Major Owens

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, Ruby Nottage was a Point-Of-Light for Brooklyn and for all urban communities struggling for empowerment. She was a point of light for all Americans. She was a totally unique creation, a magnificent fabric woven from both the rough strands of the street and the well refined strings of mankind's highest cultural aspirations. Ruby Nottage could walk with kings, after all, and never lose the common touch because Ruby Nottage was born a natural queen. At a time when education has assumed its rightful place on our national agenda it is important to first note that Ruby Nottage was a teacher. She enjoyed a 30-year career in the New York City public school system as a teacher; assistant principal and as principal of P.S. 93 in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Ms. Nottage also proudly served as a Member of the Board, president and trustee of the Brooklyn YWCA for 15 years. She was appointed by Governor Mario Cuomo to the New York State Martin Luther King Commission, and also served as Political Planning Chair of the Brooklyn Women's Political Caucus. She was also a member of the Community Advisory Board for Medgar Evers College. Ms. Nottage was one of the founders of an independent Democratic Club: Partners for Progress. She was also a founding member of the Brooklyn Coalition for Community Empowerment. In 1984, she was elected Democratic District Leader of the 57th Assembly District. Ruby Nottage was also recognized as 1996 Woman of the Year by Brooklyn Links, Inc. Ruby was as much at home with a political party nominating petition in her hand as she was reviewing a fine work of art. She could prepare and appreciate the finest cuisine. But if a late session at the Board of Elections required that she eat cold fast food she had no complaints. She had ``class'' in the best sense of the word. She would do nothing in a sloppy way. To every action and activity of her life she applied high standards. Ruby was a glowing example of how a royal style can bloom within the context of American grassroots democracy. My remembrances of Ruby are slightly different from most of her other admirers. I didn't have the delight and the pleasure of growing up with Ruby; of going to school with her; or of working with her as a colleague during her 30 years in the NYC school system. Ruby was a member of a rare species, the native New Yorker, born and raised here. She didn't come like many of us from Tennessee or Texas or Jamaica or Panama or New Jersey. She was a daughter of New York City--of Brownstones, subways, and skyscrapers. Since I was not fortunate enough to grow up knowing Ruby I had to discover her. What her close friends may take for granted I have had to observe with a sense of wonder and awe. She was a Renaissance woman with a broad range of interests. She reached out for the whole spectrum of experience, the pleasant and the difficult. the same sensitivity and intellect that she brought into a theater or an art gallery she carried into the dirt and grime of partisan politics. She brought the same passion to a discussion of the transition of the Brooklyn political machine that she brought to the merger of modern painting concepts with African diaspora subject matter and contents. It was as late as 1982 that I first discovered Ruby Nottage. She was a founding member of the Brooklyn Coalition for Community Empowerment. We later shared the euphoria of the Jesse Jackson bid for the Presidency and the David Dinkins mayoral victory. We also shared more than a few excruciating disappointments in the arena of politics. Throughout some very intense group soul searching and heated debates Ruby never lost the nobility in her demeanor. She was always the teacher who used exemplary English and offered clarity and logic to keep the deliberations on track. We all appreciated very much Ruby's dedication to the cause of community empowerment. On one occasion following a very discouraging meeting she pulled me aside and pointing a finger in my face, whispered: ``You know, Major, you are one of the few people who have continued to believe in group decision-making and real community empowerment after you got elected.'' I have a vivid recollection of that compliment. Her words were like a Congressional Medal of Honor. When you are in the political trenches surrounded by sell-outs and cynicism there are few things as inspiring as recognition and understanding from a respected fellow worker. It was an honor to receive praise from Ruby because she had no hidden political agenda. She was the most unselfish District Leader in America. Politics added nothing to her life except headaches and challenges. It was by choice, not need, that she accepted the challenges and became the District Leader for the 57th Assembly District. By choice this Renaissance Lady had woven a life for herself that was unique. Where else could you find the combination of school principal and District Leader? Along with her husband, Wally, and the rest of the family, Ruby created a combination Brownstone palace and art gallery on Dean Street. Where else could you find such a collector of precious items willing to offer her home as a meeting hall and site for political fundraisers? Few galleries in Brooklyn are as fascinating as the Nottage home, but you don't have to pay a fee or purchase a painting there. Because of what I experienced in my relationship with Ruby over the past sixteen years, nothing surprises me about her record of accomplishments before I me her: That she traveled to Farmville, Virginia during the Civil Rights struggle to provide service to schools that had been closed is one more example of her being willing to place herself at risk on the firing line. Despite her appreciation of the finer comforts of life she also braved the inconveniences and hardships of Haiti to help set up day care centers for children. It is not surprising that as a responsible, professional resident she served for fifteen years as a member of the Board of the Brooklyn YWCA. It is also consistent with her unique duality that she was a founder of an independent Democratic club, Partners for Progress. Moving from participation in an established national institution to an almost revolutionary grassroots base was not a difficult transition for Ruby. The common touch didn't stop her from walking with kings and vice versa. In all that she did Ruby could blend the practical and the sublime. I am certain that her son Aaron reflects these same ingredients in his pursuit of law. His cases will never be handled with less than maximum thoroughness and responsibility. Since tickets for her recent play were all sold out I could not yet see the recent work of Lynn Nottage; however, I am certain that her drama will be a blend of meaningful contents and message with great style and method. Ruby's genes and nurturing would allow it to happen no other way. Ruby Nottage now belongs to the ages. She now becomes one of the ancestors for our children and grandchildren. Our ancestors are our eternal role models. As she was a role model in life we should strive to keep her forever a role model. Cinque, the leader of the Amistad rebels insisted that in a moment of crisis he would not be alone because he would be joined by his ancestors. To gain strength from their ancestors our children need to know who they are. Television cameras, movies and celebrity magazines will never tell them who their living role models are. We can certainly not depend on the media and our official school curricula to let our children know who their magnificent dead ancestors are. It is my plea to all who cherished her that we do more than merely fix a monument to Ruby in our minds. Ruby Nottage now has a place among our magnificent ancestors. For the next few years we must strive in every way possible to move beyond the monuments in our minds to pay homage to Ruby in some concrete and highly visible ways. Little Brooklyn girls and mature men and women should be able to know Ruby's story and call up this beautiful ancestor for inspiration in the future. Some have pledged to go forward and get busy to write a book about Ruby or name a street or erect a statue or start a scholarship fund or name a school after her or do all of the above. Just because she was in a class by herself is no reason why others should not be encouraged to strive to match her magnificent performance. Ruby Nottage was a Point-of-Light that must be magnified and multiplied.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. I salute the gentlewoman's sense of urgency. I think the message is quite urgent and my appeal is that we stop the business as usual approach in life and death matters. Gun control certainly is a life and death matter far more immediate than school construction. In the long run we are talking about life and death of children, life and death of our society. I think the President started at the right place when he talked about Social Security and the concern of people and what happens to our Social Security. But I think we also understand that, and I am not one of those who thinks our Social Security is endangered, that we are facing the possible bankruptcy in 30 years, I think that is all propaganda, but the President certainly, by making Social Security the highest priority with the utilization of the surplus, has challenged those people and we can finally deal with it. If we really need the money, then the surplus should be directed in that direction. But Social Security is threatened if we do not have a work force, a work force that can keep our economy going. And I am going to talk in a few minutes about the work force for the Information Age, the information technology workers and the great crisis that exists right now and is likely to grow even worse. First, I want to talk about one of the President's initiatives. And again we must get behind the President and push these initiatives with a sense of urgency. There is a great need for the additional 100,000 teachers that he proposed. And whereas he talked mainly about those teachers being utilized to train students to read, I think we ought to seriously consider that we need teachers also who are able to deal with training children and what they need at every step of their educational career to get ready for the world of information technology where the jobs are going to be in the future. I think we also should understand how this relates back to my concern with construction and infrastructure. If we pull in large numbers of idealistic students and they become teachers, do not subject those teachers to a problem of the boilers breaking down and they have to go into cold classrooms and instruct students who are shivering, or they have to participate in instructing students to wear heavy clothes to go to school in order to stay warm. Do not subject teachers to a situation where they are teaching about the environment and they are teaching about health care and they are teaching about pollutants and we have coal burning furnaces right there at the school spewing pollutants into the air and children suffering from asthma at a greater rate. Do not subject teachers to that kind of situation. Do not subject teachers to a request that they teach youngsters and use the latest technology, use the Internet, get them prepared for what is coming in the future of these children and then do not have adequate computers for them. And if they have computers, they are not hooked up to the Internet because the school cannot be wired properly. They are old schools and the wiring does not lend itself, or they are afraid that asbestos, a problem I encountered in trying to wire 11 schools. And we did on Net Day. Net Day, by the way, is the national day on October 25th where all across the country volunteers were called upon to wire their schools. It was a Saturday. And volunteers came in to wire the schools so they could be hooked up to the Internet. A school was considered appropriately wired and reaching the Net Day goals if 5 classrooms and the library was wired. So for 11 schools we got five classrooms and the libraries wired. It was not easy. And whereas I endorse the notion of using volunteers, and I know that there have been some very successful Net Days across the country using volunteers, we had to have some professional volunteers. If you do not have some people who really know a little bit about what they are doing, it can really bog down. So I want to thank the Bell Atlantic crews that came in, because we did have a partnership with the private sector, and the private sector hooked us up with Bell Atlantic crews that came in to help. And there were some other private sector groups that provided us with personnel that went to the schools ahead of time to help mark off the wirings. It was a beautiful operation bringing together the private sector and the school officials and the local community volunteers, but it was very difficult just to wire 11 of 1100 schools. In other parts of New York City, I understand there were other schools wired on that day, but the number of schools that have been wired to hook up to the Internet is, indeed, a very tiny number for New York City. In case my colleagues did not know it, effective this Friday the FCC has announced that the universal fund for libraries and schools application process will begin. If you want to apply for the more than $2 billion available to pay for telecommunication services, if you are qualified, the process of qualification for the funds will begin this Friday, and that process will continue for 75 days. And they are using the Internet. They are using the Internet as a way of getting the applications. So for the 75 days you can put your application in. It is a simplified application, with forms. You can do it right on the Internet and send it in. Anytime within that 75-day period that you put your proposal in, it will be considered like the first day, everybody is equal; and only at the end of the 75 days will the clock be cut off. So I think it is very important to link these things up and understand that here is an advantage that is being made as a result of an act of Congress, Telecommunications Act of 1996, where the Congress instructed the FCC to set up a universal fund for libraries and schools for telecommunications and give them a discount. The poorest schools get up to a 90-percent discount. Any school in America can get a 20-percent discount. So that only operates if you have computers. If they have a technology set up where they have computers and somebody who is in charge of their computers in their school and they meet the requirements, only that way will they be able to take advantage of a discount. They cannot have the setup and have their school wired if they do not have an infrastructure already that allows them to do that. Asbestos is a major problem. When we start marking holes in the walls, boring the holes to put the wires through, we confront an asbestos problem. New York City must have a certified asbestos inspector come out, very expensive, each school have a certified asbestos inspector come out and say what we are doing will not cause a health hazard. Very expensive. So if there are only a tiny number of schools that are wired, my colleagues can understand how that hurdle alone will keep the number down. When we get into the details, it makes it very sad for inner city schools. They are not wired now, and they are not likely to be wired anytime soon. They will not be able to take advantage of universal telecommunications for the universal funds for libraries and schools for telecommunication if they are not wired. It all goes back to the problem of infrastructure and construction. So we must assume a state of emergency. Because there is a domino theory operating here. One inadequacy, one critical inadequacy with respect to construction and infrastructure sets off a chain reaction where it generates more disadvantages and more inadequacies. The President gave a long list of initiatives and education, and I think he must understand and all of us must understand that those initiatives, most of them, will not go forward unless we deal with the basic problem of school infrastructure. Among those initiatives, he mentioned the fact that we want to have our children able to go into the 21st century with the knowledge that they need to hook up with the burgeoning and growing information industries. There was a major conference held in California in Berkeley in the second week in January related to the critical shortage of information technology workers. Business is very upset by the fact that they are beginning to feel the pinch of this critical shortage of workers. And I think that it directly relates to the fact that at one point the President talked about an initiative that is needed which is similar to the GI education bill. We need something as massive as that in order to really get ready to confront the changing of our society into an information technology society. The conference was held on January 12. I just want to read a few excerpts from an article that appeared in the New York Times. The Clinton administration will announce today a broad and unique Federal effort to help train more computer programmers, responding to concerns from economists and business leaders that U.S. companies have a critical shortage of skilled technology workers. The administration's initiatives, which include millions of dollars in grants to fund educational programs, the creation of a nationwide job bank on the Internet, and a campaign to glamorize computer-related professions, come as a new survey shows that 1 in every 10 information technology jobs in the United States is unfilled. The study, conducted for an industry group by Virginia Tech and scheduled to be released today, estimated that 346,000 computer programmer and systems analyst jobs are vacant in U.S. companies with more than 100 employees. Although rapidly growing computer firms increasingly have had difficulties finding enough workers with cutting-edge skills, the Virginia Tech report indicates that the shortage has spread to many non-technology firms, including banks, hospitals and retailers that depend on programmers to design and operate large systems for their businesses. The widening scope of the issue has prompted the administration to take the unusual step of intervening in a worker training issue. The Federal Government programs will form the central part of a campaign among industry and educational institutions to chip away at the shortage. The efforts will be unveiled formally at a meeting of government and industry leaders in Berkeley, California, including Commerce Secretary Daley and Education Secretary Riley. ``The shortage is a fundamental threat to the economic growth of the United States,'' says Harris N. Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, an Arlington-based industry group that is organizing the meeting. ``It's not just hurting the ability of classic computer companies to grow. It's hurting the ability of the entire economy to grow through the productivity increases you get if you can install the latest technology products,'' Miller said. The Virginia Tech study confirmed similar findings made last year and shows that the industry has made no progress in reducing the shortage of technology workers. Though many statistical measures indicate the U.S. economy is at one of its strongest points in recent history, the economists say much of the recent growth has come through technology: both the growth of the Nation's tech industry and cost savings from the use of computers. ``Right now, technology represents 50 percent of the Nation's economic growth,'' says Kelly H. Carnes, deputy assistant secretary for technology policy at the Commerce Department. ``It is the most important enabling industry.'' I will not read any further, but my point is that this has a great deal to do with those constituents of mine in the low-income section of my district, the people who cannot find jobs, and some of them, you know, are community college graduates. But many have never been exposed at all to a computer. It is relevant in terms of not so much the astronomical figures that are mentioned today, and they say 346 vacancies now. The Department of Labor has a more conservative estimate of an additional 1.2 million workers over the next 5 years. If we take the most conservative estimate of the Department of Labor or the estimate given as a result of the Virginia Tech report, we still have a large growing industry which probably nobody can fully estimate what the limits are. There are jobs there for the future. There are jobs for the youngsters coming out of our schools if they have had some kind of orientation to computers early in their schooling, beginning in the elementary grades, progressing through junior high school and, of course, high school. They really need some significant exposure to the utilization of computers before they get to college. And many of them may never go to college. Many of them may never go to college. There are some young men that I know who did take a few courses in college and maybe were exposed to college to some degree, but they did not take any computer science courses, and they have decided because they like to work with computers that they will go into this field. They are getting promotions and making very good salaries with a bright, rosy future. One who started at $35,000 says that by the end of this year, in less than 3 years, he expects to be making $100,000 a year, and he has never taken a computer science course in a college. So, in addition to the programmers, in addition to the analysts, we need the troubleshooters, we need the mechanics, we need people all up and down the line. And it cannot happen. The opportunity will be there, and we will not be able to fill that opportunity if our schools do not have the courses and the exposure to computers that are necessary, the opportunity to utilize computers. Most of the homes in my district do not have computers. Nationwide, computers are a middle-class phenomenon, upper middle-class phenomenon and a large percentage of middle-class people have computers in the home. Most of the children who go to public school in my district will not be exposed to computers except in school and library. And I want to congratulate the Brooklyn Public Library. In several of the poor areas, they have installed computers. They have only a few. But it does give youngsters an opportunity to come in and practice a little and get some exposure. The Brooklyn Public Library has a very forward-looking approach to computerization and technology. There is a lot of vision that the director of that library has shown in this area. Recently, the Brooklyn Public Library received some grants from Microsoft to continue their work and to expand it; and we are looking forward to the library, which is a free-standing institution. Not only can the student and school come there, but the parents can come, and the people who are not enrolled in school can also utilize the library's computers. That is an area we hope will continue to grow. I did say that the universal fund that the FCC has created is for both schools and libraries. It is for private schools as well as public schools, and it is for libraries. So they will have an opportunity to be able to get the discount on the telecommunications services, telephone company, Internet, various telecommunications services. They will qualify also for the discount which ranges between 20 and 90 percent. And I am not rambling at all, I assure my colleagues. There is a direct connection between the need to have an emergency school construction initiative across the country. There is a need to deal with this as a central problem related to education. The additional qualified teachers, the efforts of the Federal Government to recruit more teachers, all of those are important and must go forward. But I hope that we understand if you bring teachers in on a system where they see children's lives in jeopardy, and in many cases their own lives are placed in jeopardy, or if you bring them in situations where their lives are not placed in jeopardy directly in some kind of concrete way but they are in a polluted environment that is injuring not only the health of the children but also their health, how long do you think we will keep these qualified teachers? I think we ought to think in terms of the GI education bill that allowed thousands and thousands of returning GIs to get an education, a broad sweeping approach. This country has done that kind of thing only a few times in its history, but it has been very important. The GI bill set up a situation where the need for a highly educated work pool, workforce, was met by the people who came out of those programs. We did not really know exactly what they were going to do later. But we have outstanding scientists, outstanding lawyers, politicians. A lot of people came through the GI bill into the schools and never would have gotten an education otherwise. It is a massive program. It was not an incremental program. It was not a nickel-and- dime program. It was a massive program which was necessary. We ought to see what we are facing now as the day after Pearl Harbor. There are many, and certainly my colleagues on the other side of the aisle insist that there should be no more, big Federal programs, big spending programs. I agree that government should be reduced, and we are proud of the fact it has been reduced. I agree there is a lot of waste in government. I have said it over and over again, you do not need the CIA spending $20 billion or more. You can downsize our overseas bases. There are a number of ways you can save money in government, but do not get locked into an ideological approach, a dogma, that says that no program should be big enough to meet the challenge. If, on the day after Pearl Harbor was attacked, we came to the conclusion that, yes, there is a need to mobilize the country, there is a need to spend a great deal of money to marshal resources to meet the threat, but somebody said, well, it costs too much, where would we be? It would be absurd for anyone to argue that the mobilization to meet the threat that Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor posed, or Hitler posed operating in concert with Japan, the threat to the world's freedom, the direct threat to our own well-being, nobody would be so absurd as to say you cannot spend the money that is necessary to do it. The problem is when it comes to educational reform, we really do not believe we are threatened. We really do not believe the very foundations of society can be rocked if we have jobs and opportunities out there available and a large population that needs jobs, and are not qualified and cannot get to those jobs, and the reason that happens is just because we fail to provide adequate opportunities. We really do not believe that our competitors in other parts of the world can outstrip us, despite all the advantages that we have, we are on top of the economic heap right now; really do not believe that can be threatened if some other nations showing much more vision about educating their population would overtake us in the critical areas of information technology and the kinds of things you can do only with information technology. Right now you have India. That is not a superpower and never claims to be a superpower, but India is a major source of computer programmers for the United States. Bangladore, India, some people call the computer capital of the world, computer programming capital. Large numbers of American companies are contracting with groups in Bangladore to do their computer work, and large numbers of companies are bringing personnel from there here to work. Here is a country not nearly with as many advantages and resources that we have, but they have made a choice educationally which is paying great dividends in terms of being able to employ their work force in a foreign country. We should not allow the situation to develop where we have to rely on foreign sources for the work force of the future because those foreign centers in the final analysis will take the know-how back to their own countries and increase the competition. We may be on top of the heap now and consider ourselves invulnerable economically, but that is not the case. Let's declare a state of emergency and start thinking about the things with the greatest sense of urgency, and get away from the incremental approach where everybody in this capital that has some power has some idea of what should be done with education. The Committee on Appropriations more and more writes education bills, taking the power away from the authorizing committee, because they have the power to do it, not the know-how. Many things proposed in the Committee on Appropriations are not harmful, they will do some good, but the whole idea of a scatter gun approach, that any man with power interested in education is able to impose his will on us because they can get the appropriate bill passed and an amount of money appropriated, that is the wrong approach to education reform. We need a comprehensive approach where we understand that large amounts of resources are needed, and we must focus on what is most important and set some priorities. I think the President, some people accused him last night of giving a laundry list not only of education programs, but other programs, I think he understands that laundry list has priorities. He understands some of the connections. I am confident this President can deliver on his educational agenda, as well as the rest of his agenda. I have had a lot of calls from people asking me and people who are really concerned about the child care initiatives and the education agenda of the President. Those announcements have been going on for the last 10 days, announcements coming from the White House about new programs for child care, tax credits and more money for day care centers. There are large numbers of people among my constituents that are very interested in the reality of those things, will he be able to deliver, and those questions, of course, have come in the last few days as a result of the problems that have come forward from the White House with respect to the President's personal life. My answer to the constituents who want to know will we really get the child care initiative program implemented, does he have the ability to go forward and do this, where some people want the training, they finally think that people who want to go into the child care field can get some training which allows them to qualify for a job which is a decent paying job and be in a position to be promoted, will it really happen? Will we get more money, so day care centers are not just for the very poorest people, but also for some working families that are not on welfare. All these questions are being asked, and my answer to them is yes, this President can deliver, and he will deliver. I have seen nothing happen at the White House which says that he will not be able to deliver on the agenda which was laid out last night. I answer some people by saying, look, Thomas Jefferson in his first year in office was confronted with a problem where they were trying to drive him out of office, accusations were made about his private life, and the press of that day had a drum beat going to try to get him out of office. But they did not succeed. Thomas Jefferson refused to even address their criticisms, to address their charges. Thomas Jefferson kept his focus on what he was doing, and Thomas Jefferson delivered the Louisiana purchase, which doubled the size of the Nation at a very low price. Thomas Jefferson fathered the Lewis and Clark expedition. Thomas Jefferson restored certain liberties that the Federalists had carelessly begun to take away from people. His accomplishments were magnificent, despite the fact he was confronted with a major challenge on the basis of his personal life. There is no reason to assume that this President cannot deliver because of the present challenges. There is no way to assume that he will not be around or be able to negotiate and to drive his program through to conclusion. I think it is very important to understand that. I have been here 16 years. I was here when another government was set up in the basement of the White House. People have forgotten Irangate. They have forgotten that in the basement of the White House there was an operation running which was raising money, where money was being raised to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. Not only were they raising money, but they entered into a deal for Iran to buy arms, to let Iran buy arms from us, and use the money raised from that to fund the Contras. That was a government operating out of the basement of the White House, contrary to what Congress had already clearly stated in legislation they should not do. This Nation survived that, and no President was impeached as a result of that, and that was far more serious than anything I have heard recently. I think it is important that we keep our focus on the things that are important to the American people. Common sense dictates that the agenda set forth last night ought to be realized. We ought to allow the President the opportunity to deliver that to the American people. I think it can happen. At the heart of it, I think, should be his educational initiative. At the heart of his educational initiative should be the school construction priority. We are going to hear more about this in the future. I do not intend to let it get lost again. Last year we had a great start. The President mentioned in the first session of the 105th Congress a school construction initiative. Later on negotiations took place with the White House and the school construction initiative was taken off the table. We must not let that happen again. From start to finish, we must focus on the fact that if you care about children, if you want to improve American education, at the core of the improvement process has to be a massive school construction initiative in this Nation.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to the census language in the Commerce, Justice, State appropriations bill H.R. 2267, because it would jeopardize a fair and accurate count of the U.S. population. In true Republican form, the majority has once again politicized an issue that is as straightforward as the science behind statistical sampling. In a self-serving and subtle racist effort to maintain control of Congress, some Republicans are hampering the Democratic effort to ensure that all Americans are counted in the Decennial Census. H.R. 2267 would allow opponents of sampling to file lawsuits in Federal courts to block the use of sampling in the 2000 census. It also gives unprecedented power to the Speaker of the House to sue on behalf of the House to block sampling and to use resources of the House counsel or outside counsel to pursue such litigation. Finally, the bill is plagued with partisan language which states that statistical sampling ``poses the risk of an inaccurate, invalid and unconstitutional census.'' It is unfortunate and unconscionable that while we have the tools to obtain an accurate count in the 2000 census, some in Congress continue to object to the use of statistical sampling. We can use statistical sampling to transcend socioeconomic barriers that have historically restricted an accurate count. In the last census, almost four million Americans were not counted because of the antiquated counting method that was used. That means that 1.6 percent of our population was not counted. The current counting method relies on a door-to-door count of every person in the Nation. This method is neither the most efficient nor is it cost effective. The Census Bureau estimates that nearly five million Americans will not be counted in the 2000 census if the traditional methods are used. Faced with past failures, it is only logical that we should use all of our existing resources to achieve a fair and accurate count. Scientists have concluded that it is close to impossible to physically count each and every person in the United States. Statistical sampling has been universally accepted by the scientific community as the best way to conduct the 2000 census. The Census Bureau would simply account for those residents it cannot count. Sampling is a scientific method endorsed by the American Statistical Society, the General Accounting Office, and the National Academy of Sciences. In light of all of these facts, we must ask ourselves: Why does the Republican majority continue to oppose sampling? The answer lies in who the census undercounts when sampling is not employed. Studies have concluded that the undercount is not uniform across the population. Minorities, particularly in urban areas, are grossly undercounted by traditional methods. This leads me to conclude that race has become an underlying factor in the 2000 census debate and raises more questions about why statistical sampling has come under attack by Republicans. The results from the census determine how Federal funds are allocated to the localities as well as how congressional seats are distributed among States. For instance, census data determines how certain public works funds are distributed, the creation of Federal empowerment zones, the establishment of fair market rent values, and the need for equal employment opportunities programs. Only through sampling can we ensure that States receive their fair share of Federal funds and programs. Since minorities have historically supported the Democratic Party, I believe that Republicans are positioning themselves to maintain power by depriving minorities of scarce Federal funds and representation in the Congress. It is immoral and undemocratic for anyone to support a proposal that would deny the Census Bureau the vehicle to count each and every American. In a major and unprecedented move to mend the sad state of race relations, President Clinton has created an ``Initiative on Race.'' It is rather ironic that Republicans are trying to turn back the clock by refusing to have a census that counts not just their supporters but every American. While we all know that American history is rampant with instances of prejudice and racism, it is unfortunate that this Commerce, Justice, State appropriations bill will add another pathetic chapter to that piece of history we are trying so hard to heal.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, once again the U.S. Congress has exhibited a double standard toward the people of Haiti. The District of Columbia appropriations conference report provides a badly needed resolution to the District's financial problems. This conference report also contains certain immigration policy provisions that are intended to counteract a provision in the extreme, mean-spirited immigration reform legislation passed by the Republican-led 104th Congress. I commend the efforts made by House and Senate conferees to stop the potential deportation of hundreds of thousands of Central American and Eastern European immigrants; however, they specifically left thousands of Haitian immigrants out in the cold. This is tragically unfair and must not be overlooked. The only discernible difference between Haitians and these other refugees is that Haitians are black. I cannot believe that in 1997 the U.S. Congress has chosen to make critical policy decisions in this irrational manner. The United States Government helped create conditions in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador that resulted in great numbers of people from these countries fleeing their homelands and searching for relief on our shores. In spite of this, Republicans in Congress have attacked immigrants on all fronts, including those from these Central American nations. In addition to cutting back on the types of social services and benefits immigrants could apply for, the ill-conceived Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 created new rules for Central American refugees which would effectively disqualify the vast majority of these immigrants from attaining citizenship and set them up for deportation. Before the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 was passed, these immigrants were permitted to apply for suspension of deportation and then apply for permanent residence if they met several rigorous requirements. They had to follow a painstaking, labyrinthine process to become American citizens. American citizenship is so prized by our Central American neighbors that they were happy to play by these complicated rules. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 changed the rules for these immigrants midstream and would have forced many of them to return to their homelands even though many have established themselves as productive members of our society. The District of Columbia appropriations legislation treats all these groups with compassion. The conference report even provides relief for refugees from certain Eastern bloc countries in which we did not become involved to create a refugee situation. Inexplicably, Haitians were not afforded the same treatment, even though their plight was just as terrible and their desire to become American citizens is just as great. The United States must acknowledge that its support for previous Haitian regimes has forced thousands of Haitian refugees to seek relief here in America. Since the military coup in Haiti, the United States has allowed thousands of these refugees to apply for citizenship. Haitians are still endangering themselves, risking death in order to reach our shores. Clearly, the situation in Haiti is not that much better than it is in Central America and the former Eastern bloc countries. The Haitian Government continues to be in disarray. The country's infrastructure continues to decay at a rapid rate while more than $1 billion in foreign assistance remains unspent. More than half the population eligible for work is estimated to be jobless at the same time that the cost of living is rising at an alarming rate. The situation in Haiti clearly calls for more compassionate action by the United States. Unfortunately, a proposal by Congresswoman Carrie P. Meek and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus [CBC] to provide relief for Haitian immigrants was not included in the District of Columbia appropriations conference report. This CBC-backed proposal would simply grant Haitians the same treatment given to Nicaraguans under the District of Columbia appropriations conference report. Like Central Americans and Eastern Europeans, Haitian immigrants have a powerful desire to become American citizens. They have established families and provided American businesses with skilled, dedicated workers. In my district in particular, Haitians are a vital part of the local economy and culture. Why are they not afforded the same treatment by American policy makers? It is unthinkable that Haitians were treated differently solely because they are black; however, the circumstances leave me no choice but to conclude that this Congress considers the suffering of black people to be of less importance. We have settled in this country refugees from many war-torn nations. The people of Haiti have suffered long enough from the excesses of their former despotic leaders and the shortsightedness of our foreign policy. I plan to dedicate the second session of the 105th Congress to working with my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus and other Members of Congress to ensure that equal treatment of Haitian immigrants is achieved. I challenge the House leadership and the administration to make justice for Haitians a priority in 1998. It is time that we settle this moral debt that we owe the people of Haiti.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Youth, and Families, the gentleman from California [Mr. Martinez], and the chairman of the subcommittee, the gentleman from California [Mr. Riggs], and the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Chairman Goodling], and all the others who have negotiated this piece of legislation. There were some serious differences, and for a moment I thought maybe the children of America would be denied this small effort because of those differences, and I do not think it is good to do that and wait another year while the inaccuracy of the teaching of reading goes forward. I was shocked to learn that most of the teachers in our schools have never been trained to teach reading. There was an article on the New York Times editorial page which said the overwhelming majority of teachers have never been taught to teach reading and there is a need to have some kind of instruction on how to do that. It will improve the job. So the children who will benefit from this need it now. We cannot hesitate and wait. We should go on and do all we can. So this is one more small effort to improve education in America. It is just that, a small effort. This is like dipping from the lake of inadequacy with a teacup. This is a small program. It is $200 million. It may sound like a lot of money out there, but a nuclear submarine costs more than $2 billion. If we are really going to deal with the problem of teaching reading, we ought to try to make an impact on the schools of education with some kind of Federal program in the future. I do not know whether it costs as much as a nuclear submarine or not, probably not, but it would require a bigger effort than this one. This is a good effort. It is a good pilot program, and it ought to go forward. It brings in a lot of different elements, all of which I think ought to be brought in. Common sense dictates that you should use what you have at hand, and this is a good common sense effort. But in order to really deal with the problem, I hope that these pilot programs and these good common sense efforts are only a prelude to this Congress going ahead in the future to deal with the overwhelming problem of inadequate and substandard education in America. The war against substandard education cannot be fought by some rifle corps going out. That helps. This is a little operation where we are sending out a few platoons to deal with the problem. We need a real war on substandard education. A real war means you deal with basic problems, like school construction. School construction is a basic problem out there. We need $120 billion to deal with the infrastructure of schools all across America. Even if you do not get nearly that much, we ought to do better than we have done so far. To say we are going to teach reading better and make efforts to teach reading or to improve technological instruction or provide more technology in the schools, when the kids are still up against the problem where the boilers are breaking down in the schools and they have to go to school and bundle up in order to stay warm, and that does not just happen in Washington, D.C., there are a number of schools all across America that have problems in terms of heat. So we should see this as a wonderful prelude, as an indication that the Congress cares. But we are just beginning to deal with the bigger problem. We are just beginning to fight the war. These are little patrols that we are sending out to reconnoiter, to scout out the problem. The problem is much bigger, and beyond this program on reading, which is about $200 million, $210 million, we need to have a comprehensive approach to education, stimulated and guided by the Congress of the United States, despite the fact that the primary responsibility for education is at the local level. Mr. Speaker, we can provide the leadership, we can provide the stimulation. We will never be responsible for education. That is a matter for the States, but we can go beyond the 8 percent of education expenditures and move on to a more important role in leading the fight to really wage a war against substandard education in America. This is the beginning, but let us get ready to fight a bigger war next year.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall vote 611, I was unavoidably detained and did not vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.'' Motion to Reconsider the Vote Offered by Mr. Doggett

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. I rise in strong support of the Tierney amendment. Mr. Chairman, I would like to appeal to the gentleman from California, the chairman of the subcommittee, to look at the priorities that he set as recommendations in this bill and understand that, and I am a strong supporter of this bill and I will vote for it, but I am supporting it and will vote for it because I think it is a good way to move the agenda forward, to escalate the charter school support, but I assume we are going to have to revisit this issue next year and we are going to take a closer look at charter schools and what we can do at the Federal level to make certain that this is an idea whose time has come and is not destroyed and distorted because it is handled in the wrong way. I am in favor of maximizing the experiment now. Let us maximize it. Let us give the freedom to the States to experiment. Experiment does not mean that they can wildly go galloping off, because I do not think any State legislature is going to let that happen. I think probably Arizona has one of the freest and most permissive charter school laws, and they are beginning to rein that in. We understand there will be people who will not adhere to standards. There must be accountability. We understand that money is involved here, and there is a need to deal with restrictions on the way money is handled and the way the financing is done. There are a lot of problems that are going to have to be ironed out. But let us see it as a research and development operation at this point. We are experimenting. These are projects that can teach us a whole lot. In the future I think we need to back away from any notion that this is an idea that is going to perpetuate itself automatically by itself. We need to not romanticize the idea of charter schools and believe that nothing can go wrong. A lot of things can go wrong. Money is involved here. We are going to have to have, not a whole set of regulations but more guidance at the Federal level is going to be necessary. Just in the area of civil rights abuses. We do not want charter schools to be used to perpetuate segregation and racism. There are a number of areas that we are going to have to deal with. I look forward to next year having a more detailed bill to look at charter schools and help promote them. But right now, why not have maximum experimentation? Why not have OERI be given notice that we want them to closely monitor charter schools? There are less than 800 charter schools now in existence out of more than 86,000 public schools. Given the fact that they are less than 1 percent, they are not going to run away out of control and take over the public school system any time soon, but they can offer invaluable lessons to the public school systems in terms of the kinds of things we can learn from them. We should be looking to learn those things from them. We should not allow certain kinds of things to happen. I think we have a problem even with definitions of charter schools by some States. If charter schools are not going to be fully funded where the school gets the same amount per pupil as other public schools get, I do not think they are real charter schools. That is a problem that has developed already. We are going to go back and take a look at that. There are a number of problems that next year we are going to have to take a close look at, but right now why not go forward and leave the community design idea there, the State design idea there, and let it at this point be fully open for experimentation; Massachusetts and any other State. New York does not even have a law yet; we are trying hard to get one. We should be in a position to do at the bottom in the chain the things that have to be done to study them across the board, and, if we have 50 different sets of examples of State laws and for all the 16,000 school boards in the country, different variations of that, so let it be. Let us study it, let us get the best out of all of them and be able to go forward with a maximum, well-developed approach to charter schools in the future. Next year, year after and ongoing years we will be perfecting and refining this instrument, and right now I do not think we have to be so careful and so cautious that we cannot let States fully experiment. I fully support the Tierney amendment and hope that the chairman will reconsider and let his priorities be recommendations at this point.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, on previous occasions I have applauded President Clinton's assertion that this is an indispensable Nation. It is important, however, that this belief go forward with great humility. The United States is not the only indispensable Nation, and we are not the only people whose leaders have an indispensable vision. Dr. Tadahiro Sekimoto, the chairman of the board of NEC Corp., has demonstrated that he also has a unique and profound vision of the leadership needed for a new century of global peace, progress, and prosperity. I am submitting for the Record a portion of a speech made by Dr. Sekimoto calling for a world leadership summit: Calling World Leaders to Action to Address the New Roles and Responsibilities of the Global Corporation in the New Century As we approach the start of a new millennium, it is--I believe--time for those of us in positions of global stewardship to help illuminate the way to a new century of peace, progress, and prosperity for all. Great Chance During the half century that I have been in the information technology industry, I have been privileged to be an eye- witness to its creation of astounding change, perhaps the most dramatic of which has been the world's rapid advance toward a global society characterized by the accelerated movement of labor, goods, technology and capital across frontiers. Some call this new episode the ``Information Age''. It is dramatically transforming--largely for the better--most aspects of daily life in most parts of the world. But perhaps even more important, it is leading to a new society that will be based on an ability to understand and respond to the need and wishes of individuals everywhere in the world. Also great challenges With the expansion of this new global information economy and society will come radically new roles for our world institutions, including companies like mine. But what are these new roles going to be? How will they transform our multinational giants, the successful management of which challenges us greatly even today? What will this enterprise be like in the future? What should it be like? By no means do I believe that I have a crystal-clear vision of the future. But I have begun trying to understand it and its urgent demands. And in my mind, the most compelling new responsibility of the 21st century global corporation is balancing economic growth--necessary in order to extend peace and prosperity throughout the world--with the protection of planet Earth's very fragile ecosystem. More effective management of competition's chaotic expansion is the second most serious new responsibility that globalization is requiring us to asume. And I believe that cooperation at all levels--including those of global, regional, national, local and corporate--is the essential element here. World institutions will simply have to invent and engage in novel forms of collaboration at the same time they compete. In the business world we refer to this more contemporary and useful way of operating as the ``complementarian'' model where sometimes we compete, sometimes we cooperate, and more often we do both. The third most serious challenge at the start of the next millennium is, in my view, figuring out how world institutions--including corporations--can most effectively manage their new roles and work together for the betterment of the global village. The perceptive business executive knows what his organization's ``global citizenship'' responsibilities are today. But who will they be in the decade ahead as globalization broadens and informs more and more aspects of our lives? One answer is that the 21st century global corporation can no longer be parochial; its mission of service must encompass its entire community because to paraphrase Adam Smith, it too--just like other world institutions--exists to serve and strengthen it societies. So the multinational's notion of corporate stewardship will have to change--as it already has in some more enlightened U.S. companies. Increasingly, all of us business leaders are going to have to expand our philanthropy considerably beyond where we are accustomed to giving. If, for instance, our contributions have been exclusively economic, we might need to move into social, technical, and cultural spheres as well. We may also have to shift the emphases of our corporate good-citizenship efforts in terms of both geography and services provided. Instead of staying inside our comfortable local communities and simply continuing our work to support disabled people, the arts, sports, and the like, we might have to look at transferring some of our attention to the globe's poorest nations and help them build farms and highways as well. The World Bank, with its recently-begun metamorphosis, may be showing us the way. New Management Strategies Are Essential Despite these and other seriously demanding challenges--to which I have given decades of thought--I believe strongly in mankind's ability to successfully manage globalization and the resultant Information Age for the benefit of humanity, both our generation and the generations that follow us. Some multinational corporations have already started creating and employing different, more suitable management strategies for the future, and I am gratified to report that mine is one of them. The highly complex nature of our business as a leading international IT supplier and multi-media pioneer has required us to learn how to operate much more efficiently and effectively. For instance, in recent decades we have successfully situated many corporate functions, including R&D and manufacturing, in what we consider the optimum location in the world. In like manner, we have bought and sold in the world's most suitable markets--wherever they are. And this concept, to which we refer simply as ``mesh globalization'', has given us a strong competitive edge. In the process of deploying mesh globalization throughout our company--and puzzling over what the 21st century might require of us in terms of new management strategies--we were struck by the growing need to recognize both the needs of the group, or the whole, and the more personalized focus of the new era. But how to join the two seemingly divergent positions in compatible fashion. From the Greek words holos, meaning ``whole'', and on, signifying ``individual'', I coined the term ``holonic'' to indicate the need to harmonize the two. So today we are successfully employing ``holonic'' management to assure the prosperity of the corporation as a whole while simultaneously respecting and honoring the sovereignty of the individual--whether that individual is a company subsidiary, a company employee, or a member of one of the hundreds of communities around the globe in which we operate. And this more sympathetic complementary strategy has become another competitive advantage for us. Experience has taught us that one of the keys to employing it profitably is the sharing of information. Another is establishing and nurturing a culture--of the team or the subsidiary of the corporation--so that members have a meaningful concept around which to rally and with pride produce something they consider significant. In fact these two notions--the sharing of information and the development of mutually-engaging culture--have become so important, at least from our observation, that we have added them to the three resources we have historically identified and valued: People, property, and money. My Call to Action--A New Dialogue for the New Century Now you know something of my thought about the expansion of globalization and my efforts to position my company and my country advantageously for it. This leads me to share with you my great interest in building on the wisdom of world leaders from essential disciplines by bringing us together to identify vastly more creative ways to help all people achieve their desired goals in the new century. It used to be that the complementary and productive partnerships between and among business and financial leaders, elected politicians, and government officials-- Japan's ``Iron Triangle''--was sufficient to assure prosperity and peace. The now seriously-outdated nature of this limited collaboration has inspired us to consider an expansion--actually a doubling of the size of the groups to include distinguished heads of labor, academia, and the media as well. I refer to this new alliance as the ``neo-hexagon''. And I am issuing invitations to neo-hexagon leaders throughout the world, in developing as well as developed countries, to join me in a dialogue--a global conference--focused on identifying best management practices for the 21st century and preparing our organizations and our societies for the better tomorrow that our grandchildren and their great grandchildren deserve. I look forward to welcoming you there.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. What happens is that the Giuliani program is significant in that it says exactly what vouchers can do. There were 91,000 youngsters who had no place to sit when school opened in 1996. They took 1,000 of the 91,000 and they found a voucher program for them, they found scholarships for them. They are going to take care of 1,000 children. In the meantime, what are they saying to the other 90,000? You cannot deal with poor people and the problems of poor people in our inner cities unless you move systematically to change the larger system. Charter schools could have an impact on that system. It could accomplish some of the things they want to accomplish. Vouchers are a diversion. They are running away from the responsibility, the need to appropriate more money for construction, more money for teacher training, more money for books and supplies. They are running away from the responsibility and they are diverting the attention of the American people with vouchers. In their own communities, voucher advocates refuse to go and ask for a referendum and ask for focus groups and campaign on it. It will be very unpopular, I assure you, if they dare to push voucher programs in their own communities.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, we keep hearing examples of youngsters who live somewhere else. I would like to hear some examples of the children who live in my colleague's district.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, the Republican majority that came into power 3 years ago insisting that the Department of Education be abolished, eliminated, has no validity, no credibility in this discussion. This is another cynical ploy, cynical partisan ploy to destroy public education, public school education. These same advocates and sponsors of vouchers, I would like for them to tell me: In your district, have you gone to your own local school boards and proposed vouchers? What is their reaction? Do you have poor children in your districts? Most of you do. You get title I funds. They are spread all across the whole country so there are some poor children in your district. There are certainly middle-class families, who also send their children to private schools and would like to have the relief provided by funds vouchers. Have you discussed it with your school boards? And what is their reaction? Is it popular? Is this something you want to jam down only the throats of the African Americans in the inner cities and use them as guinea pigs in an experiment which has no validity in your own district? Do you know that all the States, in 1997, where legislation was introduced for vouchers, it did not pass, it failed. Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia; there were 24 States that introduced legislation for vouchers, and it did not pass in a single State. So is it the American people who want vouchers or is it something you want to impose from Washington? You have used your power to try to impose it in Washington, DC. The people of Washington, DC., had a referendum. They said they did not want vouchers, they want charter schools. But you want to force it down their throats. You are cynically refusing to support programs that would benefit poor people. Your majority in two sessions voted against Goals 2000. When you failed to eliminate Goals 2000 in a regular format, you went through the back door of the Committee on Appropriations and you eliminated opportunity-to-learn standards. Nothing is more significant for poor children in America than the opportunity-to-learn standards, which deal with just what I am saying, opportunity-to-learn. If you are going to be able to learn, you need a decent building, so school construction is what we should be discussing here. You need trained teachers. We should be discussing training teachers. We should be discussing how to introduce the best educational technology into the poorest schools. We are not discussing the things that are significant because you have the time preoccupied with a diversionary discussion of vouchers. You refused to pass all of the President's Technology Challenge Fund; you cut funds for that. And you denied low-income students the opportunity to continue their education by voting to cut student loans by $10.1 billion in fiscal year 1996. Whenever low-income programs are introduced, whenever they are introduced on this floor, the same Members who are advocating vouchers for a handful of poor children are the Members who vote those programs down. Follow Mayor Giuliani. What he did in New York is, he went to the private sector. You want vouchers, you want to experiment with vouchers; go to the private sector, they can help a handful of children, instead of threatening to destroy the entire system.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, does the local school board of the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Talent] endorse vouchers? Has he asked them to endorse vouchers?

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

Mr. OWENS. How long is the waiting list at your excellent school?

Mr. OWENS. How many can you accept?

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to ask the honorable majority leader if he could explain the fact that the State of Texas actually introduced vouchers in the legislature. They actually had a floor vote in Texas and it failed in the State legislature; it was not passed in the State legislature of Texas.

Mr. OWENS. As an elected official, have you gone to them and asked them to endorse vouchers?

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

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I rise to salute an individual who is a tireless advocate for her community--Mrs. Thelma Martin. At every critical juncture, she amasses the resources and summons the courage to challenge wrongdoings and embellish the lives of countless children, families, and citizens. She embarks on civic and community endeavors with the same fervor in which she attacks political and social ills. Upon any evaluation of her contributions, it is difficult to determine where her civic and professional responsibilities begin and end. Thelma Martin is a great POINT-OF-LIGHT whose work must be celebrated. As a native New Yorker, Mrs. Martin's professional life has always been consumed by a relentless devotion to community. Currently, she is the executive director of the Renaissance Development Corp. In this capacity, Thelma Martin's accomplishments include development of various successful national-, state-, and local-sponsored programs including the Youth Development Delinquency and Recreation program, Commercial Revitalization program, Community Achievement project, Work Incentive program, and the Structured Educational Support program. Moreover, she is responsible for developing the first youth conference. Mrs. Martin also focuses her organization's endeavors on parental involvement projects, cultural trips, and practical workshops. Thelma Martin's present record of public service is rivaled only by her past appointments. She has served as the executive director of the South Brooklyn Community Corp. Under her administration, Mrs. Martin sponsored and organized the First Annual South Brooklyn Summer Festival for area merchants and residents--now known as the ``Atlantic Antic''. She also supervised 19 delegate agencies and 254 employees and had the largest number of area residents enrolled in college out of the 26 other area poverty agencies. Despite her professional demands, Mrs. Martin still finds time to excel in civic duties. She has served as the superintendent of the Cuyler Warren Street Church Sunday School, member of Community Board No. 16, member of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, member of the New York State Association of Renewal and Housing Officials, member of the 76th Precinct Council, vice president of the New York City Association of Executive Directors, chairperson of the board of directors of the Jules Michael Day Care Center, council president of the Cuyler Warren Methodist Church and chairperson of the Pastor Public Relations Committee. Unsurprisingly, Thelma Martin's work has not gone unacknowledged; she is the recipient of more than two dozen awards and commendations from many public officials and organizations. Among her honors are congressional awards from the 12th Congressional District and a senatorial award; an award from the New York State Democratic Party for her duties of community services; and awards from the Youth Committee Board No. 16, Ladies of Planning Board No. 16, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church. She was also recognized for helping to enrich the lives of more than 5 million children and their families. A strong sense of family is another characteristic of Thelma Martin's life. She has been married to Woodrow Martin for 38 years and has two sons, Glen David and Mark Anthony; one grandson, Glen, Jr.; and one daughter-in-law, Ingrid. Inarguably, Thelma Martin has conducted herself as a model citizen. She has accepted the rights, duties, and responsibilities of a democratic society with deliberation, fortitude, and compassion. She has chosen to exercise her inner power to the fullest possible extent, having utilized her actions to improve the lives of individuals, enhance her community, challenge institutions, and demand reform of adverse practices. She is a great POINT-OF-LIGHT for all of the people of America to appreciate and admire.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Madam Speaker, as a matter of practice, I never like to criticize any efforts related to the improvement of education, whether they take place here or at the local government area or in the State governments. All efforts to improve education are generally to be applauded. As I said before, we need a comprehensive approach to the improvement of our schools and almost no attention focused on schools is wasted. First of all, it is important that the American people, the vast majority of the American people, the voters have placed education at a high priority position. They repeatedly insist that education is a high priority and that Federal aid to education is also a high priority. That is consistent and highly desirable. As a result of the general public and the voters insisting that education is a high priority, we have a lot of attention being focused on education by elected officials at every level, both in the Congress, the city councils, and the State legislatures. A lot of attention is being paid to education, a lot of campaigns that are running now across the country for this coming election day on November 4, they are not congressional campaigns because we are not running for office this year, but municipal campaigns, campaigns for Governor. Schools are in the forefront in terms of issues that voters care about and want to hear discussed. Certainly, in New York City, Democratic candidate Ruth Messinger has certainly placed great stress on school improvement. The Republican candidate incumbent mayor has answered in trying to show a thousand ways in which he helped to improve schools and education. And on it goes. In another major contest in New Jersey, the very close contest between Gov. Christie Whitman and Assemblyman McGreevey, education figures as a very important item. On the floor of this House, there is hardly a week that goes by where education is not dealt with in some form in some piece of legislation. Today was one of those days when we had a discussion on education, which I must say we do not need. It was a very negative discussion. Very negative action was taken today. We focused on vouchers, and we are insisting that vouchers must be a part of the Federal effort to improve education. School vouchers, you know, there is a group here in the Congress that insists on pressing ahead with vouchers no matter what the American public thinks of vouchers. It is like a dogma at this point. It is a religion. Dogmatically, they insisted vouchers must be placed in the forefront of any effort to improve education. Despite the fact there is so much disagreement about vouchers, there are areas of agreement. We agree that charter schools, public charter schools, is a concept that might make a real contribution to education improvement. We agree on that. We agree that more technology in schools might make a real contribution to the improvement of education. We agree that teacher training and more funds to make certain that teachers get more training would make a great contribution to the improvement of education. We agree on quite a number of things. Unfortunately, we do not agree on one major item that ought to be in the forefront, and that is school construction. The one item that is necessary before those other items can be really put in place is an effort to help localities and States with the construction of decent schools. It is not a problem confined to the inner-city communities like mine, the 11th Congressional District of Brooklyn. It is a problem which is pervasive all over America. There is not a single State that does not have schools that need replacement or repair or renovation, not a single State and quite a number of school districts out there. The General Accounting Office says we need $120 billion to deal with the infrastructure of public education. Although, America, if you really dealt with improving the infrastructure to bring schools to the point where they are adequate, they offer adequate facilities that are conducive to learning, it will cost about $120 billion. All the President proposed in his State of the Union message was $5 billion. We were happy to hear that because it is a beginning. Five billion dollars was proposed to help with school construction, $5 billion to be spent over 5 years, maybe not necessarily $1 billion a year, but over a 5-year period. That seems like much too little as far as I am concerned. But we will be satisfied that we have begun. However, during the course of the budget discussions between the Republicans and the Democrats, that $5 billion construction initially was taken off the table. When they did that, they hurt the credibility of all the other efforts to improve education. Teacher training, technology, charter schools, they become a bit of a joke when we are talking to people where the schools are crumbling all around them. It is a bit of a joke to say that Washington should have 3,000 vouchers, vouchers for 3,000 youngsters, when a school system of 70-some-thousand youngsters is crumbling around us. It is a bit of a joke to talk about that solving the problem or any other effort we make now at this point in the Washington schools to talk to the teachers about the use of more technology, computers, videos, whatever; to talk to them about the use of these modern aids to education is a bit ridiculous when the schools in Washington do not have heat. A large percentage of schools now are suffering because they have a boiler problem, a heating problem, furnaces are going bad. They open late. Three weeks late the schools in Washington open because a large number of them had problems with leaking roofs. And because so many had problems with leaking roofs, the court ruled that schools in general could not open until they were all repaired. They finally, after 3 weeks' delay, got the schools open. Now we have a large percentage of schools that have problems with their heating systems and they are closing down the schools that opened up 3 weeks late. Every day there is a new headline in the Washington paper. I think we ought to stop for a moment and consider the fact that this is the Nation's capital. It may be overwhelmingly African American. For some reason, that leads certain people to believe that we really do not have to take it seriously, what happens here is not a mirror of America. But it is in many ways the America we do not want to admit. We do not have the high visibility in the rural schools in America that may be having leaking roofs or may be having problems with their furnaces. We do not know about them because they are off the radar screen. In big cities like New York, they are so big. Washington has less than, I think, about 750,000 people. That may be an optimum size for a city. After that, it may be that the cities are too big that go beyond that because the communications problems that result are horrendous. I am a resident of the city of New York. I serve a congressional district with 582,000 people. It is one of 14 congressional districts in the city. We cannot get on the radar screen of our local television stations. We cannot get on the radar screen of our local radio stations with news that is important to my congressional district, made up of many communities, planning districts, all kinds of units in a city of 8 million people. You cannot find out in New York City which schools have problems with their furnaces today. I would wager that there are more furnace problems today in New York City than there are in Washington, D.C. But it is not news. It does not surface. We have more than 300 schools in New York City out of 1,100 schools. I always have to clarify things when I talk about New York City's school systems and make my colleagues understand the numbers. Unlike anything else in the country, there are 1,100 schools, 60,000 teachers, 1.1 million students. So, of the 1,100 schools, more than 300, and I was quoted a few weeks ago, I said more than 250. I have learned recently from people who are very close to the system, custodians' union, that it is more like 325 schools that have furnaces that burn coal. We still have furnaces in more than 300 schools that are burning coal. Coal makes a lot of heat. Maybe it makes more heat than oil or gas. But it also makes a tremendous amount of pollution. New York City is also the city that has the largest number of children with asthma. We will not go into what other respiratory diseases they may have. Again, it is so big that we have thousands of cases that do not even tabulate certain kinds of diseases. Asthma is way up there. The number of children with asthma is astronomical. So children with asthma is one indication of children suffering from a pollution problem. So just to get rid of the coal-burning schools would greatly improve the physical health of the children and probably a lot of adults, also. But that is not on the radar screen. They are not even talking about it. I assure my colleagues that schools are breaking down every day with furnace problems in New York City. But, unlike Washington, the courts and very active parent organizations are in constant monitoring. Constant state of monitoring has been provided by the courts and the parent organizations of what is going on in the schools. They have some other problems related to health that are surfacing that may lead to some other shutdowns of schools. I say this because here we were on the floor of the House today discussing vouchers, a rule to set the stage and parameters for discussion of vouchers next week. The Republican majority insists that we cannot discuss something sensible and something which has achieved a great deal of consensus among the Members of Congress, a great consensus among the American people as a whole, the public voters. Charter schools are looked upon as a respectable effort to improve schools. Public charter schools would provide some of what we think is needed to improve public schools. Most of the children in America are going to go to public schools a long time to come. Over the next 20 years, I would predict at least 90 percent of the children in America are going to still be going to public schools, regular public schools, traditional public schools, public schools controlled by some central management and governance mechanism. There is no reason we cannot have some charter schools which offer an alternative and may, by example, lead to improvement of public schools by operating in a free environment with the ability to innovate and ability to do certain kinds of other things, including the ability to attract a group of people who are dedicated to education and will stay with it over a period of time. There are a number of things that charter schools can show us if we had more of them. That would certainly not be a big problem. In America right now, I think about 86,000 public schools exist, not counting private schools, but 86,000 elementary and secondary schools, more than 86,000, a little more. And of that number, about 800 are charter schools. At this point, charter schools are about 800 out of 86,000. So we are not going to be overwhelmed by charter schools, but charter schools could provide an opportunity to provide us with little laboratories of what can happen in a school to deal with the problems faced by the traditional public schools. We will not be allowed next week to discuss charter schools separately by themselves. They must be intertwined, interwoven with the discussion of vouchers. That is the way the majority has insisted we must do it. So charter schools are going to be tarnished, tainted. The whole discussion will be adulterated and emasculated by the shadow of vouchers, which nobody really in the Congress has shown great sincerity about because they come from districts that do not have vouchers. I would challenge every person, every Member of the Congress who really believes in the voucher system or somebody else pushing the voucher system to go back to their own school districts, the school district where their children go to school, and give us a report, conduct a survey and give us a report on whether they want vouchers, who wants vouchers in their district. In their district, have they talked to the local school board and are they in favor of vouchers in their district? Have they talked to parents? Are they in favor of a voucher system? I have heard lately that most of our Republican colleagues come from middle-income districts where they have faith in their schools and they are not interested in vouchers. They have faith in their schools and the schools have done a pretty good job. Well, according to various reports that are made, even our best schools in America can stand a lot of improvement. Some of our best schools that are very well funded, have the best of everything, still have mediocre performances or performances that fall short of what we would like for them to be. Certainly, we compare our best students in math and science to the students in math and science in other parts of the world. Math and science is a good place to make the comparison. Because across the world, math and science is pretty much the same. It is not like sociology, not like literature. Literature and sociology are too complex. They take a higher order of reasoning, in my opinion, than math and science. Math and science is the same everywhere. It is the same set of principles you proceed from; the logic is always the same kind of logic. The whole notion that it takes geniuses to deal with math and science ought to be reexamined. To deal with the swirling, complex nature of societies, anthropology, sociology, a number of other things out there are much more complex because they are never the same; the variables are always moving and changing. To deal with literature, the message that literature brings about to a particular culture, all those things require a much more complex set of reasoning and higher ordered thinking, but I will not get into that debate at this point. Math and science comparisons are made, and some of our best students from our best schools are falling short. I say to every Member of Congress, no matter how good the schools are, they would, I think, agree they could be improved. Would having vouchers improve them? It probably would, according to your reasoning. If you say the best schools are the private schools, then the best schools in your neighborhood, I guess, are private schools, too. The best schools in your State, the best schools in your school district, are they private schools too and if that is the case, are you pushing vouchers in your district? And what is the reaction of your school board? What is the reaction of your constituents? Come tell us. Do not tell us that this is a solution for inner city schools, this is a solution for disadvantaged African American communities. We are going to push this solution down your throat, because we believe that this is the way it should go and we are going to make you take it. The Washington, DC, appropriation bill that is still in the hopper, they are still negotiating and in conference on the Washington, DC appropriation bill. What is one of the biggest hang-ups in the Washington, DC appropriation bill? The biggest hang-up is the fact that the Members of the House of Representatives who believe in vouchers have insisted that vouchers must be instituted in the Washington, DC schools. Vouchers must be put in whether you like it or not. The people of Washington, DC had a referendum, they voted, they do not want vouchers. They voted not to have vouchers. This same Washington, DC decided to set up a charter school board. I think probably there is no other city in the country that has a board for charter schools. They do want charter schools. They are going ahead. There are very complex guidelines, and they are now in the process of examining applications for charter schools. So why not support them wholeheartedly with charter schools, members of the Republican majority, why not leave them alone and stop trying to impose your dogma, impose your religion on the people of Washington, DC, your educational religion? Your dogma does not work if people do not want it. It is not going well even in your own districts. So why are you going to impose it on Washington, DC? Why are you going to offer it to frustrated parents in the inner-city communities as a solution when you know that only a tiny percentage of the youngsters at best could be placed in voucher programs? And when you do that, you are mixing up church and State because most of those schools that they find places in are church-related schools, and that whole debate and the conflict. In New York City it might seem easy as long as you are placing children in schools that are Christian schools. But there are also Muslim schools there. What about them? There are also Jewish schools. What about them? What kind of tensions are you going to create when you wade into that problem of replacement of students with public funds into religious schools? Are you not going to create a problem which is greater than the problem you solve? Those are some of the questions. What I want to dwell on here is the fact that this Congress, the 105th Congress, with a golden opportunity to really do something meaningful about education, is frittering it away, has frittered away an entire year around the edges with concepts like vouchers and education savings accounts and things that really, if they have any meaning at all that might be worthy of consideration, they ought to be referred to the Committee on Education and the Workforce for further study and deliberation. The voucher bill that was presented here for a rule today has not been discussed in the Committee on Education and the Workforce. We have not even gone through the regular democratic process. It was just brought to the floor because the people, the fanatics who believe in it, said this is our religion, this is our dogma, we are going to introduce it whether you like it or not and we do not need to take it through the democratic process while we are frittering away at the opportunity really to do something quite significant in the area of education. With so many Americans on board, the electorate saying we want more attention paid to education, why do we not do something really meaningful, why do we not start with construction? Why do we not start with a program that the Federal Government can offer that nobody else can offer? We are not interfering with the State and local governments if we offer assistance with construction. They all need it. There is not a single State that cannot use some funds for some school in the State with respect to construction, renovation or repairs. So why do we not focus on that? Why are we focused on testing? The White House unfortunately has gotten locked into its own dogma. Testing is the answer, testing above all. I am not among those people who say we should never have a national testing system. That is not my reason for opposing testing. My reason is that testing is not a priority. Testing ought to come in sequence. Testing should be further down the line. What are you going to say, Mr. President, to the parents of the children whose schools have been shut down for 3 weeks in Washington and they started 3 weeks late when they go to take the test? What are you going to say to the parents of these same children who not only had to start school 3 weeks late but they also have a problem now with the boilers and they face shutdowns and busing around, all kinds of interference with their schooling since school opened finally and the weather began to turn cold. What are you going to say when it comes time for them to take the test? Are you going to give them an excuse? As I said, in Washington, DC we have a high profile area, a high visibility area. We know that large numbers of schools in Washington have a problem with the roofs leaking. We have been looking at that for some time over the past few months and we hope they have gotten the roofs fixed now. We know now that they have a problem also with the boilers not working, the furnaces are not working. We know that in Washington, DC. What we do not have is a tabulation of how many schools across the Nation are also in trouble and they are having their youngsters bundle themselves up in the classroom, which is not conducive to learning, I assure you, but an invitation to lowering their immune systems and bringing on other kinds of problems as a result. How many schools are having children bundle up with classrooms that have inadequate heating? How many schools out there across the country have actually had to shut down for several days, starting with New York City? As I said before, you would not know it out of our 1,100 schools if there were some that shut down yesterday because the heating systems were not working. The news is not generated. I do not get that news. I do not get any information. The papers do not think that is worthy of reporting. It is a humdrum part of the routine. But I am sure if I go check today and yesterday, there were schools that had heating problems in New York City. How many of those coal burning furnaces, furnaces that still burn coal, how many of them are working today, spewing their pollutants into the air, causing more children to have asthma? This is not news, not being discussed, but Mr. President and the people who advocate national testing, are you going to take into consideration the fact that this is going on? Are you going to have a system for excusing the children who have experienced all these problems in our school? Not at home. They may have problems at home with heating. They may have problems at home with broken families, low incomes that cannot afford to provide nutritious food, all kinds of problems may exist in a poor neighborhood that we have been talking about for ages which impede the school's ability to educate the children. But let us put that aside and say that the school ought to be an oasis, at least when they come to school they ought to be warm. When they come to school, they ought to drink water that is not possibly tainted with lead. We have not gotten into that. There is a lead poisoning problem in many big cities because the older the school is, the more likely it is to have lead pipes and the water that children drink every day is flowing through lead pipes. We do not even raise the subject officially in New York because we know if you go looking, you are going to find too much lead in a lot of the pipes. It ought to be examined, it ought to be put on the radar screen, we ought to not jeopardize the health of children, because the younger you are, the more devastated your brain may be by lead poisoning. This is happening, Mr. President, advocates of testing. How are you going to compensate for it? How are you going to adjust for it? Why do you not take into consideration the fact that this is happening and say to yourselves, let us make construction a priority. Let us put the full force and weight and credibility of the Federal Government behind a program to guarantee every child across the country a decent physical facility, a physical facility which is not injurious to their health, a physical facility which is secure, a physical facility which is conducive to learning. The lighting system, the ventilation, whatever is necessary, let us at least provide that. Let us provide them with laboratories in those schools which are able to conduct science experiments. Let us have every school have adequate laboratories. Let us provide them with library shelf space and books in those schools which will give them a chance to really study seriously in up-to-date books. There are still many books in the libraries of New York City high schools that are 30 and 40 years old and they are history books and geography books totally inadequate, dangerously inaccurate, but they are still there. If they took all the old books off the shelves of the libraries in New York City's schools, we would have a lot of empty spaces that are not going to be filled up soon. But I am not into my bill on the Federal Government aiding libraries in schools and elsewhere. I just want construction at this point. Let us deal with making construction a priority and really be serious about the first priority. If you really care about education, if you really think our Nation is at risk, if you really believe that an educated society ought to be our first priority in terms of national security, an educated people, the one way to guarantee that our economy will continue to go forward and prosper, an educated people is absolutely necessary in order for our democracy to work appropriately. Democracies cannot work without educated people. The people must be educated. Even when you have educated people in certain societies, they still do not work if they do not have democracies. As we learned from the Soviet Union, a highly educated society, a highly educated people, probably in terms of science and math, there is no group of people on the face of the Earth more educated than the citizens of the Soviet Union, but an educated people operating in the framework of a totalitarian society where they are not able to utilize their education fully. You cannot have open exchange, you cannot have a utilization of really what is known. If it is bottled up by Neanderthal thinkers at the top of the structure, you have a command and control society, it does not matter what the truth is. The command and control society and the people at the top will issue their own truths and they blockade the progress of the society. A total collapse resulted from the fact that you had a highly educated society able to produce hydrogen bombs, missiles, able to match us in the area of defense hardware to a great degree, but the system was no good. Democracy first. Nothing works in this modern complex era without democracy, the openness and the back and forth, the churning process of people who are educated bouncing off each other, the trial and error method that takes place in a complex society, all that is inevitable. You can almost put it down now like a law. It is going to happen and the only way to have it happen productively is to have a maximum number of people educated so that what happens is among educated people. They will sometimes err temporarily and do strange things, elect inadequate, incompetent leaders, even elect demagogues. Occasionally they really go off the deep end but the correction will be there as long as it is democratic. There was no way to correct what was happening in the Soviet Union. No way to correct it, because of the fact that the closed society did not allow the churning back and forth and no matter how much education the people have, it would not have mattered as long as the parameters are set from the top. If you really believe in having maximum education in our democratic society, then the first thing you ought to put on your agenda is construction of schools. Not tests. Not tests. Not yet. Testing might make sense 5 years from now; a national test might make sense, but not now. Here are some headlines that appeared in the Washington Post about D.C. schools October 30, yesterday: ``Anger over Schools Suit Gets Personal, Attacks on Parent Leaders Expose Racial Tensions.'' The back and forth discussion over what is happening in the schools and the embarrassment has led to an upheaval that is affecting race relations in this city. October 30, yesterday also, there was another article about tests which indicates that many students in D.C. would not be promoted. There is a lot of talk at the White House and our committees about social promotion. Everybody is against social promotion. We are for motherhood and apple pie and against social promotion. Let's be against social promotion, but for the national discussion to get off into a discussion of social promotion, of uniforms, of what kind of reading approach to use, phonics versus whole words, I think that is premature. Let us focus on what the Federal Government can do best before we get off into those kinds of micromanaged details. We know they need decent places to study, to assemble. We know that. So why not focus instead on tests, rather than other problems. October 29, Wednesday, Washington Post reports, Washington school leaders close minds, close schools. School leaders, parent advocates and a Superior Court judge, who together are keeping the D.C. public school system in turmoil, are becoming public laughingstocks. This article starts by blaming the courts and parents for trying to do something about the D.C. schools, because they insist the kids ought to go to warm schools; furnaces ought to be fixed. Every day it seems they find new ways to resemble the children they are supposed to be helping. The consequences of their behavior are no laughing matter, however. Don't laugh. Because of their failure to reach in the court on how schools should be maintained, something as ordinary as opening all buildings in the system simultaneously has gotten beyond their reach. That is disgraceful. On it goes discussing the fact that even now, after D.C. schools are finally open, 3 weeks late, they are having a big problem. October 29, same day, article, ``Fire Marshal Finds Leaks and Closes Eighth D.C. School.'' Garnett-Patterson Middle School students to move to facility in Columbia Heights. The D.C. fire marshal closed Garnett- Patterson school yesterday afternoon because of multiple roof leaks, bringing to eight the number of schools closed because of a judge's concern about school safety. Do you want to have kids in schools where the roofs are leaking and furnaces don't work? I don't think any of us want that to happen. So why do we not talk about how we move to fix that? There was a discussion about the large amount of money spent on D.C. schools. The statement I heard on the floor today made was $10,000 per student is spent on the D.C. schools. That is pretty high. I heard somebody say that is the highest in the country. Well, that is not true. It may be the highest of any big city in the country, but there are districts in New York State where $20,000 is spent per youngster, per student, and there are probably districts across the country that are equally as high. They are not big city districts. Maybe the Speaker, and it was Speaker Gingrich, I think, who said Washington, DC., schools spend more than anybody else in the country on their schools per pupil. It is not true, Mr. Speaker. The number may be true for big city schools like Los Angeles and New York, Philadelphia. New York certainly is not at the $10,000 mark. It may be something like $7,000 per child. Nevertheless, the governance and management of Washington schools have been so terrible until they have all of these problems, despite the fact they have been spending a little higher than most cities. In those cities, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, I assure all of you, they also have problems with their roofs leaking, with their furnaces. It is just not on the radar screen. On Tuesday, the 28th in the Washington Post, ``Battle over Boilers Leaves D.C. students Out in the Cold.'' ``Children Bussed to Other Sites as Judge Keeps Schools Closed.'' October 27, ``Students at 5 Schools to be Bussed to Sites.'' October 26, ``Contest of Wills Contributes to Chaos in D.C. schools.'' October 26, ``Warm Wishes Not Enough.'' Warm wishes are not enough, as several D.C. public schools are being shutdown because of boiler repairs last week. I found myself thinking about the Daughters of Dorcas, a special group of women in Washington who make quilts. I just wished they could sew something for all of those children who are being left out in the cold by closed school buildings, as well as for those shivering students who will be attending schools that still do not have adequate heat. I think I made the point, I do not want to go on, but I am highlighting what is going on in Washington, DC., because I want you to know it is not an isolated case. This city is not alone in facing humongous problems with respect to their physical facilities. We ought to understand that and move forward to deal with it in this Congress. We are irresponsible by insisting on expending a great deal of time and energy on peripheral, marginal issues. Education savings accounts are marginal, peripheral items. Vouchers are marginal peripheral items. They may have some use somewhere, some time, but they certainly do not deserve to be discussed in this state of emergency that we are facing with our schools. We must go forward in the 105th Congress next year. I understand we are closing out on November 7 or 8 probably, and it is just as well, if this is the way we are going to approach a basic problem like education. We might as well close up the place and get out of town. I hope we come back with a different attitude in the second year of the 105th session of Congress. I hope the attitude of the 105th Congress matches the attitude of the people out there in the communities. Our constituents are way ahead of us in feeling that there is an education emergency, in feeling that their children deserve the best. Our constituents know that their children will not pass this way but once. You do not go through schooling but once. You are in elementary school, junior high school, high school, college, only once. Your life is going on. Your children will not have a second chance. So for every parent or grandparent, anybody who cares about children, there is an emergency. If your child is not getting the very best education they can get, there is an emergency. We ought to feel the same sense of emergency. I was quite gratified at the way parents responded when I issued the call for volunteers to come out on last Saturday, October 25. Saturday was Net Day. Net Day was a day set aside for the whole country. This was a time to appeal to volunteers to come in and voluntarily wire five classrooms plus the library. The wiring is to help set up the possibility that the schools' computers can be linked to the Internet. So wiring for the Internet of five classrooms plus the library is a goal of each set of Net Day volunteers. We wired 11 schools in my district. We had a real significant response. It was quite inspiring to see how parents responded. We were told at first that this wiring is a very simple matter. You show up on Saturday and in a day volunteers can wire five classrooms and a library. It is not that simple. I don't want to discourage anybody, but you better have some people that know what they are doing at each school. You have got to have somebody who is an electrician or telephone repairman, somebody who knows how it is done. The parents came out for training. Volunteers were asked to come to a 2-hour training session sponsored by the local phone company, Bell Atlantic. I must say that the wiring of schools in our area was a combination of volunteers in the community, the principals, the teachers, the parents, and the private sector. The private sector was key to our success. There was a group called New York Connects in New York City, which organizes private sector response to communities that want help for the volunteer wiring of schools. New York connects did a great job in providing the kind of help we needed. Bell Atlantic and Apple Computer trained some of the teachers. Bell Atlantic provided a place to train and the trainers and training sessions for parents. Various other companies supplied volunteers who came out and helped providing pieces of equipment. The process showed that even in an inner-city community, you can have a response by both the volunteers in the community and the private sector which can produce great results, if you focus on a task and a mission. I was quite impressed with the fact that the volunteer sessions, and the first session I went to, we expected 20 parents to show up. There were 45 or 50 parents there. The room was crowded. The people up front conducting the training session were white executives and technicians who had driven from Long Island through heavy traffic to get to the session to train the inner-city parents and volunteers. It was a coming together which nobody planned, but as a result of focusing on a task which is worthwhile, to carry our schools forward, it happened. Those kinds of positive things are happening at many of the schools where we conducted the wiring. We heard the complaints that we had to be asbestos-certified, make sure that the asbestos problem is not so great that the boring of the holes would be a problem. Some schools where we were wiring for the Internet, some of the principals were complaining about the fact they are worried about the old pipes that may have led poisoning problems. On and on it goes with top floors having indications that the roof is leaking, et cetera. Nevertheless, I am here to celebrate the good news, and what I am saying is the responsiveness of our constituents, the responsiveness of parents for an exercise like Net Day, demonstrates they are way ahead of us in terms of believing that makes a difference. While inner-city parents in my district, the poorest--some of these schools were in our poorest sections, where they are excited about wiring the schools so the kids can have the benefits of being linked to the Internet. Why? Because their kids excite them. When the kids hear about the computers and Internet, the students get excited and the parents know it is important. The children want to go into the 21st century. There are some people who said to me why are you concerned, and Congressman Owens, why are you wasting your time and energy for technology for inner-city schools? Why are you concerned about the fact that in January 1998, the FCC has mandated that the Universal Service Fund go into effect and $2.2 billion will be available to public schools and libraries. What does that have to do with inner-city schools that are suffering from a lack of books? They do not have enough books. They do not have enough chalk sometimes. Teachers complain about basic supplies. So why do we not focus on basic supplies and chalk and books instead of worrying about the Internet? My answer to people who approach me that way is that what if every city in the United States had said we are not going to deal, until we fix our sidewalks, until we repair all of our roads, we are not going to build airports. If every city in the country said we are not going to deal with airports until all the sidewalks and all the roads are fixed, we would not have modern airports and modern transportation systems. It would come to a halt. There are still roads and sidewalks out there that are not repaired and in constant disrepair, but we go forward, and our schools have to go forward. Our inner-city schools should be no less than schools anywhere else, and that is the way I see it, and a lot of the children see it that way, and it caught on, because their parents are also beginning to see it that way. Here is an effort that was not unique to Brooklyn. We wired 11 schools in my congressional district, but there were other schools wired in other parts of New York City on Net Day, and across the country we had schools wired on Net Day, and there are other schools across the country being wired at other times. My colleague, the gentlewoman from Michigan [Ms. Stabenow] is involved with the wiring of schools and acquisition of technology. She is one example of how Members of Congress want this to go forward. Again, we would have more credibility and our effort would have a greater result if we had a new initiative to guarantee that the school buildings are sound buildings. The wiring is not too old to take the new linkages, the phone systems are not too old that we are not going to encounter large quantities of asbestos problems, et cetera. In keeping with that whole volunteer spirit, I want to announce again that I am supporting, and quite happy to be one of the people who are spearheading another National Education Funding Support Day. I am holding a copy of our poster for this year. National Education Funding Support Day is November 19 of this year. Republicans, Democrats, everybody is invited to join us in trying to demonstrate to the public at large that we are going to provide leadership in improving our schools in every way. We want to emphasize technology this year. We have chosen to emphasize technology this year. We chose that because this is the prelude to the opening of the universal service fund for schools and libraries. That is going to happen in January 1998. We want schools to start getting prepared, and understand that they cannot wait to be in on this. National Education Funding Support Day is sponsored by the National Commission for African American Education. This year's poster has a basketball star, Patrick Ewing, of the New York Nicks. Patrick Ewing happens to be from this area, the star of Georgetown University in Washington, who also now is the president of the National Basketball Association, Patrick Ewing. I hope next year we can get lots of stars, so in local areas we can have different posters with stars of baseball, football, basketball, women and men, appealing to youngsters and their parents to look at education as belonging to them. We need changes to go forward from the masses. Whatever we do as leaders needs to be complemented by mobilization in our communities. Our communities need to get more involved. We have seen this happen in the area of crime. The National Night Out Against Crime, for example, is an idea that caught on in our communities. Every community has some activities on the National Night Out Against Crime. The reason crime is going down across the country, there are many factors, but one of the factors is that more ordinary citizens, ordinary people, have understood that they should get involved in trying to get rid of crime. Crime-fighting is not a professional activity that ought to be left to the police and judges and the criminal justice system, but every citizen has a role, too. Every citizen has a role in education. We are saying that on November 19 every group should go out and do something in connection with the promotion of education, either at day care centers, the public school, if you want, at your college, but do something on November 19 in connection with National Education Funding Support Day. We would like to have two things resonate. One is opportunities to learn in the area of technology, and that is what this message is. It is Patrick Ewing standing in front of a computer with some schoolkids. We want to emphasize that we are on the edge of a great jump start in technology for schools. That is going to be provided by the FCC mandate for a universal fund for libraries and schools, so technology is important. The other thing we want to resonate is that construction is important. Technology, the training of teachers, charter schools, nothing that we do is going to succeed unless we have buildings and facilities that are adequate for schools across the country. Every State has a problem that would be helped if the Federal Government were to take the initiative. Let us stop our waste of time on vouchers, on testing, on education savings accounts. Let us put them on the back burner, and when we open the second year of the 105th Congress, let us look forward to focusing on funding for education which provides more technology in our schools and also provides for adequate physical facilities for all of our schools. The National Commission for African-American Education has a little brochure. If Members are interested, I think their phone number and their address is in the brochure. The chairman of the National Commission for Education, for National Funding Support Day, is Dr. Edith Patterson, a former school board president in Charles County, MD. The number they give, if Members want to contact them directly, is 301- 753-4165 and 301-870-3008. Those are two numbers. For more information, the brochure talks about some of the activities that Members can sponsor on National Education Funding Support Day. The National Commission for African-American Education is located in Silver Spring, MD. I do not see the address here. Call the number and you will get, certainly, information. Certainly my office is able to give more information. It is a way to mobilize the general public. It is a way to take advantage of the fact that there is a good feeling out there about doing something about our schools. In the past we have had all kinds of activities launched by some Members of Congress. I think the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia, [Ms. Eleanor Holmes Norton] conducted lectures on that day last year. Last year we decided to launch an effort on National Education Funding Day called NetWatch. NetWatch was designed to wire schools in our area, in our district. NetWatch proposed at that time to wire 10 schools in 10 weeks, but because of the teachers' processes, because of all the complications that you run into when you try to wire schools for the Internet, it took us until October 25. National Education Funding Support Day last year was October 23. We did not get a single school wired until 12 months later, on October 25. The NetWatch activities that were launched on National Education Funding Support Day resulted in our Net Day wiring of 11 schools in central Brooklyn, my 11th Congressional District. But we are now in a position, we have a group of people we are forming called NetWatch Fellows. All those volunteers who came out and supported us, parents and local residents, we are asking them to stay with us and form a group called NetWatch Fellows, so we can move the process from the wiring of the school for the Internet right through the process of getting more computers, of getting all the connections they need, of getting software, of getting program materials, and of helping teachers get the training, so that the final result of our efforts are not in vain, the final results are that in the classroom the curriculum is effective and youngsters will find a more exciting way to get knowledge, to be inspired, and to learn whatever they have to learn. That is our goal. Our NetWatch Fellows will carry us to that process. We had 11 schools in the 11th Congressional District, and we had great cooperation from the principals. There is an organization called the Hussein Institute of Technology, founded by a gentleman who, in private industry, does computer networks. He has founded a school for free to train people on how to use computers, both adults and youngsters. Mr. Hussein and the Hussein Institute of Technology has sort of been the backbone of the effort of NetWatch in the 11th Congressional District. Again, we had at the top level the New York Connects, a similar organization, private entrepreneurs and technicians and executives in the area of technology who provided invaluable assistance in the effort to wire schools on October 25. The board of education is to be commended because it cut through a lot of the usual problems that you encounter in a large organization like the board of education, and they provided us with the personnel, help, and they attended the meetings. They made things happen. The board of education, New York Connects, NetWatch, all came together with the volunteers in our community to make things happen in terms of wiring 11 schools on Net Day. There are many schools that have contacted my office and said, when is it my turn? My answer is that we hope to provide a movement. We have started a process. This core of volunteers in some cases will be able to go to other schools and volunteer and help them move forward. In all cases we are trying to change policy, routines, management practices in the board of education which will accelerate this. There is a technology plan. The board of education has a technology plan. What we want to do is accelerate the implementing of the board of education's technology plan so our schools are not waiting 10 years from now for the technology that many suburban schools enjoy today in great abundance. In summary, what I am saying is that testing, for all of those who think that testing is important, testing may be important 4 or 5 years from now. Let us put it on the back burner and deal with it then. Vouchers may have some merit, but they are only a tiny pebble when it comes to dealing with the problem of improvement of education in America. It may be that vouchers should be left to private industry. New York City has a model. The mayor of New York got scholarships for 1,000 youngsters, vouchers for 1,000 youngsters, by raising money in the private sector. Private industry, private people, donated money, so they have 1,000 youngsters who have vouchers to go to nonpublic schools. That is 1,000 youngsters out of 1.1 million. We have 1.1 million students in New York City schools. I am happy for the 1,000 if it leads to success, and I see no reason why private industry cannot supply the money. Many of them will be going to parochial schools. Many of them will be learning religion as well as other things. That is all right with private money. Their parents took the private voucher money, they decided to send them, and that is quite all right. Parents have that right. We do not get into a debate about church and school. I would say to those who want to push vouchers, why not let the private sector raise the money for the vouchers and demonstrate the utility of vouchers in solving problems, if that is the case. If we are going to launch a voucher program to demonstrate that it can help solve the problem, then let us use private sector initiatives and private sector money for vouchers. Let us return to charter schools as another clear way to offer an alternative to traditional public school education. Charter schools can offer competition. Charter schools can develop innovations that might be replicated in the public schools. Charter schools can offer a great deal. In New York City, we have something else called the alternative public schools. Alternative public schools fall in between charter schools and traditional schools. Alternative public schools are basically run and controlled by the central board of education, but they allow a great deal of leeway and latitude in the local group that wants to operate that alternative school. That is another possibility. Of course, as I said before, we cannot let up on the process of hammering away at the big school systems in our big cities. They are going to be the system that provides most of the education for inner- city children for a long time to come. We cannot let them off the hook with governance, management. The scandal in Washington, DC, that a command and control system, a centralized system, has allowed to happen should not be allowed to happen again. We should keep a vigilant watch on all of our school systems, but most of all, the Federal Government should send a message across America that where it hurts most, or where we can be most helpful, in the area of school construction in 1998, we are going to come together and make that the backbone of the effort to improve education in America, the Federal aid effort to improve education in America. Construction comes first.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 2646. I think the credibility of the Congress is greatly injured by playing these kinds of college boy, sophisticated games around the edges of a crucial issue like education reform. Mr. Speaker, we are showing off with college boy sophistication while we reject the common sense of the American people. They want something real done about the education reform problem. They do not want us to continue to play games. Our credibility is now down to 36 percent. I understand this Congress dropped from 40 percent. This is the reason. We are not serious here. We like to show off among ourselves. Mr. Speaker, the voters out there clearly want decisive action on education reform and improvement. They keep saying it again and again and again. In this 105th Congress, instead of playing games, we should take advantage of this window of opportunity to do something significant. The people are saying they want a real effort by Congress to deal with the education problems. Instead of education savings accounts and other headline-seeking tricks, we should unite in launching a bipartisan omnibus bill around the things that both Republicans and Democrats already agree on. We agree that we need more teacher training and that Federal aid would greatly help that teacher training process. We agree we need more technology in the schools; both Republicans and Democrats are in favor of giving aid for more technology. We agree on charter schools. Instead of pushing vouchers and education savings accounts, why not unite in the areas that we agree? We are both in favor of charter schools, both parties. Why do we not move forward in some kind of way which is commensurate with the problem? Let us understand that schools are at the core of what should be a massive opportunity system in America which will generate the kind of educated population we need as we go into the 21st century. We are the indispensable Nation. We are going to have to continue to hold on to a leadership role. We cannot do that unless we have the most highly educated population. Mr. Speaker, let us stop playing games and let us have some real Federal aid to education that meets the common sense needs of the American people.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I suppose the item of the day in terms of significant news is the fact that the Democratic minority leader has decided to also throw his lot in with those who want to make the highest priority of reforming the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service. I want to get on board, too. I cannot think of any American out there who does not think that we could improve the Internal Revenue Service in some way, and hopefully in a way which relieves us of some of the unjust items that have affected us in the past in some way. But, in all seriousness, it is long overdue. The IRS has been neglected by Congress for too long. Congress, in general, is delinquent in its oversight responsibilities for the Federal Government. In the 15 years that I have been here, I have watched how time is frittered away and it is always the item which captures the most headlines for the moment that gets the most attention, while the important functions of government, and the gigantic agencies of government, like the Internal Revenue Service, they go on and on and they get very little oversight. I suppose that is why IRS stumbled into a $4 billion blunder in the setup of their computer operation in an attempt to computerize themselves. Not enough Congressmen were watching. Not enough outside independent monitoring was going on, and there are probably numerous other areas in the IRS which need reform. Mr. Speaker, I certainly hope that the debate on IRS will not degenerate or remain at the level that it is. It is sort of standing at a very low level. We are interested more in paper clips and rubber bands and operations that are at a very primitive level than we are in the total philosophy that guides IRS and the total setup of policies that emanate from the Congress through the Committee on Ways and Means and the Senate Finance Committee. I hope that the debate about IRS will be a long and fruitful one. I hope that it will be a very thorough one, and I hope that we will look at all aspects of what is happening with our Internal Revenue Service, what is happening with our revenue collection processes. Revenue has always been, and I have said this many times before, neglected by people who are progressives, liberals, whatever we want to call us these days. We have never spent enough time looking at revenue collection, taxes, tax policies, and that has caused some serious problems, the fact that there has never been a balanced debate or the kind of attention focused on the revenue process that we should have. For the past few years, I have been insistent that we take a hard look, an intense and thorough analysis of what is going on with respect to revenue collection. I was fascinated. I am not on the Committee on Ways and Means, I am on the Committee on Education and the Workforce. I am concerned primarily about why there are no funds for programs like the school construction program. I am concerned about the fact that while we are lumbering along with an antiquated education system in some obvious ways. It needs help from the Federal Government and we are not supplying that help. I am concerned about our priorities and why we continue to give the impression to the American people and the world that we are a bankrupt Nation or almost a bankrupt Nation when it comes to the area of education, in the area of youth employment or a number of other worthwhile programs. We always have enough money for defense and we increase the defense budget, but we do not have enough for education. So, my concern for expenditures related to positive programs like building schools led me to take a closer look at the revenue side of the equation and several years ago, I became fascinated by the fact that our income tax collection process, our income taxes produce a large amount of taxes from individuals and families and a much smaller percentage from corporations. Corporations are where the money is, so I was fascinated by the fact that at present about 11 percent, of the last figures I looked at, the records that I saw, 11 percent in 1996 of the income tax collected was collected from corporations, while four times that much was collected from families and individuals, 44 percent. So, the policies and the laws which govern and guide IRS are of very great interest to me. How much of that inequity in collection, inequality in the collection between corporations and families and individuals is due to the fact that Congress made the wrong kinds of laws, or the laws are imbalanced, they are not in balance in terms of collections from corporations versus individuals and families. How much is doing to the wrong policy? The wrong philosophy? And how much might be due to IRS and its administration, its implementation of the policies that have emanated from Congress? Is IRS delinquent in the way it pursues collection of revenue from corporations? Does it spend too much time, an inordinate amount of time pursuing families and individuals and shy away from pursuing collection of taxes from corporations because they are so big, they are so complicated, they have lawyers, they have tax accountants? We have all seen in the past remarks made by people in the executive branch of government concerning the need to focus on collecting taxes where we can collect them more rapidly. I think in the Reagan administration there was a statement made that IRS should not waste so much time with corporations, it takes too long to get the collection. Middle-class people are the people who will respond when the IRS goes for the collections. If there are problems, then pursue middle-class taxpayers and we will get a better return, a more rapid return in terms of collection. How much of that permeates the modus operandi of the Internal Revenue Service? Those kinds of questions I would like to see raised and answers. There is another aspect of the debate which I think also I have raised before and we should take a hard look at, and that is how fair is our revenue collection policy and how fair are the procedures? When we have a situation which has persisted for a long, long time, more than 10 years, we will talk about just the last 10 years, but it is probably the last 20 years that we have had the situation with respect to New York City and New York State. We have a situation where big cities like New York City and big States like New York, industrial States, have consistently paid more into the Federal coffers, the Federal Treasury, than they have gotten back. The balance of payments has been way out of kilter consistently over the years. I have discussed it on the floor of this House on several occasions. Senator Moynihan quite a number of years ago started making a study, an analysis, of which States are in a position where they are paying more into the Federal Treasury than they get back in terms of Federal aid. So it has become a very thorough kind of analysis, and now it is supported by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and they produce a nice booklet every year and the latest version of the booklet I have in my hand. It is entitled ``The Federal Budget and the States: Fiscal Year 1996,'' the 21st edition. I was wondering before about how long we have done this, 21 years. For 21 years this study has been done, and Senator Moynihan does it now in conjunction with the John F. Kennedy School of Government. It is available, and I hope that certainly the policymakers in States like New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, the States that find themselves paying enormous amounts more into the Federal Treasury than they are getting back in terms of Federal aid, New York State is not so bad. This year we only paid $14 billion more into the Treasury than we are getting back. In the past it has been $16 billion and at one point it was $23 billion more was being paid by the taxpayers of New York into the Federal coffers than they were getting back in various forms of aid. This ranges all across the board, all forms of Federal aid. So it is interesting that New York State columnists and New York State legislators, Congressmen, city councilpersons, assemblymen, State Senators have never been that concerned about this imbalance. Senator Moynihan first made a speech about it at a community college in New York State, New York City. He was hoping it would attract the attention of the press, but it did not. The press, over the last 21 years, has basically ignored a basic injustice in revenue collection and distribution. We do not get back nearly as much as we put in. New York State now ranks third among those who suffer from this imbalance. At the same time New York State now ranks third in the amount of poverty that it has. That is pointed out in Mr. Moynihan's statement here. It is an important piece of irony. I am sort of stimulated and led to return to this discussion, and maybe I will be repetitious and say things I have said before here, but I am led to return because there was a columnist in the New York Post on Monday, October 13, who happened to single me out in his discussion of the New York economy and in his discussion of the fact that this piece of literature is produced every year and that New Yorkers seem to ignore it. Mr. Fred Siegel, a columnist for the New York Post, I do not know much about Mr. Siegel, I have not read him that often, but I think it is interesting that he pointed out in his column that we have this situation where the economy of New York City is in serious trouble. It is ready to fail. The point he was making primarily was that in the present mayoral election in New York City, we have a municipal election, borough president Ruth Messinger is running against incumbent Mayor Rudy Giuliani. He was stating that in this election there is very little talk about the economy of the city. The discussion of the economy of the city does not focus at all on the fact that New York City and New York State are in the situation where they continue to pay more into the Federal Government's coffers than they get back. And during the course of his discussion, he says that this is a subject that officials should be addressing, the mayor and his opponent should be addressing it. And he also pointed out that the Members of Congress should be addressing this subject. Particularly, he says Representative Major Owens devotes his time to long rambling and incoherent speeches on poverty and welfare reform before an empty House Chamber. I was stimulated, of course, to respond to Mr. Siegel and I think that Mr. Siegel and all the columnists in New York City's papers, the Times, the Daily News, the Post, columnists, reporters, Mr. Siegel has thrown out a challenge to elected officials. I would like to throw that challenge back to the columnists and reporters. Why is it that the editors, the columnists, the reporters of New York City and New York State refuse to accept the fact that we are being swindled and that we are a donor State to an ungrateful set of States out there who make speeches on the floor criticizing New York all the time. Why do we continue to accept the drain from New York State without putting up a fight, even if we can do no more than have a rhetorical fight at this point? Certainly the people of the State ought to be aroused by the columnists as well as by elected officials and begin the debate. We do not even have a debate now. There is really no challenge. I have quotes here from Mr. Siegel and other columnists who think that New York's Congresspeople are not interested in this problem and we have done nothing in the past. I do not know about my colleagues in the Congress from New York, but I have the proof here that I have consistently spoken about this very problem. I only went back one year, 1996, and I found three occasions where I talked at considerable length about the problem of the drain of dollars from New York State and New York City: March 12, 1996, March 22, 1996, and April 16, 1996. I talked at length about this very problem. I quoted from the statistics from the previous edition of this book, the Federal Budget and the States. I would like to say Mr. Siegel and all the other columnists and the editorial boards of the New York Times, the New York Post, get a copy. It is a fascinating book. It was made even simpler to read this time. Join the few Members of Congress and other political leaders who are aware and who are discussing this matter. Mr. Siegel is to be congratulated. He put his finger on a very important problem in terms of the mayoral election. There is not enough discussion about New York's economy. His article appeared in the Post, as I said before, on Monday, October 13, and is entitled ``New York Economy Ready to Fail but City Politicians do Nothing to Stop the Hemorrhage of Wealth.'' I am just going to quota a few items from Mr. Siegel's column. He is really writing about the mayoral election and that is his primary concern. He criticizes both candidates for mayor, the democratic candidate, Ms. Messinger and the incumbent Mayor Guiliani. He even throws in the candidate for the Socialist Workers Party, Olga Rodriguez, and says she at least talks about the economy, even though she is still trying to fight the October revolution. Talks about the kinds of things that have been discredited in terms of the fall of the Soviet empire. But he does talk about it, and I think it is a proper point of start, a jump-off point for a bigger discussion. And I hope that other journalists and editors will pick up and we can really begin to deal with the problem. Quoting from his article, Mr. Siegel says, and I quote, on Thursday, the Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, warned that the economy is on an unsustainable track. Less cautious observers suggest that stocks are overvalued by 20 percent. Is there a crash in the offing? Probably not. But there does not have to be for the city to suffer. Should the market drop to 6000, a level that just a few years back was unthinkably high, the city will start to slide into a fiscal meltdown. What Mr. Siegel is saying is that the present prosperity of the city, such as it is, and it is a spotty prosperity, certain neighborhoods have not enjoyed it at all, but overall the city looks good on paper. The mayor has just announced a surplus of more than $150 million. The Board of Ed has announced a surplus of more than $150 million. The Transit Authority has announced a surplus. These are all bodies which inflicted heavy taxes on the backs of the poorest people in the city, heavy suffering on the backs of the poorest people in the city. The Transit Authority raised the fare from $1.25 to $1.50, and people going to work every day can feel that in their pocketbooks in terms of poor people having to pay $1.50 to ride the subway or the bus. But now they come up with a surplus. And that is a whole other discussion. The mayor has cut numerous programs in neighborhoods. He has cut back drastically on the hospitals, city hospitals, a number of other places where tremendous cuts were made. And the most devastating cuts of all were, of course, made in education. We are suffering mightily as a result of those cuts. But we now have a surplus, and part of the reason given for the surplus is because the stock market is booming. And New York City and New York State have a tax on stock market transactions. Every time there is a transaction, we reap revenue. So what Mr. Siegel is saying is that that will not go on for much longer. We cannot expect to prosper or to have our budget balanced indefinitely by the gyrations of the stock market. We have to do something better than that. And I agree with Mr. Siegel on that point. The low rate of job growth, I will quote Mr. Siegel again. Beyond the halo of Manhattan prosperity, unemployment is 11.4 percent in Brooklyn, 12.6 percent in the Bronx, total employment, according to a report from the State Comptroller's office, has grown by 1.1 percent over the past 3 years and New York State as a whole. That may be good for New York but it is considerably less than half the national rate of 2.7 percent. We are at the peak of the national business cycle, but the gap between the city unemployment rate and the national unemployment is the highest in recorded history. To sum up and clarify, I am reading from an article by columnist Fred Siegel that appeared in the New York Post on October 13, entitled New York Economy Ready to Fail but City Politicians do Nothing to Stop the Hemorrhage of Wealth. In this column he mentioned my name and said that while this is going on, we are neglecting the problem of the fact that we have a hemorrhage of wealth and people like Major Owens make long, rambling and incoherent speeches on poverty and welfare reform before an empty House Chamber. My speech, I assure, is not incoherent at all. Step by step I am saying that I agree with you that we have neglected, as political leaders and as columnists and editors, we have neglected a major problem. I hope that your article and my speeches here, which are not different from the kind of speeches I have been making all along, will spark a debate among New Yorkers so that they can get themselves together and understand where the enemy is and go out and demand a just sharing of Federal revenue. We are $14 billion in the hole this year, $16 billion last year. And it has gone as high as $23 billion, where $23 billion more has been paid into the Federal coffers than we received back. At the other end of the spectrum, we have New Mexico, which receives the greatest amount per capita of Federal aid above the amount that it puts in. We have places like the Speaker's county in Georgia, which is one of the highest per capita recipients of Federal aid. We have the great State of California, which has a booming population, but compared to New York, their balance of payments has gone way down because they are the recipients of disaster aid. If it is not a mud slide, it is a hurricane or an earthquake that leads to Federal money being pumped into California's economy. And California now is contemplating El Nino and the results of El Nino and what El Nino might do to the weather, and the weather may lead to some catastrophic natural disasters. I am all in favor of people being helped when they have natural disasters, but this may be one of the areas where States should go it alone and not have to come to the Federal Government for a handout. It is certainly a very unfair situation for certain States to continually have floods and earthquakes and various catastrophes that they know are going to happen and they are not prepared for them. As a result, their economy is rewarded by enormous amounts of money being pumped in to deal with those disasters. Somebody should do a study on California's economy, the amount of damage done, the estimate of the damage versus the amount of Federal aid that flows in and the amount of Federal aid combined with the amount of local and State aid, and we might find that disasters are really a great benefit in kind of a perverse way. I am not going to go into it in too much detail, but all of these things need to be looked at when we start criticizing the kind of economy we have in New York. And it has been the subject of a great deal of criticism, which I will quote in a few minutes. But I want to continue and complete Mr. Siegel's article. Mr. Siegel goes further and says the low rate of job growth accounts in part for the facts that despite the city's image of wealth and power, 2 million New Yorkers live in poverty. Two million New Yorkers live in poverty. An average household income, adjusted for the cost of living, is about 16 percent below the national average. These numbers will only grow in the case of a recession. I want to repeat that, quoting from Fred Siegel's article, the low rate of job growth accounts in part for the facts that despite the city's image of wealth and power, 2 million New Yorkers live in poverty. And the average household income, adjusted for the cost of living, is about 16 percent below the national average. These numbers will only grow in the case of a recession. He has already quoted before that unemployment in Brooklyn is 11.4 percent; unemployment in the Bronx, 12.6 percent. While the city's overall economy is benefiting from the stock transfer tax and the city has a surplus in its budget, rampant poverty is still there. And New York State, as a whole, now ranks third in terms of being among the poorest States in the Union having the greatest amount of poverty. Two million New Yorkers living in poverty. Mr. Siegel goes further and says that the growth of wealth and power in the high-tech West has been one of the two massive transfers of wealth and power undermining New York's position in the national economy. The shift of economic power to the West is matched by the continuous movement of Federal dollars to the South. Senator Patrick Moynihan just issued his 20th annual study of the balance of payments between various States in the Federal Government. Well, Mr. Siegel, it was not the 20th, it was the 21st balance of payment study between various States and the Federal Government. For the 20th consecutive year, the average New Yorker sends roughly one thousand more to Washington than he or she gets back, and it is even worse for New Jersey and Connecticut, residents of New Jersey and Connecticut and the surrounding metropolitan region. The South, by contrast, is the big net winner. Continuing to read from Fred Siegel's article of October 13 in the New York Post, ``Did this massive redistribution of resources come up in the mayoral debate? No. Is it a pressing matter for our daffy delegation of Congress?'' And he goes on to criticize Congress Members from New York for not paying attention. Even drops my name, as I have just read before. But I am not guilty, and Mr. Siegel, I would like to join with you, as I said before, in stimulating the most voluminous, thorough, intense debate possible about this whole matter. Successful institutions, Mr. Siegel says, like successful people, learn from their pasts and adapt to new conditions. Neither of the major candidates seems capable of the adaptations necessary to stem the flood of wealth and influence away from New York. And, like Mr. Siegel, I am baffled by the fact that New York leaders, politicians, clergymen, columnists, editorial writers for years on end continue to ignore what is contained in this book. The Federal budget of the States contains a graphic picture of the wealth flowing out of New York State into the rest of the country. We could use $14 billion. Our economy could certainly benefit from $14 billion being sent back. Or even $7 billion. Let us take half. Maybe there should be some kind of revenue-sharing provision written into the Tax Code where States are always given back at least half of what they put in beyond what they normally get back from the Federal Government. Maybe that would be a creative idea and maybe it would be acceptable to everybody, because the people in this Chamber who yell the loudest about States' rights are the ones who seem to benefit the most from this imbalance. The Representatives of the recipient States are the ones who talk most about States' rights and the need to have States do it on their own, go it on their own, do not interfere, no mandates. If we do not want any mandates, that might be a good idea. But why should we have Federal dollars flowing in large amounts into the States who do not want Federal interference? Now, certainly the tradition of the Northeast and New York State supplying more in terms of its contribution to the Federal budget than it gets back is a tradition that was not blindly initiated. I think Franklin Roosevelt and people who developed the New Deal knew very well that the rest of the country needed help and they deliberately came up with policies that related to taxes and expenditures which spread the wealth across the country. The greatest beneficiary of the New Deal were the southern States, and they still are the greatest beneficiaries of the way that we distribute Federal dollars. The New Deal was something that New Yorkers were proud of, and for years progressives and liberals have always been proud of the fact that money has flowed from the northeastern States, the industrial States, out into the rest of the country. And we have taken care of the national interest that way. However, in the past few years, New York and the big cities like Chicago, in an industrial State like Illinois, and New York and New Jersey, and these big industrial States that have big cities are being constantly criticized for serving as a drain on the Federal Treasury. People who don't look at the figures tell us that New York is a great drain. I do not know where his assumptions came from, but the gentleman from Georgia [Speaker Gingrich] more than once on the floor of this House over the last 10 years that I have been here has been particularly focused on New York City and New York State as being wasteful of Federal dollars. I think that at one point in 1995 he stated that New York was quote, ``Saddled with a culture of waste for which they want us to send a check.'' New York was saddled with a culture of waste for which they want us to send a check. Who is us? Send it from Georgia? Georgia is a recipient. They get more money from the Federal Government than they pay in. How would they send a check to New York? We continually send the check for the rest of the country. The Federal Government is not going to bail out the habits that have made New York so extraordinarily expensive, quoting the Speaker again. The Speaker stated that the Federal Government is not going to bail out the habits that have made New York so extraordinarily expensive. Conventional wisdom came to be believed on the floor of this House that New York was a financial sinkhole. New York was inefficient, wasteful, a drain on the public purse. I suppose that the Congressmen and Senators from New York have a lot of blame to bear. They must bear the burdens of blame for allowing this to happen, when we have the figures here for the last 20 years which show that New York has not been a burden on anybody. We have been the donor of large amounts of taxes flowing into the rest of the country. Now, in the days of FDR, it was a conscious transfusion. They consciously decided that the northeast States, and New York among them, should help to supply the money needed to sustain the economies of the rest of the country. What started as a transfusion, a voluntary transfusion, has now become bloodsucking. It is really sucking the blood of a dying economy. Mr. Siegel is right, the New York economy needs help. It is the last place that should have to continue to send out billions of dollars that do not come back. Speaker O'Neill used to say that all politics is local. All income taxes are local and many other taxes are local, but certainly income tax. People live in a locality. They live in a city, a village or a State. They pay their taxes, and they flow up to the Federal Government. The Federal Government does not generate any taxes. In Washington, we print dollars, paper, but those paper bills are symbolic of the revenue that is collected from across the country. So it comes out of the localities and the States. It comes from New York, the billions come, and they do not go back in any just way to a State that now needs it to come back. There was a time when we did not need it, but we need it now, and the Members of the congressional delegation of New York ought to lead the fight to get into this debate about the Internal Revenue Service, a discussion of how revenue is distributed in America. Nobody has a right to take from one set of localities and give to another unless there is some kind of formula, some kind of rationale. It is now a habit. It is not a voluntary transfusion, it is bloodsucking. We have to stop the tax sucking, the bloodsucking, and look at the dying economy of New York City and reroute the blood, reroute the taxes back into the economy of New York City. Let me just read from Mr. Moynihan's introduction to this year's edition of this wonderful book that comes out every year, The Federal Budget and the States. In his introduction he says some interesting things. He talks about, a little bit about the history of taxes, income taxes, for example. An income tax was proposed by the Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander J. Dallas, in the Madison administration as a means of financing the War of 1812. The war ended before anything was agreed, but the idea was in place and the legislation with respect to income tax was enacted in the Civil War and continued until 1872. Legislation that put the income tax in place actually had been conceived as early as Madison's administration during the War of 1812, but it was enacted in 1872. In that period, New York alone, quoting from Mr. Moynihan's report, New York alone paid one-third of the entire tax when the tax first began. Massachusetts and Pennsylvania each contributed about 13 percent, thus approximately 60 percent of the total revenue collected came from only three States. Historically, the northeast has taken care of the rest of the country. It started that way and it still is that way. I am sure that at different points in time it has been voluntary, it has been given freely, but now we have a situation where ungrateful recipient States are like jackals criticizing the policies and economies of the donor States. Mr. Moynihan continues in another section where he talks about the 16th amendment. There was legislation that established the income tax, but that only lasted until 1872. Later on, in 1913, the 16th amendment was ratified, in 1913. It provided that Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes from whatever source derived without apportionment among the several States and without regard to any census or enumeration. The 16th amendment, in 1913. That is a long period of time between amendments. The 15th amendment had been passed in the 1800's. We had the 13th amendment, which freed the slaves, the 14th amendment, which established equal rights, and proposed to punish the people who rebelled against the Government. That part is always left out. There is more in the 14th amendment about punishing the rebels than there is about equal rights. But nevertheless the 14th amendment. Then the 15th amendment which gave the right to vote to the newly freed slaves. Then it was not until 1913 that we had another amendment to the Constitution. That amendment did what legislation had started before, it enshrined in the Constitution the power of Congress to lay and collect taxes on incomes from whatever source derived without apportionment among the several States and without regard to any census or enumeration. The States in the Northeast could have objected at that time. They might have had the power to stop it at that time, but they did not because they had this spirit of being responsible for the rest of the Nation. They also made some assumptions about the fact that at that time a large percentage of the funds collected by the Federal Government were going into the Armed Services, the military budget and a large part of that military budget was being spent in the big northeastern States. To continue from Mr. Moynihan, his introduction: ``It may be noted that this was the First Amendment to the Constitution to be adopted since the time of the Civil War. The regional conflict never ceased. The time simply came when the poorer regions were assumed to have the better of the argument and the votes. The programs that followed may have been a good idea when New York was singularly the most prosperous state in the Nation and these programs were an act of social conscience designed to uplift the downtrodden or unenlightened elsewhere. We sent the money to Washington, received precious little in return and felt very good. Somehow as late they don't seem to show as much gratitude as they used to.'' A very important statement. New Yorkers gave freely because they wanted to uplift the downtrodden or unenlightened elsewhere, the money went to Washington, the New Deal moved even faster, and yet we got little back in terms of gratitude. Mr. Moynihan is to be congratulated for his thoroughness and his diligence over the years in staying with this subject and getting the most objective analysis possible so that the figures that we quote here are generally accepted as credible. We have a situation, however, when we look at all of the available numbers, the quote from the report now is very apt, quoting again from Mr. Moynihan's introduction: ``We will have more to say about this subject at another time but consider for the moment the logic of the 95 percent minimum return advocates. He is talking about transportation and the fact that there has been a great complaint about States which pay the gasoline tax not receiving 95 percent of the money back in terms of highway and transportation funds. Take it a step further. If the Federal highway program exists merely to collect gasoline taxes and return them precisely to where they were paid, why bother.'' Quote from Mr. Moynihan again: ``Let the final word be that of Gerald B. Solomon of our 22nd Congressional District in the Upper Hudson Valley of New York. Mr. Solomon happily is also the chairman of the House Committee on Rules.'' Quoting from Mr. Solomon, ``Anyone who thinks that their State is being short-changed because they don't get back what they contribute in a gas tax is ignoring a whole series of factors and should take a hard look at New York. New York pays $18 billion,'' he is quoting the previous years, ``$18 billion more in Federal taxes than we receive in Federal funds. If they want to raise a stink, then let's redo the formulas for everything. New York could use an additional $18 billion.'' End of quote from Mr. Gerald Solomon, Republican from the State of New York's 22nd Congressional District. When we look at the mix of defense expenditures, gasoline taxes and return for transportation costs, the expenditures for Medicaid, aid to families with dependent children or welfare, when we look at the whole mix and put it together, military expenditures, also, New York still comes out as a donor. It gets back more from Medicaid and Medicare than most States, but we are forced to pay 50 percent of the total Medicaid- Medicare costs, whereas in Mississippi the Federal Government pays 70 percent and the Federal Government only pays 50 percent of our costs. Per capita we have a larger number of people so we get back more Medicaid and Medicare funds than probably any other State per capita. But when we balance that off against what we get back for transportation, military contracts, when it all is balanced out, the taxpayers of New York in 1996 were still paying into the Federal Government $14 billion more than they received back. This is worthy of a debate. Mr. Siegel, get yourself a copy of the book, arouse your fellow journalists and editors and let us go to work. Let us take a close look at the pages of a book which spell out the situation State by State and educate the people of New York as to what is the problem with respect to their taxes not returning to improve their quality of life and how are they being swindled. Let us look at Alabama on page 1. Alabama is a recipient State. They receive far more than they pay into the Federal Government's coffers. Alabama continues to retain its positive fiscal relationship with the Federal Government with a balance of payments surplus of $1,421 per person, the eighth highest in the Nation. They get back $1,421 for each person in the State than they pay in. Relative low per capita income results in tax collections of about 13 percent below the national average. Alabama ranks fourth in the Nation for payments to individuals and 14th for defense spending, leading to overall Federal spending that is 16 percent higher than the national average. The State of Alabama receives 16 percent more, its Federal spending, receipt of Federal funds is 16 percent higher than the national average. It has consistently been that way for a long, long time, certainly the last 10 years. Our dollars flow to Alabama. Alabama is not grateful. Alabama talks a great deal about States rights and not having people outside interfere. The State of Georgia, let us read the synopsis on the State of Georgia. Georgia is almost equal to the national averages for both taxes and spending, varying by less than 1 percent in each direction. It began and ended the period from 1981 to fiscal year 1996 with moderate balance of payments surpluses. In the early to mid-1980's, rising Federal tax payments fueled by economic growth outpaced the State's success in attracting defense dollars, with the result that its balance of payments surplus fell slightly. The dramatic decline in defense spending in the late 1980s dropped the State into a deficit position in fiscal year 1988. Defense spending increased in fiscal year 1992 and went up again in the past year, so Georgia ends the 16-year period with a balance, a small balance of payments surplus of $66 per capita and a rank of 27th. Over the years, Georgia has received per person as high as $434 more per person than it has paid in and it presently receives $66 more when you take the whole State into consideration. In a previous year, this book zeroed in on some counties and they found that the county that Speaker Gingrich represented was the county that received the highest per capita in amount of Federal spending than any other county in the country. New Mexico ranks at the very top. It is number one when it comes to recipient States. New Mexico receives more than any other State in the Union. New Mexico, the synopsis reads, leads the Nation with the greatest balance of payments surplus. Per capita Federal spending is about 45 percent above the national average, assisted by strong defense spending. While the average State receives about $865 per capita in defense spending in fiscal year 1996, New Mexico received nearly 3 times that, $2,400 per person. The State also ranks high for intergovernmental assistance, particularly Department of Interior grants to minerals management and Native American programs. Per capita income is very low and tax collections are about 23 percent below the national average. They collect very little, send very little to the Federal Government but the amount that they receive is the greatest in the whole country. In past years they have cited New Mexico as also being the recipient of a tremendous amount of agricultural subsidies. The agricultural subsidies also were driving the amount of per capita Federal spending in New Mexico up. They have always had an interesting record. If we look at the record of New Mexico all the way from fiscal year 1981 to fiscal year 1996, they have always been above the $2,500 mark in terms of per capita. For each person in New Mexico, they receive more than $2,500. It generally has run much higher than that. $3,048 per person in 1981, $3,005 in 1985, $3,313 in 1986, $3,421 in 1987, $4,464 in 1988 and on and on it goes, always very high in terms of what they receive per person versus the amount that they pay in. Likewise, on the other end of the spectrum, New York has always had a negative balance. We have received less consistently since 1981 per person. The $14 billion overall from 1996 translates into $773 we receive less per person in New York than we pay in. That is what the overall figure of $14 billion translates into on a per capita basis. In 1981 it was $312 less. It went as high as $1,016 per person less in 1989, $1,101 in 1994, $1,070 in 1995, receiving per person in New York that much less than we are paying into the Federal coffers. New York once again finds itself among the States with the largest per capita balance of payments deficits. The deficit fell by about 20 percent in fiscal 1996 but the total deficit of $14 billion still ranks third in the Nation. New York ranks near the bottom for most Federal spending, almost 12 percent below the national average of 1996. Defense spending has fallen sharply since the mid 1980s and New York ranked 46th in defense spending last year. New York's success in attracting grants to State and local government can be traced to Medicaid assistance, AFDC and surface transportation grants. New York ranks 12th in the real per capita income and tax collections are about 4 percent above the national average. I know that statistics can be boring and maybe these are boring but they are certainly not incoherent. There is a story here that we must listen to in the statistics. Mr. Siegel and other journalists have to pay more attention to these statistics. New York is to be applauded for the fact that this year its economy, partially as a result of the booming stock market, New York State, its economy is such that they have placed in the budget more money for schools, more money for education. It has also voted to launch a bond issue for school construction, more than $2 billion bond issue to help construct schools. It is to be applauded for as a State moving ahead to try to fill the gap. In New York City in 1996 we had 91,000 children who did not have a place to sit in a classroom. This year we cannot find out the number because this is an election year in New York and they kept secret the exact number of children who did not have a place to sit. The estimate is that at least there were 80,000 who did not have a place to sit at the start of school. They have to shuffle about and find places in the hallways and the closets, and, in some cases, the bathrooms were converted in order to have a place for the kids to sit. Again, we continue to have a situation where some children are forced to eat lunch at 10 o'clock in the morning because the school is so overcrowded until the lunchroom cannot take all the students. They have to have three or four lunch periods, so the first lunch period has to begin at 10 o'clock in the morning. That is child abuse, to force a child to eat lunch at 10 o'clock, but that is the case in a number of schools in New York City. So New York State has begun, at least to do more than just wringing its hands about its need for more schools. New schools, renovated schools, et cetera, will do more when we get the bond issue passed. But in the meantime we are paying more money into the Federal coffers than we are receiving back. The Federal Government ought to float a school construction initiative. The President proposes a mere $5 billion over a five-year period, and that was dropped out of the negotiations. We need to come back to that. We need to understand that if we are not willing to launch a school construction initiative to make sure of the schools across the country. The General Accounting Office estimates that the problem is about $120 billion in infrastructure needs across the whole country. There are rural schools, suburban schools, a number of places where they need new schools, not just in the inner-cities. The total tab would be, according to the General Accounting Office estimate, about $120 billion. Here we had a proposal in the State of the Union message for a mere $5 billion and they dropped that. If you are not willing as a Nation through the Federal budget to deal with the problem of school construction and some other acute problems in places like New York, then give us our money back. Give us back the $14 billion or give us back half of it. We can solve our own problems. We have a situation where it is an involuntary transfusion. It is blood sucking, really, when you have a State which has an acute poverty problem, a city like New York, which has 2 million people who are poor out of a population of close to 8 million, but 2 million are poor. We need our money back. I want to repeat and emphasize the fact that this is not stated enough by journalists, by columnists, by editorial boards in New York City and New York State. When Mr. Siegel says that this Congressman is one of those who has not addressed the problem, I want to read and close out with a couple of quotes from my previous statements on the floor of this House. I think just last March 12, 1996, I made the following statement: New York State is a State in the Nation which provides the greatest amount of surplus in terms of Treasury. When you compare what New York State receives from the Federal Government, what it receives from the Federal Government in terms of aid, it is much less than it pays in. That has been true for the last 20 years. This is my quote from last year. In 1994, the last year they had figures available, New York State paid the Treasury $18.9 billion more than it got back from the Federal Treasury in State aid. New York was the most generous of the States. We were at the very top in 1994. I quoted from the booklet in 1994. This was, for the benefit of Mr. Siegel and the other journalists who want to check it out, this is in the Congressional Record, March 12, 1996, H-2117. On that same date, I made several statements about Medicare and Medicaid. If New York State stood alone, it would be in receipt of $18.9 billion that it does not have now. If you gave us back the $18.9 billion in 1994 that we paid into the Federal Government, which was greater than the amount we got back in terms of aid, we could solve our budget problems. In fact, just give us back half that amount. I am like a broken record, the same things I am saying tonight, I have said it many times before. It is not incoherent, Mr. Siegel. It is repetitious, I confess, but it needs to be repetitious because nobody seems to pick up on these important messages. If we had $9 billion, the New York State budget could be balanced and you would have a lot left over. We could take care of our own summer youth program, our own construction problems. If you give us back the greater amount of money we pay in, we could stop waiting for the Federal Government. I mention this because the criticism on the floor of the House repeatedly aims at New York and calls New York a welfare State. I think during that same discussion I talked about the Speaker's home State of Georgia, meanwhile, is one of the large number of southern largely Republican States that receives far more from the Federal Government than they send out in taxes. I quoted Mr. Moynihan at that time. Mr. Moynihan said, ``I told Mr. Gingrich, what are you talking about my friend? In Atlanta 59 percent of the children are AFDC, Aid for Families with Dependent Children. In a single year, where do you think that money comes from?'' By the way, Atlanta is in Georgia, and in case somebody doesn't have his geography straight, Atlanta is in Georgia, and Atlanta is the Speaker's home state. Those are some comments, but there are many, many paragraphs where I expanded on the same argument. Also, for the benefit of Mr. Siegel and any other journalist who wants to criticize this for not speaking out on this subject of providing leadership, on March 22, 1996, I announced I was going to have a town meeting, and the subject of the meeting was the fiscal future of New York City. The discussion begins with a discussion of what is happening here in Washington, because the fiscal future of New York City is inextricably interwoven with the policies of general aid here in Washington, our capital. I am going to start by talking that New York City is often discussed on the floor of the House of Representatives. People often talk about New York City and New York State. It is a favorite target of the Speaker of the House. Speaker Gingrich often refers to New York State and New York City as a welfare state and a welfare city. For that reason, the people of New York need to understand the perspective of our relationship with Washington better. I again repeat, we are called a welfare state and a welfare city. We are often accused of being a drain on the Nation, and yet New York City pays taxes to the tune of $9 billion more into the Federal Government and New York State pays another $9 billion, a total of $18.9 billion in 1994. The total of New York State and the city for that year was $18.9 billion. The year before that, in 1993, it was $23 billion more to the Federal Government than we received back from the Federal Government. Mr. Speaker, I said at that time, it is baffling. We do not understand why Members on the floor of the House like to single out New York City. New York City and New York State are often singled out for its high expenditures for Medicare and Medicaid. Well, after we take away our high expenditures for Medicaid and Medicare, which are the highest in the country, I will admit that, and I can think of no more noble way to expend public funds than by taking care of the sick and the infirm and the elderly in nursing homes, no more noble way to expend funds. But we do not waste money when we take care of the sick and the infirm. In closing, I want to repeat and sum up, so that nobody will accuse me of being incoherent, this discussion is very much related to the topic of the day, the IRS and revenue collection. Revenue collection and the IRS should not be a discussion that takes place in a trivial manner. Let us talk about the philosophy of taxation and revenue collection, the implementation of that philosophy and how that impacts on the states that are now donors, while other states are traditional recipients.

Mr. OWENS

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

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, there is one worthy country in the world that deserves much wider recognition. It is the Republic of China in Taiwan. Even though it is the 14th largest training entity in the world and a full democracy. Taiwan is recognized by only 30 countries in the world. Recently President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan visited several Central American countries to shore up diplomatic support for Taiwan. To help him win more international friends and support, President Lee has announced that Taiwan's representative in Washington, Dr. Jason Hu, will be Taiwan's new foreign minister. We were delighted to hear the good news. We know Dr. Hu will make an excellent foreign minister. During his past 15 months in Washington, Dr. Hu is known as a hard-working diplomat who conducts his country's business with charm and intelligence. It is my hope that Taiwan's diplomatic fortunes will dramatically improve in the months and years ahead now that President Lee has chosen Jason Hu as his country's top diplomat.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize October as National Medical Librarians Month, and to honor the more than 5,000 medical librarians working in hospitals, academic health centers and libraries across the country for their role in improving the health of all Americans by increasing access to health care information. As a former librarian, I can appreciate the specialized skills needed in today's electronic information age to access, filter and evaluate the most up-to-date medical information for the medical community and for the general public. The ability of medical librarians to maneuver quickly through the wealth of health care information on the Internet, and to identify the most credible, relevant and appropriate sources of information for each request, underscores the increasing importance medical librarians will play in the future. Studies show information provided by medical librarians improves patient outcomes. Physicians report a reduction in mortality, hospital admissions, surgery, and hospital acquired infections due to information obtained by medical librarians. They say information from the medical librarians allows them to make more accurate diagnoses, reduce unnecessary tests, select more appropriate drugs, and give accurate and current information and advice to their patients. As we celebrate National Medical Librarians Month, I also honor the longstanding partnership between the medical library community and the National Library of Medicine [NLM] at the National Institutes of Health. For over a century, medical librarians have benefitted from the extraordinary work being done at NLM, the world's premiere medical library. Through access to NLM's state-of-the-art medical databases and telemedicine project sites, medical librarians are able to provide doctors and patients, often in underserved rural and urban areas, with the most current and accurate health-related information. Mr. Speaker, as we move into the 21st century, it is clear that the advancement of telecommunications technology will continue to revolutionize the delivery of health care in America. I believe by being wired to the world, medical librarians will lead the health care industry in this revolution. During the month of October, I ask all Members to join me in saluting this county's medical librarians for their role in keeping America better informed about health care and encouraging more active participants in the health status of this country.