Eleanor Norton

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I want to offer my thanks to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Hansen), who is a cosponsor of this bill with the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner), and of course to the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Rahall) for bringing this bill forward. I think we owe special thanks to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner), whose initial idea this was. I owe particular thanks to the gentleman. First, let me say that this was not just a bright idea. Memorializing the victims of the war on terrorism is the least we can do. But I very much appreciate the spirit in which the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner) has approached this bill unintentionally in the beginning largely because most Members do not deal with the Commemorative Works Act. This bill came forward in the way one might expect, but inherent in it were three violations of the Commemorative Works Act and now two of three of those violations are gone because the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner) in fact has diligently consulted with the National Capital Planning Commission, with other Members of Congress. Initially there was a violation of the 25-year rule, had Congress approving the location, and the legislation had a specified area. All that may seem reasonable to Members of Congress, but Congress in its wisdom, because it knew that bills would come forward all of the time like this and that somebody had to referee where on the limited space the memorial should go, gave that responsibility over to an agency that could look at the whole mall, the National Capital Planning Commission, the Fine Arts Commission. The reason the monumental presence is monumental is because we do not micromanage it. I am going to support this bill with some reservation that it continues to violate the 25-year rule. I want to give Members some context for that. A bill was brought forward early in this Congress to establish a Ronald Reagan memorial on the mall. The Bush administration did not support it because it did not want to set that precedent and it is sufficient to say did not support violating the 25-year rule. Nobody who remembers the tenure of Ronald Reagan both in this city and out of the country can doubt that his legacy will withstand the 25-year rule. The World War II memorial is going up now, more than 25 years after World War II. No one has pressed forward an Oklahoma City memorial though that was one of America's great tragedies of the 20th century. The Martin Luther King memorial could not be built until 25 years after his death. I say all this because the House needs to understand the context and why it is this way. We lost a number of residents in 9/11. A number of those working in the Pentagon came right from the District of Columbia. The most visible ones were three children and their three teachers. I certainly want to see them memorialized on the mall. The context, though, we have to understand is what is happening to the mall. We literally are in danger in one generation of using up virtually all the prime space of the mall. Yet the mall was meant for eternity. That is why there is a 25-year rule. We must not get to where London is now. London is having to tear down memorials in order to allow memorials to go up. That is not the only reason Commemorative Works Act has a 25-year rule that says to Congress step back, and the reason that Congress has stepped back in each and every occasion, the pain of a memorial may be fresh, the reputation of a personage needs time to gel. History needs to inform us and see in context what it is we want to do. The Chair of the National Capital Planning Commission, John Cogbill, III, appointed by President Bush, did send to the House a letter in which he took exception to the bill on the basis of the three violations I have noted. I am very, very pleased that most serious of the exceptions that the bill initially put forward have been rectified. We know that memorials are best when there is a nationwide competition, when people who have looked at memorials over time can look and bring their expertise to bear, and that is going to happen here. We know that we cannot sit here and say where a memorial should be built, that we have got to trust those with whom we have delegated this responsibility. That is gone. I will submit for the Record the letter of Mr. Cogbill so that the Record can be fully informed with respect to these three problems that the initial bill has. Mr. Speaker, I want to once again express my appreciation to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Hansen) and certainly to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner) for the great sensitivity they both have shown in designing this bill. I support the bill with the reservations I have noted. The letter previously referred to is as follows: National Capital Planning Commission Washington, DC, March 19, 2002. Re Terrorism Memorial Hon. James V. Hansen, Chairman, Committee on Resources, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Chairman Hansen I am writing to express the concerns of the National Capital Planning Commission with regard to H.R. 2982, a bill that would authorize a memorial in Washington, D.C. to victims of terrorist attacks on the United States. The Commission mourns the tragic loss of life resulting from terrorist attacks on the United States, including the atrocities committed on September 11th, when terrorists orchestrated the most devastating attack on American soil in our nation's history. We share the desire to find appropriate ways to remember and honor the victims, but we urge that, consistent with the Commemorative Works Act (CWA), sufficient time be allowed to pass so that these tragic events are put in proper historical perspective before commencing the process of locating and designing such an important national memorial. As you are aware, the process for establishing memorials in the Nation's Capital is governed by the CWA. By setting forth criteria for the subject matter, location, and design of memorials, the CWA is intended to preserve the integrity of the L'Enfant and McMillan Plans for the Nation's Capital, while protecting and maintaining the limited amount of open space available on and around the Mall. The Commission is concerned that H.R. 2982 circumvents one of the key provisions of the CWA the 25-year waiting period for the authorization of new memorials in the Nation's Capital. The purpose of this provision, which states that a memorial ``shall not be authorized'' by Congress until at least 25 years after the death of the individual or event, is to ensure that enough time passes following an event for policymakers and historians to gain an appropriate historical perspective before establishing a permanent memorial in the Nation's Capital. Just as with other tragedies in American history--from Gettysburg to Pearl Harbor to Oklahoma City--a more meaningful and appropriate place to honor victims at this time might be at the sites of the tragedies themselves. Congress has already authorized legislation for a memorial at the Pentagon, and permanent memorials at the World Trade Center and at the Pennsylvania crash site are currently being considered. Other provisions of H.R. 2982 are also inconsistent with the CWA. In order to help preserve the limited number of sites available in area I (sites on or near the Mall), the CWA requires passage of a separate act of Congress, following a recommendation by the National Capital Memorial Commission, before locating a memorial in this prominent area. Yet this bill directly authorizes the memorial to locate in area I, overriding the requirement for a second round of consideration by Congress. In addition, the bill suggests that any specific location for the memorial be ``approved by the Congress,'' again contrary to the CWA, which delegates to the federal land-holding and review agencies decisions as to the specific location and design of new memorials. The Monumental Core of our Nation's Capital has evolved over the centuries into a powerful expression of our nation's values, achievements, losses, and challenges. By respecting the process established by the CWA, we can ensure that the victims of terrorist acts against our country are properly memorialized and, at the same time, the historical integrity of our grand Monumental Core is preserved. Sincerely, John V. Cogbill, III, Chairman.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time, and especially thank her for bringing this motion to instruct to the floor so we will not be put in the shameful position of perhaps going home again, we cannot go home again, without doing something about this bill. Virtually every primary is over. We are 2 years past the worst election crisis in the United States of America. We have heard defense of Florida, we have heard partisan comments about the counties involved. The point of crisis has shifted from the States to the Congress of the United States. We are sitting here with our thumbs in our mouths, knowing full well that Florida and every State of the Union cannot do it by themselves. That is really all Florida says to me. Florida is like a canary in the coal mine. Just as it was in the presidential election, we never would have learned without the fiasco of the 2000 election that we have broken election systems throughout the United States of America. Florida redux is shameful, to be sure; to have the same crisis emerge in similar counties is shameful, to be sure. But we are going to have that over and over again unless we do our job. Why name the President of the United States? Because he is the President of the United States, and it was his election, that is why. Because he has the bully pulpit, that is why. Because he ought to step up and say to the conference committee what the gentlewoman from California is saying: ``Hey, shake it loose so we don't do it again.'' Yes, it is his responsibility, and it is especially our responsibility. It is shameful that the NAACP has to go retail. It has had to go county by county to just settle a suit there on such basics as, I remember one of the provisions is that you have to provide an alternative way to vote in case you are challenged at the polls? Really? In 2002 we are just saying that? In Virginia, I have read thousands of different things that have happened county by county as counties go by themselves retail trying to fix the system in Virginia. One county that had 600 overvotes was reduced to one last year. How many overvotes must there have been throughout the United States that nobody even knows about now because they have not been dealt with? If you want to know what we have to do with Florida, it is known as congressional leadership, Federal leadership, and it is known as the right to vote. And that buck, yes, I say to the gentlewoman, stops at the top, and we are the top of that pyramid. We did not know until Florida. My friends, now we know. That means now we are responsible. Any disagreement, as I have heard there is on voter ID, I just want to say right here is the most shameful, the most shameful cause of disagreement. The notion about just how much ID you ought to have before you, with your American self, can cast your vote, exercise your right to vote? It is a chilling reminder of years past. I want to say right up front; this is a civil rights issue, only this time everybody understands the civil rights is not for African Americans alone. In Florida we saw people of all races and backgrounds, all educational backgrounds, got caught in what African Americans have been caught in for decades. Let us free the American people and let them all vote in November.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I thank the distinguished chairman and the distinguished ranking member for bringing this important resolution to the floor. I rise in strong support of House Resolution 523 because it recognizes the major role that Historically Black Colleges and Universities have played and continue to play in the education of African Americans and people of all racial and ethnic identities. I emphasize that the HBCUs have always been open to people of all races and have always educated people of all races. We are fortunate in the District of Columbia to have two great HBCUs here, Howard University and the University of the District of Columbia. Most Members know something about Howard, so I want to discuss the University of the District of Columbia, one of the oldest HBCUs, but the last to be funded as an HBCU. Even though it has long been a HBCU, the UDC was funded only in 1999. That occurred as part of a bill passed by this House, the College Access Act, where this House decided that because D.C. only had one university, an open-admissions university, that District students ought to be able to go to any public institution in the United States at low in-state tuition and to private universities here in the city and in the region. There were some at the UDC who believed that opening higher education to more students would undermine UDC itself. The fact is the opposite has occurred. There is now new interest in UDC, not only because it is now a funded HBCU, but because there is new interest in college education in the District of Columbia. Talking about going to college and about the College Access Act has had the effect of raising the profile of the University of the District of Columbia. At its lowest point in 1997, we did not know if the UDC, which had been the step-child of education in the District of Columbia, was going to continue. Now, in no small part because of the College Access Act, which has helped us to market college education in the District of Columbia, there has been a 13 percent increase in enrollment at this newest of the funded HBCUs, the University of the District of Columbia. It would have been tragically wrong to restrict D.C. students given this opportunity of going to colleges, public colleges anywhere in the United States. That is the kind of zero-sum game you never want to play, especially with higher education. Fortunately, and to their credit, the students at UDC and the faculty understood and supported the College Tuition Access Act to open public universities to all our residents. Now we understand that having done that, we have increased enrollment at our own State university. We are pleased, therefore, to support this resolution.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I appreciate the work of the distinguished chairman and the distinguished ranking member and the bipartisan effort that has brought this bill to the floor. I rise in strong support of the Women's Health Office Act. Anyone trying to keep track of women's health issues today is literally on a merry-go-round. The best recent example is the hormone replacement treatment quagmire, HRT. Here we had a major drug, progesterone, where a study has just shown serious health consequences for a drug that was being administered to millions of women to promote serious health benefits. I mean, that is just how complicated it is. But that is the nature of the women's health beast. And we do not need to make it more complicated than it already is. Having multiple offices that do not relate one to another with no statutory imprimatur makes it more complicated than it really is. Speaking of complications, what I think these offices help us to do is to face the fact that females are a particularly complicated organism. Throughout her life, a woman emerges as diametrically opposed to what she once was. A woman of child-bearing age is the opposite of the menopausal woman she shall become. Now, I have not even got to the differences between women and men. If we are dealing with these kinds of complications in a single human being, we have to figure out ways to make sure that what happens to her health is as good as it gets, or as good as we can get it. Because of such complications, the bipartisan women's caucus successfully fought, for example, to have medical and scientific studies that included women and not only men, because not including women had terrible consequences for us. That is one of the reasons that the average American woman today does not know that heart disease is the number one killer of women, because these studies, this information, has not been out there, because we have not paid the kind of close and coordinated attention to women's health that this bill will help to promote. It has been very important to test women differently from men when putting drugs on the market, because let us face it, women have very different chemistry. Mr. Speaker, a year ago I signed on to a bipartisan letter asking HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson to help authorize the multiple women's offices, only one of which was statutorily authorized. The best way to do it is the permanent authorization embodied in this bill, and I strongly support it; and I ask for the support of Members of this House.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me, and for his kind and gracious words. September 11 will always be a day to remember; but for us, it must also be a day to consider how to go on. If one lives or works here, as Members do, we remember that no sooner had September 11 come than we had October and the anthrax tragedies that occurred, beginning in the Brentwood post office, and spread even to this very Congress. Yet, Mr. Speaker, though some may consider the capital city a target city, I can come to the floor this afternoon and say I have never felt myself to be a target. That is probably because I am an American, and it may be in part because I was a small child in this city during World War II. Therefore, I am blessed and perhaps burdened by the notion of American invincibility. I do not believe that simply because of our military might. Somehow I believe that my country cannot and will not be defeated ever from within or without. It is simply part of the way I was raised, and it is part of the way we must raise our children. I know how one's spirit can be broken when one goes to the funerals of three small children and their teacher who went down in the plane at the Pentagon. It can try one's spirit. But the fact is, I regard those children as representatives of all who lost their lives in September and October of last year; and somehow or the other, remembering September 11 and the October anthrax tragedies through the lives of these 11-year-old children and their teachers, random targets, has instructed me how to go on. I believe we will defeat terrorism. I tell you, it is part of my core belief. What I think we have to learn to do is to maintain an open society in the process. No society has ever faced what we have today. No society has ever had to face keeping itself wide open while understanding that terror lies within. I am a native Washingtonian, a fourth-generation Washingtonian. We live here and feel ourselves the stewards of the Nation's capital. As such, we cannot stand by and see the Nation's capital ever be closed, because if it is closed or seems to close down, the rest of America will believe it must follow behind. If this is to be an open and free society, it must begin with an open and free Washington, D.C. I am proud of the Congress for keeping our Chambers open, for doing all we can to keep this city open, and for remembering that when we are open, the rest of the country will feel itself open. Finally we will, I believe, have the rest of the world believe they, too, must open their societies to us and to the rest of the world. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for bringing this resolution to the floor.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I have come to the floor to speak this afternoon because of my concern about the nature of the conversation about our country that is taking place at this time. This is a complicated country. I have prodded myself on serving in this body in no small part because this body and the other body have been so good at grappling with the full range of issues that confront our country. Yet, as I stand back and look at the kind of conversation we were having before we recessed, conversation about corporate abuse, about the economy and about world affairs, I see a very different picture from the picture I see now. All of the oxygen in this place and in the media has been taken up with Iraq. Iraq is a matter of major concern. I have not heard or read a single analyst or member of this body that does not believe that Saddam is a man to be taken seriously and to have a serious strategy for dealing with. There may be differences about how to deal with him, but the danger he poses ultimately is not a matter of debate. What to do about him is, of course, a matter of serious debate. The fact is that there is almost no chance wherever a person stands on Iraq and Saddam Hussein that we will enter Iraq before the election. That kind of wag-the-dog approach to foreign affairs is something I do not believe this President would engage in. Indeed, Mr. Biden of the other body has indicated that in his conversations with the administration he certainly does not believe that there would be some quick entry of our country into a preemptive strike. That is why we are having a conversation now that I predict will go on for some time, because the case has not even begun to be made. Our President is going to the U.N. only tomorrow or this week. Yet, talk of Iraq has completely displaced what I think my colleagues at home have found is what the American people believe is a clear and present danger now. The clear and present danger now is the absence of a domestic agenda on the screen for them to see as we approach November. As for Iraq, the President himself has said he has not even made up his mind what to do. The President says he thinks we will have to strike Saddam at some point, but then is quick to say but I have not made up my mind what to do. My question is, has the President made up his mind and have we made up our mind what to do about what confronts the American people each and every day, and that is the economy that drives how they live their lives. We cannot allow debate about the possibility of a war abroad to foreclose debate about urgent issues right here at home. Unless my colleagues have not been listening to their constituents, I know they are hearing what I am hearing. Is this a jobless recovery? Because we still see people losing jobs. Some people do not like the use of the words jobless recovery, but even the most conservative analyst will use the words slow recovery, and there is a reason for that. We have got unemployment now at 5.7 percent. That is a huge jump up from this time a year ago, 9.6 percent for blacks. People are seeing shifts in the cost of health insurance from their employer straight to them so that they are having to bear more of the cost of health insurance than they had to bear this time last year, always a danger signal that there is something happening in the economy that I better be careful about. Perhaps the greatest and most conclusive evidence that something is wrong with the economy is what is happening to States and localities throughout the United States faced with huge deficits. My own city has found that the effect of the slow recovery or this recovery in many places, people no longer pay the kinds of capital gains they were paying, for example, no longer have the kind of disposable income yielding taxes of various kinds to State and local government. The effect of that is that State and local budgets are plummeting all over the country, and States are scrambling simply to find enough money to make it through with the bare necessities that State and local governments must provide. That is something that virtually every State and local government in the United States is experiencing now. We have it in this region which is one of the most prosperous in the country. We have it in Maryland. We have it in Virginia. We have it in the District of Columbia, and we have it in virtually every State of the Union. We know why there is this effect on State and local budgets, the effect on our own deficit which is growing like Topsy. We know it from bankruptcy and airlines. We know it from the fact that companies employ a million people less than they employed a year ago. We know it from layoffs in major sectors. Layoffs continue in manufacturing. Layoffs continue in retail. We know it because of the higher cost of terrorism insurance, something we must get completed before this House and Senate go home for the elections because every place now which is exposed to the public is beginning to experience increases in the insurance, increases that are quite extraordinary, not only here in the Nation's capital where some might have expected it, but anyplace there is a facility where large numbers of people meet or even in rural areas where there may be some sensitive facilities nearby. I am particularly concerned that in the face of this situation, with virtually no conversation going on in the media or in this body about the economy, we see that the American people turn on the television and say when is somebody going to talk about me. Our claims for unemployment were 33 percent above what they were a year ago. Most States have not kept the recommended reserves in their unemployment trust funds, just when they are most needed, and pathetically, 19 States have increased the earnings requirement in order to qualify for unemployment insurance while only 1 State has reduced the earnings requirement. This at a time when in a recent article we learned that if a person makes less than $50,000 per year, their chance of being laid off is 43 percent greater than if they earned more than $50,000 a year. I do not know how the lower middle class and low income people make it in times like this, and I do not understand why we would not be talking about these issues, why they are off the radar screen, because they are on the minds of all of our constituents. Last year, only 38 percent of the jobless even qualified for unemployment insurance. If a person is a part-time worker, if they are a lower paid worker, if they are a temporary worker, they have been written off for unemployment insurance very often because when the great statute was passed, those kinds of workers were far less numerous, and we have not done our job to revise our own statutes, to take into account the new employment trends, employment trends that have been with us now for a full generation. One of the reasons, of course, for this jobless recovery is that after September 11, the economy seemed to ride along just fine, and we thought, well, is not this something, they hit us and it did not make much difference. We owe a lot to the American people for making sure that they continued to live their lives, including live their lives in the economy, because this economy was driven or has been driven along for some time by consumer spending and consumers continue to stand after September 11. It is clear as the nose on our face, however, that consumers have now lost confidence in the economy, and the reason we know it is because they have stopped spending. Consumers account for two-thirds of all the economic activity in our economy in the first place, so let them stop spending and we begin to feel it very quickly, and that is what they have stopped doing. And I say to my colleagues, have you not stopped spending as much as you were spending? I do not know anybody who is spending the way they were 5 years ago, because there are too many uncertainties in the economy. And there is too little discussion here or elsewhere about what to do about those uncertainties. After 9-11, in order to keep people spending, we had all kinds of approaches among retailers, reductions, the no-interest financing on cars; but it seems pretty clear that consumers have had it up to here, and I can understand why. Household debt is now 75 percent of the gross domestic product. When you get that much debt, I do not care how much you want to spend, you are probably going to think very hard before continuing on the all-American spending spree that the country has been on for some years now. Now, I am not at all criticizing Americans either for spending or for deciding that the time to spend should end. I believe that they have a right to expect guidance from us on what we are going to do about it, and I believe they are getting guidance neither from us nor the Bush administration. We have to look forward and not only look backward to the good old days when the economy was so flush it looked like it would never stop expanding. The economy has been jolted to understand that that kind of expansion cannot go on forever. And if it cannot go on forever, we have to explain to the American people what to expect. One thing we can expect is that the terrible budget cuts that the States and localities are having to do this year will continue for the indefinite future. Because when we cut this year, we find the problem rolls over for 2, 3, maybe even 4 or 5 years. In my own district, the chief financial officer has said that he thinks that the city must have a 5-year plan that indicates that our budget will be balanced not only this year, by making the kind of terrible cuts that we here and all across the country are having to make, but that we will not simply roll over the problem to other years. And so we have to look at a series of cuts that are going to continue for some time, because the kind of exuberance one saw in the market was indeed reflected in State and local budgets, and, yes, in spending by the American people. I do not come to the floor today to say to my colleagues, all right, what is the answer? Let us write the answer clearly so the American people can see it. What I do come to the floor to say is that we should be debating not only foreign affairs but domestic affairs. We should not only be debating what should happen in Iraq, in Afghanistan, where we still have a theater of war, in the Middle East. All of these are of top concern and priority, but there are equal priority concerns on the domestic front. When we have been at our greatest has been when we have shown the world we know how to walk and chew gum at the same time. That is the challenge before us today, not to shortchange the domestic agenda at a time when we have a slow recovery, when Americans do not know where their next health care premium is coming from, when the corporate abuse statute we will pass has yet to prove itself, when companies are still coming forward with restatements of earnings. All that is still on the screen and our constituents still need to hear from us a balanced debate: What are you going to do about Iraq and what are you going to do about home? So I come to the floor as we ask that we initiate that debate; that the relevant committees help us to become involved in that debate; that we ourselves take on the role of restoring confidence in the consumer so that the consumer feels that it is safe again to spend because they have in Washington a Congress and a President who knows how to guide us during troubled times. They do not have that now. When we have a balanced conversation and a balanced debate about the two great bookends, the domestic and the foreign, I think we will restore the confidence in the economy that we know now has vanished.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate the remarks of the ranking member who always brings a background and perspective that makes anyone who has not been fortunate to be in this institution as long as he has understand the continuum of the work we are about and a continuum is what we are about today. I also want to thank the gentlewoman from West Virginia (Mrs. Capito) for her hard work in bringing this bill to the floor. This bill is really part of a larger vision, and one does not have to live here to have that vision. This is a small, compact city. There is not a lot of room left for all of the buildings, not to mention all of the memorials, that people would like to see in Washington. But there is a big, relatively for this city, a big piece of land that could, in fact, house much more to make the Kennedy Center the true national performing arts center it was intended to be. But to even begin to approach this vision, we have a lot of work to do on the basics, and this bill is about the basics. This bill is not about the buildings. I believe they will be constructed all with private funds. I have talked with the dynamic new leader of the Kennedy Center. But there is part of this work that is for government alone. Its rough name is infrastructure. We have got to lay the groundwork in order for the vision to rise. The mall is a work in progress. The mall is always incomplete. So we should not be surprised that we are always adding to the mall. That is as the Founders wanted it. They have also wanted us to be careful about the mall. They did not want us to put every little thing on the mall. And one of the things I implore my colleagues to remember is that the mall is perpetual. When generations we cannot even imagine are here, the mall should be here, and one of the things we do not want to do is just crowd the mall with the hubris of our generation, leaving no room for anything else to go up. If we do that, we will have to do what some of the European countries are doing. They are tearing down statues in order to allow more to rise. I think we should just be careful what we do. I believe future generations will look at what this bill initiates as part of the natural process of filling out the mall. And I very much applaud the continuing attention that the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure has given to the Kennedy Center and to the completion of the work there, and especially to the fact that one cannot get there from here. The 25 million tourists who come to the District of Columbia may do as I do as often as I can. I go on a race walk down the mall beginning at 3rd Street. It is a wonderful way to get exercise. When we get to the Lincoln Memorial, that is it, folks. If we want to walk, walk no further, unless we want to take our chances going across highways. That is not exactly what the mall had in mind. Indeed, cars cannot always get there from here. It is as if, as we get to the Kennedy Center, it was made for cars, not people, and not even for the arts. Remember that the John F. Kennedy Center really reminds us of two great presidents. The notion of a cultural arts center began with President Eisenhower. Ultimately, when it was built, it was named for the martyred President Kennedy, so it bears the imprimatur of two great president and it inspires this body in a bipartisan fashion to move forward to try to complete it even as generation after generation moves forward with the mall to complete it or to make sure that it remains a mall and remains in many ways clear. The Congressional commitment to the plaza and to the center has been clear, as the ranking member indicated, since Chairman Shuster was the chair of the committee. And, therefore, I am sure he would take special pride that we are moving forward with it today. This is a cultural center with no bus service; cabs have a hard time getting in and stopping; no metro; cut off from its neighborhoods along the riverfront except one cannot get to the riverfront from the center; isolated from everything around it. The very opposite of what a cultural center is supposed to be. We are going to fix that. I appreciate that the bill incorporates the District of Columbia, which has the air rights, and the mayor and I have spoken about those rights. There will be no problem getting whatever is necessary to make sure that the many air rights are, in fact, dealt with. The central feature of the mall will be a pedestrian plaza over a deck. It will transform the Kennedy Center itself. It will mean that our constituents who come in very large numbers, and increasingly so now that everyone understands that the capital of the United States is the safest city in the world, better protected than any city in the world, as the visitors come, they will be the first to understand that there has been a transformation in this city, that the city is being completed, that the mall itself is being extended, and that we are opening the cultural life physically and in every other way to the world and especially to our country. I urge my colleagues to support this bill and to remain with us until we see this plaza rise, and perhaps Members of Congress will be the first to walk down the plaza and invite people from all around the world to come to a cultural arts center made for the world and where the world can now come and walk and see and have the kind of access that was always intended. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Many of us will always remember Joseph Curseen and Thomas Morris as Washingtonians because it is in this city that they were born and raised and received the values and the work ethic for which they are so fondly remembered. Joseph Curseen, Jr., was born in Washington, D.C. in 1954. He graduated from Our Lady of Perpetual Help Grammar School in Southeast Washington and then went on to graduate from Gonzaga High School and Marquette University. Beginning in 1985, Mr. Curseen was a letter- sorting machine operator in the U.S. Postal Service, working evenings at the Brentwood Road facility on machines that processed government mail. Not once in those 15 years did Joseph Curseen miss a day of work. Mr. Curseen was a man of faith who never left his home church here in the District. He led a bible study group at work and was a Eucharistic Minister at our Lady of Perpetual Help Roman Catholic Church until his death. Mr. Curseen was not only dedicated to his work, but also to his community, where he served as president of his local homeowners' association. He instituted a neighborhood watch program and assisted in building a playground for the neighborhood children. He looked for ways large and small to improve his community, such as the petition he organized that resulted in speed bumps on the streets of his community to protect his neighbors from irresponsible drivers. Thomas L. Morris, Jr., was born on March 2, 1946, also in Washington, D.C., and he got his education in public schools of the District of Columbia. He began his career with the U.S. Postal Service in 1973 as a distribution clerk in the government mails section at Brentwood. During his postal career Mr. Morris was honored four times for outstanding performance and with service awards. Mr. Speaker, naming post offices is a common practice in this body, but renaming Brentwood carries special meaning, both symbolic and pragmatic. Brentwood has remained closed since the anthrax attacks last October. Yet in the not too distant future, Brentwood will reopen. When it does, it must be a new Brentwood. When workers walk back into that facility, every aspect of the reopening should signify that this is Brentwood reborn. Brentwood not only will be fumigated, sanitized and refurbished, it should be Brentwood no more. Its new name will signify a new beginning, a mission that needs our attention. Many postal workers are still, understandably, reluctant to return to Brentwood. In naming the facility for Joseph Curseen and Thomas Morris, we can hope that their fellow workers will feel more resolved and more comfortable as they return. The Subcommittee on the District of Columbia, on which I serve as ranking member, already has held one hearing on the remediation of the Brentwood facility. At that hearing I asked the Centers for Disease Control to conduct an epidemiological study to compare the health of the workers from Brentwood with the health of workers who did not work in a contaminated facility so that we can follow and know if there are any longer-term effects. The CDC has agreed to do this study, and, in addition, is following the health condition of those who worked at the facility. The Postal Service has agreed that, at the very least, the same degree of extreme care that was used in cleaning the Hart Building, also struck by the anthrax attacks, will be used to decontaminate Brentwood. I also have proposed that we hold another hearing before Brentwood is reopened to reassure the public and postal employees that every possible step has been taken to ensure their safety. Following the tragic deaths of these two men, we must do whatever is necessary and appropriate to eliminate the deep concerns many employees still have about returning to the Brentwood facility. As one way to show our commitment to a safe facility, I propose that the Postmaster General, postal, union and elected officials be the first to enter the facility. I also believe that renaming Brentwood to honor Joseph Curseen, Jr., and Thomas Morris, Jr., will help accomplish what no amount of reassurance could possibly do. Their names will forever rest on the building to remind employees, visitors and the Nation that we must not forget two brave fallen heroes, whose example at work should inspire us to press forward, unbowed and without fear. I urge my colleagues to support this important measure. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 4\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Wynn), the principal sponsor of this legislation.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, as we approach the 1-year period following the attacks on our country, I rise to support a bill of special significance to honor two native sons of the District of Columbia who as public servants gave their lives while serving this city, this region, and this country. H.R. 3287 would redesignate the United States Postal Service facility located at 900 Brentwood Road, Northeast, in Washington, D.C. as the Joseph Curseen, Jr., and Thomas Morris, Jr., Processing and Distribution Center. I want to thank the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Wynn), who represents the district where Joseph Curseen and Thomas Morris resided, for his leadership in introducing H.R. 3287, and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Civil Service, Census and Agency Organization, who is also my colleague on the subcommittee, for his hard work in bringing this bill to the floor and for generously deferring to me to manage the bill. I am proud to be an original cosponsor of H.R. 3287. This month our Nation is struggling for ways to reflect upon and appropriately commemorate the tragic events that began with the attack on September 11, 2001. Today we remember October 21 and October 22, 2001, because on these consecutive days, we lost two brave men to the anthrax attack on our country. Joseph Curseen, Jr., and Thomas Morris, Jr., were both family men and pillars of their communities. They were known for their dedicated hard work on the job as postal employees whose colleagues have still not forgotten them. They were loved by their families, who still deeply miss them. We are pleased that Celeste Curseen and Mary Morris, the widows of the two men, are in the gallery today. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair will remind Members that they may not refer to individuals in the gallery.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, could I ask the gentlewoman from Maryland if she would yield me 1 minute to sum up?

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, there is a slogan I cannot remember entirely that is associated with the Post Office, ``through rain or snow or sleet,'' to describe just how constant is that service. Well, that describes how these men were remembered as unfailing men of the Postal Service. The renaming that we bring forward today is freighted with meaning, most obviously because it is so richly deserved, but the timing of this bill imports far deeper meaning. Hundreds of workers are preparing themselves psychologically to reenter that facility where two of their friends and colleagues died. May they find the reentry easier as they come no longer to the Brentwood Postal Facility, but to the Joseph Curseen, Jr. and Thomas Morris, Jr. Processing and Distribution Center. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Civil Service.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize Jessica Lee for her efforts and success in the field of journalism. Jessica Lee has had a long and illustrious career as a journalist. She was one of the first African American women to cover the White House for a major daily newspaper, and she was one of the first journalists to give a voice in print to those not normally covered in many daily newspapers. She has traveled all over the world as a White House correspondent for USA Today: from China to Russia, Europe and to South Africa where she covered the election of Nelson Mandela. She has witnessed many major current events and written about them in what has often been called the ``first draft'' of history. Jessica joined USA Today in 1985 as a congressional correspondent. She was assigned to the White House in 1986 at the height of the Iran- contra scandal, reporting on President Reagan's final two years and President Bush's full term in office. Jessica, a fluent Spanish speaker, has worked for Gannett Co., Inc., since 1978, when she was hired at the El Paso Times in Texas. She worked five years as a regional and congressional correspondent with Gannett News Service. Jessica got her first taste of journalism at high school in Washington, D.C., where she grew up. She began her career with the Daily Journal, an English-language daily published in Caracas, Venezuela. She is a graduate of Western College for Women. Due to her courage and tenacity as a trailblazer, she will remain a role model for many women now joining the ranks of journalists.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, Today, in the Congressional Record on behalf of the citizens of the District of Columbia and the Washington, DC Alumni Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc., I recognize Dr. Paul Phillips Cooke for his efforts and successes in the field of education. I count it a privilege to acknowledge Dr. Cooke's dedicated service to the District of Columbia and our nation. The citizens of Washington, DC have been privileged to have a leader like him in the vanguard promoting the advancement of our great city. With a congratulatory letter, I recently joined the Kappas at a Tribute to Dr. Paul Phillips Cooke, and noted his commitment to the enhancement of education in the District of Columbia. Dr. Cooke was born on June 29, 1917, in New York City. His father and mother were born in Washington, DC, as well as his paternal grandfather and great grandmother. He attended public schools of the District of Columbia from 1st grade through high school. Dr. Cooke received his Bachelor's degree (cum laude) in English, from Miner Teachers College, Master's degrees from New York University, and the Catholic University of America, and his Doctorate in Education from Columbia University. He served as Professor of English from 1954 to 1974, at the District of Columbia Teachers College and as its President from 1966 to 1974. He received from the University of the District of Columbia the Doctor of Laws degree honoris causa in 1986. During his distinguished educational journey, Dr. Cooke also was a teacher of English at Brown Junior High School, and at Phelps Vocational School, on the faculty in English at Miner Teachers College, and a lecturer at Trinity and Gallaudet Colleges, and Howard, American, George Washington, and Georgetown Universities. A scholar, author of more than 200 publications and papers, lecturer, historian, and international statesman, Dr. Cooke has won the admiration and respect of his colleagues, associates, and friends for his many years of dedicated service. He has been a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc., since 1935, and is the recipient of the Laurel Wreath, the Fraternity's highest award. Dr. Cooke served as Deputy Council Member of the World Veterans Federation, Consultant to the World Peace Through Law Conferences and as Chairman of the International Affairs Commission, American Veterans Committee and is a member of the Washington, D.C. Hall of Fame. His past and current memberships also include the Girard Street Block Association, the Shrine of the Sacred Heart R.C. Church, the Washington Torch Club, the Catholic Interracial Council of the District of Columbia, the Washington City Breakfast Group, the Cosmos Club, and the NAACP. For more than 50 years, ``Corporal'' Cooke, who served in the US Army Air Corps, has been a member of the American Veterans Committee. Since 1940, Dr. Cooke has been married to the former Rose M. Clifford. Their four children have earned six college degrees. The achievements of Dr. Paul Phillips Cooke serve as an inspiration for us all as we work to expand educational opportunities in the nation's capital. It is important that he be praised by the community at large. As the Congresswoman for the District of Columbia, I applaud Dr. Cooke's commitment to step into the breach and provide opportunities, options and hope, and give my best wishes for continued success in his important work.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time and for this amendment that I hope brings us to our senses. I am bemused to hear some Republicans on this floor arguing for quotas. I thought the administration and the Republican Congress stood against quotas. I want to make it clear I do not support quotas in any context, and I certainly do not support or believe Government can tolerate deciding who gets to perform Government work by the numbers. Let us be clear. The Moran amendment leaves in place total ability to contract out work. It is contracting out without competition that assures a fair deal for the taxpayers that is at issue here on this floor. Contracting by the quotas is arbitrary on its face. Here is an example. In 1 year, they are supposed to go from 15 percent quota to 50 percent quota in certain job categories. That does not exactly lead to careful analysis. And the DOD has decided that the way to meet such an escalated quota is to simply contract out all of the work without any competition. The other agencies are sure to follow when they see that that is how DOD is going to do it. Why not let civil servants compete to do this work? They have been doing it. Let us see who does it best. I thought that is what the other side stood for. Another reason that makes no sense is that we need to retain workers for 3 years. We on the Subcommittee on Civil Service and Agency Organization, the House and Senate, have been working to keep workers in this Government. When they hear their work is going to be contracted out, they are going to be out of here. Parliamentary Inquiry

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Here we are on cue, Mr. Speaker. The annual late term abortion bill. This is the bill where Congress tries not to make law but to make mischief. Why would Congress want to put a woman in jeopardy of her health and a physician in jeopardy of prison for 2 years and a fine by prohibiting one and only one procedure? Actually, Congress does not want to put the physician in jeopardy. What Congress wants to do is to keep the physician from performing any abortion including legal abortions. And if this bill passes, that is exactly what will happen across this country. The point of this bill is to make it legally risky to perform any abortion because the physician cannot be sure he will not be prosecuted. That is why the courts have struck down these late-term abortion bans time and time again. The bill tries to simply hop over Roe versus Wade with 15 pages of congressional findings. But congressional findings cannot overrule a Supreme Court decision. Congressional findings cannot nullify a woman's constitutional right. Congressional findings cannot defeat a woman's right to have an abortion if her health is in danger. This bill is not even a nice try. It is plainly unconstitutional. Worse, it is an insult to the women of America.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I rise to thank him for his work and to thank the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook) as well and to support this appropriation. I want to talk about an important matter and that is about an amendment that I intended to offer. It may or may not have been in order, but I want to discuss it on the floor now. It is the closing of E Street. It remains closed even though the Secret Service signed off on a report recommending that it be open, a report of the National Capitol Planning Commission. There is no safety or security issue. There is an 800-foot setback from the back of the White House. It is closed for one and only one reason, and that is when the Secret Service closes something, it wants to always keep it closed. The Secret Service wanted to keep National Airport closed. Only because the entire region fought back is National Airport open. The Secret Service wanted to close Pennsylvania Avenue ever since the Eisenhower administration. It succeeded after Oklahoma City. We are not asking that Pennsylvania be reopened, but we cannot afford to see E Street remain closed; and I will say why in a few minutes. First of all, E Street is one of the few streets in the District that was prepared for September 11 because after Oklahoma City, E Street had been widened in order to make sure that the White House which has an 800-foot setback was, in fact, safe. In fact, it opened for a year after Oklahoma City and after 9-11 closed. Another study done, that study shows that it can be opened. The Chair of the Subcommittee on the District of Columbia and I have sent letters. It is because we can get no response that I come to the floor to say if we do not get response within the next few months, I will take action that I think will result in the opening of E Street. There is new urgency which above all sends me to the floor today because the entire region is implicated. There has been a recent Court of Appeals ruling that this entire region is in ``severe violation'' of the Clean Air Act. What that means for the region, and the ranking member is deeply implicated here because he represents part of this region, is that this region very soon, unless we get at things that are causing congestion like the closure of E Street which has to take all of the traffic in Maryland, Virginia, and crosstown traffic in D.C., if we are not able to get ahold of matters like this, then this region will be able to build nothing with transportation funds, no metro, no roads; and here we are just caught up in this dilemma. E Street handles a lion's share of the traffic from the region, and of course it is a way that we get across town. It makes a very large contribution to traffic congestion and air pollution that must be cleared up if we are to continue to build in this town. It is time E Street was allowed to make the contribution the founders intended it to make to facilitate traffic across town. We closed E Street in front of Pennsylvania in front of the White House. We must not close off E Street in back of the White House.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I want to associate myself with the remarks of the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder) and thank the gentleman for his leadership in bring this resolution to the floor in honor of Lindy Boggs. This is an occasion to remember and reflect upon both Lindy Boggs and the role of the Congressional Women's Caucus on women's issues, and the role they both have played in coordinating and communicating and legislating for women's interests in the formation of public policy. It is, at the same time, a celebration of Lindy Boggs herself. Lindy Boggs was or has become a stateswoman in the finest tradition of women in politics. She took the political reins when the responsibility fell to her, even though it was not her initial calling. Then she served in the House for nearly 2 decades. Lindy Boggs was a teacher by training, but she came from a long tradition of political service by members of her family. When she was in the Congress, she was given the task and the formidable responsibility of arranging for the bicentennial of the Congress itself. She chaired the Joint Committee on Bicentennial arrangements in the 94th Congress, and the Commission on the Bicentenary of the United States House of Representatives from the 95th through the 101st Congresses. She led the 1976 Democratic Convention which nominated Jimmy Carter, President of the United States, and was the first woman to chair a national party convention. She was an author, a political wife, mother, and a gentlewoman who influenced the formation of national policy with a gentle hand. When she retired from this body, she was chosen to serve as the United States Ambassador to the Vatican from 1997 to 2001. Mr. Speaker, when one looks at the life of Lindy Boggs, one is impressed by the number of firsts that accompany her service. The first woman to be elected to the House of Representatives from Louisiana. That is not so unusual today. The first woman to serve as a regent of the Smithsonian Institute. No one would be surprised at having a woman regent today. She was the first woman to reside over a national convention. That would be routine at Democratic and Republican conventions today. The first woman to receive the Congressional Medal from Veterans of Foreign Wars. Women may be new to the military and the rolls they have today, but Lindy Boggs broke yet another military tradition. She was the first woman to receive a Tulane University Distinguished Outstanding Alumni Award, the first woman to serve as Ambassador to the Holy See. These firsts have now become part of American life and the American tradition. When we consider that a woman of our time broke these barriers, we must have no small amount of respect. H-235 where the women of the House come to lounge is named the Lindy Claiborne Boggs Congressional Reading Room. We do not name rooms after ordinary people, and the naming of this room in 1962 as the Congressional Women's Reading Room is significant because H-235 is a very special room. It was the original Speaker's office used by Henry Clay and James Pope. It was the place where we are often reminded that John Quincy Adams was taken and died after suffering from a stroke. Lindy Boggs' picture was hung there. In the years since the Congressional Caucus on Women'S Issues was formed, America has changed more profoundly than in any other way. The Women's Caucus as we are called, accepts some responsibility for those changes. America is different in each and every way. Some of these ways had nothing to do with legislation. Much of them depended upon the leadership of Members of Congress willing to give women's issues great priority, to give them priority over other issues. As a result of women's leadership, much of the great legislation of the last 25 years that benefit women and their families has been passed. Today it is routine to see women walking onto factory floors or driving buses or building things. That was not routine when the Congressional Women's Caucus was formed in 1977. Women now are partners in law firms. They serve on corporate boards and are CEOs. They are doctors of every kind; and yes, they serve as Chairs in this House and in very responsible positions in the cabinet of the United States. Women have improved the quality of the recruits of the Armed Services. If there were no women in the Armed Services, much that we do every day and much of what we depend on every day would not be done nearly as well. None of this has happened because of women in the House of Representatives alone; but no one believes that women in the House of Representatives have made no difference on these great advances for women. To give Members some idea of just how important the work of Lindy Boggs and the women who began the Congressional Women's Caucus has been, I would name only a few of the most important pieces of legislation that have passed this House since the Women's Caucus was formed: The Family Medical and Leave Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the Child Support Enforcement Act, the Breast and Cervical Cancer Mortality Prevention Act, the Mammography Quality Standards Act. The list is very long indeed. In honoring Lindy Boggs, we honor the women who have served in the Congress before and since Lindy Boggs served. It is very appropriate to take note, as she is one of the most distinguished women ever to serve in this body in over 200 years. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi).

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I listened attentively to the remarks of the gentleman from Colorado. I was certainly in agreement with much of what he had to say. What amazed me was how much of his remarks were devoted to things that the Congress cannot do anything about. You can preach to the board of directors and you can talk about bad apples all you want to, but this is the Congress of the United States. We are empowered to take action against the fraud and abuse that is driving our market down. Only near the end of his remarks did the gentleman even mention pending legislation. If a Member of the House gets up on the floor, you would think he would discuss what it is we are going to do about it. Most of the remarks of the gentleman were devoted to some awfully bad apples, some folks who the President has said should go to jail, Democrats have said should go to jail, Republicans have said should go to jail. But if this problem was only about locking up a few crooks, the market would not be responding the way it is. It is about corporate greed, to be sure, and the gentleman was very correct in focusing on the manifestation of that greed. But there are some questions that the public, far more pointed questions that the public is asking the Congress now. Where was the Congress when Arthur Levitt tried to bar consultants from auditing the companies that paid them to consult? The gentleman railed about this matter, but did not tell you that it was Congress that kept Arthur Levitt from, in fact, going forward with a regulation that would have barred precisely that problem which has led to so much of the abuses we are seeing now. Where was Congress when President Clinton vetoed H.R. 2491, a veto that was overridden by the Republican Congress allowing corporations to raid workers' pension funds by significantly lowering the safeguards that were put in place in 1990 by the Democratic Congress? What can Congress do? Congress can look at, and correct, the aura of corporate deregulation of the 1990s led by the Republicans in the House. In 1995, the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, that is a fancy name for a provision, a law, which makes it harder for shareholders to bring securities fraud suits. In the name of reining in the lawyers, what the Republicans did in 1995 was to rein in the shareholders who now have a harder time going to court to sue for the very abuses that are driving the market down as I speak. So if we are going to talk about what is happening out there, by all means let us call out names for the bad apples that are running all around corporate America today, but let us be clear that this problem is far more systemic than a bad CEO here or a terrible accountant there. Today, of course, WorldCom went where everybody knew it was going, down and out, and it took a lot of good folks with them, meaning a lot of average Americans, a lot of workers. I know about the workers because here in the Washington area is perhaps the largest number of WorldCom workers in any one spot, 6,000 workers, lots of whom will not have jobs much longer. Some of them will because some of these businesses are, in fact, going to stay up and running and WorldCom at some point will stabilize. The market was down 235 points. We should be grateful for small favors. It was 400 points on Friday. But in a real sense, my friends, the instability is worse than the dive. What is panicking investors is the sense that this thing has gone wild and is out of control, out of control of us, yes, and that we do not know how to stabilize and restore confidence in our economy. There is only one way to do it. If we deregulated too much, did not regulate enough, there is a bill pending before us, not the weak sister passed by the House, but the Sarbanes bill which the President has said he would sign which passed the Senate of the United States, listen to me, 97-to-nothing. The gentleman talked about bipartisanship. That, my friend, is bipartisanship. A bill that passes by that margin is not about to give in when it comes over to this part of the House. The American people want us to put this matter to rest before we march out of this Chamber at the end of this week for August recess. The biggest bankruptcy in history surely should be enough to make us do just that. Bigger than Enron. Twice as big as Enron. But, Mr. Speaker, I do not conceive the problems we have in quite the same way as is being discussed by the pundits and, for that matter, by the gentleman who preceded me. It is not about corporate misconduct alone. It is not about income restatements alone, even though the combination of the corporate misconduct and the restatements of earnings, meaning that the earnings are not nearly what we said they were when we put out our last statement, those two factors, the restatements, the misconduct, seem to be in the driver's seat of the economy now, driving it as productivity is not driving it, driving it as nothing else is driving it. But the market decline is so serious and is so unpredictable that it could take us into a longer recession if we do not get a grip. One way to get a grip is to pass the Sarbanes bill out of here before the end of the week. I want to focus this evening on the effect on the national economy in a number of different ways of the market dive, of the instability on the average American. I suspect that all over America, these cable shows, these news reports about the market are bringing two reactions, confusion and panic. I want to do what I can to help break this down, at least as I see it. We had best be very careful. The latest measure shows that most Americans have now switched to saying that the country is on the wrong track. On the wrong track is not your usual kind of poll: Are you for it or against it? Is it doing right or doing wrong? It is used to measure such things as confidence in the economy, and when people check off the box saying that the country is on the wrong track, they are checking off several different other boxes as well. They are checking off the box that says I'm going to stop spending; this, even though the economy is growing. I'm going to stop spending. I'm going to go away for a while. I'm going to flee the market. This is serious. Because the economy we have experienced over the last dozen or more years, to the extent that it was a good economy was driven by consumer spending. Consumer spending drives, what is it, two-thirds of a good economy in this country. So when people say it is on the wrong track, we have got to work together. Here is where I am at one with the gentleman from Colorado. We have got to work together to restore this confidence and not bickering over whether the Senate bill, a very strong bill, supported across this country in most press reports, or the House bill which, to be fair, came out very quickly before this market had turned down as badly as it has. There is every reason for Republicans to say, look, it has gotten worse, I now know why the Senate bill which was passed later in the midst of this problem is stronger. Let's wipe this thing away. Let's follow what the gentleman says and use bipartisanship in the name of true recovery of the market and of the economy. This is no longer a story, however, about the market. It is a story about what is happening to the American economy. It is no longer even a story about restoring confidence in the market, as important an element of the story as that is. It is a story now also about the dollar, which has dropped. It is a story about the loss of confidence in corporate governance itself, those who stand above and are supposed to see that the corporation does right, many of whom are supposed to come from the outside of the corporation. It is a story about phony accounting practices. It is also a story about the growth of the deficit. We got another shock last week when the deficit figures came out 56 percent above what had been projected. That is not a matter of miscalculation or mistake. There is something terribly wrong here. The reason for this huge rise in the deficit is that we are experiencing the sharpest decline in receipts by our government since 1955. Today, the deficit is $165.5 billion. Last year it was a $124 billion surplus. When you see that kind of turn-on-its-head phenomenon from surplus to deficit, it is time to start paying attention. This is all part of the same picture, my friends, the same economy, the same problem. The causes of this deficit, of course, are not alone what has happened recently here with the market. The deficit comes from spending for the war, from spending for recession, it comes from corporate and market decline. But those who can count agree that the greatest cause was the $1.35 trillion tax cut. That is all in the same equation I have just enumerated. We are focused today on corporate fraud and abuse as part of the problem, because it is so clearly a part of the problem that Congress can fix. Mere mortals cannot fix market economies. They do have minds of their own. But there are certain things you can do to help correct flaws that are there because men and women have put them there, and abuse is an example of such a flaw. Anytime we see the nouveau companies like Enron and WorldCom, on the one hand, and the old giants like Johnson & Johnson and Xerox on the other, we know that we have an across-the-board problem, we have a culture that has accepted certain practices as normal when the average person would regard them as abusive. That is why to characterize this as just some rich guys buying houses is to greatly detract from what at least the Congress can do. I cannot go out and get all of these guys now. Most of them will not go to jail. We are only now changing the law that might put some of them in jail. But I can do something about the system that gave them a license to steal. That is our job as Members of Congress. I want to focus on who is losing. There has been too little talk about who exactly is losing. If hundreds of companies have done, quote, restatements of earnings, what that means is that your profits in your 401(k) have been erased. What your earnings were as stated 6 months ago turn out to be far greater on paper than the company now comes forward and says they are. Last year, investors lost $30 billion, that is billion with a ``B,'' because of restatements of financial statements alone. Erased. As I speak, there are people sitting down with their 401(k) looking at the result of corporations cutting corners, hyping profits, now restating and downgrading people's portfolios. What we have got to ask ourselves is what does this mean to the average person? And let us indicate who the average person is. At one point we would say the average person is a worker. Today the average person is a worker and an investor. The average person, average person, is in the market. The average person has lost by what has happened in the last several weeks because more than 93 percent of stocks have lost value. Forty percent of the market are simply mutual fund investors. That is pension funds. When an average Joe out there reads that the drop in the NASDAQ is the worst since the Great Depression, what he is hearing is that the average person has lost money, and a lot of money. Every time the market precipitously drops or goes up and down and back as it did today, it went wild today and ended way down, every time that happens, part of somebody's pension or life savings is gone. The ultimate insult is those who lose their jobs and their savings, like folks at Enron who lost their job and had invested in their company and so lost their savings as well. The Sarbanes bill would help to get at that unjust enrichment if the conferees over here listen. I cannot help but wonder where Mr. and Mrs. America would be if they had privatized Social Security. I mean if they were sitting with a privatized Social Security account today, where in the world would they be? It is one thing to have invested some of their disposable income in the market that goes down. It is another thing to have been encouraged by the President and the Republican Congress to invest part of their Social Security and be left without that, the ultimate fail-safe. If this episode does not kill privatization of Social Security, then it is immortal. The value of the average stock dropped 11 percent during the last quarter. That means that the average person probably lost at least that much. Do not look at the 401(k) before going to bed at night. This thing is going to get better. I support entirely what the President is doing to try to encourage people to match up an economy that is growing with what they hear about what is happening to individual stocks and to believe in the American economy. So the whole notion of thinking that this economy is going south and is going to stay there for a long time is, I think, tragically mistaken. One thing we do not want to do is to panic ourselves down and panic ourselves needlessly. We want to understand what is happening, do not want to soft-pedal it. Most people cannot just run out of the market now. If they run out of the market now, they often do not have any other place to go. We take our losses. I think the advice that most analysts are giving, which is stay in there for the long haul if one possibly can, is something most people should do. So I have not lost my faith in the American economy, but I know good and well that the only way to restore the faith of the American people in the American economy is for this body to do what it can to help restore that confidence. So far we have not done that. Look at what is happening at the top of corporate America while the investors, the workers, are being wiped out at the bottom. Twenty years ago corporate executives received 40 times what employees earned. Today it is 500 times what employees earn. I mean they can lose a lot of money and still be in good shape compared with somebody with a pension fund or a 401(k). I must say that I think this reflects in part on the decline in union membership. I think that if the average worker had a union leader who could sit there and say, look, your salary is 500 times what this worker's salary is, there would be less of a disparity between workers and CEOs, and we have the greatest disparity in the world. We also have the greatest disparity not coincidentally between the rich and the poor. Some of them have golden parachutes. They are routine in corporate America, but what has really gotten the average person, the average investor who turns out to be an average worker, outraged is that one can get these golden parachutes when one leaves the company, regardless of the condition of many companies. These are the same executives who are responsible for the accounting tricks and the aggressive accounting, as it is called, that has led one former Republican chair of the SEC to predict that there will be hundreds upon hundreds of companies that will do corporate restatements. That means everybody should get ready to understand that there is less in our little old portfolio than we thought. Some of these executives have been particularly brazen, hiding debt, as with Enron, to make profits look greater. I know a little bit about corporate governance. Before I came to Congress, I served on the boards of three Fortune 500 companies, proudly so. I must say that in each of them, usually the only inside member of the board was a CEO. These were companies which just as a matter of good corporate governance almost exclusively relied on outside members for their boards. One would think that that would be one thing a CEO would want. They would want somebody on the inside to pull their coattail if things were looking a little strange. Very often we cannot see this from the inside. We get too ensconced with it. Virtually all of the board members were outside board members. I was not on an audit committee. We met almost every month. There were a couple of months in the summer where we did not meet. I came to Congress, elected in 1990. Of course I had to give up all corporate boards, but I was on corporate boards during the flamboyant 1980s which in their own way reflected some of what is happening today. These were very conservative companies in the way they were governed. I have seen it from the inside. It does not have to be this way. It does not have to be the way it has been in the last couple of years. So here I stand, a Member of Congress. I think the average investor, the average worker I have been talking about has a right to say to me so what are you going to do about it? I dissent from the view that this has been about corporate greed alone. As I have said when I began these remarks, that would be easy to deal with. If somebody steals my pocketbook and I catch him, I lock him up. My pocketbook is going to be in better shape the next time. This is about corporate greed. Corporate greed was given a license to steal because nobody was watching the store in the way they should have been, and we of the Congress of the United States are deeply implicated in that problem. Inadequate regulation, inadequate laws, repeal and relaxing of many regulations and laws in the 1990s, some at the direction of the Congress of the United States. So we better fix it, because we are part of why it is broken. I will not go line by line down the bill, the strong bill that has been passed in the Senate; but let me give some illustrations of what it would do that I think the average American in a second would want us to do. It extends the statute of limitations so that defrauded investors can seek redress before all the cash is gone. The House bill does not do that; it would eliminate that provision. It requires corporate wrongdoers, the abusers themselves, to give up their ill- gotten gains. That is not in the House bill. You walk out on the street in any city and tell folks that that is not in the House bill, they will tell you to get back in Congress until it gets in there. Even with it in the bill, billions of dollars of lost savings are gone forever; at least we ought to make sure that it never happens again. Another favorite of mine is a whole new loophole that would be opened if we went with the House bill instead of the Senate bill. Do we really want to permit foreign accounting firms to be exempted from the oversight board, the Oversight Accounting Board? Would that not be a loophole that one could drive a Mack truck through, since this is one world? Not only are corporations global, so are accounting firms global. We certainly do not want a U.S. accounting firm to do business through foreign operations and, therefore, avoid all of the regulations and the law that we are putting in place. That is what will happen if the House version rather than the Senate version becomes law. If we cannot fix the economy, we can fix some of the abuses. We can fix those abuses if the Sarbanes bill becomes the bill of the Congress of the United States. Mr. Speaker, as I have been speaking about the average worker who is today the average investor, because one way or another, the average worker is in this market, either through their pension or through their 401(k), one has to be awfully poor and jobless not to be in the market one way or the other. But there are people who are wondering whether or not the effect that this period of abuse has had on markets has now also affected jobs. People are beginning to use the words again, words that we heard about a decade ago, ``jobless recovery.'' The words ``jobless recovery'' ought to be an oxymoron. I thought recovery was all about getting people employed again. But that is not what is happening, and that is what is scary. We now are seeing, for example, in June, the long-term jobless rate rose for the third month in a row. We are told that the unemployment rate is 5.7 percent, that is 8.4 million people. But the true jobless rate is more than 9 percent in May, if we count 1.5 million people who are marginally attached or discouraged because they have looked for so long for jobs; they have just given up. Now, some of the reason we are told for the unemployment is that employers are doing more work through greater productivity. They are using machines; they are using computers. We have a wonderfully productive economy. I agree. This is not all due to the failure of the economy to recover. But I do know this: we are not sharing the gains in productivity with workers, and the reason I know this is I have looked at the average hourly earnings and found that they are still 5 percent below the rate workers earned in 1973. We are talking 25 years ago. So no matter how we look at it, workers are getting the short end, and that is something which, when paired with what has happened to these same workers as investors, is dangerous for the economy and is dangerous for this Congress. The analysts have looked at the recessions in recent years, in 1982, in 1980, in 1975 and noted that if we looked at the first year of recovery from those recessions, job development and increase was 2.4 million. They count March 2001 as the beginning of this recession, and there is no analyst that thinks we will get to 2 million jobs in the first year after this recession. That is why at least some are saying it is a jobless recovery. I step forward to say I hope that is not the case. This is what I care most about. I think the only thing as bad as losing your savings is losing your job. Most people will not believe that there is a recovery at all unless they see that their neighbor, who lost their job, got their job back. They did not lose theirs, but as long as their neighbor is still out of work or going back only on a temporary job, they are not going to go out and spend any money. That, of course, feeds on itself and keeps the market down. That does not help anything, and that does not help anybody; and we have to help change that in this Congress, yes, by working together. The way to work together is a bill on the table. Let us pick it up off of the table and pass it and see if we do not get an immediate reaction from the market. We are on track, according to all of the figures, to recover at below the average employment rate. Now, one does not have to be an economist to know that employment is a lagging indicator. From the point of view of the employer, one can understand that. He does several things as he sees the economy recovering, and about the last thing he does is to hire back his workers. He uses all kinds of other ways to get his work out, including the encouragement to improve your own productivity so you need fewer workers. But ultimately, the test of a recovery, the test of a good economy is that people are working. There is no way to get around that test. We can talk like an economist and say oh, it is fine, the economy is doing just great; but if people are out of work, we will never convince them of that; and we should not be able to. We have to get people back to work. If unemployment is 5.7 percent for the population at large, do understand that that it is twice that for people of color, because that is the way it goes in this country; and over 10 percent unemployment is crisis in minority communities. Jobs count, and yet we hear so little about jobs. Jobs are not unrelated to the market, and the market can recover all it wants to; but if there is joblessness, there is no recovery. When we had the booming 1990s, there were both jobs and a market; yes, an overvalued market, but by no means was it simply overvalued. It was a time of great innovation, the birth of the Internet and the spread of computers, so there was a very good reason why there were jobs and why there was a good market at the same time. Consumer spending is the engine of this economy. People do not spend money when they do not have jobs or when their neighbors do not have jobs, or when they think there is still high unemployment, which is a signal to them: it may get you, so do not spend money. That stops the economy, at least an economy like ours, two-thirds of which is driven by spending by consumers. I am discouraged by the payroll increases in the last month, couple of months, a paltry 60,000. We need a 150,000 to 200,000 payroll increases per month to bring unemployment down. It will not be helped by the WorldCom layoffs and the IBM layoffs and the layoffs we have been seeing left and right just to compound the matter and make things worse. We have a horrific situation that Congress has not even paid the least attention to and that is the state of unemployment insurance. Unemployment is just that, insurance. When you have insurance that means you have to pay your premium. So a worker has to pay into the unemployment insurance funds. And the employer better pay into the unemployment insurance funds, or they both are in grave trouble. But only 40 percent of workers actually receive benefits from unemployment insurance even though they paid into the funds. How would you like those apples? You lost your job, no fault of our own. XYZ is doing layoffs because of restatements. Got to let some workers go to get back to some sense of stability, and you say, well, goodness, while I am looking at least I have unemployment. You better watch out. Lots of folks do not get unemployment. There is a huge change that Congress has failed to update, a change in your economy, a change in who goes to work. Many people are part- time workers, especially women who have small children. They cannot get unemployment insurance in many States, yet the family bought a house last year precisely because that mother could go to work part time because her children are now in elementary school. Some States do not count recent earnings but have to go back a quarter or two. And you have got to meet the earnings threshold as of that quarter in order to get unemployment insurance. Where does this come from? It made perfect sense in the 1950's when it was normal for there to be a mother at home and at that point half of the unemployed got benefits. But what has happened since is that you have got changes that the unemployment laws simply have not accommodated, at least the changes have not accommodated at least to the changes we are seeing in the workforce itself. There are more single parents working, more two- income couples who structure their work day around children and child care. But all of that may mean that if you lose your job, you cannot get unemployment insurance. I bet many did not know that if you cannot work nights or weekends because you have children at home, you cannot get unemployment insurance in ten States. What is this? Is the family-oriented Congress going to let this stand? How much longer? What are we going to do with TANF workers, former welfare recipients who took these low-wage part- time jobs to get off of welfare are now going to be the very first to go and cannot get unemployment benefits? Why are we not giving some priorities to straightening out this antiquated system that is causing so much hardship? I want to call out the name of some of the States that are worse on unemployment insurance, have obsolete requirements that nobody in even a 20th-century or late-20th-century economy would abide. These are folks that need to change their own unemployment laws; and we, of course, need to make changes that only we can make. Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia. I have not counted them, but it is getting to be almost half the States have unemployment insurance laws that unfairly, unfairly hurt working families who have paid into the unemployment insurance fund. That is a crime, particularly when we consider what is happening to the market today. More than 2 million unemployed workers are likely to exhaust their unemployment benefits in the first 6 months of this very year. That is a pending crisis that needs immediate attention. Mr. Speaker, I am concerned at the effects that the market crash is having across the board on our economy, and I have tried to speak to that profound spreading infectious effect. I note that the market is marvelous in its capacity for self- correction. The problem is it overcorrects or undercorrects very often. You see some correction from companies themselves. There are companies that are stepping forward, for example, to expense their own stock options, Coca-Cola, the Washington Post right here in the District of Columbia. But we have a problem that cannot be blinked. When you have a double-digit decline in stocks, traditionally, there is almost a formula that is been at work and the first 6 months, normally recovery there is a double-digit increase. We are not having that increase. All of this speaks to the need to pass a bill before we leave here. When you see an old-line company that no one has said has been engaged in any malfeasance, like GE, posts a 14 percent increase, and yet the stock shows only a minor increase itself, less than 4 percent, you know that there is no confidence in the market, that people do not know whether even a company with that reputation can be believed. We have got to put something behind such companies so that when people read those statements they say, I think those statements are probably right because the Congress has passed a bill that makes them sign on the dotted line and is going to send people to jail if they are not right, because the Congress has shored up all the loopholes. So I think now I can look at those statements and understand that that is probably more or less what is in my portfolio. I can begin gradually to reinvest in the markets. We can do that much. We cannot make people invest. We cannot tell people what to do. I do not know what to tell people to do, and I do not know any analysts that are telling people what to do except the same old thing that they tell us, do not run from the market; stay the course. That is having no effect on investors. They are running as fast as they can. The President asked people to stay the course. That is his job, and he is doing his job by saying to people do not run, stay put, and they are running, anyway. So what is missing? What is missing is something to back that up. We and we alone can back that up. There is nobody in power to do it under the law. There is no other body that can do it. We cannot do it State by State. It can only be done by the Congress of the United States. No, I do not think this is a matter of bad apples alone. I do not spend much time on the President and whether he sold stock or bought stock in ways that, at least today, we say should not be done. I just do not spend a lot of time on that, on whether he borrowed money. I do not even spend a lot of time on the Vice President's problem with Halliburton. I do not think this is the problem. I think the problem is systemic. I do not think the problem is the President and what he did, which probably was not illegal, or Halliburton and the Vice President, and I certainly do not think he intended to do anything illegal. I just do not think that is the problem. I think the problem is that we have taken the covers off of corporate America and found that they were doing anything they wanted to do because nobody was acting like the cop. Somebody has to be the cop. It was not the auditors, it was not the board of directors, and it was not the Congress of the United States. We do not have to be a bad cop. We do not have to engage in police brutality, but somebody has got to stand up there and say what is wrong and what is right, and say if a person does not do what is right, then there is a sanction. If the auditors do not do it, if the board of directors does not do it, then the law will make that person do it. That, Mr. Speaker, is all I think the public has a right to. It is what we have not given them yet. This is Monday. There is still time. We are rushing with homeland security. Important as that is, I do have no hesitation to say, it is not nearly as important to meet the deadline of Friday for the Sarbanes bill. That is what is important. If we get away from here on Friday, that market continues to do what it is doing today and there is nobody here to do anything about it, there is a price we ought all to pay if we get away from here and it continues to be out of control, then at least we can say we have done all we can do. Capitalism and marketing economies have their own mind. They work in mysterious ways, and they are not subject to the command of man or woman all of the time. So I say to my good friends and colleagues that I have come to the floor today because I did not believe it was appropriate to discuss this matter only as one of the individuals without understanding where this greed comes from, that the culture of greed comes because we have allowed it to grow. We cannot stand away from our own responsibility here. We have got to pass laws that say that we at least have shored up the system and instructed it to do right by putting in place laws that put a person at risk if they do not do right. When I go home, I go up the street. When my colleagues go home, they will be going far away. I ask my colleagues not to go one step away from this place without leaving our economy in order to the best of their ability. Pass the bill that is before us. Pass the Sarbanes bill. Let us not quibble about the details. If we make mistakes with the bill in one fashion or another, there will be time to correct them. There will be no time to correct what happens to the economy if we leave this place and the economy, with a mind of its own, goes its own way and its own way turns out to be a way not in keeping with what is best for the people we represent. I believe that the signs and the message from the market have been clear. I ask only that we reply in a way that is appropriate to the moment.