James Oberstar

Mr. OBERSTAR

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield myself such time as I may consume to respond to the gentleman from Iowa, if I may have the gentleman's attention. I have been on the phone--CBO has not--with the Commissioners of Transportation from the principal States and from the Association of Transportation officials. They have committed to have projects obligated or under contract in 90 days for the first $15 billion of this funding, and the next $15 billion in 180 days. Our committee is going to hold oversight hearings. Every 30 days we are going to hold the feet to their fire and a blow torch to their bottom side to make sure that they deliver jobs in the timeframe that they have said they can do. So every State is going to be on call, on notice. This is a dress rehearsal for the next authorization. If we can't deliver jobs in this context, how are they going to do it in the next 6-year authorization bill? The CBO has very conservatively scored on the basis of previous history, not on the basis of the real world that we live in, that I have insisted on.

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time though I am not in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield myself 1 minute to commend the gentleman from Pennsylvania for the amendment that he offers, in the spirit of our committee, to make even more firm our intention that the funds from our committee be stimulus, be in place to create additional jobs, not supplant money that States had already planned to use for highway projects, transit projects, aviation projects, but to ensure that the jobs created are additional jobs in this economy. We want them to continue with their program of projects planned for the current fiscal year, but that this recovery money be supplemental to, in addition to, and to clean up the backlog that States have for months and years have complained to us--by ``us'' I mean on our committee--that they need all this additional money.

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield to the distinguished gentleman from California.

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield myself an additional 1 minute to yield to the gentleman.

Mr. OBERSTAR. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Chairman, how much time remains?

Mr. OBERSTAR. And on the other side?

Mr. OBERSTAR. Will the gentleman yield for further clarification?

Mr. OBERSTAR. The legislation provides for $1 billion in new starts for transit. And Houston Transit has been moving through the process, and we are working to accelerate the consideration of its project to the Federal Transit Administration; and, Mr. Nadler will soon offer an amendment to increase the funding for transit. So I am quite confident that there will be enough capacity to accommodate the gentlewoman's concern.

Mr. OBERSTAR. We have no further speakers on our side. I just want to say I concur with the gentleman from Iowa that we required a maintenance of effort in all of those projects in our committee that had matching funds because we wanted to assure that they are a stimulus, and we want to keep the pressure on State and local government people to carry these projects out. So the gentleman's amendment is needed, it is important, it will assure that we put jobs in place by June, and we ought to support this amendment. I thank the gentleman for offering it. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBERSTAR. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I need not take the whole minute; the gentleman from Florida spoke well for both sides. But in our hearing just a week or so ago, we heard very clearly from the major transit agencies in this country. They have options for buses, they have options on rail cars that could be exercised in days. And we heard from the producer companies, the original equipment manufacturers, they can ramp up production up to 35 percent in days, not weeks or months. These initiatives will create jobs. MARTA, the Atlanta transit agency, said we need 20 new buses, natural gas buses that will clean the air and increase ridership. They will be produced in Minnesota. Muncie, Indiana needs rail cars. The rail cars will be produced in Boise, Idaho. So jobs are being created all over the country, and in Hayward, California, being produced. We need to do this.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Chair, I rise in strong opposition to the amendment offered by the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake). The Flake amendment strikes $800 million in capital grants for Amtrak to repair, rehabilitate, and upgrade its assets and infrastructure. The gentleman's amendment is misguided. Today, we are in the midst of an intercity passenger rail renaissance. People are demanding greater access to Amtrak as an alternative to our over-congested roads and airways; to address continuing anxieties over the cost of fuel; and to combat global warming. Indeed, Amtrak served more than 28.7 million passengers last year, the sixth straight fiscal year of record ridership. The $800 million provided in H.R. 1 will create and sustain family- wage construction and manufacturing jobs and is critical to meeting the national demand for improved Amtrak service. It will help Amtrak overhaul, upgrade, and expand its rolling stock; make required ADA compliance upgrades to Amtrak stations; compete a range of needed station and facility improvements that will brag them to a state-of- good repair; alleviate rail ``chokepoints'' outside the Northeast Corridor; improve trip time and reliability; improve safety features on the network; and increase the pace of the implementation of security improvements across the Amtrak network. Supporting the Flake amendment would not only kill this investment in our nation's mobility, it would also kill the benefits flowing from this investment, including the creation of thousands of new jobs, helping our beleaguered rail and steel industries, and improving the flow of our nation's freight traffic. Supporting this amendment will only hurt America's efforts as it seeks to recover from the current economic crisis. I urge my colleagues to join me in opposing the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. OBERSTAR

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield the remaining time to the distinguished gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Connolly).

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. Our committee's portion, the infrastructure recovery program is targeted. It will be transparent and recipients will be held accountable, and the investments are desperately needed. The construction sector is suffering the highest unemployment rate of any industrial sector, 15.3 percent, 1.4 million construction workers out of a job. Fully implemented, as our committee proposes, we can have a million workers on a construction site in June of this year and generate $325 billion in total economic activity when fully implemented, jobs that cannot be outsourced to other countries, using materials that are made in America, not outsourced beyond our shores. Transparency, we require reporting by every State DOT, every transit agency, every airport authority, every 30 days on the contract awarded, by contract, on the specific jobs, job description and payroll, which we will receive and make public through hearings that we will conduct 30 days after the funding is allocated to the States and every 60 days thereafter. Accountability, an amendment which I expect or hope to offer tomorrow made in order by the Rules Committee, will have a requirement that funds be committed in 90 days, use it or lose it. I am pleased to rise in strong support of H.R. 1, the ``American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009''. With more than 1.4 million construction workers out of work, and the construction industry suffering the highest unemployment rate (15.3 percent) of any industrial sector, this bill is urgently needed to put America back to work. The infrastructure investments funded by this bill will create good, family-wage jobs--jobs that cannot be outsourced to another country, because the work must be done here in the U.S. on our roads, bridges, transit and rail systems, airports, waterways, wastewater treatment facilities, and Federal buildings. For more than a year now, I have worked to ensure that infrastructure investment plays a key role in our Nation's economic recovery. I thank Chairman Obey for working with me in this effort. We consulted extensively on the transportation and infrastructure provisions in the bill. Although the legislation before us today does not include everything I had proposed, it is a very good start, and I am hopeful it can be improved and fine-tuned as deliberations continue. In December 2008, I proposed to House Leadership that the economic recovery legislation include at least $85 billion for transportation, environmental, and other public infrastructure investments. H.R. 1 includes approximately $63 billion for these programs. My proposal adhered to the following six principles: Funds must be invested in ready-to-go projects. I believe we need an aggressive timetable for the use of funds, including a 90-day, ``use- it-or-lose-it'' requirement for 50 percent of the funds, which will produce a ``quick hit'' that will jump-start our economy and create a substantial number of new construction jobs by June. 2. Funds must be used to create green-collar jobs and invest in projects that decrease our dependence on foreign oil and address global climate change. 3. The steel, iron, and manufactured goods required for these projects must be manufactured in the United States. 4. Wherever possible, funds must be distributed by existing statutory formulas, with no earmarks, to expedite the flow of funds. 5. Transparency and accountability in the use of funds must be achieved. 6. States and other recipients of formula funds must maintain their effort in terms of current State and local investment levels. These principles are, in large measure, reflected in the legislation before us today. Although the use-it-or-lose-it deadline in the bill is currently set at 180 days, I am hopeful it can be shortened to 90 days, and I will be offering an amendment to do so. On December 18, I had a lengthy conference call with 14 State Secretaries of Transportation and Chief Executive Officers of public transit agencies. I outlined for them my 90-day, use-it-or-lose-it proposal, which would require them to obligate 50 percent of the funds allocated to them within 90 days. Every one of the participants on the conference call enthusiastically affirmed that they are ready to go within 90 days and can meet the use- it-or-lose-it requirement. In another conference call earlier this month and at a Committee hearing last week, we were again assured that State and local grant recipients are proactively preparing to meet tight deadlines and will be able use these funds quickly. Despite these assurances from State and local officials, some here in Washington are skeptical that a 90-day deadline can be met. This skepticism is why the use-it-or-lose-it deadline was extended to 180 days in last week's Appropriations Committee mark-up. Ninety days is a tight deadline, but that is exactly what we need. Business as usual is not good enough anymore. If the purpose of this legislation is to be achieved, then we must set tight deadlines, and hold everyone--from Federal agencies to State and local grant recipients--accountable to them. I firmly believe that the infrastructure funds provided by this bill can--with the right incentives--produce a substantial number of jobs by June, while also improving our deteriorating infrastructure and laying the foundation for our future economic growth. I thank Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Obey, Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, and Chairman Olver, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Independent Agencies, for working with me throughout the development of this legislation. I strongly urge your support for H.R. 1, a true investment in America's future. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished Chair of the Surface Transportation Subcommittee, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).

Mr. OBERSTAR. I yield the gentleman an additional minute.

Mr. OBERSTAR. How much time remains?

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds simply to point out that on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure the Republicans have been engaged fully from 2007 all through 2008 in fashioning a stimulus initiative. Their ideas have been fully engaged and they have participated in hearings and in the crafting of our portion of this bill. So whatever criticism there may be of other committees, I say it doesn't apply in our Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. In fact, Mr. Mica, my good friend, said our portion is a very good bill. I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson), Chair of the Water Resources Subcommittee.

Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the Chair of our Economic Development Subcommittee, the distinguished gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

Mr. OBERSTAR

Mr. OBERSTAR. Madam Speaker, I strongly support H. Res. 84, which praises the pilots and flight crew of US Airways Flight 1549, and the first responders who assisted on the scene. Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger III and First Officer Jeffrey B. Skiles reacted quickly to engine failure following takeoff, and masterfully glided the plane to an emergency water landing. Flight attendants Sheila Dail, Doreen Welsh, and Donna Dent quickly prepared passengers for landing and assisted in a speedy evacuation. Captain Sullenberger expertly utilized his training and experience to land the plane in the Hudson River, so as to avoid an emergency landing in a densely populated area. This resolution commends the bravery of Captain Sullenberger, who walked up and down the aisles of the aircraft twice to ensure that all passengers left the aircraft safely. He was the last to exit the plane. After landing on water, the flight attendants and passengers removed the emergency doors, and exited onto the wings of the plane. Minutes after, ferry boats, the U.S. Coast Guard, and police boats rushed to rescue everyone. All 155 people on Flight 1549 survived unharmed due to the swift action of the pilots, flight attendants, and rescuers. The passengers, families of those onboard, and all Americans--and those around the world who witnessed this remarkable event unfold, are extremely grateful. This event underscores the importance of vigilance in aviation safety, including flight crew training. In this case, the pilots and flight crew did what they were trained to do to keep everyone safe. I thank the gentleman from New York, Mr. Crowley, for bringing H. Res. 84 to the floor, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. OBERSTAR

Mr. OBERSTAR. Madam Speaker, my colleagues and I join together today to introduce the Smithsonian Institution Facilities Authorization Act of 2009. I thank my colleagues, including Committee on House Administration Chairman Brady, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Ranking Member Mica and Subcommittee Chairwoman Norton, Majority Leader Hoyer, and the Congressional Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, Mr. Becerra, Ms. Matsui, and Mr. Sam Johnson of Texas, for joining me as cosponsors of this important legislation and for their continued efforts to move these authorizations of critical Smithsonian facilities forward. This bill authorizes the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution to design and construct laboratory space to accommodate the Mathias Laboratory at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, SERC, in Edgewater, Maryland, and to construct laboratory space to accommodate the terrestrial research program of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, STRI, in Gamboa, Panama. The bill also authorizes the Board of Regents to construct a greenhouse facility at its museum support facility in Suitland, Maryland. Section 2 of the bill authorizes the Board of Regents to design and construct laboratory and support space to accommodate the Mathias Laboratory at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland. The bill authorizes $41 million to design and construct the facility. SERC is a global leader in the study of ecosystems in the coastal zone. The 52,000-square-foot replacement laboratory will be connected to the existing structure to provide an operationally efficient and environmentally sustainable laboratory facility for SERC's research programs. The project will eliminate the use of temporary, unsafe trailers, address substandard, inefficient laboratory facilities, and will substantially reduce the facility's energy use and maintenance costs. Section 3 of the bill authorizes the Board of Regents to construct laboratory space to accommodate the terrestrial research program of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Gamboa, Panama. The bill authorizes $14 million to construct the 53,283-square-foot facility. STRI is the principal United States organization devoted to research in tropical biology. Tropical biology is critical to finding untapped resources to add to the important supply of food, pharmaceuticals, and fiber of tropical regions. STRI has outgrown the space available at its current facilities and this bill provides for construction of a new lab in Gamboa, Panama, on the east bank of the Panama Canal. Gamboa is protected by geography from the encroachment of civilization and pollution. The terrestrial research program is critical to understanding the role that tropical plants and soils play in global climate change models and for enriching knowledge of tropical biodiversity. Section 4 of the bill authorizes the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution to construct a greenhouse facility at its museum support facility in Suitland, Maryland. This bill authorizes $12 million for the construction of a new greenhouse facility. This facility will support the Office of Facilities Engineering and Operations, OFEO, of the Horticulture Services Division, HSD. This office provides services for the Smithsonian museums and units through planting for exhibits and special events, and through development and management of the Smithsonian public gardens. In the 110th Congress, I introduced two bills to authorize the facilities authorized by this legislation. The Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure reported H.R. 6627, the Smithsonian Institution Facilities Authorization Act of 2008, a bill to authorize the SERC and STRI facilities on September 15, 2008. The House passed this bill by voice vote on September 17, 2008. The Committee reported H.R. 5492, a bill to authorize the greenhouse facility in Suitland, Maryland, on March 10, 2008. The House passed this bill by voice vote on March 11, 2008. Unfortunately, the Senate did not complete action on these bills in the 110th Congress. I look forward to continuing to work with the Smithsonian as the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure moves to address the enormous repair and maintenance backlog of the Smithsonian Institution facilities and to ensure that its facilities meet the highest standards of energy efficiency and conservation. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the Smithsonian Institution Facilities Authorization Act of 2009.

Mr. OBERSTAR

Mr. OBERSTAR. Madam Speaker, the Trinity College class of 1958 celebrated its 50th anniversary of graduation this past May, in a festive gathering of classmates renewing friendships, reliving prized memories of their campus years, and sharing experiences of career paths followed since Trinity days. With my late wife, Jo, I met and came to respect and love the extraordinary women of the class of 1958: Bobbi Marhofer, Fran Collins, Judy Pauley, Carolyn Moynihan, among others, and those, like Jo, who are no longer with us--especially Jo's dearest friend in the class, Sara Lucas. The 1958 commencement address delivered by Senator John F. Kennedy could not have been more compelling or memorable than the reflective, thoughtful retrospective reunion address offered by Class of 1958 alumna Colette Hoppmann Dowling, a gifted, talented, internationally renowned writer. Ms. Dowling invites not only her classmates, but all of us to consider soberly, profoundly, the risky status of older women who live alone--a condition none of the exuberant graduates in 1958 could ever have anticipated. I invite my colleagues to read and reflect seriously on this message and its public policy implications. Colette Dowling is an internationally renowned writer of eight books whose ``The Cinderella Complex'' was translated into 23 languages. She is currently completing training in psychoanalysis and has a private therapy practice in Manhattan. Ms. Dowling gave the following talk to her classmates at the Trinity University Class of 1958's fiftieth reunion, on May 31, 2008, in Washington, DC. Facing Down the Bag Lady: Older Women in America (By Colette Dowling, LMSW) Six years ago, in the spring of 2002, I was barreling down the Mass Pike towards Woodstock, my ten-year-old Saab stuffed to the tops of its windows with computer and printer, fax and stereo, with towels and sheets and comforter, with jeans and shirts and one good outfit in case I needed it. Last but not least, my writing desk, which fortunately can be dismantled for transport. Some surgeries that fall had slowed me down and I'd had to give up my house in Woodstock and spend the winter at my son's, in Massachusetts. Now I was returning to the town I'd called home for 20 years. I rather liked that I'd reached the point where I could travel light, but I had to ask myself: How light is light? I was down to my last sixty dollars and waiting for my next social security check to arrive. The market value of my JP Morgan portfolio? One- tenth of a cent, according to the statement I'd just received. Although my account had long been worthless they were still sending me the things. I guess they were hanging in for the long haul, as I was. Basically, when I wasn't imagining what my parents would think if they could see me now, I was telling myself, ``I'll handle this.'' I was reminding myself that I was unencumbered and had an able mind. But I'd sold almost everything I owned, not in order to enter a convent (although the thought had crossed my mind) but because royalties from my books had seriously dwindled. In recent months I'd found myself thinking, ``I've worked hard all my life, sent my children to college and graduate school. How could this have happened?'' Earlier that year I'd written a proposal for a book on discrimination against women in the workplace. Fifteen publishers read it, and fifteen gracefully declined. ``We agree with her thesis,'' one editor told my agent, ``but the subject is too down.'' Too down, indeed. In my 35 years as a writer, this was my first rejection of a book proposal and it fueled my apprehension that the winds of change were upon me. To stabilize my later-life income I'd begun living in a rented cottage and substantially cut my expenses. But then came two shockers, first, a mastectomy for an early stage cancer. Then, three weeks later, on the afternoon of September 11, I entered the emergency room needing surgery for an obstructed bowel caused by adhesions from a prior appendectomy. That winter, after recuperating at my son's, in Massachusetts, I forged ahead with research for another book proposal. That, too, came to naught. Suddenly it seemed as if everything in publishing had just dried up. For a while, an interest-free loan from the Authors League Fund was what got me by. Two surgeries, two rejected book proposals, three strikes and you're out. I had to come up with something radical and decided to pursue an old dream. I'd long had fantasies of becoming a psychoanalyst. I would need a masters in social work before I could be accepted into an analytic training institute. With two weeks to meet the deadline I applied to Smith College and that summer--the summer of 2002--I began classes. It was going to be a long haul. Smith would take two years and the analytic training another four. I knew that by the time I finished I'd be over 70. Once I entered school things were a little less rocky, financially, thanks to school loans from the government. But of course, once Smith ended so did the loans. I needed a job, at least for the first couple of years of analytic training, while I was getting my practice up and running. I became a counselor for homeless children in the Brooklyn public schools. The kids were great but the commute was hellish. Each day after working with the kids I traveled an hour by subway to the Upper West Side of Manhattan to see patients in the clinic of my analytic institute. For over a year I was clocking fifteen hours a week on the subways, with house music and hip hop leaking from people's headphones. I grew up on Junior Walker and Elvis Presley and yearned for the day when I could buy an Ipod in self defense. After a while, catching a little breathing space, I began to do some research on how my finances stacked up against those of other older women. What I learned was shocking. The economic constraints I was experiencing were not only far from unique, the odds had actually been in favor of my becoming an older woman who had found herself, at sixty-five, facing down the bag lady. Particularly at risk are older women who live alone. Over a decade ago a U.S. Committee on Aging found that half of older women living alone had incomes below $9,500 a year. But whether or not they live alone, the picture for older women is pretty dim. According to the AARP Public Policy Institute, the median income for women over 65 is just about $3,000 above the Census definition of poverty. Older women have slightly over half the money older men have. A third of us are getting by on $12,000 annually, often on much less. Poverty by any other name, although the government doesn't consider an individual officially poor if she's got more than $8,000 coming in. The women who live on nothing but Social Security--and that's almost a quarter of us--certainly fit in the officially poor category. The only person in this country with less economic protection than the older white woman is the older woman of color. Of those over 65 and living alone, seventy-seven percent of blacks and seventy-nine percent of Hispanics are poor, once they've paid their social security taxes, according to the Census Bureau. Forget that they don't have pensions, many women of color don't even get Social Security--those, for example, who work in domestic labor or agriculture, fields of endeavor in which the pay is so low it's often impossible to meet the minimum for a so-called ``working quarter''. Without enough of these quarters, these women who've worked all their lives picking peas and scrubbing floors in order to support their children, end up with nothing. The truth is, women travel the borders of poverty at many points in their--as students, or young single mothers, or as older women living alone. The National Women's Law Center reports that 70% of women in America earn less than $20,000 a year. Forty percent earn less than $10,000. Women are twice as likely as men to be poor, a disparity that increases with age. For some time I'd though there must be something wrong with me for having arrived at such a low down place, some elemental bad thing. It's because I never fully understood that the financial pressures I endured at different times of my life were standard for a women--first, as a woman entering the job market, in 1958, later as a widow and a single mother. I'd always held the conviction that the economic price women pay for bearing children was temporary; sooner or later they catch up. Now that I'm seeing things from the other end of the age telescope, I'm beginning to get the picture. They never catch up. According to the National Center for Women and Retirement Research, for every year a woman stays home caring for a child, she has to work an extra five years to recover lost income. I needed only to apply the five-year-per child formula to my own situation to understand why I hadn't retired at 65. Three children equals fifteen extra years. Eighty, here I come! The dire straits women face in old age have little to do with age per se, Population Bulletin reports. It's the economic disadvantages they face earlier in life that lead to the insecurity they experience when they're older. For example, two thirds of women who work outside the home have no pensions. When they do, their benefits are half of men's. A study from Brandeis that began in 1967 tracked 5,000 women over the course of their lives and found that poverty in old age was the direct result of inequities they'd faced when they were younger. This certainly, is not the way the public thinks about older women's poverty, when it thinks about it at all. I'd always imagined that my work- and income-history would put me in a place far different than where my mother found herself in her final years. A quarter of a century ago I was fortunate to have a best seller, but fortune can be misleading. Royalties don't last forever. After The Cinderella Complex the money I received on subsequent books was only enough to get me through until the next proposal. Like most writers I lived from book proposal to book proposal. I'm proud of the eight books I've written but the work hasn't provided me with long-term security. So here I am now, in my seventies, with the hounds of heaven at my heels. Smith College, like Trinity, has a long history of supporting women. It was a tremendous opportunity I was given when Smith accepted this older woman into its graduate program and gave me a scholarship. Without that support I would not have had the chance to create a better life for myself during my erstwhile ``retirement years''. But still, it is late. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I wake and wonder how long can I sustain the tremendous amount of energy it takes to keep going. I have to face the fact that when I'm in my eighties, my financial situation may not be so different than my mother's after all. After my father died, my mother, at 82, was barely able to make it on Social Security and my father's small teacher's annuity. She had to spend her late life without enough money to be sure it was going to last longer than she did. I can remember her in the lamplight, with her scarlet robe and short white hair, going over her bills. Toward the end, knowing she'd reached a point where she couldn't stay out of poverty much longer--there were the constant co-pays on doctors' bills, and her savings were gone--she was having dreams of finding herself in a bad part of town and not being able to get back home. She was 86 when she died, in the nick of time, her resources depleted. It saddens me that even with assurances of protection from my brother and me she had to endure such anxiety at the end. Studies have shown that concern about ending up a bag lady is women's worst fear, greater than that of getting cancer, greater than that of dying of a heart attack. And why shouldn't they be afraid? To try to protect her old age, my mother had even taken on the machinations of investing. I was still young when I learned that she'd been putting her piano teacher savngs-- ``pin money'', people called such women's earnings, then-- into Certificates of Deposit. That was in the 70s, when CDs were hot. Eventually her slender earnings grew to $40,000. I was inspired by my mother's cleverness in finding a way to support her old age, but alas, my father needed private nursing for a few months before he died and overnight, my mother's pin money disappeared. Women have been conditioned to believe that in the long run it's all going to work out. I'm reminded of the many who've worked part time, forgoing pensions, health insurance and other benefits, because they couldn't afford child care. Women are used to putting others first. As for their later years, they think, How could I end up behind the eight-ball when I've spent my life trying to do what's right? But as they head into their sixties and seventies, behind the eight- ball is exactly where women find themselves. Most that I know, writers, therapists, owners of small businesses, expect to be working ``forever'' because otherwise they won't have enough money to get by. Rallying themselves for a long, late- life phase of work, they push to stay ahead of the curve. For some, for the fortunate, it's a kind of hip old age. We like to think of ourselves as being ``out there''. But there's an ominous feeling that permeates the thinning air past sixty. Women worry about how they're going to survive as the years roll on--and on. They lack a financial cushion for their really old age and believe that no matter what, they must stay healthy enough to keep on working. It's a desperate and shame-inducing situation they find themselves in, and no one's talking about it. That's why it's important for us--the first generation of women to be affected by the women's movement and the first to have a remarkable and unexpected very long productive life ahead of us--to begin speaking up. We must insist that the voices of older women be heard, because no one is going to pick this up for us until we start shouting. We can take some strength--and reduce shame--from the recognition that our numbers are astounding. I believe that if a presidential candidate were to take this on, the ball game would be over. That's how strong we are, if we choose to be. The more of us who speak up, just as we did in the seventies, the greater the chances that attention will be paid. Let the secret out. We owe it to our daughters and granddaughters. We owe it to ourselves. Maybe it isn't too late, even for us.

Mr. OBERSTAR

Mr. OBERSTAR. Madam Speaker, I thank the chairman for the time. We've been here before at this precipice, looking into the abyss of uncertainty--of Lockheed, of New York City's financial crisis, of Chrysler and of post-9/11 airlines, perhaps not all of us personally, but we, this body. And in each of those cases where great uncertainty shadowed over this body, we found a way to make the right decision. And in each of those cases, the government was called upon, the Federal Government, to help the private sector, or in the case of New York City, the city, and through it, the private sector. And in each case, our good judgment was rewarded. Lockheed paid off its loan. Chrysler paid off its securitized loan from the Federal Government with interest. The New York City financial crisis was not limited to New York. It spread into every State of this country. And we saved each hometown bank by coming to the rescue of New York City. And I stood here in the well of this House with the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young), then the chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, to ask this body to look over the horizon to what would happen on Monday if on Friday we didn't propose to rescue the airlines who had been shut down by the Federal Government in a national security interest and provide loan guarantees. And while it stumbled, the proposal stumbled and faltered that evening, it was a commitment to come back the following week and to do it and to do the right thing. And in those negotiations, I remember very well Speaker Hastert.