Major Owens

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Would he like another study? Or does he want to repeal it forever and ever? This is off the table forever?

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, does that mean that the gentleman does not agree with what the Senate passed?

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, as the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, the last 6 years I have lived with the hearings, the dialogue, the debates on this issue, and I do not want to repeat all of those technical considerations. I do want to submit for the RECORD a chronology of OSHA ergonomics standards preparations over the last 10 years. I have many extra copies if the majority wants them. We also have a list of the questions that we asked the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine to resolve. We have the questions that we posed to them, and we also have their answers. Earlier today the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood) said that there was some disagreement with the notion that ergonomics was a legitimate cause of problems in the workplace, and he quoted 1 of the 19. There were 19 experts on the panel, and one dissented. When you have a panel and one dissent among the people who are on the Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine, then you have an authoritative statement. We ought to address the political problem here. Here is the real problem. Reinforced by an army of business lobbyists, the Republican majority has launched a blitzkrieg to obliterate the recently issued ergonomics standards by using the Congressional Review Act. That act was passed under the Newt Gingrich doctrine of politics as war without blood. This Republican offensive is more than one invasion of one theater of the war. This is just the beginning. By ruthlessly destroying the ergonomics standards at the beginning of this 107th session of Congress, the Republican majority is attempting to send a message of intimidation to all the working families of America. We will not be intimidated. We will strive to work for the families of America. Mr. Speaker, reinforced by an army of business lobbyists, the Republican majority has launched a blitzkrieg to obliterate the recently issued OSHA Ergonomic Standard by using the Congressional Review Act passed under the Newt Gingrich doctrine that ``politics is war without blood.'' This Republican offensive is more than one invasion of one theater of the war. The operation against ergonomics is also conceived as a master stroke of symbolic and psychological warfare. By ruthlessly destroying the Ergonomic Standard at the beginning of the 107th Session of Congress, the Republican majority is attempting to send a message of intimidation, and to show that it will utilize its dominance of the political process in Washington to annihilate its perceived most formidable enemy--the organized workers in labor unions. Millions of victims and casualties who are not union members will suffer greatly as a result of this barbaric attack. The majority of the working families in America have at least one member who could directly benefit from the preventive measures required by the new Ergonomic Standard. They are the civilian casualties of this massive Republican offensive. After an exhaustive two-year study at a cost of $1 million conducted by 19 experts in the field of causation, diagnosis, and prevention of musculoskeletal disorders under the direction of the Academy of Sciences, they found that ``there is a direct relationship between the workplace and ergonomic injuries can be significantly reduced thorough workplace interventions.'' Mr. Speaker, earlier today, during the debate on the rule Mr. Norwood quoted from the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine's report. I would like to make very clear the fact that Mr. Norwood was quoting from the only dissenting view on the panel of 19 experts. Here are the key findings of the study by the Academy of Sciences: The Problem. ``Musculoskeletal disorders of the low back and upper extremities are an important national health problem, resulting in approximately 1 million people losing time from work each year. These disorders impose a substantial economic burden in compensation costs, lost wages, and productivity. Conservative cost estimates vary, but a reasonable figure is about $50 billion annually.'' The Cause. ``The weight of the evidence justifies the identification of certain work-related risk factors for the occurrence of musculoskeletal disorders of the low back and upper extremities * * * the panel concludes that there is a clear relationship between back disorders and physical load; that is, manual material handling, load moment, frequent bending and twisting, heavy physical work, and whole- body vibration. For disorders of the upper extremities, repetition, force and vibration are particularly important work-related factors.'' The Answer. ``The consequences of musculoskeletal disorders to individuals and society of the evidence that these disorders are to some degree preventable justify a broad, coherent effort to encourage the institution or extension of ergonomic and other preventive strategies.'' The Republican Leadership--once desperate to have confirmation of a sound scientific support for the ergonomic rule--is ignoring the very report it commissioned for a million dollars and instead plans to gut a rule ten years in the making. This action shows their contempt for millions of workers who want to work hard and stay healthy. And this action shows contempt for the findings of the nation's leading ergonomic scientists who have thoroughly documented the tragedy of ergonomic injury and illness. I am submitting for the Record the seven questions Congress asked the National Academy of Sciences and the answers arrived at by the experts on the panel. The strategy of the Republican war machine first seeks to crush the will of the opposition with its speed and overwhelming support from contributors. After the defeat of ergonomics, overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Davis-Bacon Prevailing Wage Law are the next targets with many other islands of labor law to be attacked and subdued on a great march toward the ultimate objective--``paycheck protection.'' The concepts of minimum wages and cash payment for overtime may be eliminated forever; or at least for the duration of this administration there will be a ``final solution'' for these longstanding objects of Republican contempt. The term ``barbaric'' is most appropriate for the description of this partisan onslaught. All logic, reason and science has been bulldozed off to the ditches. Primitive, brut political force has now overwhelmed ten years of scientific research, public testimony, empirical evidence and long debates, dialogues and policy deliberations. The attached chronology which ranges from August, 1990 to January, 2001 presents a record of the most patient Democratic process possible; however, suddenly the troops are massed on the border and this time-honored process has been declared ``non-negotiable.'' Barbarians often win battles; however, the working families of America are not without their own means of counterattack. We must begin today with a new campaign in a more direct language: an Ergonomic Standard means salvation from paralyzing injuries. It means preventing total disability of the muscles and joints needed to earn a living. Working families are the troops who must be made to understand clearly what is at stake today and in the weeks and months ahead as the Republicans march on to eradicate labor laws. Working families must also understand that in a war as vicious as this one that has been declared by the Republicans, there is no substitute for victory. Working families must mobilize to achieve unconditional surrender by taking control of the Congress in 2002; and by regaining the White House in 2004. Yesterday was Pearl Harbor for working families. We have nothing to fear but sluggishness, wimpishness and betrayal by the Benedict Arnolds among us. We have the votes and we believe fervently in the Democratic process. Reason and justice are on our side and we shall all experience our political VE Day. We shall overcome. Musculoskeletal Disorders and the Workplace--A Study by the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine, January 2001

Mr. OWENS

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

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, In his inaugural address President Bush left us with one profound image: the specter of an ``Angel in the Whirlwind'' guiding the fate of our nation. Democracy in America has survived and expanded despite the numerous whirlwinds and storms. At several critical periods our ship of state could have been blown off course and been wrecked on the rocks: from the challenges of Aaron Burr and Jefferson Davis, to the grabbing greed which spawned the depression and the racist totalitarian threat of Hitler's Nazism. Always, in the past, the churning American political process has produced the leadership capable of conquering crises. But now we are confronted with a new kind of subtle and invisible emergency. We are confronting an enemy that has no guns. Internal smugness, arrogance, and the lack of empathy and compassion are attacking the moral spinal cord of the nation. In a previous inaugural address President Clinton correctly identified America as the ``indispensable nation.'' Will the ``Angel in the Whirlwind'' guide us to new leaders who will know how to use our great wealth and power to fulfill this mission? At critical and pivotal points in our past, that great ``Angel in the Whirlwind'' has delivered saviors: Thomas Jefferson with his bold ideas and actions; Abraham Lincoln, frontier toughness with compassion far beyond any of his peers; Franklin Roosevelt with the vision and decisiveness that ended depression hardships and defeated Hitler. Now prosperity has brought the United States to a different kind of pivotal point in history. The question is, shall a nation with the unprecedented means to enhance survival and the resources to facilitate a less difficult pursuit of happiness for all of its people; shall such a nation at this critical moment choke on its own pettiness and greed thus rendering itself morally disabled forever. We pray for deliverance by the ``Angel in the Whirlwind.''

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, in the President's address last night he reaffirmed the fact that education is one of his top priorities. It appears from the speech that the President made that the only priority which ranks above education is the tax cut that is being proposed. I salute the President for his selection and for his devotion and dedication to education as the number one priority. I think it is very important that he has taken note of the fact that this has been the priority of the American people for the last 4 years or 5 years. Education has ranked as either the number one priority or somewhere in the top two or three priorities for the last 5 years. So the President is acknowledging the fact that in a democracy, the directions really come from the bottom. He is not alone. The previous President chose to call himself the Education President, President Clinton. At one point he said he wanted to be the Education President. And he and the younger Mr. Bush are not the only ones. Father Bush, I think, first coined the phrase Education President. The father of the present President said he wanted to be the Education President. Before that, Ronald Reagan launched the movement to reform education in America with a report called A Nation At Risk, A Nation At Risk. We are now in our fourth President who has chosen to make education a number one priority. We should be making some tremendous progress in terms of the improvement of education in our Nation. I regretfully report, however, that this is not the case. Despite the fact that lip service has been paid to the reform of education in America by the last four Presidents, the progress has been fairly slow. The flaw is in the lack of resources. When A Nation At Risk was issued as a report by President Ronald Reagan, President Reagan offered no program with any dollars. He offered strictly jawboning, lectures about how important it was to improve education. President George Bush, following President Reagan, did offer a program, but it was a very sparse program in terms of dollars. There were a lot of words and a lot of lectures again, but very little was offered in terms of resources. President Clinton offered a dramatic blueprint for the reform of education. President Clinton did build on some of the activities of President Bush, Father Bush. Father Bush had launched the governors campaign to improve education. There was a huge governors conference and the governors came together, and they set forth goals to be achieved. There was a step-by-step progression forward, which President Clinton as a governor, Governor Clinton of Arkansas, had been involved in, and President Clinton did build on what President Bush had started. President Clinton also added some dollars to the master plan. I think, relatively speaking, if you compare the record of President Clinton on education to the record of his predecessor, Father Bush, to the record of Ronald Reagan, President Clinton had a very outstanding record in terms of resources committed as well as the necessary job owning. But even the Clinton administration did not dare, for whatever reason, which I do not care to go into today, set forth a bold blueprint and the resources to match it, which would deal with the problem in a constructive way. Why? Why is it? Repeatedly there is a sense within America that ordinary people, the public opinion polls keep showing that there is a gut reaction, a gut feeling that nothing is more important than education. There is a feeling that we are not doing enough to improve education in America. Why is that? The gut reaction and the common sense feeling does not translate into really bold action. We have had bold action within the last 5 years. We have had bold action in terms of a transportation plan. One of the boldest initiatives taken in the domestic front was the bill which authorized $218 billion over a period of 6 years for transportation projects, road building, bridges, et cetera, et cetera. So we did some big spending on a domestic issue. We have been spending large amounts of money, of course, on defense. And continually under all of these Presidents, the defense budget has done very well. But in the domestic arena, we moved in a very bold way to fund a transportation act which provided $218 billion over a 6-year period. That is the kind of action that I always dreamed of, and I think it was necessary. I maintain it still is necessary if we are really going to come to grips with what has to happen in the area of education. Education suffers from a lack of resources, and that is the primary problem. We cannot escape that. No amount of jawboning and no amount of theorizing, no amount of testing will escape the fact that there is a definite lack of resources. Let me just set the stage and establish some parameters which are both local and national. At the local level, in New York City, we have just received the results of a 7-year court case. A ruling has been made after a 7-year trial by a Supreme Court judge that New York State has systematically been short-changing New York City in education funding over the years. The order of the judge is that New York State must take steps immediately to provide greater resources to New York City. It is at the local level. The Nation's largest city, 1.2 million children, about 1,100 schools, more than 60,000 teachers. It is at the local level, but I think it has good, strong implications for the entire Nation. The lack of resources is pinpointed by Judge Leland DeGrasse's decision, which declared that New York City schools have been grossly neglected and underfunded. I maintain at this point that despite all the rhetoric and discussion about education at the national level through the last four Presidents, the problem in America is that the schools of America are grossly underfunded. Now, many of the Members of Congress and many members in government are high places, live in neighborhoods where their schools are doing all right, but I am talking about across the Nation as a whole. There are too many schools that need considerable resources that they are not receiving. They need the resources in the areas of physical infrastructure. They need resources in other areas. Mr. Speaker, in fact, I think that this applies to all of America, Justice Leland DeGrasse's decision in the case of New York City versus the State reads as follows, I am just going to read a section from his conclusion, this court has held, I am quoting from Justice DeGrasse's decisions, this court has held that a sound basic education mandated by the education article consists of the foundational skills that students need to become productive citizens capable of civic engagement and sustaining competitive employment. In order to ensure that public schools offer a sound basic education, the State must take steps to ensure at least the following resources, which as described in the body of this opinion, for the most part, currently are not given to New York City's public school students. The following resources are not provided for New York City's students. This is the finding of a judge after 7 years of trial. Number one, sufficient numbers of qualified teachers, principals and other personnel; number three, appropriate class sizes; number three, adequate and accessible school buildings with sufficient space to ensure appropriate class size and implementation of a sound curriculum; number four, sufficient and up-to-date books, supplies, libraries, educational technology and laboratories; number five, suitable curricula, including an expanded platform of programs to help at-risk students by giving them more time on tests; number six, adequate resources for students for extraordinary needs; number seven, a safe, orderly environment. Education discussions become extremely complicated. People think that there is a morass out there, and there is no way out of this endless discussion of what it takes to reform education in America. Here we have a judge that has listed the simple elements, the components of what is needed to establish a sound basic education system. Those are the terms that he uses repeatedly. I think in America we can, first of all, expect from every jurisdiction, every school district in America, every State, every jurisdiction should seek to establish a sound basic education. That is a terminology used in the State constitution. Not all States may use that term, but basically when States talk about the right responsibility for providing an education, it basically means the same thing, a sound basic education. Let me go back for a moment and repeat his definition of a sound basic education. That is an education that allows students to become productive citizens, productive citizens. How does he define a productive citizen? A productive citizen is a citizen capable of civic engagement and sustaining competitive employment. It sounds too simple to be true. But this is what it boils down to. We need to produce students who are capable of civic engagement and sustaining competitive employment. Both of those are rather complicated. Not complicated, it is easy to understand the concept to fulfill that concept. I do not want to oversimplify it. To be capable of civic engagement; what does that mean? Surely it means that students produced by our system ought to be able to evaluate the pronouncements of officials seeking election and be able to vote in intelligent ways in election. It surely means that they ought to be evaluate the system that we have structured to provide for the election of our officials and be able to come up with system that is are fair and just. Civic engagement means more than the old civic books which talk about how a bill becomes law in Congress. I have those little booklets I give to the kids on how a bill becomes law in Congress, very similar to how a bill becomes law in the State legislature. Those little steps of the introduction and the action in the committee and the action on the floor and all of that is elementary and very inadequate in terms of telling students about what is necessary to have appropriate civic engagement. How do we get elected? We have elections. We have primaries that elect people in the parties. We have elections between the major parties on Election Day. We all go to the polls. The polls are fair. They are policed by policemen and monitors. Both sides can have people who are judging whether or not the election is being conducted fairly, and it all appears to be a wonderful exercise that we can all applaud. Students are not told about the fact that in all the counties of America you have different systems for electing. They are not told about the fact that machines have to be purchased because of varying circumstances. Some machines are very old and do not function very well. They are not told about the fact that from one county to another, you may have different ballots and some ballots are more difficult than others. Human beings who are political entities, Republicans and Democrats, make up the ballots. And once you have the election and you have to have a count, there are human, subjective judgments that enter in, and you may have to have court cases, and, finally, the case may get to the Supreme Court that voting in our democracy is not as simple as it may be. Mr. Speaker, to have students educated in a way which makes them capable of civic engagement, we have to do more in that area, and understand that it is not as simple as it has been made to appear over the last 100 years in our civic textbooks. In the area of sustaining competitive employment, things are very complicated. There was a time when sustaining competitive employment meant all you had to do was to know how to read a few signs and follow instructions and follow a few written instructions, but mostly oral instructions, and the straw boss, or the foreman, in the plant would tell you which widget you have to put on which line as it moved and how many boxes you have to pick up. For a long time, the young people coming out of our schools were absorbed by the manufactured industries. Most of them, for many years, did not even complete high school, and it was not necessary in order for them to obtain competitive employment. Sustaining competitive employment 30 years ago was very different than sustaining competitive employment now. So sustaining competitive employment now, if the State is responsible for making it possible for students to sustain competitive employment, then the State must provide the kinds of tools and equipment that are in a present working environment. The computer is dominant in the present working environment, whether one is talking about an assembly line in a factory or inside an office where the production of data and the distribution of data, the retrieval of data is the only concern. The computer science digital devices, they have all taken over. If one has schools that do not have educational technology that is sufficient, computer labs, then one is not providing sustaining competitive employment. So a decision like this challenges the system. When a judge says one must produce students who can become citizens capable of civic engagement and sustaining competitive employment, one is laying down a formidable challenge to the education system of today. A challenge in America today I think is how do we meet the challenges of our complex modern world. What kind of education system do we produce. We are a very powerful, smug, fat, comfortable empire at this point. Rome was just a village compared to the United States of America. Nothing has ever existed like the United States of America. Never have so many been so comfortable. Never have so many had benefits provided for them. Never have so many enjoyed the fruits of productivity in the area of technology and science and the fruits of productivity in agriculture. America is great partially because of the fact that there is a common sense out there which says education is important. Something in the air that Thomas Jefferson breathed made Thomas Jefferson decide I will go and establish the University of Virginia. The University of Virginia later became the model for all of the land grant colleges. We have every State of the Union that produce something similar to the University of Virginia. We are better in terms of the land grant colleges helped by the United States Government. The Federal Government established the Morrel Act. The Morrel Act provided the funding for land grant colleges. Land grant colleges define themselves in much the way the judge is defining basic education here, not in terms of Latin and philosophy and Greek, but whatever is necessary to allow citizens to become productive. So agriculture, engineering and topics that usually were not taught in higher education institutions were the primary curricula of the land grant colleges. So the land grant colleges were a part of the American instinct to push for more education, and our laws which made every State take on the responsibility for education. There is nothing about a responsibility to provide education in the United States Federal Constitution. But every State has something in their State Constitution which takes on the responsibility for the provision of education. Very American. Later on, after World War II was ended, that same instinct, the same drive from the bottom to assert that education is number one priority led to the creation of the Bill of Rights for the G.I. bill, which allowed every returning American soldier to get the funding for an education from high school equivalency diplomas and high school diplomas, all the way up to college, college degrees. Our universities and colleges were filled up with G.I.s going to school. They were later able to take on the revolution of technology. Automation came along, and a number of new developments came along after World War II that we were able to sufficiently master because we were producing out of our universities and colleges a broad base of very highly trained people who could take that on. So in America, we have had that push and that drive for education before. The question is now are we too smug, are we too petty, are we too driven to penny pinch that we cannot conceive of anything as great as the G.I. bill which said every soldier can go to school. If one wants to be a barber, one can get money to get trained as a barber. If one wants to be a mechanic, one gets money to be trained as a mechanic. If one wants to be a doctor of philosophy, one can get the money. The government will pay for one to become a doctor of philosophy. We do not have that kind of spirit which says that, in order to earn a living in the future, every student is going to have to be exposed to computers and have some kind of basic computer literacy; reading, writing, arithmetic, and computer literacy. If one is going to have computer literacy, then education is going to cost more than it costs before. Here we are with President Bush producing a plan which says he will leave no child behind. I have read the President's outline. I have a copy right here. ``The bipartisan education reform will be the cornerstone of my administration,'' by George W. Bush. It is an impressive outline of what he intends to do. The President has not yet introduced a bill. The Republicans who are on the Committee on Education and the Workforce, I serve on the Committee on Education and the Workforce where this bill would have to be, this function, most of it will have to come through our committee. The President has introduced no bill yet. But his outline is interesting. I would applaud President Bush in his outline for emphasizing at the very beginning the fact that we need to focus most of our resources that are available on the schools that need the most, on the failing schools, on the schools which have the most at-risk students, the most disadvantaged students. I would applaud that. It seems that that is common sense, one might say. Why should one applaud the President for immediately proposing that our primary first dollars be focused intentionally on the schools that are in the greatest need? Why would not that be understood by everybody who is interested in improving education in America? It is not a self- evident fact. It is not endorsed by all the members of the President's party. The great battle between the Democrats on the Committee on Education and the Workforce and the Republicans on the Committee on Education and the Workforce both in the House of Representatives and, I think, in the other body the same problem has arisen, is that the Republicans on the committee want to take the limited dollars that we have available in title I and other education programs and spread them out further. They want to have flexibility. They want to have block grants. So the President's first statements, which call for intensifying and focusing more of the dollars on the schools in greatest need runs contrary to the position that the members of his own party have taken in the House of Representatives. Let me recapitulate, Mr. Speaker. I really am talking about the education imperative. I am agreeing with the President of the United States that we ought to have education as one of our number one priorities. I think it should be the number one priority ahead of the tax cut even. I think that the President's proposals deserve careful analysis, and I would start by applauding the first parts of his proposal which call for focusing on failing schools, disadvantaged students. Our resources should go there first. That seems to be a self-evident conclusion, but it is not. The Republicans in the House of Representatives on the Committee on Education and the Workforce and some Democrats in the House have not seen fit to make that kind of dedicated proposition, support that kind of dedicated proposition. In fact, when I talk about school construction and the fact that the first dollars for school construction ought to go to the areas which still have coal burning furnaces in their schools, or asbestos, overcrowding so great that the schools cannot provide lunch for the youngsters except on a three-cycle program where they start feeding the first cycle at 10 o'clock in the morning because of the overcrowding. They force students to eat lunch at 10 o'clock in the morning. They have just had breakfast already, so why should they be forced to eat lunch? I said we should give the priority to those areas. Most of those kinds of schools and situations are in the inner cities. I have had Democratic colleagues who talk about, no, we do not want any construction bill which does not give equal treatment to all districts, you know. So I have a bill which calls for funding all school districts according to the number of school-age pupils. All districts feel that they have a need. Some may need money for computerization and improving the safety facilities around the school. Some may need money for remodeling the auditorium, the gymnasium. Others may need money for life and death matters like getting rid of a coal-burning furnace which is jeopardizing the health and safety of the children or getting rid of asbestos. Others may need money to build new schools because of the fact that the overcrowding is strangling the whole process of education. So President Bush, I will unite with him, and I hope that my Democratic colleagues in the House of Representatives, in general, beginning with those on the Committee on Education and the Workforce, will unite with the President on the proposition that resources ought to be better focused. Whatever we have to offer ought to be focused on the schools that are failing and the areas which have students with greatest need. Title I was conceived that way. The Federal Government became a partner in education to help with poverty areas whereas districts were too poor to educate youngsters. Lyndon Johnson fashioned the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and title I as a primary provision of that act which funnels funds into districts according to the number of children who qualify for free lunches. Free lunches are provided by the United States Department of Agriculture. If one is eligible for those free lunches, that is the definition of the level of poverty that one must have in order to qualify for title I funds. So we have a yardstick, a barometer for measuring where the problem is. The correlation between poverty and lack of achievement is well established. The number one cause of poor school performance is poverty. Now, let me not be misquoted that all poor children are in a position where they cannot perform; that there are no schools in poor neighborhoods where children do not perform very well. There are numerous exceptions. The poverty does not fix the children into a pattern where it is impossible for them to perform well. One of the best schools in my district, PS-161 on Crown Street, I was surprised to find out that 90 percent of the children, more than 90 percent of the children in that school qualified for free lunches, which means that they come from poor homes. Yet, that school performed as a second or third best sixth grade reading class in the whole State of New York. The State of New York, of course, is very variant. The State of New York has very rich communities, very rich school districts. I think the school district in New York State that spends the most money per pupil spends $24,000 per pupil. $24,000 per pupil is spent in the richest district. In New York City, we are spending between $6,000 and $7,000 per pupil. Nevertheless, there are children performing in some of these poor schools who can outperform schools in richer school districts. So it does not lock them in, but generally, generally poverty and low performance go together. The correlation has been proven over and over again. So I congratulate President Bush on saying we should focus the money. I will unite with President Bush in a bipartisan cooperation. I call on all my colleagues to unite with President Bush to push for the concentration and the focus of Federal resources in the areas that need money, that need resources most. Let us not have competitive grants in education anymore. Any additional money, and we need far more money, should not be funding that is put out there and then a proposal must be submitted and those who submit proposals will have to compete. They will have a peer review process, and the best written proposal will get the money. What we find is that the districts in America who have the best proposal writers are walking off with the available funding. After-school centers, for example, 21st century learning centers they call them, they provide after-school money, Saturday tutoring, summer school money, very exemplary programs. I do not think anybody in the Congress, Republican or Democrat, who would say these programs do not work. If we are able to get after-school centers to provide that extra tutoring and Saturday tutoring, the things that go into those programs, then children can succeed, and we have seen the progress that students make. But the funding of the Federal Government for the 21st century learning centers does not even reach one quarter of those in need at this point, and those that are reached are not the most needy because it was a competitive grant and proposals had to be submitted and what we find is the best proposal writers are prevailing. All future grants in education should be given out on the basis of need. In other words, we can target the areas where the need is greatest by following the formula for free lunches. The school districts which have the largest numbers of pupils who receive free lunches are the poorest districts. We should not have them compete with other districts for after-school learning centers. We should say there is where the need is and additional funding goes to meet this need. Community technology centers. Community technology centers were proposed by the Congressional Black Caucus. We called them storefront computer centers because what we wanted to do was to have a situation where the deficiency in the homes of poor children would be compensated for by having the availability of computers in places where members of the family as well as the students could go to practice. They need access to a computer. Among other things, they need access to a computer in order to be able to master computer literacy. So a computer storefront center concept was a response of the Clinton administration to a request made by the Congressional Black Caucus. I applaud the Clinton administration for their response. I applaud the Republican majority for agreeing to the funding. But the computer storefront centers in the bureaucratic process and the bureaucratic approach became computer technology centers. Already we had ratcheted them up to another level beyond the simple storefront centers that we talked about. The very title that came out for the RFP, the request for proposals, went out to everybody for computer technology centers. Already the proposal was more complicated than a simple gathering of computers at a storefront place, with some personnel to keep it open late at night and on Saturdays. It became something more difficult. The proposal writers went to work all over America. Now, there are some school systems and some schools themselves that have excellent proposal writers. If there is a proposal, with guidelines, regardless of the circumstances on the ground, they will produce a magnificent proposal. And when the peer review readers get that proposal, they will mark it 100. It has no relationship with the actual need. Those who are most in need usually do not have excellent proposal writers. Those schools have teachers and personnel who have moved on, and the schools that have the least experienced personnel, the ones least likely to have good proposal writers, or the districts who are struggling to meet the needs of putting people in the classroom every day, they cannot afford to hire somebody who becomes a specialist in proposal writing. So what is happening in the Clinton administration, where we had funding for some good programs, all the way from Gear Up, community technology centers, and the Safe Schools and Drugs Act, there were a number of different programs that have been funded on the basis of competitive submissions and that process has led to the pupils and the schools and the district of greatest need not having received those programs. So one thing the President can do, and we will certainly cooperate with him, is to have a provision which requires that programs that are deemed to be necessary to help improve the performance of disadvantaged and at-risk students are programs that should be targeted to those areas without a competitive bidding process. We have many other programs that do get a distribution of their funds based on need or formula. We could have a formula which says if there are certain numbers of students which receive the free lunches or who are eligible for Title I funding, then that helps to drive and determine where the need is and that is where we should place the programs that we deem are necessary to improve education. So I agree with that point that the President starts with, and we certainly hope we can make that work in concrete terms. One of the problems we will be up against is that the members of the committee who are Republican have a Republican position in the House in general that is going in the other direction. They do not want to target the money into the poorest districts. They want to have block grants. The block grant goes to the State and the State governor determines where the money goes. The Federal Government is out of it. That is disaster, in our opinion. Block grants have flexibility. We can have a grant which is for a specific program, like Title I; but the flexibility is so great until they can skim off money for administration, they could use some of it to improve the parking lot in a richer district. All kinds of things can happen when we grant flexibility to the States. It can go in the direction which is opposite where the President has chosen for it to go. Second point. President Bush says we will concentrate resources, and after we concentrate resources we will test. As a result of the testing process, we will make judgments. After 2 years, any school that is still failing will be required to allow its students to choose a public alternative. Public school choice will be mandated after 2 years. After 3 years, any school that is still failing will be closed down and declared ineligible for Federal funding and will be privatized. The schools would have an option. They can give the students vouchers and send them off to private schools, or they can become charter schools, or they can become contracted to profit-making contractors who would run the schools. Three years. I agree that we should focus on failing schools. I do not agree that 3-years-and-a-school-is-out is an appropriate process. Three strikes and you are out. Three years and you are out. I think that two problems exist there. Three years is not enough time. We do not transform institutions in 3 years. We do not solve problems involving human beings that fast in 3 years. That is a pretty harsh judgment to make: either improve, come up to standard in 3 years, or we close it down. We do not say that to any other set of institutions. We would have closed down the CIA and the FBI if we judged that harshly: either improve or perform. The CIA did not see the Soviet Union collapsing. Half of its resources were devoted to the Soviet Union, and they did not see the economy of the Soviet Union collapsing until I think the networks announced it to them. The CIA allowed Aldrich Ames, the person who was in charge of counterespionage, to sit there for years and destroy their effectiveness in terms of counterespionage. But we have not cut the CIA budget. We have not done anything to an institution that had a gross failure. We have had gross failures. The FBI now has grossly failed in the area of their own counterespionage operation. Nobody has dared to say we should get rid of the FBI because of the fact that the chief of counterintelligence was himself the mole and directing the operation for so many years, 15 years. We do not judge institutions anywhere else in our democracy so harshly. Why do we say to a school in a neighborhood struggling to educate its youngsters that they must either improve or we take all the Federal money away in 3 years? They have 3 years. So I think we ought to have some flexibility. We will work with the President on that area, and maybe we can have some flexibility, between 5 and 7 years, some kind of barometers of progress where school improvement at a certain rate we can assume is going to keep going and not harshly move in to take over after 3 years. The problem with the 3-year mandate is that there are many of us who suspect that it is a setup for failure; that by mandating 3 years, we set the school up to become privatized, with the real objective to privatize the schools of America. It is no secret that the members of the majority party want to go to vouchers, although not for their own school districts. When I question members of the majority party who advocate vouchers for poor districts, vouchers for the inner city, they do not want vouchers. They do not go to their own constituency and their own neighborhoods and say we are in favor of vouchers, because most of their neighborhoods where their children go to school have good schools. They have good public schools. Our goal is to have public schools as good as the ones that the majority of the Members of Congress have in their neighborhoods. Public schools. However, the push for vouchers cannot be resisted. The push for privatization cannot be resisted. The President now and the majority party in the House of Representatives, the majority party in the Senate, all are pushing for privatization. So what better situation to allow for a massive privatization of the schools in America than that to set up the schools for failure and say that they must succeed in 3 years or they must be privatized; they will be out of business? The other part of that is in 3 years what kind of resources does the President propose to provide? In 3 years, what kind of funding will the Federal Government provide for these schools? How will we increase what exists already? The President proposed in his speech last night that education would be the area of domestic programming to get the largest increase in his budget. He proposes to increase education funding by 10 percent. That is 10 percent over what exists now. We have actually had a rate of funding over the last 4 years greater than that. The increases in funding for education have been greater than 10 percent per year over the last 4 years. So the President would slow down the process, not increase it. He has made education the number one priority in terms of rhetoric, but in his first discussion of dollars he is slowing down the commitment to the provision of the necessary resources for the improvement of education. Here is the rub: I went to the White House as part of the Congressional Black Caucus meeting with the President and I spoke on education. I said, ``Mr. President, there are some good features in your plan. We would like to have a dialogue with you about it, but there are no figures, no dollars.'' At that time he had no dollar figures. He only came up with those last week, and last night he reaffirmed the fact that he is going to increase education by 10 percent. In the Congressional Black Caucus, we had a resolution passed like 2 years ago when they first began to talk about a surplus and we said that whatever the surplus is, let us devote 10 percent of the surplus, the present education budget, let us add onto that each year 10 percent of the surplus. If the surplus does not pan out to be as high as they thought it would be, it is 10 percent of whatever it is. The projections for the surplus at that time were $200 billion, what it is roughly now, around $200 billion, the same figure. That meant 10 percent for education would be $20 billion; $20 billion per year added to the education budget. Does that seem like an exorbitant amount? No. What you can do is in this time of most fortunate times of prosperity, deal with the capital expenditures. You do not have to increase the operating budgets of any schools. The aid would not be such that you would make the schools dependent. Spend for school construction. Spend for school computers, equipment, the capital expenditures. Now let us have every district be freed of the need to expend for capital items and especially let us set free those districts that need decent schools, buildings, safe buildings, buildings conducive to learning. Especially let us get the schools wired for computers and let us put computers in the schools. All of those things do not require that the Federal Government get involved in discussions of curriculum in the local school, discipline, administration. You do not have to get involved in local school matters. As the President said, the money came from the people. It is their money. Anyhow, we are not benevolently passing back money that does not belong to the people. Give it back to the people in the area of highest priority in terms of capital expenditures for education and get out. You are not required to stay in after you give help for school buildings. There is nothing to keep you there interfering with the way the schools are run. If you give money for computers, there is nothing to require you to stay there and interfere with the way the schools are run. A $20 billion increase in education per year over the next 10 years would create the kind of education system in America that would carry us forward into the 21st and 22nd century and make us completely inviolable, because it is education. Our greatness, our superiority in the military sector, in the industrial sector, commercial sector, in the cultural sector is dependent on a very highly educated population, a base of education which has people at every level educated. That must continue. If we fail to take this opportunity, if we are petty now and small-minded, have no vision and can only see an increase of 10 percent of the current budget, rather than 10 percent of the surplus, then we are going to lose a golden opportunity to guarantee that what happened to the Roman Empire will never happen to the American empire. Our empire is far more shaky than you think it is. We are alone in the world of 5 or 6 billion people and we have less than 300 million people who enjoy a very high standard of living. We have allies in industrialized areas. If you put us altogether, maybe we have a billion people who enjoy a very high standard of living, but what about the other 5 billion? Do you think you are really going to be able to exist unless we take our superior education, our productivity, our inventiveness, our ingenuity and keep spreading the prosperity of it, the benefits of prosperity and the benefits of inventiveness and the benefits of technology throughout the entire world. We have to have an educated population to do this. Everybody must be seen as a potential resource in the effort to keep America great in this area. We are showing strains at every level. There is a great shortage of teachers. Thousands and thousands of teachers are needed right now and they are not available in certain areas. The projection is that it will be hundreds of thousands of teachers needed in the next 5 to 10 years and they will not be there. We have shortages in other areas. Policemen. In the area of government service, the quality of people, there is a problem. In the quality of people in the military, there is a problem. We had an aircraft carrier launched a couple of years ago, a new aircraft carrier launched and they were short 300 people. They could not get 300 people to fill the necessary positions on the ship because the ship was such a high technology, the aircraft carrier had such high technology devices until they needed a very well educated population. They could not find the people. Those shortages in the military continue to exist. Ever more complicated weapons are invented and we are not matching that with a massive education program to be able to pull from the bottom what we need in terms of education. The caliber of people in high places obviously is a problem. I do not think 20 years ago we would have had a captain or an admiral or anybody in charge of a ship in the Middle East who would be so careless as to allow his ship to be put in a position where a man in a fishing boat could bring a bomb and blow a hole in the ship and the lives of 12 to 15 sailors were lost. That bomb incident in the Middle East, I do not think we would have had a person in charge of a ship who was that dumb, who was that unqualified. I do not think we would have had the submarine accident that happened in Japan, that you would have people in charge of a ship who were as dumb as the people or as careless, unqualified as the people in that submarine who let that happen. From all the facts that I hear, the human error, the sloppiness is part of a pattern. The sloppiness in the CIA that produced Aldrich Ames, the sloppiness in the FBI that produced Mr. Hanssen, the sloppiness, the erosion of quality in the Navy that produces these accidents. It is all over. We have glitches in every level of our society because the complexities of operating things are so great until you need not just people at the very top who are excellent people but you need them all the way down the line. The man who put the oil in the airplane is the one I worry about when I get on the plane. Him and the mechanic who tightened the bolts on the little screws that had to be tightened, all those details are what makes a plane go. I do not worry about the pilot because we spend more money to train pilots than we do on anybody else, any other category of worker in the Nation. The pilots are well trained. But I worry about all those other people we are dependent upon. Education in America has to produce the high quality at every level. We have to get rid of our pettiness and go forward. We have to understand that this is no place to exercise some of our weaknesses, to let some of our weaknesses rise to the top. The Education Committee that I serve on is also called the Workforce Committee, Education and the Workforce. It used to be called the Education and Labor Committee. It is very antilabor, so much that they changed the name. They got rid of the word ``labor.'' But nevertheless all the functions related to working people in America must come from the same committee. We have a hostile atmosphere there toward working families. We have a move on now to roll back the standards in ergonomics, to change the way labor unions can provide money in political campaigns. There is an attack on working families through labor unions. That is where the people who are going to make our society run have to come from. They have to come from working families. Middle-class families are going to continue to produce doctors and lawyers and people in the higher professions, the business graduates. We need more computer scientists, we need people to operate the ships. We need whole categories of people that must be producing. The only place they can come from are working families. The attacks that are being made on labor are ridiculous because of the fact that we are undermining a segment of the population, working families, that is critical. In the area of minorities, we are still making critical mistakes in the area of minority education and the way we deal with minorities. We do not understand that the youngest population that we have are among the African Americans and the Hispanics. They have the youngest people. These are the people who are now at school age, who are going to be the workforce of tomorrow when many of the other folks in the majority population have begun to retire. The way we treat minor and children of minority families is critical. I want to end with one last statement on a recent development within our Education and Workforce Committee. We are going forward in the committee with the assignments for the new 107th Congress. This button I have on relates to a problem that has arisen in the reconfiguration of our committee subcommittees, the subcommittees laid out by the majority. The majority Republicans decide. We hoped that they would have done this in consultation with Democrats, but the pattern nowadays is that they do not consult with the minority, the Democrats are never consulted on these things, so they came with a proposal for a Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness. I think the Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness is very much in order, very much in line with where we have to go. I am here saying that education is the hope of America, that the only way our society is going to survive is by focusing intensely on our education system and guaranteeing maximum education for all. I think that the change of a name of a committee that used to be the Higher Education Committee to the Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness is appropriate. We were excited about that. But in the process of doing that and creating other committees, they took out of the Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness all of the higher education titles related to minority schools. The historically black colleges and universities, title 3(B), the Hispanic serving institutions and the tribal colleges, all serving minorities, they were taken out of the Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness. They were put into another committee which is called Committee for Select Education. In Select Education, you have the problems of juvenile delinquency prevention, child abuse prevention and a number of social programs and problems that are very important. We would like to see them dealt with. But why do you take out of the Committee on Competitiveness the minority colleges, the minority colleges, which have a great role to play in making America competitive in the 21st century? Where are we going to get the computer scientists from? We have title 1(B) now, H1B, I think, which brings in foreigners to take positions in the computer science industry, in the information technology industry. We should have more and better computer programs in these historically black colleges and universities and in the Hispanic serving institutions and the tribal colleges. When we discuss 21st century competitiveness, we do not want to have a situation where the historically black colleges and the Hispanic serving institutions, the tribal colleges are not on the table, they are not being discussed. They go into another committee. In boxing, if you have a bout scheduled after the main event, you get very little attention. No matter how much effort the boxers put forth, after the main event nobody is interested. The main event is the Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness. We would like to have the historically black colleges and universities there. We would like to have the Hispanic serving institutions there. We would like to have the tribal colleges there. All of the members of the Education Committee who are minorities, we happen to have on that committee four people who are African Americans, three people who are Hispanic Americans, two who are Asian Americans and one who is a Native American. We all pleaded with the Republican leaders of the committee to not do that because it appeared, one, to push the minorities out of the process of preparing for 21st century competitiveness, it appeared that way, and in reality we know from experience that when you separate out things, they are not treated equally. When they get more attention as an event that takes place after the main event, if they are not at the table when the funding is being discussed, when the appropriations are being discussed, they will not prevail. That is just one of the kinds of blunders that we must worry about as we go into the 107th Congress. There is no crisis on the horizon which raises our level of adrenalin. We do not feel any intermediate emergency. We are a pretty smug, comfortable people, the American Nation at this point. It is an opportunity. We should not relax. When President Bush talked about the angel in the whirlwind in his inaugural address, the angel in the whirlwind which always seemed to be there to guide America through crisis. If we stop and think, that has been the case. We have gone through numerous crises in this country. We have had leaders produced at just the right time, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Roosevelt whose decisiveness and vision and cleverness matched Adolf Hitler. Not only did he get us out of the Depression but he led the way to the defeat of fascism. We have had critical periods in our history and had to rise to the occasion. Usually they were very physical kinds of challenges. The challenge we face now is different and it requires some creativity and some vision in terms of here we are in the midst of a peacetime prosperity with resources that are unparalleled. Never before in the history of mankind has a Nation existed as rich and powerful as America. If all we can do now is to declare war on our working families and go after their labor unions and undermine the structure for providing jobs and higher wages, if all we can do is do negative things like classify minorities in a special way, if those are the things we do, we will destroy our opportunity to overcome the problems that the Roman Empire finally faced. We do not have to decline. This empire can go on and on forever, but it has to have a firm commitment and dedication to education. We must put the money and the resources behind our rhetoric. President Bush, I congratulate you on the rhetoric. Now we have to get the resources for education to make education our number one priority in reality.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, throughout the neighborhoods of New York, millions mourn the death of former Mayor John Lindsay. He is still remembered as the great patron of community empowerment who provided the opportunity for the people on the bottom to enter the mainstream of New York politics as well as civil service and government employment. John Lindsay was a highly visible and articulate idealist and advocate for greater inclusion of minorities in the American dream. Although his direct impact on policy and practice never moved beyond New York City, he belongs in the category with Robert and John Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt. Assuming great political risks, Lindsay was one of the few leaders in the nation who seriously adopted Lyndon Johnson's ``Maximum feasible participation of the poor'' policy. His administration made a Herculean effort to institutionalize power-sharing down to the local level. Instead of siphoning off dollars and resources from federal programs like the Community Action Program and the Model Cities initiative, Lindsay added city support and thus increased his own tax and budget burdens. With ignorance and incompetence, the people on the bottom sometimes betrayed their mayoral advocate; however, it was the lack of vision and the resistance within the ranks of the city's organized machine Democrats which blocked the realization of a new progressive base for the governing of New York City. Unfortunately, Lindsay never sought to build a movement or even his own partisan machine. But as a solo force, a lone Achilles of New York politics, he left a lasting legacy of new leadership within the poor and minority communities. After serving as a commissioner appointed by John Lindsay, I was elected to the New York State Senate in 1974. When I entered the legislature for the first time, I noted that every minority member of the legislature had previously been in some way supported by the Community Action Program or the Model Cities Program, both empowerment vehicles sponsored by John V. Lindsay. New York City mourns a great visionary leader and champion of the poor and powerless. The Lindsay Trumpet Still Sounds For the Great John Lindsay The grave is not a period, But a colon: The good comes Flowing endlessly afterwards In offspring never seen, Achievements never footnoted. John Lindsay's trumpet sounds In the heads Of unknown urban soldiers; The posterity of the powerless Now hear the beat of new drums; The smothering of grassroots fervor Is now a gasping scheme; Heroes from the neighborhoods May still match the Lindsay dream. A Socrates for empowerment, He spawned Platos and Aristotles; Somewhere his Alexanders Are mobilizing new young armies. For the Great John Lindsay The grave is not a decaying period But a bright blossoming colon: The movement is not yet murdered, Its fervor only temporarily stolen; The rivers of righteous anger Again are fully swollen. Alive nailed to an unjust cross Big John bled away alone; With resurrections of his disciplines New Lindsay miracles of the City Can still be carved in stone.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, the words of William Shakespeare's King Lear are ringing loudly in the ears of many Americans: ``Fool me not to bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger.'' The old trusting king had just been grossly betrayed by two of his daughters. Collectively this nation has reason for an anger comparable to that of King Lear. In America the democratic process has just been mugged by the U.S. Supreme Court. As loyal citizens we must obey any decision of the court. But we are not required to restrain ourselves from vomiting. Thomas Friedman, on the New York Times Op-Ed page (December 15, 2000) provides a summary of the Supreme Court's election ``fix'' which is as accurate as any that I have seen thus far: ``. . . The five conservative justices essentially ruled that the sanctity of dates, even meaningless ones, mattered more than the sanctity of votes, even meaningful ones. The Rehnquist court now has its legacy: In calendars we trust.'' So much was outrageous about this blatantly partisan decision that it would be unpatriotic if we fail to keep the review and scrutiny of all the factors surrounding this decree alive and active. It is our duty to be conciliatory in going forward with the governance of the nation. It is also our duty to support the peoples ``noble anger''. I submit that the following RAP poem is one of many literary missiles that should be fired at this evil dragon decision into the Congressional Record. Robbers in Robes The Florida mob just made a hit--American Democracy mugged; Scalia was the bulldog in the pit. Call 911, FBI, the CIA, Priceless voting rights, just been snatched away; By robbers wrapped in fine black robes; decent nations must now launch probes. Achtung! Now hear this! Attack bulldog Scalia, Unarmed but dangerous; Beware of his tenacious bite, Any good truth may attract his sight. Right over justice thieves vaulted; Struggling patriots got assaulted. Tell your kids about the Supreme Court, at supper before they eat; Don't let young minds discover, Obscene decisions out on the street. Our votes were precious gems, Won with faith and sacred hymns. Call 911, FBI, the CIA, Priceless voting rights, Just been snatched away. American Democracy mugged!

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to join my colleagues in extending my condolences to Julian's family. We are all shocked and saddened. As a young freshman coming to Congress, I found Julian Dixon, who was not that many years ahead of me in seniority, to be the most nuturing, the guy who showed us around and gave us the details and cared a great deal, wise beyond his years of service in the Congress. Julian was the kind of person that always did his homework as a chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, as the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. I admired the way in which Julian worked, always thorough, always conciliatory, always willing to be the reconciler. Everybody trusted Julian because he was that thorough and basic. Julian did not run like a firefly to the cameras. Julian was not a peacock seeking headlines, but you knew Julian would get the job done. I think that the trust that we felt as freshmen coming in and experiencing Julian's leadership was also obviously the kind of trust that the leadership felt about Julian. He was appointed head of the Committee on Ethics. He was on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. And whenever there was an ad hoc committee that had a difficult job to do, I noticed that the leadership, three speakers, would lean on Julian Dixon; and I think that the trust extended across party lines. It was not just the Democrats, but also the Members of the other party on the other side of the aisle seemed to have the same kind of trust in Julian Dixon. If you had to take a poll, probably the individual who was trusted most in the last 20 years, 30 years, Julian would be high on that list in terms of being the most trusted among us. And I am very saddened by his departure.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I have just returned from a 1-week visit to Pakistan and Kashmir. This brief tour of a nation of more than 140 million people who were our loyal allies during the critical years of the cold war with the Soviet Union was pleasant and tremendously informative. The purpose of my trip was twofold. First, I represent the largest community of Pakistani and Kashmir-American citizens in our nation. Their concerns for their homeland are also my concerns. Secondly, since I was a high school student, and for all of my adult life, I have been captivated by the problem of Kashmir self-determination which mysteriously does not arouse the pity and anger throughout the world that it deserves. To raise the national and world level of visibility on this issue I have founded the House Pakistan-Kashmir Caucus. During our stay in Pakistan and Kashmir as the guest of the Council of Pakistan Americans and the government of Azad Kashmir we covered a full and productive itinerary: We were received by several high level officials of the national government including the Head of State, General Parvez Mucharref; whose present title is Chief Executive Officer. We also met with the Foreign Minister, the Minister of Education, the Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir, the Administrator of the City of LaHore, the Governor of the province of Punjab. We conferred with the American Embassy and Consulate officials in both Islamabad and LaHore including Ambassador Milman, Principal Officer Sheldon Rappaport, and Counsel General David Donahue along with the very helpful members of their staffs. As a result of the recent passage of the Brownback amendment which exempts education aid from the set of sanctions presently being imposed on Pakistan, we met with an unusual number of education officials and visited six schools and four higher education institutions. Because of my long-term assignment on the Education Committee I applauded the Brownback amendment and conveyed my intent to closely work with those who are charged with administering it. On a one day trip to Azad Kashmir we visited three schools and a refugee camp. We met children with high spirits and keen intelligence. We also met refugees who were obviously crushed in both spirit and body. In Islamabad, and LaHore as well as in Azad Kashmir we participated in several press conferences and meetings which discussed the Kashmir problem at great length. The Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir, Sultan Mahmood Chaudary showed particular concern about the present stalemate and the decline in American interest as a third party. We assured him that, despite the exceptional power and influence of the Indian lobby, we would return to achieve a greater balance of thinking and action with respect to Pakistan and Kashmir. We also pledged to work with the Pakistani and Kashmiri community in America to ``jump-start'' a ``People's Movement to Free Kashmir''. Self determination, democracy and human rights are assigned the highest priority in the value scheme of the international community in this year 2000. The people of Kashmir have been denied all three of these vital social and political components while the nations of the world have watched their plight for 53 years. The United Nations has reneged on a vital promise to Kashmir for more than five decades. The great powers who sit on the Security Council have ignored the pains of the Kashmir people. For humanitarian reasons Kashmir must be set free. Of equal importance is the fact that this long festering problem fuels an explosive dispute between Pakistan and India. Because both of these powers now have nuclear weapons, Kashmir has become one of the globe's most dangerous regions. Justice for the people of Kashmir is now inextricably interwoven with freedom from the massive world nuclear contamination which would result from any nuclear conflict in South Asia. The continuing refusal of the United States and its allies to assign the highest priority to the Kashmir problem is a dangerous strategic blunder. The failure to pursue a vigorous and thorough non-violent diplomatic solution in Kashmir will result in tragic future consequences.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, there are no new and original accolades that I can add to the many phrases of praise already accorded our retiring Member, William ``Bill'' Clay. When he arrived during the age of the afro haircut, Bill Clay had a chest full of invisible medals from the Movement. He helped to guide the years of maximum Congressional Black Caucus solidarity, the time of Clay, Dellums, Conyers, Stokes and Rangel. Those were the days when CBC Members were wise enough not to scramble single handedly for their committee assignment deals. In unison, the Black representatives demanded placements for the good of their local and their Black national constituency. Leadership was forced to seat Peacenick Dellums on the Armed Services Committee where the good old boys refused to give the brother a chair at the table to sit down. The radical Clay and his conspirators went on the propose the first CBC Dinner against the wishes of prominent White liberal allies. Further into the reign of Clay, the Voting Rights Act became a reality; and still later sanctions were imposed on South Africa. And the proposal for a Martin Luther King Holiday which started as an impossible dream finally concluded as a magnificent monument to the forward movement of race relations in America. At this point, Mr. Speaker, I wish to associate myself with the numerous other tributes that have already been recorded for our former Postal and Civil Service Committee chairman, and the ranking Democrat on Education and the Workforce. Congressman Clay is one of the last of the CBC original pioneers. It is important to note that with the recent election of William ``Lacy'' Clay, his son, the Clay genes will fortunately be remaining in Congress. The following Rap Poem is my final salute to the gentleman from Missouri who now we draft into our ``Corps of National American Statesmen'', William ``Bill'' Clay. Bill Clay: The St. Louis Choice (By Congressman Major R. Owens) Now is the time To lift high every voice, Join us to celebrate Achievements of the St. Louis Choice. Go ahead and loudly sing, Let fading memories Rise and sting; This St. Louis militant Earned progress The old fashioned way- He jumped in the man's face To save the day. Pushing straight ahead, to mad to be afraid, Nobody forgets The trouble he made, Every cent of dues daily he paid, Republicans regret That for so long he stayed. Indiana's Bob McCloskey Faxed Democrats an urgent note: Fly Bill Clay to Florida- Let the Master recount that vote. Wrong predictions of the past Said the CBC wouldn't last; Now forecasters ask Who'll lead the new struggle, What's the future all about? St. Louis responded: The let another load of Bill Clay genes out. Now is the time To lift every voice, Join us to celebrate Achievements of the St. Louis Choice.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, there are two very good academic studies that have been done that show that Davis-Bacon does not increase the cost of schools. In fact, the best schools and the best buildings are put up by Davis-Bacon contractors, so much so that the Fortune 500 corporations have recently decided that they prefer to hire Davis-Bacon contractors because they get the best work done in the final analysis. We have all kinds of impediments being thrown in the way of the use of Federal dollars to solve a basic problem. In the context of a $230 billion surplus, why are we quibbling about $1.3 billion for school renovations, repair, construction, whatever one wants to say? If a coal burning furnace in the school is removed, are we going to call that renovation or repair? I do not care. Let us get the deadly fumes and the pollution of the coal burning furnace out of the schools. We have more than 100 schools in New York that still have coal burning furnaces. Do we have to have the Federal Government do this? Obviously we do since the States are lagging so far behind. Or perhaps the Federal Government can serve as a stimulus, and by providing some of the money, stimulate and embarrass the States and the local governments into doing far more. The estimate is that we need about $320 billion just to take care of infrastructure needs for the current enrollment, without projecting future enrollment. That is the estimate of the National Education Association. One might say they are a teacher organization, they are biased. Well, the education commissioner recently came up with a statement that $127 billion is needed. Some years ago, 1994, the General Accounting Office said we needed $110 billion then. The need is great. We are going to improve education. The least we can do is take care of the highly-visible infrastructure problems. It does not require the Federal Government getting involved with decision making. It is a capital expenditure. You go in; you give help; you get out. It is the best way to spend Federal dollars, most efficient way to spend Federal dollars. Let us do it today.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I wanted the gentleman to clarify his remarks about the President rescinding money for infrastructure. It was a Republican-controlled Congress that rescinded the money. They came in just after that bill was passed. It was the Senator from Illinois that led that and got $100 million into the budget, and it was a Republican- controlled Congress who rescinded that.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, we have a problem of a failure of vision, a failure to understand that every time the word ``flexibility'' is used, it is used in a way which says that there is a limited pot of money here. We want to squeeze it in as many ways as possible. We want to give the flexibility to the people who have neglected the priority in the first place. The State governments have neglected the priority. The local education agencies either have neglected the priority or they do not have the funds. We have only a few basic initiatives being undertaken by the Federal government. The initiative is based on a recognition of the need. There is a need for smaller class sizes. There is clear research that has proven that smaller class sizes are very effective. The class size of the class my colleague, the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), went to when he was young did not have any 32 youngsters in it, I can assure the Members. There is a clear need for a focus in this area. There is a clear need for a focus on school repair, innovation, and construction, as we were talking about before. The American voters have made it quite clear that they understand the need. They have the common sense to see that we need more government assistance in education, and underneath that, they have pinpointed certain areas where the need is. Instead of my Republican colleagues, the Republican majority, recognizing that we should approach the problem comprehensively, with a comprehensive plan, where we have additional money for teacher development, professional development, as well as money to reduce class sizes, they want to seize upon the fact that here is an initiative that is moving, it has the approval of the populace out there, it is popular; therefore, let us strangle it and wrestle it until we get something out of it that we can use for some other purpose: We can hand money to the Governors, or hand money to the local elected officials. Let us have an additional amount of money for professional development. Mr. Speaker, let us have a comprehensive approach: more money for professional development, more money for certification of teachers, more money for the recruitment of teachers, more money for undergrads. We have a major crisis underway already. We need many more teachers. We need numerous incentive programs. Across-the-board, we should recognize the need to move to take care of our brain power needs in America. Our brain power needs are overwhelming. With our nickel-and- dime approach, squeezing each program, trying to get flexibility, trying to use the same money in two or three different ways, that is not appropriate. We need a brain power approach which requires that the Committee on Education and the Workforce have the courage and vision to take a comprehensive approach.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin tonight with a symbol that I have used repeatedly over the last year, the construction hard hat, to drive home the fact that, at the heart of our effort to improve schools in America is the need to revamp facilities. Whether that means repairing facilities, renovating facilities or building new schools, this is the key, the first and most dramatic and visible evidence of exactly how we elected officials and decision makers feel about education. Do something about the obvious problem. Do something about the overwhelming problem that localities and States are having the most difficulty with because it requires a large outlay of capital. Let us do something in the area where the Federal Government does not have to get directly involved in decision making at the local level. We help at the capital problem of buildings and equipment, laboratories, libraries that are involved in improving facilities; and we get out. We do not keep the Federal government around in a situation which involves facilities and equipment. So I am here tonight to salute the democratic process here in this Congress and to salute the process here in Washington by saying that it looked impossible 3 years ago when we began the crusade to get Federal funding for school construction. It has been a long and torturous battle. The obstacle course has been quite filled with devastating obstacles, quicksand pits and all kinds of traps. Even now, I cannot stand here and announce that we have an obvious victory. But I think what is important is that we have, at this critical moment in the final days of the 106th Congress, we have school construction on the radar screen. It is at the center of the radar screen. One of the big problems that we are faced with here as we try to reach judgment, one of the areas of controversy, fortunately, is still there on the table, is school construction. I am proud of the fact that the process has awakened and that we are now, as decision makers here in Washington, running very hard to catch up with the American people. The American people have said, voters have said repeatedly that education is the number one priority. Within the priorities for education, people do not understand why we cannot do something immediately in some kind of very significant amounts about school construction, about facilities, about guaranteeing that every youngster goes to school in a facility that is safe, that is not threatening his health in any way, the teachers' health is not threatened. We would like to see a movement which understands that part of the problem with our schools certainly in large numbers of rural areas as well as in inner-city areas is that they are not desirable work sites. Part of the problem of attracting teachers is that they do not want to work at these work sites where we have situations which, really, not only endanger the health of the students, but endanger the health of the teachers as well. If one has a situation like the coal burning schools in New York where, at the beginning of this crusade that we started 3 years ago, there were more than 200 schools in New York City that still had furnaces that were burning coal. I am happy to report that, as a result of our agitation and our effort and our constant pursuit of the problems and all the roadblocks, we have a situation now where the New York City School Construction Authority has stated that, by the end of 2001, every coal burning furnace, every school coal burning furnace in New York City will be remodeled and revamped and renovated, and it will be an oil or a gas burning modern furnace with no pollution of coal dust being spewn into the area. So it is good to stand here and report some progress at some levels, certainly as we move toward the end of the 106th Congress, to have one of our major items still on the table, on the radar screen. A point of great controversy between Republicans and Democrats is school construction, what should we do about school construction. So I would say that out there, and there are still some students who are still awake at this early hour, fortunately it is kind of early, let us pull out a glass of orange juice or glass of milk and let us drink a toast. I do not have a glass here, but let us drink a toast to the students of America, the public schools of America that are in great need of some help in this very basic area of school construction. They are about to get a breakthrough. We are about to realize a breakthrough, we hope. The fact that we are still on the radar screen is number one. The second thing I would like to joyously report is that there is discussion about the fact that, in the area of the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education appropriations bill, there is some kind of almost agreement that the first dollars will be appropriated for school construction that have been appropriated in the last 50 years or more. We will have a breakthrough, we hope. There is a tentative agreement that the President's proposal of $1.3 billion will be approved in some form. Maybe not all of it will be available for school construction, but some portion of it will be available for school modernization. They like to play with terms. School modernization means renovation or repairs. Maybe, I hope in desperate situations where they need school construction will have school construction. So many out there are going to school in trailers, have to go to classes in trailers. In the wintertime, the trailers have no bathroom facilities, and kids have to go outside to get to bathroom facilities. Trailers, of course, have no libraries and no cafeterias. Large parts of America, suburban America, rural America, as well as big cities, are afflicted with the disease of these trailers. So trailers, we hope we can look down over the next 10 years and hope that the Federal government's intervention will lead to a situation where the trailers will be gone. Certainly I just told my colleagues that the coal burning furnaces in New York City schools, they have given us a chart which shows that there will be none around as of the end of the year 2001, the School Construction Authority. So that means we move from more than 200 schools that 3 years ago were burning coal in their furnaces to none in the year 2001. I am certain that the Federal Government involvement, as small as it may be, what they are talking about is $1.3 billion in direct appropriations, there is still some discussion of the Committee on Ways and Means bill which would provide tax credits and have the government pay interest on the amount of money borrowed by States and localities up to a total of $25 billion in borrowing authority over a 5-year period, and the Federal Government would pay the interest. That is the other opening for school construction. We hope that that is not off the table yet. Either way, we would like to see some forward movement and begin the process of having our government deal with education in the area where there is the greatest immediate need and where it is simplest. It is very simple for them to get involved and not have to weigh into the issue of disrupting local control or threatening local operations, et cetera. So let us drink. Take out your orange juice or your milk and let us drink to a breakthrough. We are on the radar screen. As the session concludes, I am optimistic that we will make some small breakthrough. I think that it is important to note that this is a very strange session we are about to conclude, I hope we are about to conclude. I know the date for adjournment was set at October 6 and now it is October 30. Every week we had these projections. We are going to get through. But we are still here on October 30. There is an election on November 7, which means that this Congress goes out of existence shortly after that. We are still hung up on some very critical problems. I want to just take a minute to say that those problems are problems that are very important to the American people. Some people have raised the question as to why suddenly do we have such importance placed on problems like prescription drug benefits, prescription medicine benefits. Why have we singled out that problem for this year? It is very important because we have been discussing it for the last 10 years in one form or another. It has escalated to the point where the discussion has led to some proposals, and it is time to make some decisions about it. The cost of preparing drugs also has escalated. The cost has gone up greatly. The role of prescription medicines in our health has increased. There are now some drugs that really make a great difference in terms of the quality of life. There are some prescription medicines that determine whether people live or die. If the medicines were not there, if the prescription, the pill was not there, they would not be able to survive. More and more, we are seeing the benefits of science over the years pay off in the form of what some people call miracle drugs. I do not think it is an exaggeration. Some of them are literally keeping people alive. One could call them miracle drugs. So we are now in a situation where it is time to make a decision where this Congress has options that no Congress has had in the last 50 years. We have a situation where there is a huge surplus; whereas, we have had to deny some basically needed services before to our constituents. Here is a matter related to health, life and death. Why cannot we now make some decisions which guarantee the benefits of the great prosperity we enjoy and the great wealth that we have now. Nothing ever in the history of the world has existed like the United States of America at this point in the year 2000. There is just no other nation, no other phenomenon that one would call a political entity that has had the kind of power and the kind of wealth, the kind of options that the United States of America has at this point. These options that we have here in Congress in terms of the decisions we make are greatly increased by the fact that we have the wealth. We have the surplus. So why not now make the decisions? The fact that the prescription medicine benefit is still on the table is important. Let us make that decision before we leave here. Why not? Why not make the decisions about the HMO Bill of Rights, the patients' bill of rights with respect to HMOs. Why not now? Why save it? We have had the dialogue. The democratic process has generated proposals. We have had the debates. Why not now? Who knows what the 107th Congress may face? Who knows what natural disasters may occur? Who knows what new kinds of crises in the world will confront us in the 107th Congress? We know now that we have the options now. We have had the debate. The process of those who are not enlightened now about what the problem is will never be enlightened. There are folks who cling to certain kinds of special interest considerations. It is not because they are not enlightened. They know they have enough knowledge, they have enough evidence as to what is needed. So we ought to make those decisions. We ought to make the decisions also related to immigration fairness. We have a bill called the Latino and Other Immigrant Fairness Act, which is called the Latino and Other Immigrant Fairness Act, but it does include critical problems related to immigration in general, critical problems which covers all of the crisis situations that we face right now in immigration. We face a crisis problem with respect to certain Central American people having receiving permanent status, certain Haitians receiving permanent status, and Liberians. There are a lot of critical problems that are wrapped up here in this Latino and Other Immigrant Fairness bill. The issue of 245(i), which relates to people renewing their permanent status without having to leave the country is critical throughout the entire country overall of the immigrant groups. That is in the bill. The issue of the registry for amnesty where we had a cutoff date of 1972 in the last amnesty bill, and the request is that we move that registry date to 1986 so that anybody who had been in the country for 10 years up to 1986 would be eligible for amnesty and could apply. A very humane gesture because these are people who are already in the country. They have been in the country for a long time, 10, 15, 20 years; and we are just going to recognize the fact that they are here, they are paying taxes, they are working. So let us move to try to regularize their status by giving them permanent residency and allowing them to move on and apply for citizenship. This does not mean that we are opening up the gates for a flood of immigrants to illegally come into this country. It means we have a common sense problem, and we would like to solve that problem. That is one of the issues still on the radar screen, one of the points of controversy. I want to congratulate the White House and the President, this administration, for insisting that we confront this problem and deal with the humanitarian dimensions of it now, not next year. Right now. We had an immigration problem of another kind that we dealt with speedily, the H-1B problem, where industry, corporations, have a great need for professional manpower that can handle the kind of needs that they have, information technology needs, most of them, needs related to the digital world, computers, programming of software and hardware, of various problems in the complex digital computer information technology world. They cannot find the people to fill all of the vacancies. That will go on for a long time because our education system is not generating, not producing the people to fill those jobs. We acted quickly on that one. That is an immigration piece. We raised the quota, and now we have a situation where 195,000 new people in the professional area mostly, information technology, can come in each year. They can come in each year, so that over a 3-year period it is close to 600,000 professionals who have that capacity that are allowed in. We have a need; we met the need. The Democrats, the administration are contending that we have a humanitarian need. We have a need to regularize the lives of the people who have been here 10, 15 years and let them begin to move towards citizenship. We have a need to do that. We have a need to stop the pain and suffering caused by the regulations related to 245(i), which deny people the opportunity to go home and visit their relatives and then come back without having to deal with long stays away in order to qualify for an adjustment of status and other problems relating to that. We have a need to deal with the Liberians, the Haitians, the Central Americans who have been stranded for various reasons. We need to have the relief of this Latino and other immigrant fairness bill. So that is another item on the agenda. We have the health care, we have HMO and prescription medicine benefit, we have the Latino and other immigrant fairness act. We have a few other things that are important, but those are two items that are very important that are on the agenda, and we would like to see them remain there until they are resolved in a positive and productive way. We congratulate the administration. The power of the White House in this end game negotiation is considerable. I have tried to explain the process before. We have come to the point now where it is a Republican- controlled Congress, the other body as well. The whole Congress, House and Senate, is controlled by Republicans. They have the majority, they have the votes, they can do pretty much what they want to without the input of the Democrats who are now in the minority. Our only hope is that the Democratically controlled administration, the executive branch, the White House, will balance off the power of the Republican- controlled Congress. That is what happens in these so-called end game negotiations. The end game negotiations are underway now. And that is why we are stuck here week after week, because the end game negotiations have been deliberately slowed down as part of the strategy of the Republican majority in the hopes that they can wear out the patience of the administration and of the Democrats. These items I just mentioned are too important to be given up by default. As long as it is necessary for us to stay here, we ought to stay here to get a prescription medicine benefit in this Congress. As long as it is necessary to stay here, we should stay to get an HMO bill of rights; we should stay to get a Latino and other immigrant fairness bill, a bill which includes amnesty, a 245(i) adjustment and a blanketing of the categories of Central Americans, Liberians and Haitians, who have been left out there with a questionable status. There is one very important breakthrough that I would like to report, particularly to my own district, on this whole matter of immigration before I go on to school construction, that last and most important of the business items that we have here on the agenda of the Congress. School construction I will talk about in more detail, but before I do that, I am happy to report, and this is another example of the executive branch taking the initiative, doing what it can do in a very humanitarian spirit to relieve suffering of people, that the extension of the designation of Montserrat under the temporary protective status program. It is important that there is a notice that extends the Attorney General's designation of Montserrat under the temporary protective status program until the year 2001. August 27, 2001. So we have an extension that goes for almost a year for people in Montserrat who need temporary protected status. Eligible nationals of Montserrat may reregister for temporary protective status and an extension of employment authorization. Reregistration is limited to persons who registered during the initial registration period, which ended August 27, 1998. All who registered after that date under the late initial registration provision, persons who are eligible for late initial registration, may register for the temporary protective status during this extension. The extension, as I said before, goes until August 27, 2001. The reregistration period began August 2, 2000; and it will remain in effect until November 1 of 2000. In other words, there are 2 days. This breakthrough that was realized and announced on October 2 was a bit late when it was announced, but on that date the registration process began. But people only have until November 1, which is 2 days from now, to reregister. Now, Montserrat has suffered one of the most cataclysmic natural disasters in this hemisphere of the last 50 years. Montserrat is a very tiny country. At least a third of the country has been wiped out by a volcanic eruption. It is rapidly becoming an island that is uninhabitable. There is some worry about whether the nation of Montserrat will survive. But in the meantime, for those people who had to flee the island, special temporary protected status was given as part of the great humanity of the American people and how our government reacts to natural disasters. We ought to be congratulated for taking them in, first; and now there is an extension, which did not have to have the approval of Congress or we might not have gotten it. This extension will carry them until August of 2001, and we hope that more can be done to resolve the problems related to the great natural disaster of Montserrat in the meantime. So that is a positive breakthrough in the immigration area. It is a very tiny amount when compared to what we are requesting in terms of the need to pass the Latino and other immigrant fairness act. That act would include, and I wanted to summarize for the last time, it would include an expansion of the 1997 legislation to include refugees from Central America, Haiti, and Liberia who were unjustifiably excluded from the opportunity to apply for permanent residency. It will permanently extend section 245(i) to allow individuals who qualify for a green card to obtain a visa without first leaving the country. It would move the registry date for those individuals who can demonstrate that they have maintained a continued presence in the U.S. from 1972 to 1986, providing an overdue and well-deserved opportunity to individuals who have been living, working and paying taxes in the United States. In addition, for those individuals who have been in this country since 1985, the bill would allow them to adjust to legal permanent resident status. Now, this bill was proposed to be part of the Commerce, Justice, State appropriation. The President made it quite clear that if this was not included as part of that appropriation bill he would not sign the act, and that is part of the process that is going on now. The strong stand and position taken by the White House is to be commended. We congratulate the President and hope that he will continue to insist that the 106th Congress should not adjourn without bringing immigration relief to the people who deserve that kind of relief. Those are three items that are on the screen, two items on the screen other than the one that I started with, which I deem to be not more important than immigration, not more important than health care, but critical in terms of where our civilization is going. Our Nation at this point has made an unprecedented breakthrough. We are ahead of Europe, we are ahead of Japan, we are ahead of all our industrial rivals in the area of the digital economy. We have made some breakthroughs which put us out there, and we can maintain that lead and maintain the unprecedented prosperity that we now experience if we continue to generate the kind of resources needed to fuel and drive the information technology industries, the cyber-activities, the digital economy activities. But brainpower is needed. The critical thing we need now, unlike industrial revolutions in the past where the natural resources often determined the wealth of a nation, if a country was lucky enough to have oil, then the nation had a great advantage. An industry can grow up related to the uses of oil and petrochemicals, and there are a whole series of things that relate to oil. If an area was fortunate to have coal, the coal mining areas had certain advantages because of that natural resource. If an area was fortunate to have iron ore or coal and iron ore near each other, then the steel industry certainly saw advantages there and developed in those areas. If someone was fortunate enough, of course, to have discovered gold, gold or silver, those are obvious metals that all over the world command a great price. So natural resources determine wealth, and the wealthiest people in America for a long time were people who had control over natural resources. There were people who had control over the natural resources and used them to industrialize, to create the steel and the various products out of the natural resources, and they became the wealthiest people. Now the wealthiest people in the world are people who do not necessarily have the fortunate or good luck to have discovered a pool of oil, oil wells, or the gold mine, a whole set of coal fields; but the people who have the greatest wealth now are people who are masters of the utilization of brainpower. Brainpower is the most powerful force in the world right now. Brainpower. Who has the brains to make use of all the opportunities that have opened up by the revolution in information technology, the revolution in the digital world, the use of computers in 100 different ways, a thousand different ways? The application of computers is almost infinite. There is no limit on the application of computers, and the use of digitalized equipment of various kinds except the limits of our brainpower. As the brainpower increases directly in proportion, we have these utilizations increase. New discoveries make it easier every day, and so the industry is changing. The fact that the stock market right now is in a situation where the digital industries are sort of being questioned as generators of income and as investment opportunities, it is all a passing phase. It will not last long. It is an adjustment of an enthusiasm that maybe got out of control. But it is clear, and we do not have to be a rocket scientist or even a sophomore in college to see the way of the future is clearly the way of digitalization. The way of the computer is the way we are going. It is like when automobiles were first invented and automobiles even first began to roll off the assembly line, assumptions were made that there will always be only automobiles for rich people, that only rich people could own automobiles, and that the automobile was something so special that it was not going to affect the entire society. But the automobile has transformed and the offspring of automobiles transformed the entire society. We have the culture of the car, an automotive culture. And not just the richest and most powerful people involved, at every level down to the poorest people have some junky, used car. If they want wheels, they can get them or they are involved as drivers in the economy or in the economy as mechanics or mechanic's helpers. It is just a transformation which touched every level of our society. That was a small development compared to what computers are doing and will do. Computers will move more rapidly. The digitalization of the economy, digitalization of activities, whether they are nonprofit activities or profit activities or military activities, everything will move more rapidly, it will spread across the world more rapidly because it is not as expensive and not as difficult to move about and maneuver as automobiles were and are still. Computers are already in the far corners of the Earth. There are people who have never seen a car who have seen the benefits of computers. There are things happening in third world countries and in remote regions of the Earth with respect to computers which are astounding. So we have the leadership. We are ahead of everybody else. We are the driving force in a cyber civilization that has begun already. And yet, in this 106th Congress, the midget minds and the petty souls are such that they are not willing to take advantage of this opportunity where at the same time we can surge ahead in this cyber civilization. The opening is there. The opportunity is there. We also have the resources. We have a $230 billion surplus. To apply just a small part of that surplus in a constructive way toward education in order to increase the pool of brain power that America has available would gain immense dividends. And you do not have to be a rocket scientist to see it. If brain power is the power that is now driving the world, then the students and the children out there in all parts of America, whether it is a rural poor area or the inner-city areas, they are all potential resources that should be developed. Some of them may never become computer programmers. Most of them will not. Most of them will not become computer scientists. Most of them will not get in the high theoretical mathematics that relate to computers. But there is no reason why somewhere in the chain where you have computer scientists, you have technicians, you have mechanics, you have mechanic's helpers, you have the school aides who apply help to teachers to apply to computers. There is a whole world. If you look at automobiles and all the people that are related to automobiles, the salesmen and the auto parts shops and the car wash people, there is a whole range of people who have gotten involved in the culture of the automobile. The culture of the computer will involve many more people. And when we focus our education effort in a way which anticipates this need, we increase our ability to maintain our leadership in the world in this area. If we have to rely on foreign input, and I am not against foreigners, I am not against immigration, you just heard my arguments before, I am not against spreading the wealth by hiring a large amount of people from all over the world, but if you rely on that repeatedly, then you are going to be draining away resources from the Nation. The people that are coming here to learn eventually will go back and develop the competition. We have seen that in several instances with respect to the automobile industry. I remember shortly after World War II they were importing large numbers of students from Holland and France and training them in Detroit as engineers and design specialists and so forth and they were working for our companies here. They took it all home eventually. And we have competitors, of course, in Europe and Japan. A large number of those competitors were trained here. It is not the worst thing in the world, but they do not pay into the Social Security fund here. They do not generate the businesses here that are taxed and can provide the revenue that we need to run our society. And on and on it goes. There is a limit to the great generosity that prevails now. It may be a fact that most people cannot comprehend but one-half of all the students in our graduate schools who are in science and engineering are foreigners. They are not Americans. And the percentage of foreign students in our programs for graduate science and engineering, computer science, et cetera, has been increasing, not decreasing. The percentage increases because the number of students from our own American base school systems are going into science and those areas is decreasing, not increasing rapidly enough to keep pace with the need. The number of vacancies is not being exaggerated. The information technology world said last year they had 300,000 vacancies that would not be filled with the new crop of college graduates because their survey showed that there are colleges that do not have the people that are being prepared to come out and take these jobs. And it increases geometrically. There will be 600,000 after that. And then it will keep growing and expanding, and we will be overwhelmed by a situation where there is so much more that could be done and so many things are being attempted that the frustration will be tremendous. The lost opportunities will be tremendous. So that is the background that I give for my final statement for the night, and that is we need to reform and improve education right across the board. Education needs help in many areas. We have proposed in the Congressional Black Caucus an alternative budget way back in the spring when we introduced the budget. We proposed that 10 percent of the surplus be dedicated to the improvement of education. In order to deal with this cyber civilization and all the brain power needs, 10 percent of the surplus, which now the surplus has gone up to $230 billion, 10 percent of that over the next 10 years dedicated to education would be the kind of resources needed to revamp and move. We could train the science teachers, who then could get more science students. We could train the math teachers. We could get the computers purchased. We could get the technology training for teachers. And most of all, immediately the first thing we could do is to solve the problems that are most acute out there and most visible. And that is the problems of school construction, school renovation, school modernization, the wiring of schools for technology. We have repeatedly stayed up on this consideration. And I said before, my symbol of the construction hard hat, the Nation needs an effort by construction workers. If ever there was a time that the overtime of one group of people was needed, the Nation needs the overtime of the construction industry to catch up. The National Education Association survey showed that our needs in order to serve the present generation of public school students, the numbers now to increase enrollment, you need $320 billion for school construction, renovation, modernization, and technology, $320 billion. Now you say this is an exaggeration by the National Education Association because, after all, they serve teachers. But the official estimate by the Education Statistics Commissioner's Office in the Department of Education is that right now we need $126 billion or $127 billion. So let us take the conservative figure. Let us deal with $127 billion. Five years ago the General Accounting Office, the GAO, said that we needed $110 billion, 5 years ago. So there is some consistency here in terms of large amounts of dollars are needed for school construction repair and renovation, and we have been on this theme for some time because at the heart of education improvement and education reform must be this highly visible action we need to take to send a message to teachers, to students, to the community that we are serious about education. Every politician, every candidate is out there preaching that he wants to improve our education system at every level, whether it is the city council people at the municipal level or the State level people, certainly the Federal people, Congress people, and the Presidential candidates. Everybody talks about the need to improve our education system. Why, then, are there so few resources being dedicated to the improvement of our education system? Why, then, when we have a $230 billion surplus are we being such misers and refusing to commit a substantial portion of that surplus for education? You could commit 10 percent of the surplus without endangering or in any way infringing upon the other responsible utilizations of the surplus. We can still pay down the debt. The vast majority of the funds that have been accumulated in the surplus can be used to pay down the debt. We can still give money to the Medicare program and money for prescription medicine benefit. We can add to that school construction. And when it is all added up, we are talking about less than 30 percent of the surplus. That means we can give the other 70 percent to pay down the debt and even a tax cut. Why not a middle-class tax cut, a middle-income tax cut? Why not a tax cut that comes from the bottom and the people who are at the very bottom be eliminated from paying taxes and the middle class have their tax bill reduced, the people who are most in need of some kind of help and relief from taxes? We can do all this and still pay down the debt. We devote at least 50 percent of the surplus to paying down the debt and still do the other things. And among the other things that we do with the surplus, the number one priority should be the 10 percent improvement for education. The Congressional Black Caucus said this in the spring of this year, and it is as sound a proposal now as it was then. We have continually pressed the point. I have a Dear Colleague letter I sent out on January 27, 2000, where I said in terms of the utilization of the surplus for construction and we said if you have 10 percent of education overall, take half of that, 5 percent and use that 5 percent for school construction, renovation, repairs, and technology. That means that we are talking about $10 billion to $12 billion a year for school construction and another $10 billion to $12 billion a year for other items related to the improvement of education. In January 27, I said we are moving and the stage is set to build schools. I introduced H.R. 3071, and I said at that time that every Presidential candidate, Republican as well as Democrat, is now proposing a sweeping education program. Candidate Al Gore then called and he still is calling for a $115 billion program over a 10-year period. I have said that we need $110 billion over a 10-year period just for school construction. But we will take a break through. Even a small amount would be useful. And that is where we are at this point as we near the end of the 106th Congress, a proposal for $1.3 billion, a far cry from what the National Education Association says we need or a far cry from what the Education Statistics Commissioner says that we need or what the General Accounting Office says we need. But it is a beginning. The stage is set to build schools. I said on January 27 in this Dear Colleague letter: Keep the education action simple. Revamping infrastructure is the most effective and least intrusive role for the Federal Government. And I introduced H.R. 3071, which sends the money back to the States based on the number of school-age children. H.R. 3071 offers maximum flexibility for renovations to facilitate security and safety; modernization for educational technology; and new construction to end overcrowding. H.R. 3071 will use no more than one-tenth of the surplus for the next 10 years. Democrats risk being upstaged by Republicans, I said at that time, if they do not move on a school construction bill. We cannot emphasize too much the fact that the fiscal negotiating environment has undergone a rapid, almost revolutionary sea change since the announcement of the trillion dollar surplus, over a 10-year period, a more than $2 trillion surplus. I said that as we move toward the end game negotiations, we must make certain that school construction modernization is on the table. I am happy to report, as I said before, that at least we have achieved that. It is on the table. It is on the radar screen. It is a bone of contention, but it is there on the table. One-half year later, and that was January, July 19, 2000, I sent out another Dear Colleague which said: Build Schools 2000. Two big battles have been won. Now let us move on to win the war. The first battle won. The White House moved from a strictly tax relief policy to a direct appropriation policy of $1.3 billion for school infrastructure. The President introduced his budget. And in the budget we made a breakthrough because instead of proposing school construction only through the Committee on Ways and Means and a tax credit process whereby the Federal Government would pay the interest on money borrowed by the States and the localities, the Federal Government was proposing a direct appropriation for school construction. That was a great step forward, $1.3 billion for school modernization. The victory, the second victory, which came much later, in July, was that after insisting for decades that the Federal Government should not be involved in school repairs and school construction, the Republican leadership introduced legislation which authorizes $1.5 billion for school repairs. That is H.R. 4766, the Classroom Modernization Act of 2000, introduced by the chairman of the committee, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling). That is the second great victory. To have the Republican leadership move off the center, move off the position that school construction did not belong at the Federal level and have it propose any kind of school construction was a great victory. I understand most of the dollars being proposed in this legislation would go to charter schools, but I do not care. Let us understand that some of the remedies for our school system that are being proposed, alternatives, vouchers, for example, vouchers cannot succeed in large numbers if you do not have a school construction program. If you were to suddenly remove all barriers to vouchers, and I am not in favor of that because I think that vouchers only take us into chaos, it is not a viable alternative, but suppose hypothetically that you had the legislation and the authorization from the government to institute a large voucher program in any city or county. Immediately the amount of positions available at the private schools would be filled up. They already have long waiting lists at most private schools. So the people who want to utilize those vouchers would have to build new schools. They would have to have some new facilities. You would have to have a new bureaucracy created to take care of large numbers of youngsters moving from a public school system into a voucher system. It does not matter which way you go. Charter schools, limited experimental charter schools I am all in favor of. But charter schools have run into the first and most important problem that I am emphasizing here, that is, they have no facilities. The first problem of charter schools is to get a place, a building, some furniture, and the physical facilities, the infrastructure, is the greatest frustration being experienced by people who want to start charter schools. So no matter which way you go, we need some help in this vital area of school modernization, construction, repair, renovation and technology provision. In this July 19 Dear Colleague letter, I said: We have won common sense acknowledgment and respectability for the position of Federal aid for school construction. To win this war means we must move from a $1.5 billion proposal to a much larger annual funding proposal. But the important thing is that we have begun. Both parties have taken a position for direct appropriation of money for school construction. I said also in this Dear Colleague letter: The September end game negotiations must, one, authorize the reservation of 10 percent of the annual surpluses over the next 10 years for the improvement of education. Five percent must be used for school infrastructures; 5 percent must be placed in an education trust fund to be allocated to the States with flexible guidelines for programs that work. Allocations from the 10 percent annual surpluses shall be distributed in accordance with the number of school age children within each State, et cetera, et cetera. Mr. Speaker, I submit for the Record my Dear Colleague letter of July 19, 2000, and my Dear Colleague letter of January 27, 2000. Congress of the United States, House of Representatives, Washington, DC, January 27, 2000. H.R. 3071 Is the Way of the Future, the Triumphant March Toward Common Sense Has Begun, Construction Is the Kingpin Action for School Reform Dear Colleague: Every presidential candidate, Republican as well as Democrat, is now proposing a sweeping education program which includes school construction. Candidate Al Gore has called for the expenditure of 115 billion dollars in ten years. In H.R. 3071, we call for a ten-year school construction program at a cost of 110 billion dollars. The stage is set to build schools. Keep the education action simple. Revamping infrastructure is the most effective and least intrusive role for the Federal Government. Let the federal government pay for the big job. Build schools and then leave the day-to-day school operations to local control. Provide the capital funds for the infrastructure and thus free up other funds for salary increases, computers, more books, security, and safety. H.R. 3071 Sends The Money Back To The States Based On The Number Of School-Age Children. H.R. 3071 Offers Maximum Flexibility For: Renovations To Facilitate Security And Safety; Modernization For Educational Technology; And New Construction To End Overcrowding. H.R. 3071 Will Use No More Than One-Tenth Of The Surplus For The Next Ten Years. Democrats Risk Being Upstaged By A Republican ``October 2000 Surprise'' On School Construction Modernization. Democratic Refusal To Support A Meaningful Dollar Investment In School Construction And Modernization Which Benefits Working Families Could Weaken Our Ties To Our Labor Allies And Leave Open An Opportunity For Republicans To Capture More Labor Union Support. We cannot emphasize too much the fact that the ``fiscal negotiating environment'' has undergone a rapid, almost revolutionary sea-change since the announcement of the long- term trillion dollar surplus. To adapt to this change and at the same time respond to the number one priority of the voters, we urge you to review your position on this issue and sign up for co-sponsorship now. Missing from the end-game budget surplus negotiating table is a democratic scenario for long-term adequately funded school construction and modernization. To Co-Sponsor H.R. 3071 please call Beverley Gallimore at 225-6231. Please note that H.R. 3071 is a revision of H.R. 1820, which changes the authorization from 110 billion dollars in five years to 110 billion dollars in ten years. Yours For Education Excellence, Major R. Owens, M.C.

Mr. OWENS

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

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, some seemingly trivial items of urban popular culture are now on display at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in an exhibit titled ``Hip-Hop Nation: Roots, Rhymes and Rage.'' When I visited the exposition I was most impressed by the large numbers of youth from diverse backgrounds who were viewing the multi-media displays. Their immediate excitement combined with the symbols, clothing, photographs, memorabilia, poetry, music and clippings of urban grassroots aspiration and expressions were fresh stimulants for the mind--and also inspirational. While human interaction and experience often generate fragments of culture, the phenomenon that grabs one's attention in the case of the Hip-Hop artists is the manner in which the components aggregate, mushroom, and continually spread across ethnic, class, and nationality lines. Beyond its image as a violent movement, perpetuated by a few highly publicized celebrities, is the fact that the majority of the participants are ordinary youth. Hip-Hop appears to be on a course to leap over the limits of neighborhoods and fads. In some cases its content moves beyond the frivolous and the trivial toward profundity. The concept of traditional culture relies heavily on the elements of universal appeal and endurance. Hip-Hop may generate a significant impact on conventional culture; it continues to spread and to last. Consider the implications; urban America has a generation that is making culture. These creators may evolve into a new set of heroes that posterity comes to respect and revere. These are heroes who are making culture, not war. We salute the foresight and the boldness of the Brooklyn Museum of Art and its Director, Arnold Lehman. This initiative has provided us with a small window through which we may watch culture being made. The following Rap poem was inspired by my visit to this unusual exhibit. Make Culture Not War Make culture not war! Be loud about our love, Put passion in your dove; Shoot your best shot! Trivial sparks make profound fires, Teenage crazes light Big social blazes; Tiny innovations shape The spirit of sluggish nations; The greatest generation Still waits to take the stage; Against pain and greed Wage a new breed of rage. Combat sneaker boots, T-shirt uniforms-- The battlefield is everyday; Go for the ultimate victory Fighting the Hip-Hop way! Be loud about your love! Draft your hottest hormones, Recruit ancient instincts, Mobilize mistreated manhood, Make rivers of sweat But let it always be sweet. Shoot your best shot! Ejaculate your joy, Pour powerful blessings Into the womb Of a wailing world. Generals in heaven command: Make culture not war! Hitler was an artist Painted by the past; Graffiti hieroglyphics Is a language that will last. Pledge allegiance To life abundant; Permit simple pleasures To be redundant. Fly a flag of flowers; On Babies confer new powers; The positive pursuit Must never pause-- Happiness is our greatest cause. Storm beaches of despair, Fight poison convention everywhere, Scale cliffs rock hard With cynical soils; Victors bring your own spoils. The greatest generation Still waits to take the stage. Refuse to just sit On crumbling stoops and wait; Liberating geniuses May show up too late. Make culture not war! Rapping poets are warriors Drafted by anxious angels To conquer with their songs; Music makes no massacres. The battlefield is everyday; Go for the ultimate victory Fighting the Hip-Hop way! Shoot your best shot! Be loud about your love, Put passion in your dove; The greatest generation Take orders only from above. Make culture not war!

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, for the past few years, the American people have, through numerous focus groups and polls, sent a strong message to all elected officials. Government must do more to improve education. Government at every level, the local level, the State level, and at the Federal level must do more to improve education. Now we are finally approaching the closing days of the 106th Congress, the scandal of this session of Congress is that, despite the existence of a $230 billion Federal surplus, to date, the Republican majority has refused to respond to the clear demand of the American voters. The Republicans have chosen to move in the opposite direction. Republican inaction is sabotaging the Federal effort to improve our schools. Even long-standing programs, such as ESEA Title I have not been reauthorized by this Republican-controlled Congress. Only destructive proposals are being placed on the negotiations table by the Republicans. Publicly funded school vouchers and block grants are two of the most dangerous Republican proposals on the table. Both of these radical programs will hasten the demise of the public school systems in our Nation. We call on President Clinton to rule that block grants and vouchers are nonnegotiable items in the end game negotiations that are now beginning to take place. Title I block grants are nonnegotiable. We refuse to accept a situation where block grants would return the power to the States using Federal money to decide how Title I will be spent. It is the neglect, the savage neglect over the years of the States that have created conditions in our inner city communities and poverty rural communities that the Federal Government found necessary to address when the Elementary and Secondary Education System Act was established. Why should we abandon the very schools and communities that the Elementary and Secondary Education System Act was meant to help? There is no honorable trade-off possible for block grants and vouchers. We hope that, in the negotiations, there will be a flat refusal to trade off with the Republicans on block grants and vouchers. The bad news is that Republicans have turned their backs on education as the number one priority of the American people. But the good news is that Democrats have responded vigorously. All year long, we have made proposals. Democrats have proposed two school construction initiatives. One that most people know about is the Rangel-Johnson initiative that proposes to pay the interest on money borrowed by States and local governments. Up to $25 billion would be covered by a Federal allocation of about $4 billion to cover the interest. The President has also proposed a direct appropriations initiative of $1.3 billion. Democrats support funding for smaller class sizes. Democrats support funding for more teachers in the classrooms, and therefore the ratio of students to teachers would be a more acceptable ratio and encourage greater teaching. But one cannot have smaller class sizes if one does not have the classrooms. The construction initiative is vital to the implementation of the Democratic initiative to get smaller class sizes. Certainly in the poorest schools in the poorest communities, we do not have the classes for the smaller class sizes. The 21st century learning centers proposed by the Democrats for after-school programs, for summer school programs, those programs also need room to operate in. One cannot operate effective summer schools unless one has buildings that are air conditioned in most parts of the country. The community technology centers are an initiative of this Democratic administration. They want to expand that. We need space. We need buildings. An increase in Head Start and preschool programs is another Democratic initiative. We cannot increase Head Starts in the poorest communities where they are most needed. We cannot increase preschool programs in the poorest communities where they are most needed unless we have new facilities. We have to have better buildings and more buildings in order to accommodate these programs. In our inner-city communities, school construction comes first. In Brooklyn, in my 11th Congressional District, we worked vigorously to get rid of coal burning schools, schools that have furnaces that burn coal. I am happy to report that the end is almost in sight, that the School Construction Authority in New York City has an agenda where by the end of the year 2001, there will be no more coal burning furnaces in our schools. It is imperative that we act now to construct more schools. The Democratic initiative is necessary.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, this morning I was unavoidably absent on a matter of critical importance and missed the following vote: On the Journal (rollcall No. 514), I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to Rev. Dr. James S. Bullock, the distinguished Pastor and Spiritual leader of Holy Sacred Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York. Dr. Bullock, the former Pastor of Mars Hill Baptist Church of Coney Island, New York, was called to Holy Sacred Baptist Church in August of 1999 and was installed on December 19, 1999 by The Metropolitan Interdenominational Ministers Conference, The Eastern Baptist Association, The Pastors and Churches Union and the Holy Sacred Baptist Church family. Presiding over the installation ceremonies was the Rev. Dr. B.T. McCollum, Vice-Moderator of the Eastern Baptist Association, the Moderator D.H. Dovore Chapman, Co-President. The installation service was heralded by countless community leaders, including officials of the African American Clergy and Elected Officials of Brooklyn, the Rev. Joe L. Parker, President and many other clergymen and women along with school officials, teachers, and officers of the various PTA groups. Rev. Dr. James S. Bullock is a community minded clergyman. He participates in many community-based organizations. He is involved with the following organizations: Secretary of the Association of Brooklyn Clergy for Community Development, Secretary of the African American Clergy and Elected Officials of Brooklyn, Vice President of The Metropolitan Interdenominational Ministers Conference, Parent Body Member Eastern Baptist Association, President of the North Bay Tenant Association of Coney Island, and President of The Men and Women's Interdenominational Ministers Conference of Brooklyn, New York. Rev. Dr. Bullock is a man of vision. He is a multi-talented person who is considered an excellent Preacher and Teacher, a builder of ideas and developer of community motivation, and a master decision maker. He is steadfast in his beliefs and a loyal supporter of the missions of the organizations to which he belongs. He consistently endorses the politics of community empowerment and the practical projects which bring the benefits of empowerment to the poor. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to salute Rev. Dr. James S. Bullock as a distinguished ``Point of Light'' for all Americans.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I was unavoidably absent on a matter of critical importance and missed the following votes: On H.R. 4049 (rollcall No. 503), to establish the Commission for the Comprehensive Study of Privacy Protection, introduced by the gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Hutchinson, I would have voted ``Nay'' On H.R. 4147 (rollcall No. 504), to amend Title 18 United States Code, to increase the age of persons considered to be minors for the purposes of the prohibition on transporting obscene materials to minors, introduced by the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Tancredo, I would have voted ``Yea''. On H.R. 3088 (rollcall No. 505), to amend the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 to provide additional protections to victims of rape, introduced by the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Weldon, I would have voted ``Yea''.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, the process is a betrayal. The process by which this important legislation has been brought to the floor is a betrayal of all of the reasonable Members of this House who are ready to move to meet an emergency. We understand that there is a great need for more workers to be brought in. We understand that there is a shortage, those figures are not rigged, that there is a shortage and it is mushrooming. We understand that we are going into a cyber- civilization and brain power is very important and we cannot hesitate and slow down the process. We understand the need to do something. But why have it brought to the floor in the form of a suspension bill and not have it debated on the floor of the House fully and not allow amendments to be introduced which would be very useful for this process? What we are doing here is steamrolling through a cap. We will have a cap which amounts to almost 600,000 people over a 3-year period. 600,000 people are going to be brought in without any further discussion of the process of creating brain power. We are going to let nations like India and China, et cetera, create or let their school systems fill this need for us because we are not willing to debate and really come to grips with the process that is needed to generate and develop this kind of brain power in our own country. We have a $230 billion surplus this year and all of the proposals for education have been milquetoast proposals. We are not coming to grips with the fact that we need to invest very heavily in infrastructure, very heavily in computers and equipment. In the area of immigration alone, we are overlooking a supply of manpower that is already here. There are large numbers of young people who come out of our high schools, they are undocumented, they come out of the high schools because they are allowed to go to public schools, but they cannot go to college and receive scholarships because they are undocumented. They have the brain power. I wanted to offer an amendment where they would be allowed special status, also. There are numerous amendments that were waiting to be attached to this bill to make it better, and we have violated the trust of the people who wanted to make this happen.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I will enter into the Record a letter by Mr. Charles Loveless, director of legislation for the Association of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees, the AFL-CIO.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, it is not exaggerating to say this is legislation that will save lives. I rise in support of H.R. 5178. This legislation will significantly improve the health and safety of health care workers by reducing accidental needlesticks and other sharps injuries. It is estimated that there are between 600,000 and 800,000 incidences of accidental needlestick injuries among health care workers every year. As a direct result, more than 1,000 of these workers will contract a serious potentially life-threatening disease such as HIV or hepatitis C. Studies have shown that as many as 80 percent of these accidental needlesticks can be avoided through the use of available safer medical devices. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, has already taken action to reduce accidental needlestick injuries. In November 1999, OSHA issued a revised compliance directive on enforcement procedures for occupational exposure to bloodborne pathogens. The principal purpose of the new directive is to emphasize the requirement that health care employers identify, evaluate, and make use of effective, safer medical devices. H.R. 5178 builds upon OSHA's efforts. Specifically, H.R. 5178 amends OSHA's 1991 Bloodborne Pathogen Standard to clarify and reiterate the requirement to use ``appropriate commercially available and effective safer medical devices designed to eliminate or minimize occupational exposure to bloodborne pathogens.'' H.R. 5178 provides definitions of ``engineering controls,'' ``sharps with engineered sharps injury protections,'' and ``needleless systems'' in order to provide greater clarity of the requirements of the standard. The legislation ensures that employers regularly monitor and assess the development of appropriate commercially available and effective safer medical devices. It ensures that health care workers who must use the equipment will have a voice in its selection and will be properly trained in its use. Finally, the legislation promotes greater awareness and more active vigilance through the use of a sharps injury log. The primary intent of H.R. 5178 is to protect the safety and health of health care workers. One of the principal ways the legislation accomplishes this is by encouraging the development of safer medical devices. Under the bill, it is the responsibility of health care employers, in consultation with their workers and subject to oversight by OSHA, to determine for themselves what are the safest devices on the market that meet their individual needs. As newer safer devices come to the market, employers are required to consider and implement appropriate and effective safer medical devices. Since the bill anticipates and encourages technological development, the bill intentionally does not define any specific medical device as a safer medical device per se. To do so would be self-defeating. While reinforcing the requirement that safer medical devices be used where they are commercially available, this legislation does not mandate the use of engineered controls where such controls are not commercially available. Neither this legislation, nor the underlying standard it amends, requires anyone to use any engineering control, including a safer medical device, where such use may jeopardize a patient's safety, an employee's safety, or where it may be medically contraindicated. This legislation leaves intact all of the affirmative defenses available to employers related to the use of engineered controls under the Bloodborne Pathogen Standard. Mr. Speaker, this is good legislation. This is life-saving legislation. It is supported by health care employers, including the American Hospital Association and Kaiser Permanente. It is supported by medical equipment manufacturers, including Becton-Dickinson and Retractable Technologies, Inc.; and it is supported by the unions that represent health care workers, including the American Nurses Association, the Service Employees, AFSCME, AFT, AFGE, and the Firefighters. I commend the gentleman from North Carolina (Chairman Ballenger) for his leadership on this issue, and I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 5178. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.