Charlie Rangel

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to bring to your attention the outstanding work and commitment of the Child Welfare League of America, CWLA. This organization acts on the premise that every child is valuable and has something to contribute to society. They believe that our children are entitled to nurturance, protection, and the chance to develop to his or her full human potential. The CWLA testified before the Human Resources Subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee on May 23, 2006 to review proposals to improve child protective services, all in an effort to highlight the importance of the child welfare system in ensuring that children and families are afforded the necessary resources and services available. Although the family and the child welfare system have specific responsibilities, we all know that society as a whole shares the responsibility for promoting healthy human growth and development. I am submitting at this time part I of the testimony given by CWLA and hope that you will find it informative. Hello, I am Linda Spears, Vice President of Corporate Communications and Development of the Child Welfare League of America, CWLA. I am honored to submit comments on behalf of CWLA, and our nearly 900 public and private nonprofit, child- serving member agencies this afternoon. The attention given by the Human Resources Subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee focusing on the child protective services system and the reauthorization of the Promoting Safe and Stable Families, PSSF, program further shows the intent to ensure that our children have the appropriate resources and services available to them. CWLA believes that as a country we must confirm our commitment to prevent child abuse and neglect and to support children who have been abused and neglected. We support strengthened partnerships between federal, state, and local governments and providers in the nonprofit and charitable communities in order to do a better job of protecting our nation's children. Improving the Child Welfare System Child Protective Services In 2004, an estimated 3 million children were reported as abused or neglected and received an assessment or screening to determine whether or not there was evidence of abuse or neglect. Approximately 872,000 children were substantiated as abused or neglected. These numbers are similar to previous years. Another consistent pattern is that more than sixty percent of child victims were victims of neglect, while eighteen percent were physically abused and ten percent were sexually abused. Thirty percent of victims were age 3 or younger. We also know that 1,490 children died from child abuse in 2004. Overall eighty-three percent of the time a parent or parents were involved in the abuse. Another consistent statistic from year to year is that of the children who have been substantiated as abused or neglected, nearly 40 percent do not receive follow up services. The foundation on which child protective services, CPS, is established and what should always be the first goal of any CPS response is keeping children safe from child abuse and neglect. The CPS response begins with the assessment of reports of child abuse and neglect. If CPS determines the child is at risk of abuse and neglect or has been abused or neglected, CPS should ensure the child and his or her family receive services and supports from the public child protection agency and the community. CWLA believes the best ways to ensure children are safe from all forms of maltreatment are comprehensive, community- based approaches to protecting children and supporting and strengthening families. Public and private agencies, in collaboration with individual citizens and community entities, can prevent and remedy child maltreatment, achieve child safety, and promote child and family well-being. Child protective service, CPS, systems in the fifty states are funded by a variety of sources. In fact, funding goes beyond the two programs specifically targeted for today's hearing, the IV-B part 1 and IV-B part 2 programs. Consistently the Social Services Block Grant, SSBG, serves as a major source of funding with thirty-eight states spending $194 million in SSBG funds in 2004 for child protective services. These funds include some TANF dollars transferred into SSBG. We highlight this because SSBG, which is under the jurisdiction of this subcommittee, is threatened with a potential reduction of $500 million in the President's proposed FY 2007 budget, a thirty percent reduction in funding that would be devastating to CPS and many other child welfare services. State CPS systems also draw from the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, CAPTA, but funding under the state grants part of that program is limited to $27 million and has never reached its full authorized funding level. A CPS system that functions well is one that has a fully staffed and competent workforce. When understaffed and overworked, this system of child protection will fail. CWLA cannot emphasize enough the need for a national child welfare workforce strategy that puts well trained and educated workers in place, keeps caseloads at manageable levels, and provides competent supervision and ongoing training. It is also important to note that CPS is only one part of the child welfare system and it cannot be viewed in isolation. If the efforts at reunification of a family fail, or the adoption fails, or services are not available for families and children who come into contact with the system, then we may find these very same children entering the system again. Children with a prior history of maltreatment are more likely to experience a recurrence of maltreatment than those who were not prior victims. The Need for Services CWLA's vision for an optimal child welfare system encompasses a continuum of services ranging from prevention of abuse and neglect to permanency and stability for children who experience out of home care. Key ingredients of this system are a family-centered approach, an ample, stable, and highly professional workforce, the availability and targeted application of services to prevent child abuse and neglect, maintaining families when maltreatment has occurred and child safety can be reasonably assured, and achieving permanency and stability for children who must experience foster care. These components are consistent with current research and with federal expectations associated with the Child and Family Service Review process. Family centered approach Research in child maltreatment, juvenile justice, children's mental health, and parent education supports the effectiveness of interventions that involve the entire family over those targeting the individual parent or child alone. A family-centered approach engages families in addressing the problems that affect the care of their children. Such engagement has been linked positively to compliance with and completion of case plans. Stable professional workforce Effective child welfare services are based on accurate differential assessments and require knowledge of human behavior, the factors underlying child maltreatment, and the way in which both risks and protective factors interact to produce an overall picture of a family's needs. Thus, it is not surprising that child welfare workforce research suggests the need for staff that have formal social work education, especially that obtained through specialized child welfare programs such as those developed through Title IV-E-supported agency-university partnerships. Studies further point to the importance of consistent mentoring by competent supervisors, and to a supportive and flexible organizational environment. All of these factors have been linked to reduced staff turnover, which recent research suggests is critically important both to minimize costs associated with frequent hiring and training and to improve outcomes for children and families. Greater amount of caseworker contact with children and parents has also been associated with better outcomes. These findings make it imperative that agencies maintain staff in sufficient numbers to provide manageable workloads that do not require caseworkers to sacrifice the provision of direct services in order to complete administrative tasks and documentation. Prevention of abuse and neglect Studies have demonstrated the effectiveness or promise of several approaches to prevention of child maltreatment. Models such as Nurse Family Partnerships and Healthy Families have produced evidence that they positively impact a variety of outcomes for children and families, including prevention of abuse and neglect. Likewise, high quality pre- kindergarten programs like the Chicago Child Parent Centers and Head Start that include parental involvement and supports have also demonstrated effectiveness. Independent studies have found that the financial savings achieved by the most effective of these approaches far exceeds their costs. Rigorous cost-benefit analyses conducted by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy showed cost savings for several pre-kindergarten and home visitation programs as well as for Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, a center-based intervention that provides direct coaching to parents as they interact with their young children. Several interventions that target older children and their families have also been demonstrated to have benefits in lessening children's problematic behavior and improving family functioning. Family-based therapeutic models such as Functional Family Therapy and Multi-Systemic Therapy have been rigorously tested in sites across the country and, despite some variation in findings, there is substantial evidence of their benefits to youth and their families. Maintaining families Many children can be safely maintained in their families through the timely application of interventions that correctly target the underlying causes of maltreatment. A number of studies support the benefits of interventions that have a behavioral, skill-building focus and that address family functioning in multiple domains including home, school, and community. Cognitive behavioral models have been demonstrated to reduce physical punishment and parental aggression in less time than alternative approaches. The most effective treatment involves all members of the family and addresses not only parenting skills, but also parent-child interaction and a range of parental life competencies such as communication, problem solving, and anger control. Attention to immediate, concrete needs has also been identified as a key factor in supporting family engagement and positive outcomes. Permanency and stability A wealth of research demonstrates the importance of children being nurtured in a stable family environment, confirming the need to move those who must enter foster care into permanent living situations as quickly as possible. Recent studies suggest that, when children must leave their families, well-supported kinship placements have the potential to provide more stable and normalizing environments than unrelated family care. Most children who enter foster care are able to return to their families of origin, often within less than one year. However, when that is not possible, alternatives such as adoption or subsidized guardianship can offer long term stability. Cost analyses of child welfare services have linked kinship care and subsidized guardianship to cost savings. One study found the cost of effecting an adoption for children in foster care to range from $6,000 to $28,539, or an average of $19,141, suggesting that this permanency alternative has the potential to achieve a substantial savings over long term foster care. While research supports the use of family care when deemed appropriate by a full assessment, group care is another placement option that may offer benefits for certain youth when used strategically, for a period of time indicated by ongoing assessment, and as part of a plan to maintain or rebuild family and community connections. However, family care, even in therapeutic foster care settings with multiple supportive services, tends to be substantially less expensive. Aftercare and transitional services Data indicate that about 25 percent of all children who exit out-of-home care will return at some point, often within one year. The likelihood of re-entry is especially great when children or parents have more numerous or complex needs or when they are exposed to more extreme environmental stressors. Although the likelihood of maltreatment recurrence and/or subsequent re-entry into foster care is undoubtedly related to decision-making and services offered prior to reunification, it strongly suggests a need for aftercare services. The limited research in family reunification aftercare, indicates that it is most successful when it is initially intensive and includes the availability of concrete services and ongoing assessment of risk. The association of social isolation with failed reunification also suggests the importance of linking with extended family, extra-familial social networks, and informal resources. Tapering off of services should be based on the family's needs rather than on an arbitrary time frame. Services during and after the adoption process are also an important part of the service continuum. Although the rate of adoption dissolution is quite low overall, research indicates that some placements may have greater needs for follow-up services and supports. One study reported that, while less than 30% of all adoptive families used post-adoption services other than informational resources, most families adopting through a public agency used some type of counseling. This finding was attributed to the larger number of special needs of children placed with these families. As in other types of child welfare intervention, family-focused approaches appear to be the most helpful in supporting adoption stability. Research suggests that adoptive parents may also value participation in support groups, access to literature and seminars, and concrete services like respite care, subsidies, and health benefits. Services targeting youth who will exit foster care to independence are another important component of a continuum of care. Studies have identified four key elements: school completion, high-intensity supports over time, a work experience component, and the presence of a stable, caring adult as factors leading to successful transition of youth to work and independence. Youth have been shown to benefit from a plan based on systematic assessment, combined with focused skills development, involvement of caregivers as teachers, and re-establishing or maintaining connections to birth/ extended family and community.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, with Secretary Michael Chertoff's decision to cut Federal anti-terror funding for both New York and Washington, DC, I would like to introduce an editorial printed in the Daily News on June 7, 2006, that encourages the executive branch to put pressure on the Department of Homeland Security to rectify this decision. The editorial, titled Get N.Y. the money, Mr. President, discusses the extremely negative reception this decision has received. Both former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani and former chairman of the 9/11 commission, Tom Kean, two of the most knowledgeable men on protecting our country from terrorism, claim that New York, as the premier target of terrorist attacks, needs to implement several anti- terror programs in order to completely protect itself. The intended programs included an effort to prepare the fire department to adeptly handle multiple attacks at once, to allocate funding to the NYPD counterterrorism bureau which interprets threats to the city, and to create systems that can detect radiation in the water and air. In deciding how to best allocate homeland security funds, Secretary Chertoff used a complicated scoring system that resulted in the funding of information dissemination and consequentially the rejection of funds required for protecting New York. This editorial endorses an effort to demonstrate the importance of protecting both New York and Washington, DC. The Daily News editors argue correctly that President Bush is the only person with the authority to do this. The House Homeland Security Committee's chairman, Peter King, joined by the entire New York delegation in the House and Senate has made spirited efforts to reverse the decision to reduce the allocation to New York. More money is needed for New York, and I certainly hope that the Department of Homeland Security recognizes this as soon as possible. Therefore I submit for the Record an editorial from the June 7, 2006, issue of the Daily News for our consideration. Get N.Y. the Money, Mr. President No less an authority than Rudy Giuliani has rendered the ultimate verdict on the Department of Homeland Security's decision to slash New York City's federal anti-terror funding. Plainly and simply, Giuliani sees incompetence. Similarly, Tom Kean, former chairman of the 9/11 commission, says the department turned thumbs down on paying for exemplary programs that ``should be a model for the nation.'' Kean also questioned the wisdom of allowing Homeland Security to base its dollar allocations on the work of anonymous panels operating in secret. When it comes to emergency preparedness, Giuliani and Kean are two of the smartest guys around. Having studied the war on terror up close, they are experts in the extraordinarily broad range of defenses that a city like New York, the world's No. 1 terror target, must mount if we are to have a chance at fending off disaster. New Yorkers aren't as versed in the best ways to link emergency communications, or how to pick up radioactivity, or what to make of intelligence reports flowing from abroad--but New Yorkers do have finely tuned B.S. detectors. And so do all the late-night comics who are ridiculing Secretary Michael Chertoff's incompetence. Which starts with the rules his bureaucrats established for selecting anti-terror programs that were worthy of funding. The regs favored buying things over paying for manpower and training, no matter how vital the manpower or training was. So, Chertoff smiles at paying for armored vests for cops, but he frowns at picking up the salaries of the officers who patrol in them. He's happy to buy haz-mat suits for firefighters, but he doesn't want to train firefighters to wear them. The shortsighted, wrongheaded outrageousness of Chertoff's thinking screams forth when you run down just some of the ways the city had hoped to spend U.S. anti-terror money. There were plans to: Prepare the Fire Department to face multiple chemical, biological or nuclear attacks. Provide continuing emergency response training to firefighters and fire officers. Devote funding to the NYPD counterterrorism bureau, which analyzes threats, and Operation Atlas, which puts as many as 1,000 anti-terror cops on the street daily. Boost security for the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg and Queensboro bridges. Create a lower Manhattan security zone, complete with surveillance cameras. Develop a broadband wireless communication system for public safety agencies across the metropolitan area. Set up systems to detect radiation and biohazards in the air and water and gauge their movement in winds and currents. Draft an isolation and quarantine program to be used in an epidemic outbreak. Buy a boat to enable the FDNY to respond to a chemical, biological or radiation attack by water. Using a half-baked scoring system as complex as the Tax Code, Chertoff's evaluators gave top marks to a program to disseminate emergency readiness information to the public, including pet owners, while flunking the NYPD counterterrorism center. Nothing could better sum up how disconnected from reality Homeland Security was. Yet Chertoff is holding fast in refusing to put federal funding where it really belongs. That's in New York and Washington, which also suffered a 40% cut in aid. He needs to change his mind, or be made to change his mind, and all his nutty rules must go. Only one person has the power to compel such action: President Bush. Rep. Pete King, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, said yesterday that if Chertoff doesn't come up with more money for New York, he'll take the matter to Bush. That's good, but King shouldn't have to storm the Oval Office. Bush, who has refrained from canning Chertoff, should order him to rectify his incompetence posthaste.

Mr. RANGEL

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

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Chairman, this amendment at the desk prevents all spending in support of the embargo against Cuba. I recognize this is a very emotional subject because so many people have personal memories of the dictatorship of Fidel Castro. But this is not a pro-Castro amendment, this is a pro-American amendment. If we are going to get rid of this fellow, one thing that is clear, the embargo route is not the way to go. For 45 years, he has outlived all of our Presidents by being there. If anything, he has used the embargo as an excuse to continue his dictatorship. It hasn't done anything except hurt the Cuban people by having the negative economic impact on their government. But more important than anything, it restricts the American people from doing what we should be able to do without being restricted by our government. Americans should be able to travel, period. Nobody should deny us the opportunity to go anywhere that we want to go. If we are going to be restricted because it is a Communist country, then the administration is saying they don't have confidence in us that we are going to be converted to communism. What about capitalism, the whole idea of changing people's lives and thoughts through exchange of goods and wares? What about our farmers? What about those that want to invest in oil? But, more importantly, what about those people that believe in not only economic freedom, but cultural freedom, educational freedom, song, dance, get to know people? The Cuban people love us and those who know them love the Cuban people. It is this rascal that is in charge that we have lost billions of dollars in denying our people the opportunity to have economic exchange. That has not gained us one thing except perhaps a handful of votes in Florida. Because America has to do what works. The embargo is not working any kind of way, and the meanness of it all, to deny Americans an opportunity to visit their families in Cuba, or to restrict it to once every 3 years, we have to check with the doctor to see whether or not your parents are sick enough or well enough so that you can plan your visit. That is not the American way of life. The whole idea that you have sick and poor people in Cuba, and you are Cuban American, and you want to send some money to them, that that is being denied because the hard money is going to be used by the government. I suggest that nobody in this House, even the lovely lady from Florida, is going to say that this program has worked. I know it is a political issue, and I am not belittling that. I know there is a lot of compassion behind it. But I will call this the American amendment, an amendment for Americans to travel where they want, to trade where they want, to entertain where they want, to listen to entertainment where they want, and to send money where they want and never be able to say that these people in Cuba that are being adversely affected are a threat to our national security. If we love those people, we wouldn't cut off America to them. We would send America there with the American flag, with our young people, with hip-hop, with jeans, with all of the things that the whole world has come to enjoy. But to deny the people in Cuba this because we don't like or we hate or we want to get rid of this man who puts innocent people in jail or who shoots down harmless planes, if you want to get rid of him, bring America to Cuba but don't keep us out. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Chairman, thank you so much for your kind indulgence. I know that there is a lot of passion involved in those that oppose anything that would appear to be supporting a ruthless dictator in Cuba. I want you to know that if we had an opportunity to take a vote on this floor for or against Cuba, I would volunteer to get rid of Castro, because we are from Cuba, but we are not for Castro. There is nothing in the embargo that punishes Castro. Certainly it seems to have enhanced his popularity. But be that as it may, for those people who want to get rid of the ruthless dictator, share with me what good it is to take a Cuban American that is here or a Cuban American that is here in America, and say that they can't send money back to Cuba to their family in a very poor country because we hate Castro. How can we tell farmers that want to sell food to the Cuban people that you can't do it? We have to get special permission to send medicine and food, and even that is being opposed by some. How do you tell a kid that wants to go to Cuba and to learn not communism but learn about medicine, or why not have Cuban kids be able to come here to learn about our great republic, our great democracy? How are we able to say that putting up a wall between the Cuban people and the American people is going to help get rid of this ruthless dictator? It would seem to me that we would have such pride in our ability to change the way people think about democracy by demonstrating it, but when you tell Americans who are so proud of ourselves that we are fortunate enough to live in the greatest Republic in the world, that we can brag about it in every city and every valley and every county in every country, but for God sake do not show the Communists in Cuba how proud you are, people who have never been able to enjoy any of the things that we just take for granted in this country. But realistically and honestly, has this got anything to do with the people in Cuba over Castro? Or does it have to do with the electoral college system in Florida? Is this not where we concentrate to make certain that we are going to try to find out who hates Castro the most? I wish we could change this debate around and have it to be who loves and cares for the Cuban people the most. Why can we not expose them to our market of food and medicine and education and the ideals of freedom that was fought for in this country? Why can we not go there and be able to say that we are not afraid of Castro, they cannot lock us up, so if you lock those people who disagree with you up, then we will stand up there and say this is what democracy IS about? Who are the greatest advocates of freedom than free Americans? I am suggesting that let us take the politics out of this. Let us take the embargo out of this. Let us be proAmerican, and those people who refuse to allow our American flag to be carried by Americans to Cuba, they are the ones that are stopping democracy; because I will suggest to you that any American that is so proud of what we have been able to do, we may have obstacles to overcome, but we love our country. We preach about how great it is, especially when we are overseas. Do not deny Americans the right to be able to say how great democracy is, and do not put a cap on our capitalism. Let us be able to sell to whomever wants to buy from us and do not blame it all on Castro because he is not being hurt.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Chairman, I hoped we would not distort the argument. If we can have a petition to circulate tomorrow, where we can support the release of all political prisoners, where we can condemn the dictatorship of Castro, hey, I would want to be a part of circulating it. I do hope that sometime you might try to explain to the American people how we are supporting Castro because we say that a Cuban American that wants to visit their sick parents or their brother and sister, how that compassionate visit is supporting communism. I would like to know how would supporting Castro, if what we are saying is that we want to send some money to poor families that are there, but we cannot do it because we hate Castro and we would be rewarding him, I would like to know how we are rewarding him when our farmers are denied the opportunity during the time they have to export food, the pharmaceuticals, the people who export the American dream, I would want to know as we put a cap on capitalism, how this is rewarding Castro? No, I think it has been said by many people. Castro uses us as a vehicle for his dictatorship. And the people who are in prison, I think if we had more Americans there and people from other countries there condemning his conduct, do you think that Americans would be locked up by this dictator if our youngsters were able to go there and protest there as they are so easily able to do it here? Why do you not open up this door and acknowledge, this is a Floridian problem. This is a political problem. This is who-hates-Castro-the-most type of problem. I submit to you, if you were to take this and say who likes the American people, who loves the American people the most, how can we help them the best, I would think it is to bring them medical care, to bring them food, to bring them help, to bring them technology and wrap it all up in the American flag and dare them to contest what we are doing because we are the freedom-loving people. We do not ban people from going to places, and I do not want to give up my democracy because of some feeling that people have of their own politics, which has nothing to do with my great country. Castro is not a threat to the United States of America. He is a threat to whether Republicans or Democrats gets votes out of Florida. The Cuban people are not a threat to our national security. They are always offering to send doctors here, to send blood here, because they love our way of life. If Castro is an impediment for them being able to know and enjoy what America stands for, then let Americans go there, especially Cuban Americans who know the tyranny of Cuba and know the freedom that they have enjoyed in Florida and New Jersey and New York and throughout these States. Who could be a better ambassador for freedom, an embargo or people who have known the pains of dictatorship and the love and the joy of the American way of life? So do what you want to do politically, but do not take away Americans' rights to be able to enjoy the hearts, the culture, the education, the music and all of the things that we have been able to enjoy, really, merely because you are trying to pick up a seat or two in the State of Florida. It is not fair to the Cuban people. It is not fair to the American people, and it is not fair to our Constitution.

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

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to enter into the Record an editorial from the New York CaribNews newspaper dated May 16, 2006 that draws attention to the ``longstanding and thorny problems'' associated with the deportation of criminal aliens and the resulting initiatives needed to re-integrate them into the society of their Caribbean homeland. The article addresses Caribbean born individuals who have broken the law in the United States and subsequently banished back to their homeland. There are varying opinions surrounding the re-integration of criminal aliens. Some feel that their return is creating serious problems while others blame the situation on the United States and other country that deport them. Mary Kramer, the U. S. Ambassador to several Caribbean nations believes that the deported criminal aliens are no real threat to the Caribbean states and are in fact productive law-abiding citizens. She also asserts that the criminal aliens are not playing a significant role in the upsurge in crime in the Caribbean. Grenada's Prime Minister, Dr. Keith Mitchell shares his opinion that in the criminal enterprise Americans have imparted all of their bad ways on the aliens and then deport them back to their regions as hardened criminals. P.J. Patterson, former Prime Minister of Jamaica cautions Ms. Kramer against relying on the U.S. statistics and conclusions reached by U.S. researchers. In this article he shares a concern about the relationship maintained by criminal aliens and gang members abroad. In the article, the editor offers several solutions to solve the problem of coping with deported criminal aliens. Similar pilot programs have been developed and implemented in other countries. Based on the statistics, there will continue to be an influx of criminal deportees to the Caribbean. If other well-to-do nations are truly interested in the economic and social development of the island-nations they should be prepared to assist financially in the re-integration process for Caribbean criminal aliens. Mr. Speaker: I submit this interesting and informative editorial from the CaribNews newspaper for submission to the Congressional Record. [From the New York CaribNews, May 16, 2006] Criminal Aliens: An Editorial Just when everyone thought that the question of why undocumented immigrants should stay in the United States was the only item on the table for discussion, we have been jolted back to reality to deal with a long-standing and thorny problem: criminal aliens. From London, Ottawa, Toronto, Kingston and Bridgetown to New York, Washington and other cities, we are being forced to focus our attention once again on the deportation of persons who have broken the law in the countries to which they have emigrated from the Caribbean. The trouble is that in deporting immigrants who have committed crimes in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom, are creating serious problems for their friends and allies in the Caribbean. That issue is at the root of a dispute involving the U.S. Ambassador to several nations in the region--Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts-Nevis, St. Lucia and St. Vincent. It seems as if Mary Kramer, America's top diplomat to those island-nations, has convinced herself that not only are the criminal aliens no real threat to the Caribbean states but they are productive law-abiding citizens in their homeland. Nothing can be further from the truth. Granted, some of them have become productive citizens. Also true, the U.S. has a responsibility to protect its borders and its people from persons, whether native born or immigrants from disrupting the society. And it can do that by enforcing its law. But to ignore the hard reality of what's happening in the Caribbean, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, included, is akin to burying one's head in the proverbial sand by pretending that choirboys and girls are being shipped to the region. That's unreal. According to a news agency report, Kramer believes that the deportees are not playing a significant role in the upsurge in crime in the Caribbean. In addition, she wants to get the word out that the U.S. was ``not deporting people who go to the U.S. as very small children and learn bad behavior.'' The evidence indicates otherwise. Many of the persons deported to Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, St. Lucia, Guyana, Haiti, Barbados and their neighbors left the U.S. as underage children and were sent back as hardened criminals. Just as bad they had lived in the U.S. for so long that on their return they knew no one and nobody knew them, a point made by Grenada's Prime Minister, Dr. Keith Mitchell, when he addressed Grenadians at a recent town meeting in Brooklyn. ``They are sending people from America and they got all of their bad ways in America and Canada and they send them back to the region,'' was the Dr. Mitchell put it. ``Each time you notice a problem home involving young people there is someone from North America (involved in Grenada).'' It's clear that criminal aliens are causing problems, serious problems in the English, French, Spanish and Dutch- speaking nations and territories in the Caribbean. It's also a fact, an awful reality that far too many of the deportees are involved in criminal behavior in the region. To deny that, as Kramer seems to have done is to engage in ostrich like conduct. The mistake she made was relying entirely on the statistics which U.S. funded surveys have unearthed. P.J. Patterson, until recently Jamaica's longest-serving Prime Minister, cautioned the Ambassador against relying on the data and the conclusions reached by the researchers. ``I don't think that one can look at it only in narrow statistical terms,'' Patterson told this paper. ``I say that because very often, especially in areas connected to drugs those who return get involved in leadership of gangs that maintain relationship with gangs that operate abroad and really influence the criminal activities that are taking place in particular communities in which they return.'' Cabinet ministers from St. Lucia, St. Kitts-Nevis, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Dominica have all made essentially the same complaint. Kramer should stick to the line taken by senior U.S. State Department officials and members of the U.S. Congress who have told Caribbean nations that American authorities are simply following the law and that's not going to change. To try to defend the bad bit of legislation and its damaging consequences on the Caribbean by denying the obvious isn't going to solve the problem. The solution isn't difficult to figure out. The countries deporting the criminals and those being forced to accept them should sit down and work out a reasonable policy that (1) ensures only Guyanese are deported to Guyana, Haitians to Port au Prince, Jamaicans to Kingston or Dominicans to Santo Domingo and so on; (2) Caribbean nations are given a reasonable amount of time to find out if the deportees are their nationals before they are put on a plane back home; (3) Caribbean states must accept the awful truth: U.S. lawmakers and the Bush Administration aren't going to change the law to stem the flow of deportees; and (4) a resettlement scheme funded by the U.S. and Caribbean nations should be undertaken to ease the re-integration of the deportees back into their birthplaces. Such programs have been developed and implemented on a pilot basis in a few countries and if the organizations involved are to be believed they seem to work. A re-integration effort is needed not only for detainees from the U.S. but from Canada and the United Kingdom and those countries must help too. Just last week, Tony Blair, the British prime Minister, fired his Home Secretary, Charles Clarke because his ministry had failed to deport criminal aliens after they had completed their jail sentences. The criticisms showered on the head of the Blair government and the public's demand that something about people who enter Britain and then commit crimes were so strong that they are bound to trigger a flood of deportees to the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific. Of the 77,000 inmates in British prisons, 10,113 of them are from foreign countries, including nearly 2,000 from the Caribbean. The outcry should serve as a warning to the Caribbean, expect more criminal deportees on your shores and it also cries out for some help from the rich nations. If, as they say, they are interested in the economic and social development of the island-nations then they should be prepared to help, not to undertake the total resettlement and reintegration effort but offer a helping hand.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address the issue of third world debt relief for the Record. In the article, Can Developing Countries Be Financial Saviors of Rich Nations?, published in Volume XXIV No. 1230 (May 24-30, 2006) issue of The New York CaribNews, Mr. Tony Best cites Dr. Jeremy Siegel, a professor of the Wharton School of Business. Addressing the possibility that the baby boomers' selling their savings stock and bonds would lead to a weakening of the assets of the rich nations, Dr. Siegel claims that the best solution is to allow investors from developing countries to buy up these excess stocks to maintain the market prices. Mr. Best asserts that some of ``the highest growth rates in dollar terms in market capitalization was in the emerging markets'' of Macedonia, West Bank and Gaza, Fiji, Nigeria, Jamaica, Botswana, Trinidad and Tobago, India, Kenya, Bermuda and Tanzania. As Mr. Best claims, if the global market is integrated so that ``the selling of assets from the old in the rich world to the young in the developing world is no more difficult than today's sales of assets by elderly folks,'' America's trade deficits in the developing world would not be a cause for concern. The increasing investments in American from the growing markets would be balanced by the existing trade deficits and debts owed by the developing countries to the U.S. [From the New York CaribNews, May 24-30, 2006] Can Developing Countries Be Financial Saviors of Rich Nations? (By Tony Best) It may not be a case of reverse Robin Hood, meaning stealing from the poor and giving it to the rich. But investors and stock markets in relatively poor nations of the Caribbean and Africa may in the long run be the next financial saviors of future prosperity in the world's wealthiest nations. Add Asia, Latin America and the Middle East to that list and the prospects would become clear, very clear. So, while people in G-8 nations and their affluent neighbors may not steal from such developing and relatively poor nations as Jamaica, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Uzbekistan, Nigeria, Botswana, Pakistan, Swaziland, Bermuda, Jordan and at least 40 other emerging markets, some economists in the U.S., Britain and elsewhere in the developed world are offering a bit of advice: keep your eyes on these economies because they are poised to help make up the shortfall of buyers of assets in the rich world. One such economist is Dr. Jeremy Siegel, a professor at the prestigious Wharton School of Business in the U.S. He believes that with many baby boomers in North America and Europe, persons born between 1946-64, getting ready or planning their retirement, they may sell off their stocks and bonds in large quantities to finance their retirement and that in turn can create a huge gap in the assets of rich nations. ``The sale of these assets will lead to a sharp fall in prices, because there are too few people in the smaller generations that followed the boomers to buy all of those assets at today's prices,'' stated The Economist as it explained Siegel's theory. The upshot: unless the baby-boomers delay their retirement, they could ``see their standard of living in retirement halved, relative to their final year of work,'' the Economist added. Siegel warns a huge sell-off of stocks and bonds by the baby-boomers can trigger a 40-50 percent fall in stock prices with a smaller pool of investors coming along in the rich countries to take up the financial slack. That's where the developing countries may come in, goes the argument. Some figures tell an interesting story. Although the top 10 stock markets in terms of capitalization are in the U.S., Japan, U.K., France, Germany, Canada, Spain, Switzerland, Hong Kong and China in that order, some of the highest growth rates in market capitalization in dollar terms between 1983-2003 were in emerging market. Macedonia, West Bank and Gaza, Fiji, Nigeria, Jamaica, Botswana, Trinidad and Tobago, India, Kenya, Bermuda and Tanzania are on that list. For instance, Fiji's growth was put at 760 percent; Jamaica's 297 percent; Trinidad and Tobago's 170 percent and Bermuda 92 percent. When it came to the highest growth in value traded between 1998-2003, Zimbabwe, Jordan, Jamaica, Israel, Trinidad and Tobago, United Arab Emirates, Barbados, Malaysia, South Africa, and Sri Lanka were listed among the 44 nations with the best performance. For instance while Zimbabwe had growth of 623 percent; Jamaica 507; percent Trinidad and Tobago 128 percent; Barbados 121 percent; and South Africa 76 percent; Germany's pace of expansion was 51 percent and Canada's 42 percent. Of course, it would take decades before those countries have the financial power to fill the financial gap but then who would have predicted in 1980 that China, India and Dubai would have become such economic giants as to drive fear in the hearts of protectionist lawmakers on Capitol Hill in Washington who worry about their ability to buy U.S. companies. Dr. Siegel is writing a new book called, ``The Global Solution,'' and in it he is insisting that by the middle of the 21st century most multinational companies must find new investors outside of North America, Europe and Japan. ``The challenge is to integrate global markets so that selling assets from the old in the rich world to the young in developing countries is no harder, no more unusual, than today's sales of assets by elderly folks,'' stated The Economist. ``From this perspective, America's external deficits, particularly with some developing countries may be both long-lasting and nothing to worry about.'' It goes without saying that investors in developing countries shouldn't forget that protectionist tendencies in the rich nations are alive and well and can retard growth.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in praise of an article written by Howard Dodson in Africana Heritage, a periodical from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, in New York City. I praise the piece because it touches on a very little known subject, that being the lives of Afro-Colombians in the Americas, a people with a rich and radiant culture who are so often ignored by mainstream Colombia. Their presence in the region dates back to the age of European exploration of the Americas and, in particular, the transatlantic slave trade. Dodson pointed out in his article that, ``the Afro-Colombian population had become so marginalized that for the overwhelming majority of Colombians as well as the world's people they were invisible.'' With over a quarter of the population being of African descent, there is no way this society should have been treated the way they were for so many years. He also describes how the system might now be changing: ``presence of Afro-Colombians as part of the Colombian nation may be at an all time high.'' The Afro-Colombian people understand their history, their identity and national heritage and the need to keep it alive for the generations to come. For such a rich and vibrant culture to dissolve with time would be a detriment to an entire race of people. What makes these people so unique is the one thing that may have kept them in isolation for so many years, their African ancestry. For years, the nation has been in denial about its connection to the people of Africa. However, the connection is so strong that, ``what makes Colombia's culture distinctly Colombian is likely the African presence in it,'' as noted by Dodson. The people of African descent in the Americas have carried with them over the Atlantic aged traditions and concepts unknown to the western hemisphere prior to their arrival. The plight of Afro-Descendent populations in Latin America and the Caribbean is one that I take special interest in, for their struggles have long gone on ignored for so many years. That was why I sponsored the bipartisan historic resolution H. Con. Res. 175 recognizing, for the first time ever, the struggles of African-descendent populations in Latin America and the Caribbean. This in turn urged the United States and the international community to support social development and economic programs targeting these groups. Usually denied the most basic necessities, African-Descendent populations, particularly in Latin America, are among the poorest, least educated, and most marginalized groups in the region. In terms of the Afro-Colombian population, they have the shortest life expectancies and the lowest literacy rates of any group in Colombia. Displacement, guerilla and military violence, and fragile economics make the struggle of these groups even more difficult. I enter into the Record the article by Howard Dodson for his continuing effort to give a face to the often ignored Afro-Descendent population in Latin America. Dodson took it upon himself to research and get a first hand account about the situation below our borders. I believe that this is an ideal opportunity for African Americans to reach out to their brothers and sisters in Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, Colombia and the rest of the hemisphere, for they are experiencing the same second-class treatment African Americans received in this country forty years ago. We need to come together to safeguard access to healthcare, education and basic human rights. [From the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 2006] Colombians Rediscover Their African Roots (By Howard Dodson) I returned to Colombia after a 40-year hiatus this past November. What was new there that I did not see during my visits from decades ago was the emergence of the consciousness of the Afro-Colombian population within the nation and an Afro-Colombian consciousness among Afro descendants. Forty years ago, indeed 10 years ago, the Afro- Colombian population had become so marginalized that for the overwhelming majority of Colombians as well as the world's people they were invisible. This is no longer the case. Consciousness of the presence of Afro-Colombians as a part of the Colombian nation may be at an all time high. And Afro- Colombians' consciousness of themselves as a critical but neglected segment of the Colombian national identity, heritage, and future is also at an all time high. When I visited Colombia in the 1960s, I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador. All of my travels in Latin America during my two-and-a-half-year tour of duty were partially a mission of discovery. As an African American living and traveling in South America for the first time, I was especially interested in meeting and learning more about people of African descent who lived in Latin America. In Colombia, I traveled to the Caribbean and Pacific Coasts and visited Cartagena, Barranquilla, Santa Marta, Cali, Medellin, Manizales, etc. I also spent some time in Bogota where I met a lot of Afro-Colombians, but at the time even they were reluctant to discuss their Africanness. While my most recent visit was limited to Bogota and Quibdo in the Choco region, the context in which it occurred announced for me the existence of a new era in Afro-Colombian history and culture. The Universidad Technologica del Choco, the country's major black university, has launched an initiative to establish a National Center for Documenting Afro-Colombian Cultural Expressions. I was invited, in my capacity as Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, to participate in a two-day planning symposium to continue to develop the concept and program for this new national initiative. I have devoted over 20 of the last 40 years of my life developing the Schomburg Center into the world's leading research library devoted exclusively to documenting the global black experience. Organizers of the planning symposium thought the Center's and my experiences might be helpful in developing the Center in Quibdo. Over the last decade, we've placed a special emphasis on the Afro Latino or Afro descendant populations in South and Central America. One recent collaborative effort took place in Colombia. The staff of the National Archives of Colombia in Bogota unearthed a plethora of historic documents on slavery and black people in Colombia during the colonial period. With funding from the Schomburg Center and York University in Toronto, Canada the Archives staff was able to digitize these records. A grant from UNESCO made it possible to develop these digitized resources into a robust website and now these historic documents on AfroColombians' colonial past are accessible to the world on the Internet. This project was an important beginning, but documenting the centrality of the African presence in the development of Colombia's national history and culture will require much more research and documentation. This is what the Universidad Technologica del Choco proposes to spearhead through its National Center for Documenting Afro-Colombian Cultural Expressions. Why is such an effort warranted at this time? First of all, recent scholarship on the African presence in the Americas has unearthed a startling demographic fact that is forcing scholars to rethink their understanding of the African presence in the Americas as well as the historical and cultural development of the Americas themselves. Between 1492 and 1776, or roughly the first 300 years of what is commonly referred to as the European colonization of the Americas, 6.5 million people survived the crossing of the Atlantic and settled in the Americas-North, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. Of those original 6.5 million settler pioneers, only 1 million were Europeans. The other 5.5 million were African. This simple demographic fact challenges all of our conventional notions about who were the principle history-and-culture-makers in the Americas during the colonial period. Cartagena, Colombia was the principle entrepot for the Africans who would eventually populate the Pacific Coast of South America and Colombia (or New Grenada as it was called). Two hundred plus years later, Colombia's Caribbean and Pacific Coast provinces still have the overwhelming majority of the nation's African descended population. Their marginalized and seemingly invisible state notwithstanding, they still constitute over 25 percent of the nation's 40 million people. Of equal importance, over the last decade and a half, thanks to the Constitution of 1991 and Law 70 of 1993, the nation has committed itself to ending black marginalization, integrating the African descended population into the national body politic. While fulfilling those commitments has been fraught with difficulty, the Afro-Colombian population has developed a new sense of entitlement and consciousness of its rights and is actively seeking to have the nation correct the consequences of centuries of neglect, discrimination, and invisibility. While the nation has been in a state of denial about the African roots of its past, the African presence in the national culture has been undeniable. Indeed, in the realm of culture--be it art, music, religion, dance, language, cuisine, etc.--what makes Colombia's culture distinctly Colombian is likely the African presence in it. Recent scholarship has begun this process of documentation, but more, much more needs to be done if the total integration of the society is to be realized. Finally, Afro-Colombians themselves have been in denial about their African heritages. As a consequence, they frequently know little or nothing about it. Their historical and cultural heritage are not included in the textbooks or taught in the schools. Stereotypical representations of African descended Colombians have all too frequently dominated the public media. And Afro-Colombians' unique cultural heritages have all too frequently been mocked or denigrated. The National Center proposes to foster the development of new scholarship that will reveal the true nature of the Afro- Colombian historical and cultural legacy. The project is off to an excellent start. During the two-day planning symposium, representatives of the National Library, The Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History, the National Archives and the Ministry of Culture were in attendance as were some of the country's leading scholars in the field of Afro-Colombian Studies. All have gone on record in support of this effort. Eduardo Garcia Vega, Director of the Universidad Technologica del Choco, has made a major commitment to the effort. There is already an academic program in Afro- Colombian Studies and plans are underway to offer a Masters Degree in the field. A full floor of the new technology building that is currently under construction has been designated to house the Center. It is scheduled for completion and occupancy in June 2006. Members of the faculty and staff of the University are already working with the Rector to make the Center a reality. Finally, Georgetown University's (Washington, D.C.) Colombia Program and the U.S. Embassy in Bogota have thrown their full support behind this effort. Among the unique features of the Center is that it will house a 21st century archive. The Center will conduct oral histories and document through film, audio, and audiovisual media contemporary Afro-Colombian cultural expressions. And it will collect and preserve some printed records. But the central archive of the Center will be a virtual one. Using the 21st century Internet technology, the Center will assemble a comprehensive virtual archive of print, audio, and audiovisual resources documenting Afro-Colombian history and culture. Developing a virtual resource will allow libraries, museums and archives that currently house Afro-Colombian materials to participate in the development of this national program without having to give up their original materials. Once online, the materials will be accessible throughout the country as well as throughout the world. Researchers and scholars will be able to conduct their research without having to leave their homes or their institutions. This national digital archive on Afro-Colombian cultural expressions will be the centerpiece of the Center's larger program of research, education, and celebration. I cannot begin to underscore the importance of this initiative. While we at the Schomburg Center attempt to document the global black experience, we are clear that no single institution can carry out such an ambitious agenda. Every country in the world that has large African descended populations needs a Center that is focused on preserving the records of their past. We have done an extraordinary job of documenting the African-American experience in the United States and our collections contain representative documentation of black people around the world. A national documentation center such as the one contemplated in Colombia will go a long way toward preserving the Afro-Colombian heritage for the Colombian people as well as filling this important gap in the documentation of the global black experience.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address the issue of HIV/ AIDS which remains a matter of global concern, even twenty-five years after the first case was diagnosed. June 5, 2006, as the world recognized the anniversary of AIDS, I am reminded that our duty as a world power is to ensure that this epidemic does not continue to devastate lives. Present day AIDS education is lacking the appropriate resources to spread the message that this disease is preventable. Without these resources and advocates to stand for the cause, HIV/AIDS will continue to infect millions of people worldwide. It is critical that this country and its leaders begin to increase awareness nationwide so that our constituents will understand the causes as well as effects of AIDS while we continue to be outspoken in the fight to find a cure. Furthermore, AIDS continues to ravage our communities due to the fact that there is not enough federal or state money placed into health initiatives to treat current patients or to find a cure. With the desperately needed funding for medical programs and treatment centers, many new cases can be prevented and persons who have the virus will receive affordable quality medication. We all have a calling to service our communities by making policies that increase awareness and target funding towards HIV/AIDS. I will maintain my stance that HIV/AIDS affects us all regardless of class, race or sex. Therefore, we must present a united front in the effort to prevent this disease from spreading and remain committed to increasing appropriations for HIV/AIDS, education and treatment. [From the Washington Post, June 2, 2006] Another $10 Billion The Generals in the global battle against HIV-AIDS are meeting at the United Nations this week, five years after another U.N. summit promised an intensified push against the crisis. The target of mobilizing $7 billion to $10 billion per year has been met: Last year low- and middle-income countries spent $2.5 billion of their own money and an additional $5.8 billion from donors on AIDS treatment and prevention and the care of orphans. But that money has bought less than expected. Rather than hitting the ``three by five'' target of getting medicines to 3 million people by 2005, the world has put only about 1.4 million people on treatment--a big improvement on the 240,000 who were receiving drugs in 2001 but still well less than half of the number who need medicines immediately. Equally, better-financed prevention efforts have succeeded in driving down infection rates among young adults, notably in Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Haiti. But last year there were 4.1 million new infections worldwide. The plague is still advancing. The summiteers in New York therefore confront a daunting problem. The latest U.N. estimate, which may prove as optimistic as the last one, is that fighting the disease will soon require $20 billion to $23 billion a year, more than twice the current spending. What's more, this is not a temporary commitment: Once people go on antiretroviral treatment, they need medicines for years; caring for orphans is also a long-term proposition. Assuming that some of the extra resources will be provided by middle-income countries, the rich world may need to reach into its taxpayers' pockets for an extra $10 billion a year. Official development assistance, which has already jumped by more than two-thirds in real terms between 2000 and 2005, would have to grow by a tenth or so. Moreover, the effect of that money will be limited unless the world expands its commitment to other development efforts. Donor-financed AIDS programs can suck nurses and doctors out of the rest of the health system, so an increase in AIDS spending requires a parallel increase in general health investment. AIDS flourishes in poor societies because illiteracy and penury make people vulnerable; success against the virus depends partly on broader progress. As President Paul Kagame of Rwanda told The Post on Wednesday, there's no use in giving someone antiretroviral drugs if he has no food. The imperative to raise extra money for AIDS and other development objectives raises an institutional issue. To carry out its commitments of five years ago, the world created the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which has raised and spent an impressive $5 billion; the question is whether this venture should be the vehicle for the next step-up in AIDS funding. The fund's critics, notably the Bush administration, rightly say that it has suffered from poor management, that it has occasionally given money on the basis of poor grant proposals and that it has indulged grantees whose performance should have led to a suspension of disbursements. But rather than snipe at the fund, the critics should work to improve it. The fund's structure provides a way of sharing the financial burden globally. The quality of its grants has recently gone up. And centralizing AIDS finance simplifies the administrative burden on stressed officials from poor countries. The fund's entrepreneurial leader, Richard Feachem, has announced that he will leave when his term expires this year. The priority should be to find a replacement who is pushy enough to raise extra money and sawy enough to solidify the institution's management.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to enter into the Record an article by Mr. Warren Hoge, titled Nations Benefit From Migration, U.N. Study Says, published in the New York Times on June 7, 2006. Mr. Hoge cites Mr. Kofi Annan in calling for broad international cooperation in order to ensure rapid growth in global migration. A recent United Nations study has shown that migrants provide strong socio-economic support for their country of origin as well as their new home nation. ``The alarm over the growing number of migrants has cast the issue in a negative light.'' The aging populations in developing countries are offset by the influx of immigrants. Currently in developed countries there is an average of 142 entrants into the labor force for every 100 people about to retire but the report predicts that in 10 years the number of entrants will become as low as 87. This deficit can easily be filled by immigrants since on average the developing countries have 342 entrants for every 100 retirements. Mr. Annan calls for ``tightening law enforcement to curb smuggling and trafficking, easing visa and naturalization rules, and establishing reliable financial services'' to better the conditions of the immigrant. The U.N. study clearly shows the advantages of immigration. In light of such evidence, how can the United States, the leading nation of the world, choose to impose harsh measures that curb immigration? My colleagues, let us create an open immigration policy for our national borders and ease the integration of immigrants into the U.S. rather than build a wall to keep everyone out. Nations Benefit From Migration, U.N. Study Says (By Warren Hoge) United Nations, June 6.--Secretary General Kofi Annan said Tuesday that the rapid growth in global migration should help, not harm, all countries but that broad international cooperation would be necessary to ensure it. ``We now understand better than ever before that migration is not a zero-sum game,'' Mr. Annan said. ``In the best cases, it benefits the receiving country, the country of origin and migrants themselves.'' He made his comments in a report he delivered to the General Assembly on migration and development, subjects that will be a focus of the annual gathering of heads of state at the United Nations in September. The report noted that alarm over the growing numbers of migrants had cast the issue in a negative light but asserted that the emphasis was misplaced, citing the aging of populations in developed countries that it said could be offset only by migration. ``We think that societies don't ask themselves enough what they would do without migrants,'' said Hania Zlotnik, director of the United Nations Population Division. Mr. Annan said he hoped the September meeting would take up measures to better conditions for migrants, including tightening law enforcement to curb smuggling and trafficking, easing visa and naturalization rules, and establishing reliable financial services to enable money to be sent home. From 1990 to 2005, the numbers of migrants in the world rose to 191 million from 155 million, the report said. It estimated that migrants sent $232 billion home in 2005. Of that, $167 billion went to developing countries, Mr. Annan said. The report said that migration sometimes reduced the wages of low-skilled workers in advanced economies, but that it more often freed citizens to perform high-paying jobs. Listing demographic statistics that will make a continued rise in migration inevitable, the report said that in developed countries there is an average of 142 young entrants to the labor force for every 100 people about to retire, but that in 10 years, the ratio will be 87 young entrants for every 100 who leave the labor force. This trend, it argued, creates a deficit that only migrants can close. At the same time, developing countries will have 342 candidates for every 100 jobs that open up.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to enter into the Record, an announcement for the Pan American Development Foundation's Inter- American Leadership award awarded to President Leonel Fernandez of the Dominican Republic on April 28, 2006. The award is bestowed on ``an individual who has demonstrated outstanding leadership in strengthening democracy in the hemisphere and promoting economic and social development in the Americas.'' Undoubtedly President Fernandez, known for his forward and original thinking, is such a person. At a time of economic turmoil, he has spearheaded numerous reforms and innovations in the economy of the Dominican Republic, promising to reduce inflation, to stabilize the exchange rate and to restore investor confidence. He has largely succeeded in increasing employment opportunities and has ``demonstrated a clear vision for a vibrant future for the Dominican Republic.'' He has worked with the PADF in promoting cross-border programs with Haiti with the goal of economic development, as well as, mitigating the hostile attitudes of the two people who share the island of Hispaniola. I praise the accomplishments of President Fernandez and congratulate him on receiving this award honoring his work. I hope that he will continue his effective leadership of his nation and I wish him every success. President Leonel Fernandez Receives PADF's Inter-American Leadership Award Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Apr. 28.--The Pan American Development Foundation (PADF) presented Dr. Leonel Fernandez, President of the Dominican Republic, its 2006 Inter-American Leadership Award this evening in a ceremony at the Hotel Hilton Santo Domingo attended by business, diplomatic, and governmental leaders. The PADF Inter-American Leadership Award is bestowed upon an individual who has demonstrated outstanding leadership in strengthening democracy in the hemisphere and promoting economic and social development in the Americas. Corporate support for the ceremony and dinner was provided by PADF's longtime corporate partners Stanford Financial Group, Citigroup, and Caterpillar, Inc. PADF's President of the Board of Trustees, Ruth Espey- Romero, stated, ``President Fernandez's dynamic leadership and vision for his countrymen has strengthened Dominican society. He is committed to advancing his country's economic condition. The President has a clear vision for a vibrant future for the Dominican Republic and how the border can serve as an engine of growth for the entire region. His record has demonstrated his commitment to PADF's vision of `Creating a Hemisphere of Opportunity for All.''' PADF also presented awards to several key corporate partners whose support has enabled PADF to accomplish its work throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Representatives of Stanford Financial Group, Altria Group (including Philip Morris International and Grupo Leon Jimenes), and the American Chamber of Commerce in Haiti each received recognition for their support of projects throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. The Pan American Development Foundation (PADF) is an international nonprofit organization established in 1962 through a unique partnership between the Organization of American States and private enterprise to promote, facilitate, and implement social and economic development in Latin America and the Caribbean through innovative partnerships and integrated involvement of the private and public sectors. PADF currently has offices in Bolivia, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, and Haiti, and has operated in every country throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. In the Dominican Republic, PADF is working with over 80 local organizations to strengthen to the border region and encourage private sector participation in development. Funding for the programs comes from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), with additional support from other public and corporate donors.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce into the Record an opinion piece by former Navy lawyer Alberto J. Mora entitled ``An Affront to American Values'' which appeared in the Washington Post on May 27, 2006, as well as an Op-Ed of February 20, 2006 in The New York Times entitled ``Senior Lawyer at Pentagon Broke Ranks on Detainees.'' The Times pointed out in its Op-Ed that Alberto Mora in his position as one of the Pentagon's top civilian lawyers ``repeatedly challenged the Bush administration's policy on the coercive interrogation of terror suspects, arguing that such practices violated the law, verged on torture, and could ultimately expose senior officials to prosecution . . .'' The information came from a then newly disclosed document, a memorandum Mr. Mora wrote in July 2004 and made public in an article in The New Yorker magazine on February 19, 2006. I have repeatedly spoken out against the ``torture policies'' directly traced to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney (who remains a champion of torture) and President Bush who two weeks after the Congress passed a law banning all torture of any person in the custody of the U.S. issued a signing letter stating he was not bound by that law when in his judgment he needs to use torture in his war on terror. I am immensely gratified to know Mr. Mora challenged the opinions of Secretary Rumsfeld, who is not a lawyer and appears to have a low regard for the law, regarding the legal parameters of the treatment of detainees. But I am most proud and grateful for two excellent questions Mr. Mora asked his clients at the Pentagon which The Times reported: ``Defense Department officials found striking and out of character for a loyal Republican, a supporter of President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld and the fight against terrorism.'' He asked the questions every one in the Pentagon and the Military of good character should have asked regardless of his or her party affiliation or loyalty to the President. According to the memo printed in The New Yorker Mr. Mora asked the Pentagon's chief lawyer, William J. Haynes II: ``Even if one wanted to authorize the U.S. Military to conduct coercive interrogations, as was the case in Guantanamo, how could one do so without profoundly altering its core values and character?'' According to the Times article after trying to rally other senior officials to his position, Mr. Mora met again with Mr. Hayes on January 10, 2003. His question to Mr. Hayes that day is another every person of good moral character should be asking: ``Had we jettisoned our human rights policies?'' I will here answer both of Mr. Mora's questions: NO. The U.S. Military can not adopt coercive tactics as were used at Guantanamo without profoundly altering its core values and character. Look at what occurred at Haditha, Iraq. YES. As to prisoners in our custody with President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld in full charge of the Iraq war, the Military has abandoned its 200 year history and jettisoned its human rights policies. Mr. Mora retired on December 31, 2005. I am pleased he is still speaking out for American values and still asking very good questions. In his opinion piece in The Washington Post he asks the American people to consider some very good questions about the continued detention and treatment of ``unlawful combatants'' at Abu Ghraib and the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo. In naming his piece ``An Affront to American Values'' I knew immediately Mr. Mora has not changed his mind about the way the President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld are directing the military to treat prisoners in military custody no matter how they are named; unlawful combatants, detainees or high-value targets. Perhaps he is now making his arguments to the American people because his opinions were heard but clearly disregarded by the Pentagon's Chief Lawyer. And Mr. Mora believes he was right. I believe he was right. I believe Bush- Cheney-Rumsfeld, Attorneys (the President can do anything he wants) John Wu, David Addington Cheney's Attorney, and now Chief of Staff, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez were very wrong on the treatment and labeling of prisoners and remain wrong. I agree with Representative John Murtha; we lost the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people at Abu Ghraib. We also lost American support of the war in part because of what Americans did at Abu Ghraib. We lost more Americans because of treatment of detainees at Guantanamo. We will lose still more with incidents like the massacre of innocent men, women. Have we had turned our marines into murderers who shot two-year old babies? They are in a war based on lies, run by a Secretary of Defense who has no idea of how to get them out, who doesn't give them what they need to protect themselves, enough help to hold territory they fight for and stays in the hanger where he plane lands when he visits the troops. In the Post opinion piece Mr. Mora reminds us of how we treated Japanese Americans during World War II and just how we came to treat these innocent people as if they were criminals and spies because of their ancestry. He reminds us how we did this crime in violation of the United States Constitution and how the U.S. Supreme Court abdicated its judicial responsibility in the famous Korematsu decision, in which it endorsed the patently unconstitutional detention of American citizens. Americans unconstitutionally detained Japanese Americans because Mr. Mora writes; ``in our quest for security'' when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, ``in what will always be regarded as an act of national shame, military authorities rounded up 120,000 American citizens and incarcerated them on the presumption of disloyalty. . . .'' Korematsu reminds us that when threats and fear converge, our laws and principles can become fragile. They are fragile today. Mr. Mora writes that in the summer of 2002, U.S. authorities held in detention at Guantanamo and elsewhere people President Bush, Vice President Cheney Secretary Rumsfeld and perhaps others believed had information needed to prevent further terrorist attacks. These same people believed the detainees could be called ``unlawful combatants'' and ``interrogation methods'' constituting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment could be applied at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other locations. We know the treatment may have reached the level of torture in some instances. The American public knows torture occurred as do the members of the Congress who supported John McCain's anti torture amendment which became law and is now the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. The American people have read the testimony and perhaps heard the testimony of some of the innocent people who suffered U.S. ``rendition'' to another country like Syria and have returned after being tortured and attempted to sue the U.S. government for their treatment. There is not an iota of fact showing that torture yields good evidence. Senator John McCain who was tortured for more than five years testified to that. Experts in torture all agree people who are tortured will say anything to make the pain stop. I am ashamed for my country because The Detainee Treatment Act had to be introduced and voted on because this proud country has always had a policy of acknowledging the basic human rights of prisoners of war. The United States does not execute prisoners of war and does not torture, humiliate, starve, degrade or otherwise treat prisoners of war in a way that is inhuman. Our military has always been bound by the Uniform Military Code, the Geneva Conventions and the Laws of War. In addition, as Mr. Mora writes: ``It is astonishing to me, still, that I should be here today addressing the issue of American cruelty--or that anyone would ever have to. Our forefather, who permanently defined our civic values, drafted our Constitution inspired by the belief that law could not create but only recognize certain inalienable rights granted by God--to every person, not just citizens, not just here but everywhere. Those rights are a shield that protects core human dignity. Because this is so, the Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel punishment. The constitutional jurisprudence of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments outlaws cruel treatment that shocks the conscience. The Geneva Conventions forbid the application of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of all captives, as do all of the major or human rights treaties adopted and ratified by our country during the last century.'' I find it shocking as well. What I also find shocking and disheartening is an answer Secretary Rumsfeld gave the other day when asked if the prohibition against torture had been put into the field manual and into practice; his answer was ``not yet.'' The reason that it was not yet in the field manual for the military in Iraq and Afghanistan? The Pentagon was still arguing about certain terms like ``unlawful combatant.'' The Secretary of Defense doesn't get it. The anti-torture law applies to any person in the custody of Americans wherever they are. The fact that Rumsfeld is holding up the implementation of the anti-torture act and the implementation of human rights military policy of the past 200 years, the conduct we agreed to when we signed treaties and the treatment of prisoners we agreed to when we signed and then ratified the Geneva Conventions, leaves our men and women fighting Mr. Bush's Iraq war in great danger of being charged with criminal offenses. In fact, it is happening now. The American people must fight back. They must let this Administration know how much they object to what is happening to our proud military's moral character. American's must know this President relies on a Secretary of Defense that has no regard for Generals that have served in combat and understands the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the rules governing how our military treats prisoners of war. Our men and women in combat are at grave risk when such crucial decisions are made by men who have never served in the military and will not take the advice of those who have. Mr. Mora asks: `` In this war, we have come to a crossroads--much as we did in the events that led to Korematsu: Will we continue to regard the protection and promotion of human dignity as the essence of our national character and purpose or will we bargain away human and national dignity in return for an additional possible measure of physical security?'' Mr. Mora tells us as he attempted to tell his boss at the Pentagon why it matters for us to care about the human rights of prisoners and our national dignity. He writes: ``We should care because the issues raised by a policy of cruelty are too fundamental to be left unaddressed, unanswered or ambiguous. We should care because a tolerance of cruelty will corrode our values and our rights and degrade the world in which we live. It will corrupt our heritage, cheapen the valor of the soldiers upon whose past and present sacrifices our freedoms depend, and debase the legacy we will leave to our sons and daughters. We should care because it is intolerable to us that anyone should believe for a second that our nation is tolerant of cruelty. And we should care because each of us knows that this issue has not gone away.'' An Affront to American Values (By Alberto J. Mora) In response to the 3,000 murders on Sept. 11, 2001, our nation went to war. In Afghanistan, our targets were the al- Qaeda perpetrators and the Taliban regime that aided and abetted them. In Iraq, the target was an unstable tyrant who had a history of using chemical weapons and who could be trusted to cheat on and retreat from his international commitments. I supported both engagements as Navy general counsel. I support them still as a private citizen. I regard each as a prudent and even necessary use of force. The terrorist threat, and the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction in reckless hands, can never be underestimated. And yet, there have been times in our nation's history when, in our quest for security, our fear momentarily overcomes our judgment and our power slips the discipline of the law and our national values. One such moment occurred in 1942, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In what will always be regarded as an act of national shame, military authorities rounded up 120,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry and incarcerated them on the presumption of disloyalty. These citizens were stripped of their rights and held in detention camps for the duration of the war. Many lost businesses and property. When we recall this event--and it is relevant to our current situation--we also recall with shame the Supreme Court's abdication of its judicial responsibilities in the notorious Korematsu decision, in which it endorsed the legality of the patently unconstitutional detention. Korematsu reminds us that when threats and fear converge, our laws and principles can become fragile. They are fragile today. In the summer of 2002, at Guantanamo and elsewhere, U.S. authorities held in detention individuals thought to have information on other impending attacks against the United States. Unless this information was obtained, it was believed, more Americans--perhaps many more--would die. In this context, our government issued legal and policy documents providing, in effect, that for some detainees labeled as ``unlawful combatants,'' interrogation methods constituting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment could be applied under the president's constitutional commander in chief authorities. Although there is debate as to the details of how, when and why, we know such cruel treatment was applied at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other locations. We know the treatment may have reached the level of torture in some instances. And there are still questions as to whether these policies were related, if at all, to the deaths of several dozen detainees in custody. It is astonishing to me, still, that I should be here today addressing the issue of American cruelty--or that anyone would ever have to. Our forefathers, who permanently defined our civic values, drafted our Constitution inspired by the belief that law could not create but only recognize certain inalienable rights granted by God--to every person, not just citizens, and not just here but everywhere. Those rights form a shield that protects core human dignity. Because this is so, the Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel punishment. The constitutional jurisprudence of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments outlaws cruel treatment that shocks the conscience. The Geneva Conventions forbid the application of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment to all captives, as do all of the major human rights treaties adopted and ratified by our country during the last century. Despite this, there was abuse. Not all were mistreated, but some were. For those mistreated, history will ultimately judge what the precise quantum of abuse inflicted was-- whether it was torture or some lesser cruelty--and whether it resulted from official commission or omission, or occurred despite every reasonable effort to prevent the abuse. Whatever the ultimate historical judgment, it is established fact that documents justifying and authorizing the abusive treatment of detainees during interrogation were approved and distributed. These authorizations rested on three beliefs: that no law prohibited the application of cruelty; that no law should be adopted that would do so; and that our government could choose to apply the cruelty--or not--as a matter of policy depending on the dictates of perceived military necessity. The fact that we adopted this policy demonstrates that this war has tested more than our nation's ability to defend itself. It has tested our response to our fears and the measure of our courage. It has tested our commitment to our most fundamental values and our constitutional principles. In this war, we have come to a crossroads--much as we did in the events that led to Korematsu: Will we continue to regard the protection and promotion of human dignity as the essence of our national character and purpose, or will we bargain away human and national dignity in return for an additional possible measure of physical security? Why should we still care about these issues? The Abu Ghraib abuses have been exposed; Justice Department memoranda justifying cruelty and even torture have been ridiculed and rescinded; the authorizations for the application of extreme interrogation techniques have been withdrawn; and, perhaps most critically, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which prohibits cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, has been enacted, thanks to the courage and leadership of Sen. John McCain. We should care because the issues raised by a policy of cruelty are too fundamental to be left unaddressed, unanswered or ambiguous. We should care because a tolerance of cruelty will corrode our values and our rights and degrade the world in which we live. It will corrupt our heritage, cheapen the valor of the soldiers upon whose past and present sacrifices our freedoms depend, and debase the legacy we will leave to our sons and daughters. We should care because it is intolerable to us that anyone should believe for a second that our nation is tolerant of cruelty. And we should care because each of us knows that this issue has not gone away. The writer, who retired as Navy general counsel last year, wrote a memo to Pentagon officials two years before the Abu Ghraib scandal that warned against circumventing international agreements on torture and detainee treatment. This article is excerpted from remarks he made upon receiving a 2006 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise to enter into the Record a column by Nicholas Kristof: ``The Drumroll, Please'' in the May 23, 2006 edition of The New York Times and his column of March 26, 2006 entitled ``A Woman Without Importance.'' Mr. Kristof uses his New York Times column to bring to our attention important, little known and neglected human rights causes. In the past 12 months many of these causes have come from Mr. Kristofs observations during his many trips to countries in Africa. As a persistent, compassionate journalist advocating for women's rights in Africa, Mr. Kristof has no peer. To me, he is a quiet but powerful voice forcing our recognition that women and girls are without basic human rights in many countries in Africa and other countries as well such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Pakistan. In a column of March 26, 2006, Mr. Kristoff wrote about Aisha Parveen who at the age of 14 was living in northwest Pakistan when she was hit over the head while walking to school. She awoke to find herself imprisoned in a brothel where she was tortured and imprisoned for 6 years. When she escaped she married a man who helped her. The brothel owner sued the couple claiming he had married the 14-year-old Aisha Parveen. She was accused of adultery and was ordered to go back to the brothel owner. Girls in Africa are often sold as sex slaves or servants. In some countries girls are inherited or used to payoff debts. Marriages are arranged for them when they are as young as 12 years. They have babies before their bodies are able to deliver a child vaginally. With no medical help most labor for days to deliver a dead baby and are left with terrible birth injuries. If the mother is incontinent because of an injury called a fistula she is shunned by her family and her husband forced to live away from the village. Mr. Kristof won the Pulitzer Prize for risking his life returning to the Darfur region of southern Sudan again and again to tell the stories of the people suffering from the remaining victims of a concerted effort by the Arab government in Khartoum to eliminate every last one of them. Kristof has chronicled genocide in Darfur as it has continued unabated for three years and goes on now in spite of a newly signed peace accord brokered in part by the United States. Kristof has told the personal stories of people who have suffered from the rampages of the Janjaweed, the proxy murderers of the Government of Sudan in Khartoum. He has personalized the murders, the maiming, the rapes, the killing of children, by telling the heart breaking stories of people who have lost their homes, their children and parents, husbands and wives, their livestock, their lands and their freedom. Perhaps because so little print had been spent on Darfur, Mr. Kristoff, decided people were not familiar enough with Africa to become sympathetic to the plight of people who are targets of a ruthless, cruel genocide. Maybe Mr. Kristof had the idea that more students should make travel to other countries part of their college education and more universities should offer such trips. As he announced in his video a ``win a trip'' contest in March he felt he got a great education from his trips when he was a student that he was sponsoring a ``win a trip'' competition because he had learned so much from his trips to other countries while he was a student that he felt more students needed to experience life in other countries. Kristof's idea of visiting other countries is visiting places where the people of the country live, not visiting tourist places like Paris and London. In Mr. Kristof's video announcing the ``win a trip'' contest, the camera views him from above as he appears to be standing on a wide sand beach. Mr. Kristof begins by talking about spring breaks and how many American college students spend their spring breaks and summers reveling beaches. But as the camera closes in, it become clear Mr. Kristof is not on a beach and not near an American city or village recognizable to most Americans until the camera broadens its view to take in a skinny donkey with a rider and a few people wearing the long draped clothes and hoods common to desert peoples who are always needing protection from a brutal, relentless sun. For years Mr. Kristof has used his column in the Times to chronicle the continuing slow genocide in Darfur with the individual stories of people who have been maimed, raped and had children killed in front of them and to stop the genocide in Darfur. He has told the stories of the individuals who have lost everything they had; families, homes, livestock and parents. He has traveled to places in Africa where women are the least of the least and has chronicled stories of women who are shunned by their families if they are raped or worse go to jail even though they are the victims of crime. The fact that 3,800 aspiring journalists from universities around the country applied to accompany Mr. Kristof on an admittedly ``rough'' reporting trip to ``a neglected area in Africa'' speaks volumes about the esteem in which these students hold Mr. Kristof. The number of applicants wanting to go to Africa gives me enormous hope for Africa and our country. There is no better way for Americans to know Africa than to go there. And for those who will not be able to go themselves they will benefit from the journalists like Casey Parks the winner of the first ``win a trip'' contest who is accompanying Mr. Kristof this summer to Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon and the Central African Republic. My wish for Ms. Parks is that she has a long career as a journalist who will write so intimately and well of her journey, that the people of Africa will be seen as individual human beings to her readers. My hope for Mr. Kristof is that is he is able to take a different aspiring journalist every year and convince Universities and colleges around the country of the value of establishing programs for students to live in countries they will not visit as tourists to see how the people of these countries live their lives. [From the New York Times, May 23, 2006] The Drumroll, Please (By Nicholas D. Kristof) In March I opened a ``win a trip'' contest, offering to take a university student with me on a rough reporting trip to a neglected area in Africa. Some 3,800 applications poured in, accompanied by boxes of supplementary materials, ranging from senior theses to nude photos. After weeks of sifting through the applications, I finally have a winner. She is Casey Parks of Jackson, Miss.--an aspiring journalist who has never traveled abroad. We'll get her a passport and a bunch of vaccinations--ah, the glamour of overseas travel--and start planning our trip. Casey, who turned 23 on Friday, attended Millsaps College in Jackson and is now a graduate student in journalism at the University of Missouri. She has won a string of awards for her essays and other writing. In her essay, Casey wrote about growing up poor: ``I saw my mother skip meals. I saw my father pawn everything he loved. I saw our cars repossessed. I never saw France or London.'' (The essays by Casey and a dozen finalists are posted at nytimes.com/winatrip.) ``I so desperately want to leave this country and know more,'' she wrote. Now she'll have the chance. We'll most likely start in Equatorial Guinea, bounce over to Cameroon and travel through a jungle with Pygmy villages to end up in the Central African Republic--one of the most neglected countries in the world. We'll visit schools, clinics and aid programs, probably traveling in September for 10 days. Casey will write a blog about it for nytimes.com and will also do a video blog for MTV-U. But the point of this contest wasn't to give one lucky student the chance to get malaria and hookworms. It's to try to stir up a broader interest in the developing world among young people. One of our country's basic strategic weaknesses is that Americans don't understand the rest of the world. We got in trouble in Vietnam and again in Iraq partly because we couldn't put ourselves in other people's shoes and appreciate their nationalism. According to Foreign Policy magazine, 92 percent of U.S. college students don't take a foreign language class. Goucher College in Baltimore bills itself as the first American college to require all students to study abroad, and the rest should follow that example. So for all the rest of you who applied for my contest, see if you can't work out your own trips. Or take a year off before heading to college or into ajob. You'll have to pay for your travel, but you can often find ``hotels'' for $5 a night per person in countries like India, Pakistan, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Morocco, Bolivia and Peru--and in rural areas, people may invite you to stay free in their huts. To get around, you can jump on local buses. Is it safe? Not entirely, for the developing world has more than its share of pickpockets, drunken soldiers, scorpions, thugs, diseases, parasites and other risks. Twenty-two years ago, as a backpacking student, I traveled with a vivacious young American woman who, like me, was living in Cairo. She got off my train in northern Sudan; that evening, the truck she had hitched a ride in hit another truck. Maybe if there had been an ambulance or a doctor nearby, she could have been saved. Instead, she bled to death. So, yes, be aware of the risks, travel with a buddy or two, and carry an international cellphone. But remember that young Aussies, Kiwis and Europeans take such a year of travel all the time--women included--and usually come through not only intact, but also with a much richer understanding of how most of humanity lives. There are also terrific service options. Mukhtar Mai, the Pakistani anti-rape activist I've often written about, told me she would welcome American volunteers to teach English in the schools she has started. You would have to commit to staying six weeks or more, but would get free housing in her village. You can apply by contacting www.4anaa.org. Then there's New Light, a terrific anti-trafficking organization in Calcutta. Urmi Basu, who runs it, said she would welcome American volunteers to teach English classes to the children of prostitutes. You would have to stay at least six weeks and budget $15 a day for food and lodging; for more information go to www.uddami.org/newlight. In the 21st century, you can't call yourself educated if you don't understand how the other half lives--and you don't get that understanding in a classroom. So do something about your educational shortcomings: fly to Bangkok.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to enter into the Record ``Witness for Justice #269'' entitled Invisible People, published May 22, 2006 by the United Church of Christ of Cleveland, Ohio. The statement, one of a series of observations on the state of justice in the U.S. today, eloquently written by Carl P. Wallace, Executive Associate of this Church on 700 Prospect Ave. in Cleveland, criticizes the ineffectiveness of the current administration in contending with the devastating impacts of Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Wallace warns us, ``Right before our eyes we are losing our children'' as they continue to remain invisible in the eyes of the relief and aid workers in the Gulf Coast. Katrina orphaned thousands of children whose ordeal is prolonged due to inadequate health care, public education and housing services. ``One in three sheltered children in the Gulf Coast region has some type of chronic illness.'' Almost none of them have health care coverage. Highlighting the fact that one-fourth to one-fifth of the children in America are growing up in poverty, Mr. Wallace suggests, and I concur, that the 1.9 trillion dollars of tax cuts would be better employed to provide health care for 9 million uninsured children and mitigate child poverty. I also join Mr. Wallace in questioning the reason behind this invisibility of our children. Are they invisible because ``they do not vote, lobby or pay taxes?'' Is it acceptable to allow these children to be neglected, even abused? What happened to compassion and human kindness? Mr. Wallace ends on the hopeful note that through prayer and action ``the invisible can be made visible.'' The Children's Defense fund has already released a ``Call to Action for Katrina's Children,'' that focuses on providing immediate health and health services and quality public education, as well as, creating an enduring support base for such endeavors. I join Mr. Wallace in all his concerns and call upon my colleagues in the Congress to alleviate the suffering of children affected by Hurricane Katrina. [From Witness for Justice #269, May 22, 2006.] Invisible People (By Carl P. Wallace) Ever wonder what it would be like to be invisible? You could go around and nobody would see you. Nobody would know you existed. Do you remember playing hide and seek? Wow. If you were invisible you could always win the game because no one would be able to find you. ``Ollie Ollie ump fee. I'm coming to find you.'' What a game. Those who could hide the best always won the game. It was great being invisible until you discovered that if no one cared to find you, you really did not win. Regrettably, there is a similar game being played in the Gulf Coast. Our children appear to be invisible. But it is no game. It is a situation of life and death. And right before our eyes we are witnessing the most devastating reality of what it means to be invisible in the richest country in the world. Right before our eyes we are losing our children. We are literally losing our children due to the lack of adequate health care, public education and housing. There are over 125,000 displaced families in the Gulf Coast. In a Red Cross shelter north of Birmingham, Alabama there are over 2,000 children who have lost their parents. In a FEMA trailer park outside of Baton Rouge 700 of the 1,670 residents are children. In the richest nation in the world one-fifth to one-fourth of our children are growing up in poverty. Of the 1.9 trillion dollars of tax cuts, which will give the richest 1 percent of all tax payers $57 billion each year, we could instead provide health care for all 9 million uninsured children and end child poverty in America. Wow! Centuries ago Jesus said, ``Let the little children come to me, and do nothing to hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.'' (Matthew 19:14). Maybe we missed Jesus' request. Sometimes I wonder where our priorities are. A wise man once said: ``Where your heart is there also is your treasure.'' Are our children our treasure? It is extremely painful to note that one-in-three sheltered children in the Gulf Coast region has some type of chronic illness. Are our children our treasure? In the Gulf Coast region one-half of the children who had some level of health coverage do not have any now. Are our children our treasure? Did the need for health care coverage just disappear? Have a heart. I guess invisible people don't need health care. Let's think about it. Perhaps our children are invisible because they do not vote, lobby or pay taxes. Let's think about another point. Can you imagine what it must be like to be undocumented and in this situation? Is there such a thing as double invisibility? The Children's Defense fund released a ``Call to Action for Katrina's Children.'' It calls in part for: immediate emergency mental health and health services for children and their families; quality public education and after-school and summer education; as much attention focused on constructing levees of support for strong health care, family and public education as they will for the construction of the physical levies that will hold back the water in future storms; and, prayer for Katrina children and families and for leaders who work for justice. Prayer and action will make a difference. Our children must be made visible. Maybe, just maybe, if we lift our voices to make their needs known our children will not disappear right before our eyes. Maybe, just maybe if we take action we will not lose the least of these. Maybe, just maybe we will find our treasure. The invisible can be made visible. ``Ollie, Ollie ump fee. We're coming to find you!''

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address the issue of third world debt relief for the Record. In the article, Can Developing Countries Be Financial Saviors of Rich Nations?, published in Volume XXIV No. 1230 (May 24-30, 2006) issue of The New York CaribNews, Mr. Tony Best cites Dr. Jeremy Siegel, a professor of the Wharton School of Business. Addressing the possibility that the baby boomers' selling their savings stocks and bonds would lead to a weakening of the assets of the rich nations, Dr. Siegel claims that the best solution is to allow investors from developing countries to buy up these excess stocks to maintain the market prices. Mr. Best asserts that some of ``the highest growth rates in dollar terms in market capitalization was in the emerging markets'' of Macedonia, West Bank and Gaza, Fiji, Nigeria, Jamaica, Botswana, Trinidad and Tobago, India, Kenya, Bermuda and Tanzania. As Mr. Best claims, if the global market is integrated so that ``the selling of assets from the old in the rich world to the young in the developing world is no more difficult than today's sales of assets by elderly folks'' America's trade deficits in the developing world would not be a cause for concern. The increasing investments in America from the growing markets would be balanced by the existing trade deficits and debts owed by the developing countries to the U.S. [From the New York CaribNews, May 24, 2006] Can Developing Countries Be Financial Saviors of Rich Nations? (By Tony Best) It may not be a case of reverse Robin Hood, meaning stealing from the poor and giving it to the rich. But investors and stock markets in relatively poor nations of the Caribbean and Africa may in the long run be the next financial saviors of future prosperity in the world's wealthiest nations. Add Asia, Latin America and the Middle East to that list and the prospects would become clear, very clear. So, while people in G-8 nations and their affluent neighbors may not steal from such developing and relatively poor nations as Jamaica, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Uzbekistan, Nigeria, Botswana, Pakistan, Swaziland, Bermuda, Jordan and at least 40 other emerging markets, some economists in the U.S., Britain and elsewhere in the developed world are offering a bit of advice: keep your eyes on these economies because they are poised to help make up the shortfall of buyers of assets in the rich world. One such economist is Dr. Jeremy Siegel, a professor at the prestigious Wharton School of Business in the U.S. He believes that with many baby boomers in North America and Europe, persons born between 1946-64, getting ready or planning their retirement, they may sell off their stocks and bonds in large quantities to finance their retirement and that in turn can create a huge gap in the assets of rich nations. ``The sale of these assets will lead to a sharp fall in prices, because there are too few people in the smaller generations that followed the boomers to buy all of those assets at today's prices,'' stated The Economist as it explained Siegel's theory. The upshot: unless the baby-boomers delay their retirement, they could ``see their standard of living in retirement halved, relative to their final year of work,'' the Economist added. Siegel warns a huge sell-off of stocks and bonds by the baby-boomers can trigger a 40-50 percent fall in stock prices with a smaller pool of investors coming along in the rich countries to take up the financial slack. That's where the developing countries may come in, goes the argument. Some figures tell an interesting story. Although the top 10 stock markets in terms of capitalization are in the U.S., Japan, U.K., France, Germany, Canada, Spain, Switzerland, Hong Kong and China in that order, some of the highest growth rates in market capitalization in dollar terms between 1983-2003 were in emerging markets. Macedonia, West Bank and Gaza, Fiji, Nigeria, Jamaica, Botswana, Trinidad and Tobago, India, Kenya, Bermuda and Tanzania are on that list. For instance, Fiji's growth was put at 760 percent; Jamaica's 297 percent; Trinidad and Tobago's 170 percent and Bermuda 92 percent. When it came to the highest growth in value traded between 1998-2003, Zimbabwe, Jordan, Jamaica, Israel, Trinidad and Tobago, United Arab Emirates, Barbados, Malaysia, South Africa, and Sri Lanka were listed among the 44 nations with the best performance. For instance while Zimbabwe had growth of 623 percent; Jamaica 507 percent, Trinidad and Tobago 128 percent; Barbados, 121 percent; and South Africa 76 percent, Germany's pace of expansion was 51 percent and Canada's 42 percent. Of course, it would take decades before those countries have the financial power to fill the financial gap but then who would have predicted in 1980 that China, India and Dubai would have become such economic giants as to drive fear in the hearts of protectionist lawmakers on Capitol Hill in Washington who worry about their ability to buy U.S. companies. Dr. Siegel is writing a new book called, ``The Global Solution,'' and in it he is insisting that by the middle of the 21st century most multinational companies must find new investors outside of North America, Europe and Japan. ``The challenge is to integrate global markets so that selling assets from the old in the rich world to the young in developing countries is no harder, no more unusual, than today's sales of assets by elderly folks,'' stated The Economist. ``From this perspective, America's external deficits, particularly with some developing countries may be both long-lasting and nothing to worry about.'' It goes without saying that investors in developing countries shouldn't forget that protectionist tendencies in the rich nations are alive and well and can retard growth.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to enter into the Record, an op-ed piece, entitled Consider the Living, published May 29, 2006 by Bob Herbert of the New York Times. Herbert eloquently points out the hypocrisy of the Bush administration on the issue of the war in Iraq. Herbert declares that the fastest way to end this war is to ``start sending the children of the well-to-do to Baghdad, and start raising taxes to pay of the many hundreds of billions that the war is costing.'' The claim that chaos would ensue if we pull out of Iraq is just an excuse to continue the reckless actions of the current administration. Recalling President Bush's challenge to the insurgents to ``bring 'em on,'' Herbert counters that we have lost nearly 2,500 Americans in the war and tens of thousands of Iraqis, and they are still ``bringing 'em on.'' The ones suffering the most in the war are the non-combatants, Iraqi residents who are ``like sheep in a slaughter farm.'' Even after three years parts of Western Iraq are not under U.S. control. Is this what we are to looking forward to? Is the next three years going to cost us 2,500 more American lives as well as billions more of taxpayers money? Not to mention that casualties on the Iraqi side and the atrocities that are byproducts of war. My colleagues, I join Mr. Herbert in urging you to take decisive measures to bring a swift end to this fiasco. Let us stop this needless waste of lives. [From the New York Times, May 29, 2006] Consider the Living (By Bob Herbert) Pretty soon this war in Iraq will have lasted as long as our involvement in World War II, with absolutely no evidence of any sort of conclusion in sight. The point of Memorial Day is to honor the service and the sacrifice of those who have given their lives in the nation's wars. But I suggest that we take a little time today to consider the living. Look around and ask yourself if you believe that stability or democracy in Iraq--or whatever goal you choose to assert as the reason for this war--is worth the life of your son or your daughter, or your husband or your wife, or the co-worker who rides to the office with you in the morning, or your friendly neighbor next door. Before you gather up the hot dogs and head out to the barbecue this afternoon, look in a mirror and ask yourself honestly if Iraq is something you would be willing to die for. There is no shortage of weaselly politicians and misguided commentators ready to tell us that we can't leave Iraq--we just can't. Chaos will ensue. Maybe even a civil war. But what they really mean is that we can't leave as long as the war can continue to be fought by other people's children, and as long as we can continue to put this George W. Bush- inspired madness on a credit card. Start sending the children of the well-to-do to Baghdad, and start raising taxes to payoff the many hundreds of billions that the war is costing, and watch how quickly this tragic fiasco is brought to an end. At an embarrassing press conference last week, President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain looked for all the world like a couple of hapless schoolboys who, while playing with fire, had set off a conflagration that is still raging out of control. Their recklessness has so far cost the lives of nearly 2,500 Americans and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, many of them children. Among the regrets voiced by the president at the press conference was his absurd challenge to the insurgents in 2003 to ``bring 'em on.'' But Mr. Bush gave no hint as to when the madness might end. How many more healthy young people will we shovel into the fires of Iraq before finally deciding it's time to stop? How many dead are enough? There is no good news coming out of Iraq. Sabrina Tavernise of The Times recently wrote: ``In the latest indication of the crushing hardships weighing on the lives of Iraqis, increasing portions of the middle class seem to be doing everything they can to leave the country.'' The middle class is all but panicked at the inability of the Iraqi government or American forces to quell the relentless violence. Ms. Tavernise quoted a businessman who is planning to move to Jordan: ``We're like sheep at a slaughter farm.'' Iraqis continue to be terrorized by kidnappers, roving death squads and, in a term perhaps coined by Mr. Bush, ``suiciders.'' The American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, acknowledged last week that even at this late date, there are parts of western Iraq that are not controlled by American forces, but rather ``are under the control of terrorists and insurgents.'' Now we get word that U.S. marines may have murdered two dozen Iraqis in cold blood last November. No one should be surprised that such an atrocity could occur. That's what happens in war. The killing gets out of control, which is yet another reason why it's important to have mature leaders who will do everything possible to avoid war, rather than cavalierly sending the young and the healthy off to combat as if it were no more serious an enterprise than a big-time sporting event. Nothing new came out of the Bush-Blair press conference. After more than three years these two men are as clueless as ever about what to do in Iraq. Are we doomed to follow the same pointless script for the next three years? And for three years after that? Leadership does not get more pathetic than this. Once there was F.D.R. and Churchill. Now there's Bush and Blair. Reacting to the allegations about the murder of civilians, the commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Michael Hagee, went to Iraq last week to warn his troops about the danger of becoming ``indifferent to the loss of a human life.'' Somehow that message needs to be conveyed to the top leaders of this country, and to the public at large. There is no better day than Memorial Day to reflect on it. As we remember the dead, we should consider the living, and stop sending people by the thousands to pointless, unnecessary deaths.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to enter into the Record, an editorial, entitled From Civil Rights to Immigrant Rights, published in the May 16, 2006 edition of the New York Carib News, by Basil Wilson on the CaribOpinion page. Mr. Wilson raises some pertinent issues and questions about the highly polarized immigration debate. The Republican immigration bill wants to criminalize illegal immigrants and individuals and organizations that support them. Claiming that illegal immigrants are a costly burden on legitimate taxpayers, legislation is being discussed to deny medical services to undocumented workers. Fearing that ``Latinization of America'' is a threat to American values, the conservatives plan to militarize the southwestern border but policing 1,900 miles border is very difficult, not to mention costly. The shocking revelation is that this anti-immigrant sentiment is not only backed by economic concerns but also by academic ideology. Samuel P. Huntington and the like are ``for immigration provided the dominant culture of white Protestantism is preserved.'' Recalling the Know Nothing Party of the 1840's whose goal was to expunge the ``foreign and unassimilatable Irish Catholics,'' Mr. Wilson deplores the generalization of the supremacists that Mexican immigrants are unwilling to be integrated into American society. Even if that were the case, the history of Black America proves that assimilation alone is not the answer. The civil rights movement abolished the institutionalized segregation but racism has not disappeared from America. More importantly the power relation with white America has not changed. ``The black commitment to integration did not ease the white backlash and the immigrant assimilation will not mitigate the resistance to the browning of America.'' The struggle of today's immigrants is about first class citizenship. The 11.5 million immigrant workers who are an integral part of the American society deserve their rightful place. I join Mr. Wilson in urging that the movements for civil rights, immigrant rights and social justice should join forces to free America from the grip of its historical racism. [From the New York CaribNews, May 16, 2006] From Civil Rights to Immigrant Rights (By Basil Wilson) The mass demonstrations on May 1, 2006, dramatized the rights of immigrants and their capacity to mobilize on the part of Hispanic Americans. Mass numbers took to the streets in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix, etc. The mass mobilization has unsurprisingly triggered a white backlash from segments of white civil society who were opposed to any form of legalization of undocumented workers. Like the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the immigrant rights movement that has been launched in 2006, seeks legislation in Congress to redress their grievances. Paradoxically, it was the proposed bill passed in the House of Representatives on December 17, 2005 which precipitated the immigrant rights movement. The Republican Bill sought to criminalize visitors staying beyond their stay or crossing the borders illegally. The proposed legislation seeks to criminalize individuals and organizations that provide support for illegal immigrants. This extreme legislation reveal the high state of polarization in the country regarding what is to be done with 11.5 million illegal immigrants who take part in the day to day life of American society. The immigration debate like the civil rights debate evokes deep emotions among white Americans who view the Latinization of America as constituting a threat to Protestant hegemony. Republican conservatives have somewhat sanitized their position since immigrants have taken to the streets. Representatives in the House like Tancredo and Sensenbrenner insist that they are for legal immigration but vehemently oppose amnesty as that would undermine the rule of law in the country. The salient issue for the conservative wing of the Republican Party is the sealing of the borders. Since the 1996 immigration legislation, the United States Congress has allocated billions of dollars to protect the 1,900 mile border between Mexico and America. The Immigration and Custom Enforcement division under the rubric of Homeland Security has been using state of the art technology, helicopters, and increased patrols to stem the tidal wave of immigrants streaming across the unsealed border. There is strong sentiment among conservatives to build a wall and to militarize the border to thwart illegal aliens from crossing the southwest border. The truth of the matter is that the policing of 1,900 mile border is a trying task. That situation becomes even more challenging when so many Mexican and Central American workers find themselves succumbing to an increasingly immiserated state. Republican conservatives make the case that illegal immigrants are a costly burden on the backs of legitimate taxpayers. The accusation is that illegal aliens are overcrowding the public school system and clogging the emergency wards of hospitals. There is even legislation underway in the House of Representatives to prevent hospitals from providing emerging service to undocumented workers. The level of polarization is not driven just by economics. Economics provide a respectable cover for the debate. The recent study authored by the Harvard scholar, Samuel Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenge to America's National Identity unmasks the true roots of the national hysteria. Huntington in 1996 wrote. For the Harvard scholar, the new danger was the clash of civilization between Islam and the West. Those fault lines were particularly volcanic and the war in the Middle East is manifestation of that collision between Islamic civilization and the encroaching military arm of western civilization. The Huntingtons of the world are preoccupied with the preserving of American military hegemony and the only way that the hegemony can be sustained is for America to pursue policies aimed at the subjugation of peoples committed to the post-colonial principle of self- determination. Huntington's point of departure vis-a-vis migration is identical to his position on world civilization. He is for immigration provided the dominant culture of white protestantism is preserved. Huntington's position is that the volume and cultural distinctiveness of the new immigration poses a threat to American civilization. His wrath is aimed not just at immigrants but Mexican immigrants in particular. In his view, the former epochs of mass migration were unthreatening because the Irish wave of the 1840s and the Southern Europe phase of 1890-1920s were assimilatable unlike the present wave of Mexicans. The previous immigrant waves generated the same histrionics. In the 1840s, the Know Nothing Party was created to purge the country of the foreign ad unassimilatable Irish Catholics. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants argued that Italians and Jews were not assimilatable. Italians and Jews were not seen as white and were not given that status until after Hitler's genocide in World War II. Huntington sees the Mexicans as constituting a threat to values that made America great--the values of hard work, love of family, and a unitary cultural system. According to Huntington's weltanschauung, the concentration of Mexicans in the southwest constitutes a threat to American loyalty. He perceives that the loyalty to Mexico, the difference in culture, the language clash will invariably lead to two Americas. He throws data into the mix and argues that Mexicans have not shown a propensity to learn the language or a willingness to show loyalty to America. In the 2004 Presidential election, a majority of the Hispanic community supported the war in Iraq. In contrast blacks overwhelmingly opposed the war. The response to the mass mobilization on the part of the Hispanic community on May 1, 2006 and previous demonstrations reflects the deep asundering in the American society. The detractors have been critical of Mexican or other foreign flags. The singing of the national anthem in Spanish sparked vehement emotions and brought to the fore issues of patriotism and dual loyalties. White America likes to be flattered. Martin Luther King and the civil rights leadership understood the importance of flattery to persuade a majority of Americans to the correctness of toppling Jim Crow. Black people sought to be assimilated into America. The civil rights movement was about building an integrated society consolidating the cultural system. The immigrant movement is about Mexicans and others taking their rightful position in American society. Immigrants have taken great risk to enter America's borders to become American. One sees the magnetic force of American culture and by the second generation of immigrants, they become indistinguishable from indigenous Americans. The black commitment to integration did not ease the white backlash and the immigrants to assimilation will not mitigate the resistance to the browning of America. There is a convergence of the civil rights movement, the immigrant rights movement and the movement for social justice. Although the civil rights movement accomplished the abolition of de jure segregation with the passage of the Civil Rights Bill in 1964, the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the Housing Rights Act of 1968 and the Immigration Legislation of 1965, institutionalized racism has not disappeared. Racism persists but in a less truculent form. In the post civil rights era, the black community finds itself in a far more variegated state. There has been some expansion in the ranks of the black middle class. The working class has become more precarious and even though there is a reduction in poverty, there has been a sharp rise in the ranks of the incarcerated. Nonetheless, there has been no change in the power relationships with white America. Power is far from being variegated. There is increased black representation in politics but the black community finds itself still in a state of powerlessness. Black people are not catching hell in America because of the massive influx of legal and illegal immigrants. There are sectors of the economy where illegal immigrants occupy niches such as in construction that black workers could fill that void. There are black spokespersons who see illegal immigrants as the reason why black men are being left behind. The immigrant struggle is synonymous with the black struggle. The struggle of the immigrants is about first class citizenship. In American society, like so many other societies, there is a need to have someone beneath to stomp on perennially. That is what whites sought to do with blacks from the genesis of the society until now. That is what poor whites relished in the Jim Crow years and continue to sustain that asymmetrical relationship. If black labor is degraded, then all labor is degraded. The immigrant movement is about worker's rights and the recognition that illegal workers who have been for decades are entitled to emancipation from deportation, to live in human dignity. That is a condition that black people and all people of color in American society can identify. The caricaturizing of Mexicans is no different from age-old dehumanization of black people. Huntington and others of his ilk are oblivious to their supremacist worldview which is so entangled with America's view of military hegemony. This other worldview is possible but the possibility for this other world is enhanced if white supremacy on the national stage and on the world stage is obliterated. It will only come about when America recognizes the pluralistic state of the world and that America's role is not about the building of walls or engaging in inhumane forms of mass deportation. America has had to adapt to the millions of Africans who came ashore beginning in 1619 and now constitute an integral part of America's multi-racial society. The 12 million immigrants must become an integral part of America. The change in status from their undocumented precarious position will enable them to have access to higher education and social programs to improve the conditions of their existence. America is split down the middle on the rights of immigrants. This is a difficult time for America. It is confused about its role in the world. Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist recognized that no entity gives up power willingly. The significance of the black and brown movement is the capacity to forge links with the other America to force America from the trappings of white supremacy. The test of the immigrant movement will be its staying power. The battle for immigrant rights has only just begun.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to repealing the estate tax. It is fiscally irresponsible and would drive higher an already swelling deficit. Repealing the estate tax lacks rigidity that is desperately needed to reduce the national deficit and balance the budget. On the heels of passing consecutive tax cuts for the wealthy, repealing the estate tax would grant further tax relief to the most affluent in our country while the poor and the working class continue to struggle to make ends meet. Contrarily, estate tax repeal would save the estate of Vice President Dick Cheney between $13 million and $61 million. It would save the estate of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld between $32 million and $101 million. The estate of retired Exxon Mobil chairman Lee Raymond would save a comfortable $164 million. Additionally, tax relief for the wealthy does not materialize in gains for the poorest in America. I urge my colleague in the Senate, Jon Kyl, to abandon the pursuit of legislation that would permanently repeal the estate tax for the wealthiest Americans. If adopted, Sen. Kyl's bill would plunge the government into another trillion dollars into the red during the first decade (2011-2021) that the legislation would be in effect. As boomers are retiring from the market place, Congress should mount a concerted effort to preserve Social Security and Medicare rather than giving tax cuts to the wealthy who are not demanding them. Health care needs are not being met by employers and a growing number of Americans are without adequate access to vital care. Repealing the estate tax will not bring these services and other needs to the most disadvantaged in our nation. Repealing the estate tax is misguided public policy. Democrats and Republicans should focus on strengthening education, Social Security, Medicare and restoring discipline to budget spending. Mr. Speaker, I would like to introduce an op-ed article written by Harold Meyerson, titled ``Estate Tax Lunacy'' in the Washington Post on May 31, 2006. [From the Washington Post, May 31, 2006] Estate Tax Lunacy (By Harold Meyerson) Spring has given way to summer's full-furnace heat in Washington, apparently taking with it any scintilla of sense that Congress may yet possess. In the House, Republicans who could not even raise an eyebrow at reports that the National Security Agency has been conducting warrantless wiretaps of Americans became instant civil libertarians when the FBI conducted a search of a congressman's office. The Senate, meanwhile, is scheduled next week to take up legislation by Arizona Republican Jon Kyl that would permanently repeal the estate tax on the wealthiest Americans. If enacted, Kyl's bill would plunge the government another trillion dollars into the red during the first decade (2011-2021) that it would be in effect. Behind the scenes, the action has been on the Democratic side in the Senate, as the party's leadership has sought to dissuade Montana's Max Baucus, ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, from forging a halfway-house compromise with Kyl that would deplete revenue by only $500 billion to $600 billion during that decade. The Republicans would need Baucus to bring roughly a half-dozen Democrats along with him to reach the magic number of 60 votes required to overcome any filibuster that the vast majority of Democrats would mount to block any such measure. Even a paltry $500 billion, of course, is a lot of money to drain from public coffers just when boomers are going onto Social Security and Medicare and the number of employers providing health insurance, if present trends continue, might have dropped to a virtuous handful. To cover those and other needs, Congress will either plunge us deeper into debt or increase some other levies--payroll taxes, say--that will come out of the pockets of the 99 percent of Americans whom the estate tax doesn't touch. A decades-long campaign by right-wing activists (brilliantly documented by Yale professors Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro in their book ``Death by a Thousand Cuts'') has convinced many Americans that the estate tax poses a threat to countless hardworking families. That was always nonsense, and under the estate tax revisions that almost all Democrats support--raising the threshold for eligibility to $3.5 million for an individual and $7 million for a couple--it becomes more nonsensical still. Under the $3.5 million exemption, the number of family-owned small businesses required to pay any taxes in the year 2000 would have been just 94, according to a study by the Congressional Budget Office. The number of family farms that would have had to sell any assets to pay that tax would have been 13. On the other hand, an estate tax repeal would save the estate of Vice President Cheney between $13 million and $61 million, according to the publicly available data on his net worth. It would save the estate of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld between $32 million and $101 million. The estate of retired Exxon Mobil chairman Lee Raymond would pocket a cozy $164 million. As for the late Sam Walton's kids, whose company already makes taxpayers foot the bill for the medical expenses of thousands of its employees, the cost to the government for not taxing their estates would run into the multiple billions. The Baucus split-the-difference measure wouldn't repeal the estate tax, but it would still cut the tax rates on the estates of the super-rich by 15 percent. The Montana senator spent much of last week trying to line up a handful of his Senate Democratic colleagues to support his proposal, in the hope of being able to announce an unshakable 60 votes favoring this folly when the debate begins next week. Why any Democrat would back such a measure, however, is a deep mystery. From the policy standpoint, it would make it vastly more difficult both to shore up programs that Democrats believe need shoring up--better educating the nation's children, for one--and to get the nation's fiscal house in order. Politically, backing the measure is even wackier. The Democrats are running this year as the party of comparative fiscal sanity and greater economic equity and security. Baucus's compromise would undermine all those premises. Republicans might very well attack Democratic senators up for reelection this year for failing to repeal this hideous death tax, as they call it, but any Democratic senator who can't rebut that charge in what is shaping up as a very Democratic year should probably be in another line of work. Last Friday Baucus's staffers assured the Democratic Senate leadership's staff that their boss would back off his compromise campaign. Still, given Baucus's penchant for mischief (it was largely he who rounded up enough Democratic votes to enact Medicare Part D and its Big Pharma giveaway), those assurances have met with some skepticism on Capitol Hill. The Democrats' capacity to undermine themselves has not vanished with the final days of spring.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to enter into the Record, my heartfelt support for the ``Muslims Care'' campaign, launched by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, to promote volunteerism in the Islamic community. CAIR is asking Muslims across the country to volunteer their time for raising health awareness, helping the needy and supporting activities for youth. Using verses from the Qur'an and Hadith, the ``Muslims Care'' tool kit (available in www.muslims- care.org) is encouraging local mosques to participate and promote volunteering programs such as blood drives, health awareness, student tutoring, etc. First of all, the ``Muslims Care'' program has a community benefits focus, which can potentially bring together people from a multitude of backgrounds and interests. Moreover, it offers an opportunity to weave Muslims and Islamic identity into the American sociocultural fabric, a viable approach to counter the misinformation that is out there about Islam and Muslims. Lastly, a recent survey, conducted by CAIR, showed that the majority of Americans promised to change their views about Islam if Muslims are seen to be concerned about healthcare, education, economy, issues that plague the average American. The ``Muslims Care'' campaign is an excellent way to overcome this us/them mentality and the prejudices about Islam and Muslims. I heartily support this undertaking by CAIR, as well as their other programs that promote cross-cultural dialogue to enhance the understanding of Islam. U.S. Muslims Launch Annual Volunteerism Campaign Washington, DC., May 25, 2006.--A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today called on American Muslims to support its second annual campaign, called ``Muslims Care,'' designed to promote volunteerism in the Islamic community. In its summer-long initiative, the Council on American- Islamic Relations (CAIR) will offer Muslims the resources and information they need to help improve the communities in which they live. This year, CAIR will again ask Muslims across the country to focus on health awareness, helping the needy and activities for youth. Visitors to CAIR's campaign website, www.muslims-care.org, will be able to download a toolkit containing information about how to become a volunteer and suggesting volunteer activities such as blood drives, health awareness fairs and student tutoring. CAIR is suggesting that community members visit the website to submit local volunteer opportunities and see what activities are available in their state. The ``Muslims Care'' kit also offers advice to Islamic religious leaders about how they can promote volunteerism in local mosques and suggests partnering with established volunteer groups such as the American Cancer Society and Big Brother/Big Sisters. Local Islamic leaders and imams (prayer leaders) are being encouraged to give Friday sermons on the importance of volunteerism. The ``Muslims Care'' toolkit has sample verses from the Quran, Islam's revered text, and hadith (Islamic traditions) to incorporate in the sermons. One tradition quotes Islam's Prophet Muhammad as saying, ``The upper hand (of giving) is better than the lower hand (at receiving),'' as an encouragement to provide for those less fortunate. ``As Muslims, we are encouraged to work to improve the communities in which we live,'' said CAIR Communication Coordinator Rabiah Ahmed. Ahmed cited a recently-conducted CAIR opinion survey showing that a majority of Americans said they would change their views about Islam and Muslims if they perceived that Muslims were more concerned about issues such as healthcare, education and the economy. CAIR, America's largest Islamic civil liberties group, has 32 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce into the Record the commentary entitled ``It's Time To Engage With Iran'' written by David Ignatius and published in the May 25, 2006 issue of the Washington Post. Much of the diplomacy of the last 5 years has been confrontational, characterized by threats, ultimatums and labeling or ``name calling'' of leaders or countries perceived as threats by the Bush administration. With this threat diplomacy in mind, Mr. Ignatius offers some literary and policy advice. Quoting the last line of E.M. Forester's novel Howards End, Mr. Ignatius suggests ``Only connect'' as a good foreign policy for the United States. Ignatius suggests only connect is a useful injection in thinking ``about U.S. strategy toward Iran and the wider conflicts between the West and the Muslim world.'' I agree. The U.S. could certainly have benefited from connections with our traditional allies before we invaded Iraq. Instead President Bush and Vice President Cheney unhelpfully labeled France, Germany and our other long-time and steadfast allies as ``the old Europe.'' Unbelievably, for a time, otherwise reasonable and sane members of Congress and of the administration insisted on calling french fries, freedom fries. The Bush administration's arrogance and hubris led the President and Vice President not merely to rebuff the countries who refused to let America lead them into war with Iraq but took every opportunity to disconnect from them. At every opportunity the Bush administration let our long-time friends know our connection with them did not matter. If they were not with us, they were against us. I believe there are those in Congress who regret the attitude represented by these words. Our ``coalition of the willing'' has few member countries left and those that are left have few soldiers fighting in Iraq. During the first days of the Bush administration, the U.S. refused to meet with Iran at all. China finally convinced the U.S. to meet with Iran but when we did, our representatives sat in the conference room and announced the U.S. would not deal with Iran and then spoke no more. During the 1\1/2\ years we did not deal with Iran it forged ahead on its nuclear research and perhaps produced enriched plutonium. We just don't know. Ignatius writes that ``we are in the early stages of what the Centcom commander, Gen. John Abizaid, calls `the first war of globalization, between openness and closed societies.''' General Abizaid's advice was to ``expand openness and connection.'' According to Ignatius, General Abizaid called al-Qaeda ``the military arm of the closed order.'' The extremist mullahs in Tehran are leaders of a closed order. Ignatius writes that America's best strategy is connection and to play to its strengths, which he believes are the open exchange of ideas, backed up by unmatched military power. I believe we have nothing to fear from connecting with Iran, North Korea, China and Russia. We have much to fear from antagonizing these countries. Vice President Cheney recently called Russia ``irresponsible,'' which angered President Putin of Russia. Name calling and labeling should not be used by any member of the administration. It is a backward, undiplomatic form of communications employed by schoolyard bullies not by high officials of a country like ours which must learn to live in peace with the other great powers in the world. We connected, engaged, with the Soviet Union in 1973 through the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe, CSCE, even while conservatives warned that it was a dangerous concession that the Soviets might interpret as weakness. Instead the CSCE helped speed the fall of the Soviet Union. President Nixon was warned by conservatives not to go to China and yet an era of great diplomacy with China followed his trip. The column by David Ignatius points out that Ahmadinejad's letter to President Bush ``clearly had the backing of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini.'' In the words of Ignatius ``that's like having the support of Vice President Cheney for a peace feeler.'' According to Karim Sadjadpour, an Iranian analyst with the International Crisis Group, opinion polls show that 75 percent of Iranians favor relations with the United States. There is no guarantee that a policy of engagement will work. But there are no other good options. We can have engagement with Iran and hope they will accept a package we can offer with our allies that will keep them from developing nuclear weapons, or we can learn to live with Iran as a nuclear power, or we can go to war with Iran. War with Iran would have unintended consequences we cannot imagine. It should be obvious that the first of these is the best option. It's Time To Engage With Iran (By David Ignatius) ``Only connect.'' That was the trademark line of E.M. Forster's great novel ``Howards End.'' And it's a useful injunction in thinking about U.S. strategy toward Iran and the wider conflicts between the West and the Muslim world. We are in the early stages of what the Centcom commander, Gen. John Abizaid, calls ``the first war of globalization, between openness and closed societies.'' One key to winning that war, Abizaid told a small group of reporters at the Pentagon yesterday, is to expand openness and connection. He called al-Qaeda ``the military arm of the closed order.'' The same could be said of the extremist mullahs in Tehran who are pushing for nuclear weapons. America's best strategy is to play to its strengths--which are the open exchange of ideas, backed up by unmatched military power. The need for connection is especially clear in the case of Iran, which in isolation has remained frozen in revolutionary zealotry like an exotic fruit in aspic. Yet some in the Bush administration cling to the idea that isolation is a good thing and that connectivity will somehow weaken the West's position. That ignores the obvious lesson of the past 40 years, which is that isolation has usually failed (as in the cases of Cuba and North Korea), while connectivity has usually succeeded (as in the cases of the Soviet Union and China). A telling example was the decision to engage the Soviet Union in 1973 through the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe. At the time, some conservatives argued that it was a dangerous concession that the Soviets might interpret as a symbol of weakness. But the CSCE provided a crucial forum for dissidents in Russia and Eastern Europe, and with astonishing speed the mighty edifice of Soviet power began to crumble. Similar warnings about showing weakness in the face of an aggressive adversary were voiced when President Richard Nixon went to China in February 1972. I cite this Cold War history because the moment has come for America to attempt to engage revolutionary Iran. The invitation for such a dialogue came this month in a letter to President Bush from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad--a man whose rabble-rousing, Israel-baiting career gave him the credentials, if that's the right word, to break a 27-year Iranian taboo on contacts with the Great Satan. Ahmadinejad's letter clearly had the backing of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In the American context, that's like having the support of Vice President Cheney for a peace feeler. My own Iranian sources say there is broad consensus in Tehran that it is time for talks with the United States. ``Iran wants to start discussions the same way the Chinese wanted discussions'' with Nixon, an Iranian businessman named Ali Ettefagh told me in an e-mail this week. ``Great Satan doesn't sell anymore. More than half the population was not born 27 years ago, and the broken record does not play well.'' The Iranian offer of dialogue, he says, ``ought to be taken as an opportunity, if only to air out grievances and amplify differences.'' I suspect Iran wants dialogue now partly because it perceives America's position in Iraq as weak and its own as strong. That may be true, but so what? Washington should still take yes for an answer. The United States and its European allies this week are crafting a package that, one hopes, will include everything the Iranian people could want--except nuclear weapons. The bundle of goodies should stress connectivity--more air travel to Iran, more scholarships for students, more exchanges, Iranian membership in the World Trade Organization. The mullahs may well reject these incentives as threatening, but that's the point. Their retrograde theocracy can't last long in an open world. This very week, about 40 police officers were injured in a clash with demonstrators at two Tehran universities. One of the hand-lettered protest signs captured in an Iranian photo said: ``This is not a seminary, it is a university. `` Karim Sadjadpour, an Iranian analyst with the International Crisis Group, noted in Senate testimony last week that opinion polls show 75 percent of Iranians favor relations with the United States. ``Embarking on a comprehensive dialogue with Iran would provide the U.S. with the opportunity to match its rhetorical commitment to Iranian democracy and human rights with action,'' Sadjadpour said. He's right. There's no guarantee that a policy of engagement will work. The Iranian regime's desire to acquire nuclear weapons may be so unyielding that Tehran and Washington will remain on a collision course. But America and its allies will be in a stronger position for responding to Iranian calls for dialogue. Openness isn't a concession by America, it's a strategic weapon.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a truly remarkable woman, Ms. Katherine Dunham. A woman of astounding grace and character, Ms. Dunham has altered for the better both our country and world. We recently lost Ms. Dunham on May 21, 2006, at the age of 96 at an assisted living facility in New York. Born Katherine Mary Dunham in Chicago, III on June 22, 1909, and raised in Glen Ellyn, Ill, Dunham was fascinating from the very beginning. The author of a published short story in a magazine edited by W.E.B. DuBois at the young age of 12 she had the gift for the written word. She was class poet in high school, and later wrote a memoir entitled, ``A Touch of Innocence''. Ms. Dunham was an enchanting beauty who often danced with a sound sense of rhythm and eroticism. Dunham was always combining and changing methods of dance, the sign of the true innovator within. Katherine Dunham was a pioneer in the first in many areas for blacks. She was among the first black artists to form a ballet troupe and achieve renown as a modem dancer and choreographer on Broadway and in Hollywood. She was responsible for exposing to mass audiences the other side of black artistic expression, a side rarely seen. She made people in the 1930's and 1940's see and understand black dance as ``more than tap and minstrelsy''. She was also one of the first black choreographers to work for the Metropolitan Opera. Many admired Dunham because she amassed so much in a country and time where few opportunities for blacks existed. She will forever remain an inspiration to many who seek guidance in her wisdom and words. She was noted for her no nonsense approach to the way of life as stated here, ``Don't be nervous, don't be tired and above all, don't be bored. Those are the three destroyers of freedom''. Her insight goes far beyond dance and choreography, but into the real human dilemma. It was stated that, ``she was speaking less about dance and more about an area of equal concern: human rights''. All those who knew her dignified heart of compassion could not help but follow her lead. As a human rights activist, she spoke out publicly about the United States' position on deporting Haitian refugees. Dunham was so passionate about the matter that in 1992 she went on a 47 day hunger strike to prove her point. One notable activist, Harry Belafonte stressed the notion that, ``She didn't perform miracles; she performed acts of human kindness, which should be viewed as a miracle in itself''. With age Ms. Dunham sought to spread her knowledge to especially young people. She wanted them to grow up with the adequate capabilities and skills necessary to live in today's ever-changing world. She kept a small museum of artifacts about her career with her in East St. Louis, Ill., where she educated local children including Jackie JoynerKersee, the Olympic long jumper, and filmmakers Reginald and Warrington Hudlin. When asked about her work with the youth she felt she was ``trying to steer them into something more constructive than genocide''. In a way, maintaining relations with the youth of today kept Dunham youthful, a quality she never lost. In a New York Times report done on her a few years back, she mentioned, ``Did you ever see photographs of elderly divas trying to look sexy?'' I enter into the Record with pleasure the article published in the Washington Post and New York Times for their in-depth look at Katherine Dunham for both her artistic and humanitarian efforts. She has truly left her mark on our society and I will always remember her for that. We must keep her memory alive in our hearts and minds so that generations after us will know who she was and what she did. One cannot speak of dance and innovation without mentioning Katherine Dunham, for she has without a doubt moved our world. [The Washington Post, May 23, 2006] Moving the World (By Sarah Kaufman) It was a bitterly cold winter day three years ago when I last saw the pioneering choreographer Katherine Dunham teach. She was rolled into the Howard University dance studio in her wheelchair, bundled up like a prized antique. First a thick fur blanket was peeled off, then a woolen wrap, and then Dunham herself was revealed, somewhat hunched, wearing lots of gold jewelry. Peering through her oversize glasses at the more than 100 students sitting on the floor in front of her, she got right to work. ``Think of everything you learn from me today as part of a way of life,'' she announced in a low, raspy voice. ``Now-- breathe.'' This was not as simple as it sounds. For Dunham, a tireless activist who died Sunday at the age of 96, invested every aspect of her life--indeed, you could say, every breath--with meticulous attention and an unflinching eye. And on this day in January 2003, that eye didn't see much it liked. Dunham hollered at the dancers to tilt their heads back, to hold their stomach muscles in, to undulate with the breath inside them. Then, unsatisfied with the beat that the drummers alongside her were producing, she leaned out of her wheelchair, grabbed one of their drumsticks and began keeping time on the table in front of her. A few beats later, that tiny old lady had all the drummers grooving together and the whole room full of young adults breathing in unison. Dunham's dance technique and her way of life went hand in hand. She was inquisitive, blazingly energetic and exacting as a dancer and a choreographer, but she didn't leave those qualities behind after the curtain fell. Her whole long life was about questions and activism and energy. The path that led her to Broadway, Hollywood and concert stages around the world eventually took her to Haiti, where she lived for a number of years, working feverishly and, to her great distress, ultimately unsuccessfully to bring about change for that nation's desperately poor people. In her unparalleled career in dance, where she educated the world about the power of African dance as found throughout the diaspora, Dunham mixed academic research and showbiz flair. An anthropologist as well as a choreographer, she studied dance in the Caribbean islands, blending movements she found there with Western dance. Her style was not scholarly; she reveled in eroticism. She sought not to re- create specific rites but to transport the audience the way a spiritual experience might. And she wasn't afraid to use sex to do this. A sensuous performer, she frequently wore costumes that revealed well-muscled thighs and ample curves. There were other dancers interested in Afro-Caribbean arts--Pearl Primus, also an anthropologist, for one--but Dunham had the most far-reaching success, perhaps because of her utter fearlessness. She founded her company in the 1930s, when a predominantly black dance troupe was unheard of. Her voluptuousness as a dancer made her especially marketable-- because, let's face it, audiences at that time were not especially sensitive to the art she was creating. She caught the eye of ballet master George Balanchine, who created the role of the sexpot Georgia Brown for her in the 1940 Broadway hit ``Cabin in the Sky.'' Dunham and her company performed in other Broadway revues, and she also made her mark choreographing for film, in 1943's ``Stormy Weather'' and several others, in Hollywood and abroad. But her twin artistic achievements were her body of choreography--works such as ``L'Ag'Ya,'' a story of love and death, and ``Shango,'' drawn from Trinidadian cult rituals-- and the development of her own method of dancing. ``Dunham technique'' became part of the bedrock of American modern dance, like the techniques of Martha Graham, Jose Limon and Merce Cunningham. Through her own flamboyance and interpretive beauty as a performer, as well as her rigor as a teacher, she raised African-based dance to a new level. Growing up in an America that offered few opportunities for blacks, Dunham served as an inspiration to black artists who saw her achievements as especially formidable given the racism of the times. ``She set the bar for attaining excellence in art and she instilled in us a great sense of pride in our blackness,'' said singer Harry Belafonte, speaking by phone yesterday from California. Belafonte and his wife, Julie, were close friends of Dunham's for half a century, he said. Julie was a member of Dunham's company; Harry credits Dunham with encouraging him to investigate the music of her beloved Haiti. Without Dunham's effort to ``reveal to me the beauty of that music,'' Belafonte said, he would never have recorded songs like the gentle, lilting ode ``Yellow Bird.'' However attuned she was to musical beauty and island mysticism, Dunham could breathe fire in the studio. She was a legendary taskmaster, and even in her nineties, during that class I witnessed at Howard as part of the International Association of Blacks in Dance Conference, she was capable of whipping her students into a lather. ``Now think of your anal opening!'' she cried at one point. ``Does everyone know what your anal opening is? Think of a pole from the top of your head through that hole. That's your strength! `` ``Don't be nervous, don't be tired and above all, don't be bored,'' she lectured them. ``Those are the three destroyers of freedom of movement.'' She called on the dancers to be ``strong and easy at the same time,'' swaying in her wheelchair, her arms floating, responding to the drumbeat with a remarkable fluidity. Her eyes never strayed from the dancers, who by the end of the class were trying to keep up the relentless tempo on their tiptoes, with bent knees, stamping and shimmying their shoulders, adding turns if they could. Dunham technique seeks to balance tricky polyrhythmic equations, with the head nodding out one beat and torso and legs keeping time with another. The trick, say those who have mastered it, is to move with such musical and muscular intricacy that you achieve complete freedom. Dunham was scheduled to teach for an hour; she kept at it for two. Not long after that class, I visited Dunham in her Manhattan apartment. She was in bed, where she spent much of her time when she wasn't making appearances. She suffered from crippling arthritis and had had both kneecaps replaced. Reclining against a mound of pillows, wearing a peacock-blue top, and fixing me with her dark, wide-set eyes, she spoke not of weakness but of strength. ``There is a need in the body to express itself,'' she said. ``Every culture has its own form of physical expression. An unfortunate thing about today--about Western dance--is it's too competitive in feeling. I don't dance because I can do this movement better than you. I do it because it's what I feel, and want to do.'' ``When I first saw however-present and powerful dance was,'' she said, ``it came as a wonderful revelation.'' Pressed regarding about her views on dance, though, it became clear she was speaking less about dance and more about an area of equal concern: human rights. ``It's a real job to recognize dance at all,'' she continued. ``Until our Western need to compete begins to slow down and becomes a need to feel and love and express motion and care for our inner selves as well as our outer selves . . . if we can find a way to live in union with other people -- '' She looked out the window at her view of the skyline. ``We have to love ourselves, love what we are doing, and find a way to express these things in unity with other people.'' Dunham banged up against politics as she sought to spread her teaching in the island she so loved. ``Long before she could teach the healthy minds, she needed the healthy bodies,'' Belafonte said. She found herself feeding the students, seeing to their health care and welfare, and eventually spreading this concern into a wholesale human rights activism that included a hunger strike of 47 days in 1992 to protest the U.S. policy of deporting Haitian refugees. Sadly, most of her good works there came to naught without government support to sustain them. ``She didn't perform miracles, she performed acts of human kindness,'' Belafonte said. ``Which should be viewed as a miracle in itself.''

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, with the President's proposed agreement with India on civil nuclear cooperation, there has been much discussion as to what Congress' position should be concerning this matter. I find it appropriate to bring to the attention of Congress a May 23 article written by Will Marshall, President of the Progressive Policy Institute, and Wesley Clark, a candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2004, a retired Army general, and former supreme allied commander of NATO. The article entitled ``Warming to the India Nuclear Deal'' comprehensively discusses the proposed agreement, determining that it is a great opportunity to create a strategic partnership with India. The Marshall and Clark article encourages the Senate to support Bush's proposed agreement, but also to articulate several commitments by the Administration on which the support is conditioned, most importantly a fresh burst of energy in promoting the international nonproliferation system. This deal is a great opportunity for the United States to form a truly beneficial partnership with India, an up-and-coming 21st century power. India has proved its stability as a multi ethnic democracy with an ever-growing economy, a middle-class that is well-versed in English, a lively technology sector, and a tremendous domestic market. Advocates of arms control argue that the removal of a ban on the supply of fuel to India's civilian nuclear-power sector should not compromise nonproliferation efforts. However, it is clear that admonishing India for its failure to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT, is not enjoying the success that it should and therefore must be modernized. The need for efforts to improve the NPT is confirmed by the inception of several new nuclear states and the potential for the establishment of even more in the near future. Considering India's exceptional nonproliferation efforts, a United States-India partnership in designing a superior global nonproliferation system should prove to be beneficial worldwide. Mr. Marshall and Mr. Clark encourage a push for NPT reforms, including more effective inspection and control of nuclear activity across the globe. They cite the critical reform as disallowing states who agree not to build nuclear weapons to then develop civilian nuclear energy programs. A loophole such as this permits countries, such as Iran, to insist upon a ``right'' to produce their own nuclear fuel supplies, as opposed to acquiring their supply from already established nuclear powers. The article cites a simple solution to the problem: internationalize the nuclear fuels cycle. U.S. officials can organize an adequate source of fuel to countries that agree not to produce nuclear weapons and submit to rigid inspections through an international consortium. India should be at the forefront of this effort. Mr. Marshall and Mr. Clark also encourage the Senate to demand that the U.S., along with other nuclear powers, move in the direction of disarmament. The current administration has failed to do this, and has in fact done the opposite. I thank Mr. Marshall and Mr. Clark for their thorough analysis of the President's proposed agreement with India. Their views on the matter are greatly respected. I therefore submit for the Record a piece from the May 23 issue of the Hill for our consideration. [From the Hill, May 23, 2006] Warming to the India Nuclear Deal (By Will Marshall and Wesley Clark) At first glance, President Bush's proposed agreement with India on civil nuclear cooperation is a no-win proposition for the U.S. Senate. Rejecting the deal could chill relations between the world's biggest democracies; approving it might shred America's credibility as a leader of global efforts to restrain nuclear proliferation. Senators can escape this dilemma, however, by offering the White House a deal of their own: support for the India agreement conditioned on concrete commitments by the Bush administration to breathe new life into the international nonproliferation system. Under the deal struck last summer, the United States would lift its ban on supplying expertise and fuel to India's civilian nuclear-power sector. India agreed to place 14 of its 22 nuclear reactors under safeguards with the International Atomic Energy Agency. The deal is intended to remove the chief irritant in U.S.-India relations: America's longtime policy of banning sales of civilian nuclear technology and fuel to any country--most prominently India-- that has refused to sign the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). U.S. leaders should not miss the best opportunity since the Cold War ended to forge a true strategic partnership with India. As a stable, multiethnic democracy with a brisk economic growth rate, a vibrant technology sector, an English-speaking middle class and a potential domestic market four times larger than America's, India is fast emerging as a 21st century power of the first rank. Arms-control advocates, however, warn that closer U.S.- India ties should not come at the price of undermining the nonproliferation framework. Yet U.S. efforts to punish India for spurning the NPT have manifestly failed. More important, it's clear that the NPT cannot survive in its present terms and needs fundamental revision. Since the treaty's inception, four new states have elbowed their way into the exclusive nuclear club, and such scofflaw regimes as North Korea and Iran are pounding on the door. Without bold action now to strengthen and modernize the NPT framework, we could be looking at as many as 20 nuclear-armed states within the next decade or two. So instead of persisting in vain attempts to punish India-- which, unlike rival Pakistan, has an exemplary nonproliferation record--the United States should enlist New Delhi's help in designing a fairer and more effective global nonproliferation system. The Senate, for example, should insist on boosting spending on the Cooperative Threat Reduction programs aimed at securing Russia's loose nuclear materials. It should also press the Bush administration to push for overdue NPT reforms, including stronger inspections, tighter control of nuclear know-how and a closer watch on the activities of nuclear-trained scientists and engineers worldwide. The key reform is to close the NPT loophole that allows states to develop civilian nuclear energy programs if they agree not to build nuclear weapons. The problem comes when countries demand, as Iran has done, a ``right'' under NPT to develop their own nuclear fuel supplies rather than acquiring what they need from the nuclear powers. As Ashton Carter and Stephen LaMontagne point out, ``Enrichment and reprocessing facilities low states to cross into a proliferation `red zone,' putting them dangerously close to a nuclear weapons capability.'' Carter and LaMontagne offer a simple solution: Internationalize the nuclear fuels cycle. Building on Russia's offer to provide nuclear fuel for Iran, the United States should organize an international suppliers consortium to provide a reliable source of fuel for nuclear energy plants (and a repository for spent fuel) to countries that forswear nuclear weapons and submit to robust inspections. India, as a former leader of the nonaligned nations, could show its commitment to nonproliferation by helping to build support for such an approach among the developing nations. The Senate also should insist that the United States hold up its end of the nuclear bargain. Under the NPT, the nuclear ``haves'' are obliged to move toward disarmament. Yet the Bush administration has gone in the opposite direction. It has rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, failed to engage the other nuclear powers in talks aimed at mutual cuts in nuclear arsenals and even launched new programs for developing nuclear ``small'' bombs and ``bunker-buster'' weapons. Finally, the United States should offer similar terms to Pakistan, providing it is willing to return to the NPT, put its nuclear programs under international safeguards and offer a full accounting for the worldwide nuclear bazaar operated by A.Q. Khan. If accompanied by imaginative U.S. efforts to update and strengthen the global nonproliferation system, the proposed deal with India could become a cornerstone of a comprehensive post-Cold War strategy--but only if elected leaders at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue have the insight and courage to seize this opportunity.