Major Owens

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. OWENS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I rise to offer an amendment in support of OSHA and the safety of workers, in contrast to the last amendment offered which tried to trivialize the importance of workers' safety. My amendment is to protect first responders and receivers from bioterrorism and its deadly consequences. Several distinguished colleagues have joined me in offering this amendment: they are the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette), who co-chairs the Nurse Caucus; the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), who is senior Democrat on the Committee on Education and the Workforce; and the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Thompson), who is the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Homeland Security. Mr. Chairman, this amendment simply strikes a dangerous provision in the underlying bill that would leave first responders and receivers without the most basic protection against bioterrorist attacks. This provision bans the annual fit testing of respirators or masks for our front-line heroes. Why is such a provision there? It is part of the effort to trivialize the whole concept of workers' safety. Why single out a small matter like this and deny the fit testing of respirators and masks for our front-line heroes? Unless this provision is deleted, let me spell out the commonsense consequences, and bear in mind the fact that even on the Hill here when we had the anthrax attacks, the danger of people being exposed who were not protected was dramatized; and during the series of anthrax attacks, the two people who were casualties, who are unrecognized, unsung heroes, they are dead, were postal workers who died as a result of not being protected from anthrax. So to trivialize this situation, I think, is one more step in the attempt by the majority party to make OSHA seem like an irrelevant inconsequential agency. In the event of an attack, emergency medical technicians from a local fire department would be the first on the scene to help scores of victims with the same unexplained illness. Unless they have respirators that fit properly, these emergency medical workers would themselves face exposure to the deadly bio-agent. Likewise, nurses in a local hospital would routinely have first contact with patients brought in with similar unexplained symptoms. Unless they had respirators, they would pass it on to other people. Mr. Chairman, the provision in this bill that bans such fit testing of respirators clearly undermines a core tenet of preparedness in the event of a bio-terrorist attack. I would urge each Member to consider the fact that we were given opportunities to go get fitted for masks, to get used to how the masks go on, and most Members of Congress did not go; but those who did go found just to be fitted with a mask and get used to the idea is very difficult. By the time such an attack is under way, it is flat out too late to start fit testing respirators for individual workers. The only Federal rule we have that requires the annual fit testing of respirators for these workers is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's tuberculosis prevention standard. Yet the bill we are now considering would prohibit OSHA from enforcing this requirement. At a time when the Bush administration continues to issue daily color-coded terrorist alerts, it makes absolutely no sense to weaken the only standard we have to protect first responders and receivers from bioterrorism. We already know that in the hands of terrorists, airborne pathogens would quite literally become weapons of mass destruction capable of causing life-threatening illnesses and death for hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of Americans. Examples of these pathogens include multidrug-resistant TB, smallpox, and pneumonic plague, among others. Elsewhere in this bill, we are appropriating $500 million for hospitals to purchase equipment for this purpose. We also are appropriating $30 million for hospitals to educate their workers, but we picked out this situation that says but we cannot have a standard which ensures responders and receivers would be protected by having a prefitting. It would only cost about $11.7 million to fit test all the first responders and receivers in fiscal year 2006, and one third of the amount appropriated for hospital funding for workforce education on bioterrorism could be used for this purpose. Talk about a lack of common sense and egregious failure to act responsibly, this is it. And it is only there because of this great contempt for workers' safety and for OSHA. The respirators first responders use, N95 masks, are 95 percent efficient at deterring pathogens if and only if they fit properly. According to the manufacturer of these respirators, and this is laid out in the instructions for use, there must be annual fit testing to ensure a proper fit. Even slight changes posed by weight gain or loss, dental work, or normal aging can interfere. If we are going to carry out our duties in terms of homeland security, then this small step must be taken. Remove and ban this provision. June 22, 2005. Dear Representative: On behalf of nearly one million first responders and nurses represented by our organizations, we are writing to urge you to support an amendment to the Labor- Health and Human Services-Education Appropriations bill that would protect health care workers and first responders from unnecessary risk when exposed to tuberculosis (TB) as well as other natural or man-made airborne biological agents. The amendment to be offered by Representatives Major R. Owens and Steven C. LaTourette would remove a provision in the bill that prohibits the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) from enforcing the annual fit testing of respirator masks that employers are required to provide workers who are at risk of exposure to TB. In December 2003, OSHA extended its respirator standard (29 CFR 1910.134) to apply to workplaces where there is a risk of exposure to TB. This requirement would protect nurses, first responders and other health care workers in workplaces where tuberculosis cases have previously presented. As part of the respirator standard, employers are required to conduct an annual fit test, to ensure that an employee's respirator mask fits properly and provides the expected protection. When developing the respirator standard, OSHA determined that an annual fit test was necessary due to changes in a worker's weight, dental work and other factors that affect the facial seal of the respirator mask. Properly fitted respirators not only safeguard against TB, but against additional airborne hazards such as SARS, anthrax, avian flu, monkey pox and other biological agents that could be released in a terrorist attack. Annual fit testing against TB will ensure that nurses and responders are prepared in advance from airborne biological threats. The need for a properly fitted respirator mask was demonstrated in Toronto during the SARS outbreak when several health care workers whose respirators had not been fit tested contracted SARS. Because the cost of the annual fit testing is small-- estimated by OSHA at $10.7 million nationally--it is a wise investment to be made for those most vulnerable to TB and on the frontline of any biological threat or attack. While many states have made progress against TB infection rates since the early 1990s, it is still a serious threat to many nurses and first responders. Furthermore, drug resistant TB is still a daily risk for nurses and first responders who care for immigrant, homeless, incarcerated and long-term populations. The annual fit testing requirement is not unique to tuberculosis. The respirator standard requires other industries to conduct an annual fit test where there is risk of exposure to other airborne hazards. Indeed, health care facilities are required to conduct annual fit testing when the presence of other contaminants, such as ethylene oxide and formaldehyde, require the use of respirators. First responders and nurses at risk of exposure to tuberculosis should be afforded the same protections as workers who are at risk of exposure to other airborne hazards. Moreover, the annual fit test serves the public interest by reducing the possibility that first responders and nurses will become vectors of TB and other diseases. For all of these reasons, we strongly urge you to support the Owens-LaTourette amendment and to help protect first responders and nurses from unnecessary and serious health risks. Sincerely, AFL-CIO; American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; American Federation of Teachers; American Nurses Association; Communications Workers of America; International Association of Fire Fighters; International Brotherhood of Teamsters; International Union, United Auto Workers; Service Employees International Union; United American Nurses; United Food and Commerical Workers International Union; United Steelworkers.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, the Congressional Black Caucus has always held up education as our number one priority. At the heart of our agenda to end disparities this year is a bill which calls for the Federal Government to require that all States equalize their distribution of education funds. It is a major problem across the country. Columbia University has recently started a project which identifies 28 States where there are lawsuits underway, just requiring basically that the States distribute education funds equally to minority areas and to rural areas as a first step toward ending disparities. When Lyndon Johnson proposed Title I in the Elementary Education Assistance Act, he proposed it to go into the areas with the greatest needs, the greatest poverty. He was offering a way to help eliminate disparities. When we proposed that Title I funding be raised to the level of the promise, we promised enough money for it to have $13.2 billion this year and over the period of time that the legislation has existed. If we had lived up to the promise, we would have had $40 billion going into the system which basically is designed to help end disparities. Title I money goes to the poorest areas of our country. Title I money goes, in big cities, to areas like my district. Title I money goes to areas where you will find the largest amount of health problems, you find the largest amount of people who are being put in prisons. You will find the greatest rate of unemployment. So title I money is targeted to help end disparities. But it is not happening at the rate that it should, because of the fact that we are cutting back on our investment in education. The people who live in the areas helped by title I funds are people who are important to the America of the future as anyone else. These are major human resources. We should invest in these human resources, follow the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) in terms of setting aside money for priority education programs. If you reached into the tax cuts and gave less of a cut to the richest people in America, you could easily fund the promise of title I as well as many of these other education programs. But this budget reverses what has been happening over the last few years. For the first time, we have frozen education and actually gone backwards in some instances, because the rising cost of living means that you cannot have the same funding and get the same results when the costs are going up. Not only has No Child Left Behind received what is really a cut, but the promise of funding IDEA, Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, with greater funds has been thrown away. The bill freezes after- school centers; education technology has been slashed. And on and on it goes. We are not investing in a major area of human resources that our Nation needs.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, may I ask how much time I have left?

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by thanking and congratulating my colleagues on the Committee on Education and the Workforce, the ranking member, the gentleman from California (Mr. Miller), the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney), I want to thank them for their invention of the congressional e-hearing. This is not a small thing. We now have a device, one more productive milestone for communication, that can allow us to reach out into the entire Nation, beyond the Beltway, beyond the partisan arguments of the Congress. This is a very important new instrument for freedom of speech and for freedom of the minority party. We are, as Democrats, a minority party, and we are an oppressed minority party in that we are not given the right to call hearings or we are not allowed to recommend hearings and have the majority party follow through on those hearings. That was not the case when the Democrats were in the majority, but that is the way it has developed with the present Republican majority. So we have a device now whereby any citizen can participate. They do not have to pay the fare to come to Washington, but you can participate in a hearing, and I think this is a device that we should look forward to using more often. We should understand that in street language what my colleagues have been talking about is a legal swindling, legal theft. How can there be legal theft? Well, whatever the Congress approves is legal. They sometimes approve things that are immoral and illegal, really. They sometimes approve things that are devastating for people. But legality means we made it legal, because it is a law. By law, we are allowing corporations to run rampant over the rights of individuals in a most profound and basic way, and that is they are taking their money. They are taking the money of people who have put their money aside in a pension plan and who entrusted the corporation to be the guardian for the money that they have saved over the years. I am going to begin with one letter, because I think it is very important to keep this on a plane where we understand that the people of America are speaking. I think the e-hearing solicited at least 1,000 responses, and I think that some of those responses need to be amplified, and we need to hear them and the rest of America. I want to begin with one which does not come from New York State. I am going to read a few from New York State, but this one happens to come from a lady who lives in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, Carolyn A. Rosenberg. I give her name, I give her location, because I think she wanted to participate in a hearing, and she wants to be heard. She wants it to be public, what she is about to say. I must say that what is in this letter is very intimate, very painful, it shows a great deal of human suffering, and I congratulate her, I thank her, for being willing to share it with the rest of America. ``Representative George,'' she says, ``my vivid recall of 9/11 is lying on the kitchen floor in a fetal position crying uncontrollably, feeling like I am going to vomit, praying to God to keep my husband safe, and wondering where my husband is, what he is experiencing, and what the hell is going on. My next thought, rational or not, was to jump in the car and go pick up my son from his Jewish preschool, figuring these lunatics would want to kill him because of how we choose to worship God, yet my body wouldn't let me get up off the cold floor. I desperately hoped for someone to call me, anyone, and tell me my husband was safe. ``Presently, as I write this, my body is shaking. It is difficult to keep my emotions in check and to focus on what I want to say. My husband recently retired from United Airlines after a 24-year pilot career with them and a 40-year career as a professional aviator. What is happening at United to all its employees, present and past, is appalling. The people with the power of this company belong to the group that boasts Ken Lay, Bernie Ebbers and Dennis Kozlowski as some of its members. The Executive Council for the Pilots Union is also right there with them. ``The effects of the United Airlines bankruptcy has been staggering to my family. The stress on my husband and myself individually is enormous, not to mention the strain on our marriage. We have lost a significant portion of our savings due to United's collapse. At mid- life I am forced to go back to school to switch careers, and wondering how I will pay for it. I have to find a job that will pay me what I was making, plus the 61 percent retirement loss my husband is going to suffer. Yes, that percentage is accurate. My husband used the Pension Benefits Guarantee Corporation formula. My kids want to know why we won't buy them Game Boys, why we never eat out anymore, why the house was freezing in the winter, why we are canceling the cable, why we might sell the house, and why we won't buy a replacement vehicle to our 13-year-old minivan with the loud noises. ``I'm not a rocket scientist, but I know that United's employee pension funds don't have to be turned over to the PBGC to allow UAL to emerge from bankruptcy. I expect, no, I demand, that these smart people at the top actually formulate a plan to preserve what all the employees have worked so hard to earn. ``I feel pretty darned (not the word I want to use) mad, betrayed, and depressed. I feel that my husband and I have no control over our financial future and also feel, unfortunately, that this won't be resolved for years. Congress, it's your turn to step up to the plate and do something since United Airlines' management isn't, nor this administration (and I'm a Republican). Carolyn A. Rosenberg, Doylestown, Pennsylvania.'' I want to thank Mrs. Rosenberg for sharing that with us. I want to thank her for participating in the e-hearing. I hope that we will be able in the future to have many more e-mail hearings since we are not allowed to have hearings of people in person. Mr. Speaker, I will enter the entire letter of Ms. Rosenberg into the Record. Representative George. My vivid recall of 9/11 is lying on the kitchen floor in a fetal position; crying uncontrollably; feeling like I'm going to vomit; praying to G_d to keep my husband safe; and wondering where my husband is, what he's experiencing, and what the hell is going on! My next thought, rational or not, was to jump in the car and go pick up my son from his Jewish preschool, figuring these lunatics will want to kill him because of how we choose to worship G_d, yet my body wouldn't let me get up off the cold floor. I desperately kept hoping for someone to call me--anyone--and tell me my husband was safe. Presently, as I write this, my body is shaking; it's difficult to keep my emotions in check and focus on what I want to say. My husband recently retired from United Airlines after a 24-year pilot career with them and a 40-year career as a professional aviator. What's happening at United to all its employees, present and past, is appalling. The people with the power at this company belong to the group that boasts Ken Lay, Bernie Ebbers, and Dennis Kozlowski as some of its members. The executive council for the pilots' union is also right there with them. The effects of the United Airlines bankruptcy has been staggering to my family. The stress on my husband and myself individually is enormous, not to mention the strain on our marriage. We've lost a SIGNIFICANT portion of our savings due to United's collapse. At mid-life I'm forced to go back to school to switch careers (and wondering how I'll pay for it). I have to find a job that will pay me what I was making plus the 61% retirement loss my husband is going to suffer--yes, that percentage is accurate; my husband used the PBGC formula. My kids want to know why we won't buy them Game Boys, why we never eat out anymore, why the house was freezing in the winter, why we're canceling the cable, why we might sell the house, and why we won't buy a replacement vehicle to our 13-year old minivan with the ``loud noises.'' I'm not a rocket scientist, but I know that United's employee pension funds don't have to be turned over to the PBGC to allow UAL to emerge from bankruptcy! I expect--no, I demand that these smart people at the top actually formulate a plan to preserve what all the employees have worked so hard to earn. I feel pretty darned (not the word I want to use) mad, betrayed, and depressed. I feel that my husband and I have no control over our financial future and also feel, unfortunately, that this won't be resolved for years. Congress, it's your turn to step up the plate and do something since UAL's management isn't, nor this Administration (and I'm a Republican). Carolyn A. Rosenberg, Doylestown, PA. I want to just take one moment to reminisce about the early days, my early days in Congress. Within a few years after I came to Congress, more than 23 years ago, we had what is called the savings and loan bailout scandal. Savings and loans bailout scandal. I call it scandal. It was another one of those swindles, legal swindles, legal stealing, sanctified by the Congress. We have spent more than half a trillion dollars of the taxpayers' money paying for the swindling and the crookedness that went on in the savings and loans banks. I said more than half a trillion, because whenever I try to get the final figure, and really how much taxpayers were charged for that swindle, nobody ever can come up with a hard figure. So I recommend that there are some sophomores out there listening, high school sophomores, and bright students, you might want to go and check out and see if you can research and search out the amount of money that the United States Government, the taxpayers, had to put up to pay for the transgressions of the savings and loans failures. Legal swindling. That is what it was. Stealing. Legal stealing. Systematic swindling. Sanctioned and guaranteed by the government. And I use those harsh words because we are about to enter another one of those fantastic bailouts. It has already begun. The airlines now are going to have what the savings and loan banks had, a bailout by the taxpayers. Now, there are two things at work here. I want the fullest possible sympathy for the people who are suffering, like Mrs. Rosenberg, and some of the other people's whose letters I will read in a few minutes. But we must sympathize fully. We must understand that those are human beings, families that need somehow to be justly compensated. They need the full amount that they have invested returned to them. And that is our first priority. It must be our first priority. If in the end the only way they can get that is through the Federal Government, taxpayers, then I guess we will have to do that. But what a shame. These are individuals who never expected, never wanted to be the beneficiaries of taxpayer welfare. That is what it is going to be, a subsidy given to them from the government to make up for something that they should have gotten as a result of their own individual responsibility. We stress a great deal, and certainly this administration and this White House and the present domineering majority party in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, they stress personal responsibility. But the personal responsibility does not seem to extend to the corporate executives who take the money of the people, the investors, and the money of the employees and illegally use it and end up empty handed, expecting a bailout again from the taxpayers. That is what we are dealing with here. We must sympathize. We must try to get ways to get more than 60 percent. Now, once as you heard from the letter, in this case the pilot says, I will only get 60 percent. Now, I face a 60 percent loss. That means I will only get 40 percent of what I should have gotten. The loss is 61 percent. You know, we would like to see them get a hundred percent of what they should get. And I do not want anything I say now to let us lose sight of that important consideration. But we must understand the job of Congress now is to stop further thievery. Stop further swindling. Let it by known right now that this whole acquiescence, surrender to rule by corporations, which has gotten completely out of control under the present administration, this has got to stop. You cannot let corporations continue to plunder the economy and plunder its citizens. Yes, we have had other plunders. We know the military industrial complex, which President Eisenhower, as he was going out of office, said, beware. Beware of the military industrial complex. They will rob America blind. They had taxpayer's money in this amount, and they are doing that. They are still doing that. It is an open bottomless pit that we are dropping money into, military expenditures. Above and beyond Iraq. Iraq had to have a special appropriation. But we are spending more than a half trillion dollars on the military already. Today the New York Times had on its front page a story of how the program for the procurement and the development of weapons has gotten completely out of control; and it cited as an example, in the early part of the story, a naval weapon that has been under consideration for some time. And when it was tested, the missile blew up, melted and was no good. But, yet, it was reported to have been a success, and additional money was given to keep the development going. Thus far, that development process has cost $400 million; $400 million to develop a weapon which blew up and obviously is not workable. But, also, they pointed out that we do not need to be in a weapons race. Who are we racing against? Who is it that has better weapons already than the United States of America? Why do we need to madly pour money down the drain after building more weapons? The military industrial complex continues to rip off the taxpayers of America. The banking and credit card complex is what the savings and loan people were all about. The savings and loan scandal started with the failure of a few big banks, a few big banks after being mismanaged. Can you imagine banks with billions of dollars being mismanaged, on the verge of bankruptcy, and the United States Federal Reserve Board, the guy who was there at the time, who was in the particular banking regulation agency, recommended that we not allow them to fail? The phrase was, they are too big to fail. If they fail, they will drag down many other industries with them. Well, first it was one bank, then in a few months it was four banks. And then it came out that the savings and loans, all of the hundreds of savings and loans banks across the country many of them were in serious difficulty because of the fact that the savings and loans program, the Federal Government guaranteed $100,000. If any individual put their money in the bank, up to $100,000 was guaranteed by the Federal Government; therefore they were abusing that, and in some places they were offering tremendous interest to get people to deposit up to $100,000, and it ran away from them. They did not have the money to cover when people came to collect their money. And this happened in large amounts across the whole country. Everybody got in on the swindle who was in the savings and loan industry, not everybody became crooked, but a large percentage. So in the end it cost us more than a half a trillion dollars. And I wager that we probably have gotten close to a trillion dollars, but you cannot go find that figure. It was all so cleverly done, with the approval of so many very important and powerful people, and so you cannot get the full story. We are on our way now to a bailout of the airline industry. Phase 1: shortly after 9/11, we all agreed that the airlines had been unfavorably, unjustly penalized economically, that because they were grounded as a result of trying to ensure the safety of the American people from the air they had lost a tremendous amount of revenue. So we did an unprecedented thing. We gave a single industry money to make up for their losses. The airlines got billions of dollars, appropriated by Congress, taxpayers' money, to help cover their losses. Step 1: but, evidently, you know, their business practices are such that they did not look at the situation and say, well, you know, like a farmer has to worry about the drought, and manufacturing has to worry about a declining interest of consumers, you have to make your adjustments, you have to do things differently. No, the airlines did not adjust, so they continued to lose money, because they did not make adjustments in terms of their commitment of volume and employees, et cetera; and they are still losing tremendous amounts of money. And now they wade into the pension funds of the employees. And we are expected, we taxpayers are expected to cover that cost. Where will it go? How many billions will it be? Do you know? There is no way to know, because we are so compliant in our obedience to corporations, we bow down in America. The America of the last 20 or 25 years has been more and more bowing down to the power of the corporations. We do not demand that corporations act responsibly. We do not demand that corporations, which are part of the Pension Benefit Guarantee Fund Corporation, that they disclose the situation with respect to their pension funds. It seems to me that that is a reasonable demand; it ought to be an automatic demand. Any common sense will tell you if you are going to take the responsibility of bailing out someone in the future if they get into trouble, the least that you should be able to do is to be able to demand that they show us how they are proceeding in their business, what is the likelihood that they may get into trouble, and what is the trend, what may be the place in which the crisis occurs. We have every right to demand that corporations disclose the basic information about their pension funds. And yet we are not getting that information. The transparency is not there. The regular reporting is not there. Why does Congress allow the taxpayers to take on responsibility of insuring these people, while at the same time making no demands? That is what the new legislation is all about. It is old legislation. We Democrats on the committee, as the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), the ranking member of the committee, pointed out before, we have been saying for years, we need to strengthen our pension laws. We need to deal with this in a different way. We need to be more responsible as a government. We have been saying it, but in the last 8 years we did not have control; the Republican majority did. And they seem to believe that there is nothing corporations can do that is wrong. You know, we had the great theory that persists even until today, laissez faire is better, laissez faire, fancy French means ``leave it alone.'' Businesses say laissez faire, leave us alone. Government is best by following a laissez faire policy, leave business alone. And that has been the story of American capitalism. We have left business alone. But it has not worked the other way. Business has not been willing to leave government alone. And here is our dilemma. Business has taken over government. Business has taken over government, and business demands that laws be made in ways which guarantee that their profits will be maximized, that whatever damage occurs in their case that they will be bailed out. You know, we just finished an agricultural appropriation bill today. The agricultural industry is one of those industrial complexes, the agricultural industrial complex feeds off the taxpayers enormously. The agricultural industry is still giving subsidies to farmers. In most cases they are not going to individual farmers; they go to farm corporations, because when Roosevelt started the program for the dirt farmers of the country, small amounts of money went to them to help them grow crops, participate in the program, use experimental information from the various county agents, et cetera. Small amounts went to individuals farmers. But the individual farmers had the right to sell their so-called quota allotment to someone else. So corporations have, over the years, bought up all of those allotments, and you have corporations now that get tremendous amounts of subsidies as a result of that original program to bail out poor farmers. The poor are not benefiting from the agricultural industrial complex at this point. The agracorporations, the big agricultural industry, benefits now. We struggled more than a year ago to bring down the amount of money that each agricultural corporation can get. Taxpayers should not give them any more than $275,000 per year. We should not give away any more than $275,000 a year. I think the House passed that. I was surprised to learn a few months ago that it was overridden by the Senate, and then at a conference, we all agreed, and the number is not now $275,000. Agricultural corporations can get from the taxpayers of America up to $340,000 a year; $340,000 in welfare. That is what it is, a subsidy from the government, money from the government. If you are going to call one subsidy welfare, any subsidy from the government is a welfare payment. I do not think welfare is a dirty word. But let us call it what it is. The only difference is that a family of four in America right now can only get about $7,000 a year, family of four on welfare, you know, children and one adult, really, because it is for mothers. Aid to Families With Dependent Children, and that means it has to be a single- family home, in most cases there is no father, because one adult and three kids, 6 or $7,000 per family per year, versus $340,000 for a farm, an agricultural corporation farm program. That is what we are doing in America. The farm bill that we passed today has billions of dollars in there to give away to farm subsidies, sometimes for not growing grain, et cetera, but it is a giveaway of American taxpayers' money. The farmers now constitute less than 2 percent of the population. Less than 2 percent of the population is walking off with a tremendous percentage that is available for needy groups. $340,000 for each corporation, that is the maximum amount they can get. Is it not wonderful we set a maximum, that they cannot go to a million? This is a nature of a corpaucracy, the corpaucracy that we have allowed ourselves to get entangled in. The old terminology for economic systems and political systems is obsolete, to talk about communism or fascism or any other ``ism.'' I think in terms of it being a system that is set and being run a certain way, and you can talk about it in term of certain theoretical principles that will follow, there is always a pattern. Not the case. We have a situation now where in America we have social for the rich. Socialism bailed out the savings and loan banks. Socialism meant the government, the people distributed their wealth into the banks to make up for what they had lost. Socialism means the government, the people will bail out the airlines. The government, the people will distribute money to the farmers to keep the market healthy and to see to it they do not overflow with certain commodities and see to it our exports. For whatever reason, it is a government action, and I do not condemn all government action. I think the complexities of our civilization are such that we need a mixture, but let us recognize and admit that it is a mixture. Sometimes socialist principles need to be applied. Socialist principles involve central planning. Central planning is necessary in order for the agriculture bills to work. Central planning is necessary in order to bail out the savings and loans. Central planning is necessary to have a Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation. There is some central planning that societies in this day and age need. But let us not fool ourselves. That is government coming to the aid of business, the private sector being helped greatly by the public sector, by the ordinary taxpayers. It is very interesting now, we have a great deal to worry about China. China is an economic giant coming on so fast until it is beginning to worry even the capitalists who are making the most money as a result of their relationship with China. We get cheap goods from China. We sell it at high prices here, big profits. Our relationship with China was too good to pass up. You can get things too cheap. You can get them so cheap manufactured and you can come back here and sell them in a market which has a different standard of living and you make tremendous profits. That is how we have caved in to China. China is a Communist government politically. China is as totalitarian as a government can get in the final analysis. They do not hesitate and they do not pretend to be democratic. They will not hesitate to step in and change the rules if they want to change the rules in terms of any one of the industries in China. They put a great deal of conditions on our businesses when they go there. It is a planned economy. It is a totalitarian economy which still restricts people a great deal. They are finding trouble restricting people because of the Internet and they cannot keep information from flowing. There are a number of things that a modern world is going to undue the Chinese totalitarian approach. But they at this point are a Communist totalitarian state with a mixed economy, and where capitalism suits them and they can make profits off of capitalism they are doing that. We are a mixed economy here, but we do not admit it. We now need socialism to bail out the airline industries. You need socialistic actions, just as we had socialism to bail out the savings and loan industry. Mr. Speaker, in the last few minutes I want to read a couple more of these letters, because I think it is very important to get it down to what this e-mail hearing was trying to get to, ordinary Americans suffering in this situation, not the Beltway theoretician or politicians but ordinary Americans who deserve better. ``Dear Congressman, I am a 49-year-old flight attendant based in the JFK New York area and a 28-year veteran with United Airlines. If United Airlines is allowed to terminate our defined pension plan and the Public Benefits Guarantee Corporation takes over, I will be losing over 50 percent, half, of my promised benefits. The elimination of our retirement plan will result in my inability to maintain my family's basic necessities in retirement. ``The employees at United Airlines have already lost their savings from the ESOP program, 401(k) UAL stock Stock Investments, UAL Employee Stock Purchase Program, and wages and benefit cuts that average between 30 percent and 50 percent. Currently, we are barely making ends meet and have lost much of our savings. Ironically, our CEO, chief executive officer, of the corporation, Mr. Glenn Tilton, of 2 years will retire with a $4.5 million package. Please, please help stop this assault on our lives, our families, and our airline. Help save our pensions and what is left of our dignity. Frank Annunziata, East Meadow, New York.'' Here is another statement from Arthur Mount, a retiree living in Stony Brook, New York. ``In 2003, I retired from this once great company after almost 38 years of continuous service. I started with United in June of 1965 as a ramp serviceman at JFK airport, and in April in 1967 became a pilot, finishing my career in April, 2003, as a captain. There are many things that I am concerned about regarding a loss of my pension, but my biggest apprehension is in regards to my wife. With the termination of my pension as proposed by the management of United Airlines, what sort of life can she expect? Who will take care of her? Where will the money be for the things she will need? Is she to end up as a financial burden to our children? It has been said that a true leader leads by example. Apparently the senior management of United Airlines does not hold to such a high standard. Their pensions are secure. Somehow or another I cannot help but believe that if the pensions of this company's senior management were to be treated exactly as they proposed mine to be, that another solution, other than termination, would have been proposed. Arthur Mounts, retiree, Stony Brook, New York.'' Mr. Speaker, I will also include in the Record a letter from Leola Robinson from the Bronx, New York and a letter from James P. Lattimer from Bronxville, New York. Mr. Speaker, I would like to close by saying it is the business of the Congress to protect the American people from these kinds of legal swindles and legal thefts. This is suffering that should not take place in the United States of America in the year 2005. We can do better. We have bills that are being proposed which will make certain that no future employees of other large corporations will have to suffer what the United Airline people have suffered. We urge you to participate if you have the opportunity to participate in any future e-hearings and that we have your participation fully. Dear Congressman Miller: As a result of the termination of my pension with UAL I will be the only one, and the first in my family, to not have a pension. I have been in the airline industry for 32 years working for Saturn Airline in the 70's, then Trans America, enduring with Seaboard and finally with Capital (dollar sign on the tail). With each airline I've had to support my daughter and myself on a ``Flight Attendant salary'' which was never enough living in New York City. I have survived under great duress. I finally came to UAL hoping to get some decent benefits and a retirement plan which is the very least an employee should expect after devoting time and giving loyalty to this company. Needless to say I am extremely disappointed at recent events in which UAL sought to dissolve the defined pension benefits. Now my future looks bleak. At my encouragement, my daughter became a UAL Flight Attendant as well as her husband and they now cannot support their family of five and they have no hope of future benefits and retirement. How cruel. Sincerely, Leola Robinson, Bronx, New York.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, today is May 17, 2005. On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court issued a decision in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas case. Last year we celebrated the 50th anniversary of this landmark case. I expect to be joined by some colleagues of mine from the Congressional Black Caucus tonight to again take advantage of this anniversary, the 51st anniversary, to highlight problems related to education. Not only education as related to the African-American community, to minority communities or to poor communities but education in general needs more attention in America. Whatever activities there are that allow us to focus attention on education, they are very noble and worthwhile activities with a very useful purpose. We need to spend more time focusing on the role that education plays in our society, and this is just one more occasion where we can do that. I want to congratulate the people who participated last year in the 50th anniversary celebration. We had a marvelous array of people who joined in highlighting that landmark case's 50th anniversary: corporations, foundations, all kinds of groups participated in highlighting that landmark decision. I want to particularly congratulate the Library of Congress, which had an exhibit which ran from May 13 to November 13 last year, 2004, which was entitled, ``With an Even Hand: Brown v. the Board At Fifty.'' It was a fantastic exhibit which laid out the story in great detail, a lot of inspirational background and facts. On May 17, 1954, the decision was issued declaring that separate education for children is inherently unequal. The Court held that school segregation violated the equal protection and due process clauses of the fourteenth amendment. African American activists laid the groundwork to challenge the racial segregation in public education as early as 1849 in a case called the case of Roberts v. the City of Boston, Massachusetts. The Brown case was initiated later and organized by the National Association For the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP, recruiting African American parents in Topeka, Kansas, for a class action suit against the local board of education. In 1952, Brown v. The Board was brought before the Supreme Court as a combination of five cases from various parts of the country; it was not just Brown, but four other cases altogether; and they represented nearly 200 plaintiffs at that time. The NAACP, through Brown, sought to end the practice of ``separate but equal'' throughout every segment of our society. It was to be a landmark decision. From education we went on to transportation, dining facilities, public schools, and all forms of public accommodation. So it was a decision that benefited us across the board, and I think we ought to take a moment to note the fact that it brought to all of us, brought to the attention of all of us the role of the Federal Government in education. It highlighted the fact that there is a major role that the Federal Government has to play in education. The Federal Government has always shown an interest in education. There are examples which I will talk about later of early, very early actions taken by the Congress with respect to guaranteeing that States carried out some educational function. On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren read the decision of the Court which stressed the importance of education in American life. This is going to read as if it was written yesterday. Chief Justice Warren said: ``Today, education is perhaps the most important function of State and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the Armed Forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today, it is the principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values and preparing him for later professional training and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity where the State has undertaken to provide it is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms. Today these words ring equally true as we prepare our children to live and compete in the global economy.'' These are the words of Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1954. They show a great deal of profound insight and vision, and we are using the same language today and still having the same problem of convincing the American people, certainly those who make the big decisions about how we use our resources, that education should occupy the foremost place among our priorities for public activities. I am going to later on deal with a case history involving my own State of New York, which directly runs contrary to statements made by Chief Justice Warren in 1954. In the great enlightened State of New York, which prides itself on leadership in so many other areas, the failure to provide a sound, basic education for the children of New York City is a major item of controversy that has been raging for the last 10 or 12 years. Today we are at a critical point where the Court has ordered the legislature to stop swindling the children of New York City and provide additional funding from State funds to make up for some of the failures of the past and to also continue providing the kind of education needed. That case I will come back to later as exhibit number one of what the problem in education is. Regardless of whether we are talking about separate but equal, the lack of a decent education for minorities or the poor, or we are just talking about education in general, even the best education in America, the education offered in our best schools is inadequate; and every time we are measured against international standards, we are clearly falling behind. In the most powerful Nation in the world, in the Nation that rightly deserves the role of leadership, we are endangering ourselves and our future by failing to pay attention closely to education. The Congressional Black Caucus has consistently provided the impetus, been the conscience of the Congress on matters related to education. We have always made education the number one priority of the Congressional Black Caucus, and that is still true today under the leadership of the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt), who is the president of the Congressional Black Caucus. The emphasis is on closing gaps between a lot of different kinds of activities and services in America, closing the gap between the African American community and the mainstream community; but education is particularly singled out as number one, the need to close the gap related to achievement and opportunity in education. So we have again advanced that. There was a Congressional Black Caucus alternative budget; and in that budget, the stress was placed on education. We chose in that budget to highlight the fact that there is $8 billion in the military budget for a missile system that most scientists and even military experts say is almost useless and never going to be fully completed, and that beginning with that $8 billion, we should be transferring funds for some of our other objectives, certainly those related to the fact of an overblown military budget, to critical measures such as education. The best final analysis will be an educated population. It is the best defense today; it will be even truer tomorrow as we go forward. The Congressional Black Caucus particularly singled out one bill that was introduced by a group of us under the leadership of the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah), which is called the Student Bill of Rights. The Student Bill of Rights has been introduced in several sessions, and it was reintroduced just recently on May 5 of this year. The Student Bill of Rights may be called accurately by many other names. In the past I have used the language, The Opportunities to Learn bill. The Student Bill of Rights means that the government has a responsibility to provide an opportunity to learn or to provide opportunities to learn in every way possible. When we break down the general Student Bill of Rights proposition, it breaks down into the right to have the necessary resources to be educated. The right to have the necessary resources means that we must start with decent funding for teachers' salaries so that the people who are actually doing the teaching, who are most important in the process, are paid reasonable salaries, can expect to have reasonable careers, will stay and make use of the investment we place in them to teach children. And as the world becomes more complicated, these same people will have an incentive to stay with their profession and get the additional education and be able to provide a more and more complex form of education. So a bill of rights means an opportunity to learn. One of those opportunities has to be the opportunity for providing decent teachers and decent administration personnel and decent counselors. The whole apparatus of human resources for the school system comes first. But there are many other opportunities to learn which also must be taken care of. The facilities. We need to have a decent place for teaching to take place. Yes, it is true that Aristotle, in the days of Aristotle and Plato and Socrates, they defined a school as being a log with a teacher on one end and the student on the other end. That was adequate. That is not adequate today in a world where we are trying to educate young people to play a role in this complex society of ours. We need laboratories. We need libraries. We need a physical infrastructure which houses all of this appropriately. That is as much a part of the opportunity to learn as anything else. A bill of rights for students means that that opportunity to learn should be there. School construction is a vital part of the process. School construction and the failure to have adequate school construction has led to a situation where many, many teachers who are quite dedicated and people who want to remain in the school system leave the school system because, one, they are teaching in facilities which are outdated and make it difficult to teach; two, they are teaching in facilities which are endangering their health. There are situations where the health of the children and the health of the teachers is endangered. Large amounts of asthma cases were found in certain areas in New York City. It has only been about 3 or 4 years since we eliminated the last coal-burning furnace in a school in New York. That took a drive and a whole campaign to highlight the fact that we still had coal-burning furnaces. Our high asthma rate often ran parallel, high asthma rates in children ran parallel to the schools with coal-burning furnaces. Teachers themselves were having respiratory problems and illnesses. So you cannot separate the physical facility from the whole process of education. And, of course, most of our schools in a place like New York City and like New York City have very meager libraries. Elementary schools have rooms that are called libraries, but they are really not anything near the kind of libraries which are recommended by library professionals. The kind of libraries we will find in any suburban school we will not find in an elementary or junior high school within New York City and many other urban cities. I use New York as an example because the case history there is very pertinent. The pattern of what has happened in New York City is a pattern of what has happened all over the country. We have large concentrations of minorities and the poorest people in the cities, and that is where we have the worst education. Why? Because they are segregated? No. Even if you had maximum integration, we would still have the same problem, unless we deal with the problem behind the problem. Why did we have segregation in the first place? Why did we need Brown v. Board of Education to end segregation? If the white power struggle insisting that we had segregated schools had been willing to raise the money and provide the resources to make every school for a nonwhite equal to the white schools, the issue probably never would have come up. It was the great disparity that existed between the schools for the African American students, the Hispanic students, and the poorest students of other minority groups, that great disparity which kept causing the problem. The disparities were great when the schools were separate, and the unfortunate fact is that in 2005 those disparities still are great. You can go into any city, big city, and you will find several different classes of schools. You will find very good schools in some areas, and the poorest of schools in other areas, because of the fact that the problem is, the problem behind the failure of the education system in America is that the people with the power, those who make decisions in the Congress, State legislatures, in the city councils, in the executive offices of the President, the Governors and the mayors, those people who make the decisions and have the power to transform the school system do not really believe in public school systems anymore. They do not believe that they are vital. When we believe things are important, we take action. We do not stand around and complain about how much they cost. We take the necessary action. When we wanted to put a man on the Moon, the extra billions of dollars that it took to put a man on the Moon was not an issue. President Kennedy said we will go to the moon, and one President after another endorsed going to the moon and to outer space and on and on it goes, because we consider that important. It is important, because it had a military objective if nothing else. At that time it had a military objective, and we were driven very much by the fact that the Soviet Union beat us into outer space. The Soviet Union sent Sputnik up circling the globe at a time when Congress and our executive branch said that the Federal Government should not be involved in education, that it is a matter for States, and the States would be offended if we got involved. They looked at the situation and saw that the way the Soviet Union beat us into outer space was to build a system of scientific education. We produced a massive number of scientists and engineers who could do the job. So we had the Defense Education Act. Many Members of Congress are too young to remember. The Defense Education Act was the first great forward movement of the Federal Government into education. The Defense Education Act provided funds down to the elementary, secondary level, and up to the colleges, to improve education in the areas of math and science. And if you do that, of course it helps to improve education overall, because the resources provided for education in math and science can be then transferred to other areas, and education would benefit overall. Later on under Lyndon Johnson, it became more codified in terms of understanding that this Nation was embarking upon a venture in history which required a massive amount of people who had education. So Lyndon Johnson, of course, came forward with the Elementary and Secondary Assistance Education Act, which provided funding for the schools on the basis of helping the poorest schools, the recognition that if there was a fear that the Federal Government would take over education at the local level, then we should proceed only to help those local education agencies that had problems with poverty, they could not afford to educate all of their students, so the poorest districts were the beneficiaries of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Title 1 is a major title under that, and that is still true today. Title 1 is primarily focused on the poorest schools. No Child Left Behind, which encompasses Title 1 now, focuses primarily on the poorest schools. So it is understood that the Federal Government has a role to play in education, it is understood that no nation at this point in history can survive unless it pays a great deal of attention to its education system. There is an immediate threat that we are feeling economically already in the area of high-tech education, where we thought we will always be the leader, we will have the most people who are scientists and engineers in the information industry area, that always no one can catch us there and keep producing better and better technicians and scientists and our manufacturing operations and design operations would always be ahead of the rest of the world. We still are ahead of the rest of the world. We still are. But there is a great problem that has already been introduced at the lower levels where you cultivate the programmers, the technicians, the first level scientists. They are finding in all of the information industries that they can get cheaper personnel at the same education level or even at higher education levels by going overseas to places like India and Pakistan, and the Chinese are learning English very rapidly themselves. The most renowned university in the area of science and engineering and information industry now is not Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it is a university in India that is recognized in the world as being the leader in the field of science engineering that has overtaken and left MIT behind. That is just one indication of what is happening in the world because there are people who clearly understand. But the people who make decisions in our Congress and in our State legislatures do not seem to want to understand. We want to spend billions of dollars more for missile systems that do not work, billions of dollars more for jet planes that already nobody can catch. I mean, we already have planes that nobody can keep up with anyhow, no other force, no other nation is manufacturing planes of the caliber of the ones that we have, but we want to go forward and do new ones. We want to go and fight a war in Iraq, solving a problem that had to be solved in the worst and most expensive way. And last week we just voted another $82 billion dollars for the war in Iraq, bringing the total up above $300 billion. So we are setting priorities, but the wrong priorities. No nation, no matter how powerful it is, and how rich it is, can endure by wasting its resources in the way that we are presently wasting ours. Instead of investing our resources in our people and our infrastructure, and our own Nation, we are wasting our resources in numerous ways and one of them of course is the war in Iraq which is a war that we certainly can never ever win. The war in Iraq's best conclusion, peace, will mean that the Shiites, who are the predominant population, will take over. If you have democracy, they will have the votes, and they will take over, which is wonderful, democracy should work. Whoever is in the majority should be there. It just so happens that the Iraqis are right next to Iran, which is a Shiite nation overwhelmingly ruled by Shiites, and they have their own agenda, which is not friendly to our Nation. So we are going to hand them some partners and hand them a nation as a result of our blundering in Iraq, trying to solve a problem with force that had to be solved in some other way. But, let me return to the celebration, the recognition of this day as the day where the landmark decision of the Supreme Court, Brown v. The Board of Education was decided, and say again that it highlights a turning point. It forced the issue up to the national level. And we are still struggling with that today. As I said before, the Congressional Black Caucus has followed through and continued to put it on a front burner before the Nation. We are the foremost advocate for education reform. We are willing to spend the money necessary for education. We are willing to take it away from wasteful expenditures in places. And the concrete piece of legislation is our Bill of Rights, which I will talk about in more detail in a minute. But in the last alternative budget, the Congressional Black Caucus alternative budget, under Function 500, education and training, we alone had large significant increases for education. School construction we said should be increased by $2.5 billion, at least. You really need to spend more like $10 billion a year for the next 10 years to just get our schools back to a reasonable level so that local and State governments can then take care of them. There is a great deal of lack of resources at the State and local level, unlike ever before. Our State and local governments are broke. All of the more reason why our Federal Government, which has the most money, all funds are local, we do not make any money here in Washington really, we print something we call money but it is all based on what happens at the local level. All taxes come from the local level. People live some place in the Nation, who pay their income taxes, and their other taxes, and that generates what runs our Government. So all taxes are local. The money does not belong to the Federal Government. And we should have a greater voice in spending the money for the priorities that benefit the greatest number of people at the local level, not for a military machine that is somebody's dream, a Star Wars dream, a military machine that is out of control, very poorly planned, could not even fight the limited war that it undertook in Iraq. But getting back to the Congressional Black Caucus alternative budget. School construction, we proposed to spend $2.5 billion more. That is $2.5 billion more than zero. We are spending almost nothing on school construction now. We have some funds in the budget for charter schools. Charter schools are a favorite of the majority party, the Republicans like charter schools. The President likes charter schools. So they went contrary to their own philosophy, because the philosophy and the rationale that they have used is that we should not get involved in funding school construction, because that is a local and State matter. But if you like charter schools, as they do, they are willing to go right ahead and fund charter schools at the State and local level because they like charter schools. But the funding for charter schools is a small amount too, I assure you. No Child Left Behind, which is the encompassing Federal education program, Title 1 and all others, we propose another $12 billion for No Child Left Behind. Elementary and secondary school counseling, we impose vocational education, $1.5 billion more. In that same area of Function 500, related to education is job training. Adult education, we propose great increases there. Head Start we propose a $2 billion increase. Head Start has over and over again been certified and cited by numerous scientists, numerous scientists, I mean education scientists, numerous experts as being a very successful program. And yet we keep chopping away at it, evaluating it to death, and finding excuses not to fully fund Head Start. $2 billion increase in Head Start would still not fund all of the children who were eligible, but it would move us in that direction. I might add that Head Start is not a program for minorities. Head Start is a program for poor children. And as a result, I would wager that at least 50 percent of the children who are served by Head Start now are not minorities, they are from the mainstream, they are poor. And it is important to have Head Start for them as it is for anybody else. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, we propose $2 billion. What is that? That is part of special education. Special education has become quite a problem at the local level, because the Federal Government has mandated that special education must be provided as a right to any child with disabilities. We mandated it. At the time that law was authorized and mandated, we said we would pay 40 percent of the costs. But we have never paid 40 percent of the cost. We are up to about 12 percent of the cost of special education. So what we do is we mandate this, they must do it at the local level. It puts a strain on the local education agency's budget, and hostility is generated toward people with disabilities or children with disabilities as a result of the extra costs that is necessary to educate children with disabilities. We propose a $2 billion increase as we move toward the original authorization of 40 percent of the total cost. Historically Black colleges and universities, we propose a $500 million increase there. Hispanic-serving institutions, $400 million increase. TRIO. TRIO is a program which helps to prepare youngsters for college and helps those who are in college to get off to a good start. We have found that in the year 2005, in the last few years, enrollment in colleges is going down rapidly among minority and poor students. We do not need enrollment going down, because in the final analysis, for a complex society the way you increase the pool of educated people is not by educating those who are normally going to be educated anyhow, the rich and the middle class are normally going to find ways to be educated. They always have. But as the demands on our society become greater for more educated people and more people, more education at different levels, you know, a plumber, a plumber's helper, all kinds of people need greater knowledge than they needed 20 years ago. If you do not educate that class, you are not meeting the needs of a modern society. So the pool has to continue moving. The pool has to grow; and if you do not grow the pool, you are failing to build for the future. Our children will spit on our graves when they look at how we have squandered so many billions of dollars on meaningless activities while our education system crumbled. They will wonder what happened to this generation, what were those men and women in Congress doing, where were their heads, how dumb were they, how stupid they were at looking at the situation and understanding the implications of where the world is going. They will wonder why we chose to waste $300 billion on Iraq, a war which has been discredited by the fact that the President led us into it with a group of false assumptions, a war which we cannot win, a war which only hands the Iraqi nation over to Shiites which control Iran right next door. The kingdom of Iran will be expanded as a result of the end of this war. We had a situation which backfired on us totally. They will wonder why we did it, why we were so dumb. Everybody makes decisions, whether they are in Congress or local legislatures and State legislatures or in the White House. Everybody who makes decisions should be held accountable. We are expected to have the information we need in order to go forward. So if our population in general is not wise or is greedy and they want massive tax cuts instead of expenditures for necessary infrastructure services, expenditures for education, if they are unaware of the implication of what is happening right now in China, what is happening in India and Pakistan, to say nothing of the Soviet Union, which is overlooked, we assume that the Soviet Union is standing still, but the massive education system of the Soviet Union has been cranked up again, and the Russians, the young Russians, are learning English rapidly, too. We are concerned about Social Security. A displacement of our young working population will take place on the level of a tsunami. It will be so massive in about 10 to 20 years that we will just never know what hit us because outsourcing will be so much cheaper than hiring people who live and work in the country and pay taxes in the country. Outsourcing to the Soviet Union, to India, to Pakistan, to China is a very interesting phenomenon. The Chinese have a Communist government still. They do not pretend they have a democratic government. They are Communists, and there were times when the business community of America, every businessman would foam at the mouth and go crazy if you mentioned communism or Communists having some kind of advantage. Yet our business community has embraced this Communist authoritarian, totalitarian regime fully, wholeheartedly because they can get a few extra pennies from the relationship, because they can profit greatly. They have a program called Guided Capitalism, mongrel capitalism; but at the top of it, you have a totalitarian, authoritarian group that is no different from the Communists who were there 50 years ago. They have enlightened ideas about economics. They are smart enough to know that they can build their economy on the backs of the American people and the American economy. They are even loaning us a great deal of money now to take care of our deficit. They are very bright people. After all, they have been in existence for more than 2,000 years as a unit. They have been operating together so they have the ability to see all of this and to proceed with these kind of machinations, which overwhelm this Nation and is not surprising; but we are smart enough, it seems to me, to wake up, and we must wake up, to the fact that the first threat of China is the educational threat. When I was in grade school, I remember very vividly and was impressed by the fact that China was such a huge nation. It has always been a huge nation with a huge population, but the geography books kept repeatedly saying that China is a backward nation. The word ``backward'' sticks in my mind. China is a backward nation, but Chinese are backward people. Some kind of assumption in a young mind, you think, well, do they walk backwards. What does backward mean? Well, it was a racial slur. It was saying that they are inferior, the Chinese; but we know now if we did not know before that there are no inferior human beings on the planet. Education makes the difference, and when you have a government like China's, even though it is a totalitarian, Communist, authoritarian government, it places a high priority on education. It knows that gaining a large amount of power over a short period of time is directly related to the number of people they educate. Osama bin Laden, why are we so fearful of Osama bin Laden? Because Osama bin Laden is not some fanatic out there with a beard in the wilderness. Osama bin Laden is an engineer. Osama bin Laden is a well- educated man. The 19 murderers who crashed their planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and headed for this Capitol, they were educated. The financing structure for al Qaeda is a very well- orchestrated financial structure. They are using experts. They are taking advantage of every weakness in America, every weakness in the developed nations, as well as the developing nations, too, of course. We had earlier here tonight a presentation by one of my colleagues about the drug industry and the way in which the Afghan warlords are still being financed and the way in which the Islamic extremists are still being financed by drugs. Who is buying the drugs? Who are they manipulating in this situation but the developed nations? So what I am saying is that at this point in history it would be wise for us to take note of Brown v. The Board of Education as an important time to each year examine where we are in education in general. Segregation was the first problem, but the problem that caused segregation is still a major problem of education in America. The problem that caused segregation was the refusal of the power structure, those people who control the resources and the money, to provide the funds to equally fund and create equal education. If equal education had been created, if they had built schools in the black community which were as good as schools in the white community, if they had had salaries for the black teachers which were the same as the salaries for the white teachers, the administrator structure and everything else, you probably never would have had an issue being made out of segregation. But the very heart of the inequality is the failure and the refusal of people in power to use the resources for those who have no power and who have little power. The failure in our big cities is that we have people in our big cities who are suffering because they have very little power. The people who are making decisions, the mayors, what we call the permanent government, the businessmen behind the scenes are who decide which candidates they are going to finance. Usually they place the highest on cutting taxes, keeping taxes low. It does not matter what the needs are. They used to be willing to sacrifice the school system and have an inferior education system, but now they are beginning to cut into the firemen and the police, and any public activity is now on target since they have gotten a taste of what tax cuts can do. It is monumental greed that can only be counteracted by leadership, people elected, and people elected should have time to study the situation. People elected should be accountable to our children and our grandchildren about what kind of society we are building, and we should let the people who are greedy and selfish and do not want to pay another penny in taxes as a first instance, make them understand that they care about their children, they care about their grandchildren. We are like every other living thing in this world on this planet. Our offspring, the continuation of our species, is a major concern of ours, a major motivation of ours; and when we take our resources and refuse to develop them, to promote a structure which is going to support the development of a society for our children and our grandchildren, we are doing them a great disservice. Everybody talks about education. Everybody should be concerned about education. Education is very complicated and folks are trying to oversimplify it all the time. The story of the blind men who were feeling an elephant and each one came to a different conclusion because of the part of the elephant they felt, they assumed that that could define the elephant. Well, in the case of education, it is just blind men feeling a dinosaur. There are so many different parts. It is so complicated until we should not oversimplify. We should not expect easy answers. If a missile system can be tested again and again and each time it fails and one of its missiles explodes accidentally it is 18 to $20 million and we are willing to live with that, we should live with experimentation in our schools. We should live with systems that are not evaluated or up for evaluation every 2 years, but are given a chance to succeed. In the New York Times today, May 17, 2005, research finds a high rate of expulsions in preschool. Kids in preschool are being expelled from school at a higher rate than children in the normal pattern from 1st grade to 12th grade. We have a difficult problem here. It is an increasing problem. Some say, well, we have got more kids in school so we have got different backgrounds. But basically, we have a problem taking place at the pre-kindergarten level which has already shown itself in the early grades and in junior high school and high school. We have an excitement gap. We have children who live in a very electronically hyped world. They have television, all kinds of devices and gadgets. They go to school and it is too dull, and some of the brightest kids are some of the first who act out. It means that it is just one more area where more resources have to be put in instead of expelling kids, which is ridiculous. We should be finding ways and doing whatever is necessary to make sure that they are there. I said before that the Indians, Pakistanis, a number of developing nations understand the need for education in order to develop their societies, their economies; but a greater threat still and more immediate threat I started to talk about and did not complete, and that is educating people who are extremists and people who hate our way of life, the people who are ready to die in order to destroy us. They are educating them, also. They know that a human being can be taught to become a brain surgeon, a bomb maker who then can be taught to effectively man a machine gun or fly a plane into the World Trade Center. Human beings have that capacity. So you have what you call a network of madrassas. Ever heard the term madrassas? It is a new term. After 9/11 we discovered that there are schools in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia and a number of other places where they are learning not just science, math and religion; but they are learning how to hate and learning how to be willing to sacrifice themselves if necessary against the infidels. So you have a massive number of people at various levels who are seen as resources. If we do not see our own population the same way, everybody as a resource for our goals, then we are going to also experience some of the same kind of problems internally that we are facing externally. By that I mean you are going to have youngsters who live in America, who come to the American system, who hate America, who hate in general, who are willing to take up any kind of cause and fervently pursue it in some kind of suicidal venture. Yes, we can always defeat them and always have a strong Navy and Army and Marines, but we have to pay a very costly price if we do not understand that every human being deserves to be developed and should be developed for the benefit of the Nation, and his mind and his skills should be shaped in a way which benefits and not cut them off and ignore them and let them become driftwood. We are increasing our expenditures at a much more rapid rate in our prison system than in our education system. We are willing to pay $20,000 to $25,000 a year to incarcerate an individual. We are the Nation now in the world with the largest number of people in prison, more than 2 million and climbing. It used to be mostly men, now we have an increase in the number of women who are in prison. That is a statement about the wrong way to educate, the wrong way to proceed in developing our population. Mahatma Gandhi said, when he went to visit a big nation, a big city, he said where are your exploited people? Who is oppressed? And he was told by the mayor and leaders of the place at the city, we have no oppressed. He said, oh, yes, you do. Take me to your prisons and I will show you who are oppressed. Take me to your prisons, and the people there, the types of people there will be an indication of who is oppressed in your society. Take me to your prisons and you will find African American males way out of proportion to their numbers in the population. You will find Hispanic males way out of proportion to their numbers in the population. Take me to your prisons and you will find $20,000 to $25,000 a year being spent on those individuals while we complain in New York City about spending $8,000 a year on children in the schools of New York. I want to close by just quickly highlighting the Bill of Rights that I talked about that the Congressional Black Caucus sees as its centerpiece in its effort to maintain a high profile for education matters. As I said, the bill was reintroduced on May 5, 2005 by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah) and numerous other sponsors. Among its findings is stated: A high-quality, highly competitive education for all students is imperative for the economic growth and productivity of the United States, for its effective national defense, and for achievement of the historical aspiration to be one nation of equal citizens. It is therefore necessary and proper to overcome the nationwide phenomenon of educationally inadequate or inequitable State public school systems in which high-quality public schools serve high- income communities and poor-quality schools serve low-income, urban, rural and minority communities. That is finding number one. Finding number two. There exists in the States an ever-widening educational opportunity gap for low-income urban, rural and minority students characterized by the following: Highly differential educational expenditures among school districts; continuing disparities within the States in students' access to fundamentals of educational opportunity; radically differential educational achievement among public school districts within the States; and on and on it goes adding up to eight major findings that are part of the introduction to the Bill of Rights, H.R. 2178. Mr. Speaker, at the conclusion of this special order I will submit for the Record the findings of the Bill of Rights for Education, as well as other items relating to this topic. Finally, Mr. Speaker, I would like to conclude with the case history that I mentioned before, the case in New York City which points out exactly, in a specific example, what is wrong with our education system in America. We have a rich State like New York. It is not a poor State at all. We have a huge budget. We spend large amounts of money on numerous items that could be considered optional and luxuries. We are now embarking on the building of a great stadium in Manhattan for one football team, the Jets, and for the Olympics, and the city proposes to put $100 million in, and the State will put $100 million in. They say the rest will be paid for by the Jets' ownership. But all estimates are that before it is over the city and State will put in more like $.5 billion in order to make it work. We are selling valuable real estate at pennies on the dollar, on State-owned property upstate. The Governor recently gave away a major property for $30,000, and on and on it goes. The money is there but the will and the power is not there to use the money for education. In New York City, a case was brought more than 10 years ago by a group called the Committee for Education Equity, CFE. That committee won the case at the first level. Justice Leland DeGrasse ordered that the State must spend $5.6 billion in operating funds over the next 4 years. In addition to the State aid it was giving the city already, it had to give additional aid, and $9.2 billion in capital funds over the next 5 years to bring them up to par. Why is this necessary? Because for the last 30 years the New York City students have been receiving less money per pupil than students in the rest of the State, and this is to correct an inequity, an injustice. It took the courts to do this. But the judge ruled it and the case has been thwarted and avoided for the last 3 or 4 years by the Governor of the State. The Governor first appealed the case, and so it went to the appellate division of the New York State court system. That is the next level. The appellate division overturned the original judge's decision; said he was wrong, you do not need additional money because in New York State all you need to do is to provide an 8th grade education for students to be able to come out of school, get a decent job and function in the society that we have at this point. All you need is an 8th grade education is what the appellate decision decided. Fortunately, the court system has checks and balances and there was one higher level above the appellate division which looked at the decision of the appellate division and said it was nonsense, and they supported the original decision by the original judge. So it went back to the judge to make the decision which he has made, ordering the State in 90 days, 90 days was some time ago, to come up with a plan to comply with the court order. So the Governor appealed it again and he got a stay on the order on the basis of the fact that this one had particular figures in it, and so it has been sent back to the appellate division. Let me just sum up. The same level of the judicial system which decided that all you need in New York City and the State is an 8th grade education 2 years ago, they now have the case back in front of them as a result of the machinations of our Governor. And so I sent a letter to the Governor, to the Attorney General, to the Speaker of the Assembly of the State of New York, and to the majority leader of the State Senate and asked them all to please obey the law. There is a question about the power of courts around here. We are having big discussions here in Washington about selecting judges, and we think in the final analysis sometimes we have had bad decisions; other times we have had beneficial decisions. But either way our court system is a magnificent system with a set of checks and balances built in, and the kind of effort being made in the Senate now to take away the minority's right to have a meaningful role in the selection of judges is going to jeopardize this. But, presently, the courts are there and they ought to be obeyed. They ought to be obeyed. Sometimes judges order our legislatures to do things, and when they do not do them they fine the legislature so much per day for every day that they do not comply. There have been examples of this. And other times there are State governments and legislatures that have ignored courts and the courts have done nothing about it. An historic example of Andrew Johnson being ordered by the Supreme Court of the United States to let the Cherokee Nation alone and not drive them off their land in Tennessee. Andrew Johnson ignored the Supreme Court, and of course nothing was done about that. So we have a problem which needs to be clarified in law in our society. The courts ought to be obeyed. You go to the courts as a last resort. So I wrote this open letter to Governor Pataki, the Attorney General, and the other people where I said please obey the law. New York's highest court has ordered the State of New York to provide New York City schools an additional $5.6 billion in operating expenses over 4 years, and $9.2 billion in facilities funding over 5 years to ensure that the city's children have their constitutional right to the opportunity for a sound basic education. And I go on and on to say that the case has been lingering; it has been 262 days since the court deadline was passed, and we would like some action. Mr. Speaker, I will enter this letter to the Governor of New York State, Governor Pataki, for the Record, because it is an example of the kind of case which pinpoints the fact that the children of our Nation, the parents of our Nation, the people who care about education in our Nation are at war with a group of leaders and decision-makers who are the major problem. They do not want to understand in many cases, they do not understand in some cases, but they are the major impediment to the building of an educational system which will cost money. It will cost resources. Folks talk about we are spending so much more than we used to spend. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, the United States owned only four vehicles, four cars. No airplanes for the President. Look where we are now in terms of our military apparatus, our governmental apparatus. The government moved on and the United States of America moved on. We produced what we needed for World War II. We won the war because we cared about it. It was vital. We went to the moon because we cared about it. It was vital. We can do anything we care about if it is vital. We do not understand how vital education is and that is our central problem. The leadership, including the Members of Congress, have to come to grips with the problem that we are failing the generations to come by not providing an adequate education structure. The ruling in Brown v. Board of Education set off a domino effect which has built the knowledge that the Federal Government does have a role. It has a major role, and we must stop trying to thwart that role but cooperate with it in order to build a better Nation. Mr. Speaker, at this point I will conclude and submit for the Record those documents I referred to earlier: (a) Findings--The Congress finds the following: (1) A high-quality, highly competitive education for all students is imperative for the economic growth and productivity of the United States, for its effective national defense, and for achievement of the historical aspiration to be one Nation of equal citizens. It is therefore necessary and proper to overcome the nationwide phenomenon of educationally inadequate or inequitable State public school systems, in which high-quality public schools serve high- income communities and poor-quality schools serve low-income, urban, rural, and minority communities. (2) There exists in the States an ever-widening educational opportunity gap for low-income, urban, rural, and minority students characterized by the following: (A) Highly differential educational expenditures among public school districts within States. (B) Continuing disparities within the States in students' access to the fundamentals of educational opportunity described in section 112(a). (C) Radically differential educational achievement among public school districts within the States, as measured by the following: (i) Achievement in mathematics, reading or language arts, and science on State academic achievement tests and measures, including the academic assessments described in section 113(b)(1). (ii) Advanced placement courses offered and taken. (iii) Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and ACT Assessment scores. (iv) Dropout rates and graduation rates. (v) College-going and college-completion rates. (vi) Job placement and retention rates and indices of job quality. (3) As a consequence of this educational opportunity gap, the quality of a child's education depends largely upon where the child's family lives, and the detriments of lower quality public education are imposed particularly on--(A) children from low-income families; (B) children living in urban and rural areas; and (C) minority children. (4) Since 1785, the Congress of the United States, exercising the power to admit new States under article IV, section 3 of the Constitution (and previously, the Congress of the Confederation of States under the Articles of Confederation), has imposed upon every State, as a fundamental condition of the State's admission, the following requirements: (A) One, and sometimes two, square-mile lots in every township were to be `granted and . . . reserved for the maintenance and use of public schools'. (B) `[S]chools and the means of education [are to] be forever encouraged' (C) `State conventions [were to] provide, by ordinances irrevocable without the consent of the United States and the people of said States . . . that provision . . . be made for the establishment and maintenance of systems of public schools which shall be open to all children of said States'. (See Ordinances of May 20, 1785, and July 13, 1787; Act of March 3, 1845, 28th Congo 2d Sess., 5 Stat. 789, Chap. 76 (admitting Iowa and Florida); Act of February 22, 1889, 50th Cong., 2d Sess., Chap. 180 (admitting States created from the Dakota Territories); and the Acts of Congress pertaining to the admission of each of the States.) (5) Over the years since the landmark ruling in Brown V. Board of Education, when a unanimous United States Supreme Court held that `the opportunity of an education . . . , where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms', courts in 44 of the States have heard challenges to the establishment, maintenance, and operation of educationally inadequate or inequitable State public school systems. (347 U.S. 483, 493 (1954)). (6) In 1970, the Presidential Commission on School Finance found that significant disparities in the distribution of educational resources existed among public school districts within States because the States relied too significantly on local district financing for educational revenues, and that reforms in systems of school financing would increase the Nation's ability to serve the educational needs of all children. (7) In 1999, the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences published a report entitled `Making Money Matter, Financing America's Schools', which found that the concept of funding adequacy, which moves beyond the more traditional concepts of finance equity to focus attention on the sufficiency of funding for desired educational outcomes, is an important step in developing a fair and productive educational system. (8) In 2001, the Executive order establishing the President's Commission on Educational Resource Equity declared, `A quality education is essential to the success of every child in the 21st century and to the continued strength and prosperity of our Nation. . . . [L]ong-standing gaps in access to educational resources exist, including disparities based on race and ethnicity.' (Executive Order 13190). [From the New York Newsday, May 3, 2005.] State Refuses To Overturn CFE Stay (By Wil Cruz) A state Appellate Division panel Tuesday refused to overturn a stay in Gov. George Pataki's appeal of a court order giving city schools billions of dollars in additional funding. The court also said it would hear the appeal of State Supreme Court Justice Leland DeGrasse's order in October. DeGrasse ruled earlier this year that city schools need an additional $5.6 billion in operating funds over the next four years and $9.2 billion in capital funds over the next five years to bring them up to par. The Campaign for Fiscal Equity, which filed suit in 1993 accusing the state of shortchanging city schools, had asked that the stay be lifted. ``Even though the stay was not lifted, we're gratified that the court granted our motion to expedite review of the case,'' Michael Rebel the group's executive director, said of the planned October hearing. Pataki has maintained that in issuing his order, DeGrasse overstepped his judicial boundaries and failed to address accountability measures. ``Justice DeGrasse's ruling ignores important, fundamental, separation-of-powers principles and requires the state to spend too much and reform too little, so it's appropriate that it be reviewed by a higher court before taking effect,'' Kevin Quinn, a spokesman for Pataki, said in a statement Tuesday. The Campaign for Fiscal Equity pushed to have the stay lifted in hopes of having the issue resolved in time for the upcoming academic year. Yesterday's decision eliminates that possibility. An Open Letter to Governor Pataki on Law & Order for Education April 19, 2005. Dear Governor Pataki: I call on you to OBEY THE LAW. New York's highest court has ordered the State of New York to provide New York City schools an additional $5.6 billion in operating expenses over four years and $9.2 billion in facilities funding over five years to ensure the city's children their constitutional right to the opportunity for a sound basic education. To properly shape the character and enhance the moral fiber of our children we beg you, Governor Pataki, to show respect for law and order. You are an important role model in the lives of the youth of New York State. The spectre of public officials refusing to obey a court order baffles and discourages law-abiding citizens. We have been taught to believe that in America the courts have the power to render justice when all other avenues have closed. New York City students have been denied their fair share of funds for decades and now the courts have ordered that this injustice be corrected. It's been 262 days since the CFE court deadline! Governor Pataki, you have further deprived our kids by defying/appealing a court order to fairly fund our schools. The law clearly states the responsibility for giving a sound basic education to our children lies with New York State. As a public servant who has served for twenty-three years on the House of Representatives Education Committee, and prior to that, eight years on the Education Committee of the New York State Senate I want to stress the importance of this vital law and order moment in the history of New York State. After years of legislative deals, which resulted in great inequalities, the court has proclaimed justice. Along with other elected officials we urge you to OBEY THE LAW. Please OBEY THE LAW. Set an example for our students, for our communities. Show them everyone must OBEY THE LAW. Yours For Improved Education, Major R. Owens, Member of Congress.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, that 6 million innocent souls should not die in vain is the noble purpose of Yom Hashoah, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day. This is a day to remember the horror and solemnly swear that we will never let it happen again. This is a day to celebrate the resistance of the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. We must remember the horror and we must remember to resist. A civilized nation with the most deadly war machine in history, descended to a level below any known beasts. A clear lesson to our civilization is still relevant: Decent citizens should never stand by passively and allow such atrocities to take place. And vigilant citizens should actively resist any erosion of their rights by a powerful few. Unfortunately, Rwanda and Darfur are present day examples of our failure to take the profound lesson of Nazi tyranny seriously. At the same time, submission to the U.S. government actions which arrest large groupings such as the Pakistanis without due process; and acquiescence to an administration which launches a massive and expensive war based on lies; these positions demonstrate a deep-seated failure to understand the need to resist immoral and dangerous government acts. There is a need for our generation to make greater sacrifices and take greater risks if we truly want to honor the six million souls annihilated by the Nazi monsters.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, it is altogether fitting and appropriate to commemorate Workers' Memorial Day this year by introducing the ``Workplace Wrongful Death Accountability Act of 2005.'' I am very pleased to join my colleague from New Jersey, Senator Jon Corzine, in introducing this bill aimed at saving workers lives. Senator Corzine and I sponsored identical legislation in the 108th Congress. The bill would amend the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act in 3 simple ways. First, it would stiffen sanctions for worker deaths caused by an employer's willful violations of basic safety standards. Under current law, the sanction is a mere misdemeanor which carries a fine of no more than $10,000 and a prison sentence of no more than 6 months. As the first librarian to become a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, I can vouch for the fact that some local jurisdictions seek harsher penalties for failure to return a library book. This bill would make corporate manslaughter a felony offense, with the possibility of sentences that might range from no time behind bars to up to 10 years in prison. Upon a second offense, the maximum sentence could be doubled. Second, this bill would double the penalty for illicitly warning of an OSHA inspection, from a maximum of 6 months to up to 2 years in prison. Third, my bill would increase the penalty for lying to or misleading OSHA, from a 6 months maximum to 1 year's imprisonment. In all three instances, fines would be decided upon in accordance with title 18 of the U.S. code, which is standard criminal law and longstanding criminal procedure. The reason we need this bill is very clear: the Federal Government is itself guilty of gross negligence in efforts to deter corporate manslaughter. As David Barstow of the New York Times noted last year in his remarkable investigative series on worker deaths in this country, OSHA has an astonishing 20 year track record of failure to seek criminal prosecution when an employer's willful and flagrant safety violations lead to worker deaths. It isn't that the Department of Labor (DOL) doesn't know how to seek criminal sanctions. Anyone who visits the DOL website will see an exhaustive list of prosecutions undertaken by staff in the Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS). From 2002 to 2005, the prosecutions sought by OLMS fill up 111 pages, typewritten with a very small font. The difference is that these are prosecutions against union officials for a vast array of minor offenses. Contrast that with OSHA's failure to seek criminal prosecution in a staggering 93 percent of worker death cases, investigated by the agency over the past 2 decades. These deaths were caused by an employer's gross negligence or willful safety violations. In other words, the employer placed a profit motive far, far above any concern over peoples' lives. In some instances, the same unscrupulous employer's pattern of egregious safety violations has caused multiple worker deaths over several years. In such cases, a misdemeanor penalty has no deterrent value whatsoever. Holding certain local union officials criminally liable for minor instances of alleged record falsification versus handing employers who commit corporate manslaughter an automatic ``get out of jail free'' pass is a real statement of values and priorities. We hear a great deal from this Republican Administration about the importance of affirming a ``culture of life.'' Well, American workers deserve a ``culture'' of workplace safety that ensures they will live to go home at night and return to their jobs the following morning. When Congressman Tom DeLay was asked by an Associated Press (AP) reporter last year about the ``Workplace Wrongful Death Accountability Act,'' he replied: ``The worst thing you could do--telling a small business person that they could go to prison over an OSHA violation.'' But such ridicule and exaggeration offends any surviving relative of a victim of corporate manslaughter. Every year, between 5000 and 6000 workers are killed-on-the-job, often in gruesome circumstances due to inexcusable safety violations. This bill is aimed at holding such grossly negligent employers accountable. It will not result in either wanton or reckless prosecutions of hapless employers. My bill is NOT a radical departure from current law by any stretch of the imagination. This bill simply corrects a glaring oversight in federal law and policy: the inability to pursue a felony conviction of an employer who willfully causes the deaths of workers. It is a moderate adjustment that is long overdue. Review of a recent case in my own Congressional district illuminates the reasons why this bill needs to be enacted. Less than a week ago, the contractor and owner of Big Apple Development and Construction (Big Apple) pleaded guilty to causing the death of a worker by failing to comply with OSHA regulations requiring employers to provide employees with fall protection equipment. The death of one worker, Angel Segovia, and serious injury of two others occurred, when a building collapsed on Fort Hamilton Parkway in May of 2004. Big Apple was a repeat safety violator, having already received OSHA citations in 2001 for failing to provide its workers with fall protection equipment. When Big Apple's owner and contractor, Kang Yeon Lee, is sentenced for causing the death of Angel Segovia, he faces a maximum of 6 months in prison under the current OSHA statute. But Mr. Lee also pleaded guilty to mail fraud in connection with concealing his failure to pay workers the prevailing wage on a federally funded, U.S. Postal Service construction project. And for mail fraud, Mr. Lee faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000 for each count of conviction. The contrast between a six month prison term for killing a worker and a twenty-year prison term for mail fraud could not be starker. Enactment of the ``Workplace Wrongful Death Accountability Act of 2005'' would value workers'' lives and correct such a disgraceful discrepancy. In closing, Mr. Speaker, I would like to note for the record that the ``Wrongful Workplace Accountability Act of 2005'' is included in its entirety in a broader bill I am also introducing today, the ``Protecting America's Workers Act.'' I urge my colleagues to respect the lives of all American workers and ask them to join me in sponsoring both these bills. Millions of hard-working Americans and their families deserve nothing less than such essential protection.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, April 28th is Worker Memorial Day, designated as a time to honor the thousands of American workers killed on the job every year by willful or negligent safety violations on the part of errant employers. The surviving family members of workers killed by corporate wrongdoing deserve much more than just our sympathy, however. They deserve immediate Congressional attention and action. Today, I am very pleased to join with Senator Edward M. Kennedy in introducing legislation that promises such essential action by strengthening provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act. The bill-- ``Protecting America's Workers Act''--would hold those who commit corporate manslaughter accountable at the same time that it reinforces critical health and safety protections for workers nationwide. Even by conservative estimates, an American worker is killed on the job every 96 minutes. We read about these deaths in newspapers from the District of Columbia to Washington state. Only last month, for example, 15 workers were killed by a fiery explosion in a British Petroleum (BP) oil refinery in Texas City, Texas. Every year in New York City, construction workers are killed by free-falls from buildings and collapses of faulty scaffolds and concrete walls. Near Toledo, Ohio last year, 4 ironworkers died in the collapse of a massive bridge crane and 4 others were injured. And almost 6 months ago in Walnut Creek, California, a gas pipeline explosion killed 5 workers and badly injured 4 others. In the words of a New York State Supreme Court Justice, these worker deaths were not simply ``random accidents'' but rather ``tragic certainties.'' The workers died as the direct result of some employer's willful safety violations or serious negligence. All too often--and in the worker death cases listed above--employers responsible for these fatalities are repeat safety violators. In some cases, multiple workers in the same firm may die in identical circumstances over a period of years, without the responsible employer ever facing stiff criminal penalties or any prison sentence. Under the current OSH Act, the maximum penalty any employer can receive for causing the death of a worker is 6 months in prison and a $10,000 fine. Unlike surviving relatives of other crime victims, family members of workers killed on the job are left without any victims' services or assistance under current law. They even lack a voice in any Occupational Safety and Health Agency (OSHA) investigations of their loved ones' deaths as well as subsequent negotiations with culpable employers over any downgrading of initial citations and fines tied to the worker fatalities. By stiffening criminal penalties for those found guilty of blatant safety violations that result in worker deaths, this bill will make other employers think twice about ignoring basic health and safety rules that risk workers' lives. It incorporates in its entirety the provisions of my bill, the ``Workplace Wrongful Death Accountability Act,'' which makes it a felony offense to kill a worker and provides for a term of up to 10 years in prison. For a second offense, the maximum term for a culpable employer would be 20 years in prison. Likewise, maximum penalties for illicitly warning of an OSHA inspection or lying to OSHA would be set appropriately to serve a deterrent purpose. Under this bill, civil penalties are also set in accordance with the time-honored principle of deterrence. The ``Protecting America's Workers Act'' would also extend OSHA coverage to millions of workers who currently lack the protection of workplace safety and health laws. Among others, these include public employees in a number of states and localities, certain transportation workers such as flight attendants, and a number of federal workers as well as those in public/private entities such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Moreover, it provides stronger protections for any worker who reports the safety and health violations of an errant employer. This bill requires OSHA to investigate any workplace incident that results in the death of a worker or the hospitalization of 2 or more employees. At the same time, it gives surviving family members of workers who are killed greater participation rights in OSHA's workplace investigation and ``penalty negotiation'' process with the respective employers responsible for these fatalities. Moreover, it prohibits OSHA from downgrading willful citations in worker fatalities to ``unclassified'' ones. Last but not least, the bill strengthens workplace prevention efforts by requiring employers to cover the costs of personal protective equipment for their employees. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the New York Committee on Safety and Health (NYCOSH), joined by like committees in the other 49 states, for launching a national campaign against corporate killing. This grassroots campaign will alert workers and the wider public about the importance of ensuring employers do not place profits above basic safety measures at the expense of workers' very health and lives. As senior Democrat on the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, I want to recognize a number of my colleagues, including Representatives Miller, Andrews, Lynch, DeLauro, and Michaud who have joined me as original cosponsors of the ``Protecting America's Workers Act.'' Representative Miller's 30-year track record of support for workers, as well as his role as senior Democrat on the Education and Workforce Committee is well known. Representative Andrews, senior Democrat on the Employer-Employee Relations Subcommittee is also author of a separate bill to extend OSHA protections to those state and local government workers who lack coverage by workplace safety laws. His bill is included in its entirety as a provision in the comprehensive bill we are sponsoring today. As a co-chair of the Labor Caucus in the House, Representative Lynch is dedicated to protecting workers across the country. Through her actions on the House Appropriations Committee, Representative DeLauro has demonstrated her commitment to ensuring worker health and safety. And, by serving as a co-chair of the House Labor Caucus, Representative Michaud has also shown his dedication to workers' well-being. I thank them all for their cosponsorship and urge other members of the House to join with us in endorsing this legislation, critical to the well-being of America's working families. In closing, Mr. Speaker, the time for the ``Protecting America's Workers Act'' is now. Although we have made substantial progress in protecting health and safety in American workplaces since the OSH Act was first passed in 1970, that progress has stalled precipitously under the current Bush Administration and the Republican Congress. We must reverse this setback to workplace safety and enact this bill without delay.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to S. 256 because it protects the risks that credit card companies take, while allowing them to swindle citizens. Mr. Speaker, as a result of the actions of the Republican led Congress, unscrupulous credit card companies will increase their strong, hard sell tactics pressuring more and more individuals and families to purchase more credit. Credit card hucksters can take more risks because they will now enjoy greater protection from the courts. The taxpayer financed courts will become the debt collectors for the credit card swindlers. A federalized system will now protect the predators. Once again the doctrine of laissez-faire has been turned upside down. The marketplace has chosen to cling to the aprons of government. The banking private sector is demanding governmental interference in a situation where the taxpayers prefer not to pay agents for the work of strong enforcers. To serve the interest of consumer justice I urge a ``no'' vote on S. 256, the Bankruptcy Reform Bill.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, we have just set a frightening precedent in the halls of Congress by interfering in the life of an individual. Yet we show little compassion for the scores of families who do not have the financial means or insurance to cover the expenses of individuals on life support or individuals who are sick in general. There are 10,000 individuals on life-support throughout the country. The White House and Congress should find better ways to take care of all of these individuals and individuals who are in dire need of proper healthcare. If we continue on this path, the President of the United States should be made guardian of all people on life support. Then perhaps we can find an amicable solution to the sadness that is the state of healthcare for Americans. What are our priorities? If we care about saving lives, we should address the problem of 40 million Americans who do not have health care insurance. Eleven million children do not have basic health insurance. New York State ranked 33rd out of 50 states in quality of hospital care. And, 57,000 Americans die needlessly each year because the health care system failed to provide adequate care. Congress must stand up and do what the voters elected them to do-- focus on the critical issues facing everyone in this country.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, this Congressional Black Caucus alternative budget continues the CBC tradition of advocating for increased federal aid to education as the first priority of the world's only superpower. For the last ten years the Members ofthe CBC have boldly trumpeted the fact that there is an Education State-of-Emergency in the African American community and in the mainstream of America. The American people enhanced by universal quality education constitute the greatest Weapon of Mass Construction our nation can have. To maintain this Weapon of Mass Construction, to maximize Homeland Security, education must be our front line of defense. To confront violent fanatics and zealots in the military arena our soldiers must be the best trained and most educated fighting force in the world. To maintain, expand and guide the most complex economic system in the history of our civilization in ways that guarantee continued prosperity we must accept nothing less than overwhelming supremacy in education. Our budget must reflect this overwhelming quest for supremacy. Members of the CBC have proudly supported an increase of 23.9 billion dollars in the education budget. More specifically we have supported the following restorations and increases: Function 500--Education and Training.....................+$23.9 billion School Construction........................................$2.5 billion Full Funding for No Child Left Behind, including: Title I, Safe and Drug Free Schools, 21st Century Learning Centers, Teacher Quality Programs, Education Technology, Fund for the Improvement of Education, English Language Acquisition, and Migrant Educa$12 billion Elementary and Secondary School Counseling..................$50 million Vocational Education.......................................$1.5 billion Job Training...............................................$750 million Adult Education............................................$400 million Pell Grants................................................$450 million Head Start...................................................$2 billion Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)...........$2 billion Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).................................$500 million Hispanic Serving Institutions..............................$400 million TRIO.......................................................$500 million Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR-UP).......$350 million Perkins Loans..............................................$100 million Impact Aid.................................................$300 million SEOG.......................................................$100 million

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. If the gentleman will yield, does that mean we cannot rise to strike the last word?

Mr. OWENS. He said all future amendments. Correct?

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. (Mr. OWENS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, this bill is filled with many worthwhile expenditures, and I have heard my colleagues all day make various adjustments and amendments. However, the overwhelming amount of this appropriation will be wasted in the continuing financing of the war in Iraq. The war in Iraq is an expensive blunder with costs now approaching the level of $300 billion. In the name of security, we are throwing dollars at a problem which will yield the least amount of security here in the homeland. We are left vulnerable within our own borders, while there is no honest accounting for billions which could make our ports safer, which could increase our first response capacities, which could train expert translators, anti-demolition experts, communications personnel and many others that are vital for maximum homeland security. In general, our Federal expenditures for education, including school construction and modernization, could be increased greatly in order to guarantee that America has the most valuable ingredient to secure its future, that is, an educated population. Nothing is more vital for the existence of this Nation than an educated populace. We neglect these vital needs while we continue to throw dollars into a bottomless pit. This present appropriation might be justified if there were a timetable and a clear plan for withdrawal. Through the election process, the Iraqi people let it be known that they reject the suicide bombers. The Iraqi people reject the fanatics and the zealots. The Iraqi people reject the extremists. The extremists can be isolated and paralyzed if we build on this goodwill and desire for freedom among the Iraqi people. They demonstrated that in the election in which they went out to participate. To build on this foundation, we must offer the Iraqi people justice. Justice means a plan to show them how their oil revenue ought to be used to help their economy, and justice means a clear timetable for the withdrawal of American troops. We must strengthen the partnership with the Iraqi people. Let us stop the waste of dollars and stop the waste of lives of American heroes. We cannot continue to dig blindly down into this deep pit of more war. I would like to close with a quotation which I hope all of my colleagues will allow to settle on their minds for a few minutes: ``Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing their country to danger. It works the same in any country.'' That quote was from Air Marshall Herman Goering. I urge a ``no'' vote on this entire appropriation bill which is mostly for the continuation of the war in Iraq.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, February is designated as Black History Month, and I want to take this opportunity to utilize this very practical observance, or practical designation. The observances have very practical values. Some people have said they are useless and also they are insulting because our history goes on all the time. Why do we need to single it out for just one month? And if they are important, why only have one month? Well, the way Americans do things, part of our culture and part of our way of life is we do highlight things, days of observances, holidays, special ceremonies, all these things are part of the way we capture people's attention. I am grateful for the fact that the whole month of February is designated as Black History Month. There was a time when there was no such designation, and there was a gentleman named Carter G. Woodson who resided here in Washington D.C. who worked for years to get a Black History Week designation. The purpose for his Black History Week designation was a practical one. He wanted an opportunity to be able to highlight some of the achievements of African Americans over the years. So the fact now that television stations and corporations and various other people have pitched in and they pay homage to Black History Month is an achievement to be saluted. I congratulate the people who worked to have that done. It is for us, both black and white, to understand ways in which we can take advantage of the fact that this observance exists. You cannot separate American history from black history or black history from American history. The history of African Americans certainly is interwoven with the history of the United States of America in a way which can never be separated. I would like to see us deal with black history as a continuum. The fact that people in small groups or individuals made contributions should not be played down. We are proud of the fact that you have a whole series of individual achievements that were highlighted when you start celebrating. We know that Thomas Edison had a black assistant who played a great role in what he did. Alexander Graham Bell. The inventor of the traffic light was a black man. Crispus Attucks was one of the first people to fall in the Boston Massacre. Crispus Attucks was a black man. There are a whole bevy of achievements that are saluted. We often bring up the Tuskegee Airmen and how it took black groups highlighting the achievements of the Tuskegee Airmen in World War II before they were recognized nationally by the entire American public. They did not fly in a segregated war. They were escorts for bombers flying to Germany in World War II. They played a major role and should have been recognized right away, but that was not the case. So the separate recognition and the efforts made by people to highlight their group achievements have been very important. Dorey Miller, who was one lone individual, needs to be celebrated and highlighted and maybe we will one day get an appropriate Congressional Medal of Honor for Dorey Miller. Dorey Miller happened to be a black man who was in the Navy, on one of the ships that was attacked on the day of the Pearl Harbor raid. Dorey Miller was a cook. He was not allowed to handle the guns at all. He had never been trained as a gunner and generally was forced to stay away from any kind of combat training. But on the day of Pearl Harbor, Dorey Miller shot down two Japanese planes standing on the deck of the Arizona, I think it was, with courage and skill fought back and deserves to be recognized. And on and on it goes in terms of highlighting individuals. I think as we highlight individuals, we also should understand that the social and political and economic history is much more complicated and has to be part of what we discuss as we observe Black History Month in February. I would like to call the attention of the Members to the fact that the Public Broadcasting System, which is under attack right now for various reasons, from the left and the right, is not given the kind of acclaim they deserve for producing magnificent programs. The quality of their programming is really outstanding. They did a series on slavery. That series ended last night. I saw the last part of it. It is a magnificent series that introduces a number of basic facts that most people have never known and others have forgotten. It also highlights the passion and the fervor of the struggle, the struggle on both sides, the struggle of the African slaves to get free in this country and the struggle and fervor of the people on the other side who wanted them very much to never be free because they were property earning great profits. The magnitude of those profits earned by slave labor was discussed at great length. Everybody in this country needs to understand the role of slave labor in the building of the wealth of America. They need to understand it was not just the South but New York City was one of the biggest, it was the second or third largest port where slaves came into the country. They need to understand that although cotton was king and very profitable, it was profitable not only for the people who grew the cotton in the South but the mills in New England and in the North that made textiles also profited greatly from the slave labor that produced the cotton that they made into textiles. That piece of economic history is very important to understand and comprehend. People dismiss and consider it an insult when certain groups of African Americans say that we do reparations. Reparations is not a silly idea. Reparations ought to be considered because of the fact that so much slave labor, free labor, labor taken with no compensation, went into the building of this Nation, that there ought to be some consideration in some way. I will not go into any great detail at this point, but this Capitol was built by slaves. This Capitol was built by slaves. Only recently have they discovered documents which certainly make it quite clear that slave labor built the Capitol. They have the actual records of how they contracted with the masters of the slaves and paid them, I think, $5 a week or something for their slaves to work. You can document it if you are interested in seeing it in greater detail and if you doubt that that is the truth, but the Capitol was built by slave labor and much of Washington and much of the east coast, I assure you, in the early days, before the Civil War, was built with slave labor as well. We have an African-American museum that is about to be undertaken here in Washington with the support of our government. It is going to be a museum which brings all this together. We have achieved, finally, the American Indian museum on the Mall that opened, I think, last year. That American Indian museum pays proper homage to the original Americans who were here when the explorers from Europe came. I think that is very important. But proper homage has not been paid to the Africans who helped to build this Nation, who were not here when the Europeans came, who did not come voluntarily as immigrants, but who came here kidnapped and in chains, but nevertheless their labor helped to build America. That African-American museum is going to be a part of the Smithsonian Institute. That African-American museum will be partially financed by the Federal Government and partially financed by private funds, I think like the museum of the Holocaust, partially paid for with private funds and some government funds. The African-American museum is a great opportunity to accomplish what I was talking about before in terms of the continuum, showing in a continuation the economic, social, and political development of black life in America and what the impact of African-American labor and participation was here in America. It is going to be on the Mall, I am told by my colleague, the great John Lewis, John Lewis, who has participated in the making of a great deal of African-American history. John participated the hard way. He was a hero in the civil rights struggle. If you want to go back and watch the films, you can see John on the Edmund Pettis Bridge getting beaten up. You can see John in some film of the freedom rides where they were trying to integrate the Greyhound buses, interstate buses. You can see them beating John Lewis. So John Lewis was definitely a part of history. It is altogether fitting and proper that John Lewis has played a major role as we prepare for this museum to be developed and opened on the Mall here. John tells me that it is going to be on the Mall. There was some question about whether it would be located on the Mall or somewhere else. There were people who said the Mall is crowded now and there is no more room for another museum. There were people who felt that there were other locations in Washington where you should put the African-American museum; but I am so proud of the fact that John reports, and I salute President Bush, John reports that President Bush says he wants the museum on the Mall. He will support the building of the African-American museum on the Mall. We will have collected there the whole range of activities that go into the making of the history of a people. I am certain that a lot of things that have been lost will now be found. The records of the early Members of Congress after the Civil War who were black, one has to search very diligently to find out who was here, what kinds of speeches they made and what the situation was and the whole drama that was played out as they removed the more than 30 African-Americans who came to Congress and the Senate shortly after the Civil War. That whole drama is a story that needs to be told as there are many other stories that need to be told. The story needs to be told of what it meant for the early colonists to have all that slave labor that was available through the slaves in terms of overcoming the wilderness that was quite unfriendly and the wilderness that had in many cases defeated the gentlemen who came from Great Britain who were not prepared to do the kind of hard work that had to be done to sustain a nation in the wilderness. The story has to be told of how in the French and Indian wars, the blacks fought side by side with George Washington and the Americans against the French, and the Revolutionary War where blacks divided. Some wanted freedom, they were promised freedom by the English and they fought on the side of the English; and many more fought on the side of the American patriots. George Washington had a major assistant who was black, who has gotten lost in history out there and would be retrieved. The whole history of how in New York City, the building of that city and the movement of the black population from one place to another would be retrieved in this African-American museum. Central Park was a major location of an African-American settlement. That settlement was unceremoniously bulldozed and removed later on. That story needs to be told. The story of the Negro burial ground in lower Manhattan which recently received a memorial. A memorial was built there because we have a Federal building that was being built on that ground over the Negro burial ground, and the excavation process brought up skeletons and indicated it was a ceremony and there was a protest. This is a 10- year project that went on. Finally, the settlement was that they built a memorial right there at the Federal building and they reinterred the bones of those who had been dug up. I was at that ceremony, recognizing the tremendous cost that was sustained by the African-American community at that time. Facts came to light as to terms of the volume, the large numbers of people who were worked to death. They even took some of the bones to various institutions and analyzed the bones and the trauma that had been experienced by the bones and found out that necks were broken because of the load that they had to carry, that spines were cracked and the horror of slave labor you get from that Negro burial ground memorial in New York. That is one of many black history exhibitions and museums and libraries across the country. They all make a small contribution. The wonderful thing about having an African American museum on the Mall is that it says to all of America, it says to the whole world, that we are prepared to recognize fully the involvement, the contributions and the role played by African Americans in the history of the United States of America. Across the country we have a lot of small museums that deserve to be examined. As you travel from one place to another, you can find in many places various museums and cultural centers. In Richmond, Virginia there is the Black Museum and Cultural Center. Out in Idaho there is the Black History Museum. Right here in Washington, of course, we have the Anacostia Museum; and the Museum of African American History in Boston; New York Institute for Special Education in the Bronx, a small recent one; the Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History in Augusta, Georgia; Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, Michigan. I am not going to read them all, but just to give some example of how there is a body out there, maybe too few. Rosa Parks Library & Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. I think the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, Alabama is located in the same corner where she refused to go to the back of the bus. That is very symbolic. And the great National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis is one of the most dramatic of the museums. Memphis, Tennessee was where Martin Luther King was assassinated. He was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel, and that is the site of the museum. The Lorraine Motel has been converted into a civil rights museum. The University of Colorado Department of History has a museum; the African American Museum in Dallas, Texas; the Howard A. Mims African American Cultural Center in Cleveland; the African American Culture Links throughout the country now on the Internet. Of course in New York City we have the great Shimberg Library, which is probably the definitive collection of books and materials about African Americans, not just African Americans but Africans from time and memorial. So we would like to take this opportunity in February, when we have the observance and the attention is focused, to remind people that they can go find out quite a bit about black history in these places. The Public Broadcasting System's documentary which I referred to before, that is available. People can get the documentary itself, and it would be, I assure my colleagues, worthwhile to have a copy of that documentary which does a very dramatic and human presentation of slavery in America. There are a lot of different Black History Month events that are going on right now. Just to give a few examples, the Slave Life of Mount Vernon is being performed at the Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens in Mount Vernon here, not far away. The College of Notre Dame of Maryland is doing a Soul Bake Sale. The Writing on the Wall is an exploration of the recent renaissance of graffiti art as a form of social critique. It goes back to Africa, at the Community College of Baltimore. There is a Black History Month Film Series at the Walters Art Museum, et cetera. Many other events are taking place this month from here. Up to February 17, today, there have been many others. Mr. Speaker, I will submit for the Record two items: the Black History Month events in the metropolitan area, a listing of those events; and the Black History and Culture libraries and museums listing across the Nation. Black History Month Events in Metro Area

Mr. OWENS. I yield to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia. Her point is that history is still continuing, and in the African American history museum that I spoke about before, there probably should be a section for unfinished business. One of the pieces of unfinished business certainly is the fate of the District of Columbia respective of full representation in the House and the Senate. I would like to say that the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia had mentioned some individuals, and that is very much a part of the history that is ongoing, and I hope that there will never be a minimizing of the role that has been played by individuals like Shirley Chisholm, like Ossie Davis. But more closer to home, today is the 80th birthday of Congressman Louis Stokes. Congressman Stokes was an outstanding Member of Congress serving on many different committees: the Select Committee on Intelligence, the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, and the Committee on Appropriations. The kinds of things he got done while he was here are legendary, and I hope that history does not lose track of the achievements of Congressman Stokes. A few days ago, at the ceremony for Shirley Chisholm, Congressman Ron Dellums was here. Ron Dellums is one of the most brilliant minds in America today still; but certainly when he was here, he had a chance to exhibit one of the most brilliant minds one would want to find on matters related to the military and international events. And Parren Mitchell also I hope will not get lost in history. These are people who served during the time that I have been a Member. Parren Mitchell from Maryland was a genius in the area of economic development. And he got started some things that continue and have been broadened to set aside for Federal contracts that started for minorities and was, of course, broadened to include women, and it continues. So we do not want to lose track of the heroes who might inspire our young people. One of the great values of the African American history museum is that it will bring all of this together. We have a great problem with our young people in terms of them understanding what the history has been and understanding what the challenges are. And I think that to have physically located in one place these kinds of items, such as blacks in the military, and there will be a section related to what the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia was saying before, not just the role of blacks in World War I and World War II, but it goes all the way back to the war of 1812 and the Revolutionary War. There have been very few wars that have been fought where a major role was not played by African Americans. So the stream of history, we want to make certain that that is properly handled; and then the mosaics, the little pieces, the individuals who made history should be a part of that in the proper places, and some of these heroes that I have just mentioned certainly should not get lost. The record and the inspiration and the achievements of Louis Stokes, Parren Mitchell, and Ron Dellums should live on forever. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings).

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis).

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to close by saying that this year, the year 2005, is a landmark year for the observance of African American history in that there will be an African American museum launched here on the Mall during this year. The money has been appropriated for the planning. There is a distinguished board of Americans who are going to go forward with this, including Oprah Winfrey, Ken Chenault of American Express, Tony Welters of AmeriChoice, and a whole group of business people and academics who will oversee the beginning of this process. I would like to call upon all celebrities out there who have money, because part of the arrangement is that the government will pay for one-half of it, and the other half has to be raised in private contributions. So I call on all of the celebrities and the stars and the athletes to come forward and let us make certain that this great project does not falter at all as a result of not having the private funds to match the government funds. It is a great day in the observance of African American history, a long haul from the day when Carter G. Woodson asked for a 1-day observance and could not get it, and then it finally became a week and a month. We want a museum that brings it all together right here in Washington to make sure that our children and the children of all Americans, not just African American descendants but all Americans, understand the role and the contribution of African Americans to the history of this great Nation.