Tom Osborne

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, On July 1, 2003, two organizations deeply rooted in Nebraska will join hands to form a new organization dedicated to caring for people with developmental disabilities. I rise today to recognize and commend the beginning of this new organization--Mosaic. Bethphage, founded in 1913 in Axtell, Nebraska, which is located in my congressional district, and Martin Luther Home Society, founded in 1925 in Sterling, Nebraska, is my colleague from Nebraska's, Mr. Bereuter's congressional district, bring 168 years of experience to the field of developmental disabilities. The consolidation of the two organizations will give Mosaic secure financial strength, fiscally responsible stewardship and diverse professional choices as it works to make life better for people with disabilities. Mosaic will serve approximately 3,700 people in 16 states and Great Britain, and will employ more than 5,100 direct support professional, regional management and home office staff. Mosaic will have two corporate offices, both of which will be located in Nebraska. Finally, Mosaic will provide a full range of supports and advocacy for people with disabilities from early intervention through elderly care. Services will include residential group home, host home, in-home supports, behavioral skills, and spiritual development. As Mosaic officially begins operations on July 1, 2003, I want to congratulate this exceptional organization for their visionary leadership in the field of developmental disabilities. I feel I can speak for many Nebraskans when I say that I am proud that Mosaic calls Nebraska home.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, I represent a rural area, 64,000 square miles, 68 counties, and it goes without saying it is a long ways between towns. In an area like this, veterans ofttimes have a hard time accessing healthcare. Let me give a real example. Let us say a veteran lives in Ogalala, Nebraska, which is in the western part of the State but is by no means the most remote part of the State, and let us say that individual has to go to Omaha, Nebraska to a VA hospital which is 350 miles away, and he may just be going for a routine blood test, diabetes checkup, blood pressure checkup, or any type of simple checkup of that nature. Ofttimes when he makes an appointment, the appointment will not be fulfilled for 6 months. So he waits for 6 months, and that veteran at that time then gets up at 4 a.m. and leaves for North Platte, Nebraska, which is 50 miles away. After he gets to North Platte, he boards a van to go to Grand Island, Nebraska, where he spends the night and that is another 140 miles, and early the next day he gets on another van, goes to the VA hospital in Omaha, a 3-hour trip. He completes the test that day and then he returns to Grand Island for the night, and the next day he takes the van from Grand Island to North Platte, another 140 miles, and then he gets a ride to Ogalala, another 50 miles. So he has waited 6 months, he has had a 3- day trip to go 660 miles for routine tests. This is ridiculous. Had the veteran driven his own car or had somebody drive his own car, he still would have had an 11-hour trip and it would have taken at least 2 days, if not 3. Let me give an urban example. Let us say that someone, a veteran with the same health problem lived in Richmond, Virginia. It would be the same as if that individual from Richmond, Virginia drove to New York City and back for basic medical care. Those same tests that were performed in Omaha, Nebraska at the VA hospital could have been done at the local hospital in a matter of three or four blocks away or maybe a couple of minutes away from that veteran, and sometimes because of their age some of our World War II veterans are having a hard time traveling today, maybe a disability, maybe the weather, a blizzard or a snowstorm, and the veteran simply does not get the healthcare at all. He does not even try because he is not able to make the trip. So that is why I have introduced H.R. 2973, the Rural Veterans Access to Care Act. H.R. 2973 would allow the VA to contract for care with local medical facilities. The only stipulation is that the veteran must travel at least 60 miles or more for the care. Some people say that only happens in Montana or North Dakota or South Dakota or Nebraska. And it is true. Those States would be hard hit. But there probably are hardly any States in the Union with the exception of maybe Rhode Island or Connecticut or someplace like that where we do not have at least some veterans who are somewhat isolated from VA hospitals and are having to go great lengths to get their medical care. H.R. 2973 would set aside 5 percent of the VA funding to contract with local medical facilities for veterans living in rural areas. By contracting with local clinics in remote areas, number one, medical care would be prompt, it would not be a four to five to six-month wait. Number two, veterans who have difficulty traveling would be served. They would not have to just simply give up on getting medical care. Number three, there will be no additional cost and might even cost less. And number four, the local hospital or clinic, which is often struggling to survive in a small town, would receive added funds. So I think this bill makes sense. I would urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 2143. Mr. Speaker, I do come from a rural area. We have 52,000 farmers and ranchers in Nebraska. I heard some figures that were unbelievable to me, that maybe only 400 farmers in this country would benefit from the repeal of the death tax. I would say out of 52,000 farmers in Nebraska, that we would look at probably somewhere between 15 and 20,000 that would benefit tremendously and will probably not be able to pass their farm on without some repeal of the death tax. Let me give Members an example. A small ranch in Nebraska is 12,000 acres. That will support about 300 cows and that will support one family. That probably started out at $25 an acre, it is now worth $300 an acre, so it was maybe worth $100,000 when the farmer started out roughly 30 years ago. So it has increased in value. If they have two children and the last surviving parent dies in 2010, that ranch, which is worth $5 million today, would go on to those two children and they would pay no tax. But in 2011, their tax bill would be $2 million. They cannot pay that tax. They have to sell the ranch. That is an actual example of an average to small-sized ranch in Nebraska. The Coble family in Mullen, Nebraska, had that happen to them. And who bought the ranch? Ted Turner bought the ranch. Ted Turner owns several hundred thousand acres in Nebraska today, most of which has been bought because people could not afford to keep the ranch because of the inheritance tax. And so that drives hundreds if not thousands of young people off the land. They cannot afford to ranch or farm. Of course, the same thing is true with small businesses. The only way to preserve family ownership is through insurance. And so maybe only 1 percent of inheritance taxes is the issue, but lots of people have to pay insurance in order to hang on. I urge the support of this bill.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, as has been mentioned a couple of times, Carl Curtis served in Congress for 40 years, longer than any other Nebraskan in the history of our State. Carl was the Congressman representing the Fourth Congressional District in Nebraska for 16 years. It is kind of interesting to note that at one time Nebraska had five congressional districts. Today we have three. That has to do, of course, with the fact that Nebraska has not grown in population as fast as most other States. Carl was from the central part of the State and was very popular in rural areas. He paid a lot of attention to agriculture. Carl was a close friend of my father's. I knew Carl quite well. Carl was not a large man in terms of physical stature; but in terms of the way he comported himself in terms of his contribution to the State, he was a person of great proportion. Carl was always well-dressed, he was always well spoken, he was courteous to a fault, and he was truly well respected and well liked by both sides of the aisle. He was not a partisan individual. I think the term ``statesman'' really represents Carl very well. I understand that early on in his life he apparently had some aspiration of being a politician and thought that public speaking abilities were important, so having lived on a farm, he went out and rehearsed his speeches to farm animals. Whether that educated them very well or not, we may have had some of the smartest animals in Nebraska due to Carl's rhetoric. As was mentioned earlier, he did pass the bar by ``reading the law.'' I guess at one time you could do that. That is a little bit unusual, but at that time apparently you did not have to go to law school. As the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry) mentioned, probably the trademark legislation that Carl introduced was the Pick-Sloan project. At one time, the Missouri River ran wild every spring and there were numerous floods and whole villages got wiped out. Many people died. From Garrison Reservoir up in Montana to Sakakawea down in North Dakota and the whole series of dams in South Dakota, Oahe, a tremendous flood control project which now has great implications, of course, for recreation and barge traffic on the Missouri River down into Nebraska and Iowa was really very visionary and the most important thing that he did. I think the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry) mentioned that he was the floor manager at the Republican convention in 1964 where Barry Goldwater was nominated for President. Carl lived to age 95. Carl was bright and was articulate right up until the end. He was an amazing gentleman. His wife, Mildred, served on the Park Service board. So I think it is only fitting that because of his interest in flood control and Mildred's work on the Park Service board, that the National Park Service headquarters in Omaha be named after Carl. I along with others urge support of Senate 703.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, obviously, biotech is really important to the Midwest. Roughly 55 percent of the corn grown in Nebraska and a high percentage of the beans grown in Nebraska are biotech, and roughly $300 million in corn exports is being blocked by the current boycott. As has been mentioned by several speakers previously, this boycott is not about safety. It is a tariff, and it is a thinly disguised tariff. The European Union did the same thing in blocking our beef that was fed hormones. The WTO stepped in and said, look, that is nonsense. This is against WTO rules, so it is something that has precedent. So the European Union has simply said, well, we will go ahead and pay the fine; it saves us the money. We will pay $116 million a year in blocking your beef, and that is essentially what this tariff is doing as well. Already, people have mentioned several times about the fact that starving people, particularly people in Africa, have had their products blocked; and this is, I think, unconscionable. Lastly, let me just say in regard to the reduction of pesticides, water use, fertilizer, these are certainly good for the environment. And we hear people all around the country decrying biotech; and yet Brazil, when we were down there a year ago, said they really did not believe in biotech, and yet they are raising 1 million acres of soybeans. So they obviously know it is safe. So usually these are simply tariff barriers. I certainly applaud the resolution, and I urge support of it. It makes a lot of sense.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Alabama and the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Leach) for this legislation. I support H.R. 2143. As the chairman mentioned, I spent most of my life working on a college campus. I can attest to the fact that Internet gambling is really hitting our college campuses very hard, because all you have to do is have a computer and a credit card and you are in business. Almost all students have this, so we see an explosion of gambling on the college campuses. Many student athletes are becoming heavily involved. I think someone mentioned earlier a quarterback from Florida State. The reason that the NCAA, the NBA, major league baseball, all of these organizations are against it, is that once a student athlete becomes heavily indebted, there are really only a couple avenues he can take to get out of the problem. One is to cooperate with gamblers. Another is to shave points. So it tremendously compromises the athletic scene. According to a 1997 study by Harvard Medical School, students show the highest percentage of pathological gambling. To say that students are not involved is simply inaccurate. For some, as has been mentioned earlier, gambling releases endorphins, much like crack cocaine, so this is a highly addictive activity. Our society is becoming increasingly dependent on gambling. Individuals try to get out of poverty by winning the lottery or hitting the jackpot. States try to cure economic woes through lotteries and casinos. Internet gambling does not fix the problem; it makes it worse. Internet gambling provides no useful goods or services. It usually is linked to organized crime. It often results in divorce, suicide, theft, and poverty. It siphons money that would otherwise be spent to buy food, clothing, appliances, housing, and thus hurts the economy. Above all, it hurts our families and it hurts our children. Please support H.R. 2143, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Funding Prohibition Act.

Mr. OSBORNE

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

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, I think that our recent military successes in Afghanistan and Iraq have demonstrated very clearly that we are the preeminent military force in the world. Our economy, although it has been somewhat slowed recently, is certainly the strongest in the world. By most measures, the United States is the most powerful Nation in the world. At the present time, we stand alone in a position of preeminence; and so sometimes when one is in that position, it is easy to begin to think that we are invincible and that this will go on forever, and certainly we hope that that is the case. Then I think it is important that we cast a historical frame of reference on all of the recent circumstances on things that have happened. Certainly 2,500 years ago, the Greeks were preeminent; and they, I am sure, felt that their culture would last forever and that they would be in a preeminent position until history ended; and then 500 years later, 2000 years ago, we found that the Roman empire had superseded Greece, and again, for a period of time, it was the most powerful nation in the world, just dominated the then-civilized world as we knew it. 150 years ago, the British Empire certainly was the most dominant nation in the world and controlled most of the affairs in the discovered world at that time; and of course, even the Soviet Union just 20 years ago appeared to be an almost invincible force. It was our rival. And so the United States and Soviet Union were the two most powerful nations in the world; and yet in each case, each one of these great civilizations, each one of these nations fell, and the interesting thing was that they did not fall from outside forces. It was not because somebody took them over. Rather, they fell from internal factors; and so their unity of purpose, their national resolve, the character of their people began to crumble, and as a result, they all to some degree became less powerful, and to some degree they became history. So what is America's greatest threat today? I am sure some would say al Qaeda. Some would say it is the ongoing conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine. Some would say it is the nuclear capabilities of North Korea and possibly Iran. Others would say the biggest problem we have is the economy, and certainly all of these things are important, and certainly they are all worthy of our attention, and they certainly get it in this body on a daily basis. I would submit to my colleagues that from my perspective the greatest threat that this Nation faces today is not outside forces, but rather, it is unraveling of the culture from within. So I am going to tonight, Mr. Speaker, document this thesis in some ways, and the reason I say this is because I have had considerable experience working with young people over 36 years. From 1962 to 1997, I spent almost all of my time working with young people. Most of them were ages 17 to 22, but I also spent a lot of time in high schools with summer camps where I worked with kids in the 9th, 10th and 11th and 12th grade. I coached 150 young men every year, visited 70 to 80 high schools in all parts of the country. Some were in inner cities, some were in suburbs, some were in rural areas; and I sat in 70 to 80 living rooms all around the country from wealthy to poor to rural. So I am not saying, Mr. Speaker, that I understand the whole situation that is going on in our country; but over those 36 years, I began to see some things that were of concern, some things that I think are worthy of note. The young people I worked with were talented; and as time went on, they became bigger and faster and stronger and in some cases smarter, but they also were more troubled. I saw more personal problems. I saw more stress. I saw more young people who were off balance; and as a result, over that 36-year period, I progressively spent less and less time coaching and more and more time dealing with personal issues; and I think almost anyone in education would tell us the same thing, whether they are a school administrator or a teacher or a coach. Anyone who works consistently with young people over a period of time will tell us that things have changed. There has been a shift, and as far as stability, it has not been for the better. I think, Mr. Speaker, there are several factors that have contributed to these changes, and the first of these that is very obvious, and I think almost anyone would recognize this, is a change in family stability. In 1960, when I first started working with young people, the out-of-wedlock birthrate was 5 percent. Today, it is 33 percent. So roughly one out of every three children are born out of wedlock, with no stable marriage and have two strikes against them. That is an increase over that period of time of 600 percent. In 1960, the great majority of young people lived with both biological parents. We would occasionally see a young person who was from a single-parent family, but usually if we did so, it was because one parent or the other was deceased. Today, roughly one-half of our young people are growing up without both biological parents, again, an increase of probably 3 to 500 percent in terms of lack of stable families. Today, only 7 percent of our families are so-called traditional families. So the family that we have is generally a father works, a mother stays home with the children and is a full-time homemaker or at least if the mother works, the father stays home, and yet only 7 percent of our families are of that nature today. So we often think of latchkey kids belonging in the inner city where they come home after school and nobody is there, but I can tell Members from personal experience that there are roughly 80-90 percent of the young people in the suburbs and rural areas, nobody is home at 3 o'clock and they are latchkey kids as well. So this has been a tremendous shift in our demographics. Parents today spend 40 percent less time with their children than a generation ago. The average parent spends no more than a few minutes with each child, and a huge amount of time is eaten up with the television set and work activities. The divorce rate has increased, from 1960 to 1995, 300 percent. Currently today, 24 million children are living without their real father. I dealt with a lot of those young people and I remember particularly one case where this young man was a good football player, and by his junior year he was being mentioned as being an All-American. One day I got a phone call from a man living in another State and he wanted to know if I knew this player. I said, I coach him. He said, ``That is my son. I would like to talk to him.'' So I talked to this young man and I thought he would be thrilled being reunited with his father. He said, ``He left me when I was 1 or 2 years old and now the only reason he wants to talk to me is because I am somewhat famous as a player, and I do not want to talk to him.'' I sensed the anguish. I saw young people time and time again who had a father who was missing in their life and they were trying to fill that void, and usually it was with all the wrong stuff; and it was not just young men, it was young women as well. This Sunday is Father's Day, and fatherless children are in some difficult circumstances at the present time. Fatherless children are 120 percent more likely to experience child abuse, twice as likely to drop out of school, 2-3 times more likely to have mental or emotional problems, 1\1/2\ times to 2 times more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, and 11 times more likely to commit a violent act. I ran into a story recently that is true, and this had to do with a greeting card business that contacted a prison. Mother's Day was approaching and they notified all of the prisoners that they would provide a Mother's Day card free if the prisoner would use it and send it to his mother. They had almost 100 percent participation. Practically all of the inmates took the card and mailed it to their mother. They thought this was quite a success. So Father's Day was rolling around and they thought they would do it again. And the interesting thing, Mr. Speaker, in that particular prison there was hardly anyone who asked for a card to send to his father because, I would assume, because none knew their father, or their father had abandoned them. What I am saying as far as the family is that the launching pad, the family, is not totally broken. We have some good families in our country, but the launching pad is certainly cracked, and changes have been undertaken in our society that are going to be really difficult for us to rectify in the immediate future. So on top of the family disintegrating to some degree, we find that the environment in which young people are living has changed dramatically. When I began coaching in the 1960s, drug abuse was almost unheard of. We had never heard of cocaine, steroids, methamphetamine. We heard a little bit about marijuana, but that was somebody out in Hollywood, and none of the young people I was dealing with had experienced it. Of course today, currently, we find that we have a drug epidemic on our hands, and that includes alcohol. We have between 2 and 3 million teenage alcoholics in our country today. So the drug issue has become one of epidemic proportion. The thing that is really interesting to me and astounding to me and discouraging to me is at one time we assumed rural America was the bastion of the family, and that was the one place we could count on traditional values. Yet we find at the present time that drug abuse in rural areas is equal to that of the urban areas, if not greater. The greatest scourge currently in rural areas that we have is methamphetamine abuse. It is roughly twice as prevalent as it is in the cities. If you are addicted to meth, the time that you are going to have to spend in inpatient treatment to have any chance of being cured is not 3 months as it is for alcohol and other drugs, it is roughly 24- 36 months, and then the odds are very good you will not beat it and meth probably at some point will kill you. The average meth addict will commit roughly 130 crimes per year to support that habit. Imagine the cost to each community of one meth addict, and we have rampant meth abuse in the rural areas. We also have the highest rate of violence of any civilized nation in the world at the present time. The United States has the highest homicide rate. We have the highest suicide rate, and of course we have had numerous school shootings in the United States in recent years, and Columbine is almost the catch word for that type of activity. So the violence activity has escalated astronomically over the last 25 years. Also, pornography has exploded. There are over 1 million porn sites on the Internet today. Sixty percent of all sites on the Internet have to do with pornography, and that is more than one-half. Additionally, there are more than 100,000 child porn sites on the Internet. Child pornography is illegal, and yet we have 100,000 child porn sites. So our children, our young people, are being engulfed by a wave of pornography. It has been estimated that 1 out of 10 children between the ages of 8 and 16 have viewed pornography on the Internet, and mostly this has been unintentional. They have used a search word such as Pokemon, Disney, Barbie, ESPN, and those search words bring up a porn site, and once you bring up a porn site, you begin to get spam, which is dozens of porn sites and the child is inundated with pornography. I was really surprised about a year ago, Mr. Speaker, to realize that my name used as a search word brought up a porn site. We were able to get that rectified, but the average young person in my district who is maybe doing a research paper on his or her Congressman and plugged in my name would all of a sudden be confronted with a porn site. In a civilized Nation that simply should not happen. I have grandchildren ages 3-10. I have four of them. I can imagine that they will someday be exposed to hard-core pornography, and this should not happen. Many people say pornography is a victimless crime. It does not really hurt anybody so what you see and hear does not make any difference in terms of how you behave. If that is true, why do we have an advertising industry that spends billions of dollars on advertising? Obviously, if you see a soft drink advertised in an appealing ad, it changes your behavior. You are more apt to purchase that soft drink or automobile or whatever is being advertised. Obviously what we see and what we hear has a tremendous impact on our behavior, and our young people today are being inundated with these kinds of messages, and that is discouraging to see. The video game is also a problem. Today, 8- to 18-year-old boys average 40 minutes a day playing video games. There is nothing wrong with that as long as the video games are within the lines. They might be a little bit violent, but they are probably not going to be a real problem. But we see that some of these games have gotten progressively more and more violent and more and more graphic. Many of them teach stalking and killing techniques that are actually used in training military personnel, Special Forces, to go out and kill people. One particular video game that we saw recently here in Congress was such an example. It was one in which the young person would engage in stalking someone and shooting them, and if you hit them in the right place in the head and the blood flew, you were rewarded by a series of pornographic images. That was your reward. So people say that is for adults and those were adult-rated games, but the average person who plays those games is 12 years old. The marketing is beamed directly at young people who are teenage and preteenage children. There is no way, Mr. Speaker, that you can play these kinds of games for any length of time and not have it impact you in some way in the depths of your psyche. There was a school shooting in Kentucky a couple of years ago, and the young man who did the shooting went 9 for 9. He shot at 9 young people and he hit all 9. Many law enforcement people said that was amazing. Hardly any law enforcement individual could have done that, but the amazing thing was this particular shooter had not fired a gun before. He had played a lot of video games, and in playing those video games, he had shot lots of people. Apparently he got very good at it because he was almost perfect in his score. That shows you what video games can do. We have much music, some television, many movies, some talk shows are very explicit and very graphic, and all of these things, if you think about it, simply could not have been put on the airwaves 30 years ago. It would have been impossible to present this kind of material, and yet we have drifted so far that this becomes commonplace and nobody objects. And obviously, this is impacting the minds and hearts of our young people. The family is less stable. The environment young people are growing up in is more threatening, and also I would submit that our value system has shifted and shifted considerably. I would point to a study that was done by Stephen Covey who wrote the ``7 Habits of Highly Successful People'' and what he did was research everything that he could find that had to do with success. He said that he noticed a marked shift. He said in the first 150 years in our country's history, success was defined primarily in terms of character traits. A successful person was honest, a successful person was hardworking, a successful person was faithful, was loyal, compassionate. And so really it had to do with qualities of virtue, and that is what success was. Then he said about 50-60 years ago he began to notice a shift in the literature that he was reading. He noticed that at the present time and for the last 50 years or so that success is now defined in terms of material possessions, in terms of power, and in terms of prestige. So a successful person has money. He may not be an admirable person, but if he has enough money, he is successful. He may have influence and power, and if that is the case, he may not be a good person or an admirable person, but he is a successful person. He may be very popular. He may have people wanting his or her autograph, and he may not be a very good role model, but if he has popularity, he is labeled successful. So success is no longer linked to character and that is an interesting shift in the way that our value system has come about. In 1998, there was a poll done that indicated a very high approval rating for the President who was in office at that time. Even though that particular President had misbehaved rather badly with an intern in the Oval Office and had lied to the American public, he still enjoyed a very high approval rating. The thing that really grabbed my attention was that there was a poll that was done and the question that was posed to the American public was this: Is there any correlation between job performance and private behavior? In other words, what you do in your private life, does that have anything to do with your job performance? Seventy percent of American adults say it has no connection, that there is no relation. You can be a bank president and do all kinds of unscrupulous things in your private life, and it does not affect your job. You can be a very unscrupulous coach, and it would not make any difference in how you did your job. It was amazing to me that this many people in the American public would say that there is no correlation between job performance and private behavior, because what we are saying here is that character really does not count, because what you do in private essentially is an issue of character. The value system has certainly changed in that regard. In the business world, we have seen some changes. I would submit that WorldCom and Enron and Global Crossing were not isolated instances. These were not accidental happenings. It was simply a reflection of the shift that we have had in this culture to an all-out infatuation with material success. And so anything goes in those types of situations. The Great Wall of China, Mr. Speaker, was breached twice. It was several thousand miles long. It was believed to be impenetrable. As a result, it was built to keep out the barbarian hordes. Yet twice it was breached. In neither case was it a situation where the barbarians overran the wall, knocked it down or had a military victory. It was because they bribed the gatekeeper. What I would submit at the present time is that a lot of our gatekeepers at the present time have not been responsible. As a result, we see a lack of trust in our country today that is almost unprecedented. Many people no longer believe that some of the leaders that we have in various industries and politics and athletics and the business world can be trusted. Of course, the alarming thing here is that democracy is based on trust. When trust evaporates, then it is very difficult to run an effective democracy. The predominant world view today, Mr. Speaker, is something called postmodernism. Postmodernism is a belief that there are no moral absolutes, that nothing is absolutely good or bad in and of itself. As a famous individual recently said, the Ten Commandments are irrelevant. And so everything is relative. Theft is justified at times. If you need what you are stealing bad enough, it can be justified. Everything is relative. Murder certainly could be justified if you happen to kill someone who is really not an admirable person. You can rationalize that it is okay. Adultery is certainly something that is acceptable if nobody is going to find out. Even treason would be okay if you were angry enough or hated your country badly enough. Postmodernism has dominated our thought and I think has had a tremendous amount to do with the way our young people and our country begin to see things. In view of the fact that we have had a family breakdown, we have had a decline of the culture and a shifting of values, this is an extremely difficult time for our young people. They are being asked to weave their way through a minefield. In this minefield, there is alcohol and drug abuse over here, there is harmful video games over here, unwholesome music and television over here, there is promiscuity over here and gangs here, violent behavior and broken homes and all of those things; and somehow we are saying, you have got to get through this thing and you are probably going to have to do it by yourself because you are not going to get much parental support or adult support. And so we are asking our young people to do something that is very, very difficult and in some cases almost impossible. What we find is that our children's feet are not set on a rock but they are, rather, set on sand. I think it is important we pay attention to these issues because a culture is never more than one generation away from dissolution. There is no permanence if the next generation coming up cannot pull it off. And so we need to think about this. De Tocqueville said something that was very interesting. It was a powerful sentence. He said, America is great because America is good. He said this probably 100, 150 years ago. He did not say that America was rich or powerful or perfect, but he said America was good and that is why America was great. I think America still is good, and I think America is great; but I would say that there are some signs on the horizon, some storm clouds that would lead us to wonder a little bit where we are headed and to cause us to sit up and pay attention. What can be done? It is easy to state the problems, we hear that all the time, particularly around here, what is wrong. It seems to me, Mr. Speaker, that you do not leave an issue without at least setting out some possible solutions. One thing that I would submit that makes sense to me is the issue of mentoring. We cannot legislate strong families, we cannot legislate morality; but one thing that we can do is provide a mentor in the life of a young person who badly needs it. It is assumed that at the present time in our culture there are roughly 18 million young people who lack a stable, caring adult in their life and badly need a mentor. What is a mentor? A mentor, number one, is someone who cares, someone who has no ax to grind, someone who simply cares enough to show up and spend time with that person. He is not a father, not a mother, not a grandparent, not a preacher, not a teacher, no one who is paid to do this; but it is someone who simply cares enough to be there with that child and provide stability and a caring environment and a stable relationship in the life of a young person who probably does not know what that looks like. The second thing that a mentor does is he affirms. I guess I saw that very clearly in athletics. If you told a player that you really believed in him, that you really thought that he could amount to something, that someday he had a future with you, oftentimes he would grow into that which he did not know that he was even capable of being. On the other hand, if you said, you know, I really do not think that you are going to make it, son, we do not really think we have a place for you here, his performance would begin to tail off and pretty soon he would play down to that level of expectation and he would be gone. So affirmation is critical. No one can live without some type of affirmation, whether you are 50 years old or whether you are 30 or whether you are 10. A mentor is someone who says, I believe in you. I really think you can do this. And you are important to me. A mentor is one who affirms. Also, thirdly, a mentor is one who provides some guidance. So many young people that we have today have never seen anyone in their immediate family or their immediate life who has graduated from high school, maybe no one who has held down a steady job, no one who has a concept of what it is like to be a good parent. A mentor is someone who provides some guidance and says, I believe in you. I think you can do this. I think you can graduate from high school. I think you could make it in this college, or I think you would be really good at this. Guidance is critical. Mentoring works. It reduces dropout rates by roughly 100 percent, reduces drug and alcohol abuse by 50 percent, teenage pregnancy by 40 percent, violent acts by roughly 30 percent, and improves relations with peers and parents, improves self-esteem. Even though it is not perfect, it is the best thing that we know of, the best opportunity that we have to begin to rectify some of those relationships that have been so badly broken and have damaged those young people so badly. The President has proposed currently $450 million over the next 3 years for mentoring. That is $150 million a year; $100 million would go for mentoring for all children and $50 million would be designated for children of prisoners. If that program is enacted, and I hope Congress will do that, I hope it will be funded, that will reach 1 million young people. That still leaves 17 million that are not being reached. But mentoring is cost effective, because a good mentoring program will cost $300 to $500 per child per year. It costs $30,000 to lock somebody up. As we mentioned earlier, a meth addict, someone who commits 130 crimes, would be almost difficult if not impossible to total up the dollars. What we are doing in our society today is we are spending huge amounts of money on the back end, and we are losing person after person after person, the recidivism rate is about 85 percent, and we are not spending the money on the front end where we can really make a difference. Mentoring is something that we think is a possible solution, at least a partial solution. The President has been talking about the Call to Service Act. This is legislation which encourages volunteerism in our country. One of the greatest resources that we have in this country today is our senior citizens. We have so many people who have retired in their late 50s or in their 60s, and they are going to live until they are 80 or 90 years old and they are still healthy and they are still vibrant. The greatest need that we have in our country today is extended family. Our kids growing up do not have grandparents, some do not have parents at all; and so we feel that the Call to Service Act can certainly be used to hook up people who will volunteer, who have some life experience to help our young people, to mentor them, to tutor them, to be supportive; and we think this is a tremendous opportunity. The Internet gambling bill was passed today on this floor. I hope that it will have some success over in the other body. As a culture, we are trying to gamble our way to prosperity. The difficult thing is that it impoverishes those who can least afford to gamble, breaks up families, directs money from children's needs. It is tied to organized crime, and students are particularly susceptible. One thing that we noticed on Internet gambling is that the most high-risk group of people in our country is students. All you need is a computer and a credit card. Most college students and an awful lot of high school students have that and the more times that you gamble in a short period of time and the less troublesome it is to do it, which Internet gambling provides the optimal situation, the more addictive it becomes. For some it has the same addictive effect as crack cocaine. So a certain percentage of our young people are getting addicted very quickly. This is a powerful issue, and I believe that the Internet gambling bill if it is passed in the other body can certainly be a tremendous help. We eliminated the marriage tax penalty which was certainly countercultural to tell people that if you live together, you are going to have less tax consequences, it is going to save you $1,000 or $1,500 a year as opposed to if you were married just makes no sense, because marriage is the basic family unit in this country. We have rectified to some degree that particular marriage penalty. I think it is really critical that we fund drug prevention programs. Let me just mention one here, Mr. Speaker. Byrne grants. Byrne grants go out to fight meth. It is amazing how much methamphetamines cost. If you find a meth lab, to get that dismantled and all the chemicals disposed of costs thousands and thousands of dollars. So if we do not fund this, and right now it is not scheduled to be funded, this is a tremendous blow to our culture and particularly to our rural areas where most of these meth labs occur. We need to make sure that we are giving people the tools that they need. H.R. 669, the Protect Children From Video Game Sex and Violence Act of 2003. I am its cosponsor. I think this is certainly one that can correct some of the problems of video games. H.R. 756, the Child Modeling Exploitation Prevention Act, addresses the issue of some people trying to get around the child pornography statutes by having children pose as models in provocative poses, and so this addresses that. Above all, Mr. Speaker, we need a fundamental shift in the way that we address first amendment rights in the courts. This is a dangerous statement for somebody to make, that we have got to watch out for the first amendment. Everybody is in favor of free speech and the first amendment, and I certainly go along with that as well; but I would like to point out some things that have happened in the courts in recent years that I think have been very damaging to this culture. In 1996, Congress passed the Communications Decency Act that made it illegal to send indecent material to children via the Internet. Listen to what happened to that, Mr. Speaker. In June of 1997, the Supreme Court overturned portions of the law and made this statement. They said, indecent material is protected by the first amendment. And so what we are saying is those who produce indecent material have protection, and yet those children who receive that material and are influenced by it have no protection. In 1996, the Child Pornography Prevention Act outlawed child pornography, including visual depictions that appeared to be of a minor and so it may not actually be a minor involved; but it could be a computer-generated image, or it could be an adult posing as a minor and how do you know? The Supreme Court ruled that unconstitutional and overturned the law banning computer graphics showing child pornography. In October 1998, the Children Online Protection Act was signed into law to prohibit the communication of harmful material to children on publicly accessible Web sites. It makes sense that you should not be able to on publicly accessible Web sites send pornography to children. Yet the Supreme Court refused to rule on the 1998 law. As a result, it was never enacted; and it still sits there today and is void. The 106th Congress passed the Child Internet Protection Act to require schools and libraries that receive Federal funds to use Internet filtering to protect minors from harmful material on the Internet. In May of 2002, the Federal court declared the law unconstitutional. Free speech is protected, while women and children are attacked. It is important to note that 80 to 90 percent of rapists and pedophiles reported using pornography usually right before they commit the act, and they will admit that this has shaped their behavior and made a difference. It seems to me our women and children ought to have rights and freedoms as well, and yet it seems the way we have phrased the argument that they are being victimized, whereas others who are perpetrators are being given freedoms to do so. The Court has often ruled against school prayer. I would not do so necessarily, but some have traced some of the cultural decline I have mentioned tonight to the absence of school prayer, which began I believe in the 1960s. But there have been some decisions that really caused me to wonder. I will mention some of these. In 1992, the Supreme Court declared an invocation and benediction at a graduation ceremony unconstitutional. On the floor of this House, every day we start with a prayer. In many public places, prayer is used. And yet at a school graduation it is not legitimate to have a minister, a priest, a rabbi, a cleric say a prayer. Again, this seems to fly in the face of the way our country was founded. The Court also has held that a minute of silence in school is unconstitutional. Now, a child may spend a minute of silence and may say a prayer, may look out the window, may think about the upcoming test. He is not forced to believe in any doctrine. He is not forced to pray. Yet the Court said that a minute of silence is unconstitutional. The Court also ruled not long ago that a student-led prayer at a football game was unconstitutional. The students voted in this particular student body to have a prayer. They wanted a student-led prayer before the game. The Court said this would really violate the rights of the football players who had to be there and also some of the cheerleaders required to be there. Yet this violated the rights I think of those who chose to have the prayer, the students themselves. As most people understand, the words ``under God'' were struck from the Pledge of Allegiance by the Ninth Circuit court. Most of the framers of the Constitution obviously mentioned time and time again their dependence upon God, and yet we are trying to strip this away also from our Pledge of Allegiance. I am not going to get into the abortion issue at any great length. It is very controversial. I realize there are many people on both sides of the issue. But I will mention one thing. Just recently Congress and this House passed the partial-birth abortion ban. The reason I do not think this is particularly controversial is that this particular ban I believe drew something like 84 votes in the affirmative on the Senate side, and we had a fairly large majority here, and we saw a great many people who are for abortion, who are pro-choice, in quotes, vote for this ban. They were beginning to get the idea of how barbaric it really is. So this was something where there has been a real shift. Currently 70-some percent of Americans do not favor partial-birth abortion; and many of them, as I said earlier, are in favor of abortion. Yet this particular law, I am sure, will be challenged in the courts, and there is a fair chance it may be overturned as somehow being unconstitutional. So we have seen a steady erosion of the culture by some decisions that have been made in the courts. The reason I think this is so important to bring up today is that some people cannot understand why there is so much controversy over in the other body regarding the appointment of judges and justices; and the reason is that what is at stake, I believe, is the future course in many of these issues, particularly in moral issues, that our country is going to take. So these are monumental issues, and the shape of the Supreme Court, the shape of our district courts, our courts of appeal, are going to go a long ways in deciding what this country abides by in upcoming years. Mr. Speaker, this country was founded upon principles of dependence upon God, a recognition that life is sacred, the importance of sound character, and the fact that children are our most important assets. There is no question that we are involved in a cultural and spiritual struggle of Titanic proportions. This struggle may present the greatest crisis facing the United States today, as I have outlined I think fairly clearly. As Congress addresses critical issues such as national defense, the economy and health care, which we certainly need to spend a lot of time on, it is critical that we not lose sight of the fact that our Nation's survival is directly linked to the character of our people, and particularly our young people. I say it again, our Nation's survival, long-term, will rest primarily upon the character of our people.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding time to me, and I appreciate his help very much. I would also like to thank the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Gordon) and his staff for all the work they have put in; the gentleman from Louisiana (Chairman Tauzin) and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Chairman Sensenbrenner) and their staffs; and also Lisa Knott from my staff. Many people have cooperated. As has been mentioned, currently only 20 States have comprehensive laws regulating sports agents; 17 States have no laws at all. My State, Nebraska, is one of those. Thirteen States have a patchwork of laws governing sports agents. Here is the problem. I will use primarily a football illustration, because that is what I understand the best. As of April, 2002, the National Football League Players Association reported 1,200 certified agents to represent NFL players. The problem is that of those 1,200, only 400 had clients, so we have 800 people who say they are agents and they have nobody to represent. There are also several hundred other agents who are not even certified by the National Football League who also call themselves agents. So if they call themselves agents and do not have a client, they are pretty desperate. What these guys do is, they will go after undergraduates, and they will sometimes be very unscrupulous in doing so. There are some good agents, but many are not. So here are some of the things that happen. They will offer an undergraduate athlete cars, clothes, cash, sometimes even drugs, to sign an agency contract. Of course, immediately this renders the student athlete ineligible. They promise an athlete that he will be drafted higher. The National Football League tells them they will be drafted in the fourth round, and the agent says, that is a lot of baloney. I will get you a personal trainer, I will get you a nutritionist, we will go to California, we will work hard, you are going to get bigger, faster, stronger, you are going to be a first-round pick, and you are going to make $6 million just to sign your name. Of course, that is totally untrue. They cannot get a player drafted higher because of the agent's activities. So the player drops out of school at that point, and he gets a nutritionist, and nothing happens. They use runners, as has been mentioned. These are usually former players. These are student athletes in the school. Sometimes they are simply students in the school. The player has no idea that he is dealing with somebody who represents an agent. So the runner takes him out to dinner and gets him obligated. They sometimes threaten athletes with physical harm. Lastly, they often tell a student athlete they will predate or postdate a contract so they will not jeopardize their eligibility, which is absolutely untrue. The minute they verbally agree to a contract or sign it, no matter whether it is predated or postdated, they are ineligible. These are some of the problems. With these problems in mind, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Gordon) and I have introduced H.R. 361, which has been referred to previously as SPARTA. It makes it illegal for sports agents to entice student athletes with false or misleading information, promises, or representations. SPARTA requires the agent to inform the undergraduate athlete and his school in writing that the player has signed an agency contract and is ineligible. What often happens is a school does not know that they have got a guy out there playing who is ineligible, that he has already signed a contract, so this forces the agent to let the school know in writing that he has a player under contract and that player is ineligible. Under SPARTA, sports agents who engage in illegal recruiting will be fined up to $11,000 per incident per day. The Committee on Energy and Commerce passed this legislation by voice vote. The Committee on the Judiciary passed SPARTA by voice vote. So this legislation is bipartisan and it is noncontroversial. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation. I do not know any college athletic director, coach, reputable athlete, or most reputable agents themselves who would oppose this legislation. Again, I want to thank my colleague, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Gordon), all those involved, and urge passage of this, what I think is a very important Federal backstop, very important legislation.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. I rise to support the Homeless and Runaway Youth Act, H.R. 1925. I would like to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Boehner) and the subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), for their work on this committee. The number of young people in our country who are currently homeless is truly alarming. Most of these young people are without any parental support. Many are simply fleeing abusive and dangerous situations. So it is critical that we provide these young people a safe haven, a place where they can have food and shelter. But certainly young people need more than this. They need the help and the care of an adult. They need a relationship. I think that is important. I think whether a child is homeless because he simply has no parents or is fleeing an abusive situation, they all share one thing; that is that there is no adult in their life that they can really count on. In my previous profession, 36 years of coaching, I dealt with a great many young people in situations like this where they had absolutely no support. I saw firsthand the difference a coach, a teacher, a mentor could make in the life of a young person. This is one reason why I would like to, in conjunction with discussing this particular bill, mention the importance of an initiative that the President has recently promoted, which is to make a rather concerted effort in this country to promote mentoring. A mentor will reduce absenteeism from school by 50 percent, reduce teenage pregnancy, reduce drug and alcohol abuse and violent behavior. Currently, we have 18 million young people in the country who need a mentor, so along with this bill I think a mentoring initiative is critical. I certainly support this bill and would like to thank again the chairman and the subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), for their work.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, I must at this time speak in opposition to the Miller-DeFazio amendment. As a member of both the Committee on Agriculture and the Committee on Resources, I saw the evolution of the McInnis-Walden bill, H.R. 1904, heard it debated at length and heard it amended at length. The base bill provides desperately needed safeguards for our Nation's forests. It is well crafted, it is thorough, it is comprehensive. I have five major concerns with the Miller-DeFazio amendment: Number one. As has been stated many times today, the one-half-mile thinning zone is not adequate obviously to protect many homes and many residential areas. Many fires have jumped further than the one-half- mile limit. Number two. The Miller amendment does not adequately address bug and insect outbreaks. This has been particularly a big problem in the South, in the East, and in some of the areas in the Midwest which abut to the State of Nebraska. The red oak disease has been particularly predominant in that area. Number three. This amendment prohibits new road development. Certainly no one wants a lot of new roads in our forests, but new roads occasionally are critical to firefighting. Last summer that was one of the major problems that we had; we could not get to the fires. And so at times some road building will be necessary. Number four. The Miller amendment requires several mapping and reporting procedures which will slow down the decision-making process necessary to reduce fuel loads. We need less paperwork; we do not need more. The base bill, I think, does eliminate paperwork, and that is very important. Number five. There is a concern that this amendment does not address some watershed concerns that are critical to clean water. I am a fisherman. I am very concerned about streams. I am concerned about habitat. The base bill, I think, does a better job of protecting the watershed areas. The base bill is comprehensive and thoroughly crafted. I urge its passage without amendment.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate Chairman Larry Combest on a long and successful congressional career. I was privileged to serve on the Committee on Agriculture under Larry. We were certainly at opposite ends of the spectrum. My first 2 years on the committee were Larry's last 2. I was without status. He was the chairman. Regardless of seniority, each person had access to Larry and his staff on an equal basis. I have always felt that the true measure of a person's character was how he treated those who could do nothing for him. In that respect, I thought that Larry was really exemplary and I really appreciated the way I was received. The most significant accomplishment of the Committee on Agriculture the last 2 years was reauthorization of the farm bill. This was a very exhaustive process. It went on over 2 years, involving roughly 50 hearings, 25 of those in various parts of the country and 25 here in Washington. Input was received from such diverse groups as the Farm Bureau, Farmers Union, corn and soybean, rice and cotton, fruits and vegetables, Ducks Unlimited, Nature Conservancy and the Sierra Club. Everybody had a chance. What the chairman did was ask each group to write the farm bill as they saw it needing to be written and also to score it, to come up with what it was going to cost; and so this was kind of a unique approach because I think everybody that tried began to realize how complex this was. Again, he took input from every group. The bill was written in full committee, which I appreciated. Everybody had a chance to speak their piece. It was truly bipartisan. We hear the term bipartisan around here all the time, but this was a case where I can really, honestly say that I do not believe either side was given any advantage and that each side felt they had equal ownership, and as a result the farm bill was passed almost unanimously out of the Committee on Agriculture. Larry was under a great deal of pressure to delay the writing of the farm bill until 2003. Yet he realized that agriculture was in trouble, that we were surviving each year on roughly a 7, $7.5 billion emergency payment and this simply could not go on, so he pressed forward and got the bill done in 2002 in the face of a fair amount of criticism. I thought that he showed great tenacity in doing so, and I really appreciated his efforts. I visited South America with Larry and other members of the Committee on Agriculture a little bit more than a year ago, and I can recall one meeting in Brazil with their agriculture leadership in which they were very critical of U.S. farm policy. They thought they were poised to take over the soybean market of the world, and I remember Larry's response. He said, ``My responsibility is to protect the interests of American farmers and ranchers.'' That is what he did. Our farmers and ranchers really comprise only 1 percent roughly of our population. At one time they were a very significant part of our population. Now they are about 1 percent, and so they certainly need advocates. I really appreciate the fact that Chairman Combest truly did all that he could to represent a very important and often unappreciated part of our Nation. I would like to thank the chairman for his contribution and for his career here and for the way that he worked with other people to bring agriculture to the forefront during the farm bill.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, in the world of athletics, each year our young people get bigger, they get stronger, and they get faster. Unfortunately, many of our young people just get bigger. They consume diets that are very high in fat. Sometimes a serving of fruit equals a serving of Fruit Loops and a serving of vegetables equates to French fries or potato chips. As has been mentioned previously, 60 percent of Americans currently are overweight, 20 percent are obese, and among our young people the percentages are just about the same. An alarming trend has been that we are starting to see atherosclerosis in elementary school children. These are fatty deposits in the coronary arteries which lead directly to heart disease. This was unheard of 20 or 30 years ago. Type 2 diabetes is exploding among our young people. And of course this again is related to being overweight. Many children do not exercise. They watch TV and play video games. Senate 870 authorizes the extension of a valuable school pilot program. The fruit and vegetable pilot program provides fresh fruit and fresh vegetables to a limited number of schools during the current school year. A recent Department of Agriculture study found that normal-weight children consumed significantly more fruits than overweight children. Studies have shown a positive relationship between consuming a balanced healthful diet of protein, fruits and vegetables and children's performance in the classroom and on the playing fields. I thank my colleagues from the Committee on Education and the Workforce for bringing this small, yet important, piece of legislation to the floor and urge my colleagues to vote to extend this valuable pilot study.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, I come from a family that has been in a small business operation for the last 100 years, and the biggest concern that I hear in small businesses is government regulation; and I agree with many of the gentleman's proposals here. Some are good, but it does add complexity. It adds cost. And right now what we are seeing is a huge exodus from the retirement plan operations of so many companies. I am afraid that this would exacerbate the problem. For example, expanding the remedies of ERISA will quite likely lead to more litigation and more expense. Requiring 401(k) insurance is already provided by many plans but adds cost. Making it mandatory will cause people to exit the system. Reporting of insider sales is already governed by the Securities and Exchange Commission; so we think this is somewhat redundant. {time} 1500 I am as embarrassed as the author of this substitute with some of the compensation plans that we have seen by various executives, and I agree this needs to be addressed. However, when we are dealing with something that has to do with pension reform, I do not believe that this is the appropriate vehicle to use at this time. So overall what I am saying is I believe the base bill provides sound pension reform without promoting so much complexity and expense that we would eliminate retirement plans. If we do so, we simply throw out the baby with the bath water; and I think as a result, we cause more problems than we solve. So, Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of this base bill and rejection of the substitute.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, I represent a rural district that has been hit by 3 consecutive years of draught, contains the three poorest counties in the United States, definitely not a wealthy area. We are losing population, particularly our young people. The best way to keep our young people is to have them start their own business, to be involved in entrepreneurial activity. H.R. 2 is the most small business-friendly piece of legislation I have seen in years. It increases expensing allowance, expands the definition of small business, extends operating loss carryback. Also, the reduction in the capital gains tax to 5 percent for the low-income tax bracket also helps farmers and ranchers whose lands have appreciated in value, but they cannot sell out because of the debt they have accumulated and because of the capital gains tax they would have to pay. Most people in my district appreciate the child tax credit increase and the elimination of the marriage tax. These are not wealthy people. I support the rule, and I urge support of H.R. 2.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, along with nearly all Americans, I felt a great sense of pride at the competence and skill displayed by our military in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was extremely gratifying to see nearly all Americans united behind our troops. Even though all did not agree with the idea behind the war, at least they supported the troops. Over the last several months, a number of communities in my district provided meals for military personnel being transported across Nebraska. That is not a big deal, but this spirit of support was really a rebirth of a project called the North Platte Canteen. The North Platte Canteen's history is as follows: just 10 days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, North Platte, Nebraska, residents learned that on December 17, 1941, Company D, Nebraska National Guard troops, were scheduled to travel through North Platte aboard a military train. According to sources, that train could possibly make a stop in North Platte on its way to the west coast. So nobody knew because of secrecy whether they were coming or not. Because of the secrecy, it was unknown when the train would actually stop in North Platte, but hundreds of family members from the area came out with food, Christmas gifts, and baskets of fruit to celebrate the troop train's arrival. When the train finally arrived, the Nebraska troops were not aboard. Instead, it was Company D, the Kansas National Guard troops who were heading west. The crowd was disappointed but rallied around the Kansas troops, gave them the gifts and food that they had prepared for the Nebraska National Guard and sent them on their way. The very next day, Rae Wilson of North Platte contacted the local newspaper to suggest that the community open a local canteen to meet the troop trains traveling in either direction across the United States. With this humble suggestion, the North Platte Canteen was born. The North Platte Canteen met every troop train that stopped in North Platte from Christmas Day, 1941, to April 1, 1946, 5 years. While the volunteers never knew when the trains would be coming through because of national security, they were always there to serve the military personnel going off to war. The canteen served approximately 6 million members of the Armed Forces at the North Platte Canteen in the Union Pacific Railroad station in North Platte. So that really constituted probably three- fourths to 80 percent of the total military personnel in the United States Army at that time. There were approximately 55,000 volunteers from nearly 125 communities who helped to feed the troops that traveled through North Platte. It is estimated that 23 trains a day traveled through the community carrying between 2,000 and 5,000 troops each day. It is also estimated that the troops each month consumed 40,000 cookies, 30,000 hard-boiled eggs, 6,500 doughnuts, 4,000 loaves of bread, 3,000 pounds of meat, 450 pounds of butter, 1,350 pounds of coffee, 1,200 quarts of ice cream and on and on and on. And this was done at a time when gasoline and food items were rationed. The majority of the items were donated to the effort, as the North Platte Canteen did not receive any Federal or any government assistance of any kind. Individual volunteers also helped to get cards, letters, and phone calls to family and friends of the service personnel when they stopped in North Platte. The volunteers wrote the notes and made the phone calls to loved ones to let them know that the soldier that they were interested in was doing well. This week I introduced a resolution honoring the outstanding efforts of the individuals and communities involved with the North Platte Canteen in North Platte, Nebraska, during World War II. This is, I think, an example of the spirit of cooperation that we currently see across our country for our troops; and it just shows what can be done when partisanship is set aside, when everyone is united in one purpose. And these people, members of our greatest generation, are now disappearing very quickly. So I think it is important that we recognize their contribution at this time because many of them in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years from now will not be around. So their extraordinary act of generosity and service to the country, I believe, needs to be recognized; and I urge support of this resolution.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, last weekend, the National Football League draft was conducted. Over 200 players were selected in the draft. Each player eventually will be represented by an agent. The difficult thing is that many of these people who call themselves agents have no special qualifications. We find that many of them have no legal training, no expertise in writing contracts, some misrepresent themselves, some offer illegal inducements, particularly to undergraduates, such as cars, cash, clothes, and sometimes even drugs, to get young people to commit to a contract while they still have eligibility, which makes them ineligible, of course. A few even have criminal records. Most of them will tell a player that they will get them drafted higher. The NFL committee will say, well, you are going to be a fourth-round pick; and these agents say, well, if you come with me, I will get you a trainer and a nutritionist, and we will make you a first-round pick, which obviously does not happen. And then some even get the power of attorney, which sometimes bankrupts these individuals. The National Football League Players Association currently says that roughly one-half of the players leaving the National Football League have no money. The minimum salary is several hundred thousand dollars. Some guys make millions of dollars; some sign for $10 million or $11 million. Yet at the end of their career, nearly one-half have no money left. A lot of that is due simply to the issue of the way they are treated by their agents. Every coach and athletic director that I know says this is a huge problem and that we need some type of uniform standards and regulations to govern sports agents. One of the biggest problems that we have is these people come on the campus and nobody knows they are there. They see the players in the dorms; they harass them and call them on the phone. Some of the better players end up having to get unlisted phone numbers because of all the harassment. Currently, Mr. Speaker, there are only 15 States that have tough laws regulating actions by sports agents. There are 17 States, including my home State of Nebraska, that have no laws at all regulating sports agents, and then there are 18 States remaining that have some laws. It is kind of a hodgepodge, a patchwork; and there is no consistency and no teeth in the regulations. So the majority of young people coming out of college really are not protected by any laws that would govern sports agents. With this problem in mind, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Gordon) and I have introduced H.R. 361, the Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act, which is also known as SPARTA. SPARTA protects student athletes by making it illegal for sports agents to entice student athletes with false or misleading information, promises, or representations in order to lure them into a contract. SPARTA would protect student athletes when they travel to other States. Some student athletes are in States with some laws, but once they go home for the summer in another State or go to a bowl game, sometimes they are preyed upon by sports agents in those areas. So this provides a uniform Federal backstop. It does not supplant State laws, and we feel it is a very sound piece of legislation. As of April 2002, the National Football League Players Association reported 1,200 certified football agents. Eight hundred of those represent no clients. Now, those are the guys that are really not very well qualified, and they are particularly dangerous because they are desperate to represent somebody. So they will make almost any kind of a deal, any kind of a promise to get someone committed. We think, of course, that this is obviously a huge problem. But let me just cite two cases from my own experience. One: we were getting on the bus to go to the Orange Bowl, and I could not find my quarterback two hours before kickoff. I finally located him in one corner of the lobby cornered by two agents that he had never seen before, I had never heard of before, and were obviously unscrupulous; and they are hammering this guy to try to get him to sign a contract right before a kickoff. Well, of course, this did not do the quarterback any good, and it did not do me any good either. In one other case we had a young man who was contacted at his home during the summer and he signed a contract. He did not really understand what he signed, but buried in the fine print was a 13 percent commission for the agent. So the agent got several hundred thousand dollars from this young man. Fortunately, the agent was from a State that did have some laws governing agents, and this agent had not registered. So we were able to recover $300,000 of this young man's money because of some sports agent legislation. So what we are saying is we need this kind of protection for all athletes in all States. It is a Federal backstop. We think this is sound legislation, and I urge my colleagues to cosponsor H.R. 361, the Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Chairman, as I have traveled my district, I hear a lot of concerns from teachers, administrators and parents, and the most common concerns that I have heard reflect on excessive paperwork and litigation. This bill obviously addresses those. We attempt to streamline the administrative process. It provides for less legislation through arbitration. The second major issue we have talked about a great deal here today is funding. I am convinced that the chairman of the committee, the subcommittee chairman and others, are fully committed to full funding of 40 percent within the next 7 years. The track record pretty much backs this up. In the last 8 years, we have seen a 300 percent increase in funding for IDEA. So we are very convinced that this full funding will occur. The third issue I would like to address is over identification. We find that some schools have 40 to 50 percent of their student body identified as learning disabled, and, generally speaking, this is simply due to reading difficulties. So if we have adequate Head Start and early learning programs, we can eliminate this process. Mr. Chairman, I urge support of the bill. It is a good bill, and I appreciate the chairman's offering it.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize the outstanding accomplishments of Captain Travis Ford, formerly of Ogallala, Nebraska. Captain Ford was one of the thousands of men and women who were called to serve in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Captain Travis Ford was born in Saint Paul, Nebraska, in 1973. At the age of two, Captain Ford's family was told that he had developed a heart murmur and only had one year to live. Captain Ford did not let that stop him. In 1991, as an Ogallala High School graduate, he received the Dutch Cup, and was named the male athlete of the year. He was all-conference in football and named conference champion in wrestling. After high school graduation, Captain Ford enlisted in the United States Marine Corps as an Engineer Equipment Operator. But he decided he had more to offer his country. Captain Ford pursued and achieved a Bachelors Degree in Accounting and completed officer training at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Captain Ford also participated in extracurricular activities at the University by becoming a member of the yell squad. It was during a Nebraska football game that Captain Ford proposed to his wife, Deon, with the help of the other cheerleaders. Captain Ford, like many Nebraskans, strived to accomplish more and set higher goals, which took him around the country. In May of 1997, Captain Ford was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. He attended Field Artillery Officer's Basic Course at Fort Sill, Oklahoma and was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 11th Marines. Captain Ford achieved his ultimate goal when he was accepted in the Fleet Accession Program in Pensacola, Florida, to train as a helicopter pilot. Captain Ford excelled and graduated second in his class, and earned his Wings of Gold. Captain Ford eventually made his way to Camp Pendleton, California, where he trained to fly the AH-1 Super Cobra helicopter. Captain Ford's passion to fly Super Cobra helicopters took him to Iraq, where he honorably served his country. Sadly, Captain Ford did not see the outcome of his hard work and dedication because Captain Travis Ford was killed in the line of duty on April 4, 2003, before the end of hostilities. Captain Ford leaves behind his supportive and loving wife, Deon, and two-year-old daughter, Ashley; his mother, Josie Ford; brothers Alex, Trevor, Mike, Todd and Matt; as well as his brothers' families. I want to thank Captain Ford's family for their sacrifice to our country. They are in our thoughts and prayers.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, during last night's debate, there was a great deal said about renewable fuels and particularly about ethanol. Much of this was uninformed and inaccurate. I think some of it was due to the fact that it was based on old research. One of the comments that was made was that ethanol is not energy efficient, that it takes a lot more energy to produce than what it actually yields. Actually for every Btu of fossil fuel used, ethanol yields 1.4 Btus of energy. Gasoline for every Btu of energy used yields .8 Btu. MTBE yields about .7 Btu. It is the most energy efficient fuel that we have going at the present time. Also, ethanol reduces farm payments by $5.9 billion over 10 years and it adds $51 billion to the farm economy. It reduces the trade deficit by $34 billion over 10 years which certainly helps the economy as well, and in 2002 removed 4 million tons of carbon dioxide from the air.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for the work he has done on this bill. It is a very good bill, very important to the security of our Nation. Mr. Chairman, we are currently concerned about our economy. We are talking about the need for an economic stimulus. Increasing ethanol production from 2.7 billion gallons currently to over 5 billion in the next 12 years will do this. Number one, it increases farm income by $51 billion; creates 214,000 new American jobs; reduces government farm payments by $5.9 billion, which will be a tax savings to our taxpayers of $5.9 billion; and reduces the trade deficit by $34 billion. We currently import 60 percent of our oil, 500,000 barrels a day from Iraq, spend $100 billion a year on foreign oil; and this certainly remedies that problem. And, of course, it reduces air pollution. Ethanol use reduced carbon dioxide by 4.3 million tons in 2002. Finally, the current bill will reduce, not increase, the price of gasoline, which is excellent. So this energy bill is critical. It provides assurance to those who would invest in renewable fuels that there is a long-term Federal commitment. I thank the chairman for his work and urge passage of this legislation.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr Chairman, banks that primarily serve agricultural customer remain concerned with the possibility of having to rely more and more on nontraditional funding sources to support their asset growth and continued ability to provide the necessary financing for their customers--farmers, ranchers, consumers and rural businesses. Today, more than 1,820 of our nation's banks hold more than 25 percent of their loans. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, FDIC, office in Kansas City, in Nebraska, there are 210 farm banks that are FDIC insured institutions with at least 25 percent of total loans comprised of agriculture loans. A majority of these banks are located in rural areas and are the economic engines that help support the local community. The legislation we are considering today, H.R. 522, the Federal Deposit Insurance Reform Act of 2003, includes modest reforms to the deposit insurance system that will substantially benefit local banks in my community and our nation's agricultural economy. During the 1990s many farm banks experienced a decline in core deposits and would likely see that trend reversed with increased deposit insurance coverage levels. A key component of this legislation includes a provision that provides for a modest increase of general coverage levels to $130,000 and then indexes it for inflation. Deposit insurance coverage levels have not been increased in twenty-three years, the longest period in FDIC history without an increase. Deposit protection has eroded by one-half due to inflation since 1980. Higher coverage levels would provide rural residents such as farmers and ranchers with the additional security to deposit their funds in the local bank. These funds would be reinvested in the local communities to support projects such as the building of new ethanol plants and other value-added processing activities that will benefit local agricultural producers and provide employment for rural residents. Additional economic development in rural areas would create new opportunities for recent college and high school graduates and would help stop the rural depopulation that has been occurring over the past 20 years in many of our agriculturally dependent areas. I urge my colleagues to support our nation's local banks and rural communities by voting ``yea'' on H.R. 522. Mr. Chairman, H.R. 522, the Federal Deposit Insurance Reform Act, expands the federal government's unconstitutional control over the financial services industry and raises taxes on all financial institutions. Furthermore, this legislation could increase the possibility of future bank failures. Therefore, I must oppose this bill. I primarily object to the provisions in H.R. 522 which may increase the premiums assessed on participating financial institutions. These ``premiums,'' which are actually taxes, are the premier sources of funds for the Deposit Insurance Fund. This fund is used to bail out banks that experience difficulties meeting their commitments to their depositors. Thus, the deposit insurance system transfers liability for poor management decisions form those who made the decisions, to their competitors. This system punishes those financial institutions which follow sound practices, as they are forced to absorb the losses of their competitors. This also compounds the moral hazard problem created whenever government socializes business losses. In the event of a severe banking crisis, Congress will likely transfer funds from the general revenue into the Deposit Insurance Fund, which could make all taxpayers liable for the mistakes of a few. Of course, such a bailout would require separate authorization from Congress, but can anyone imagine Congress saying ``No'' to banking lobbyists pleading for relief from the costs of bailing out their weaker competitors? Government subsidies lead to government control, as regulations are imposed on the recipients of the subsidies in order to address the moral hazard problem. This is certainly the case in banking, which is one of the most heavily regulated industries in America. However, as George Kaufman, the John Smith Professor of Banking and Finance at Loyola University in Chicago, and co-chair of the Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee, pointed out in a study for the CATO Institute, the FDIC's history of poor management exacerbated the banking crisis of the eighties and nineties. Professor Kaufman properly identifies a key reason for the FDIC's poor track record in protection individual depositors: regulators have incentives to downplay or even cover-up problems in the financial system such as banking failures. Banking failures are black marks on the regulators' records. In addition, regulators may be subject to political pressure to delay imposing sanctions on failing institutions, thus increasing the magnitude of the loss. Immediately after a problem in the banking industry comes to light, the media and Congress will inevitably blame it on regulators who were ``asleep at the switch.'' Yet, most politicians continue to believe that giving the very regulators whose incompetence (or worse) either caused or contributed to the problem will somehow prevent future crises! The presence of deposit insurance and government regulations removes incentives for individuals to act on their own to protect their deposits or even inquire as to the health of their financial institutions. After all, why should individuals be concerned with the health of their financial institutions when the federal government is insuring banks following sound practices and has insured their deposits? Finally, I would remind my colleague that the federal deposit insurance programs lacks constitutional authority. Congress' only mandate in the area of money, and banking is to maintain the value of the money. Unfortunately, Congress abdicated its responsibility over monetary policy with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which allows the federal government to erode the value of the currency at the will of the central bank. Congress' embrace of fiat money is directly responsible for the instability in the banking system that created the justification for deposit insurance. In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, H.R. 522 imposes new taxes on financial institutions, forces sound institutions to pay for the mistakes of their reckless competitors, increases the chances of taxpayers being forced to bail out unsound financial institutions, reduces individual depositors' incentives to take action to protect their deposits, and exceeds Congress's constitutional authority. I therefore urge my colleagues to reject this bill. Instead of extending the Federal program, Congress should work to prevent the crises which justify government programs like deposit insurance, by fulfilling our constitutional responsibility to pursue sound monetary policies.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Madam Speaker, I would like to join those congratulating the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kline) for his introduction of H.R. 1412. Madam Speaker, a high percentage of our military personnel are Reservists and National Guardsmen. These are ordinary citizens; they have families. Many of them are in school. Many are in higher education. I would like to call attention to a couple of aspects of H.R. 1412 which have heretofore been somewhat ignored. Number one, this particular legislation allows Reservists who leave college and universities for military service to return with the same academic standing as they had when they left. And this may seem kind of minor, but it is very important because in many graduate programs if you are not there for consecutive semesters, you lose your standing. You are no longer in the graduate college. Also sometimes after a period of absence, a student will lose credits and so this legislation prevents that from happening. I think that is very important. Also this legislation urges full refunds of tuition and fees for those who are called to active duty. Often times this happens in the middle of the semester, and the student may have already paid thousands of dollars in tuition and fees and normally the universities, when you drop out, do not refund these, so this does call for a full refund. And of course we have already discussed the fact that this does relieve Reservists from payments of student loans while on duty, which is very, very important. On April 15, 2002, the State of Nebraska enacted the above provisions for those called to active duty through a memorandum agreement between the Governor and the colleges and universities. This was certainly a very good step for the State of Nebraska and, of course, this legislation to make these provisions applicable nationwide. So I urge its support and, again, want to thank the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kline) for his introduction of this bill. It is a good bill and something we can all be proud of in a bipartisan manner in this House of Representatives.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, this is the final week of the NCAA basketball tournament. This is an exciting time, and it is also a time when large amounts of money are gambled. In 1998, $2.5 billion was gambled on the NCAA tournament. Today, that would probably be almost double that amount. Gambling on NCAA sports has become a major problem. In 1951, CCNY had a point-shaving scandal, and Kentucky in the 1940s. In 1994, a Northwestern running back intentionally fumbled to fix a game. In 1996, 13 Boston College football players bet on NCAA games, and several bet against their own team. In 1998, a Northwestern basketball player was indicted for point shaving. In 1999, two Arizona State basketball players shaved points. This was done to pay off gambling debts. The fix was traced to organized crime in Chicago. Last month, Florida State quarterback Adrian McPherson was charged with illegal gambling, and of course he owed a bookie thousands of dollars. A University of Michigan study recently found that 5 percent of NCAA athletes that play football and basketball provided inside information to gamblers. So over 36 years of coaching, gambling was a major concern to me. I was always worried about our players getting involved because of gambling debts; but more importantly, as a coach you had to win twice. You had to win once on the scoreboard, and then you had to win again in beating the point spread. Someone up in the stands who had bet $10,000 on the outcome of a game that he could not afford to lose was not a casual observer. Most of the nasty memories that I have from coaching, and I do not have very many, had to do with hate mail, obscene phone calls at night, a mailbox that was blown up. In general, most all the time these were caused by situations where somebody had lost a bet. Gambling on NCAA sports is illegal in 49 States, yet it is legal in one State, which is the State of Nevada. So we might ask, why not have a uniform standard? It is like having 49 States that have to pay Federal income tax and then one State is given a pass. I have four major concerns with the Nevada loophole. First, this allows bets to be laid off. If there is a big game and the action is getting pretty heavy, a local bookie can have a runner or himself go to Las Vegas, up the ante, and have his bets covered. I had a young man from Nebraska who traveled to Las Vegas weekly to do this over a period of time. Kevin Pendergast, who orchestrated the Northwestern gambling scandal, said this: ``Without the option of betting in Nevada, the Northwestern basketball point shaving scandal would never have occurred.'' Secondly, the loophole provides money-laundering opportunities. The former chairman of the Nebraska Gaming Control Board said, ``We have no way of knowing how much is laundered through legal sports books, but based on wiretaps, it is millions of dollars.'' Thirdly, this results in ties to organized crime. FBI agent Mike Welch said this: ``Most student bookies, even if they don't know it, are working for organized crime.'' Fourthly, giving one State a pass on amateur gambling sends a message that this is not really a serious problem. It is like legalizing drugs in one State and having them be illegal in 49 others. The argument is often advanced that legal gambling on amateur sports in Nevada tips off a fix. In other words, as the points change and there is a big shift in gambling money, this will alert people that the fix is on. Yet in 2001 testimony on Capitol Hill, NCAA officials pointed out that legal sports betting in Nevada has never prevented a point-shaving scandal from happening. Sometimes after the fact you might go back and look at it and say, well, maybe something was going on here, but it has not really prevented anything. The National Gambling Impact Study Commission said in its 1999 report, it recommended that current legal gambling on college athletics be banned altogether, and of course this would apply to the Nevada loophole. So I urge support for H.R. 1451 which will do exactly that. This will not eliminate all gambling, I realize that, on NCAA sports; but it certainly would be a step in the right direction and I urge support of H.R. 1451.

Mr. OSBORNE

Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) for yielding me this time. I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner) for his support of this amendment. A year ago, my staff brought to my attention the fact that my name uses a search word that brought up a porn site so that meant that anyone in my District who was doing research on their Congressman was subject to a porn site and anyone doing research on athletics or football quite often would be subjected to the same pornographic material. I have grandchildren who are ages 6, 7, and 10, who all use the computer much better than I do, and it really concerns me that innocent words like ``Barbie'' or ``Disneyland'' can bring up graphic pornographic material or invite them into chat rooms that are frequented by pedophiles. So this is an issue that is very personal with me. Of course, we are concerned about first amendment rights, but what about the rights of children who grow up in a wholesome environment to maintain some innocence, to not be exploited? The Pence amendment makes the use of domain names to deliberately mislead children viewing pornography to be a criminal activity. I urge support of the Pence amendment.