David Price

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I rise in support of the amendment offered by the gentleman from Massachusetts. I think it is a simple, straight forward, commonsense amendment that would simply prohibit HUD from overcharging users of the FHA multifamily insurance program. Now, no credit subsidy funding has been provided in this bill for the multifamily for-profit program, and I understand the committee's decision to eliminate that subsidy. Unfortunately, however, elimination of the subsidy requires an increase in the premiums that are paid by program users. That could translate into higher debt service and up-front costs for owners and higher rents for families that depend on this housing. Many users of the for-profit program think that the credit subsidy formula that HUD is currently using to calculate premiums may not accurately reflect the actual risk to the government of the loans as they are now being underwritten. In other words, the premiums next year could be higher than are necessary to fully support this program. HUD has reportedly initiated a reassessment of the credit subsidy formula to see if this is the case. This amendment simply makes clear that if, based on its reassessment of the credit subsidy formula, HUD determines that the formula should be changed, then program premiums should not be higher than is necessary to support the program. It is as simple as that. It makes good sense. It simply underscores what I hope HUD would do on its own. I urge support for this amendment.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from New York for his helpful clarification of the committee's intent. I, too, have seen that letter from the Deputy Secretary and am somewhat reassured by the commitment that letter makes. I am still a bit concerned, however, about how the bill's statutory reduction in the amount of reserves available to individual public housing authorities might in practice affect their ability to gain access to additional resources for legitimate needs. I still hope we can come up with another solution that would provide a firmer guarantee to public housing authorities before the conference bill is finalized. But I do appreciate the gentleman's description of the committee's intent, and I look forward to talking further about this issue with both the gentleman from New York and the gentleman from Pennsylvania. Whatever we do, we do not want to have our public housing authorities stopping short of providing as much housing as they possibly can to people in need.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I rise for the purpose of engaging in a colloquy with the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh), the chairman of the subcommittee, and also with my friend, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah), who is also a member of the subcommittee, on language in the bill that will reduce the defined reserves available to individual public housing authorities for administering their tenant-based section 8 programs. During full committee consideration of the bill, the gentleman from Pennsylvania and I expressed some concern that without the cushion of a guaranteed reserve beyond a single month, public housing authorities, when they seek to avoid running out of money before the end of the year, might less aggressively pursue full utilization of their allocation of vouchers. I understand the committee's intention, through this language, to reduce the amount of unused budget authority that has resided in the section 8 reserve account. I hope to be able to continue talking with the subcommittee chairman between now and conference about ways to accomplish this goal without reducing the ability of public housing authorities to access the funding that is necessary to ensure that housing for families is not put in jeopardy. In the meantime, I hope we can clarify for the record what is the committee's intent exactly with regard to the language in the bill.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I thank the gentleman. Amendment No. 45 Offered by Mr. Bonior

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, when we find neighborhoods built on top of toxic waste dumps, we respond to that emergency by buying out the homes and protecting the people who live there. When floods wipe out communities, we respond by buying out property to protect residents and help them find safe places to live. Mr. Chairman, error-prone voting equipment is an emergency situation that threatens our democracy, and we need an immediate response. I commend the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings) for offering an amendment that offers such a response. It is going to take some money to upgrade voting technology from error-prone punch card and other systems to reliable machines. We simply cannot afford to do nothing. Just look at what error-prone voting equipment like punch cards does to our democracy. A study done by Cal Tech and MIT revealed that the spoilage rate for punch cards was as many as 986,000 ballots in 2000. In Florida last year the spoilage rate for punch cards was almost 4 percent. And in Cook County, Illinois, it was 5 percent during the last election. Earlier this year, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the gentleman from California (Mr. Horn) and I and other colleagues introduced the Voting Improvement Act, which would make buy-out grants available to any jurisdiction that used punch card voting systems in the last election. We want to see new equipment in place, and we want it there soon, in time for the 2002 elections. We want to buy out that inferior equipment and put accurate equipment in place that will give citizens the assurance that their vote is being counted. We need to push for adequate appropriations to make that happen. Unfortunately, the President and our Republican friends failed to include any funding for election reform in the budget this year. But Congress can and must meet the challenge of restoring faith in our democracy. The Hastings amendment rises to that challenge, and I commend the gentleman for offering it.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the chairman and the ranking member for their efforts to bring the conference report before us in a bipartisan manner which will provide supplemental appropriations to the Department of Defense and address other critical needs we face in this country. I am particularly glad to see that the conference report does not include any rescissions in FEMA's disaster relief account. Included in the supplemental is $5 million for the Department of Agriculture's Animal Plant Health Inspection Service to guard against the threat of foreign animal disease, including foot and mouth disease and mad cow disease. I have expressed serious concerns about this issue as have other Members about the devastating impact that these diseases would have on American agriculture should any outbreak occur in this country. Because of the concentration of livestock in my home State of North Carolina, a foot and mouth disease outbreak would be an incredible catastrophe. An outbreak in eastern North Carolina could require the destruction of 2.8 million hogs within a mere 20 mile radius. That number is greater than the amount of animals killed in the entire country of England. My State has worked hard and continues to be vigilant to prepare for an emergency and, most importantly, prevent an outbreak before it occurs. Five million dollars was not the amount that the USDA requested, nor was it the amount that experts in the field felt was adequate. Frankly, I am disappointed that the full $35 million requested for APHIS for this effort was not agreed to. But now the decision has been made, and we must count on the USDA to muster all the resources we can to bolster animal inspections at U.S. borders and ports, to hire additional veterinarians for animal health assessments, and to control an outbreak should it occur. The conferees have indicated that they expect the Secretary of Agriculture to use funds from the Commodity Credit Corporation not only to deal with an emergency after it occurs, but also to work now to prevent the threat of foreign animal disease. I just hope they know what they are doing down at USDA because we cannot afford to wait until a foot and mouth outbreak hits to do something. The cost would be much more than the $30 million this bill does not include.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, many citizens, including Members of this House, first got into politics and stay involved in politics because of their moral and religious convictions. Religious congregations and organizations are working in communities daily to reach out to those in need, through Meals-on-Wheels, housing complexes for the elderly and the disabled, after-school programs for at-risk youth; and they are often doing this with the help of public funds. This concept of faith-based initiatives is not new. My experience has been that religious groups are eager and effective in delivering greatly needed social services. But, Mr. Speaker, these groups have willingly organized their activities so as to honor the constitutional injunction against the establishment of religion when administering government funds. They have kept sectarian and social service activities institutionally separate. And they have understood that the use of public funds carries with it an obligation to refrain from discrimination, both among those served and among those hired to provide the service. While the Democratic substitute preserves these safeguards, the President's proposal threatens to break them down, and for that reason religious groups across the spectrum have raised red flags about the bill before us. The dual constitutional prohibitions against establishing religion and prohibiting its free exercise protect fairness and freedom in the public realm and also the autonomy and integrity of religious practice. We must maintain these safeguards, even as we encourage citizens to put their faith into action and thus to enrich our community life. My colleagues, support the carefully crafted Democratic substitute.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I commend the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) and the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for including in this motion language that would instruct conferees to accept the Senate provision to provide $35 million for USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, as requested by the Bush administration, to protect American agriculture from serious animal disease threats like foot and mouth disease and mad cow disease. Unless we take steps now to protect ourselves, an outbreak of these diseases could be absolutely catastrophic for our country. My State of North Carolina is a good example of that. One estimate says that if foot and mouth disease were to break out in certain counties in eastern North Carolina, with concentrated hog operations, within a 20-mile perimeter we would have to destroy more animals than were destroyed in all of the country of England. Our Governor, Mike Easley, and agriculture commissioner Meg Scott Phipps have worked hard on a prevention effort, but the States need help from the Federal Government. Now, earlier this year Secretary Veneman did authorize the use of $32 million in APHIS funding for foot and mouth and mad cow disease border inspection activities. During our debate in the Committee on Appropriations, we were advised that this and other funds available from the Commodity Credit Corporation were sufficient; that USDA had adequate resources to address foreign animal disease. That, however, was not accurate. And I am amazed to hear the subcommittee chairman repeating that argument this morning. The President, 8 weeks after Secretary Veneman made these funds available, requested $35 million in supplemental funding for APHIS. I have confirmed with the Agriculture Department just this morning that we still need this $35 million in supplemental funding and that without it the Agriculture Department does not have adequate resources to protect the United States against foreign animal diseases. It is amazing to me, it totally escapes me, how we would not want to prepare ourselves for what could be an absolutely devastating outbreak. We have to do all we can to protect this country against the threat of foreign animal diseases. We should honor the administration's well- justified request and accept the position of the Senate on this $35 million for the Agriculture Department. So I urge adoption of the motion to instruct.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I want to offer my congratulations to Gina Upchurch, one of 10 recipients of the 2001 Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leader Award. Ms. Upchurch has earned this honor for her pathbreaking work with the Senior PHARMAssist Program based in Durham, North Carolina. Each year, the Community Health Leadership Program recognizes ten individual who have found innovative ways to bring health care to communities whose needs have been ignore or unmet. Ms. Upchurch was selected for this prestigious recognition from a field of 577 nominees. As founder and executive director of Senior PHARMAssist, Ms. Upchurch created a model to help seniors on limited incomes purchase expensive medications. PHARMAssist monitors the medications of their clients to help prevent life-threatening interactions and provides financial aid to those on limited incomes. The program has helped more than 2,600 seniors get the medications they need and has educated over 800 older adults about safer usage of medication. The counseling and support provided by PHARMAssist works. A recent study conducted by the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill found that emergency room visits and over-night hospital stays had decreased by almost a third for seniors who had been in the program for at least one year. Ms. Upchurch graduated from UNC with degrees in pharmacy and public health. She served in the Peace Corps in Botswana before returning to North Carolina to write her master's thesis, a policy analysis which recommended a program to provide health care to seniors throughout the state. This laid the groundwork for what eventually became Senior PHARMAssist. She now oversees a $500,000 budget and has written a manual to help other communities establish a similar program. Gina Upchurch has improved health care and helped those in need in our community. I am proud to recognize her achievements today.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, in recent weeks celebratory events have been held both in Washington and in my district in North Carolina honoring one of our most distinguished citizens, Swadesh Chatterjee, upon his reception of India's Padma Bhushan award in the area of public affairs. The award was conferred by the President of India on March 22, 2001. Established in 1954, the Padma Bhushan is one of the highest civilian awards that the Indian government can bestow on an individual. Mr. Chatterjee is the first Indian American from North Carolina to receive this award and the first Indian American to receive the award in the public affairs category. ``As a young boy growing up in the small town of Somamukhi, West Bengal,'' Mr. Chatterjee recalled, ``I remember how in awe I was of the men and women who were chosen to receive these honors.'' Yet for those of us who have come to know Swadesh Chatterjee and to appreciate his leadership, this award is not surprising and is richly deserved. For Swadesh Chatterjee has gained recognition in North Carolina as an astute businessman and a respected community and political leader, and in recent years he has become well known nationally as well. Particularly noteworthy has been Mr. Chatterjee's presidency over the past two years of the Indian-American Forum for Political Education (IAFPE), one of the oldest and most respected Indian-American organizations in the nation. In this capacity he worked effectively to strengthen the organization at the grass roots and to raise its profile nationally. He helped stimulate the growth of our Congressional Caucus on India and Indian-Americans. He encouraged President Clinton to make his historic trip to India last year and accompanied him when he went. Mr. Chatterjee, his wife Manjusri, who is an accomplished psychiatrist, and their children Sohini and Souvik, are citizens of Cary, North Carolina, whom I am honored to represent. They have helped make the Indian-American community in our state a vibrant one, and they have greatly enriched our wider community as well. Swadesh Chatterjee once said that he and other Indian-Americans were ``fortunate to be the children of two mothers: India, which gave us our lives, and the United States, which gives us our livelihood.'' He and his family are proud Americans who contribute a great deal to our country and remind us that being American does not require a masking or suppressing of our diversity; on the contrary, our country is enriched by the flourishing of the multiple ethnic and cultural traditions from which we came. Mr. Speaker, the Padma Bhushan award is a fitting recognition not only of Swadesh Chatterjee's contribution to his native land but also of what he has contributed to America and to Indian-American relations. And while it surely represents a high point of his career, I am also confident that it points to even greater things to come!

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, last month a gathering of distinguished North Carolinians assembled in Durham to pay tribute to Julius Chambers upon his retirement from the chancellorship of North Carolina Central University. Speaker after speaker praised Chancellor Chambers for his many contributions to the university and to the community. Today, along with the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt), I want to pay tribute in this House to Julius Chambers, to his distinguished and path-breaking career, to his bold vision, perseverance, and ability to inspire that have meant so much to the university, to North Carolina and to the Nation. Julius Chambers served as chancellor of his alma mater for 8 years, and his vision for NCCU reminds me of another leader of a great Durham university, Terry Sanford, who led Duke University with what he called ``outrageous ambitions.'' Julius Chambers brought that tradition of ``outrageous ambitions'' to Central, and he left the university far stronger than he found it. Julius Chambers accepted the call to return to Central after a distinguished history of leadership in the civil rights movement, the legal profession, and higher education. He came back to Durham with a reputation as a premier civil rights lawyer, having argued landmark desegregation cases in the 1960s and 1970s. His most famous case was Swann vs. Board of Education, in which he persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971 to approve Charlotte's comprehensive plan for school integration. At Central, he moved quickly and effectively to increase public and private funding, to raise admissions standards and strengthen curricula, to recruit talented faculty and add major facilities in biotechnology and education, and to involve Central students in community service as an integral part of their curriculum. He had an active agenda at the Federal level as well. I enjoyed working with him on matters ranging from the impact of the Higher Education Act on Historically Black Colleges and Universities to the Eagle Village project, which is developing the community around NCCU; the highly promising NCCU-EPA partnership at the Biomedical/ Biotechnology Research Institute, which bears Mr. Chambers' name; and the restoration of Shepard House, the home of NCCU's founder. Julius Chambers graduated summa cum laude from NCCU in 1958, earned a master's degree in history from the University of Michigan in 1959, and he completed his law degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1962 and earned a master's degree in law from Columbia University School of Law in 1964. He was the first African American to edit the UNC Law Review. He was selected by Thurgood Marshall to be the first intern for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He founded North Carolina's first interracial law firm, which continues a distinguished and wide-ranging practice today. As he presided over his last commencement this year, Chancellor Chambers told students how he felt when he graduated from Central 43 years ago. Despite being black and poor, he believed he could accomplish anything: ``You are expected to succeed. You are expected to dream,'' he told the graduates of NCCU. As Julius Chambers returns to Charlotte and his law practice, we are grateful for the foundation he laid at Central; and we pledge to continue to build on his dream for the benefit of all. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt), a close friend and associate of Mr. Chambers.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, this education bill represents the first real bipartisan effort of this Congress. I commend the leaders from both sides of the aisle who have put it together. I just hope it stays bipartisan for the sake of our children and our home communities. The bill will help local school districts meet some of our most pressing education challenges. There is a strong emphasis on early reading and a commitment to title I and special education funding. The bill expands public school choice, which is welcome news in my district where magnet schools have been especially successful. The bill also provides resources and specific remedies to turn around low-performing schools. In these next hours of debate, we are going to face amendments that could derail this bipartisan success. We will face an amendment to provide public funding for private school vouchers, which would siphon money away from public education, not strengthen it. We will face amendments to weaken the link between dollars and results. We must maintain accountability to ensure that our children are learning. Of course, when you have a truly bipartisan piece of legislation, no one gets everything he or she wants. I would have liked to have seen more attention paid to reducing class size. We know that smaller class size improves student learning, especially in the early years. We need to build more schools and hire more teachers to get class size down and to improve the quality of what is going on in the classroom. Schools in my area are bursting at the seams with thousands of students going to school in hundreds of trailers. We have crumbling classrooms and outdated facilities. Over 90 percent of children in kindergarten through third grade in my district are learning in overcrowded classrooms. There are 24,000 children trying to learn in classrooms with 25 or more students. So we need local school districts to build more schools; and when new classrooms are built, we need quality teachers to teach in them. In my State, we have a staggering need to hire 80,000 new teachers in the next 10 years. I actually think that the teacher shortage is the education issue of the next decade, and neither party has paid sufficient attention to it. Without quality teachers in the classroom, no other education reforms we talk about are going to work. But today, Mr. Chairman, we have a chance to take an important first step, a bipartisan step in the right direction. We can improve American public education in this country together. Vote for the bill and against crippling amendments.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I thank my colleague for yielding. I want to underscore what others have said, that the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) has done a wonderful job in pulling this committee together and in taking us all over the country to examine voting practices and possible reforms in various communities. I think we are going to have some very significant results in a relatively short period of time. Everyone in the country, of course, knows about the travesty that occurred in Florida last fall. But what we have learned is that unfortunately, it is not that unusual for people to have their votes not counted accurately, to find that somehow their name has mysteriously dropped off the rolls when they go to vote on election day. There is a range of problems and challenges that we need to deal with to make our democracy work as it needs to work. Certainly the right to vote and to have your vote counted is fundamental to democracy. My particular focus today is going to be on voting equipment, because we know that we need modern equipment to have votes cast accurately and counted accurately and unfortunately there is a great disparity in this country in the kind of equipment that people are using and the kind of equipment that local communities have access to. All too often, there is a correlation between the worst, worn-out, inaccurate equipment and the economic level of that neighborhood and that precinct and that community. That simply is unacceptable. It is unacceptable for any community to have worn-out, inaccurate equipment but particularly for it to be concentrated in lower-income areas, minority areas, that is just simply unacceptable. We should not stand for it for another election. Before the 2002 election occurs, we must move on this problem. It is sort of like the situation we face when we find a neighborhood built on top of a toxic waste dump. How do we respond? We respond to that emergency by buying out those homes to protect the people who live there. When a flood wipes out a community like happened in eastern North Carolina not too long ago, we respond by buying out property to protect the residents and help them find safe places to live. Well, I think error-prone voting equipment is no less an emergency. It is an emergency that threatens our democracy, and we need an immediate response. And it is going to take some money. It is going to take some money to upgrade voting technology from error-prone punch- card systems to reliable machines. But we cannot afford not to do anything, and here too I think a buyout is warranted, a buyout of these machines, so that new, accurate machines can be in place by the 2002 election. Just look at what error-prone voting machinery does to our democracy. It is impossible to say every vote counts, when a study done by Caltech and MIT revealed that the spoilage rate for punch cards from 1988 to 2000 was 2.9 percent, or as many as 986,000 votes in the year 2000 alone. In Florida last year, the spoilage rate for punch cards was 3.9 percent. In Fulton County, Georgia, the punch-card spoilage rate reached 6.25 percent. In Cook County, Illinois, it was 5 percent during the last election. That amounts to 120,000 ballots. Now, we have seen some encouraging efforts in cities and counties and States to get rid of this error-prone equipment. In 1996, the City of Detroit used punch-card machines and 3.1 percent of its ballots were spoiled. In 2000, after the city moved to an optical scan system, which warns voters of errors and allows them to correct mistakes, the rate fell to 1.1 percent. In the States, Georgia recently passed legislation requiring uniform election equipment throughout the State by 2004, and the State is going to conduct a pilot project to test electronic touch screen voting equipment in the 2001 municipal elections. Maryland passed legislation to require the State Board of Elections to select and certify a new voting system to be used by all counties in the State. And, as we have recently heard, in Florida, the legislature passed sweeping election reform, including $24 million for new voting systems. Florida has banned punch-card machines, thank goodness, and it requires counties now to use electronic or precinct-based optical scan equipment in the 2002 elections. Perhaps I ought to point out in discussing the possible avenues for reform that we are not necessarily finding that high-tech is always better. In fact, some of the answers to our problems might be described as low-tech. For example, these precinct-based optical scan machines which have been turned to in so many areas are not as complex or advanced or certainly as expensive as touch screen machines or proposed Internet voting. But the fundamental question is not how fancy or how expensive or how complicated the machinery is, but rather does it work? Does it enable you to cast your vote in a straightforward way, and does it count that vote accurately? There may be many different technologies that lend themselves to our reform efforts. The U.S. election system comprises 200,000 polling places, 7,000 jurisdictions, 1.4 million poll workers and 700,000 voting machines, so it is not a simple system and there are not simple solutions. But Congress needs to be an active and constructive partner if we are going to have a successful and meaningful election reform, and there is no better time to act than now. There are several proposals in the Congress to help States and counties and cities get the technology they need to run accurate elections. A bill I introduced with the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Horn) would make grants available to any jurisdiction that used a punch-card voting system in the last election. We want to see them get new equipment in place by 2002, and we are going to push for Federal funding to make that buyout happen, to get those inaccurate, worn-out machines off line and bring on more accurate systems. I am disappointed that the President and our Republican friends have failed to include one dollar for election reform in their budget, but that must not stop us. This Congress must meet the challenge of restoring faith in our democracy. I thank my colleague from California for her leadership in making this happen, and I pledge my continued support, my continued work, to make meaningful election reform a front-burner item before even the first session of this Congress goes home.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, is it not true that our colleagues in the other body actually put additional funding in the budget for special education, and now as this budget comes back to us, those funds have been stripped out. Those funds are gone. This is an obligation which our local districts feel very acutely. Mr. Speaker, without new resources, these crumbling classrooms cannot be repaired, new schools cannot be built, teachers cannot be hired and Pell Grants cannot be increased. We must do better. We must defeat this budget.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield to the gentlewoman from Oregon, a great champion of special education.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, in my State alone we are going to need 80,000 new teachers in the next 10 years. We do not know where those are coming from. The gentleman is correct, this budget has no investment in recruiting and training and improving the preparation of teachers.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank my colleague for underscoring the need to get our kids out of these trailers and into modern effective classrooms where they can learn and where teachers can teach.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, our budget reflects our values, and Democrats want to provide tax relief. We also want to take care of other priorities, like paying down the debt and strengthening Social Security and adding prescription drugs to Medicare and making the investments we need in education and research and the environment, safe communities, affordable housing, military readiness. Quite simply, this Republican budget falls short on all of those counts, but nowhere more than in education. We need to be reducing class size in this country and building and modernizing schools and recruiting and training teachers and boosting Title I aid for disadvantaged districts, closing the achievement gaps between majority and minority students and increasing Pell Grants and meeting our obligation to special education students and expanding Head Start. This budget falls short even of what the President asked for, and that was already inadequate. For example, with this budget, President Bush and the Republicans break their promise to increase the maximum Pell Grant to $5,100. Candidate Bush promised to do that for freshmen. Unfortunately, President Bush and the Republicans have fallen at least $1.5 billion short of the amount needed to fulfill that promise. The President's budget provides only enough funding to raise the maximum award of $3,750 by a mere $150, far less than Pell Grant increases in recent years, and the budget before us today does even less than what the President proposed.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, the gap between rhetoric and reality has never been wider than in this budget, and I am going to concentrate today especially on the education budget because that gap is truly massive in that area. We are being asked to support a budget that provides no increase over inflation for education funding, and even falls short of what the President asks for in his budget plan. Despite all the talk from the White House, despite all the talk from our Republican friends, education is not a priority in this budget. We have serious education needs. We need to reduce class size. We need to construct more schools, get our kids out of trailers. We need to recruit and train teachers. We need to boost Title I aid for disadvantaged school districts. We need to close the achievement gap between majority and minority children. We need to increase Pell grants for college opportunity. We need to meet the Federal Government's obligation to IDEA special education funding. We need to expand Head Start. The list of needs is long. This budget comes up short on every count. With this budget, President Bush and the Republicans break their promise to increase the maximum Pell grant to $5,100. During the campaign, Candidate Bush promised to raise the maximum Pell grant award to $5,100 for freshmen. Unfortunately, President Bush and the Republicans have fallen at least $1.5 billion short of the amount needed to fulfill that promise. The President's budget provides only enough funding to raise the maximum award of $3,750 by about $150, which is far less than Pell grant increases in recent years, and this budget does even less than what the President requested. Then let us talk about Gear Up. Gear Up, that program already underfunded, that program to get colleges and private businesses engaged in mentoring high school students, closing that achievement gap, preparing them for college. This Gear Up program, praised by Secretary of Education Paige when he was in Houston as head of the system there, President Bush wants to cut Gear Up by 20 percent, meaning 200,000 fewer kids being helped; and now this Republican budget provides even less funding. Bipartisan majorities in the Senate adopted amendments to add $294 billion over 10 years for education over the House-passed budget, but the final version of this budget eliminates those increases. In fact, education receives less in this budget than the woeful House-passed budget by almost $1 billion next year and $21.4 billion over 10 years. Mr. Speaker, I don't want to just throw money at education and hope for improvements; but without new resources, crumbling classrooms cannot be repaired, new schools cannot be built, teachers cannot be hired and Pell Grants cannot be increased. We must do better. We need more than talk. Reject this budget.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I thank the gentleman for yielding and for coordinating this special order for us this afternoon. Mr. Speaker, on April 3, North Carolina and the Nation lost one of our most distinguished citizens and public servants, L. Richardson Preyer. It is a privilege today to join with my colleagues in paying tribute to his life and his work, which were memorialized at a moving and majestic service at Greensboro's First Presbyterian Church on April 5. Rich Preyer served in this body with great dignity and effectiveness for six terms, from 1969 to 1980. He was a senior member of what was then called the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, and he chaired the Government Information and Individual Rights Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations. The Almanac of American Politics noted his reputation for ``great integrity and sound judgment'' which led the House leadership to call upon him ``to serve in some difficult and unpleasant assignments.'' These included the committee investigating assassinations, where he headed the subcommittee investigating the assassination of President Kennedy, and the House Ethics Committee at the time of the so-called Korea-gate scandal. Rich Preyer was born in 1919, took his undergraduate degree at Princeton, served as a Navy lieutenant in World War II and was awarded the Bronze Star for action in Okinawa, and then earned his law degree at Harvard University after the war. He became a city judge at age 34, then a North Carolina superior court judge. In 1961 he was appointed judge of the Federal Middle District Court of North Carolina by President Kennedy. He resigned that lifetime appointment to undertake a race for governor, a race that he narrowly lost but that engaged and inspired thousands of North Carolinians, many of whom went on to leadership positions within our State. When the Sixth Congressional District seat came open in 1968, Rich Preyer was such an obvious choice for that position that he was nominated without opposition. Rich then won reelection year after year by large margins and had an exemplary congressional career. This was when I, having returned to North Carolina in 1973, first got to know him. At first as an academic who studied Congress and the Commerce Committee in particular, I admired Rich from afar. Then as I got more involved in North Carolina politics myself, I was privileged to work with him personally. Like many in my political generation, I admired Rich tremendously as a man who brought conviction and courage, dignity and style to politics, a model of what a Member of this body should be and a model of what political leadership at its best can be. My admiration was deepened and given another dimension when Rich lost his 1980 race for reelection and I observed how he handled that loss. I remember as executive director of the State Democratic Party sitting with Rich and his dear wife Emily in a television studio in Greensboro waiting to be interviewed on election morning. He had a premonition of what was to come. But he was at peace with the account he had given of himself in his congressional service and in his campaign. He weathered defeat with equanimity and a remarkable sense of humor. And he never wavered in his political ideals and his expansive citizenship: the years since 1980 have been filled with numerous local and State and national involvements to which Rich Preyer brought remarkable gifts of vision and leadership. Rich and Emily Preyer had a wonderful family, and their children have carried on the Preyer family tradition of high spirits, love of nature and of athletic competition, generous friendships, and faithful stewardship of time and talent. We express our sympathy to sons Rich, Jr., and Britt, and daughters Mary Norris, Jane and Emily, and their families, in the hope that the outpouring of affection and admiration that has followed their father's death, and their mother's death not long before, will give them strength and comfort in this time of sorrow. Madam Speaker, I ask that the obituary from the Raleigh News and Observer be included in the Record at this point, as well as the reflections offered at the April 5 memorial service by Jane Preyer, Richardson Preyer, Jr., and Tom Lambeth, Rich Preyer's chief of staff during his time in the House, who recently retired as director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation. [From the Raleigh News and Observer, April 4, 2001] The Honorable Lunsford Richardson Preyer Greensboro--The Honorable L. Richardson Preyer, 82, died Tuesday at the Cone Memorial Hospital. A funeral service will be held at 4 p.m. Thursday at the First Presbyterian Church. Congressman Preyer was a native of Greensboro and attended the public schools. He received his A.B. Degree from Princeton University and his Law Degree from the Harvard Law School. At the First Presbyterian Church he was an elder, teacher/ member of the Young Men's Bible Class for over 40 years and a Chairman of the Board of Trustees. During World War II he was a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy served for four years as a Gunnery Officer and Executive Officer on Destroyer duty in the Atlantic and South Pacific; he received the Bronze Star for action in Okinawa. Mr. Preyer was appointed as a City Judge, and North Carolina Superior Court Judge. In 1961 he was appointed Federal Judge of the Middle District Court by President John F. Kennedy. In 1963 Judge Preyer resigned his Judgeship to become a candidate for Governor of North Carolina. In 1964 he became City Executive for Greensboro at the North Carolina National Bank. In November 1968 he was elected to the United States Congress, 6th District of North Carolina and served until 1980. The U.S. Federal Courthouse and Post Office are named in his honor as the L. Richardson Preyer Federal Building in Greensboro. Among his many Congressional Committees he was most proud of serving as Chairman of the Select Committee on Ethics which drew up the Congressional Code of Ethics and Chairman of the House Committee on Assassination of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King. The Honorable Mr. Preyer served in many other ways and was honored as Chairman of the Board of the North Carolina Outward Bound School; Commissioner, Greensboro Little League and Pony Baseball programs; Honorary Chairman of the Greater Greensboro Open (GGCC); Inter-Club Council's Outstanding Civic Leader of the Year Award; Greensboro Chamber's ``Uncle Joe Cannon'' Award for outstanding leadership; Distinguished Service Award at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine; and recipient of the Phillip Hart Memorial Award for Conscience by ``Washingtonian Magazine.'' At the time of his death he was Co-chairman of the Guilford Battleground Company; member of the Board for the National Humanities Center; Chairman of Coastal Futures Committee (appointed by Governor James B. Hunt); Trustee: Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation; H. Smith Richardson Foundation; NC Institute of Political Leadership; Woodrow Wilson Center (Smithsonian Institute); Uplift, Inc. (past president); and the NC Institute of Medicine. He had served as a Trustee of the National Nature Conservancy; Hastings Institute of Medicine; Greensboro National Bank; Director of Vanguard Cellular Systems, Inc. and Piedmont Management, Inc. He also served on the Board of Directors of Guildford College, Davidson College, UNC School of Social Work; Robert Wood Johnson Fellows--UNC Medical School; Community Self Help; The American Red Cross, Salvation Army, NC Museum of Natural History; and UNC-G Excellence Foundation. He was preceded in death recently by his wife Emily Harris Preyer and brother William Yost Preyer Jr. He is survived by his sons and daughters-in-law, L. Richardson and Marilyn Jacobs Preyer Jr. and Britt Armfield and Alice Dockery Preyer; daughters and sons-in-law, Mary Norris Preyer and Henry Patrick Oglesby, Jane Bethell Preyer, and Emily Harris Preyer and Richard Tillman Fountain, III; brothers and sisters-in-law, Dr. Robert Otto and Kitty Preyer, Dr. Norris Watson and Catherine Preyer and Frederick Lynn and Margaret Preyer; sister-in-law, Mrs. Russell H. Tucker and Mrs. Doris Preyer; grandchildren, L. Richardson Preyer, III, Parker Jacobs Preyer, Jane Elizabeth Preyer, Emily Preyer Oglesby, Britt Armfield Preyer Jr., John Calder Preyer, William Harris Preyer, Mary Norris Preyer Fountain, Richard Tillman Fountain, IV, Janie Katherine Fountain, Preyer Harris Fountain, and Peter Richardson Fountain. The family will receive friends following the service in the Church's Family Enrichment Center and request the memorial contributions be made to one's favorite charity. Hanes-Lineberry, N. Elm St., Funeral Home is assisting the family.