Marcy Kaptur

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment concerning the Public Housing Drug Elimination Program.

Ms. KAPTUR. First of all, I would like to thank the ranking member for his strong support in clarifying why HUD is the proper administering authority for this program and the distinction between the Department of Justice and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. I thought I would also like to place on the record a comment made by the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) a little bit earlier. His time expired, but in other comments that Secretary Martinez made before the Subcommittee on Housing that the gentleman from Massachusetts is the ranking member of, he mentioned that Mr. Martinez said that, in terms of money available to HUD this year, that the Department of Energy estimated that utility costs would be going down; that before the Subcommittee on Housing he actually stated that the Department of Energy had told him to tell us that utility costs would be going down. I find that incredible. The operating funds that exist in this bill will not be sufficient if you look at what is happening to utility rates across this country. So this program is even more necessary in order to keep the cap on crime, keep arrests up, keep neighborhoods more safe and help with the prevention programs that the gentleman from West Virginia has so aptly described. I thank him for yielding to me and for his support of this program.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Illinois for his eloquent statement. I thank him for giving us a snapshot of places in America where programs like this make an enormous difference. I thank him for his leadership, and I just wanted to place on the record the fact that HUD did do a study in 1999. In fact the inspector general of HUD did a study. They found no abuse in this program. In fact, all HUD said, the inspector general, the inspection side of HUD merely said they ought to do some more studies around the country on how the program is working. They only asked for more paper reporting. But on the ground, on the ground where people live every day, this is a successful program. Mr. Chairman, I wanted to use this moment also to say to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh), my good friend, who I really do not think his heart is in opposition on this program, but I want to say in my own town he said the money was not being spent. I would have to say that is not an accurate statement. In fact, over $700,000 of Federal and local money is being spent every year and is being spent according to the allocation formulas from HUD on schedule.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, the amendment I am proposing would restore a program that the majority party has zeroed out in this legislation for the Public Housing Drug Elimination Program. This program has been in operation since President Reagan signed the legislation in his last administration, and was first appropriated, funds were first let around the country, by the first Bush Administration back in 1988. Our amendment has been scored by CBO as budget neutral, both in outlays and budget authority, because of offsets from the HOME program and the Down Payment Assistance Initiative, which has not been authorized. Last year Congress provided over $310 million to over 1,100 housing authorities across the country for this very, very successful program, which aims at keeping criminal activity down in some of the most vulnerable neighborhoods in our country where seniors, low-income families, and the disabled live on a daily basis. It is a worthy program; it is a successful program that has been supported by both Republican and Democratic administrations. Frankly, I am rather perplexed, I am mystified, as to why any administration or any subcommittee would zero out a program with this rate of success. Over 118 Members of this Congress have signed a letter to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh) and the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan) supporting the continuation of this program, and with me here at the desk I have a list of Members' districts that include over 1,100 Housing Authorities where this program has been in operation and so successful. Now, there is no question that crime has dropped nationwide and, in particular, in some of the most vulnerable areas of our cities, so let me explain what used to happen. What used to happen is that drug lords in places like Chicago literally controlled the roofs. I was in the housing field long before I was elected to Congress. I know what it is like to stand on the roof of a building and watch as mothers cannot leave a housing project to go buy milk because the drug lords control the streets, and if they had a deal coming down, you could not live your life. This program aims to get rid of that, to set up police substations in many of these housing projects in some of the most dangerous parts of America to let the children in those areas have a chance at a decent life. This is a program with a track record, and it is a good one, and it should not be zeroed out.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Ms. KAPTUR. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentlewoman from Texas for yielding. To reaffirm what she has said with me here today, I have documents from over 1,100 public housing authorities in our country and their neighborhoods that are benefiting from this program. Members should know and should check their own districts prior to voting on this amendment. It serves America coast-to-coast. It has made our communities more beautiful and safer places in which to live. It saves lives every day. I thank the gentlewoman for asking for that clarification.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I really wanted to take this moment as we begin full consideration of this bill to thank the chairman, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh) and the ranking member, the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan), for their work and the improvements that we have been able to afford the citizens of our country in this fiscal year 2002 appropriation bill for the Veterans Administration, the Housing and Urban Development Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, and the National Science Foundation. The bill has many good points. Certainly the National Science Foundation increase, the President asked for an increase, we provided over an 8 percent increase in this budget. And even in smaller programs, like the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, which has such a fine track record in communities across our country, a respectable increase. But I have to say that in other accounts this particular bill does not have adequate funding. Other Members have talked about HUD's housing programs, and without question the reductions in public housing modernization, decreased by 15 percent; and community development block grants, every single community in this country affected by that cut by 6 percent; and homeless assistance down by nearly 9 percent. We still have not completely solved that problem across our country. The impact on Americans as a result of this underfunding of the HUD programs will be felt from coast to coast. The bill eliminates the popular AmeriCorps program. HUD's Rural Housing and Economic Development programs have been eliminated. Empowerment zones, Enterprise communities, and the Public Housing Drug Elimination Grant Program I will talk about in a moment. Now, I wanted to say a word about the Environmental Protection Agency, also a reduction, and as important as the reduction, the shift in responsibility for enforcement to the States. In the case of Ohio, my home State, The Washington Post reported just a couple weeks ago ``Nowhere are the problems cited by the EPA studies of State enforcement performance more in evidence than Ohio where so much backlog remains. During the past 2 years, 72 percent of Ohio's plants and refineries had violations of the Clean Water Act, a third of the plants were in violation of the Clean Air Act, and over a third of the factories were found to be operating with expired permits required under the Clean Water Act.'' So we have to be conscious that as this bill is considered, there are serious imperfections that are contained within it. Others have referenced the veterans portion of the budget. We hear lots about the greatest generation; books have been written, movies, and we are about to build the World War II memorial, one of the most important pieces of legislation I have ever sponsored here in this Congress. Yet the Veterans Medical Care budget, the budget that will actually go to care for those that the Nation says it cares so very much about, underfunded by nearly $.5 billion over what the administration needs in order to accommodate the lines that are out there in hospital after hospital. So as the bill moves forward, I really do look forward to working with the chairman and the ranking member to perfect it. And I just wanted to say a word about the amendment I will be offering later this afternoon, because I heard my colleague, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Oxley), come to the floor a little earlier and speak against the drug elimination program in public housing, and my friend and colleague from Ohio is a former FBI officer. I was very surprised to hear that. But I have to tell him that perhaps the part of Ohio he represents is not like my own. But his position is going to hurt Cincinnati, it will hurt Dayton, it is going to hurt Toledo, it is going to hurt Steubenville, and it is going to hurt Lima, because in fact the drug elimination program goes to the very heart of communities where drug lords and this drug trade took control of people living under the most vulnerable of circumstances. The local policing forces, sometimes out of sheer racism and sometimes out of the fact that when they wore a uniform they were not accepted inside those projects, did not patrol the projects. My colleagues can go across this country, in places like Chicago, where I personally visited, and see people on the roofs with repeating shotguns, with repeating rifles, at a certain time of day. If a drug deal was coming down on the street, a mother could not leave that project and go buy a bottle of milk because the drug lords were controlling the projects. Now, if we have not lived under that situation, we cannot appreciate what it really means. But the amendment I will be offering will be to continue the drug elimination program in public housing at a level of $175 million, unlike this bill which zeros it out. And, in fact, our amendment will actually cut the program by nearly half from what was existing last year. But to do this across America is truly a serious mistake. Crime has been going down in our country. Why should we do any less than President Reagan, the first President Bush and President Clinton? Mr. Chairman, I again thank the chairman and ranking member and look forward to perfecting this bill as it moves along.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman very much for the clarification and for his willingness to engage in this colloquy. It has been a pleasure to work with the gentleman.

Ms. KAPTUR. I yield to the gentleman from Oklahoma.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the able gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Treasury, Postal Service and General Government, for yielding me this time. I rise to engage the chairman of the subcommittee on Treasury, Postal Service and General Government, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook), in a colloquy regarding public debt management. Mr. Chairman, as part of the House report accompanying the fiscal year 2002 appropriation bill for the Treasury Department, the Committee on Appropriations directs the Bureau of Public Debt to provide a report to review the complete debt program of the Bureau from a fiscal management perspective, providing cost comparisons between high amount- low volume debt instruments and low amount-high volume debt instruments. Another major concern regards the ownership of our public debt, particularly the extent and growth in foreign ownership of U.S. debt securities. I would say to the chairman, the ownership of the government's debt is increasingly in the hands of foreign owners. Our government may not be sufficiently active in promoting the domestic ownership of our debt, especially to individuals, something that many of us in this Chamber can recall being a matter of national will and, indeed, pride. As part of this review of the national debt, I believe that we should have a detailed report regarding the levels of ownership of savings bonds and other forms of public debt, rates of return on those savings bonds and other forms of public debt, and how savings bond ownership historically compares to other forms of public debt. Would the gentleman agree that the review of the complete debt program of the Bureau of the public debt requested by the committee should contain a thorough analysis of debt ownership, differentiating between foreign and domestic customers as well as between individuals by income category, corporations, and governments; trends over the last 20 years with respect to what groups are purchasing U.S. debt; the amount of interest being paid to each bondholder category; and developments and trends over the last 20 years with respect to what media and methodologies are being used to affect debt transactions?

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I yield \1/2\ minute to myself. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support the Kaptur-Schaffer amendment and to maintain levels of funding for Ukraine. Help Ukraine move toward reform, especially in memory of the slain journalists. Many of those independent journalists would want us to help their cause inside Ukraine. Do not walk away from her now. Mr. Chairman, I want to also express my great appreciation to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe), the chairman of the subcommittee, for allowing this discussion to ensue this afternoon, for the serious manner with which he has dealt with those who do not share his position, and the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey) for her graciousness as we move this amendment forward.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer).

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith).

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I rise and wish to present to the committee an amendment that concerns Ukraine. The real issue for us here in the House today is whether the United States should begin walking away from the most strategic country in Central Europe: Ukraine. My amendment says stay the course with the democratic forces for reform. It says do not single out Ukraine as the only nation in the world that will receive a one-third cut from last year's allocation. My amendment will allow the committee and will allow this Congress more flexibility as we move towards floor passage and conference in order to restore the funds that rightfully should go to democracy building in that new republic. Let me just say that proposing to reduce assistance for Ukraine comes at absolutely the wrong time. The third set of parliamentary elections are about to occur. During the last week of August, Ukraine will celebrate its 10th year of independence. This kind of ill-advised action by this Congress is going to give the forces that are against reform a greater share of authority inside that country. I do not really think that the gentleman, the chairman of the committee and other Members that proposed this initially, really want that to happen. Put it in the context of our own country. It took us 11 years from the time of the Declaration of Independence to adopt our own Constitution, 89 years to end slavery at the end of the Civil War, 141 years to give women the right to vote, and 188 years for the adoption of the civil rights acts of our country. Now, I am not suggesting Ukraine should take that long. All I am saying is that after 10 years certain Members may be expecting too much. Let me also say that other nations, like Russia, are making very favorable overtures toward Ukraine, particularly with the recent appointment of former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin as the new Russian Ambassador to Ukraine. America should be no less interested in Ukraine. Further, the House bill does not even meet the administration's request of $170 million for Ukraine, and President Bush and Secretary Powell have both stressed the importance of this strategic partnership. Even the wife of the slain journalist Heorhiy Gongadze wrote a letter to all of us in which she says, ``Do not do this. It would be a terrible mistake to adopt the House committee version.'' She says, ``Condemn the actions and inactions of the Ukrainian executive power when appropriate, demand open and honest investigations, seek the truth about my husband's murder, and cut off funding or restrict it, if you deem it necessary, but please do not reduce the aid to Ukraine that is so important in the building of a normal Democratic society.'' I will insert her full letter in the Record. This September, we are going to have the first Rada-Congressional exchange to try to more completely work together as legislative bodies in our respective communities, to try to help to integrate Ukraine more fully into the world community. Do I think everything is rosy in Ukraine? I would be the first to say no. Much more remains to be done on nuclear safety. I wish to insert in the Record two letters. One from our U.S. Department of Energy and one from the Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States talking about the serious nuclear safety issues that still remain and need to be addressed in Ukraine. We need full investigations into the suspicious deaths of independent journalists. We need an independent and free press and media and allow them to develop and help them to develop in that country. We need to urge Ukraine to create a judicial system and rule of law that yields justice. We need to ensure human rights and free speech to help advance that country toward a more open free market economy with reliable and transparent credit institutions, and we need to help them complete land title reform and agricultural transition to a privatized system of production. The report that accompanies the bill is also inadequate. I am going to also insert into the Record tonight more complete language that should be in the report that urges Ukraine toward these types of reforms. But let me remind our colleagues, Ukraine has had major accomplishments over the last decade. It has, at our request, completely dismantled its nuclear weapons. It has worked to become and wishes to be part of the full union of European and western states. Ukraine refused to sell turbines to Iran giving up an economic sale in excess of over $100 million. The current President of the Ukraine personally invited Pope John Paul II for an historic visit with Ukraine. I might say to the chairman of the full subcommittee, with all due respect, last week you spoke eloquently of not isolating China and you voted on behalf of opening China up. I can tell you China arrests Catholic bishops. She would not invite the Pope into that country. In fact, she ordains phony bishops. So I would say do not treat Ukraine in a manner any worse than you would treat China. If you look at Ukraine, she has a growing middle class. It has grown at over 6 percent this last year. Industrial production is up by a fifth. Land privatization is occurring. Small businesses are up by 40 percent. Small bank accounts have started. In fact, and this is really important for our colleagues to understand, almost all of the U.S. assistance to Ukraine does not go to the government. In fact, it goes to help the development of the very organizations that are working for all the good causes I have just talked about: small business development, exchange programs, support for independent media, municipal development, nuclear clean up; all these very, very worthy causes. So in offering this amendment today it was my hope to put some of this on the Record. It is my hope that as this bill moves toward full passage and over to the Senate that we might get some perfecting language that would not single out Ukraine for this type of harsh treatment by the people of the United States. In fact, our hope is that this discussion today and the chairman's willingness to allow us to talk about this in giving us some time on the floor will help to give us a meeting of minds so that we can, in fact, perfect the House language and help Ukraine move herself into the company of the free nations of the world. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Washington, DC, July 23, 2001. Ambassador William B. Taylor, Jr., Coordinator of U.S. Assistance to the NIS, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC Dear Ambassador Taylor: We understand that the House Committee on Appropriations report on foreign operations limits Ukraine assistance in 2002 to $125 million, based partly on the completion of major nuclear safety projects. The International Nuclear Safety Program has completed the safety parameter display system project, the simulator project, and the Chernobyl Replacement Heat Plant project. However, additional nuclear safety work is needed in Ukraine. Projects that are not yet complete include: simulator and operator training; completion of in-depth safety assessments; physical security upgrades; nondestructive examination improvements; operational safety improvement's; emergency cooling reliability upgrades; plant computer upgrades; and nuclear fuel qualification. I recently returned from a visit to Ukraine for commissioning of the Chernobyl replacement heat plant and for reviewing State/AID supported projects at the Khmelnytskyy nuclear power plant. I saw impressive progress due to State/ AID assistance at both locations. The Ukraine safety program is at a pivotal stage. On the one hand, clear improvements to safety and operations are evident and documented. However, an enduring safety culture has not taken hold and important projects remain to be completed which Ukraine is currently unable to provide for itself. Until that safety culture is firmly established, cutbacks may endanger the progress made to date, e.g., they may drive Ukraine to seek help from Russia in some areas. We plan to complete nuclear safety improvements at reactors in the countries of the former Soviet Union by 2006. A reduction in funding would prevent current projects from being completed, and reduce the sustainability of the already completed projects. We hope you will support this important work at the same level as last year. We look forward to continuing to work with you. Sincerely, James M. Turner, Assistant Deputy Administrator.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) has been a leader in child labor protection and labor rights, along with the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith). They are a voice over these trade routes for people, including for children, and that trade is more than just material goods. It is amazing how hard it is to carry that message, even in this country, and yet we look at a nation like China, with over 1.250 billion people, and we see that none of the standards that we have written into law in this country exist. Yet we continue to be the chief market, whether it is fireworks or toys or clothing, the chief market in the world for Chinese exports. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this resolution asking for a full accounting and also condemning China for allowing its children to be used in such a heinous way. With imported carpet from India, we require smiling logos in order to guarantee to American consumers that they are buying a product that is not made with child labor. We have no such guarantees with China. I thank the gentleman for what he is doing here. In some places on Earth, life is very cheap; and here in our country it used to be cheap. In fact, it was not until a wonderful woman by the name of Mary Norton, the first Democratic congresswoman to serve here east of the Mississippi River in the 1930s who wrote into our laws the prohibition on child labor in our country. We as a country gained a broader conscience of how we should live as a people and that children have value as human beings beyond whatever they might be able to produce. They have a value beyond being a producer. They have an intrinsic value as a human being. Mr. Speaker, I support the gentleman's fine cause and support the resolution and again compliment the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) and the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) for reminding us of our own heritage as we try to lift another part of the world forward as she struggles to meet her own social and economic needs internal to herself. It should not be done at the cost of any human life to be so disregarded.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, regarding the so-called faith-based initiative, if I were convinced that this initiative posed no threat to separation of church and State, I could support it. And if I were convinced it held no potential for the Government telling us what to believe, I could support it. But I am not convinced. I just want to point to one particular provision in the bill that asks those receiving funds to set up not a separate 501(c)(3) to receive the dollars and be audited, but only a separate account. It specifically states that in the legislation. Religious organizations or any organization that is not for-profit receiving government money should be required to set up a separate 501(c)(3) to give them tax exempt status and to keep the distinction between the religious side of the organization and its social service activities. In my district, the Lutheran Church already provides nursing home care, for example, through Wolf Creek Lutheran Home; but they have a separate 501(c)(3). Jewish Community Services, the same. Islamic Social Services, the same. The establishment of the 501(c)(3) principle in the base legislation is absolutely essential. I cannot support the faith- based initiative as currently constituted. As a freedom lover who happens to be a Roman Catholic, I also know if our faith isn't deep enough, as sacrificing people, we don't need government money to subsidize us. We must give of our substance, not come to rely on a government subsidy. But partnership between government and faith-based groups has its place. If this initiative--or any faith-based initiative--had the proper safeguards, I could give it my support. On page 29 of the bill, any funds received by religious groups under this program shall be placed in a ``separate account,'' not a separately incorporated 501(c)(3) legal entity. This means federal funds will be awarded directly to religious organizations. This simply defies our Bill of Rights and the separation of church and state so essential to the maintenance of our fundamental freedoms. This bill should require religious organizations to establish separate 501(c)(3) organizations and give them a separate legal standing from the religious mission of the faith-based group and a tax- exempt status. Of course most involved in social services already do. In that way, they can take government money but maintain the separate legal structure that is necessary to protect religious freedom from government incursion. Of course, grantees should employ strict prohibitions against discrimination in hiring and the provision of services and abide by all applicable federal, state and local laws prohibiting discrimination. Of course, Mr. Speaker, religious organizations providing social services--augmented by taxpayer dollars--is hardly a new concept. And, we have learned an enormous amount from this rich and worthy experience. Let me give you some examples: The Sisters of Mercy, the Franciscons, the Grey Nuns, the Dominicians and members of other orders minister to the needy in hospitals and hospices and homeless shelters throughout America. But they do so through non-profit organizations that are separate and legally distinct. In my district, the Lutheran Church provides nursing home care and other service through Wolf Creek Lutheran Home. But they have a separate 501(c)(3). Jewish Community Services throughout the nation offer social services, including federally-subsidized independent housing for elderly and handicapped people. But they keep a separate accounting through a 501(c)(3) status. Islamic Social Services Association provides a wide range of social services to the growing Muslim population in North America--through its non-profit arm. Certainly we want to encourage religious organizations to provide social services to our fellow Americans. And certainly we want to do nothing that would discourage such compassionate activity. Priviate philantropy has its place, and we want to encourage our fellow citizens to give of their time and money to help the less fortunate. We know private philanthropy will never be a complete substitute for substantial social services funded by the U.S. Government. Our needs in America are so great, and many of the private groups boats are so small. I believe it is crucial--in order to protect taxpayer dollars and also to protect religious institutions from government interference--to keep not just two separate accounts, but separate and distinct organizations legally incorprated with their mission clearly defined. That is why the establishment of 501(c)(3) organizations is so crucial--not just for the integrity of government grant money but also for the independence of the religious organizations using it. I cannot support the faith-based initiative as currently proposed. Please vote ``no'' on the rule and on the bill, unless amended.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the Rohrabacher- Brown amendment as someone who loves liberty and believes in free trade among free people. Mr. Speaker, I wish to enter into the Record as part of this debate a wonderful article by Lawrence Kaplan in a recent edition of The New Republic where he talks about why trade will not bring democracy to China. He talks about the relationship between profit and freedom and looks at the long history of nation states, talks about foreign trade and the penetration of multinational corporations having no significant effect on the correlation between economic development and democracy. Capitalism does not bring democracy. 100 years ago in Germany and Japan, 30 years ago in countries such as Argentina and Brazil, and today in places like Singapore and Malaysia, capitalist development has buttressed rather than undermined authoritarian regimes. In none of these cautionary examples did the free market do the three things business people say it does: weaken the coercive power of the state, create a democratically minded middle class, or expose the populist to liberal ideas from abroad. It is not doing that in China either. In fact, capitalism in the People's Republic of China, a Communist state, still operates within the confines of an arbitrary legal order and a party-controlled system where the emerging bourgeoisie consist overwhelmingly of state officials, their friends and their business partners. And who is benefiting from all of this? The authoritarian, repressive regimes that are imprisoning Catholic bishops, that are not allowing U.S. citizens of Chinese heritage to go back into that country, and the very same people who took our surveillance aircraft and held our troops all those weeks and now are asking us to pay for the time that they held American citizens on their territory. Mr. Speaker, is something wrong with this picture? Vote in support of the Rohrabacher-Brown resolution. The May 1, 2001, report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom links the deterioration of rights to receipt of normal trade relations. ``China has concluded that trade trumps all.'' Torture of believers increased, the government confiscated and destroyed as many as 3,000 unregistered religious buildings, and has continued to interfere with the selection of religious leaders. Since passage, persecution and execution have increased. [From the New Republic, July 9 and 16, 2001] Why Trade Won't Bring Democracy to China.--Trade Barrier (By Lawrence F. Kaplan) On February 25, business professor and writer Li Shaomin left his home in Hong Kong to visit a friend in the mainland city of Shenzhen. His wife and nine-year-old daughter haven't heard from him since. That's because, for four months now, Li has been rotting in a Chinese prison, where he stands accused of spying for Taiwan. Never mind that Li is an American citizen. And never mind that the theme of his writings, published in subversive organs like the U.S.-China Business Council's China Business Review, is optimism about China's investment climate. Li, it turns out, proved too optimistic for his own good. In addition to rewarding foreign investors, he believed that China's economic growth would create, as he put it in a 1999 article, a ``rule-based governance system.'' But, as Li has since discovered, China's leaders have other plans. Will American officials ever make the same discovery? Like Li, Washington's most influential commentators, politicians, and China hands claim we can rely on the market to transform China. According to this new orthodoxy, what counts is not China's political choices but rather its economic orientation, particularly its degree of integration into the global economy. The cliche has had a narcotic effect on President Bush, who, nearly every time he's asked about China, suggests that trade will accomplish the broader aims of American policy. Bush hasn't revived Bill Clinton's recklessly ahistorical claim that the United States can build ``peace through trade, investment, and commerce.'' He has, however, latched onto another of his predecessor's high-minded rationales for selling Big Macs to Beijing--namely, that commerce will act, in Clinton's words, as ``a force for change in China, exposing China to our ideas and our ideals.'' In this telling, capitalism isn't merely a necessary precondition for democracy in China. It's a sufficient one. Or, as Bush puts it, ``Trade freely with China, and time is on our side.'' As Congress prepares to vote for the last time on renewing China's normal trading relations (Beijing's impending entry into the World Trade Organization will put an end to the annual ritual), you'll be hearing the argument a lot: To promote democracy, the United States needn't apply more political pressure to China. All we need to do is more business there. Alas, the historical record isn't quite so clear. Tolerant cultural traditions, British colonization, a strong civil society, international pressure, American military occupation and political influence--these are just a few of the explanations scholars credit as the source of freedom in various parts of the world. And even when economic conditions do hasten the arrival of democracy, it's not always obvious which ones. After all, if economic factors can be said to account for democracy's most dramatic advance--the implosion of the Soviet Union and its Communist satellites--surely the most important factor was economic collapse. And if not every democracy emerged through capitalism, it's also true that not every capitalist economy has produced a democratic government. One hundred years ago in Germany and Japan, 30 years ago in countries such as Argentina and Brazil, and today in places like Singapore and Malaysis, capitalist development has buttressed, rather than undermined, authoritarian regimes. And these models are beginning to look a lot more like contemporary China than the more optimistic cases cited by Beijing's American enthusiasts. In none of these cautionary examples did the free market do the three things businessmen say it always does: weaken the coercive power of the state, create a democratically minded middle class, or expose the populace to liberal ideals from abroad. It isn't doing them in China either. One of the most important ways capitalism should foster democracy is by diminishing the power of the state. Or, as Milton Friedman put it in Capitalism and Freedom, ``[t]he kind of economic organization that provides economic freedom directly, namely, competitive capitalism, also promotes political freedom because it separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other.'' In his own way, Bush makes the same point about China: ``I believe a whiff of freedom in the marketplace will cause there to be more demand for democracy.'' But the theory isn't working so well in the People's Republic, whose brand of capitalism isn't quite what Adam Smith had in mind. China's market system derives, instead, from a pathological model of economic development. Reeling from the economic devastation of the Mao era, Deng Xiaoping and his fellow party leaders in the late 1970s set China on a course toward ``market socialism.'' The idea was essentially the same one that guided the New Economic Policy in Soviet Russia 50 years before: a mix of economic liberalization and political repression, which would boost China's economy without weakening the Communist Party. And so, while leaving the party in control of China's political life, Deng junked many of the economy's command mechanisms--granting state-owned enterprises more autonomy, opening the country to limited investment, and replacing aging commissars with a semiprofessional bureaucracy. The recipe worked well: China has racked up astronomical growth rates ever since. And democracy seems as far away as ever. The reason isn't simply that government repression keeps economic freedom from yielding political freedom. It's that China's brand of economic reform contains ingredients that hinder--and were consciously devised to hinder--political reform. The most obvious is that, just as the state retains a monopoly on the levers of coercion, it also remains perched atop the commanding heights of China's economy. True, China has been gradually divesting itself of state-owned enterprises, and the process should quicken once China enters the World Trade Organization (WTO). But Beijing's leaders have said they will continue to support China's most competitive and critical industries. Taking a cue from authoritarian South Korea during the 1980s, China's leaders have proposed sponsoring industrial conglomerates in crucial sectors of the economy, transformed industrial ministries into ``general associations,'' merged failing state-owned firms with more successful ones, and established organizations to, as Chinese economist Xue Muqiao has put it, ``serve as a bridge between the state and the enterprises.'' But that's where any similarities with South Korea end. Unlike South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan, which evolved from authoritarianism (and did so, significantly, as de facto protectorates of the United States), China even today has no effective system of property rights--a signature trait that distinguishes its Communist regime from traditional authoritarian ones. The absence of a private- property regime in China means that, at the end of the day, the state controls nearly the entire edifice on which China's ``free'' markets rest. It also means that China's brand of capitalism blurs, rather than clarifies, the distinction between the public and the private realms on which political liberty depends. Nor is that the only requisite for democracy that China's markets lack. As the imprisonment of Li Shaomin and thousands of other political prisoners attests, capitalism in the PRC still operates within the confines of an arbitrary legal order and a party-controlled court system. ``China is still a lawless environment,'' says University of Pennsylvania sinologist Arthur Waldron. ``Whether in terms of individual rights or the rights of entrepreneurs, interests are protected not by institutions but by special relationships with those in power. Before he was arrested, Li diagnosed this condition as ``relation-based capitalism.'' What he meant was that relations with government officials, not property rights or the rule of law, underpin the Chinese market. Because the political foundations of China's economy remain the exclusive property of the state, China's entrepreneurs operate with a few degrees of separation, but without true autonomy, from the government. Hence, capital, licenses, and contracts flow to those with connections to officials and to their friends and relatives, who, in turn, maintain close relations with, and remain beholden to, the regime. Their firms operate, in the words of Hong Kong-based China specialist David Zweig, ``[l]ike barnacles on ships, . . . draw[ing] their sustenance from their parastatal relationships with the ministries from which they were spun off.'' Helping to keep all these distortions in place are Deng's functionaries, who now constitute the world's largest bureaucracy and still control the everyday levers of the Chinese economy. Today, they function as the engines and administrators of a market increasingly driven by skimming off the top. The foreign-trade sector offers particularly easy pickings. In 1995, for instance, the World Bank found that while China's nominal tariff rate was 32 percent, only a 6 percent rate was officially collected. Presumably, much of the difference went into the pockets of Chinese officials. And even though WTO accession will reduce opportunities for rent seeking from inflated trade tariffs, China's bureaucracy will be able to continue siphoning funds from distorted interest rates, the foreign exchange markets, and virtually any business transaction that requires its involvement--which is to say, nearly every business transaction. Nor is the problem merely the corrupting influence these bureaucrats wield over China's markets. The larger problem is that, whereas in the United States the private sector wields enormous influence over the political class, in China the reverse is true. For precisely this reason, Washington's celebrations of the democratic potential of the new Chinese ``middle class'' may be premature ``Entrepreneurs, once condemned as `counter revolutionaries,' are now the instruments of reform. . . . [T]his middle class will eventually demand broad acceptance of democratic values,'' House Majority Whip Tom DeLay insisted last year. Reading from the same script, President Bush declares that trade with China will ``help an entrepreneurial class and a freedom-loving class grow and burgeon and become viable,'' Neither DeLay nor Bush, needless to say, invented the theory that middle classes have nothing to lose but their chains. In the first serious attempt to subject the ties between economic and political liberalization to empirical scrutiny, Seymour Martin Lipset published a study in 1959, Some Social Requisites of Democracy, which found that economic development led to, among other things, higher levels of income equality, education and, most important, the emergence of a socially moderate middle class--all factors that promote democratization. More recent studies have found that rising incomes also tend to correlate with participation in voluntary organizations and other institutions of ``civil society,'' which further weakens the coercive power of the state. But middle classes aren't always socially moderate, and they don't always oppose the state. Under certain conditions late modernizing economies breed middle classes that actively oppose political change. In each of these cases, a strong state, not the market, dictates the terms of economic modernization. And, in each case, an emerging entrepreneurial class too weak to govern on its own allies itself-- economically and, more importantly, politically--with a reactionary government and against threats to the established order. In his now-classic study Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, sociologist Barrington Moore famously revealed that, in these ``revolutions from above,'' capitalist transformations weakened rather than strengthened liberalism. In the case of nineteenth-century Japan Moore writes that the aim of those in power was to ``preserve as much as possible of the advantages the rule class had enjoyed under the ancient regime, cutting away just enough . . . to preserve the state, since they would otherwise lose everything.'' Japan's rulers could do this only with the aid of a commercial class, which eagerly complied, exchanging its political aspirations for profits. On this point, at least Marx and Engels had things right. Describing the 1848 revolution in Germany, they traced its failure partly to the fact that, at the end of the day, entrepreneurs threw their support not behind the liberal insurrectionists but behind the state that was the source of their enrichment. Much the same process is unfolding in China, where economic and political power remain deeply entwined. In fact, China's case is even more worrisome than its historical antecedents. In Germany and Japan, after all, an entrepreneurial class predated the state's modernization efforts, enjoyed property rights, and, as a result, possessed at least some autonomous identity. In China, which killed off its commercial class in the 1950s, the state had to create a new one. Thus China's emerging bourgeoisie consists overwhelmingly of state officials, their friends and business partners, and--to the extent they climbed the economic ladder independently-- entrepreneurs who rely on connections with the official bureaucracy for their livelihoods. ``It is improbable, to say the least,'' historian Maurice Meisner writes in The Deng Xiaoping Era: An Inquiry Into the Fate of Chinese Socialism, ``that a bourgeoisie whose economic fortunes are so dependent on the political fortunes of the Communist state is likely to mount a serious challenge to the authority of the state . . . the members of China's new bourgeoisie emerge more as agents of the state than as potential antagonists.'' A steady diet of chauvinistic nationalism hasn't helped. In the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre, party leaders launched a ``patriotism'' campaign, a sentiment they defined as ``loving the state'' as well as the Communist Party. As the Shanghai-based scholar and party apologist Xiao Gongqin explains, ``[T]he overriding issue of China's modernization is how, under new historical circumstances, to find new resources of legitimacy so as to achieve social and moral integration in the process of social transition.'' To Xiao and others like him, the answer is nationalism. And, as anyone who turned on a television during the recent EP-3 episode may have noticed, it's working. Indeed, independent opinion polling conducted by the Public Opinion Research Institute of People's University (in association with Western researchers, who published their findings in 1997), indicate greater public support for China's Communist regime than similar surveys found a decade earlier. And, contrary to what development theory might suggest, the new nationalism appears to have infected the middle class--particularly university students and intellectuals--more acutely than it has China's workers and farmers. ``The [closeness of the] relationship between the party and intellectuals is as bad as in the Cultural Revolution,'' a former official in the party's propaganda arm noted in 1997. Even many of China's exiled dissidents have fallen under its spell. In addition to being independent of the regime and predisposed toward liberal values, China's commercial class is supposed to be busily erecting an independent civil society. But, just as China's Communist system restricts private property, it prohibits independent churches and labor unions, truly autonomous social organizations, and any other civic institutions that might plausibly compete with the state. Indeed, China's leaders seem to have read Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone and the rest of the civil-society canon--and decided to do exactly the reverse of what the literature recommends. ``Peasants will establish peasants' organizations as well, then China will become another Poland,'' senior party official Yao Yilin reportedly warned during the Tiananmen protests. To make sure this fear never comes true, China's leaders have dealt with any hint of an emerging civil society in one of two ways: repression or co- optation. Some forbidden organizations--such as Falun Gong, the Roman Catholic church, independent labor unions, and organizations associated with the 1989 democracy movement-- find their members routinely imprisoned and tortured. Others, such as the Association of Urban Unemployed, are merely monitored and harassed. And as for the officially sanctioned organizations that impress so many Western observers, they mostly constitute a Potemkin facade. ``[A]lmost every ostensibly independent organization--institutes, foundations, consultancies--is linked into the party-state network,'' says Columbia University sinologist Andrew Nathan. Hence, Beijings Ministry of Civil Affairs monitors even sports clubs and business associations and requires all such groups to register with the government. The same kind of misreading often characterizes celebrations of rural China's ``village committees,'' whose democratic potential the engagement lobby routinely touts. Business Week discerns in them evidence ``of the grassroots democracy beginning to take hold in China.'' But that's not quite right. China's leaders restrict committee elections to the countryside and, even there, to the most local level. Nor, having been legally sanctioned 14 years ago, do they constitute a recent development. More important, China's leaders don't see the elections the way their American interpreters do. In proposing them, says Jude Howell, co-author of In Search of Civil Society: Market Reform and Social Change in Contemporary China, party elites argued that elected village leaders ``would find it easier to implement central government policy and in particular persuade villagers to deliver grain and taxes and abide by family planning policy. Village self-governance would thus foster social stability and order and facilitate the implementation of national policy. By recruiting newly elected popular and entrepreneurial village leaders, the Party could strengthen its roots at the grassroots level and bolster its legitimacy in the eyes of rural residents.'' Which is exactly what it has done. In races for village committee chairs, the Ministry of Civil Affairs allows only two candidates to stand for office, and until recently many townships nominated only one. Local party secretaries and officials often push their favored choice, and most committee members are also members of the Communist Party, to which they remain accountable. Should a nonparty member be elected, he must accept the guidance of the Communist Party, which, in any case, immediately sets about recruiting him. As for those rare committee members who challenge local party officials, their success may be gleaned from the fate of elected committee members from a village in Shandong province who in 1999 accused a local party secretary of corruption. All were promptly arrested. Still, the very fact that China's leaders feel compelled to bolster their legitimacy in the countryside is telling. Last month Beijing took the unusual step of releasing a report, ``Studies of Contradictions Within the People Under New Conditions'' which detailed a catalogue of ``collective protests and group incidents.'' What the report makes clear is that Beijing's leaders think China's growing pool of overtaxed farmers and unemployed workers, more than its newly moneyed elite could become a threat to the regime. Fortunately for the authorities, with no political opposition to channel labor unrest into a coherent movement, protests tend to be narrow in purpose and poorly coordinated. And the wheels of repression have already begun to grind, with Beijing launching ``strike hard'' campaign to quell any trouble. In any case, what these formerly state-employed workers have been demonstrating for is not less communism, but more--a return to the salad days of central planning. Which brings us to the final tenent of the engagement lobby: that commerce exposes China to the ideals of its trading partners, particularly those of the United States. As House Majority Leader Dick Armey has put it, ``Freedom to trade is the great subversive and liberating force in human history.'' Or, as Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger burbled in 1997, ``The fellow travelers of the new global economy--computers and modems, faxes and photocopiers, increased contacts and binding contacts--carry with them the seeds of change.'' But the Chinese disagree. To begin with, they don't import much. And economists predict that won't change dramatically once they've joined the WTO, since China's leaders have committed themselves to the kind of export-oriented, merchantilist growth model that South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan pursued in decades past. Last year, for instance, China exported $100 billion in goods and services to the United States and only imported $16 billion worth. Hence, for every six modems it sent to America, Sandy Berger sent back only one. To be sure, that one modem may carry with it seeds of change. Bush, for instance, says, ``If the Internet were to take hold in China, freedom's genie will be out of the bottle.'' Alas, through links to Chinese service providers, Beijing tightly controls all access to the Web. and Western investors in China's information networks have eagerly pitched in. One Chinese Internet portal, bankrolled by Intel and Goldman Sachs, greets users with a helpful reminder to avoid ``topics which damage the reputation of the state'' and warns that it will be ``obliged to report you to the Public Security Bureau'' if you don't. But Goldman Sachs needn't worry. If anything, China's recent experience lends credence to the pessimistic theories of an earlier era, which held that nations shape the uses of technology rather than the other way around. Thus Beijing blocks access to damaging ``topics'' and to Western news sources like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and this magazine. It also monitors e-mail exchanges and has arrested Internet users who have tried to elude state restrictions. And, in ways that would make Joseph Goebbels blush, the government uses websites--and, of course, television, newspapers, and radio-- to dominate the circuits with its own propaganda. ``Much as many people might like to think the Internet is part of a bottom-up explosion of individualism in China, it is not,'' writes Peter Lovelock, a Hong Kong-based academic who studies the Internet's effect in the PRC. Instead, it provides ``an extraordinarily beneficial tool in the administration of China.'' And that tool was on vivid display during the EP-3 crisis, when China blocked access to Western news sources and censored chat rooms. American politicians describe foreign direct investment, too, as a potent agent of democratization. But, in this case, they're not even paraphrasing political science literature they haven't read, because the literature makes no such claim. In fact, a 1983 study by the University of North Carolina's Kenneth Bollen found that levels of foreign trade concentration and penetration by multinational corporations have no significant effect on the correlation between economic development and democracy. In China's case, it's easy to understand why. Beijing requires foreign investors in may industries to cooperate in joint ventures with Chinese partners, most of whom enjoy close ties to the government. These firms remain insulated mainly in three coastal enclaves and in ``special economic zones'' set apart from the larger Chinese economy. Moreover, they export a majority of their goods--which is to say, they send most of their ``seeds of change'' abroad. At the same time, their capital largely substitutes for domestic capital (foreign-owned firms generate half of all Chinese exports), providing a much- needed blood transfusion for China's rulers, who use it to accumulate reserves of hard currency, meet social welfare obligation, and otherwise strengthen their rule. Nor is it clear that U.S. companies even want China to change. If anything, growing levels of U.S. investment have created an American interest in maintaining China's status quo. Hence, far from criticizing China's rulers, Western captains of industry routinely parade through Beijing singing the praises of the Communist regime (and often inveighing against its detractors), while they admonish America's leaders to take no action that might upset the exquisite sensibilities of China's politburo Business first, democracy later. But ultimately the best measure of whether economic ties to the West have contributed to democratization may be gleaned from China's human rights record. Colin Powell insists, ``Trade with China is not only good economic policy; it is good human rights policy.'' Yet, rather than improve that record, the rapid expansion of China's trade ties to the outside world over the past decade has coincided with a worsening of political repression at home. Beijing launched its latest crackdown on dissent in 1999, and it continues to this day. The government has tortured, ``reeducated through labor,'' and otherwise persecuted thousands of people for times no greater than practicing breathing exercises, peacefully championing reforms, and exercising freedom of expression, association, or worship. It has arrested Chinese- American scholars like Li Shaominn on trumped-up charges, closed down newspapers, and intimidated and threatened dissidents. Nor is it true that linking trade and human rights will necessarily prove counterproductive. When Congress approved trade sanctions against Beijing in the aftermath of Tiananmen, China's leaders responded by releasing more than 800 political prisoner, lifting martial law in Beijing, entering into talks with the United States, and even debating among themselves the proper role of human rights. As soon as American pressure eased, so did China's reciprocal gestures. Turning a blind eye to Beijing's depredations may make economic sense. But to pretend we can democratize China by means of economics is, finally, a self-serving conceit. Democracy is a political choice, an act of will. Someone, not something, must create it. Often that someone is a single leader--a Mikhail Gorbachev, a King Juna Carlos, or a Vaclav Havel. But such a man won't be found in China's current leadership. Other times, the pressure for democracy comes from a political opposition--the African National Congress in South Africa, Solidarity in Poland, or the marchers in Tiananmen Square. But there are no more marchers in Tiananmen Square. Pressure for democratization, however, can also come from abroad. And usually it comes from the United States or from nowhere at all. During the 1980s America applied diplomatic and economic pressure to repressive regimes from Poland to South Africa; intervened to prevent military coups in the Philippines, Peru, El Salvador, Honduras, and Bolivia; and loudly enshrined human rights and democracy in official policy. The United States played a pivotal and direct role in democratizing even countries like South Korea and Taiwan, which many China-engagers now tout as evidence that the market alone creates political freedom. Appropriately enough, the decade closed with democracy activists erecting a facsimile of the Statue of Liberty in Tiananmen Square. The commercialist view of China, by contrast, rests on no historical foundation; it is a libertarian fantasy. ``The linkage between development and rights is too loose, the threshold too high, the time frame too long, and the results too uncertain to make economic engagement a substitute for direct policy intervention,'' writes Columbia's Nathan. Yet make it a substitute is precisely what the United States has done. And, far from creating democracy, this subordination of political principle has created the justified impression of American hypocrisy and, worse, given U.S. policymakers an excuse to do nothing. Maybe the claim that we can bring liberty to China by chasing its markets will prove valid in the long run. But exactly how long is the long run? A political scientist at Stanford University says it ends in 2015, when, he predicts, China will be transformed into a democracy. Others say China will democratize before that. Still others say it may take a half-century or more. The answer matters. After all, while capitalist Germany and Japan eventually became democracies, it wasn't capitalism that democratized them, and it certainly wasn't worth the wait. In China's case, too, no on really knows what might happen as we wait for politics to catch up with economies. With the exception, perhaps, of Li Shaomin, who tested the link between economic and political liberalization in China for himself. He's still in jail.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize a significant milestone for a community in my district. Pemberville, Ohio celebrates its 125th anniversary this year. The town recently celebrated the 125th anniversary of its incorporation, which took place on June 8, 1876. The fertile farmland region in Wood County, Ohio was home to pioneering settlers for three generations prior to the establishment of Pemberville--first known as the forks because it was near a fork in the river--in 1854. Well before Pemberville became a town, William Henry Harrison made his camp at the site--which was strategically situated on the Portage River--during the War of 1812. Later, many families found it desirable and by the time it was incorporated in 1876, the town grew from a crossroads for fur traders and a few adventurous farmers into a viable community. Upon incorporation, it became known as Pemberville, named for one of its founders, James Pember. The town further prospered when railroad lines were completed in 1875 and oil was discovered in 1881. In fact, only a year after being formally incorporated, Pemberville boasted a population of 500. Those earliest citizens were united in their effort to establish Pemberville as a regional hub, and its prime location on the river, along with the development of both roads and rail, helped the growth. Pemberville became home to many churches and businesses and provided a well-developed school system. Today it remains a vibrant community, rich in tradition, with a small-town, folksy feel. It is a community looking forward while proud of its past. It moves forward through the seasons, adjusting to fit the times, but never losing the essence of the best of small town America: neighborliness, friendliness, and a timeless quality. Oliver Wendell Holmes said ``Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.'' Pemberville is a town that illustrates this sentiment: Though many of its sons and daughters have traveled far afield, often settling elsewhere, still that inexorable feeling of community and home brings them back time and again, whether it is in fact or in mind. I know that they, along with the citizens who assembled at this year's sesquicentennial, are proud of Pemberville and proud of its journey through the past to the present. I am pleased to join those who gather at this 125th anniversary celebration to celebrate that past even as we see a vision of Pemberville's future.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to recognize the 100th anniversary of the East Toledo Family Center in Toledo, Ohio. Begun by a cadre of East Toledoans who felt great pride about their neighborhood and wanted to further enhance opportunities for its residents, the East Toledo Family Center was born in 1901. It has established itself as a stalwart beacon in a community which saw continued and great change in its century of existence. Evolving with the neighborhood and its changing needs, the center has grown into a full service neighborhood center with 40,000 square feet of space providing educational, recreational, and social programs including preschool, school age childcare, youth enrichment, programs for teens to learn about themselves and their environment, human services case management on site, a family health clinic offering family and maternal health care, and a police substation. It also coordinates with community organizations offering special programs on site. Amazingly, the East Toledo Family Center serves more than 10,000 people each year. Its longtime former director Warren Densmore, who led the center through unprecedented growth for 38 years, encapsulated the feeling and vision of the East Toledo Family Center: ``We want to create a feeling of neighborliness by helping individuals and groups to be interested in one another and to help each other try to better the conditions around themselves physically, culturally, socially, and morally. We try to develop our own leadership, so that when a community problem or need arises we can go to work on it, individually and as groups.'' It is a philosophy which is a guiding principle yet today. The East Toledo Family Center is governed by the community, of the community, and for the community. Therein lies both its strength and its success. The East Toledo neighborhood is center stage in the planning and implementing of all of the center's opportunities. Its mission is to ``provide quality programs and services to enhance the lives of individuals and families by meeting the emerging needs of our community. We will accomplish this by assisting seniors in maintaining independent lifestyles; preparing young people to do well in school, developing and fostering good character, and helping them become productive members of society; building strong family units within the community; coordinating services and cooperating with other agencies to improve the quality of life in the community.'' Anyone who has visited the East Toledo Family Center can attest to how well it lives its mission. It is truly a jewel in our city's crown.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise to commemorate the life of a Toledoan and American of note. Ina Marie Lee. Miss Lee passed away at 108 years of age. Miss Lee was a nurse and a veteran of World War I. She was considered the oldest living veteran in Northwest Ohio, and was one of the oldest in our nation. She served as a nurse during the war, stationed with the Army in Mobile, Alabama and Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Upon her discharge at the War's end, she worked as a private nurse for several of Toledo's prominent families. She did not retire from nursing until the age of 85, after a 55 year career. Ina Marie Lee was born in the tiny town of Jerry City in Wood County, Ohio. The daughter of a poultry farmer, Ina dreamed of being a nurse. After overcoming tuberculosis as a child, she realized that goal and was one of the first graduates of the former Toledo Hospital School of Nursing. Graduates of the school still meet, and Ina was a revered and popular member. She was ``a wonderful role model for other nurses,'' according to her longtime friend and nurse Mary Lou Leonard. Believed to be a descendant of General Robert E. Lee. Ina joined the Army on June 10, 1918. As a distinguished veteran, she was a member of the American Legion Argonne Post 545. She was also a member of the Toledo Chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star, the Toledo Hospital Alumni Association, the Idlewood Rebekah Lodge No. 565 in Jerry City, and the Westgate Chapel in Toledo. She was several times the Grand Marshall in Toledo parades and was featured on NBC's Today Show on two occasions. It was my personal honor to join Ina at a recent nurses reunion in Toledo where we unveiled a statue to honor nurses and their contributions to our community. These few words on the Congressional Record cannot do justice to this most remarkable of women and her life well-lived. Perhaps the words of her friend. Ms. Leonard, say it best. Ina Marie Lee ``was a fun-loving, happy, caring person. She loved live life, she loved people, and she loved helping people.'' No greater tribute can there be than to have been recognized and appreciated as a friend, confidante, and dedicated nurse. We extend to her sister, Genetta Grau, and her niece and nephews our heartfelt condolence. At the same time, we celebrate a truly incredible life and honor her memory by trying to live in its example.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in both celebration and sadness to commemorate the retirement of Margaret L. Hunt, senior citizens advocate extraordinaire, from Toledo, Ohio. A pioneer in the Toledo area senior citizens'movement, Margaret takes with her 45 years of experience in senior services. Born in Kentucky, Margaret has been a Toledoan since the age of two. She has lived in South Toledo, graduating from Libbey High School and raising a family. She and her husband, Daniel, to whom she was married for more than fifty years, have four children: Rebecca, Nancy, Margaret, and Daniel. Margaret is also grandmother to eleven grandchildren and seventeen great-grandchildren. Margaret got her start in Toledo area services while a young mother. Even while she was employed by a local bakery, she helped to establish Teen Town in Highland Park, working with the City of Toledo's Parks & Recreation Department. During that time it became apparent that although Toledo actively developed programs for young people, the same could not be said for older Toledoans. Margaret was charged with the task of developing and implementing such programming. She started by promoting the formation of neighborhood social clubs that met regularly in park shelter houses. Prior to the days of the Older Americans Act and thus with no kind of senior nutrition program available, Margaret took the creative approach of encouraging weekly potluck luncheons. While enjoying each other's camaraderie and a hot meal, the seniors participated in games and crafts and planned outings. Soon this very successful program was expanded into local senior housing complexes. These groups were the precursor of the modern senior centers. In fact, Margaret was instrumental in the establishment of Toledo's first senior center, Senior Centers Inc. In 1981, when the idea of senior centers was still in its infancy and there were just a few beginning locally, Margaret took on the task of growing a center in native South Toledo. The South Toledo Senior Center was born in August of that year, with Margaret at the helm as Executive Director. In the twenty years that followed, Margaret fostered unprecedented growth in the center, which is now in a large and airy freestanding building and continuing to grow. The South Toledo Senior Center serves hundreds of seniors a nutritious lunch every day, and is the only one in the area serving lunch on Sunday as well. Its programs are varied and all- inclusive: if it's something seniors enjoy doing it's being done at the South Toledo Senior Center. I cannot imagine it without her, nor not being greeted with her cheerful smile upon my visits there. Hayes's belief that ``Old age is not something to which I have arrived kicking and screaming. It is something I have achieved,'' Margaret Hunt has arrived at this place in her life with grace. While we wish her a wonderful life of retirement, we yet look to her for continued quiet greatness.