Silvestre Reyes

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in observance of Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Domestic violence happens all too frequently and affects thousands of Texas families in profound ways. As leaders we must take a more active role in providing targeted assistance to victims of domestic abuse to empower them to overcome abusive relationships. According to a survey by the Texas Council On Family Violence, TCFV, 74 percent of Texans, including 77 percent of Hispanics, reported that either they, a family member and/or a friend have experienced some form of domestic violence. Additionally, TCFV's survey indicates that nearly two out of every five Hispanic females, 39 percent, in Texas reported personal experience with severe abuse. These revealing statistics clearly show that domestic violence is not a rare occurrence, but a widespread, social ill that must be addressed. Since the first Domestic Violence Awareness Month in 1987, great strides have been made, resulting in a steady decrease in domestic violence in the last few decades, but much work remains to be done. I have personally remained engaged on this topic and have supported the YWCA El Paso del Norte Region which is dedicated to eliminating racism, empowering women and promoting peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all. In fact, I am proud to note that I am a strong supporter of YWCA's ``Walk a Mile in Her Shoes'' initiative, which asks men in our community to literally walk a mile in red high heels to promote awareness of sexual violence issues and raise funds for local domestic violence shelters. This is an innovative way to express solidarity with domestic violence victims and those who come to their aid. During this month, let us consider the plight of the thousands of victims of domestic violence in our country, and show our support through actions of awareness and advocacy. Mr. Speaker, I commend the organizations across the country that have continued to raise awareness on behalf of domestic violence victims, and I ask for a moment of silence to pay our respects to those victims who are not with us today, as well as pay tribute to the survivors.

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in recognition of the achievements of Escontrias Elementary School. Escontrias was recently honored with the 2011 National Blue Ribbon award from the United States Department of Education for excellence in education. The National Blue Ribbon School award honors both public and private elementary, middle and high schools where students achieve at high levels and also schools where the achievement gap is narrowing. Since 1982, approximately 6,500 American schools have received this coveted award. I want to personally congratulate the teachers, administrators, and staff of Escontrias Elementary. This year only 304 schools nationwide received the award, and they will be honored at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. The Blue Ribbon validates the efforts of these schools to create a positive and effective learning environment. Escontrias principal Marivel Macias noted that the award ``has solidified the notion that all things are possible''. This national award exemplifies the dedication, persistence, and commitment that the Escontrias faculty, staff and community has for their students, and by closing the achievement gap, they will acquire the tools necessary to compete at a global academic level and become future world leaders. In times of economic uncertainty, we cannot lose sight of the paramount importance of our children's education, and I am honored to represent Escontrias Elementary School.

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in recognition of the achievements of Silva Health Magnet High School. Silva Health was recently honored with the 2011 National Blue Ribbon award from the United States Department of Education for excellence in education. The National Blue Ribbon School award honors both public and private elementary, middle and high schools where students achieve at high levels and also schools where the achievement gap is narrowing. Since 1982, approximately 6,500 American schools have received this coveted award. I want to personally congratulate the teachers, administrators, and staff of Silva Health Magnet High School for their commitment and dedication to our young students in El Paso. This year only 304 schools nationwide received the award, and they will be honored at a ceremony in Washington, DC. The Blue Ribbon validates the efforts of these schools in creating a positive and effective learning environment. These schools and their communities have achieved a degree of excellence of which they can justifiably be proud. Silva Health Magnet is a fitting example of the type of educational curriculum and environment that encourages students to become interested in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Our nation must provide more opportunities, like those at this outstanding school, to encourage our children and youth to focus on STEM fields and to help our nation remain competitive in the global economy. In times of economic uncertainty, we cannot lose sight of the paramount importance of our children's education, and I am honored to represent Silva Health Magnet High School.

Mr. REYES

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

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. I would like to pay tribute to a group of young men that won the 1949 baseball championship in Texas and overcame many, many obstacles and overcame the odds that at the time existed. When I read their story, you will appreciate their accomplishment. This is from a story written by Alexander Wolff from Sports Illustrated that appeared in the June 27, 2011, edition. It's entitled, ``The Barrio Boys.'' In 1949, El Paso's Bowie Bears, a team of poor Hispanic players who were too unworldly to be intimidated by their more affluent Anglo opponents, came from nowhere to win Texas' first high school baseball championship. You'd saw off a broomstick for a bat. For a ball, you'd beg spools of thread from the textile plant, enough wrap to create a wad that you could seal with carpenter's tape. You'd go back to the factory for cloth remnants to sew together for a glove, which you'd stuff with cotton you picked at the ranch on the fringe of the barrio. That's what you did as a kid of Mexican blood in El Paso during the 1940s to play the game that, more than anything else, the traditional American game which would make you an American--baseball. But to become a champion at that game, to beat all Anglo comers in a world that belonged to them, how could you possibly do that? Borders are shape-shifting things--sometimes barriers, sometimes membranes, sometimes overlooks from which one people take the measure of another. If you were to transport yourself to the El Paso of 1949 and take up a position as far south as possible by the north shore of the Rio Grande, in a nether land not wholly of the U.S. but not of Mexico either, you'd be a cutoff throw from Bowie High School, the only public secondary school in the U.S. then dedicated to educating Mexican Americans. The people of south and east El Paso dealt every day with two kinds of borders. The geographical one at their backs reminded them of their Mesoamerican heritage. The aspirational border just to the north, which was an east-west highway through downtown, was a tantalizing gateway to their country of choice. Andy Morales, a member of the 1949 Bowie High School baseball team, used to walk the eight blocks from his home up to Alameda Avenue, which was the local stretch of U.S. Highway 80, the artery that ran from San Diego, California, to the Georgia coast. Beyond the avenue lay the Anglos' turf, where a Mexican American would think twice before entering that space. Instead, they focused on the road. My friends and I, we'd compete counting out-of-State license plates on Alameda Avenue. Morales, says: I set the record one Saturday, counting 39 in a 2-hour period. Plate-spotting gave Morales and his buddies a chance to glimpse the energy of a country ready to burst after the end of World War II, a place where they gradually came to believe they belonged. They would owe the awakening in large part to the game they loved. Bowie High School didn't field a baseball team until 1946, when a wiry, energetic man of not quite 5 feet, 6 inches tall arrived from San Antonio. He started the first team. Three years later, the Bowie team included: Morales, the wisecracking second baseman who never took a book home from school because there simply wasn't enough light to read in his home; Javier ``Lefty'' Holguin, the pitcher with a knuckleball that was so crazy that nobody would play catch with him; Jose ``Rocky'' Galarza, the smoky-eyed third baseman to whom Bowie coeds dedicated yearbook pages; and Ramon Camarillo, the catcher whose hunches came to him in his dreams. Despite the poverty that made them scrounge for equipment and wonder if they'd ever have enough food to eat, and despite discrimination that subjected them to stinging slurs and other indignities from Anglos, these boys and the other 11 players on the 1949 Bowie Bears would win the first Texas high school baseball tournament ever staged. Bowie High sat in El Paso's Second Ward, or Segundo Barrio, which was home to the city's leach field and sewage treatment plant. A smelting operation, stockyards, and a meatpacking company further fouled the air. Nowhere in the U.S. did more babies die of diarrhea. The barrio had no paved streets, much less sidewalks, streetlights, or parks, and 50,000 people packed themselves into less than 1 square mile in this part of El Paso. This is about twice the population density of New York City. Those not living in adobe hovels were warehoused in presidios like the ones in which Camarillo and Bowie first baseman Tony Lara grew up in, where as many as 175 families--at least 700 people--were shoehorned into a single block of two-story tenement buildings with one communal cold-water commode serving each row of two-room apartments. Compared with Anglo El Paso, the Second Ward was, as Camarillo would say, ``like another country.'' One might have expected Bowie's '49ers to be cowed by their more affluent, better equipped Anglo opponents, but, Lara says, ``We were so dumb, we didn't know how to be intimidated.'' This obliviousness was carefully calculated. Bowie's baseball coach made sure his players didn't wallow in want and ethnic victimization, diverting them instead with such requirements as daily classroom attendance, executing the hit-and-run, and mastering the nuances of English by speaking nothing else around him. ``With Nemo, there were no heroes,'' says Gus Sambrano, a shortstop on the 1949 team. ``He was the leader. His message was, `You have leadership; follow.' We were the followers.'' William Carson ``Nemo'' Herrera was a fronterizo, a child of the borderland like his players, and he probably knew them better than their parents did. He was born in Brownsville, Texas, in 1900. His father, Rodolfo, had immigrated after losing his landholdings in the political unrest that would lead to the Mexican Revolution. And his mother, Carolina, had roots in the Canary Islands. The family moved to San Antonio when Nemo was 7, and by the age of 13, he had become the bat boy of the San Antonio Broncos of the Texas league. He steeped himself in the game. His speed and tenacity served him well in basketball as well as baseball while he attended Brackenridge High School. He would excel at both sports at Southwestern University in Georgetown and play semipro baseball during summers. After graduating, he became the head basketball coach and assistant football coach at Beaumont, Texas High School. For a year, he worked as the coach before joining Gulf Oil's subsidiary in Tampico, Mexico. There, he progressed from pipeline work to payroll department while playing second base on the company team. In July of 1927, during his fourth year in Tampico, Herrera was spiked during an industrial league game and wound up in the town's American hospital. Within a month, he had married the head nurse on the floor, Mary Leona Hatch, an Anglo who had been orphaned as a girl near Opelousas, Louisiana. A year later, Herrera took a job as baseball and basketball coach at Lanier High School in San Antonio's west side barrio, where he would spend 18 years, including all of the Depression. His basketball teams rarely had much size, so much so that he introduced what later generations would recognize as a full-court press. ``Only we called it a man-to-man, all-over-the-court defense,'' one player would say later. Herrera would say five times his teams reached the State final four, winning titles in 1943 and 1945. He acquired enough of a reputation for Texas A&M to offer him its basketball coaching job. However, he turned it down for the stability of public school work. And in 1946, Bowie High School came calling, offering a better salary and the benefits of a desert climate, which Mary Leona, who suffered from hay fever, and Bill, one of their two sons who also had asthma, benefited from. Herrera's new high school belied the squalor of the Segundo barrio. When the city expanded the school in 1941 onto what had once been a slag heap, a complex of athletic fields girdled by cottonwoods and elms bloomed in the floodplain of the Rio Grande. Signs throughout the school warned students to speak only English, and special pronunciation classes walked them through phonemes and diphthongs. ``I once asked the girl sitting in front of me for a piece of paper in Spanish,'' Sabrano recalls. ``I got suspended, and my mom and dad said that was the first and last time that you will be guilty of speaking Spanish.'' La Bowie, as it was called, was a temple of assimilation. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt federalized the all-Hispanic Company E of the Texas National Guard's 141st Infantry Regiment late in 1940, half of the soldiers had been Bowie Bears. Forty former Bowie students gave their lives during World War II, most of them as members of Company E, whose ranks were steadily thinned through the Italian campaign, from Salerno to San Pietro to the slaughter at the Rapido River, where over 2 days in January of 1944 German soldiers killed, wounded, or captured virtually every GI not swept to his death by the current. At the outset of the 1948-1949 school year, Bowie dedicated a memorial to its fallen 40 and an ROTC color guard concluded each day with a retreat ceremony, lowering the flag that flew above the school. Herrera worked to make baseball one of Bowie's tools of Americanization. He set up a summer league in the barrio and placed kids on American Legion and commercially sponsored teams. Then he bird- dogged the games, nudging prospects he liked to go out for the Bowie varsity the following spring. A decade later, after Brown v. Board of Education forced El Paso to close all-black Douglas High School, Herrera enticed a bilingual African American kid from the south side to enroll at Bowie. This was the future NCAA- champion basketball coach Nolan Richardson, who would also be a star for Nemo in hoops as well as in baseball. El Paso was a military town, much as it is today, and eventually Nemo took his guys to play teams at Fort Bliss and Biggs Field, where they often outperformed their older, bigger, and stronger hosts. ``We went out there on the field against those base teams not knowing any better,'' says Morales, attributing many of Bowie's boys' victories to Herrera's enforced obliviousness. Always the Bears ate at the mess. And Morales remembers fondly, ``Those were the only days we'd get three square meals.'' The school newspaper, The Growler, could have taken its name from the sound in a Bowie student's stomach. Mary Leona Herrera would send her husband off to work each day with extra sandwiches and burritos, which he left in plain sight so they could be ``stolen'' by his famished boys. As their stomachs filled up, so did their heads. Molding his baseball team in the image of basketball squads, Herrera played small ball before it, too, had a name. ``We used to work on some plays for hours and hours,'' says Morales. ``We won games on details, not because we hit the ball out of the park.'' Herrera spent Saturday mornings chasing down truants. He'd say to me, ``I'm gonna kick their butts if they're not back in school on Monday,'' remembers Bill Herrera, who today is 77, and who would accompany his dad on those rounds. But back at Bowie, Nemo would just as doggedly plead the cases of those same kids to Principal Frank Pollitt. The coach treated his baseball diamond like a drawing room carpet, picking stray pebbles off the infield. And he encouraged teasing for its democratizing effect. One day, first baseman Lorenzo Martinez showed up at practice with a new glove which he had bought across the river in Juarez. ``It smelled like a dead salmon,'' Morales recalls. ``Nemo said, `You paid for that?' The madder Martinez got, the more Nemo encouraged us to razz him because that made him a better player.'' ``Nemo had a wide nose with huge nostrils, and when he got mad, he looked liked a raging bull. We used to joke that we should all get toreador capes.'' One day, as a few of the Bowie Bears nursed beers in a Juarez cantina, Herrera walked in. They literally, and figuratively reached for their capes. Nemo, in typical fashion, said, ``I'll tell you the truth boys; I'd rather see you guys drink beer than soda pop. Soda pop will ruin your health.'' If a Bear took only one thing from his coach it was a credo that became an incantation, and it read, ``It's not who you are or where you come from,'' Nemo would say, ``it's who you become.'' The last of those words synched with the striving of the postwar generation, with the American Dream, with all those cars whizzing east and west on Highway 80. By the spring of 1949, the new coach's spadework had begun to pay off. A San Antonio sportswriter noted ``the wonderful spirit'' of the Bowie baseball team, ``the way the pitchers bear down, the sharp fielding and baserunning reminiscent of the old St. Louis Gashouse Gang.'' The Aztec, which was the Bowie yearbook, had already gone to press by the time the Bowie Bears edged El Paso High, which was the Anglo school on the North Side. There they won the district title. So beneath a team photo the editors of the Aztec had written, ``Good luck to you, team, and when these Aztecs reach you, may you have lived up to those early- season forecasts.'' When the Bears reached Lamesa, Texas, for the best-of-three bi- district playoffs against Lamesa High School, their appearance on the sidewalks caused gawkers to pour out of storefronts. ``You'd think that the circus had come to town,'' Sambrano recalls. Some people made cracks like, ``Why don't you speak English?'' And ``Remember the Alamo,'' while others called the players ``hot tamales'' and ``greasy Mexicans.'' Herrera found a restaurant that would serve the team, but not in its largely empty dining room. Tables and chairs were hastily set up in the kitchen. The Bears' coach rarely brought up the discrimination that his boys faced, for fear they might be tempted to use it as an excuse. Herrera regarded prejudice as the problem of the prejudiced, Sambrano says, best met with an even temper and devotion to the task at hand. Bowie's Ruben Porras three-hit Lamesa to win the series opener 9-1. The next day, Trini Guillen scattered five hits in an 8-0 shutout that clinched the bi-district title. ``Those guys were big,'' Sambrano remembers, ``but we had what they didn't: speed.'' Against the Golden Tornados, the El Paso Herald-Post reported the Bears ``made a race track out of the diamond.'' In the first inning of each game, Bowie scored a run on a lone hit and either an error or a walk. By sweeping Lamesa, Bowie earned a trip to Austin for the single elimination quarterfinals of the state tournament. ``If memory serves me right,'' Lara recalls today, ``there were eight teams and we were rated 10th to win it all.'' Large odds by anybody's calculation. Racial segregation still prevailed in Texas during the 1940s, but Mexican Americans confounded the easy dichotomies of black and white. In Lubbock, where the team made a rest stop on the way to Austin, a sign in one window read No Dogs or Mexicans. ``I remember seeing two drinking fountains, one marked Colored and the other marked White,'' Morales says. ``Me being brown, I didn't know which was for me. So I asked a husky Anglo guy which one I was supposed to use.'' Morales took the man's reply (``I don't give a `s--' '') as permission to use the white one. In Austin, while most of the other visiting teams stayed in hotels, the Bowie Bears had to sleep on Army cots that were set up beneath the stands of Memorial Stadium, the football field on the Texas campus, and they had to make the long slog across the field to the Longhorns' field house to use the bathroom. But to Herrera's naive boys, the unusual accommodations only heightened their adventure. They lined the cots up like hurdles and ran races. When Hispanic businesses and social organizations back home sent telegrams of support, the Bears delighted in seeing the spectacle of a Western Union messenger driving his motorcycle up the stadium ramp for deliveries. One day, four players ventured downtown to see a movie, and they were bewildered when they were told, ``Mexican have to sit upstairs.'' So what did they do? They waited for the usher to turn the corner, and then they scrambled into the seats of the orchestra in the dark. They recalled that they watched The Streets of Laredo with William Holden. Facing Stephenville High in the quarterfinals, Bowie made another display of first-inning resourcefulness, scoring three runs on two hits. The press had expected Herrera to start his ace, Guillen, who was 7-0 for the season. One reporter wondered why the Bowie coach, instead, gambled with his number two pitcher. In typical Herrera fashion, he said, ``Number one, number two, who can tell?'' leaving unsaid that Guillen had just spent 4 days in the hospital with strep throat. Porras, ``the dark-skinned right hander,'' as the American-Statesman described him, struck out six, while limiting Stephenville to two hits in the 5-1 victory. The wisdom of using his ace sparingly became clear the next day in the semifinals against Waco High School. The game lasted three hours. Guillen held up until the fourth, when Waco touched him for two runs. And that's when Herrera brought in Porras as relief. With the score tied at two in the sixth, Rodriguez stole third, then sprinted home on a long fly ball. ``I would have scored easily tagging up and that would have won us the game,'' Rodriguez remembers. ``But me, like a dummy, forgot that there was only one out. The ball was caught and I got doubled up. Nemo almost strangled me, he was so mad.'' He always reminded us, ``Keep your head in the game. Pay attention to details.'' The score remained tied at two until the 10th, when Waco loaded the bases with nobody out. Suddenly, Herrera yelled in Spanish, ``Watch the guy on third. He's gonna steal.'' Camarillo called for a pitchout, and they picked the runner off. It was the only time that any '49er of the Bowie Bears can remember Herrera addressing his players in Spanish. Camarillo then cut down another runner trying to advance to third, and during the rundown, the next batter was caught trying to steal second. In the following inning, Bowie center fielder Fernie Gomez, his back to home plate, preserved the tie by running down a long drive with a catch that his teammates would recognize later as Willie Mays' famous World Series play 5 years later. But in the top of the 12th, Waco took a 3-2 lead on a double and Morales' two-base error. That might have doomed the Bowie Bears had Morales not delivered a reversal of fortune in the bottom of that inning. With Bears on second and third, Morales hit a grounder that eluded the Waco second baseman to tie the game. Then the fates squared accounts with Rodriguez, too: His quailing single dropped into short center field to send Gomez home for the game-winner. Neither of El Paso's daily newspapers sent a reporter to the tournament, so people back home followed Bowie's progress through the collect calls that Herrera placed to the local radio station, KTSM. His boys, Herrera said in his call after the Waco game, ``just don't know when to quit. They're eating well and hitting that ball, and that wins ball games.'' Surely it's one of the few times that a coach has ever credited a victory to eating well. In the final, Austin's Stephen F. Austin, had the tournament's number one seed. They enjoyed more than a home field advantage. The Maroons, as they were called, hadn't lost to a single high school all season, even beating the Longhorns' freshman team. They had swept Robstown in their bi-district series by a combined score of 36-1, and in the semifinals eliminated Denison 12-0. The Boston Braves would soon sign the Maroons' ace, right hander Jack Brinkley, to a $65,000 bonus. Brinkley had allowed only one hit in his quarterfinal start, a 2-0 win over Lubbock. In the final, Herrera intended to counter Brinkley by pitching Guillen, but before game time he asked his catcher, Camarillo, for his thoughts. Camarillo nominated Lefty Holguin, arguing that the knuckleballer would keep the Maroons off balance. Camarillo later confessed that he volunteered Holguin because he had dreamed that the Bears could win the title with him on the mound. Herrera agreed--Guillen could still barely speak--and Porras had pitched 15 innings in 2 days--with the proviso that Holguin would get the hook if he became wild. ``When you've got just one left,'' Herrera would say later, ``that's who you pitch.'' During Austin's half of the first inning, each Maroons hitter returned to the dugout with the same verdict: Holguin was ``just a good batting-practice pitcher,'' as one told his coach, according to the Austin American-Statesmen. They always said, ``we'll get him next inning.'' The next inning came, and the next, and the next, yet Austin couldn't muster a hit off Holguin. Meanwhile, Bowie seized a 1-0 lead in the usual fashion, jumping on a couple of first-inning errors. But after Holguin walked two Maroons in the fourth, Herrera was true to his word, lifting Lefty for Guillen. In the sixth inning, Bears right fielder Ernesto Guzman tripled, and two infield errors on a grounder by Lara allowed both Bears to cross, putting Bowie up 3-0. In the last inning, Austin finally kindled to life. Brinkley, the pitcher, led off with a single hit and advanced to second on a walk. Guillen struck out the next man, but Brinkley scored after Galarza misplayed a slow roller, leaving runners on second and third. The next Austin hitter sent a single to right to knock in a second run, and as the Maroons' third base coach waved the tying run home, the favorites looked like they were going to seize their chance. That's when all of Bowie's preparation--the harping on details, the numbing repetition, the many games against the military-base teams around El Paso--paid its biggest dividend. From right, Guzman sent the ball on a line. Morales, the cutoff man, let it go through to Camarillo, who fixed a tag on the Maroons' base runner for the second out. On the play at the plate, another Maroon, also representing the tying run, made his way to second base. An infield hit edged him to third, whereupon the next Austin hitter slapped a sharp ground ball. At least some of the 2,700 fans there that night must have wondered what the Bowie shortstop was thinking, dropping to one knee. He simply explained, ``I was ready to block it, just in case,'' Rodriguez says. ``I said, `This damn ball's not going through me.' '' He caught the ball cleanly, stood up and whipped it across the diamond. Cradled safely in Lara's borrowed glove, the ball made the urchins of El Paso lords of all of Texas. True to form, there was no celebration when it was over, Morales recalls. ``We took it as part of how Nemo raised us. We just picked up our belongings and walked out of there.'' The Bowie players don't recall ever shaking hands with their opponents. Their opponents simply walked away from them. And though the Bears received a trophy--``I mean, it must be about 3 feet high,'' Herrera marveled in his collect call that night--there was no formal presentation or other official act recognizing Bowie for having won Texas' inaugural baseball championship. The Bears had scratched out nothing but unearned runs to win the final, and to a typical Texan of that time, it must have seemed that an alien team had seized the title by alien means. The Austin American-Statesman reacted as if Pancho Villa had just led a raid over the border: ``Amigo, the Bowie Bears have come and gone. And they have taken with them the State baseball championship. They took it Wednesday night through a weird assortment of hits, errors, jinxes and other sundry items which ultimately meant Bowie 3, Austin 2.'' After the Bears had packed up for the ride home, much to their surprise, a few rocks hit their bus. ``There were two cops there who didn't do anything,'' Rodriguez recalls. When a restaurant near Fort Stockton, which was 240 miles away from home, wouldn't serve the Bowie party, Herrera ferried food from the restaurant to the bus. Around noon the following day, as the team rumbled along Highway 80 over the El Paso County line, a sheriff's deputy on a motorcycle flashed his lights to pull the bus over. One player wondered if they'd hit somebody. When the officer stepped aboard, it was to inform the driver and the students that Bowie students were affixing a State champ's banner to the side of the bus and that he'd be providing a police escort to the terminal. ``As the bus approached downtown, there were people lining both sides of the street,'' Latta recalls. Remarkably, ``a lot of Anglos were cheering for us as well.'' Later, the minor league team El Paso Texans threw a Bowie Night that weekend, and the Bears were feted with several banquets the following week. ``We can't give them anything,'' one city official told the local paper, ``but we can sure feed them. Still, the Bears sensed that even in their hometown, they were given a second-class celebration. Instead of the mayor meeting them at the bus station, as had been announced, an alderman did the honors. ``At the depot, some guy came up to Nemo and gave him a box with a shirt in it,'' Morales remembers. ``When El Paso's Austin High won the district in football, their coach got a brand new car.'' None of the players stopped by the terminal's baggage room to claim luggage. ``We all carried paper bags with our stuff off the bus,'' Morales says. ``I walked a mile, hopped the streetcar, then walked the eight blocks home.'' The night before the team had left for Austin, students in a Bowie home economics class stayed up late preparing hard-boiled eggs for the players to eat on the trip. The Bears had won, one of those coeds would say at a Bowie reunion years later, ``porque jugaron con huevos.'' Because they played with eggs--that is, with balls. Sixty years would pass before another team from El Paso County claimed a state baseball title. In 2009, Socorro High, a school with a Hispanic enrollment of more than 95 percent, ventured to the Austin suburb of Round Rock to beat Austin Westlake and Lufkin for the Class 5A crown. Early in the semifinal a knot of Westlake supporters unfurled a Confederate flag, chanted ``We speak English!'' and waved their ID's. ``If we can have something like that in our day and age,'' says Jesus Chavez, Bowie's current principal and a former Socorro administrator, ``I can't even imagine what they went through in 1949.'' A month after their victory the Socorro players visited Bowie to present championship rings--not awarded in 1949--to the eight surviving Bears. A new Bowie High sits on an old melon field that in '49 was part of Mexico but in 1963 passed into the U.S. as part of the Chamizal Settlement between the two countries. If the borderland remains its protean self, in one respect it's as hard as a barrier can be: While Juarez becomes an ever more Hobbesian hell of drug violence, in which more than 8,000 people have been murdered over the past three years, El Paso remains virtually immune. Bowie nonetheless serves the second-poorest zip code in the U.S. The annual median income in the Segundo Barrio languishes below $20,000, and 68.8 percent of the children in Bowie's catchment area are considered at risk. Chavez says, ``This school is about facing adversity, moving forward and beating the odds.'' The 1949 Bears and their young counterparts from Socorro gathered near the commemorative display in Bowie's Fine Arts Building, where a visitor can punch up audio of Nemo Herrera's collect calls back to KTSM Radio. The 400 people on hand included Peter Contreras, assistant athletic director of the state's University Interscholastic League, the high school sanctioning body that hadn't seen fit to properly lodge or honor the Bears 60 years earlier. That Contreras is Hispanic is only one of uncountable examples of how times have changed. As for the old slights, the '49ers were ``always very restrained how they responded,'' says Reyes Mata, the South Side native who helped organize the event. ``They always maintained their dignity.'' What did they become, Nemo Herrera's barrio boys from El Paso and San Antonio? Judges and produce barons and big-city postmasters. Mechanics and firefighters and civil servants. Opticians and claims adjusters and veterans, many of them decorated. An outsized number chose Nemoesque professions: teaching, educational administration, coaching. Rocky Galarza, the old third baseman, put an open-air boxing ring behind his South Side tavern. He plucked kids off the streets, and if the streets pulled them back, as they briefly did eventual WBF lightweight champ Juan (Ernie) Lazcano, Galarza would simply wait until they returned, wiser, to the sanctuary of his ring. The best ones ultimately made their way to L.A. or Dallas or Houston, where someone else cashed in on them; Galarza, in cowboy boots and jeans, his black hair flowing as he worked a guy out, simply turned to the next kid to save. One night in 1997 one of Galarza's barmaids shot and killed him in his sleep. Seven years later, on the eve of a title fight in Las Vegas, Lazcano told Bill Knight of the El Paso Times, ``Sometimes, when I'm asleep, I still see him, still hear him. He's telling me, `Come on, Champ, don't give up. Feint. Don't just stand there. Move your feet.' It's nice to know, isn't it, that if you do something special for people the way Rocky did, that you live on through them?'' Andy Morales, the license-plate-spotting second baseman, also ``went Nemo,'' as the old Bears put it. After winning a football scholarship to New Mexico and serving in Korea with the Navy, he became baseball coach at El Paso's Austin High. There, in the early '70s, he taught the game to an Anglo kid named Chris Forbes, who grew up to coach Socorro to that 2009 state title. Morales followed the Bulldogs as they made a familiar way east through the draw, to Midland and greater Austin, as excited as he had been as a Bowie Bear. He was amazed that a dozen spirit buses would make the trip from El Paso for the final. As for Herrera himself, he remained at Bowie until 1960. ``The [Bowie] boys knew little of fundamentals,'' he said upon leaving, ``and I was told I couldn't teach them. But I did.'' He took a post at another barrio high school, Edgewood of San Antonio. After one year Herrera--by now known as el viejo, the old man--returned to El Paso to coach baseball at Coronado High, a new, largely Anglo school on the outskirts of town. ``I couldn't get those guys to do a damn thing,'' he would say. ``They had a car in the parking lot and a gal on their arm.'' Upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of 70, he returned one last time to San Antonio, working as director of civilian recreation at Kelly Air Force Base for 10 years before retiring again. He died in 1984. Herrera remains the only Texas high school coach to have won state titles in two sports, and his name can be found throughout the barrios of the two cities: on a scholarship fund, an elementary school and a baseball field in El Paso; and on a scholarship fund, a basketball court and the Kelly Air Force Base civilian rec center in San Antonio. ``It's almost a competition between the two cities to see who can honor Nemo the most,'' says his son Charles, 75. Of the eight members of the 1949 Bowie Bears still living, the five in El Paso gather for breakfast every few months at a Mexican restaurant on the East Side. Listen in, and you'll hear the sounds of baseball: chatter, needling, kibitzing, stories that reach across the years and often involve their old coach. Not that it matters particularly, but the banter is much more likely to be in English than in Spanish. And just so you know, Morales says, ``For 60 years we've never lost a conversation.'' I know my time is up, Mr. Speaker. I wanted to read the story of the 1949 Bowie Bears into the Record to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. This is the end of Hispanic Heritage Month, and I thought that would be an appropriate way to end the month. I thank you for your indulgence.

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to mark the 20th anniversary of Water Conservation Day in El Paso. I also want to honor the truly remarkable turnaround El Paso has achieved in reducing water use and preventing the depletion of the Hueco Bolson aquifer. In 1991, with one of El Paso's main water sources predicted to run dry within 36 years, the goal was to reduce the 200 gallons used by each person everyday by 20 percent. Today, average usage stands at 133 gallons per person, and, despite a population increase of 200,000 people since 1991, El Paso uses 1.6 percent less than 20 years ago. El Paso's Water Conservation Ordinance has provided guidelines and schedules for water usage for two decades, and resulted in over 231 billion gallons of water saved from waste and has also halted the over- drafting of fresh water from the Hueco Bolson aquifer, the main water source for the city. El Paso's initiative succeeded for several reasons. The Water Conservation Department offered incentives to lower daily water usage by offering high- efficiency toilets and implementing a progressive seasonal rate structure. Rebates were offered for water-efficient washing machines and central refrigeration systems. In addition, 185,000 efficient shower heads, 9,000 evaporative cooler bleed-off line clamps, and 170 waterless urinals were provided at no cost to improve efficiency. Thousands of residents also eliminated their grass lawns through the Turf Rebate Programs, saving El Paso 894 million gallons annually of water. These efforts combine to conserve over 3.6 billion gallons of water annually. In addition to these measures, El Pasoans use 2.1 billion of reclaimed water annually, a water source that is unaffected by drought, and awareness campaigns have encouraged El Pasoans to conserve water. In two decades, El Paso was able to coordinate a series of programs to achieve its goal of averting a water shortage, while dramatically reducing consumer demand and saving $460 million in the process by deferring the expansion of water facilities. The El Paso Water Utilities desalination plant has helped provide water especially in the most recent drought we are experiencing, and has become a main source of water for the city. It treats 27 million gallons of water daily, making it the largest inland plant in the world. El Paso is serious about water conservation, and I am proud to represent a community that works together to protect and conserve our precious resources.

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. Mr. Speaker, as our nation celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month, I rise to honor the men and women of our Armed Forces, particularly Hispanic service members. Hispanics have served in the United States military since its establishment and have fought in every conflict since the Revolutionary War. Forty-four Hispanic Americans have been awarded the military's highest honor for bravery. In addition to these Medal of Honor recipients, thousands of Hispanics have died in combat defending our freedom. Beyond the military, Hispanics continue to play an important role in every aspect of our society, and their influence is growing. According to the 2010 Census, the U.S. Hispanic population surged 43 percent, rising to over 50 million up from 35 million in 2000. Latinos now constitute16 percent of the nation's total population of 308 million. Hispanic population growth accounted for more than half of the nation's growth over the past decade. The Hispanic population in the military has also grown, but Hispanics continue to be under represented in our nation's military forces. Despite making up over 17 percent of the population between the ages of 18 and 40, only 11 percent of the United States Army and the Air Force are Hispanic. Hispanics make up 12 percent of the Marine Corps and 14 percent of the Navy. While these figures are lower than the percentage of Hispanics in the general population, they represent a significant increase from 1994 when the number of Hispanics entering the Army was just 6.6 percent of new recruits. Despite recruitment levels lower than the overall population, Hispanics are retained in the force and promoted at the same or higher rates than other groups. Today, I want to highlight a few outstanding Hispanic Americans who have risen to the highest ranks and are serving in high profile and critical positions for the defense of our nation. General David Rodriguez leads the United States Army's Forces Command. As the 19th leader of this critical organization, General Rodriguez oversees one of the Army's most important functions, preparing forces for deployment to combat. Lieutenant General Rhett Hernandez recently stood up the Army's Cyber Command, which brings the Army's cyber resources under a single command. Under the leadership of General Hernandez, Cyber Command is developing and protecting the critical network that links warfighters in every battle space. Major General Angela Salinas began her military service as an enlisted Marine in 1974 and now serves as the Director of the United States Marine Corps' Manpower Management Division. In this position, she ensures that the Marine Corps has the right mix of forces to respond to any contingency worldwide. Rear Admiral Samuel Perez serves as the Commander of Carrier Strike Group One. Carrier Strike Group One is based in the Pacific and has a 100 million square-mile area of operations. As a fellow native of Canutillo, Texas, I am especially proud of Admiral Perez's leadership of this important United States Navy combat formation. At every level of our nation's military, Hispanic Americans are serving in critical leadership positions. They have demonstrated exceptional dedication to their country and their fellow service members. They have risked their lives fighting to defend our nation and our freedom, and we owe them an immeasurable debt of gratitude for their sacrifice.

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in recognition of the achievements of Coldwell Elementary School. Coldwell was recently honored with the 2011 National Blue Ribbon award from the United States Department of Education for excellence in education. The National Blue Ribbon School award honors both public and private elementary, middle and high schools where students achieve at high levels and also schools where the achievement gap is narrowing. Since 1982, more than 6,500 of America's schools have received this coveted award. I want to personally congratulate the teachers, administrators, and staff of Coldwell Elementary for their commitment and dedication to our young students in El Paso. This year only 304 schools nationwide received the award, and they will be honored at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. The Blue Ribbon validates the efforts of these schools in creating a positive and effective learning environment. These schools and their communities have achieved a degree of excellence of which they can justifiably be proud. Coldwell Elementary School is a fine example of what can be accomplished when parents, teachers and administrators collaborate to prepare our students for a prosperous future. By emphasizing the importance of subjects like math, science and language arts, Coldwell is enabling a new generation of community leaders. In times of economic uncertainty, we cannot lose sight of the paramount importance of our children's education, and I am honored to represent Coldwell Elementary School.

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to honor United States Army Corporal Eduardo Pedregon, who tragically went missing during the Korean War. In 1947, Eduardo Pedregon left his hometown of San Elizario, Texas, when he was only 17 years old. He wanted to serve his country, but, because he was not yet old enough to enlist, he convinced his mother to sign his enlistment papers granting him parental permission to join the Army. In 1950, he was deployed to fight the spread of communism on the Korean peninsula. Corporal Pedregon's unit moved across the 38th Parallel into what is now North Korea where they fought in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. In the harsh, mountainous terrain, it was a brutal fight in the freezing cold--as low as 35 degrees below zero as the winds swept in from Siberia. Weapons malfunctioned, and the roads were often impassable, as they were encircled by 60,000 Chinese troops. The U.S. forces were eventually able to retreat, but not before suffering massive casualties--including Corporal Eduardo Pedregon, who was last seen on November 30, 1950. Corporal Pedregon's family hoped and prayed that he would be found. This spring--over sixty years later--Corporal Pedregon's family learned that the remains of their lost family member were finally identified using the latest technology and DNA provided by his late mother. Today as the House of Representatives convenes, Corporal Pedregon's remains are returning home. Our community will join his family to honor him at the San Elizario Chapel on Saturday, and he will be interred in this nation's most hallowed ground on October 6, 2011. He will be laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery with his brothers and sisters in arms who, like him, made the ultimate sacrifice. I can think of no greater honor to give to an American hero. As a fellow combat veteran, I have seen firsthand the sacrifices that soldiers like Corporal Pedregon and his family make in defense of our great nation. The Pedregon family sacrificed more than most; of the 11 children in the family, 5 served in the armed forces, including Eduardo and his brother, Roberto, who fought in the Korean War. These brave men and women deserve the honor and respect they have earned by risking, and even giving, their lives to defend our freedom. We will continue to keep faith with the families of all soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines and never leave a service member behind.

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in observance of Hispanic Heritage Month, which is celebrated September 15th through October 15th, and I am proud to honor the contributions of the Latino community to the diverse landscape of American life and culture. I would like to take a moment to recognize a few individuals for their impact on the Hispanic community and its progress in our Nation. Through their accomplishments in media and the arts, Jose Antonio Burciaga, Rosa Guerrera, Luis Jimenez, and Ramon Renteria have given a part of themselves to enrich the Hispanic community. On September 30th, these individuals are being recognized at the annual El Paso Community College's Hispanic Heritage luncheon celebrating 100 years of Latino art & media. To begin, I would like to honor the life and career of the late writer and artist Jose Antonio Burciaga, a native El Pasoan, for his exploration of the complex Chicano identity in American society. With the tools of language and art, he illuminated and articulated issues of identity, discrimination, and alienation facing the Chicano community. I would also like to recognize artist and educator Rosa Guerrero. Through her projects such as the International Folklore Dance Group and her film, ``Tapestry,'' Rosa Guerrero has made it her life's mission to promote cultural diversity and understanding, beginning with some of the first intercultural programs in El Paso schools in the 1970s. I would also like to remember the life of artist Luis Jimenez, whose powerful sculptures are on display nationwide in public spaces and museums, including the ``Vaquero'' at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. His creations, such as ``Blue Mustang'', which often depict the working man, are marked by vivid and fluorescent colors. They are purposefully striking yet accessible, often provoking strong reactions. And finally, I would like to recognize journalist and columnist Ramon Renteria for his decades of bold, quality reporting on a wide range of cultural and social issues. His past honors include the Guillermo Martinez-Marquez national award for Latin American reporting and a Texas Headliner Award for his feature story, ``Separate and Unequal: The Story of Kelli, Veronica and School Finance,'' as well as the Ruben Salazar Award from Cafe Mayapan. As a veteran journalist, Ramon Renteria has brought unique insight and experience to important topics in education, politics, and border issues in our community. I want to personally congratulate our honorees for their exceptional achievements and contributions to our community, Hispanic culture, and the rich tapestry of American life. They have left their mark on the Hispanic experience in America through the sharing of their cultural perspective and achievements in their respective fields. As the Hispanic community continues to grow in America, it is important to celebrate our roots as we grow in our journey as a part of this great Nation.

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the life and the lasting impact that Dan Reyna had on our Nation. As General Manager of the U.S. Section of the U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission, he worked to address critical public health issues in the border region, such as diabetes and tuberculosis. I had the pleasure of working with Dan for the past five years, and I was impressed with his dedication and tireless advocacy for improving health and quality of life on the border. Dan spent over 25 years as an advocate for the U.S.-Mexico border and was a national expert on border health issues, working for the Texas Department of Health and the New Mexico Department of Health before joining the U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission. One example of Dan's positive impact was the Border Health Commission's Healthy Border Initiative 2010. The overarching goals of the campaign were to improve the quality and increase the years of healthy life and eliminate health disparities for border residents. The initiative was a success, decreasing the prevalence of diseases, and giving individuals the tools they need to lead a healthy lifestyle. Dan also served his country proudly for over 21 years in the U.S. Army. He retired from the U.S. Army Reserve as a colonel, having served in Afghanistan as the Senior Health Action Officer and Coalition Forces Liaison to multiple national ministries including the Ministry of Health in 2003 and 2004. Dan's exemplary military career began early. Even as a cadet he was honored as a Distinguished Military Graduate, an honor only achieved by the Nation's top cadets. Throughout his career he continued to distinguish himself earning awards that included the Joint Service Achievement Medal, the Bronze Star Medal and the Legion of Merit. Our thoughts and prayers are with Dan's wife and family during this difficult time as well as the staff at the U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission. One thing that I will always remember about Dan is that no challenge was ever too difficult or complex to conquer, and, if everyone adopted this approach, the world would be a better place. Dan's work and impact on the border region will always serve as an inspiration for others.

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to strongly oppose the Republican's ``Cut, Cap, and Balance Act.'' The only thing balanced about this bill is that it has the word balance in the title. The actual title should be ``Cut, Default, and End Medicare Act'' since it would have a devastating effect on all American families and businesses. This legislation makes significant cuts to social programs, and caps spending at unprecedented levels. Quite simply, this is the worst piece of legislation I have seen while serving in Congress. This legislation seals tax breaks for richest Americans, while gutting Medicare for seniors and other critical programs for students, such as Pell Grants. In order to eliminate tax breaks for the richest two percent of Americans, a supermajority of Congress would be required for approval. This bill will adversely impact the Hispanic community and will substantially weaken the American economy. The Republican plan is not the balanced approach Americans favor: spending cuts and revenue increases, but instead the Tea Party plan will lock in cuts over the next 10 years as severe as those in the Ryan budget plan that they passed in April. In fact, according to a CBS News Poll released Monday, 66 percent of Americans say an agreement to raise the amount of money the nation can borrow should include both spending cuts and tax increases. This bill would exacerbate the debt crisis by making it more difficult for the U.S. to pay its bills by August 2nd and force the passage of a constitutional amendment that would require a two-thirds approval to raise any revenue in the future. This bill would require slashing $111 billion immediately from critical programs, in FY2012, without regard to the 9.2 percent unemployment rate. These cuts would cause the loss of roughly 700,000 jobs in the current weak economy. In fact, the Republicans' slash and burn politics have not created a single job for hardworking middle class families in over the 200 days they have controlled the House. Instead of rebuilding our economic infrastructure by investing in roads, ports, bridges, and education and job training programs to help middle class Americans, they push a radical and dangerous ideological agenda. H.R. 2560 also continues the Republicans assault on our nation's seniors. Their plan will inevitably result in the end of the Medicare guarantee, shifting thousands of dollars of health costs onto seniors, shredding the social safety net and our promise to protect our most vulnerable. Social Security would also be affected, even though Social Security doesn't add 1 penny to the deficit. Rather than focusing on innovation, infrastructure, education, and jobs, Republicans want to manipulate the Constitution to make it easier to cut Medicare and Social Security than to close special interest tax loopholes. The bill destroys Social Security and Medicare as we know them. These programs are extremely important to seniors, especially to those in my district. H.R. 2560 is nothing more than an ideological piece of legislation to pursue a radical policy agenda of attacking the livelihood of our seniors, while protecting tax breaks for special interests and the wealthiest Americans. For these reasons, I strongly urge my colleagues to oppose this legislation and stand firm in support of our seniors, children, and most vulnerable.

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. Mr. Speaker, it is with a heavy heart that I rise today to share the news of a great loss to El Paso, to Texas, and to the Nation. My dear friend, Colonel Retired James ``Buster'' Hayden was a class of 1945 West Point Graduate, retired Army officer with 30 years military service, long time area West Point Admissions Representative, and the Chairman of my Military Academy Advisory Board for over 15 years. Col. Hayden came from a long and distinguished line of West Point graduates. His great-grandfather was a member of the Civil War Class of 1862, and his grandfather graduated in the Class of 1888. In the 20th Century, his father was in the World War I Class of 1917, and Col. Hayden--well known to everyone as ``Buster''--graduated with the World War II Class of 1945 after securing an appointment on his fourth try! Col. Hayden's distinguished career of 30 years included tours of duty with the Constabulary Force during the occupation of Germany, in an armored field artillery battalion during the Korean War, at the Pentagon, and with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He retired as the Deputy Assistant Commandant of the Air Defense School in 1975. Just a year later, he started working with the West Point Admissions Field Force, beginning his long and distinguished journey of molding the next generation of leaders. With his passing, our community has lost one of the greatest advocates for El Paso youth wishing to serve in our Nation's Armed Forces. After his family, what he loved most was inspiring scores of young El Pasoans every year to never give up on their dreams. Since 1976, he helped recruit talented cadets from the El Paso area and Southern New Mexico to West Point. Over the last 15 years, Col. Hayden devoted countless hours, along with the other members of my Academy Advisory Board for the 16th Congressional district, to overseeing the annual process of nominating El Paso's finest young men and women to our Nation's service academies. He influenced the lives of hundreds of service academy graduates, who have pursued successful careers in the military, education, business, and industry. In fact, Col. Hayden helped shepherd more cadets into the United States Military Academy at West Point than anyone in the history of the Academy. His efforts in our region have led to over 1,200 offers of admission to young men and women, resulting in no less than 622 graduates. Col. Hayden never gave up on a single applicant, nominee, or appointee, even when he was feeling sick from the effects of cancer. Even near the end, his daughter found him in his office looking for information to reach a cadet. Once he got the phone number, he spent 30 minutes talking to the cadet. That is how he was with ``his'' cadets as well as those seeking a future at our military academies. In fact, in one of life's great ironies, I was at an event the night he passed away speaking with a second lieutenant of the 1st Armored Division from Fort Bliss who was proud to be ``one of Hayden's soldiers.'' He told me how Col. Hayden had changed his life by mentoring him from prep school to graduation at West Point. I have heard from many soldiers I have visited with around the world who tell of how Col. Hayden kept in touch and mentored them. That was the ``Hayden way.'' He always had words of encouragement for our young applicants and loved to recount the story about the challenges he himself faced in gaining entry into West Point. In his own self-deprecating way, he talked to candidates about how it took him four tries to get in, and he urged them to never give up on their dream. During 30 years of active duty and another 35 years supporting Admissions and many other programs connected with West Point, Col. Hayden has truly espoused the motto of the United States Military Academy: Duty, Honor, Country. His love for the Academy and for our Armed Forces was unparalleled, and we will all miss him. It was a privilege to know Buster and to work with him. He leaves a great legacy and will have a lasting impact for many generations to come. Our Nation and our community are deeply indebted to him for his service and dedication to our young people.

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. Madam Chair, I rise in strong opposition to the underlying bill for its drastic and extreme cuts to various critical food programs funded through the Department of Agriculture. While we face a great challenge in reducing the deficit and creating jobs, the greater challenge is to do this in a way that is consistent with our values. Slashing funds for programs that help put food on the table for the neediest of Americans, young children, pregnant mothers, the elderly, and those struggling to make ends meet, is not good policy. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP) which serves predominantly low-income seniors, and The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) which works with states to assist food banks are just some of the programs that were targeted for extreme cuts. The cuts to WIC concern me the most. WIC provides food to new mothers, babies, and children under five who have been identified as nutritionally at risk. Nearly 50% of the babies born in our country each year rely on WIC. On top of that, it is incredibly cost-effective, serving nearly 10 million people each year, and costing less than $100 per person. In my district, nearly 54,000 children and women suffer from food hardship, and depend on WIC to make ends meet. This is yet another chapter in the Republican attack on working families to give handouts to special interests. First they came after seniors who rely on Medicare, and now they're coming after children and mothers who rely on food assistance. We cannot let Republicans destroy programs on which our most vulnerable population depend to pay for $45 billion in tax breaks for millionaires. According to the Center for American Progress, if we got rid of tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires for one week, we would pay for the entire WIC program for a year. I urge my colleagues to protect working Americans, not millionaires and billionaires. Thank you.

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. Madam Speaker, I rise today in opposition to the Boehner resolution on Libya. As a combat veteran myself, I am extremely concerned any time that we commit to using our armed forces to support military actions, and I believe that close scrutiny of our country's involvement in the NATO-led operation is essential. I understand the frustration being expressed by many here today about their level of consultation in the decision to commence military operations in Libya, but, as my colleague from the Armed Services Committee Adam Smith noted, Congressional leaders were invited to a White House briefing and substantial information has been provided to Congress since then. Based on my personal experience as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, the Obama Administration's level of consultation with Congress on these sorts of issues is much more extensive and timely than during the Bush Administration. I, myself, had additional questions which were not fully addressed by this week's briefings, and, while my colleagues were debating the rule for this resolution, I simply called the White House to request the information demanded in this resolution. Much of the information was provided immediately, with the rest due back in the next few days. And when I asked the White House about requests for information they had received on operations in Libya, they told me they had responded to all Congressional requests for briefings. Debating the bill before us may provide a convenient opportunity for opponents of the President to make political statements, but it does so at the expense of our troops who are actively engaged in combat operations. This resolution threatens our critical NATO alliance and emboldens our enemies. The Boehner resolution--like the Kucinich measure which we are also debating today--potentially sends the message to our NATO allies that the United States does not stand by its commitments. At a time when we are relying more and more on our NATO allies to support the joint mission in Afghanistan, now is not the time to turn our back on NATO. Beyond straining relations with our closest allies, this resolution sends an even more dangerous message to Colonel Qaddafi. This resolution is effectively telling a despotic dictator, who has murdered and terrorized his own citizens, that he can simply wait out the military effort to protect the Libyan people because the United States will not hold true to its word. As a member of the Armed Services Committee, as a combat veteran, and as an American, I will continue to ask the hard questions of our military and civilian leaders about military operations over Libya. But I will not vote for a measure that I believe threatens the security and safety of our country and undermines our President.

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. Mr. Chair, I rise to support the amendment offered by Mrs. Lowey to restore funds to the State and Local Grant Programs account in the FY2012 Homeland Security Appropriations Bill. As you know, various programs under the Department of Homeland Security such as the Urban Areas Security Initiative, Operation Stonegarden, and FIRE and SAFER grants, provide communities across the country with the resources and tools necessary to keep us safe. Unfortunately, the FY2012 Homeland Security Appropriations Bill funds the State and Local Grant programs almost 65 percent below the President's request. And, while I appreciate the Committee's efforts to consolidate and streamline the process, I concur with Mr. Price's sentiments when he says that these cuts ``break faith with the states and localities that depend on us as partners to secure [and protect] our communities.'' These steep reductions have prompted President Obama to release a Statement of Administration Policy expressing great concern regarding the insufficient amount of funds that are critical to support ongoing homeland security prevention and preparedness programs to ensure that all levels of government have the capacity to respond to threats. As our local governments continue to face financial challenges, these federal grants help ensure that our communities have the resources they need to stay safe. As I have mentioned before, El Paso, Texas, the city which I represent, sits on the U.S.-Mexico border across from what is arguably one of the most violent cities in Mexico--Ciudad Juarez. Yet, despite this, El Paso has continued to rank as one of the safest cities in the country. Indeed, in 2010 it was ranked the safest large city. I attribute this to the great work of law enforcement in our community which is supported by the resources from programs funded through the State and Local Grants account. With the continued violence in Mexico and other potential security threats in our area, funding for the State and Local Grants accounts is especially critical. These federal grants help ensure that our local law enforcement agencies have the resources they need to ensure that El Paso remains the safest city in the U.S. As former Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, I know very well the importance of providing our cities with adequate resources to prepare, prevent, and protect against attacks. This is a time for our communities to remain vigilant, and it is unwise to cut off resources in such a drastic way--especially as some of my colleagues seek to paint the border as violent and lawless. Mrs. Lowey's amendment provides necessary increases for disaster relief, police department anti-terror programs, and firefighter grant programs--restoring the latter two to their 2011 levels. If this amendment does not pass, the Republican Homeland Security Appropriations bill would dramatically reduce support for police and fire departments. This shifts the costs to local communities, forcing them to slash jobs and services, or increase taxes. I urge my colleagues to support the Lowey Amendment to ensure that our communities remain safe.

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. Mr. Chair, I rise to support the amendment offered by Mr. LaTourette and Mr. Pascrell to restore funds for FIRE and SAFER Grants in the FY2012 Homeland Security Appropriations Bill. The Assistance to Firefighters (FIRE) and Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant programs provide much needed support to local fire departments to help them afford critically-needed equipment and training as well as to hire additional firefighters. Funds from the FIRE and SAFER grants can be used by local fire departments to equip, train and maintain personnel, as well as to prepare them to respond to emergencies from natural disasters to terrorist attacks. These programs address the immediate, individualized needs of departments efficiently and effectively. Unfortunately, the FY2012 Homeland Security Appropriations Bill slashes these critical programs by almost 50 percent the amount requested in the President's budget, an amount that was already lower than previous year's funding. I concur with Mr. Price's sentiments that these cuts ``break faith with the states and localities that depend on us as partners to secure [and protect] our communities.'' In fact on Sunday alone, the Texas Forest Service responded to 20 fires consuming over 1,370 acres. This is in addition to three large ongoing fires that have consumed over 1,000 acres across Texas. While our State and Federal agencies are working together to battle this inferno, we need to ensure that fire fighters have the equipment and resources that they need. As local governments continue to face difficult times, these Federal grants help ensure that our communities continue to have the funds to hire and retain firefighters and purchase the equipment necessary to keep our communities safe. The FIRE grant program has provided over $7 billion in funding to local fire departments across the country since it's authorization in FY2001. One of the most recent grants awarded to El Paso, Texas, which I represent, was over $1 million to help offset the costs of constructing new fire stations across our quickly expanding city which has welcomed over 20,000 additional soldiers. Indeed, the FIRE and SAFER grants are a critical piece to our security efforts, and I'm proud to say that I have supported legislation to strengthen these programs to ensure that communities facing financial hardship are able to apply for funds. The LaTourette/Pascrell Amendment restores funding to the FIRE and SAFER Grants, and the spending increase is offset by cutting other funding. I urge my colleagues to support our fire fighters by voting in favor of this amendment.

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to strongly oppose the Republican's plan to eliminate Medicare as we know it. The Republican budget ends the Medicare benefits guarantee and replaces it with an inadequate voucher system where seniors will have to buy their own health insurance in 2022. These actions will fulfill Republicans' longtime goal of privatizing Medicare. Their plan eliminates critical provisions of the Affordable Care Act, including those that provide no-cost preventative screenings for all seniors and eliminates a 50 percent discount for brand-name drugs for seniors in the `donut hole.' Above all, the Republican plan increases the age eligibility for Medicare from 65 to 67, raising health care costs for millions of seniors who will have to wait longer to gain access to Medicare. The plan to dismantle Medicare will have a devastating impact in my district. There are over 76,000 seniors in El Paso, and over 2.4 million seniors in Texas according to the most recent U.S. Census 2010 numbers. Based on Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis, the Republican plan would more than double a senior's out-of-pocket health care spending in 2022, compared to what their costs would be under traditional Medicare--increasing their out-of-pocket costs by more than $6,000 annually. By 2030, the GOP plan would nearly triple this cost to seniors. These drastic changes to Medicare are a clear reflection of continued efforts to cut vital services for hardworking families to subsidize tax breaks for millionaires. It is simply irresponsible to balance the budget on the backs of seniors, while millionaires who can afford the high cost of health care, benefit from more tax breaks. Republicans are wrongly targeting vulnerable seniors, many of whom survive on limited incomes. Their plan will undoubtedly place additional burdens not only on seniors, but on their children, who will bear more costs to help meet the health care needs of their parents. This plan will also have a disproportionate impact on low income communities, such as those in the district that I represent, that will be overburdened with uninsured patients who will use public hospitals to meet their health care needs. We have an obligation to protect our seniors and ensure they continue to have access to Medicare and receive the health care they need in the years ahead. That is why I will strongly oppose any effort to privatize Medicare and to increase health care costs for seniors.

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Just in fairness, none of the manufacturing of this great aircraft is in my district. So what I'm saying is based on my experience and what I know about the capabilities of this great aircraft. First and foremost, if we had had the Osprey when we went into combat in Tora Bora, we wouldn't have had the casualties that we suffered there because it's got much better capabilities than even the upgraded CH-47s that we were using at the time. Secondly, in February, along with the chairman and another member of our committee, we flew the MV-22 in Afghanistan. I also had an opportunity to talk to the pilots and talk to the crew chief, mainly because that's what I did when I was in the Army. I was in aviation. And I wanted to get a sense from them as to what they felt about the aircraft. All of them said this was a great aircraft with great capabilities--a technological marvel. The bottom line is that is it effective. It is not how much have we paid for it but, rather, how many lives have we saved with it, and how many lives will we save because of it. In closing, Madam Chair, I submit for the Record a letter from the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, and I want to read a paragraph from that letter. It reads, ``This aircraft is safe and survivable, effective and efficient. The MV-22 has operated successfully in extreme environmental conditions--'' extreme environmental conditions like the ones we were in when we were in Afghanistan ``--during nine combined deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and aboard amphibious shipping. It has the lowest Class A flight mishap rate of any United States Marine Corps rotorcraft in the past 10 years. In addition to being safe, our Osprey offers a very efficient use of resources. In 2010, the MV-22 had the lowest cost per seat mile of any Department of the Navy rotorcraft. Those figures will only improve as our cost per flight hour continues to decrease and our readiness rates continue to rise.'' Vote ``no.'' February 15, 2011. Hon. C.W. Bill Young, Chairman, Subcommittee on Defense, Committee on Appropriations, Washington, DC. Dear Mr. Chairman: In light of the current debate regarding the MV-22, I appreciate this opportunity to expound upon this important issue. The effectiveness and survivability of the MV-22 Osprey have been demonstrated repeatedly in combat, from land-based operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to sea- based operations in Haiti and the Horn of Africa. The Osprey is giving our Combatant Commanders unprecedented agility and operational reach. As we remain actively engaged in combat for the foreseeable future, the revolutionary capability of the MV-22 will be a cornerstone of our Marine Air Ground Task Force. Without a doubt, this great country faces tough challenges in the coming years. Continuous forward engagement, coupled with growing fiscal pressures at home, presents a dilemma in the face of public demands for dramatic action. The MV-22 is the medium lift assault support aircraft for the Marine Corps, and we must have it in sufficient quantities to support our ground forces and ensure robust sustainment from industry. The cost of introducing a second aircraft to make up the difference in medium lift would be extreme. A prudent evaluation of the facts makes it clear that the V-22 Program of Record must be kept intact. This aircraft is safe and survivable, effective and efficient. The MV-22 has operated successfully in extreme environmental conditions during nine combined deployments to Iraq, Afghnistan, and aboard amphibious shipping. It has the lowest Class A flight mishap rate of any USMC rotorcraft in the past ten years. In addition to being safe, our Osprey offers a very efficient use of resources. In 2010, the MV-22 had the lowest cost per seat mile of any Department of the Navy rotorcraft. Those figures will only improve as our cost per flight hour continues to decrease and our readiness rates continue to rise. As we consider the likely challenges of the next two decades and how the Corps will meet them, one thing emains clear: America needs an Expeditionary Force in Readiness that is prepared to respond to any crisis. We are a maritime Nation with global responsibilities requiring ready, agile sea-based forces. These forces are organized, trained and equipped to conduct operations in the littorals--from humanitarian assistance to major combat--and ``such other duties as the President may direct.'' This has been, and will remain, the Marine Corps' primary role in providing for the Nation's defense. The MV-22 serves as a critical linchpin that will enable our Corps to deliver this capability across the spectrum of operations. Again, I appreciate the opportunity to provide these details, and I stand ready to answer any additional questions you or others on your Committee may have. Sincerely, James F. Amos, General, U.S. Marine Corps, Commandant of the Marine Corps.

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. I would like to thank the gentleman for yielding and compliment both the chairman and the ranking member for setting the tone to once again work in a bipartisan basis, as has been mentioned by all three of my colleagues that have spoken here this evening. Mr. Chairman, each year the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee is charged with conducting oversight of hundreds of thousands of dollars in Department of Defense programs that total more than $135 billion. All of the members of this subcommittee take this task very seriously because the troops in the field depend on Congress to provide them with what they need. Conducting this oversight is a challenge because the budget, as we get it from the Department of Defense, is often far from perfect. It is the subcommittee's responsibility, therefore, to identify any wasteful spending, very critical at a time when the budget is under stress, find unexecutable funding and also find redundant programs. In addition, the subcommittee must also consider pressing DOD needs that are not addressed in the budget. That's the role of Congress. Doing all of that while making sure that equipment continues to flow to the troops in the field therefore is sometimes no easy task. Despite these challenges, I am pleased to report again this year, under the leadership of our chairman, Chairman Bartlett, the subcommittee has put together a very well balanced product that cuts waste, reallocates funding for more critical priorities, and ensures that our troops will continue to have the very best equipment available. I am also pleased with how the bill supports the Army and Marine Corps in particular. These two armed services have borne the heaviest burden over the past 10 years of war. And this mark does an excellent job, I believe, of helping them to rebuild combat power and prepare for the future. H.R. 1540 fully supports and funds the Army's number one development program, the ground combat vehicle. This bill provides an increase of $425 million for additional M1 Abrams tanks and M2 Bradley fighting vehicles and keeps the production line open. The budget request assumed that a 3-year shutdown of both the Abrams and the Bradley production lines that would cost the taxpayer $1 billion, eliminate thousands of jobs, and diminish the United States defense industrial base was the way to go. We changed that. So rather than spending money to lose American jobs, this bill provides funding that will protect those American jobs while it also provides the Army with better and more modern equipment. While this issue will not be fully dealt with in one budget year, I do believe that this bill lays down a better and smarter way that will maintain the Army's ground combat vehicle critical to the needs of both the Army and the Marine Corps. Finally, the bill fully funds the Marine Corps' $2.6 billion request for procurement of ground combat vehicle and support equipment. For those reasons and many more, Mr. Chairman, I urge all Members to support H.R. 1540. It's the right balance and a great bipartisan product.

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the outstanding accomplishments of the Americas High School Mock Trial team from my congressional district in El Paso, Texas. On March 5, 2011, at the Texas High School Mock Trial Competition, the Americas High School Mock Trial team became the first team from El Paso in the competition's 32- year history to win the Texas state title. This is a remarkable achievement that I am proud to recognize. Mock Trial offers students across the nation the opportunity to develop critical thinking and public speaking skills, as well as knowledge of legal practices and procedures, in a real courtroom setting. Teams devote long hours to work on case theories and examinations to prepare for competition. Undefeated in the regional competition for three years in a row, the Americas High School Mock Trial team's dedication secured their victory as they defeated the defending state champions. The team members include Enrique Esparza, Edwin Felix, Zach Fields, Joshua Monarez, Nayell Palomino, Jacob Parson, Texas Quezada, Chris Ramos, Savannah Rappe, and Anabella Tarango. In addition to the team victory, Zach Fields was awarded the Outstanding Advocate Award at the competition in a unanimous decision by the judges. The Americas High School Mock Trial team is coached by Mr. Robert Almonte II, Assistant City Attorney for the City of El Paso, and Mr. Jaime Esparza, the District Attorney for the 34th Judicial District of Texas. The team's teacher sponsor, Teresa Candelaria, has served as their sponsor for seven seasons since 2004. I commend these three outstanding professionals for their dedication to the educational development of El Paso students. Americas High School, located in east El Paso, is one of seven high schools in the Socorro Independent School District. The school opened in September 1996, serving a predominantly Hispanic student population. In early May, the Americas High School Mock Trial team will travel to Phoenix, Arizona, to represent the State of Texas at the National High School Mock Trial Championship. I am pleased to honor this team for their impressive accomplishments, and wish all team members the very best in their future endeavors.

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the Women's Resource Center at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) for highlighting Sexual Assault Awareness Month. It is reported that worldwide, one out of every three women will be physically abused during her lifetime. In the United States, nearly two million women are assaulted each year, and more than half of all women will be physically assaulted during their lifetime. Last year in Texas, there were over 15,000 pending cases involving sexual assault or indecency with a child. In El Paso alone, there were over 850 pending cases reported. These numbers indicate the severity of a widespread problem that can have devastating social and health-related consequences. To highlight the problem of violence against women and to support the survivors of sexual violence, the Women's Resource Center at UTEP, in collaboration with the Take Back the Night Foundation, will be one of ten partners throughout the nation that will participate in the second annual 10 Points of Light to Take Back the Night initiative on April 28th. This national initiative has assembled community organizers, campus advocates, and student leaders to illuminate the darkness of abuse, domestic violence, and sexual assault. Take Back the Night is a powerful movement that started in the 1970s to combat sexual violence and abuse on campuses and in communities around the world. The UTEP Women's Resource Center provides supportive services for students, faculty, staff, and administrators at the university. Today, I am proud to recognize the Women's Resource Center at UTEP, the Take Back the Night Foundation, and everyone who is helping with this important initiative. As a husband, father, and grandfather, I am proud to lend my voice to this effort. I encourage all Americans to raise awareness of sexual assault in our nation and help empower individuals to ``end the silence and stop the violence.''

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the accomplishments of the Rio Grande Safe Communities Coalition. The Coalition serves the Paso del Norte region which includes the City of El Paso, Texas, Southern New Mexico and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico to build a safe drug-free environment for youth and adults. I want to honor the members of this Coalition for their tireless efforts in making a positive difference in our nation. By implementing substance abuse preventative strategies within these communities, the Rio Grande Safe Communities Coalition helps individuals to avoid the negative consequences of drug and alcohol abuse. In order to do this effectively, the Coalition proactively identifies unsafe conditions in the community that contribute to the problem of substance abuse, and implements programs that aim to stop the behaviors creating these conditions. One such example is the Communities Against Reckless Endangerment or CARE initiative. The CARE initiative was established in 2002 by the Coalition in response to troubling data from University Medical Center of El Paso and the El Paso Police Department regarding alcohol-related incidents among youth ages 12-17. The Coalition's response to this problem was to build a program that engages high school students to become part of the solution through peer-to-peer learning and educational awareness campaigns that warn of the dangers of substance abuse. Through this initiative, which was funded through the Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Program and monitored by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, high school students created public service announcements and billboards aimed at preventing alcohol and drug abuse. Since the establishment of the Rio Grande Safe Communities Coalition in 1999, there have been a number of initiatives to prevent and combat substance abuse. Initiatives include Operation B.R.I.D.G.E., which helped curb the problem of underage drinking by local teens who would cross into Mexico to consume alcohol, and the ``DARE 2 CARE,'' campaign that placed warnings at convenience store windows and on alcohol packages throughout El Paso regarding unsafe and illegal consumption of alcohol. The efforts of the Rio Grande Safe Communities Coalition have helped save the lives and improve the health of countless individuals in the community. Today, I am proud to recognize their efforts in improving the quality of life for youth and adults living in the Paso del Norte region, and congratulate the Coalition for recently marking 10 years of community collaboration.

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my support for H.R. 1308 which extends the due date of the final report of the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission from April 30, 2011, to November 30, 2011; and the final termination date of the Commission from May 30, 2011, to December 31, 2011. The Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission was formed to commemorate the 100th anniversary of President Ronald Reagan's birth and to celebrate the life of our Nation's 40th President. Earlier this year, I was appointed one of the new members of the 2011 Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission by Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. In that capacity, I am aware of the great events scheduled to commemorate the life of President Reagan past the original dates Congress set forth in the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission Act. Passing H.R. 1308 today will extend the timeline and allow for the appropriate completion of these events. I worked with President Reagan prior to serving in Congress when I worked in the United States Border Patrol. During his administration, I served as Sector Chief for the McAllen Sector in south Texas, where I worked under one of the great leaders of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, Alan Nelson, who was appointed by President Reagan. While most Americans remember Ronald Reagan for his unwavering optimism, his sense of humor, and his unique ability to connect to a broad spectrum of Americans, what I appreciated most about President Reagan was his pragmatic approach to immigration and border security. President Reagan was at his best when he shared his idealism of an America that stood as a shining city on a hill, a beacon of hope, and a place where people of all backgrounds are welcomed. He reminded us of all that was great about America--a place where people have for generations come here in search of a better life, often fleeing from oppression, persecution, and deprivation. When America was faced with a growing wave of undocumented immigrants 25 years ago, he proposed common sense solutions to fixing the problem. He never demonized illegal immigrants; he never belittled them, never used them as a scapegoat, and never blamed them for the Nation's troubles. He never inflamed public opinion, and saw the good in people. His former speechwriter, Peter Robinson, once said: ``He could picture--in his own mind's eye, he could picture those little ships that the pilgrims sailed in. He could picture the difficult, oppressive conditions under which the Chinese were brought to California. He admired people for what they had gone through to achieve better lives for themselves and their families in this country.'' He even felt compassion and empathy for those who had come here illegally. At the signing ceremony for the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, President Reagan said: ``The legalization provisions in this act will go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society. Very soon many of these men and women will be able to step into the sunlight and, ultimately, if they choose, they may become Americans.'' While I did not agree with all of the President's policies, I admired and respected the character of his discourse on immigration, and I believe we should all learn from his example. As we mark this historic occasion and celebrate the life of President Ronald Reagan, I hope all of us are inspired by President Reagan's ideals and the vision he had of an America that embraced immigrants and the compassion he showed even to those who came here illegally. In his farewell address to the American people, President Reagan closed his speech by making reference to the 'shining city on the hill' as he so often did during his political career. He said: ``I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, bat I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still.''

Mr. REYES

Mr. REYES. Mr. Speaker, El Paso, Texas has a history of producing strong, passionate, and caring educators who motivate and engage our children to become lifelong learners. As a parent and grandparent, I am grateful for the contributions of our teachers in the El Paso area, and today in honor of Women's History Month, I want to take this opportunity to honor women who are serving as teachers in El Paso. There are so many dedicated and talented women in the schools of the 16th congressional district of Texas who deserve to be recognized and thanked for their commitment to providing the best possible education to our children. From Rosa Guerrero, a pioneer in education who was awarded a lifelong membership to the Texas Parent Teachers Association and was the first Hispanic woman in El Paso to have a school named after her, to our more recent Texas Teachers of the Year, we have been blessed with many dedicated and talented women in the classroom. Across the country, female educators make up 76 percent of the classroom workforce and serve as the core of the teaching profession, inspiring and supporting our youth. El Paso has been particularly blessed with incredible female educators and their work has been recognized year after year by the State of Texas and the Texas Teacher of the Year program. I am proud to note that El Paso has had ten Texas Teachers of the Year and six have been strong and passionate women. Today's teachers are working under a tough budget crisis. Yet, in such difficult times our teachers continue to work hard every day to educate and inspire our children. Education is one of the fundamental building blocks of our Nation, and our teachers deserve to be acknowledged for all of their hard work and dedication. In honor of Women's History Month, I would like to salute all the women in our classrooms in the 16th District of Texas, and also enter the names of the previous female recipients of the Texas Teacher of the Year Award from my congressional district. Names of El Paso's Female Texas Teachers of the Year Yushica Walker, Texas Teacher of the Year for 2010--Morehead Middle School Christine Gleason, Texas Teacher of the Year for 2009--Fabens High School Dana K. Boyd, Texas Teacher of the Year for 2007--Dolphin Terrace Elementary School Kyann McMillie, Texas Teacher of the Year for 2004--Canutillo Elementary School Rosa E. Lujan, Texas Teacher of the Year for 1992--Ysleta Elementary School Rita Harlien, Texas Teacher of the Year for 1982--Eastwood High School