Jim McDermott

Mr. McDERMOTT

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

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I think in closing it's important to point out that children are children, and while we may talk about some Haitian children who want to be adopted in the United States, we have an immigration policy in this country that is sending children back from my district to their country because we have got an immigration system that does not work. I actually think we ought to think a little bit more about people in this country and how we get the immigration policy rather than trying to say, well, we've got to worry about these people somewhere else. Part of this election was fought over the issue of immigration policy, and this country needs a fair way for people to proceed toward an ability to become a citizen. Now, you want these Haitian kids to come in here. What about their citizenship? I mean, they just get here; they're going to sit here forever and never get citizenship? I have a boy in my district who was 6 years old when he came here, and no one told him he had to go down and fill out some papers when he got to be 18 and choose his citizenship. So now we're trying to send him back to a country that he never lived in since he was 6 when he came, and so there are real problems with children in this country, and I think we can deal with this one and we'll deal with the other one. The other body has kept their foot on these issues over and over and over again, and I think we ought to deal with this issue and then we'll deal with the other issue. We'll see whether they're really serious about all children. I urge my friends and the Members of the Congress to vote for this resolution.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H. Res. 1648.

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

Mr. McDERMOTT. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 1648) supporting the goals and ideals of National Adoption Day and National Adoption Month by promoting national awareness of adoption and the children in foster care awaiting families, celebrating children and families involved in adoption, recognizing current programs and efforts designed to promote adoption, and encouraging people in the United States to seek improved safety, permanency, and well-being for all children.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H. Res. 1648, which supports the goals and the ideals of National Adoption Day and National Adoption Month. Children deserve nothing less than to grow up in a safe, stable, and loving home. While the vast majority of children are raised in such settings, there are a number of vulnerable children who are victims of child maltreatment or may have lost their parents in a tragedy and are now in search of a new home to call their own. Today, there are more than 423,000 children in the foster care system in this country. Many of these children will be reunited with their biological parents when it is safe for them to do so, while others will find a permanent home with a grandparent or other relative. Meanwhile, more than 114,000 children will be unable to safely return to their biological parents and need to find a new home. Over the last several years, Congress has worked in a bipartisan manner to provide services that promote foster care outcomes for children in foster care that are positive and to facilitate the timely placement of a child into an adoptive home. In 2008, Congress passed the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, which provided an array of new services to strengthen the foster care system. The legislation expanded the number of permanency options made available to children who are in search of new homes by allowing States to use Federal assistance to relatives to agree to become the legal guardians of foster children. The bill also extended and improved the Adoption Incentives Program and required States to inform prospective adoptive parents of their potential eligibility for the Federal Adoption Tax Credit. So far, we have seen positive results in the area of adoption. Last year, 57,000 children were adopted out of foster care. That's a 3.5 percent increase over the previous year. The increase in the number of children adopted out of care reflects a trend that occurred over the last several years. Since 2006, the number of children adopted out of foster care has increased by 10.5 percent. Remarkably, this increase has occurred as the number of children who are served by the foster care system has steadily declined by 14 percent over the same period. Earlier this year, as part of the landmark legislation that provided for health care coverage to all Americans, additional incentives and initiatives were taken to promote adoption. The Affordable Care Act included legislation that repealed the sunset date on the adoption tax credit for 1 year--from 2010 to 2011--and increased the maximum amount under the credit. The legislation also made the Adoption Tax Credit refundable for tax years 2010 and 2011. While Congress has had great success in promoting the adoption of children out of foster care, there are still far too many children in foster care who are waiting far too long to find a permanent home. We need to continue to work together to ensure that States have the resources they need to swiftly move children into adoptive homes when it is appropriate to do so. I look forward to continuing to work with all my colleagues to achieve that goal. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting H. Res. 1648. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on S. 3774.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of S. 3774, which extends the deadline for the use of supplemental social service block grant funds, also known as SSBG, that were made available following the disasters that occurred in 2008. This extension would provide a 1-year extension for the use of supplemental SSBG grant funds that were appropriated in the Disaster Assistance and Continuing Appropriation Act of 2009 in response to the natural disasters that occurred in 2008. The legislation provided $600 million for disaster recovery for States affected by hurricane, floods, and other natural disasters that occurred in the year 2008. Over 60 percent of the money that was appropriated has been spent, leaving a great deal of funding available to address the ongoing needs in States that have been adversely affected by natural disasters. While a number of States have been successful in quickly drawing down the funds that were available to support disaster cleanup, many others need additional time to utilize the resources effectively. The legislation follows a precedent that was established by the Congress in recent years when we acted to extend the availability of supplemental SSBG funds that were appropriated for the recovery efforts following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. These funds were extended for a 2-year period to allow additional time for affected States to make use of these resources. Additionally, the legislation is PAYGO compliant and will not add one dime to the Federal deficit. The funding has already been allocated. The bill simply makes the appropriation available for an additional year. The legislation, which passed the Senate in late September by unanimous consent, is very similar to a bill that was introduced in the House by Representative Pete Olson that has bipartisan support. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting S. 3774. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (S. 3774) to extend the deadline for Social Services Block Grant expenditures of supplemental funds appropriated following disasters occurring in 2008.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, there is an old Chinese proverb that says, ``A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,'' and I rise today in support of this legislation which is before us to take the first step toward addressing the egregious imbalance between China's currency and our own. For too long, the Chinese have not been playing fairly in the international trade arena, and this Congress has to send a clear message that China must become a responsible player in a multilateral trade. The Chinese export-driven strategy is smart, but subsidizing by suppressing their currency is an unfair way to do it. This legislation is a good step, but it's not my preferred step. I would prefer the United States, together with our partners, bring a multilateral WTO case against China on the currency issue. Absent that, this commonsense legislation helps the Commerce Department do a fair job of making the multilateral mechanisms more available to U.S. businesses. This legislation sends a clear signal that the American people respect international agreements and expect fairness. After years of an unlevel playing field, it is time to act, and this legislation is the right kind of measured first step we must take now. I urge the passage of this bill.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the Seattle Storm for winning the 2010 WNBA National Championship Title, their second national championship in six years. After a record- breaking season, the Storm swept the Atlanta Dream in three close games during the WNBA finals, winning on Thursday night in Atlanta, 87-to-84. Their victory is not only a tribute to the hard work of the players but also the determination and gumption of our team's female owners, who bought the team in 2008, refusing to make the move to Oklahoma City with the Sonics. I applaud our players, owners, and fans for allowing our team to grow and thrive in Seattle. While none of the athletes on the Storm were born when Patsy Mink wrote and worked to pass Title IX, in 1972, all have reaped the benefits of her efforts. Title IX gave women and girls greater opportunities to participate in high school and collegiate sports, which the talented and dedicated women of the WNBA have parlayed into professional careers. I am so very proud of our team and their accomplishments. As we all learned in grade school, it's not just if you win, but how you win. Too many of our professional athletes have forgotten this lesson, but not the women of the Storm. As ESPN's Mechelle Voepel put it: ``The Storm weren't a team that was dominant in the sense that it throttled all its opponents. To the contrary, the Storm made rallying an art form this summer. But the Storm were a team that always seemed to figure out how to get the job done whenever it really mattered.'' Congratulations.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. In a room of 20-by-20, you had seven people living with no running water and with no hot water for 4 months, and they were trying to deal with babies and diapers and with all the things that go on in ordinary living. Then the people who have put you there turn around and say, We will accept you into our Army to go and fight for us in Italy. Now, you can imagine among these Japanese families the discussions that went on about whether or not they should participate in this. David's grandfather came from Japan and started the Japanese Baptist Church in Seattle. He told his sons, We are Americans, and we will support our country no matter what. This was long before the war, so he was dead when that happened. They were then taken off to the camps. The mother--her name was Misa Sukura--had four sons. She said to her boys, You must go. The camp people were mad at her. How can you send all of your sons to this? She said, They are Americans. We are proud and we will serve. Now, you have to understand what it took then to be thrown into the toughest part of the war. They didn't become the most decorated unit in United States Army history because they were sent out to some easy deal. They were sent into the toughest fighting in Italy. They are the ones who went in when they couldn't find the lost battalion. They said, Send in the 442nd--and they found them. A simple medal hardly speaks to what they did for us, but what they did beyond that is to say, if you're in America and if you're an American, we treat you all the same. We are at a time now when their example needs to be carefully looked at because panic among the American people says suddenly, Oh, those people are to be feared. We can't stand those people. They're not like us. What happened in 1941 can happen again if we do not honor those Nisei vets and their families who stayed at home. They lived through without fathers, without mothers, with all the people who got killed, and everything else. Several years ago, it was my honor to name the courthouse in Seattle, Washington, after a young man named William Nakamura. He went at 19 years old, out of Garfield High School, and won the Medal of Honor. The family never got the medal because the medals were buried. Nobody wanted to demonstrate and distribute them until President Clinton went back and reviewed the records and found these Medals of Honor. They were then given to the families of the fallen. We have much to be proud of in this country, but the Nisei vets have more than most of us because they overcame the racism and the attitudes that put them in concentration camps, and they came out and stood tall. For that reason, I am very proud to be here today. I commend Mr. Schiff and the other members of the committee who brought this gold medal. It's about time.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I did not come over to the floor to speak on this issue; I came for the next issue. But I am an honorary Nisei vet. I have been involved with the Nisei community and with the Nisei vets of the 442nd in Seattle for a number of years. Two weeks ago, we dedicated a wall at the Nisei vet hall on which the names appear of all the people from Seattle. It was an extremely moving event to have not only some of the old vets but to also have the young sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters get up and talk about their relatives and what they did. I found out about the Nisei when I was in college. I had a roommate named Dave Sukura. One day, he told me about having been in a prison camp when he was in elementary school. I couldn't believe it. I was a kid from Chicago, and had never heard of such a thing; 127,000 people were rounded up for no other reason than we were panicked about the Japanese, and we put them in concentration camps. Now, you can imagine having a store or having a hotel or having a farm and suddenly being told you have 1 week to get your stuff together and get out of here. They lost all their land. They lost all their holdings. They lost everything. They were sent to these camps. Someday, when you're in Idaho, go out to Minidoka, and see the national monument that we have created. We call it a ``monument'' now, but it was a concentration camp then. There was nothing there. They came and put up barracks very quickly and said to the people, Move in.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I thank the chairman, and I want to acknowledge Congressman Holt. Rush came to me and said, Will you help me gather signatures to get this thing before the House? I've got to have two-thirds of the Members sign this thing. And I said, Sure, I will be glad to help you. He immediately handed me a long list of people. And this is not an easy thing to get done in the House of Representatives, to get 290 Members to sign to bring something forward. However, the object of this gold medal, Dr. Yunus, is clearly somebody who it's worth working for. He is a marvelous symbol. I got to know him. I have been out to Bangladesh. I have been out in the villages. I have actually sat on the ground when the women were paying their debts and deciding who got how much money in the next week, and watched the whole process go on at the grassroots level. I also had the opportunity to introduce him when he came to Seattle to a RESULTS dinner, where there were about 500 people. The impact of Dr. Yunus goes far beyond the Grameen Bank. Seattle has, I don't know, probably 40 or 50 microcredit operations working worldwide all through Central America and South America and Africa, where this idea that this man created was taken by other people. And it works everywhere, and anybody can do it. What's amazing about this is to think about how one man, faced with the poverty in the most densely populated country in the world, Bangladesh, could say to himself, you know, I think I can change this. And then not only did he think that; he went out and he did it. And I think that's really why a gold medal for Dr. Yunus is such an important part for us to remember in the Congress. We often think that, you know, we've got to give $100 million or $80 billion or whatever. This man started with $27 and created something that has affected millions and millions of people. The last thing I want to say is that it's affected the lives of women. Women in the world, their status clearly is below that of men in most countries. But the access to credit for these women of Bangladesh gave them the ability to begin to develop a little business, and accumulate a little capital, and then to buy some school uniforms for their children and pay their school fees. Any country that educates their women, begins to educate the children, begins the development of a country. And Dr. Yunus knew that, that if he could give women a chance to have access to credit--a lot of people laughed at him--but a 97 percent payback rate will match Citibank any day of the week. And this is the work of a man who had an idea and proved that if you have an idea and you are willing to work and believe in people, you can make it work. So it's a great honor to have a chance to say a few words about Muhammad Yunus. He is a great man, and a gold medal is little enough to give him.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 6156) to renew the authority of the Secretary of Health and Human Services to approve demonstration projects designed to test innovative strategies in State child welfare programs, as amended.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I would like to enter into the Record letters of support for H.R. 6156 that I received from the National Conference of State Legislatures and from the American Public Human Services Association. National Conference of State Legislatures, Washington, DC, September 21, 2010. Re Renewing Waiver Authority in State Child Welfare Programs (H.R. 6156). Hon. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, Cannon HOB, Washington, DC. Hon. John Boehner, House Minority Leader, Longworth HOB, Washington, DC. Dear Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader Boehner: On behalf of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), we urge you to support H.R. 6156, a bill to renew the authority of the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to approve demonstration projects designed to test innovative strategies in state child welfare programs. Congressman McDermott and Congressman Linder have fashioned bipartisan legislation that helps create opportunities to enhance the state/federal partnership to assist our nation's most vulnerable children. NCSL supports reinstating and expanding federal waiver authority so that states can test the results of increased funding flexibility on the development of service alternatives and on the overall delivery of child welfare services, targeting programs to address the needs of their children. By renewing Title VI-E waiver authority from 2011 through 2016, H.R. 6156 will give states an enhanced ability to provide early intervention and crisis intervention services that will safely reduce out-of-home placements and improve child outcomes. H.R. 6156 will allow states to improve the quality of their child welfare interventions and reinvest savings in their programs. It will also provide both state and federal legislators more information on what innovations are effective to transform the lives of children who are at risk of abuse and neglect. We applaud Congressmen McDermott and Linder for crafting this legislation. Sincerely, Representative Mary Jane Wallner, New Hampshire House of Representatives, Chair, NCSL Standing Committee on Human Services and Welfare. Representative Wes Keller, Alaska House of Representatives, Chair, NCSL Standing Committee on Human Services and Welfare.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 6156.

Mr. McDERMOTT

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, this is sort of an historic moment. If you can get three doctors to agree on the same thing on the floor of the House of Representatives, you've got a pretty good bill. I urge passage of the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey).

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, many individuals who suffer from rare diseases or conditions currently face obstacles to participating in clinical research trials that may extend or improve their quality of life. The Improving Access to Clinical Trials Act, which passed the Senate on August 5, 2010, by unanimous consent, would eliminate these barriers. This legislation would prohibit disabled beneficiaries who receive assistance from the Supplemental Security Income, or SSI program, from participating in clinical trials. It is standard practice to reimburse clinical trial participants, not only for direct expenses associated with participation in such trials but also to reimburse them for time committed for their participation. Moreover, it is the policy of research institutions to treat all clinical trial enrollees in a consistent manner. As a result, if compensation for expenses and time is paid to one trial enrollee, it must be paid to all. The current program rules under the SSI program regarding compensation or reimbursement from clinical trials has inadvertently created an obstacle for enrollment in such trials that can lead to life-saving therapies. For example, approximately half of all adults with cystic fibrosis are SSI recipients. If one of these recipients were to participate in a clinical trial and received reimbursement for their commitment, that compensation would lead the Social Security Administration to redetermine whether the individual continues to meet the income and asset tests used to determine eligibility for the SSI program. Thus even a modest reimbursement for clinical trial participation may prevent the majority of individuals from enrolling in trials because, under the SSI income and asset limits, it could potentially trigger a loss of their SSI benefit. As a result of this risk, very few SSI recipients who suffer from cystic fibrosis participate in clinical trials. Given the large number of recipients with cystic fibrosis, this may have the undesired effect of slowing the pace of cystic fibrosis clinical research for all Americans, including the approval process for promising therapies that are already in the pipeline or waiting to be tested. The development of new treatments for rare diseases would benefit not only those who suffer from such conditions but the Nation as well. SSI rules should not force recipients to choose between their current income support and health coverage and their long-term ability to manage and potentially overcome the disease that has disabled them. In May of 2008, a number of my Democratic and Republican colleagues from the Ways and Means Committee joined me in sending a letter to the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration. We urged him to consider practical steps to allow SSI recipients to maintain their eligibility for the SSI and Medicaid benefits while participating in potentially lifesaving clinical trials. The Commissioner informed us that such a solution would require a legislative change in the law. The legislation before us today is very similar to the bipartisan legislation that was introduced in the House by Representatives Ed Markey and Cliff Stearns in June of 2009. The bill excludes the first $2,000 received as compensation or reimbursement in a clinical trial from the income and asset eligibility limits in the SSI program. It also would exclude the first $2,000 in compensation from the income tests in Medicaid. Additionally, the legislation would require the Government Accountability Office to conduct an evaluation of the impact of this bill on enrollment of SSI recipients who participate in clinical trials. The CBO has determined that this provision, which is scheduled to sunset in 5 years following enactment, has little to no cost. Eliminating the obstacles faced by SSI recipients who suffer from a rare condition could lead to potentially lifesaving treatments or therapies that can improve the quality of life for those who suffer from these diseases. Permitting the SSI recipients to participate in clinical research trials is the right thing to do. I reserve the balance of my time.