John Shadegg

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. And fight fires.

Mr. SHADEGG. If the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. Chairman, certainly I agree with the gentleman that this should be emergency money. I believe it belongs in the supplemental bill and not in this bill. But that $700 million goes to this current fiscal year. What we are debating in my amendment is the funding for next fiscal year, where the committee has reduced the amount of money for wildfire fighting by $23 million. That is what I am trying to restore. I would point out, the gentleman points out there is a list on page 21 of the report that shows the projects that need to be purchased, or that the committee has looked at purchasing; but no one of those projects is above the amount of money that I have left in the bill for land acquisition. This simply would say that in the current circumstances, with the unbelievable fires we are having in the West, with Colorado burning up and Arizona burning up, that for next year, we go through and reprioritize this list, delay the acquisition of some of that land.

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

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

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Chairman, it seems to me this is, in fact, a commonsense amendment. It does not say that you can never bring such a lawsuit. It is limited to certain circumstances where they are cutting small diameter trees, trees of less than 12 inches. It would not allow commercial logging. It simply allows a reasonable thinning of the forest to stop the kind of devastating crown fires that have destroyed Arizona recently and have stricken California and Colorado and many other States. It is, I believe, an absolute essential requirement that we allow this thinning to occur so that we do not burn our forests down. When you look at the language of the amendment, which requires a rather extreme certification that the wildfire is likely to cause extreme harm to the forest ecosystem, destroy human life and dwellings, and that the project is necessary to prevent these occurrences, I believe it is a very, very reasonable amendment. It is designed to protect our forests and strike a balance, because this would not block a citizen lawsuit if they wanted to thin larger trees. It would not block a citizen lawsuit under other circumstances where these certifications were not made. It is a middle ground that I think makes a great deal of sense. I would urge that the point of order be withdrawn so that the Members can at least look at this policy. Our forests are burning to the ground. We lost over 460 homes of people that live in those forests in Arizona in the absence of being able to strike a reasonable policy, and I think this does. This requires a certification. It requires that the certification be that there be extreme harm and that it is going to destroy human life and dwellings and that the thinning project is necessary. In Arizona, the environmental groups have agreed that they support thinning so long as it does not go to large-diameter, old- growth trees. Indeed they have rushed to say we are willing to support this kind of policy as long as it is limited. I was urged not to put a diameter limit in this because I was told, look, if you put a diameter limit in it, we may need to cut some larger trees. I said, no, I want a bright line so that those who oppose allowing timber harvesting to go forward under this policy will not be able to see this as a ruse. It is not a ruse. It is a genuine effort by us to strike a reasoned policy that will allow thinning to go forward without extended legal battles where the thinning is not a commercial logging effort but is, rather, necessary to save the forest and to prevent these kind of crown fires. The evidence is absolutely clear that these crown fires take off and occur only when there is the underlying load, fuel load, which has not been removed. In the strongest possible terms, it seems to me that this is a reasonable compromise which I would urge upon this Congress and upon our colleagues that they withdraw the point of order. Point of Order

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I simply want to make the point that my colleague, the gentleman from Washington, and I complimented the committee for its effort to begin with, has pointed out some of these particular projects: the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. I simply want to make the point that project is only $1 million. The second project that he cited is also only $1 million. We have left, under my amendment, a substantial sum of money in the bill so that we could go through and acquire much of this land in the current year as planned; and even with that, if we restored $23 million, we will probably have to come back here and put more money into wildfire fighting next year. But I would simply say that it should be obvious to anyone, certainly it is obvious to the people of Arizona, that the devastation of these wildfires has not stopped and is not going to stop. I would point out that my colleague on the opposite side of the aisle just fought us, at least his side of the aisle did, and objected to an effort by our side to allow a thinning of the forest, to allow us to clean out the fuel wood load so we would not have the devastating crown fires we now have. Some of the Nation's best experts are in Arizona. Dr. Wally Covington of NAU has said the only way we can save these forests is to clean out the fire load, fuel load that is underneath them. Yet we just made an effort to try to do that, and it was blocked on a point of order by the other side. If we cannot thin the forests, if we cannot take the advice of the experts like Dr. Wally Covington to avoid these wildfires, then we had better put the money behind fighting them. It is simply irrational, and I hope my colleagues in this Congress are listening carefully, it is simply irrational to add $700 million to firefighting this year and cut $23 million from wildfire fighting next year. What we are doing is we are putting the people who live in those forests at risk, and we are putting the firefighters who need that funding at risk, and we are putting the people who need these funds at risk. Right now, we just heard my colleague, the gentleman from the other side, say that, by gosh, we should not put these firefighting funds at risk. It is desperate to get money into them. Well, if it is desperate to get money into them, it is irrational and I would say dangerous to take money out of them; to undercut, underfund next year's firefighting effort by $23 million, when we know this is a long-term drought; when we know we are not thinning the forest the way we need to. It simply makes no sense. I have the greatest respect for the committee. I am simply saying we should not be buying millions of dollars of additional land that we cannot protect at the same time that we are bulldozing extra money into the current year. If we need $700 million more this year, by gosh, it is wrong to cut $23 million next year. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. First of all, I want to thank the participants in this debate for its collegial nature. I think we are debating very, very important issues. I know for the people of Arizona, for the people of Colorado, for the people of California, and indeed, for the people of the entire West, Washington and New Mexico and all of these States, these are critically important issues. I appreciate the debate. My colleague, the gentleman from Washington, I paid a compliment to earlier. I think the committee struggled with these issues. I would simply argue that when this committee draft was put together, I do not know that we appreciated the dimension of this year's problems. I know this report was prepared very, very recently; and I know that the fire in Arizona literally was contained just a matter of a week or so ago. With regard to the point my colleague just made with regard to we can protect the land we are acquiring, yes, I would certainly agree, we can protect the lands we are acquiring. But candidly, we cannot protect it by reducing the amount of money for wildfire fighting for the coming year by $23 million. It is simply irrational to say that we can protect it next year for $23 million less, but we need $700 million more this year. I think for the people across America who understand this issue, certainly for my constituents in the West, they have to say, I would rather we acquired a little bit less, just acquire a little bit less, still go ahead and acquire the Lewis and Clark Trail, and I am just finishing the book on Lewis and Clark, ``Undaunted Courage,'' so I certainly think we ought to protect those lands. But we can slow down the acquisition of more Federal land this year in this economic climate, just slow it down, not bring it to a stop, and put a little of that money back into wildfire fighting, so we knew that money was there when we needed it. It simply makes no sense, and it literally cannot be justified, given the fires; and I know the Colorado fires recently broke out. They are a recent development. The committee may not have thought through those. I know the California fires are relatively recent. I know the Arizona fires that have been devastating to my State and to 460 families who lost their homes, and to half a million acres of Arizona that is burned up and gone, I know those people would want to know that the money is not just there, the $700 million in the current year, but is going to be there next year. Because no one, again, I challenge my colleagues, either of my colleagues from Washington or anybody else on this floor, can say to me that they can establish that next year is going to be a less severe fire season than this year. If it is not going to be, and they cannot prove it is going to be, we cannot plus it up by $700 million this year and pull it down by $23 million in the next year. We will be back at this issue. We should not do it this way. We ought to put the $23 million back in.

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

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is designed to address a problem with the Endangered Species Act and the fires that are raging across the West at the present time. Right now citizens' suits are being brought to prevent the clearing of these forests by thinning out the dead wood and thinning out the smaller trees. As a result of the fact that we are not doing this removal of smaller trees, we are encouraging crown fires which destroy entire areas. In my State of Arizona, we have just had a fire that has destroyed 500,000 areas. If you look at areas that have been treated, it appears as though the fire never even went through those areas. If you look at areas where they were not treated, there has been absolute, total devastation. This simply says that a regional forest ranger could make a determination that a wildfire in the area of the project to thin out the fire load was likely to cause extreme harm to the forest ecosystem and destroy human life and dwellings and that the project was necessary to prevent these occurrences. Once that finding had been made and had been certified to the United States Congress, then the thinning could occur without there being a citizen lawsuit to block the thinning from occurring. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Utah to discuss the issue as well.

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

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. I would like to discuss the process that brings us here, but first I want to begin by expressing my strong admiration for the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), for the work he does and for the dedication he brings to his job. But also on this particular night, I want to express my deep respect for and admiration for the chairman of this subcommittee. You come here as a young freshman and you get various assignments. Some of them you do not anticipate, and some of them you are unaware of. I am elected from Arizona. I did not know Joe Skeen when I was first elected, but I got assigned here and I became a deputy whip. As a whip, I was assigned to whip various Members. One of the Members I was assigned to whip was Joe Skeen. I think that happened just as a matter of serendipity. It was not preplanned. As it turned out, someone was already whipping the Arizona delegation, and so I suppose it made sense to somebody that I should whip the New Mexico delegation. And so I did. For the duration of my tenure here in Congress, I have had the privilege of whipping Joe Skeen. What that has meant is that I have had the honor to have conversations with him week in and week out and have him impart to me his wisdom and his knowledge of this institution, of the pressures that move in each direction, of the people that are at play, of the great traditions of this institution. It would be difficult for me to express how many times Joe Skeen in those days when I have chatted with him has been able to educate me, to give me as a younger Member of this House advice and counsel. Joe is leaving this institution after this session of Congress, and I simply want it to be known to my colleagues here in Congress and the people across America that this institution will be diminished by his departure. He is indeed a dedicated public servant. He is a man of the people, revered by the people of New Mexico and of his district. He is a man who has come here from his ranch and who has brought the common knowledge and the common understanding of the people across America to his job here. I would be remiss if I did not say thank you, Joe, for all you do. We tend to look at our inconvenience tonight being here on the floor at approximately 10 p.m. at night as a great imposition. Yet there is not a one of us who wears this pin, not a one of us that is elected to this institution that does not understand the immense privilege and the immense honor it is to serve in this institution. For those who are perhaps frustrated that on this particular Tuesday evening we might debate late into the night these issues and for those who are frustrated and do not like the amendments that are being offered, I would simply remind you, I would urge you to perhaps step outside and look at the dome that is above our heads, contemplate the task we are about, because each and every amendment offered here tonight, and I have three or four that I would like to offer, is a serious amendment offered by a Member with deep beliefs. I happen to be embroiled in a scandal in my own State on the issue of firefighting. I feel very strongly about fighting wildfires. It is vitally important that we fight wildfires. But this institution is the people's House. This is the place where debate should occur. This is the institution where we should talk about whether it is appropriate to put $700 million into this bill, as the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) offered in committee and as was adopted by committee or whether it would be more appropriate to put that money into the supplemental bill which can become law much sooner. We are engaged in a huge debate and it is a serious debate, as my colleague from Pennsylvania pointed out. These are grave issues. Spending is running out of control in this Congress, and the American people are worried about it. Go home and ask them. Go home this weekend. Think about the conversations you had last weekend. I would remind my colleagues that when we adopted this budget, we thought there was going to be a surplus or perhaps a small deficit. The reality is last weekend's paper, at least my home paper on Saturday morning blared with a gigantic headline, ``$165 Billion Deficit.'' It occurs to me that when we adopted the budget resolution and we believed we were going to have a surplus and we are now here tonight recognizing we are going to have not a small deficit but a massive deficit, not only is it wrong to limit debate as we just did on the dimensions of this budget and our spending but it is what the American people would want us to do. They would want us here debating these issues. One of the definitions of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again. We are in changed circumstances, and those changed circumstances demand that we debate this budget tonight in a serious fashion.

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Every American taxpayer can participate.

Mr. SHADEGG. I thank the gentleman for yielding. What I would like to do, I will talk a little bit about our experience in Arizona, but I also would like to kind of get down to the nitty-gritty questions that I think a lot of people ask, and people who might be watching tonight might be curious about. People are interested in improving education in America and want to know how to do that. But I think that is critical. I guess I ought to begin by saying that I come at this from the perspective of someone who my entire education was in the public school system, but more recent experience than that is my wife is a public school teacher in Phoenix, Arizona. She teaches kindergarten. I have two sisters, both of whom are teachers, both in the public school system in Arizona, and then I have a niece who is a teacher in the public school system in Tucson, Arizona. And so I come from a family that is pretty deeply steeped in public education. Of course to achieve any kind of reform, and you were just talking about how difficult it is to achieve reform, you have to kind of convince people to take a leap of faith, to try a new idea. As you pointed out, we in Arizona tried a new idea. We have tried education tax credits, and I think they have worked extremely well. That does not mean that everybody in Arizona is yet convinced or already on board and it does not mean that the teachers and the teachers unions in Arizona are not still skeptical, but I think it would be important for either of you as the lead proponents on this legislation to kind of lay out what you believe tax credits will do and why public school teachers like my wife, my two sisters, and my niece ought to embrace this idea. Because we have to win them over. We cannot achieve this without them. I know our experience in Arizona has been that by creating a tax credit for education, in Arizona it is capped at $500, we have been able to allow young children trapped in schools that were not meeting their needs to get a scholarship that enables them to go to a school of their choice and to get a high-quality education, because money is made available to them that they could not otherwise access. That money lets them go to a different school. I also believe it has not only not damaged the public education system in Arizona, it has helped the public education system in Arizona because these are essentially additional resources for education. It is not less money to educate America's schoolchildren; it is, rather, more money to educate our schoolchildren. But I think that is a critical question, and I would invite your response to it.

Mr. SHADEGG. As the only mechanism.

Mr. SHADEGG. I just want to go over a couple of points you made because I think it is important to understand. One, I emphasize the fact that my wife, both of my sisters, and my niece are all public school teachers. You made the point in your remarks that these dollars can go by a donor to a public school. That is, I think, one of the points that people have concern about. The other point, and people get confused, when we talk about cost to the government, I just want to make it clear that we understand this. As this system works, if you give a dollar directly to an educational institution, be that a public school in your neighborhood or a private school, or to an organization that creates scholarships, I take it, for a public or a private school, that dollar goes directly to that school and is used by that school. When you say it only costs the government 50 cents, or it only imposes a cost upon the government of half of that, what you are saying is that it, as an inducement or a way to encourage taxpayers to engage in this activity, the taxpayer's tax liability to the government goes down by half of what they give. So you are actually doubling the amount of money that goes to education, because they give $500, would be the max, and they get a tax credit, that is, they can reduce their check at the end of the year that they owe to the government by half of that. In this case it is $250. So not only are these resources that can go to public or private education without all the bureaucracy that you talked about, but on top of that, it is double the money. To get a $250 tax credit, reduction in your tax bill, you have to give $500. We are essentially doubling the money going to education.

Mr. SHADEGG. I would just like to drive home a couple of the points the gentleman has made and make it very clear that what we are talking about here is more resources for education. It is kind of interesting, as the gentleman points out, in Arizona we adopted a tax credit. The Arizona tax credit is different than our proposal here in Washington, which is not a dollar for dollar match, but rather a one for two match. If you give $2 to education, you get a tax credit, that is to say in simple English, a reduction in your taxes due, the amount of money you have to pay, of $1. That doubles the amount of money going to education before you even factor in the loss of whatever it is, 25 cents, 35 cents, in the bureaucracy, taking the dollar that goes to Washington down to only 65 cents by the time it gets back to the education system or to the child. But on top of that, in Arizona, ours is a dollar for dollar. We did not have the multiplier effect. I think the multiplier effect of the proposal here is a very good one, because no one can say this will divert resources from education, because by definition you have to give twice as much in order to get the single deduction, that is, you give $500, you get a tax credit of only $250. That means there is twice as much money for education, and that is a true benefit. In Arizona, as the gentleman pointed out, the experience has been very positive; and it has encouraged, not discouraged, the funding of education. It has been a boon. It has been good to watch people get excited. I think our colleague from Michigan pointed out that the accountability is a huge factor. In Arizona, they created what is called the Arizona School Choice Trust, which is a nonprofit charitable organization which collects contributions from people all over the State and then awards scholarships to low-income children trapped in failing schools who want to get a good education and whose parents want a good education for them. I have known a number of people involved in that effort, and it is very exciting to see the kind of, as the gentleman described, the students who come to Washington, to see the excitement in the eyes of the adults, some of them very wealthy, some of them very ordinary means, who have decided to make this kind of contribution, give money for a tax credit, and then see that money used usefully. We are in a very competitive world. This is a different world than perhaps our parents or grandparents faced, in that education now is absolutely critical. We all know the stories about America falling behind in education and the ongoing debate about we need more resources. In Arizona there is a very heated debate, do we not need to put more money into education, more money into education? I am not one of those who believes that money creates a direct link to success in education, but it is true that we do need to pay teachers well, we need to be able to give them the resources to do their jobs. The gentleman mentioned the professionalism of educators. I am obviously biased in my own view of my wife and two sisters and my niece, but I find they are all intentionally dedicated, concerned individuals. They give a great deal of money out of their own pocket. They go out and buy supplies. My sisters go out and buy supplies for their classrooms. My wife, to my chagrin, goes out forever and buys supplies for her bulletin boards and candy to give away to the kindergartners that she works with to provide rewards when they do well in their performance. My niece in Tucson is a math teacher, and she gets excited when she can help kids. Giving those teachers the resources they need to educate young minds and to make them be able to be competitive in this globally competitive world we are entering is, I think, one of the greatest challenges we face here as a Nation. Doing it by the tax credit means, which lets people get personally involved and say okay, I am going to write a check this year for $500. I know I will only get a reduction in my taxes of $250, so I am giving away an extra $250. But I care. I care about the education of kids in general. Business owners care about getting educated workers to come into the workforce. I think this is an idea that kind of cuts around all of the bureaucracy of other reforms that, as the gentleman pointed out earlier, we might make in the overall system, that indeed the President was trying to make with H.R. 1. He believed he hit upon something that might make education more accountable. Tax credits let individual people put their money where their mouth is, so to speak, and do something to help educate the kids right in their neighborhood and create a one-on-one relationship with the parent or with the child or even with the school administrator and say hey, I made a $500 contribution this year in Arizona. I gave it to your school, I expect to see you make that money work. The administrators that I have seen in Arizona are very excited about this program, and they believe that they are being given a chance to manage these resources. I think it is a huge success, and I am very, very hopeful that we can enact here in Washington a modest beginning of this program and get it started across the Nation.

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I would like to begin by saying that the gentleman deserves a lot of credit, along with the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), having been in the lead on this fight. You are both on the committee of jurisdiction, the Committee on Education and the Workforce, and I think you have done a great job on leading this issue. Whenever we do these Special Orders, it sometimes occurs to me that we sometimes may be talking around or over the heads or past the listening audience. I thought maybe it would be worth just a couple of minutes to explain some of the concepts here. I know that I get in discussions where I use the words ``tax credit,'' or I use the word ``deduction,'' and people do not understand. I mean they do not want to say, I do not understand what you mean, Congressman. But in America, with the withholding structure that we have where both wages and taxes are withheld out of your check, you file a form at the end of the year and you get a check back from the government; I think a lot of people do not really understand what a tax credit is and what a deduction is and why there is such a critical difference. I think it might be important to kind of walk through the fact of what this would mean for, as the gentleman pointed out, any taxpayer in America who even does not have a child; let us say they are used to filing their tax return and they get a check back from the government saying that they have overpaid their income taxes for the coming year. Let us say they get a check back right now of $1,000 in a given year, and that is because they owed everything else that they had paid in, except that $1,000. This is not a deduction that reduces the amount of money on which they have to pay taxes; this is rather a reduction, a lowering, of the dollars that they must pay in taxes themselves. So a tax credit means they get, they actually get money back, whether their check refund is larger or whether they write a smaller check to the government at the end of the year; is that not correct?

Mr. SHADEGG. So just to make clear, Mr. Speaker, a taxpayer decides, once this bill is in place, I am going to give $500 to help low-income children in my neighborhood or in my State. They give that $500 check. Come the end of the year, they get either a refund check that is $250 larger or, if they owe money at the end of the year, they write a check to the government that is $250 smaller.

Mr. SHADEGG. And, Mr. Speaker, of critical importance, for those who say we are underfunding education at the Federal level already, we should not be doing any of these schemes, we should not be diverting dollars, we should not be reducing the amount of money that goes into education. By using this device, by saying you get a $250 tax credit, but only if you make a $500 contribution to education, that argument goes away. Because we have not reduced the amount of money going to education by $250; we have increased the amount of money going to education by $250 that would not have been there to begin with. And if $500 went to education, not $250, and in a sense we know that out of the $250, only 65 cents out of each dollar would get to the student, we have, as we said earlier, more than doubled the amount of cash going into education, which is why teachers across America, teachers' unions, school superintendents, school administrators, people who are professionals and care about resources for education ought to be excited about this idea.

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Speaker, the ``leave no child behind'' phrase is such a great one, because every American believes in that. No American wants to leave a child behind, and it is a great way to point out what we want to do as a country for our children. But I just want to point out that as a necessary corollary to what the gentleman was saying just a moment ago, the only reason that one would oppose tax credits would be either that one wants to retain the bureaucratic control in Washington, D.C., to be able to order those districts around, or wants fewer dollars to go to education. I just want to make that clear, because I think people are out there debating, who is opposing this and why? I think it is important to understand that. Given that under this structure we leave the existing structure in place, and it still gets the resources that are directed to it, the Federal dollars to education that are flowing through the Department of Education are still there, and they still go out with all the strings and all the bureaucracy. This is not in place of that, this is an add-on in addition to that.

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Speaker, to continue the point, this tax credit proposal is on top of the existing Federal funding for education. It is more dollars without the control. So I thought the gentleman did such a good job of making that point, that these are extra dollars and they go without the control; that the only reason one could oppose it would be if one is a bureaucrat in Washington, D.C. and does not want Federal money of any kind going out to educate kids without those Federal dollars being controlled, and the control of them, and the dictate, saying they must spend it this way, coming from Washington, D.C. It seems to me, given that, that one has to either oppose additional funding for education or genuinely believe that the people back home in the local schools and school districts cannot spend the money unless they are told precisely how it must be spent by Federal bureaucrats. Unless one believes one of those two things, one ought to be supporting this kind of idea, because it means more dollars for education, more local control, it means more involvement by Americans in the funding of education in a very direct sense, where they want the accountability to them and they get the satisfaction of knowing their money is helping education. It is, as the gentleman says, a win-win proposal.

Mr. SHADEGG. I think the gentleman said it well. The key is, this is not a replacement for the current system. People in the current system and believers in it should not feel threatened by it. What it is, is a chance to add resources to the current system. It is a chance to make it even stronger. It is a chance to put more dollars behind education. It is a chance to get people more involved in the education of their children. It is a chance to get around the bureaucracy and have the accountability run directly to people in their own neighborhoods. It is indeed for that reason I think a win-win that should not threaten the education establishment and should encourage them. So I compliment the gentleman and my colleague from Michigan for their very hard work on this project.

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Speaker, on this, the 58th Anniversary of D-Day, I address the House to honor 6 heroic Arizonans. This past Monday I had the pleasure of awarding Don Benford, Joe Cicchinelli, Archie Dixon, Frank Kirinich, Mike Mills and Richard Thim the ``Jubilee of Liberty'' medal and a certificate of thanks from the French government for their outstanding bravery, valor and extraordinary service to the liberation of France. Fifty-eight years ago they stepped to the doors of their C-47 transports and jumped into the dark, menacing embrace of the Normandy night. Fifty-eight years ago, the ramps of their landing crafts hit the pounding surf at Omaha and Utah beaches and they leapt forth into the teeth of terrible storm. They were the elite of the American Army and Air Corps. They were the pride of our entire nation. They were what Tom Brokaw later came to call our ``Greatest Generation.'' As these gentlemen spearheaded the Allied invasion of France on that fateful summer night 58 years ago, they were taking an incredible leap of courage. Steven Spielberg has said that his depiction of D-Day in Saving Private Ryan actually underplayed the ferociousness of the battle. That gives some measure of the superhuman heroism and valor of our D-Day vets. It is no exaggeration to say they saved the world. And it is even less of an exaggeration to say they saved democracy for my generation-- and future generations. In his history of D-Day, Stephen Ambrose points out that Hitler thought that democracies were too weak to fight fascism, and that American soldiers--raised to believe in freedom and liberty--were soft and no match for his master race. But America's soldiers of democracy-- you and millions of other World War II veterans--were anything but soft. The Taliban, by the way, are learning the same lesson about today's Gls. These six Arizonans were able to storm the beaches of Normandy and win World War II precisely because they were fighting for liberty and freedom. They are the heart and soul of America. In some ways, modern society is very different from the nation that the men and women of D-Day knew, and it is sometimes fashionable to take a cynical view of the world. But when the calendar reads the 6th of June, such opinions are better left unspoken. No one who has heard and read about the events of D-Day could possibly remain a cynic. Army Private Andy Rooney was there to survey the aftermath. A lifetime later he would write, ``If you think the world is selfish and rotten, go to the cemetery at Colleville overlooking Omaha Beach. See what one group of men did for another on D-Day, June 6, 1944.'' Mr. Speaker, I remain eternally grateful to all of the veterans who stormed the beaches at Normandy in the defense of freedom. Every American soldier who courageously fought for freedom deserves recognition and thanks from this Congress.

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Madam Chairman, I rise to address the inclusion of my amendment in the Manager's Amendment to H.R. 3994, the Afghanistan Freedom Support Act of 2002. The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Hyde, has drafted an important piece of legislation that will help significantly in efforts to rebuild Afghanistan's economic infrastructure, create durable institutions of government that are representative and accountable to the people of Afghanistan, and reduce the production of narcotics. The bill helps the people of Afghanistan, and reduce the production of narcotics. The bill helps the people of Afghanistan to help themselves by providing the seed money needed to establish the necessary base of physical infrastructure and stable government upon which they can build a modern economy and thus a peaceful and prosperous society. I believe that this legislation offers an excellent opportunity to allow the natural generosity of the American people and businesses in America to play a role in this effort. That is why I proposed an amendment, which the gentleman from Illinois has included in the Manager's Amendment, that states that the President should encourage donations from U.S. corporations and small business of manufacturing and other types of excess or obsolete, but usable, equipment to help rebuild the infrastructure of Afghanistan. Currently, the Federal Government does not solicit donations of usable equipment from U.S. corporations and small businesses. My amendment rectifies this problem and asks the Federal Government to look to all sources to provide the needed machinery and equipment to begin the rebuilding process. U.S. corporations continually replace old but reusable equipment and are faced with relatively few choices for disposing of it. My amendment expands their choices and helps them contribute directly to a people who are in dire need. This equipment can be used to help start small businesses and begin entrepreneurship in Afghanistan that will lead to the creation of jobs and start the country on the long path to recovery. I thank the gentleman from Illinois and look forward to working with the Chairman and the Administration to see that this important provision is enacted into law and fully implemented. With that I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I rise in strong support of both the rule and the underlying legislation. Make no mistake about it, this is an issue on which there should not be a disagreement. John F. Kennedy said a rising tide lifts all ships. With that, he cut tax rates. The result was not less income to the Federal Government but more. Ronald Reagan took the same premise. He lowered tax rates and revenues went up. We are being presented today with a false pretext, a pretext that the only way to increase government revenue is to increase government tax rates, and that is simply wrong. But look at the devastation that that position will cause. If Congress fails to make the Bush tax cut permanent, it will result in the single largest tax increase in American history. That simply makes no sense. But what is puzzling here is that the American taxpayers do not even understand why we are doing this. Why we are doing this is because there is a bizarre rule in the other body called the Byrd rule; and under the Byrd rule it said that when you make tax policy and it goes beyond 10 years, you must have 60 votes. Sadly, there were only 58 votes, of course, a solid majority for these tax cuts; but we were stuck with the bizarre system where all of these tax relief provisions will go out of existence if we do not act now. Which one do they oppose? Do they think we should reinstate the marriage penalty and punish Americans who are married? Do they believe that we should repeal the increase in the tax credit and punish parents with small children? I do not think so. Are they opposed to the repeal of the death tax and do they support it being fully reinstated? Because that is what opposing this rule and that is what opposing this bill will do. But what about savings in America? In this legislation, IRA contribution limits were increased. They would be reduced by 60 percent if we do not act today to make them permanent. Education IRAs. How many kids are in school today because we increase the ability for education IRAs? Who will be hurt if we do not make this tax cut permanent? Every American will be hurt. I urge my colleagues to support this rule and support this important piece of legislation.