Tim Ryan

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the extraordinary career of my friend Richard P. Michalski. After over four decades of loyal and dedicated service, Mr. Michalski has retired from his position as General Vice President of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM). Mr. Michalski is an example of an American success story. He began his long time association with IAM in 1968 as member of the IAM Local Lodge 1916 while working as a welder with General Electric in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He climbed the ranks and moved up to Local Lodge President. Rich Michalski has dedicated his life to promoting workers as he served in various positions with the IAM. In 1992, he became IAM's Director of Legislative and Political Action Department. It was in this position that he served as a champion of the rights of working men and women by advocating for their concerns with Members of Congress and relentlessly pursuing their interests in Congress. Mr. Michalski's became a member of IAM's Executive Board in 2006 where he served as the General Vice President and continued to fight for the advancement of workers across the United States. I want to extend my warmest and most sincere thanks to Rich for his lifelong devotion to American Labor. Thank you for your friendship and your counsel. Truly the great cause of our time is to help protect the American Dream for working men and women who built this nation. I am proud to have joined with Rich in the cause. Rich's long and illustrious career from humble beginnings as a welder to the leadership of one of the world's great unions will not be forgotten and I congratulate him and wish him all the best in his well-deserved retirement.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And to figure out how to target the technology. We were out at Walter Reed a few weeks ago, going through and seeing all of the various techniques and approaches that are being used for our veterans that are coming back, and they talk about having high-tech health care, high-touch health care. A good portion of our health care costs are driven up by the sickest 1 percent of the people, and the top 5 percent of the people in health care are driving a lot of the costs.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And, I think, take what is working in areas systemically, but also techniques. Up at Walter Reed, for example, they're using things like acupuncture. They're using things that can help with stress reduction. They're using mindfulness-based stress reduction because we now know, in 2013, given all of the brain science, all of the research that the neuroscientists have done all over the country and the world, Dr. Richard Davidson, at the University of Wisconsin, and Dr. Amishi Jha, at the University of Miami, all of the greatest institutions in the United States and the scientists that run these labs, that study the body, study the mind, they know that the future of health care is self-care. How do we help people reduce their stress? How do we help some of these soldiers that come back that are on 6, 8, 10, 12 drugs? We spend $300 billion a year on pharmaceuticals. That's more than many of the other countries in the world combined. And we're not saying that you shouldn't have prescription drugs, because you're going to need them in this system that appreciates and tries to utilize all of the tools in the toolbox to keep people healthy. But how do we create a system where a doctor can have more than 5 minutes with a patient? And it's on to the next one and on to the next one and on to the next one. That's not a system. That is not protecting the integrity of the doctor/patient relationship. And that, in and of itself, can be a healing relationship, being able to sit down with the doctor and find out what's wrong. How much stress and anxiety do people have when they just don't know what's wrong?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And if you think about what the small business person who's suffered the brunt of these huge health care increases over the last decade or two, 120-some percent increase, I think, in the last 10 years for a small business person, their health care, over that period of time has gone up. So if you start reducing that cost, the money that business person will have to reinvest can be a stimulant for the economy.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. From the top 5 percent. So 5 percent of the people drive 50 percent of the health care costs. I think what a lot of these folks are finding out, if you can surround that patient, the patients in the center and figure out exactly what's going on and make sure that that patient has preventive care and a consistent doctor and a consistent nurse and somebody to consistently make sure that they are taking their medication, these techniques, these medical homes, these accountable care organizations, to surround the patient to make sure that they get better, and then reward the doctor and the nurses and everybody, the hospital, everybody who is involved for saying, we're not going to pay you the same amount of money every time you see this patient that still has the same problem that they had from the first time they came in; you will be paid to make them healthy. And that begins to shift the incentive and squeeze some of that excess out of the system that the gentleman from Connecticut talked about.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I thank the gentleman, and I would like to say a deep thank you because I think this is one of the key issues that we need to address as a country in order to have healthier citizens, have a healthier economy, and drive down the national debt. As you said so eloquently, the big driver for our national debt and deficits are the Medicare and Medicaid programs, issues dealing with health. Look at what is weighing down businesses right now. Small businesses especially, huge increases in health care, year in and year out--10, 15, 20, 30 percent. We've all had people come to our office and say, Hey, it went up 90 percent this year. How am I supposed to plan for capital investments? I want to buy a new machine, and on and on and on and on. Where we start is, the current health care system is not working. We spend $8,000 per capita in the United States versus $3,000 in developing countries, and we have worse outcomes. We have worse outcomes here. What we're talking about, what the CEO of Aetna is talking about, is how do we take this system and recognize and begin to appreciate in 2013 in America that if we put some money into prevention, if we pay doctors and nutritionists and dieticians on the front end, we're going to save a boatload of dollars on the back end. Seventy-five percent of health care costs go to chronic diseases that are mostly preventable. So here we are bogged down by a system when the answer is patient- centered care and having people participate in their own health care. This is a challenge to every American to take responsibility for their own health, their own well-being, and to create a system that incentivizes everyone who is in the system to operate in this fashion and help drive down health care costs in the long run. We all know this intuitively, that if you take care of yourself, your diet matters, your nutrition matters, your exercise matters, your checkups matter, and through the Affordable Care Act, by having everybody covered, it begins to change that business model of having the insurance company incentivized to keep and help people get and stay healthy. I think it's time for us to take the advice of the CEO of Aetna. This isn't John Larson, this isn't me. We're looking at the statistics here in our country, and we have to say, This is unacceptable. We have so many sick people in our country, and we are doing nothing to prevent them from getting sick in the first place.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the career of an exemplary public servant, Col. Scott W. Gordon. After over thirty years of service, Col. Gordon is retiring at the end of August from the United States Army. Col. Gordon was born in Utica, NY and grew up in Youngstown, OH. He earned his undergraduate degree in Zoology from Miami University in Oxford, OH in 1973 and went on to earn his masters in entomology from The Ohio State University in 1976. He was awarded a Ph.D. in Microbiology from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO in 1993. Col. Gordon joined the military in 1984 after being employed as a medical entomologist by the Vector-borne Disease Unit of the Ohio Department of Health. Throughout Col. Gordon's thirty years of service to his country, he worked in several distinguished capacities within the United States Army. Col. Gordon's work and dedication is exhibited through the numerous awards and decorations he has accrued throughout his three decades of service. Since joining the military, Col. Gordon has remained active in entomological research as a member of numerous professional organizations including the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, The American Mosquito Control Association, and the Entomological Society of America. Col. Gordon has authored or co- authored over 20 publications in peer-reviewed journals. I want to extend my warmest and sincere thanks to Col. Scott W. Gordon for his many years of service to his country. His long and illustrious military career will not be forgotten and I would like to wish him congratulations and all the best in his well-deserved retirement.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the career of an exemplary public servant, Roy Apseloff. After 32 years of service, Mr. Apseloff will be retiring from the Defense Intelligence Agency. Mr. Apseloff is a native of Kent, Ohio and earned his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Cornell University. He continued his education earning a Master of Arts in International Relations from Catholic University and a Master of Science in National Security Strategy from the National War College. He began his career with the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1981 as a U.S. Navy Officer assigned to the Directorate for Collection. Mr. Apseloff transitioned to civilian service in 1985 and since then he has held a series of positions of increasing responsibility within human intelligence and collection operations. Mr. Apseloff will be retiring from the Defense Intelligence Agency as the Vice President for Information Management and Deputy CIO; he also serves as the Deputy Chief of a Global Information Technology organization of over 3,000 people and $1 billion that provides IT support to 20,000 customers worldwide. In addition, Mr. Apseloff serves on various senior interagency boards and forums. Despite leaving for civilian service in 1985, Mr. Apseloff continued to serve in the U.S. Navy Reserve until his retirement in 2003 with the rank of captain. His many reserve assignments included: Operations Officer, Executive Officer and Commanding Officer. His longtime service in the U.S. Navy is yet another testament to his long career of service to his country. Mr. Apseloff's exemplary work ethic has been recognized by the many awards and distinctions he has received in his 32 years with the Defense Intelligence Agency. He has received the Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Executive, the Presidential Rank Award of Meritorious Executive, the DIA Director's Award for Exceptional Civilian Service, and the Defense Intelligence Director's Award. I want to extend my warm and sincere thanks to Roy Apseloff for his life's devotion to serving his country. His long and illustrious career with the United States Navy and The Defense Intelligence Agency will not be forgotten. I would like to wish him congratulations on all he has accomplished and all the best in his well-deserved retirement.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I have one point to make. Why are we talking about inequality and poor folks and upward mobility? The reason is we only have 313 million people in the United States. We're competing against 1.3 or 1.4 billion in China, and 1.3 or 1.4 billion in India. We have to have everybody on that football field playing for us economically, wearing the jersey that says ``U.S.A.'' on it, so we can compete economically. So we need to get innovative and we need to make these kinds of investments if we're going to get everybody on the field, graduated from high school, on a track to go into manufacturing or some of these other trades so we can really have a renaissance in the United States economy. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I would just like to say, we all say let the free market work and all of this. But when there's a savings and loan issue or there's a Wall Street collapse and a lot of very wealthy people in the country are going to lose a lot of money, here comes Secretary Paulson with his hair on fire walking around Capitol Hill saying we need $700 billion of the taxpayers' money. You know, over and over and over again, we've seen this in the last 30 years with this system of heavy deregulation and heavy cuts for the top 1 percent. So it looks like they're making a lot of money, and that's high risk and high reward in a deregulated market; but when things collapse, here comes the government to save the day. It's a pretty good deal. I've got 1,700 families going bankrupt in my district just on health care alone. Nobody's rushing in to say: Oop, that shouldn't matter. It's a health care issue, so you're not going to go bankrupt. That is, in essence, what happened to a lot of these folks. Someone came to the rescue, and that someone was the taxpayer.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Leather helmets?

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. You make a good point. I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine who is a lot more conservative than me. We were talking about the government's role in these different things. He said, Well, what about the phone company and the original government investments into telephones? As the conversation proceeded he said they weren't doing it well enough and the private sector could do it a lot better. My point was, Yeah, we all have fights with our cell phone companies now on our cell phone bills, but no company was going to be able to do at that point what the government came in and said they were going to do. I'm not defending every government program. What I'm saying is there is a role that has been successful in the history of our country. Whether it was the phone company back then or green technology today, how do we begin to incentivize these investments that are good for the environment, that could create a whole new sector of manufacturing? How many tons of steel go into a windmill? How many thousands of component parts go into a windmill that may be made one day by three-dimensional printers and additive manufacturing? This is all starting to tie together. But while the Chinese and the Indians and other countries are making these investments, we're sitting on our hands saying, Ah, the private sector will do it.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I want to thank the gentleman for making that a point. If you look at the United States as we compete against other Nordic countries, Australia and some other countries in Europe, we do not have the upward mobility. Meaning if you're born poor--and we talk a lot about the American Dream and moving up the ladder. If you are born poor in America, we rank about ninth or tenth in our citizens' ability to climb up through that ladder and get themselves into the middle class. That, to me, is a benchmark of how we've moved away from that philosophy that we had for many years, up until the 1980s, where we were going to make key investments that were going to help people climb up that economic ladder. That citizen has to bring initiative, has to bring ingenuity, has to bring determination. I am not one of these people who thinks every kid needs to get a trophy in Little League. I don't adhere to that philosophy. Kids are going to fail, but we need to help pick them up. At the same time, you can have policies that allow and cultivate the ability for people to go up the economic ladder, to not have such a disadvantage in life and an economic system that doesn't facilitate that to ultimately where we're getting bypassed by some of these other countries who have a different philosophy than we do.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Fair enough.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I want to thank the gentleman from California for being consistent in coming down to the House floor and always making sure that the issues of the day are brought to the American people, but also trying to persuade the House of Representatives to move in a direction that, quite frankly, the case continues to be made for these investments that you talk about with regard to infrastructure. Now, this to me seems like a very simple proposition. There was a great article today--I think it was today or yesterday--by Ezra Klein talking about we've got to get away from the deficit hock issue into the infrastructure hock issue. And I want to join the infrastructure hock caucus, if there is one here. But this simply articulates a position that I've held from before the American Recovery Act--and still hold here today--that we have projects in the United States that need to get done, that need to get built. Bridges, roads, airports, ports, all across the country, rail, all across the country, investments that need to be made, combined sewer systems, all over the United States of America, that need to get done at some point. And what I like about what Mr. Klein said is that we're talking about what we're leaving to the next generation. Now, at some point, they're going to be left some deficit. We have an obligation here in Congress to make policies that are going to make investments to reduce that deficit. In some instances, that means balancing the budget. Over the long term, we're all in agreement that that is a moral issue for us not to leave that huge deficit for our children and our grandchildren. But there are also deficits in other ways that we could leave our children, and that's if we have infrastructure all over the United States that needs fixed and we don't fix it, that is a deficit that we are leaving to our children and our grandchildren. That road needs fixed, that bridge needs fixed, that sewer system needs upgraded, the rail system needs upgraded. So if we don't make the investment now, someone is going to have to make it down the line. And the argument we're making is that maybe some money will have to be borrowed today in order to do that project or do all of these projects. The value of doing it today is twofold: One, the money we're borrowing today is almost 1 percent in interest, if not less. So we're borrowing money with a very, very, very, very small interest payment to get the job done for a project that's going to have to get done anyway. Now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, the project is probably going to need more work, health care costs are going to be higher, energy costs are going to be higher, labor costs are going to be higher, so the project is going to cost more money because we're going to have to do it at some point. The other factor is that we have high unemployment now, double-digit unemployment, with the men and women in the building trades, the men and women in the construction area, construction field. So by doing the project today, we not only get the project done, but we're also putting people back to work that need to go back to work that will then have money in their pocket to go out and spend and pay taxes and to help get the economy going again. This is a very, very simple economic principle that we are trying and fighting to implement here, and we keep running into roadblocks--no pun intended--roadblocks that are preventing us from getting the economy moving. Now, we have an obligation in this country to make sure we give the next generation a country that is moving in the right direction. And I think when you couple a strong emphasis on investments and roads and bridges and rail and combined sewer overflow and waterlines and dams all across the country, we're going to put people back to work, not to mention high-speed Internet, which could help light up the next generation of American workers. So I wanted to come and join my friend here, who is carrying the flag week in and week out here on the floor, to say that we have a lot of work to do here; and to the American people, to say there are Members in this Chamber who are saying: make these investments. The President had a plan. It wasn't quite as big as I wanted it to be or as big, I'm sure, as my friend from California wanted, but he did what he thought could, maybe, at least get through in a jobs plan. It got shot down and hasn't gotten anywhere in this Chamber, so we've got a lot of work to do.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Yes. I mean, one of the things I'd mentioned a couple times toward the end is the combined sewer systems in all major cities in the United States. So if you take a city like Akron or Youngstown--mid-sized cities in the industrial Midwest--you're talking about between $500 million and $1 billion in investments that are needed.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. You want to make sure that a lot of this stuff is not getting mixed together, and you want to make sure that it's separated, and you want to make sure that it's up to date. So these investments that a city or a municipality would traditionally have to make go well above and beyond a city like Akron or a city like Youngstown or Cleveland or Detroit or Toledo or Milwaukee--all across the United States. Let's make this investment. You're talking about cities that have very high unemployment rates. Let's get people trained up. We've got many good, solid union training programs out there that would put these people to work, that would get this economy moving, that have state-of- the-art transportation and infrastructure systems in the United States, and that would inject some money into the economy on the demand side. We've been playing the supply side game since 1980: cut taxes for the wealthiest, deregulate Wall Street and every other sector you can deregulate and hope the economy takes off; but that ultimately led to the boom, bust and to the ultimate collapse in 2008. What you're talking about and what I'm talking about is consumer investment, the demand side: get people back to work; get some money in their pockets. They go out and spend it, and the economy hums right along because there are consumers out there. That construction worker pays local taxes for the local school district, for the mental health levy, for the libraries, and you throw some money in the basket at church on Sunday. It just keeps going around and around and around.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. As you have talked about--and I know on other occasions--what are the investments we need to make today, not just in physical infrastructure, but in other things that will lead to the next generation of employment? The United States' comparative advantage in the world has always been that we make these investments into the next generation of research whether it's through the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy. Do you know what? Sometimes it doesn't always work out, but sometimes it does. When it does, we create new areas of the economy that can expand and grow just like the human genome that has led to billions and billions and billions of dollars in private investment. Here, I think, is the important point for a lot of Americans who probably already know we collectively as a society make investments in the research that no one company can make on its own, this basic research that costs tens of millions, if not billions, of dollars over many, many, many years that no company could come in and reap the profits of immediately. We collectively say that we're going to make that together and then let the companies come in, pull out what they want, and take it to the private market, get investors, and off we go. That has been a pretty good recipe for the United States for a long time, and we're saying physical infrastructure but also these investments in research that have led to an explosive economy, a dynamic economy here in the United States. Now in these budgets that we're talking about we're paring back our investments in the National Science Foundation and in the National Institutes of Health. Not only does it affect Alzheimer's research and autism and these kinds of things; it's also taking away from the next generation of ``what could be'' in the United States.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I know you and I are not going to defend wasteful government programs. They should go. We are now in a new economy that is information-based and very dynamic in so many ways, faster than anything that we've ever experienced in the country. And I think there are some programs that we historically have had that probably we don't need to have any more, and there are also programs that need to be tweaked and changed, as far as how we are training our workforce and how we are investing, and our new understandings of our brain, for example. All of this research should begin to change the way we approach some of these investments that we've made before we had that knowledge. So we probably do need to shift resources into areas, but clearly we aren't making enough investments. We clearly still have 25 percent or 30 percent, in many high schools, of kids not graduating. We need to figure out how to make, for example, school a lot more exciting. We have programs in robotics. We have programs in Legos. We have kids that need to do a lot more hands-on stuff to get them excited about learning. That's going to take some investment to make.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I thank the gentleman, and I am going to be brief. Again, I want to thank Chairman Carter, and I want to thank Mr. Price and just say that I believe this is a homeland security issue. This is an appropriate venue for that. As the gentleman from Louisiana said, there is a level of frustration here because we have been working on this, pursuing regular order now since 2007, and we have gotten nowhere. As I said, this woman is walking around in Brazil as a free woman when Carl Hoerig, who flew almost 200 missions for our country, is dead. This process has a long way to go. We're not anywhere close to this bill's becoming law. We've got a lot of time between today and that day. So let's work today to try to increase the pressure to try to get justice for Carl Hoerig and to try to make this situation right. Again, I thank everyone. I don't want to be here offering this amendment, because of the situation; but I promised this family I would do everything in my power to get justice for their son and to get this woman. So help me God, I'm going to do everything I can to get this woman back here whether it's this bill or bills in the future. So I ask the Members of this House to please, please, please support this amendment on behalf of Carl Hoerig in his service to our country.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Chairman, as has been read, this doesn't allow petitions for relatives, fiances, or workers coming from Brazil. And I first want to say thank you to Judge Carter--Chairman Carter-- and Mr. Price. We passed a very similar amendment out of the Appropriations Committee that was dinged here a little bit earlier. This is a narrowly tailored version of that. I rise today not because I want to. Many of us come here because we want to offer amendments. I don't necessarily want to offer this amendment. But I'm offering this amendment on behalf of Major Karl Hoerig. And I would like to tell the House of Representatives a brief story about Karl, who flew 200 missions for our country in Iraq and Afghanistan. On March 10 of 2007, Major Karl Hoerig's wife went out and bought a .357 Magnum and went to a shooting range. She purchased ammo and asked, ``what ammo can I buy here that best kills.'' Two days later, Claudia Hoerig shot Major Karl Hoerig in my congressional district. She fled to Brazil, where she was from. She could not be extradited, so we were told, because we don't have a treaty with Brazil in order to extradite their citizens, which would make sense. But later throughout the investigation, we found out that in August of 1999 Claudia Hoerig renounced her Brazilian citizenship and said she was a citizen of the United States, which gives us every right to have her come back and extradited back to the United States. Now, this woman shot a war hero. She renounced her Brazilian citizenship, and she now is drinking Rum Runners in Rio de Janeiro, walking around freely in Brazil while Carl Hoerig's family is sitting in Newton Falls, Ohio--his brother, his parents--wondering why we can't bring this woman back into the United States for justice. Now, many people would say, Well, why are you offering an amendment? Why are you trying to defund visas? It's because I've been working on this since 2007. I've got a stack of letters here that go back to Alberto Gonzales--now, many Members of this Congress don't even know who he was--then Condoleezza Rice, then Secretary Clinton, on and on and on to try to get the attention of people, and it takes an amendment in the Appropriations Committee to say we're not going to be able to fund visas anymore. I don't have any problem with Brazil--we've got a good relationship with them--but they have a woman who killed one of our airmen who flew 200 missions to Iraq and Afghanistan. If you want to talk about a safe haven: if the kids from the Boston massacre a few weeks back instead of going to the 7-Eleven had got on a flight and had gone to Brazil, they'd be sitting in Brazil right now, and we wouldn't be able to get them back here. I recognize that these are extraordinary actions, but there is a long process ahead before this bill becomes law. We've gotten the Brazilians' attention, and now it's time for us not to take the pressure off, but to allow this process to continue until Claudia Hoerig is back in the United States and getting prosecuted in Trumbull County, Ohio. It should be known, too, to this House that al Qaeda is setting up shop in Brazil--planning attacks, training people in Brazil right now-- and we have no mechanism. If someone were to commit a terrorist act here in the United States and flee to Brazil, we would not be able to get him back. I think this amendment sends a signal to the Brazilians, hopefully in the long term, to renegotiate treaties and to talk of extradition, but also in the short term to get Claudia Hoerig back into the United States. I would just like to end, Mr. Chairman, with a quote from Carl Hoerig's dad, Ed Hoerig. He said: Our government is supposed to be the most powerful country in the world, and they are turning their back on a 25-year veteran. It's wrong. When you say the Pledge of Allegiance, the last sentence is `` . . . and justice for all.'' They are turning their back on my son's justice. Let's right this wrong, Mr. Chairman, and pass this amendment. I yield back the balance of my time. [From the Weekly Standard, Apr. 7, 2011] Al Qaeda in Brazil? (By Jaime Daremblum) The Brazilian magazine Veja is reporting that al Qaeda members have established an active presence in South America's largest country, as have militants associated with Hezbollah, Hamas, and other terrorist groups. They are apparently engaged in fundraising, recruitment, and strategic planning. Earlier this week, Aldo Donzis, a leading figure in the Argentine Jewish community, spoke to the JTA news agency and voiced alarm about the revelations. ``We have high concern about fundamentalist movements in Latin America and about recruitment activities of fundamentalist movements,'' Donzis said. ``We shared this information with Latin American parliamentarians last July and they agreed with our information. But the situation is getting worse. In Argentina, we have seen graffiti written in Arabic calling for jihad which coincided with the visit of Iranians here. Also, this graffiti was seen in Bolivia. We understand that Brazil needs to feel worried and act.'' Terrorists have long found haven in South America's so- called Triple Frontier, which encompasses the intersection of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. This area is known for being a Wild West of lawlessness, drug trafficking, and organized crime. Argentina is especially sensitive to increased terrorist activity in the region. During the 1990s, it suffered two deadly bombings orchestrated by Hezbollah and Iran. The first (in 1992) destroyed the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires; the second (in 1994) demolished a Jewish community center in the same city. Speaking of Iran, the head of U.S. Southern Command, General Douglas Fraser, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday and declared that ``Iran continues expanding regional ties to support its own diplomatic goal of reducing the impact of international sanctions connected with its nuclear program. While much of Iran's engagement in the region has been with Venezuela and Bolivia, it has nearly doubled the number of embassies in the region in the past decade and hosted three regional heads of state in 2010.'' General Fraser expressed concern that ``there are flights between Iran and Venezuela on a weekly basis, and visas are not required for entrance into Venezuela or Bolivia or Nicaragua.'' He also confirmed that ``members of violent extremist organizations from the Middle East remain active in Latin America and the Caribbean and constitute a potential threat. Hezbollah supporters continue to raise funds within the region to finance their worldwide activities. Several entities affiliated with Islamic extremism are increasing efforts to recruit adherents in the region, and we continue to monitor this situation closely.'' Yet another reason for the Obama administration to rethink its passive approach to Latin America. [From the Telegraph, 3 Apr. 2011] Brazil Latest Base for Islamic Extremists (By Robin Yapp) With preparations for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro well under way, security experts have expressed fears that terrorists are ``taking advantage'' of weaknesses in the country's laws. Brazil has not passed any specific anti-terrorism legislation, does not recognize Hezbollah or Hamas as terrorist groups and disbanded the Federal Police's anti- terrorism service in 2009. Now, Veja, a weekly news magazine, has had access to reports compiled by the service as well as documents about the terrorist threat sent to Brazil by the FBI, CIA, Interpol and the US Treasury. It says the papers show 21 men linked to Islamic extremist groups including al-Qaeda, have been using Brazil for various purposes including controlling inflows of money and planning attacks. They include Khaled Hussein Ali, who was born in Lebanon but now lives in Sao Paulo, Brazil's biggest city, from where he runs an internet cafe. However, according to Veja he is also in control of an online communications arm of al-Qaeda called Jihad Media Battalion, which has a presence in 17 countries around the world and spreads communications from al-Qaeda leaders as well as publicising attacks. Another of those named is Mohsen Rabbani, an Iranian wanted by Interpol as the suspected architect of bombings on Jewish targets in Buenos Aires in the 1990s that killed 114 people. According to the documents, he frequently slips in and out of Brazil on a false passport and has recruited at least 24 youngsters in three Brazilian states to attend ``religious formation'' classes in Tehran. ``Without anybody noticing, a generation of Islamic extremists is appearing in Brazil,'' said Alexandre Camanho de Assis, who co-ordinates Brazil's network of public prosecutors across 13 states. The papers also show that the US Treasury described the poorly policed Tri-border area, where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet, as a ``financial artery'' for Hizbollah. Daniel Lorenz, a former head of the Federal Police's intelligence department and now Security Secretary for the Federal District, that includes the capital Brasilia, warned that Brazil risks being caught out. ``The terrorists are taking advantage of the fragility of Brazilian legislation,'' he said.

Mr. RYAN of Ohio

Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to remember the extraordinary life of my friend and supporter Arlene Billak who sadly passed away on April 21, 2013. Arlene was born January 13, 1949, in Sharon, Pennsylvania to her loving parents Stan and Marie Izenas. Arlene was a graduate of Sharon High School and retired from State Farm Insurance as an office manager. Arlene was a devoted wife and mother who provided constant love and support and was always willing to sacrifice her all for her family. Arlene was a woman of strength and humility who never refused to give up after being diagnosed with cancer. She courageously fought until her final days, always making sure that she had a smile on her face. Her loving heart and spirit will continue to be felt everyday by those who loved her and those she loved. I would like to extend my deepest and heartfelt sympathies to Arlene Billak's family: her husband Rick, her son Damian, her two brothers Paul and Bob Izenas, and her two sisters Kathy and Irene. Rest assured the love and devotion she had for her family and friends will never be forgotten. I have known Arlene and Rick for many years. They have been active in politics for decades. They were always there to support and push their candidates and those issues that improve the quality of life for those who have the least. Arlene believed that politics could make a positive difference in people's lives, and she showed us all how one person can make a difference. I will always remember the example she set and how she constantly shared her upbeat and positive demeanor with the world. Our community, and all that knew her, are better because we crossed paths with Arlene Billak.