member of Bay Vista Church of Christ, where she served on the Board of Directors for several years. Survived by her daughter, Oneshia Herring (Washington, DC); her parents, Johnnie and Mildred Jackson (St. Petersburg, Florida); sister, Thelma Jackson-Burns (St. Petersburg, Florida); and brothers, Johnnie Jackson, Jr. (St. Petersburg, Florida) and Alonzo Solomon (Atlanta, Georgia), Ms. Herring was known throughout her family, colleagues, clients, and community as a compassionate leader with a peaceful, virtuous, and generous spirit. While her presence is truly missed, her legacy continues to live on in the hearts of all the many people she touched. Mr. Speaker, Alphonse de Lamartine once said ``To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.'' For her angelic spirit and unconditional love to her family and community, it is with great privilege that I celebrate the life of Ms. Carolyn Jackson Herring. I extend my deepest condolences to her friends and family.

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Ms. Shari B. Kaplan for her extraordinary efforts in abuse treatment for children and adults. She has worked tirelessly through her ``Can't Tell Foundation'' to give hope to victims of domestic and sexual abuse and children who are plagued by bullying. Her foundation has been a pioneer in treatment for victims and relies on several methods to allow victims to cope. Such practices include self-defense, music and movement, Qi Gong and yoga, nutrition, mentoring, improvisational work, meditation, individual therapy, family therapy, group therapy and support. Ms. Kaplan herself was a victim of bullying and has experienced the personal pain of abuse with her closest family. She was in a horrific bike crash when she was young that left her with physical injuries that ultimately lead to bullying when she was in school. Additionally, her children were victims of abuse at the hands of her nanny's 13-year-old son. Using the wisdom she gained from her own pain and experience in helping her children cope, she went on to help others deal with their pain and create prevention policies against abuse in all its forms. Her more recent goal is to raise 6.5 million dollars to help build a treatment facility in Boca Raton, Florida. Abuse and bullying has become an epidemic in this country. Suicide is the second major cause of death in teens and young adults ages 13-24. In addition, government statistics show that 32 percent of 12- to 18- year-olds say they have been bullied. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to recognize and stand with a woman who has decided to stand up against abuse and bullying. Ms. Shari B. Kaplan has truly dedicated herself to this important cause and I wish to give her my full support.

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, it is with great privilege that I welcome my dear friend, Bishop Henry Fernandez, as our guest chaplain for today's opening prayer. He is an anointed speaker, educator, accomplished author, and entrepreneur. Henry B. Fernandez answered the call of God on his life in 1985 and later became an ordained minister in 1988. In July 1991, Bishop Fernandez began to demonstrate his faith in God and a commitment to ``walk by faith'' in every area of life when, along with his wife, Carol, he founded the Plantation Worship Center in the cafeteria of a local elementary school in south Florida with only 11 members. Now known as The Faith Center Ministries, the church makes its home in the former Sunrise Theater, where its more than 8,000 members embrace a mission of ``Reaching the World for Jesus.'' Bishop Fernandez is an amazing inspirational speaker, author, community servant, and business person whose work continues to manifest the freedom of worship enjoyed across our Nation. Through his work, he has encouraged us all to exercise faith and live victoriously. He and his wife, Carol, have two sons, Seion-Zane and Elijah-Zane. I am truly honored to welcome my friend and inspirational leader, Bishop Henry Fernandez.

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Unique and unconstitutional.

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. I thank my good friend from South Carolina. David Frishberg wrote, in 1975, ``I'm Just a Bill.'' This has been utilized. I utilized it yesterday. My friend from Georgia (Mr. Woodall) utilized it again today. I shan't go into all of it, but I would encourage the American public to understand that my friends know how a bill becomes the law. H.R. 1, the measure that we have been talking about, really did pass the House of Representatives and it went over to the United States Senate and it was rejected. The President also said that he would veto H.R. 1 if it reached his desk. So what we're doing here is symbolism. My friends on the other side are entitled easily to message anything they wish to address their base, but don't bring it to the American public under the aegis of this is something serious. It is not. It is absurd. It is a complete waste of time. And, even more importantly, as has been said by many, and I believe everybody on the other side understands, it's unconstitutional. It also has not gone unnoticed that my friends who advocated rightly that there should be transparency, in addition to being transparency, that measures should be allowed to be read before they're utilized. The leadership of the House of Representatives held a press conference before any Member of the House of Representatives saw Mr. Womack and Mr. Woodall's bill. Knowing this, then, I guess what must be happening here is we are wasting our time on patently unconstitutional measures.

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. I won't go into all the details about the need to address jobs, but I do know this: Steny Hoyer said earlier what all of us in America know, and when we were children we celebrated a lot--a lot of us--and it was April Fool's. We played jokes on people. But, listen, the American people are not fools and they're not foolish enough to believe this absolutely foolish unconstitutional measure.

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. I just have a question. Do you really believe that what you're doing is constitutional?

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Will the gentleman yield again for yet another question?

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Do you have any precedent for the constitutionality of this particular measure? And I urge you based on what you just said, there have been measures that were deemed, but that was when they were agreed upon, but there is no authority anywhere for us to pass a law requiring of the United States Senate to undertake to do something, and I appreciate my colleague yielding.

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. I yield 1 minute of that time to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia, Ms. Holmes Norton.

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Madam Speaker, I am very pleased today to rise in strong opposition to H.R. 471, the Scholarships for Opportunity and Results Act, also known as the SOAR Act. I also am very pleased that my friend from Utah has, in the tradition of this committee, granted the time to our side. This legislation revives the District of Columbia's school voucher program, a program that was allowed to expire after 5 years of failing to improve student achievement. My colleague said that there will be statistics on both sides. Doubtless that is true. I also have great respect that the presenter of the rule today is a school teacher. At least if somebody is going to meddle in somebody else's business, they ought to at least know a little bit about what they're talking about. Too many times in our States, too many times in this place, many of us who are not educators, nor have we been involved, are making decisions about the education of children when we should be being a lot more careful. For example, I'm sure that my colleague, who knows his State well, as I know mine and as we know ours--all of us in this institution--is mindful that in the last 41 years voters have rejected private school vouchers every time they have been proposed--interestingly enough, two times in Utah, I would urge my good friend. As late as 2007, Utah voted 62 percent to 38 percent not to have vouchers. Before that, it was sort of like the District of Columbia. Incidentally, in 1981, 89 percent of the people in a referendum in the District of Columbia voted against vouchers--but in 1988, in Utah, 67 percent. It didn't change very much from that time to 2007, which isn't very much time from now. So how dare we come here to tell these people that we are going to thrust upon them something they don't want without a single bit of consultation with a single member of the public officials in this community being consulted. I might ask why we are here debating such a misguided, narrowly focused measure when violence is raging in the Middle East, when earthquakes and tsunamis have ravaged Japan, and when our own Nation's economy is kind of sputtering along. I suppose, when it is one of the leadership of the Republican Party's pet issues, the people's work can always be put on hold. This matter is nothing more than a shallow attempt to, once again, appease the right-wing of the Republican Party. Well, Madam Speaker, Congress' oversight of the District is not an excuse for political pandering to the Republicans' special interest of the day du jour. My colleague used Leo Durocher. He played with and against Yogi Berra. Yogi Berra reminds me, if I were to use an analogy, that this is deja vu all over again. He and Leo would be proud that we are talking about them, Mr. Bishop. Whether it is gun rights, a woman's right to choose or education policy, the District is not and should not be the dumping grounds for Republicans' ideological whims. My colleagues have already stripped the District of its limited vote in Congress. The least they could do is allow them to control their education system just as every other jurisdiction in this country is able to do. The people of the District of Columbia did not ask for or want this program, nor were they or their elected officials consulted, as I have pointed out. If they had been, I'm sure the committee would have been told what many of us already know: that this program is simply a waste of money. According to legislatively mandated evaluations, the D.C. voucher program failed to show any statistically significant impact on student achievement. This is in contrast to reading and math scores across the District, which did improve over the same period. Though my colleagues claim that this program serves students who would otherwise be stuck in failing schools without the resources to adequately meet their needs, only about a quarter of the students using vouchers came from schools in need of improvement. Additionally, the Department of Education found that students participating in the D.C. voucher program were significantly less likely to attend a school with ESL programs, learning support and special needs programs, tutors, and counselors. Further, private schools are not required to hold the same level of transparency or accountability as public schools. Rather than directing these funds toward improving all of the District's public and charter schools, as Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton has proposed, this program only serves 1.3 percent of the 70,000 students enrolled in the D.C. public schools. Though my colleagues may claim to have a newfound commitment to education--my friend from the Rules Committee being an exception-- albeit for only a few select students they have found this commitment. Let's not forget that, just a few weeks ago, some in this body and most in the Republican Party were content to cut--and my friend just used the kinship of Pell Grants with this proposal--Federal funding for 9.4 million students, to eliminate over 200,000 Head Start placements, to do away with supplementary education services for 957,000 underprivileged students, and to reduce or get rid of, they said, after-school programs for 139,000 students across this Nation. I was just with the CEO of the Urban League's Broward and Palm Beach Counties--my constituency--and they were talking about how drastic this is going to affect the constituency in that area of underprivileged students and who they are seeing and what the juvenile justice system is now reaping from this ill harvest that we have thrust upon these people. On the one hand, the Republicans go on about the need for fiscal discipline. They refuse to negotiate on legislation to keep the government operating, and they propose billions of dollars in cuts to our Nation's students. Yet they are perfectly willing to throw millions of dollars at a program that has proven year after year to be unpopular, inefficient, and downright ineffective. If my colleagues truly wanted to improve the District's schools, along with the schools across the Nation, they would be bringing forth a serious measure to reform the No Child Left Behind provision. But no. Instead, we are debating a measure that has no hope of becoming law. It is simply to appease the political whims of a few in the Republican Party. The American people, in my view, are tired of the majority's using this institution to do nothing but spew ideological rhetoric. Madam Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I am going to offer an amendment to the rule to provide that immediately after the House adopts this rule it will bring up H.R. 639, the Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act, and I am mindful that there will be speakers regarding the same. The amendment will provide our government the tools to rein in unfair currency policies by the Chinese. I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record along with extraneous material immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. I am going to at this time reserve any further comments that I have after the following statement: It has been 13 weeks and still no jobs bill and no substantive plan to improve our Nation's economy. When my friends in the majority are ready to get down to the serious business of improving the lives of all American people, we will be waiting. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Before yielding, I'll one-up the one-upper: Satchel Paige also said, Don't look back. I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to my distinguished friend and colleague from the Rules Committee, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis).

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Madam Speaker, would you be so kind as to inform us as to the remaining time.

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. I am very pleased at this time to yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from the District of Columbia, my good friend, Ms. Holmes Norton, who knows more about this issue than all of us combined.

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. To complete her thought, I yield the gentlelady an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline).

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Sort of like ``Joe DiMaggio was against vouchers.'' Madam Speaker, at this time I would like to yield myself 10 seconds to explain that we are still on the D.C. voucher matter, but the previous question is with reference to Chinese currency. With that, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman, my good friend from Washington (Mr. McDermott). (Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Madam Speaker, at this time, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to my very good friend, the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Madam Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida. Madam Speaker, my friend is absolutely correct about the Joe DiMaggio comment. But I've been around long enough to remember the Washington Senators. One of my personal friends played baseball with them, Earl Battey, and I won't tell you some of the things that Earl said to me when it wasn't about school vouchers. But I leave to the seriousness of the moment 5 minutes of my remaining time to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), who has, with great persistence, tried to get clarity about taxation without representation.