Butch Otter

Mr. OTTER

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

Mr. OTTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his indulgence. Mr. Chairman, this Congress has a dual fiduciary area responsibility when we spend taxpayers' money. One is to get the absolute best deal that we can for our money and the other one is to spend the least amount that we can in order to get that deal. The United States is not obligated to offer foreign aid to any nation, especially those that are antagonistic to the principles of democracy and American values. And yet we continue to dole out indiscriminately, as if it were required, to those who use it against us, other nations, and our allies, and who teach their children and their citizens to hate Americans and her allies. Foreign aid is a privileged gift and it should be based upon demonstrated willingness to support U.S. ideas and aspirations for the regions to which that money goes. When we offer aid to a country we should be able to see a marked change in behavior. Our tax dollars are worse than wasted if benefitting nations from the generosity of the United States continue to work against our friends and with our enemies. All of the efforts we put into promoting peace and cooperation is meaningless without requiring accountability from the recipients of our assistance. Infusing foreign aid with common sense and accountability requires an attitude shift on our part here in Congress. This amendment is the first step towards reforming that attitude. President Bush has recommended giving foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority for the first time in almost a decade as part of his Roadmap to Peace. If this aid is to advance the realistic goals that the President has set forth in the Middle East, it must be subjected to high expectations and provide a powerful incentive to discourage terrorism and encourage good faith participation in the peace process. The amendment states simply that no more than 25 percent of the appropriated funds would be available to the Palestinians during any fiscal quarter. That means that the United States would retain authority to withhold those funds should the State Department determine that the Palestinians had participated in or supported acts of international terrorism during the previous 3 months. Everything goes well for 3 months, no acts of terrorism, they get one-fourth of the allocated funds. Such a common sense approach to accountability would provide a powerful incentive to the Palestinians to discourage violence. It would also enable the United States to put hard earned dollars of American taxpayers to work for peace in this generation and peace in this world. I applaud the President's efforts to achieve lasting peace in the region. Discord and violence have plagued the world for almost a century now, resulting in countless deaths and endless disruption of lives. The President has addressed the issue realistically and in good faith, but our approach to foreign aid must change, and what better time to implement a responsibility-based attitude than now? It is a golden opportunity to assist in the peace process by making sure that our assistance has weight. Mr. Chairman, I have engrossed in a letter these very ideas to the subcommittee chairman, had the opportunity to meet with the committee many times on this, and before the underlying legislation that we are now considering was ever drafted. I had hoped that those ideas of wrapping our foreign aid assistance around demands for behavioral change would have been included in the final draft of the legislation that we now have before us; however, that is not the case. So it is my hope that such a responsible concept as I have suggested will become part of the appropriate title of the legislation which we will be considering a year from now. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment.

Mr. OTTER

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

Mr. OTTER. Mr. Chairman, over 200 years ago when the formulation of this great republic was being put together, John Stuart Mill sat down and probably put the essence of this government in writing better than anyone could. ``A people,'' he said, ``may prefer a free government, but if from indolence or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is directly attacked; if by momentary discouragement or temporary panic, they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; or if in a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, in all these cases, they are more or less unfit for liberty. And though it may have been to their good to have had it for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it.'' The United States PATRIOT Act was well intentioned, Mr. Chairman, especially during a time of uncertainty and panic. However, now we have had a chance to step back and examine it objectively. The legislation deserves serious reevaluation. While I agree with some of the new powers granted to the Federal law enforcement authorities that may be, and I stress ``may be,'' necessary, many more are unjustified and are dangerously undermining our civil liberties. We have the opportunity to revisit these sections of the USA PATRIOT Act and to correct these mistakes from those first frenzied weeks after September 11, 2001. One provision, section 213, allows delayed notification of the execution of a search warrant. It authorizes no-knock searches of private residences, our homes, either physically or electronically. By putting off notice of the execution of a warrant, even delaying it indefinitely, section 213 of the USA PATRIOT Act prevents people, or even their attorneys, from reviewing the warrant for correctness in legalities. These ``sneak and peek'' searches give the government the power to repeatedly search a private residence without informing the residents that he or she is the target of an investigation. Not only does this provision allow the seizure of personal property and business records without notification, but it also opens the door to nationwide search warrants and allows the CIA and the NSA to operate domestically. American citizens, whom the government has pledged to protect from terrorist activities, now find themselves the victims of the very weapon designed to uproot their enemies. It is in defense of these freedoms that I offer this amendment today to the Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act for the fiscal year 2004 bill. This amendment would prohibit any funds from being used to carry out section 213 of the USA PATRIOT Act as signed into law on October 26, 2001. Through the passage of this amendment, Americans would have reinstated a different kind of security, one giving them renewed confidence in their government in tirelessly protecting their individual freedom from unjustified and unnecessary intrusion. Being secure at the expense of our freedom is no real security. Like many Idahoans who have come to me with their concerns about the USA PATRIOT Act and in passionate defense of their freedoms, we must continue to examine our actions to correct our mistakes to guard against the apathy or the indifference to safeguarding our liberties. To these Federal agencies, it is a house, it is a building, it is a business; but to us, Mr. Chairman, it is our homes, and there is nothing more sacred than homes in America because it is the foundation on which we build our families. It is the arsenal in which the virtue and hope of every generation resides, and it is the fundamental primer of any free people. We can, with the adoption of this first alteration to the PATRIOT Act, begin the reclamation of our title of a Nation as a people fit for liberty.

Mr. OTTER. Mr. Chairman, I thank those who have engaged in the debate, whether one is for or against this amendment. But there is one thing I must notice and bring to everybody's attention, Mr. Chairman, and that is that pound for pound, we have debated this amendment longer than we debated the PATRIOT Act. We passed the PATRIOT Act in 45 days. The smoke was still coming up out of the rubble in New York City and at the Pentagon, and who could not be torn by still hearing the cries and the pain of the victims and the families of those victims. But now we have an opportunity to reflect back on what have we done. I have to tell my colleagues that the comments that have been made relative to, is this the proper time or is this the proper place, I am just so thankful that our Founding Fathers did not sit around and say that. It was the time. It was the place. And that is the legacy that they gave us; and that legacy demands that whenever the opportunity arises, we have an obligation to stand and to stand firm to make sure that the liberties of the American people are foremost. There is only one purpose for government, one purpose for government, and that is to defend us in the peaceful exercise of our liberties. So I am hoping, once again, as my friend, the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), said, that this will be the first in the piece-by-piece taking back the freedoms and the liberties that we have, while leaving some of the PATRIOT Act in place. The proper role of government, the proper role of government is to defend us in the free and peaceful exercise of our liberties and in our homes, and not to take those away from us. So I pray, I hope that today we begin that process, and I invite the gentleman from Wisconsin and all others who will want to participate in that to join me.

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

Mr. OTTER

Mr. OTTER. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I would conclude by saying we got no support from the gentleman from New Mexico or the gentleman from Washington when we wanted to take those scientists to task. What happened to them, they were sent to sensitivity schools and told not to do that again. I suggest that we send this legislation to the same place.

Mr. OTTER. Is that not the status quo?

Mr. OTTER. Mr. Chairman, I want to bring to Members' attention, and we have heard quite a few things from the other side of the aisle about all the scientists and sportsmen and everybody else who has engaged in this battle, and it is a very important battle, but I would like to read a letter addressed to the Secretary of Agriculture, Ms. Veneman, dated April 11, 2001. It says, ``The National Forest System supports a diverse array of forest and rangeland ecosystems and provides useful products, unparalleled recreational opportunities and other important amenities. Today, the ability of the Forest Service to conserve and enhance these attributes is increasingly compromised by obstructionist administration appeals and legal challenges of proposed agency actions.'' And the letter goes on to say scrap the 2000 and let us deal with a system that actually works. What we have heard from the gentleman from Washington, which I am in shock and awe that he would suggest that we stay with the status quo, as well as the gentleman from New Mexico, the proponent of this amendment, is they want a continuation of the same scientists that, in the gentleman from Washington's own State, 12 agency scientists got together in the Wenatchee National Forest and they said we have a great plan, let us put out a bunch of phony science here so we can lock up thousands of acres, put thousands of people out of work, maybe close down a few communities. I am sure the gentleman remembers the incident in Wenatchee National Forest where the scientists were looking for Canadian lynx. They could not find any, so they took little sticky pads, as is the normal scientific method, and placed them in the forest at rub areas and scratch areas so they could recognize or perhaps ascertain whether or not the lynx were there. The scientists could not find any. So what did they do? This is the science that they want to protect, the very scientists that these victims want to protect. So they go into the lab and they have a stuffed lynx in there from God knows where, and so they take hair off of it and they run around in the forest and put this hair on these little sticky pads and write a report that says obviously the lynx are there, and so now we have scientific data and scientific evidence to shut down this area from any kind of human activity, including the people who want to live and work in that area.

Mr. OTTER. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. OTTER

Mr. OTTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to acknowledge and praise Jim Witt of Meridian, Idaho, for his steadfast commitment to safety. Mr. Witt is a professional truck driver who recently celebrated a remarkable career achievement: driving 1 million miles without a preventable accident. That's the equivalent of driving safely around the world 40 times. Fatal accidents involving large trucks occur most frequently in rural areas like those throughout Idaho. On U.S. Highway 95--the major north- south route through my district--the long and tragic history of traffic fatalities is a constant reminder of the need to make highway safety foremost among our public policy considerations. The U.S. Department of Transportation cites the danger posed by trucks on our highways as a growing concern for citizens. Professional, safety-conscious drivers like Mr. Witt provide an important public service as they navigate our corridors of commerce by helping to alleviate those concerns and setting an example for everyone who gets behind the wheel. I hope my House colleagues will join me in congratulating Mr. Witt and encouraging others to follow his lead in helping to make our roads safer.

Mr. OTTER

Mr. OTTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring to the attention of the House the distinguished accomplishments of Art Brown, chief executive officer of Hecla Mining Company, on the occasion of his retirement. Art Brown retired last month from Hecla Mining after 36 years of service. Mr. Brown was manager of the Lucky Friday Mine in 1979, when silver prices rose from $5 to $50 per ounce, and Hecla became the No. 1 performer on the New York Stock Exchange. Last year, Hecla's stock rose 400 percent, again making it a top NYSE performer. However, it was not an easy task to keep the company afloat during the years between in which it was plagued by low market prices, environmental litigation and cash-flow problems. Under Mr. Brown's leadership, however, the company has moved from close to bankruptcy to a viable, growing enterprise producing record amounts of gold and silver in 2002. Under the visionary leadership of Art Brown, Hecla Mining Co. has survived and flourished. The company is now positioned to move forward into a future of growth and continued profitability. I congratulate Art Brown on his success, and wish him an enjoyable retirement.

Mr. OTTER

Mr. OTTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this rule and the underlying legislation. This rule is the result of many hours of committee work, many hours of considering all of the amendments that the opponents of this legislation and this rule right now say they have never had a chance to voice or to discuss. This has gone through the Committee on Resources, it has gone through the Committee on Agriculture, it has gone through the Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Rules. At that point and at that time these folks well know that the rendering process, the deliberative process that is provided them in the committee is an opportunity to make those points at that time and avoid that same kind of confusion on this floor. Now, this is reasonable and it is sensible legislation. It is reasonable if we want to protect the habitat for all species, including those that are endangered. It is responsible if we want to protect the watershed. Mr. Speaker, the watershed in Idaho is not around the 201 communities. It includes that 35 million acres of Federal ground in the State of Idaho. That is where our watershed is. There is no watershed close to the communities. Most of that watershed is out in the forests. If Members really believe in clean water, then they have to have a clean watershed. Finally, at no other time could I think of on this floor would this body not come together if they saw a disaster, a natural disaster, a flood, a coming hurricane, that we would not marshal every one of our forces, all of the elements that we have available to us and attack that potential disaster to preserve property, to preserve lives, to preserve habitat, to preserve clean water, and to preserve the values that we have in this Nation. So I hope that Members will join me in supporting this rule, because those of us who really want habitat, those of us who really want clean water, and those of us who want to avert coming disaster ask for Members' support on this legislation and this rule.

Mr. OTTER

Mr. OTTER. It has been, and when I served on the Committee on Resources last year with the gentleman from Utah, as he will recall, Dale Bosworth, the new supervisor of the forest, indicated to us that, and he was the one that coined the term ``analysis paralysis,'' and he indicated to us that so many of the resources of the forest agency are being consumed by not only procedures in court but also preparing to go to court and then filing such an analysis of overwhelming environmental studies hopefully to prevent themselves from having to go to court. I believe that the gentleman's figures of 40 percent and upwards are indeed quoted from Mr. Bosworth's testimony.

Mr. OTTER. I think that is one of the key components in this forest health restoration act and that is allowing for that opportunity to go to court if that is necessary, but the players must be part of the process prior to the plan being delivered and then taking them to court later. As the gentleman will recall, many times in the testimony that we received in the Committee on Resources last year, there would be one or two of these interest groups that would be involved in the planning process, that would be involved in the environmental analysis, in the NEPA process and all the public hearings, and they would be agreeing and they would be working with the forest service; and then when the forest service had blocked the sale, the sale in some cases had gone through, then another interest group that had never had a dog in the fight suddenly rushes over to court with a $20 bill and then a 34 cent stamp, and filed an action to stay any future action on that sale. In many cases, if it were the restoration or the recovery from a burn or some other kind of insect infestation, the opportunity window for harvesting what good that can come out of that forest was lost.

Mr. OTTER. That is right, and I think some of the pictures that the gentleman will show later will be very obvious in what can happen to a healthy forest that is overgrown and weakened as a result of the closing canopy and weakened as a result of the overgrowth. I can tell my colleague that testimony I received up in a little town called Grangeville, Idaho, just last weekend, my colleague, Senator Craig from the Senate, who is from Idaho, joined me in that hearing, and we were told that in many cases there is as much as 80 tons per acre of fuel that has grown as a result of lack of harvest. We had a sustainable yield, sustainable harvest program for years; and when we got away from that and took a passive attitude toward the management of our forests, the watershed, the habitat, the result was that the forest continued to grow. It did not stop. The forest continued to grow; and as a result, we have had a tremendous overgrowth, and just as is the case with any species, we get them crowded in too close of an area and if one gets sick, they all get sick; and that is where we are with our forests.

Mr. OTTER. The other thing I would like to bring to my colleague's attention is the picture he shows there, the one closest to him which would be on the left. When we have that healthy a fuel loaded, what happens when that forest does burn, just as it shows there, it burns so hot that it actually calcines the Earth; and when it calcines the Earth 16, 18, 20 inches deep, it burns all of the natural nutrients right out of the soil. So the result is that nothing will grow there for years and years. It is like trying to grow something in a jar of marbles. There is not anything to hold the root system. There is not anything to feed the root system. The big blowup that I referred to in my opening statement, part of the big burn of that 3 million acres was a place in Idaho in the St. Joe, just up from the St. Joe called Slate Creek, and that fire was in 1910, and today there are still areas in those reaches where nothing grows because the nutrients were burnt out of the soil over a hundred years ago, and there has been nothing to replace it.

Mr. OTTER. Let me just go ahead and make one more analogy for anybody that may be watching this. In the old days I know when I was growing up and we raked the leaves and everything in the fall of the year, we would rake them up into a pile; and if we burn them on the lawn, if we even have that little bit of fuel, even that little bit of heat, we would have a spot there for years to come. Just imagine magnifying that by 100 or 150 times and then how long that that spot is going to be there.

Mr. OTTER. And sometimes it gets to the point where good people get very frustrated. I know in Idaho we have had some good people quit the Federal agencies there because of the fact that they just were not allowed to do their job, and they just got frustrated and they left. Another aspect of that is since 1989, just 14 short years, we have shut down half of our ability to saw logs. We have shut down half of our lumber mills, about 37 lumber mills thus far. All those jobs are gone. We get to the point that in many places in Idaho, these small communities that lived and worked for generation after generation, that grew up in those communities, school systems counted on those communities, the infrastructure around it, and when those lumber mills shut down, the towns died, the schools went away, and people then transferred. They end up having to transfer into the more populated areas, and to then go through vocational education to get a new job, ruining the historical fabric, ruining the work ethic, if you will, of the folks not only in the agencies, but also those folks that watched their grandfathers and grandmothers and their mothers and fathers that grew up in those areas, that went to college from those areas, and then came back to become silvaculturalists or become foresters because their great effort in life, their great desire in life was to go to work for the Forest Service. I have traveled around the world in many capacities. In my private business capacity I was the president of the international division, and between that and being the Lieutenant Governor of Idaho for 14 years, it was my job to sell our groceries, to get around the world and strut our stuff and show these other countries what we had, and in the process I went to some 82 different countries. One of the things I found, when we got into some of these developing countries, is that they wanted to know about the School of Forestry, the College of Forestry at the University of Idaho. It had a reputation worldwide. I talked with the President here just a while back and he said, you know, we may have to close down that school. We have already closed down some of the other natural resource schools because nobody is managing them anymore. We are making all our decisions in court. None of the decisions are being made on the forest floor. None of the decisions are really being made for the health and the cleanliness of the watershed, for the health and cleanliness of the water itself, the streams that run into those reaches of the mountains. As a result, we are losing our national reputation. We are losing, unfortunately, one of our real national heritages in our culture.

Mr. OTTER. We have had some great rains. In fact, the farmers all call them million-dollar rains. I think Bonneville Power said the other day they had an $80 million week, the week that it rained so hard up in the Pacific Northwest. Because of the watershed, because of the snow and the watershed going into the reservoirs, they were going to have much more water in those reservoirs for the production of power than they thought they were going to have. But any time there is that much fuel, and as the gentleman knows, come July and August when we hit those 100, 105 day temperatures out in the West, out in our country, out in the Rockies, that is going to dry that fuel. And unless we graze it with the cattle or have some other method of removing that, we are going to have that stairstep that the gentleman talked about, that stepladder that the gentleman talked about. We will have the grasses low, which will then meet the interface of the browse and the brush itself, and then right on up into the trees.

Mr. OTTER. Tomorrow is not too soon. And I know, looking at Idaho, where we have the overgrowth, where we have high unemployment, all these counties that I talked about where that 1910 fire went up, I have six counties that run right up through that vein where that 1910 fire went that all have double-digit unemployment, they are all ready to go to work. All we need to do is to pass the hiring mechanism, and that hiring mechanism, that action mechanism is this bill.

Mr. OTTER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's leadership on this issue. The Representative from Utah is the chairman of the Western Caucus this year, and given the motivation by the Chief Executive to move forward on the healthy forest initiative, I join with my chairman of the caucus as well as the rest of the caucus in an enthusiastic effort to try to make sure that the healthy forest initiative goes forward. Mr. Speaker, as we debate the healthy forest issue tonight, I am reminded that we were approaching the 100th-year anniversary of what Idahoans refer to as the ``big blowup,'' that is, the fires of 1910. It was a series of 1,763 fires that ravaged some 3 million acres and killed 85 people during August of 1910. The hardest hit areas were the Clearwater National Forest, the Coeur d'Alene national forests of Idaho, the Lolo and the Cabinet national forests of Montana. I would like to share with my colleagues, if I might, an excerpt from ``The Big Burn,'' a book that was written on the Northwest fires by Stan Cohen and Don Miller: ``Daylight was shut out as far north as Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada; as far south as Denver; and as far east as Watertown, New York. To the west, officers of a British vessel 500 miles out of San Francisco said that they were unable to take observations for ten days because of smoke in the atmosphere caused by the big burn. Some claim that smoke from the big blaze reached one-third of the way around the world.'' This big burn started near a little town called Elk City, Idaho, a small community surrounded by dead and dying trees. That community is struggling to keep its one and only lumber mill in business. During the past 20 years, we have seen the growth of the surrounding forests double and the mortality rate from bugs and from viruses triple, all while the timber cuts steadily decline. In short, the sustainability of the forest is declining as the trees die. A variety of factors have caused this monumental and potentially national disaster, including severe insect infestations, the practice of fighting nearly every wildfire and a passive forest management philosophy. The forest health crises on our public lands can no longer be ignored. There are over 190 million acres of Federal land at risk to catastrophic fire. The national forest system is home to more than 72 million acres of high-risk catastrophic wildfire and more than 26 million acres at high risk to insect infestation and disease. The administration must be commended for the action that it has already taken, which precipitated the healthy forest initiative through its current regulation to reduce procedural delays in preparing projects to reduce the fire danger and address forest health problems; but more must be done. The Healthy Forest Restoration Act seeks to streamline bureaucratic procedures that stymie legitimate management efforts without unduly restricting public participation. Forest management projects could still be subject to rigorous environmental analysis as well as administrative challenges and lawsuits, but the process would be completed in a matter of months rather than in a matter of years. Tough environmental safeguards in the bill would provide heightened restriction on management activities in inventoried roadless areas, and old growth trees would receive additional protection. At the same time, priority would be given to management projects near communities and the watershed. The measure would also facilitate use of otherwise valueless wood, brush and slash for production of biomass energy, a key component in our upcoming energy bill; authorize Federal programs to support community-based partnerships addressing forest stewardship and watershed protection and restoration needs at the State and local level; and direct additional research on the early detection and containment of disease and insect infestations. We cannot tolerate another season of death and destruction. We are past the analysis paralysis point, Mr. Speaker; and the point in this debate is that we must move forward. It is time we got to work on the ground. The sooner we get this legislation through Congress, the sooner we begin ensuring the future of our forests. We need to act quickly before Idaho is faced with another big burn. I thank the gentleman from Utah for yielding to me.

Mr. OTTER

Mr. OTTER. Mr. Speaker, there are 435 of us in the United States House of Representatives. We come from almost every imaginable race, religion, creed and family background. Our political persuasions run the gamut of the American experience, and we sometimes seem to have 435 distinctly different viewpoints on any given issue. Yet every one of us in the House--indeed, everyone on Capitol Hill-- has at least one thing in common, and we cherish it most dearly. We all are the sons and daughters of the mothers who gave us life, who did their best to nurture and teach us, protect and care for us. For each of us, no matter how close or distant it since has become, that mother- and-child bond was the first formative influence on the people we were to become. That bond and formative influence is as strong as ever for me. I am incredibly fortunate to have the warm affection and sage advice of my Mother still in my life. I was the sixth of Regina Otter's nine children. Not a day goes by that I don't draw inspiration from her physical, mental and spiritual strength after 88 years in this world. Her example of faith, charity, hard work, selfless dedication to family and friends and individual responsibility remains the standard by which I judge myself. I will forever fall short. Perhaps more of our public policy debates should be infused with the wisdom of our mothers. Would we behave as selfishly, as myopically, if at crucial moments we recalled what Mom would want? Would we feel so compelled to seek out the political benefit, to place the short-term advantage over the long-term good, if Mom were there to remind us-- sweetly but firmly--of the simple but profound truths of right and wrong? Those of us in public life sometimes fall into the trap of believing our own press clippings--at least the positive ones. We think ourselves grand, elected by the good people of the world's oldest democracy, entrusted with the will of the greatest nation on Earth. At such times we would do well to remember the words of George Bernard Shaw, who said, ``Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.'' Mothers do that. Yes, fathers also are incredibly important to strong families. Despite decades of social experimentation, research and analysis, no sound substitute has been found for the values, structured growth and sense of mutual dependence one finds in a traditional family unit for those fortunate enough to have it. But make no mistake: Mothers are the anchors holding families in place against the gales, and the engines that enable them to progress toward their goals even through stormy seas. They are the lodestar on which we all depend to find our way through life. They are the shining examples of compassion and love to which we all aspire. And they are the souls of frail humanity who evoke the best from us when times are at their worst. So on this Mother's Day, and every day, take some time to honor the one who made you who you are. Whether they are with you still or passed to a better place, the gesture will be noticed and appreciated. And you will be a better person for it. Thank you, Mom.

Mr. OTTER

Mr. OTTER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to acknowledge and praise the students of the Orofino High School Government Class for participating in the ``We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution'' national contest. The following students were recognized as the state winners: Tarina Anderson, Kelly Burge, Rachel Burrell, Sam Christiansen, Kayleen Copeland, Melissa Dangman, David Dobyns, Desirae Downing, Whitney Gochnour, Maggie Hall, Holly Jones, Mallory Larson, Hana Nedoma, Terra Rintelen, Brianna Savage, Jessica Silva, and Kyle Stanley. They competed in the national contest in Washington, D.C., displaying their knowledge of the government institutions of the United States and the ideals upon which our democratic form of government is based. Their teacher, Cindy Wilson, also should be commended for her commitment to teaching Constitutional principles and instilling an appreciation for civic participation in her students.

Mr. OTTER

Mr. OTTER. Mr. Chairman, unfortunately I missed the votes on H.R. 1596 the ``Timothy Michael Gaffney Post Office Building Designation Act,'' H.R. 1625 the ``Robert P. Hammer Post Office Building Designation Act,'' and H.R. 1740 the ``Dr. Caesar A.W. Clark, Sr. Post Office Building Designation Act.'' Had I been present, I would have voted for these bills.