George Miller

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, the suggestion again has been made on the other side of the aisle that somehow this would be a burden or somehow this would be complex if we required that workers be treated the same as executives. They do very complex things in the corporate suites. They create various accounts to pay for the pension benefit of executives. They go out and buy various insurance schemes to pay for the benefit of executives. They create special tax treatment. They come to Congress and get special tax treatment for the pension plans of executives. All very complex. But at the end of the day, it means that that executive will know, no matter what happens to that company, that they and their family and their children will be protected forever into the future because it will be outside of the bankruptcy, it will be outside of the corporate failure. So complexity is not a problem when the executives want to protect their income. They have been doing it for years. But somehow now to say that we ought to send notice, send an e-mail to your employees and tell them that the president is selling 100,000 shares, that the President is doing an inside deal on a stock option, send an e-mail, you send them all day long, there is nothing complex about it, you type it out and push send; it is not complex. But they do not want the employees to know this. That is why so many people have been trapped in the financial collapse of these companies. In the middle of the negotiations with the flight attendants, the pilots, the machinists, the ramp workers, when American Airlines was asking those people for $2.3 billion in givebacks from their vacation time, from their pay, from their health benefits, give it back to help the company fly, they were secretly, quietly and in a very complex fashion protecting and guaranteeing hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for the executives; and they got caught. Once the light was shined on them, they scrambled like rats for the door, because they knew they could not sustain it; and the CEO resigned and they had to give back the compensation package, and then the flight attendants and others agreed to try to help the company stay out of bankruptcy. That is all this bill does. It says that you ought to know about that when they are negotiating your union contract, what they are doing for the executives. That is why the pension story today is no longer a back-page story. That is why it is on the cover of Fortune Magazine, not exactly a left-wing journal. But Fortune Magazine captured the context when it said oink, the pigs in the suits are jeopardizing your corporation, your compensation and your pension plans. Oink. Earlier, Fortune Magazine asked America, is your retirement at risk, and why? Because of what is going on in terms of corporate financial gimmickry. It is why millions and millions of Americans have left the stock market and why the stock market laments that they have not returned. They do not have confidence in this system. They do not have confidence in this system any longer. They understand it is rigged on Wall Street against them and it is rigged in the Congress of the United States against them. Where do these families go to get justice? Where do these families go to get equity? Where do these families go to get fairness, if they cannot come to the Congress of the United States? So now what we say in the Republican bill is we are going to give them additional advice about what to do with their savings, and we are going to give that advice from the very same people that just had an out-of-court settlement of $1.4 billion because they lied to their clients. They had financial arrangements that prevented them from being independent. They had financial arrangements, so they misrepresented how a stock was doing, how a company was doing, because they were getting fees, they were getting commissions, they were getting percentages of deals. Those are the very same people the Republicans say now that Mr. and Mrs. Jones and Mr. and Mrs. Smith ought to go to and trust that they are going to give them independent advice. The Democratic bill says you can go to those people, you can make them available, but you also must make an independent adviser available to these people as they plan for their retirements. When things go wrong for people in their retirement plans, as they did over the last couple of years, and you are 50 or 55 years old, you do not have much chance to make it up. Again, we have all heard from our constituents about people who thought they were going to retire a year ago, a year and a half ago. From Pacific Gas and Electric, the Portland company, not the California one, a person came before our committee, the Committee on Education and the Workforce, who had $650,000 in Enron stock. He and his wife bought a small farm that they were going to use to run a care center for retarded children. By the time they got to our committee, he had $6,000 in stock. He is 60 years old. Where does he go to get back his money? Where does he go to get made whole? Well, unless we want that to happen to another generation of workers planning for their retirement, planning for their families, unless we want that to happen again, we have got to support the Democratic substitute, because it is about justice, it is about fairness and it is about getting away from the conflicted advice, from the manipulation, from the dishonesty, from the criminal activity of the financial markets. Mr. Speaker, $7 trillion was lost in the markets, $7 trillion. These are the people who want to take you out of Social Security and put you into that market. Social Security did not lose a dime. Wall Street lost $7 trillion, and hundreds and thousands and millions of Americans had their entire retirement future changed overnight. We thought, well, that is the free enterprise system. That is the market system. But what we find out now every day is, no, like the California energy crisis, that was a manipulated system, that was a dishonest system, that was a criminal system. All the Democratic bill says is give people some notice, give people some rights, give people control over their money so they can escape the ship. The CEOs, the board presidents, the presidents of companies, they are heading for the lifeboats. They do not even have the decency to hit the alarm bell to tell you the ship is going down. We say at least you have to sound the alarm and tell the workers that they may want to jump too. That is the decent thing to do if you care about your workers, if you respect them, if you appreciate what they have done for the corporations. But that is not what is going on in America today, and that is not what will go on in America under the Republican bill. Mr. Speaker, you must vote for the Democratic substitute if you believe that workers and their families are entitled to the decent protections for their retirement funds. I urge Members to vote for the Democratic substitute.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney), a member of the committee.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, we are now $2 trillion into the Republican economic scheme. First, they gave away a trillion dollars because we had such a big surplus, they wanted to return it to the people. Now we have trillions of dollars of debt. Now they want another trillion dollars, and they have not created a single job. The American people have been waiting for 2, 2.5 years for jobs, and this bill does nothing to create a job. This bill does nothing but increase the deficit. It does nothing but increase the giveaways to the wealthiest people in this country. Yet the American people and their families are waiting to have the opportunity to go back to work, to stimulate the economy. But that is not what this legislation does. This legislation ignores the needs of working people in this country, ignores the needs of those families of working people in this country, and ignores the needs of those children who live in those families of working people in this country. How does it do it? By simply showering a trillion dollars over the next 10 years on Americans who do not need this money, many of whom have come to us and said, do something productive with it, and ignores the problems in the economy of this country.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, here they go again. When they first took office, the Bush administration said we needed a big tax cut to get the economy moving again. They gave us a big tax cut, financed out of the deficit, financed out of Social Security; and we lost 1.7 million jobs since that tax cut. We have lost 2.5 million jobs since the Bush administration took office. This morning they want to give us another trillion dollar tax cut to create more jobs, and the fact of the matter is that most of it will be financed out of the Social Security system and out of the deficit. When is this Nation going to learn that these people do not have a plan? They have yet to create a single new job; but what they will do in this tax cut is for those families earning over a million dollars, they will get $93,000 back next year in tax cuts. For the average family, they will get $217 back. In fact, over the next decade those families will take more in tax cuts than 90 percent of the population. Mr. Speaker, this is once again showering hundreds of billions of dollars on the wealthiest people in the country while 2.5 million people are out of work, while 4 million people have given up looking for work, and three people are looking for every job that exists in this country. The Republicans and President Bush owe America better.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I am, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Watson). (Ms. WATSON asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 4 minutes. I rise in opposition to H.R. 1261. This is the wrong bill being considered at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. This bill fails to extend unemployment benefits, it fails to create jobs, and it fails to stimulate the economy. This economy is in the grips of a devastating economic stagnation, and it is now clear to everyone that the President's economic policies have utterly failed to date to create new jobs, they fail to stimulate new business growth, and they have richly succeeded in turning historic Federal surpluses into staggering deficits. Unemployment is at 6 percent. That means that almost 9 million Americans are officially unemployed and another 9 million are either working part time because they cannot find full-time work or they are so completely discouraged that they have stopped looking for work. The Department of Labor's own data shows that there are three job seekers for every job available today. And yet this legislation comes forth and begins to unravel what has been a carefully constructed job-training program over the last 20 years on a bipartisan basis. It does so by undermining the ability of workers who are dislocated and others to get the services that they need to go back into the job market. But it also does it because of the insensitivity of this administration, because in this year, in this last year, as hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Americans join the ranks of the unemployed, this administration and this Congress cut $650 million of the programs under WIA. The President's budget this year suggests another $200 million in cuts. So while they talk about the block grant and they talk about efficiencies, let us understand what they are doing. As the ranks of the unemployed grow in staggering numbers, there will be fewer resources available to help those individuals get back into the job market. There will be fewer resources available to help the 6 percent of Americans who are unemployed, to the 4 million Americans who are underemployed and are looking for longer hours. Payroll employment has not been this depressed since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and why is that? Because there is not enough demand in the economy. But unfortunately tomorrow the Republicans will give us an economic program based upon tax cuts for the wealthy that most economists in the country have already said while they may agree with the tax cuts, it will not stimulate the economy. It is still questionable whether or not the Democrats will be able to put forth their program which economists tell us will create 1 million new jobs this year. This legislation, because it is within the jurisdiction of the committee and our ability, could have also extended unemployment benefits for those who are about to run out on May 31. But unfortunately the Republican leadership of the committee would not support that amendment and the Republican Committee on Rules would not make it in order. So as we stand here in these dark times for unemployed American families who do not know yet whether or not unemployment benefits are going to be extended at the end of this month, where they will be playing with whether or not we will extend them, we know that within the Republican part the last time there was a huge amount of opposition to the extension of the unemployed benefits, that many people were lost because of the gap in that coverage. But this legislation is silent on that issue. This legislation is like a narcotic. It wants to say we are moving around the structure of WIA, we are cutting the funding of WIA, but things are going to get better for the unemployed in this country. It is just simply not so because the Bush economy has been so terribly devastating to so many segments of the economy, whether it is in manufacturing, whether it is in high tech, whether it is in services, whether it is in transportation, whether it is in accommodations, and this President has yet to take a single step. Yes, he got his tax cut his first months in office. He has lost 2.5 million jobs since then, since then. That did not work. What he is suggesting is that we do more of the same. That is not an answer for these desperate families who are trying to hold themselves together through these dark economic times.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee), a member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens), a member of the committee. (Mr. OWENS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler). (Mr. NADLER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Green), an alumni of the committee.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this amendment would have the effect of providing an equivalent of 26 weeks of unemployment insurance to individuals who have exhausted both their State and their Federal extended benefits. The importance of this amendment is that it can provide a certainty to those people who are going to exhaust their benefits to know that these benefits will be there. We have tried in the Committee on Ways and Means yesterday to offer an amendment to send a message to these families. It was rejected. We tried in our committee. It was rejected. We tried in the Committee on Rules last night. It was rejected. None of you, if you were in the situation of these families, would want to be taken up to the eve of the exhaustion of your benefits or, as we did a few months ago, we went past the exhaustion of the benefits. They exhausted on the 31st, and we went into January before we approved those benefits. We owe it to these families. These families were working before their job disappeared. They are trying to provide for their families. They are trying to provide for their health care. They are trying to provide for their education and keep their house and keep their car. The least we can do is let them know in advance, but so far the Republican leadership has refused to do that. The administration claims that they are still debating on whether or not they will extend the unemployment benefits upon exhaustion. Every member of our committee voted for this amendment. Every member of our committee on our side of the aisle spoke for this amendment because it is a compassionate thing to do. It is a decent thing to do, and it is a smart economical thing to do because this money to these families will enable them to participate in the economy and put demand into the economy. It is the minimum that we can do. We would like to just have a simple extension of the unemployments benefits, but so far there has been a deaf ear on the other side of the aisle on that matter. So we would like to have this motion to recommit to succeed, to go back and to extend the equivalent of those 26 weeks to those individuals and to those families that are in dire straits. A million more families have exhausted their benefits than at this time in the last recession. The severity and the duration of this economic downturn is such, and this administration has yet to take a single step, a single step to help create jobs in this country, to help create the benefits for these individuals that they need. That is what this amendment helps us to address. The first plan of this administration was a massive failure. They passed their big tax cut, a trillion dollars, and we have lost 2\1/2\ million jobs. We cannot just do more of the same. The American families that are under this economic stress in this job market in this lousy economy deserve better.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis), a Member of the committee. (Mr. DAVIS of Illinois asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I want to join my colleagues on this side of the aisle who are rejecting this legislation because of its embracing of religious bigotry. As was pointed out, the language that is in the current law was authored by Dan Quayle, it was signed into law by Ronald Reagan. I guess that was when the Republican Party was a more tolerant party. But this Republican Party today, for the first time, will repeal a major civil rights piece of legislation that outlaws discrimination based upon religion. To do so is to embrace the ugly, ugly form of religious bigotry. There is no other explanation for that. The people will be rejected in the pursuit of their employment, and it comes in a bill that is designed to get people more employment. They can be qualified for the job, they can be ready to go to work, they can provide value-added to their employer, and they can be rejected because of their religion and for no other reason. That is bigotry. That is what the Republican Party is embracing here. Yes, today religions can reject this with their private money and their private donations and collections. They can do that. But if they take Federal money, they cannot do it. This is not about whether or not religious organizations participate in work employment programs, work training programs. One of the most effective programs in my district is run by North Richmond Missionary Baptist Church. It came out of welfare reform. It has done a tremendous job of getting people trained and into employment. But they do not discriminate against people, because the law does not allow that. But hundreds of thousands of dollars are run through that program to try to help people be employed. But this law will say for the first time that a religious organization with Federal money, with a position paid by the Federal Government, can discriminate against individuals because of their religion. My colleagues are right. We should reject this. And it is an insult, and it goes to the level of the corruption of the democratic institution of the House of Representatives that we would not be allowed to have an amendment where we could debate and vote on this measure. This is fundamental to the freedoms of this country, it is fundamental to the right of free speech in this institution, it is fundamental to the democracy of the people's House. But this process has been so corrupted in the Committee on Rules, so corrupted by the Republican leadership that we will not be allowed a vote on the matter of whether or not people should be allowed to discriminate with Federal dollars, whether organizations should be able to engage in religious bigotry. Members will not be able to have an up or down vote. You talk about a corrupt process. We spilled blood to bring democracy and freedom in Iraq and we see it being closed down in the House of Representatives. We see the underlying basic tenets of the democratic foundation of this House, the right to debate, the right to vote, the right to express our differences being corrupted by the Republican leadership and the Republican Committee on Rules.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I know that all Members of the House of Representatives will want to join me in saluting the Sheet Metal Workers' International Association, Local Union No. 104 on the 100th anniversary of its founding. Sheet Metal Workers' Local Union No. 104, through its many members over the last 100 years, has long played a vital role in protecting and organizing workers throughout Northern California. The Sheet Metal Workers' International Association was first formed on January 25, 1888, in Toledo, Ohio. Since that day, local unions throughout the country have fought to protect the rights of workers in a wide variety of trades and job types; encompassing workers from tinsmiths to high tech specialists. Sheet Metal Workers' Local Union No. 104 was formed on May 7, 1903, and is dedicated to the mission ``* * * to establish and maintain desirable working conditions and thus provide for themselves and their families that measure of comfort, happiness, and security to which every citizen is entitled in return for his labor, from a deep sense of pride in our trade, to give a fair day's work for a fair day's pay.'' Sheet Metal Workers' Local Union No. 104 membership includes individuals from the geographic regions of: Alameda, Contra Costa, Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Monterey, Napa, Santa Clara, San Benito, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Solano, Sonoma and Trinity Counties. Furthermore, Sheet Metal Workers' Local Union No. 104 currently represents more than 8,000 members local-wide, and is accredited with one of the most successful Organizing Programs in the country. The Union has organized approximately 50 new shops in that past two and a half years alone. Sheet Metal Workers' Local Union No. 104's members are highly skilled craftspeople specializing in areas such as heating, air conditioning and ventilation, and architectural sheet metal. These members' work is attributed with achieving higher quality of air in homes, office buildings, medical facilities, schools and other official buildings, in addition to contributions to various architectural features such as copper roofs, stainless casing and bronze architecture which can be seen throughout many cities; an example of this work is the copper dome on San Francisco's City Hall. Sheet Metal Workers' Local Union No. 104's efforts to raise the standard of living and protect individual rights for its membership, as well as other workers throughout the region, are deserving of our attention and admiration. Mr. Speaker, I join Sheet Metal Workers' Local Union No. 104's officers and members in celebrating the 100th Anniversary of their founding, and I salute the work of the Sheet Metal Workers' International Association, Local Union No. 104. I encourage my colleagues to similarly respect the positive impacts the Sheet Metal Workers' International Association has had within their home districts and States, and I encourage them to express their support of this historic anniversary for the Sheet Metal Workers' Local Union No. 104.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to regretfully announce the passing of a great jurist whose pioneering efforts in the field of juvenile law have changed much of the way we think about this complex and often controversial area of jurisprudence. John Steketee was a third generation lawyer who spent over 30 years on the bench, mostly as presiding/chief judge of the Kent County Michigan Probate Court, Juvenile Division. I came to know Judge Steketee when he was the leader of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges and I was doing the research that would culminate in enactment of the P.L. 96-272, the national foster care and adoption reform law of 1980. Judge Steketee was one of the earliest jurists to focus on the importance of permanency planning for children who had entered into, and often became trapped within, the bureaucratic maze of the foster care system. I frankly don't remember if I found him or he found me, but however it occurred, he played a hugely important role in shaping that legislation. Because of Judge Steketee's involvement, we were able to craft legislation that included case planning, periodic reviews of placement, and requirements for appropriateness of placements. He genuinely believed that the system had to be accountable to the child. The record of his achievements on the bench in Michigan, and his friendship with then-President Gerald Ford, helped many of those who might otherwise have been indifferent to recognize the workability and importance of the reforms we were proposing. The first Children in Placement study was conducted in his court in 1971, which enabled him to discover lost children in the system and make sure that plans were being made for them. Through his association with them he was instrumental in successfully encouraging judges across the country to see permanency as an important issue for children and families, and that it was a duty for judges to hold all accountable for permanency to be achieved for all children. Judge Steketee was the first chair of the National Council's Permanency Planning Committee, and was the President of the Council 1984-1985. After retirement he continued to remain a strong advocate for permanency for the nation's children, and advocated for therapeutic juvenile and family drug courts. I would like to extend my condolences and those of the House to his widow, Maribeth, his daughters Betsy Fenner and Martha Steketee, his three step-daughters, Erin Checchi, Leigh Baker, and Laurie Baker, and his seven grandchildren. This is a man who made a great contribution to our nation and especially to its children and families, and I know the House joins me in paying respects to his memory. I would also like to include an article from the Grand Rapids Press on Judge Steketee. [From the Grand Rapids Press, May 3, 2003] Judge John Steketee, a Force for Children, Dies at 76 (By Doug Guthrie) A voice for children in need was stilled Friday with the death of retired Kent County Probate Judge John Steketee. Steketee, 76, died from heart failure at Spectrum Health Blodgett. He battled cancer since before his retirement in 2000, following 33 years on the bench. ``This is one of those people who may have been better known in the nation than you thought you knew him at home,'' said David Mitchell, executive director of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. With enthusiasm for openness and change, Steketee was a pioneer in efforts to move foster children more quickly into permanent homes. His reshaping of the juvenile welfare system in Kent County brought national attention. Mitchell said word of Steketee's death triggered a stream of e-mails at his University of Nevada office in Reno. ``Without his example, leadership and vision, we would not have moved the judicial system to the rules and permanence for children that we have achieved,'' wrote Judge Richard Fitzgerald of Louisville, Ky.'' . . . His mentorship of all of us has helped us in building a just system.'' Said Mitchell, who served 18 years as a judge in Baltimore: ``He was a great man and mentor to so many of us. He taught men and women throughout this nation how to be judges and child advocates. He was loved.'' His closest friends and family were at a loss Friday to explain what in Steketee's life gave him the strength to walk alone so many years ago against the current of conventional bureaucratic wisdom. ``I'm not sure what it was,'' said his son, John Steketee. ``He loved his work and had a desire to help.'' Press columnist Arn Shackleford for 35 years has written weekly stories about local children in need of adoptive parents. She said it was Steketee who encouraged her to start. ``The first quote I ever used from him was, `You can't replace parental neglect with governmental neglect.' He was just a truly good person who loved kids,'' Shackleford said. Raised on Grand Rapids' Southeast Side, Steketee became the third generation of his family to practice law. After earning degrees from the University of Michigan and Wayne State University, he joined the family firm in 1956. He carried on another family tradition, serving as the Netherlands' vice-consul for Michigan. Steketee was elected to Kent County's Probate Court in 1967, handling estates, juvenile issues, and mental health commitments. The part of the job he liked best was obvious, as the man with the snow-white beard became known as the ``Santa Claus Judge.'' His office in the Waalkes Juvenile Center on Cedar Street NE became decorated over the years with hundreds of snapshots taken at adoption ceremonies, where Steketee had everyone in every adopted family swear under oath to love one another. Off the job, he loved to sail. He owned two sailboats in his lifetime, the Shields and Twin Wing, berthed in Holland. He never raced, only cruised and relaxed on the waves. Despite already being diagnosed with lung cancer, it was state law that prohibited Steketee from seeking another six years in office because of his age. Even undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments, Steketee remained active in his retirement. Mitchell said he spoke with Steketee last week about plans to attend the council's annual national convention in July in San Antonio. Until recently, Steketee also served as a visiting judge, filling in for others on the Kent County Circuit bench. He often stopped by the Kent County Courthouse to lobby for a new idea, visit his old staff or simply find a lunch partner. ``He was fighting the cancer and trying to live his life,'' his wife, Maribeth, said Friday. Judge Patrick Hillary, who was elected to Steketee's seat, said Friday was a busy day in court, but one with many pauses to reflect. Hillary used to practice as domestic relations attorney in front of Steketee, and when elected, inherited his staff and caseload. ``People say, `You replaced Judge Steketee.' I'm always real careful to say, `I succeeded Judge Steketee,' '' Hillary said. ``Nobody could replace him.''

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, last week the House considered H.R. 1350, Improving Education Results for Children With Disabilities Act of 2003. I would like to add the following list of organizations opposed to H.R. 1350 for inclusion in the Record: National PTA, Children's Defense Fund, National Association of Education of Young Children, American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Association on Mental Retardation, American Association of University Affiliated Programs, American Council of the Blind, American Counseling Association, American Music Therapy Association, American Occupational Therapy Association, American Physical Therapy Association, American Society for Deaf Children. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, The Arc of the United States, Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs, Association of University Centers on Disabilities, Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Council for Exceptional Children, Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, Disability Service Providers of America, Easter Seals, Epilepsy Foundation, Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health. Higher Education Consortium for Special Education, Learning Disabilities Association of America, National Alliance of Pupil Service Organizations, National Association of Developmental Disabilities Councils, National Association of Mental Illness, National Association of Protection and Advocacy Systems, National Association of School Psychologists, National Association of Social Workers, National Center for Learning Disabilities, National Coalition on Deaf-Blindness, National Coalition of Parent Centers, National Committee of Parents Organized to Protect IDEA. National Consortium for Physical Education and Recreation for Individuals with Disabilities, National Down Syndrome Congress, National Down Syndrome Society, National Mental Health Association, Research Institute for Independent Living, School Social Work Association of America, TASH, Teacher Education Division/Council for Exceptional Children, The International Dyslexia Association, Tourette Syndrome Association, UCP.