Christopher Shays

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. That is for the student who has borrowed the maximum of $17,000, and there still will be the grace period. We defer the payment on that interest and allow them to amortize it over the course of their entire loan.

Mr. SHAYS. I would love to weigh in on this. I represent an urban area, I think I am one of the probably few Republicans that represents an urban district. I represent Stanford, Norwalk, and the city of Bridgeport. The city of Bridgeport--a few years ago--attempted to go bankrupt and, candidly, it is getting itself back in line and getting its financial house back in order as well. As someone who has been involved in government and has voted for a lot of welfare programs, I have had to ask myself, what have I done? This is what I look at and see. I see 12-year-olds having babies, I see 14-year-olds selling drugs, 14-years-olds. I see 15-year-olds killing each other. I see 18-year-olds who cannot read their diplomas. I see 24-year-olds who have never had a job, or if they had a job, say, at McDonald's', they would say it was a deadend job. If I ever said that to my dad, he would say, ``Son, how many hours are you working?'' and if I said ``Dad, I am working 10 hours,'' he would have said ``It just increased to 15,'' because he knew the value of waking up in the morning, earning my [[Page H 11753]] keep, and being of service, being useful to society in a very proactive way. Then I think of my 80-year old grandparents. We have created a legacy that has to change. We have to be willing to confront how we have voted in the past, how we can change it. I want to be part of a caring society. We have been a caretaking society. In the process of being a caretaking society, I think we have destroyed generations of young people who now cannot be productive. We have given them the food, we have not taught the how to grow the seed. For our Republican revolution to have a positive impact ultimately, we have got to teach people how to grow the seed. That is what we are trying to do with our welfare reform.

Mr. SHAYS. Could I just jump in here under the school lunch program, Mr. Speaker, because we talk in our circles about not ever being school-lunched again. It was the first time we encountered where we were going to increase a program and people called it a cut. Instead of it growing 5.2 percent a year, we allow it to grow 4.5 percent a year. But we do something very important. We allow the local communities to adjust 20 percent of the cost, because a lot of wealthy communities get 30 cents per child. We are going to allow States to say wealthy communities maybe should not get that, and a poorer city, maybe like Bridgeport, can have a breakfast program. So we are going to allow States the discretion to focus these programs where they think it is most needed, but they are going up.

Mr. SHAYS. I would love to weigh in on this issue. My parents raised four boys. I was the youngest of four boys born in the mid-1940's. My parents, in today's dollars would have been able to deduct, per child, $8,200 per child. That is $32,800 off the bottom line of their income. But a family today can only deduct $2,500. What we are trying to do with our family tax credit is give families today the same basic purchasing power, at least get them closer to the kind of purchasing power, that my folks had. I might make this point as well. My parents probably paid less than 12 percent of their total income in Federal, State, and local taxes, maybe 15 percent, Federal, State, and local. A family today pays anywhere from 25 percent to 40 percent, plus, in Federal, State, and local taxes. This eminently makes sense. We may end up where, when we agree with the Senate, that it will apply to any family making less than $100,000. So then what you will have, you will have it focused primarily on those with the most need.

Mr. SHAYS. That is not true, to start with.

Mr. SHAYS. What it is is a tax credit. In other words, the taxes he paid, he will get $1,500 back in taxes he paid.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Tiahrt] for joining me in this effort, and I have learned a lot from his charts. I would like to say that I have never been more proud to be part of a new majority than this Republican majority that candidly is trying to take on getting our financial house in order, balancing our budget, saving our trust funds, particularly Medicare, and transforming the social and corporate welfare state into what has to become an opportunity society. All of the new Members that we have have made an incredible difference in this effort. They have been the driving force with some of the sophomore class as well, and it has just been absolutely a thrill to welcome our new Members and it has been a wonderful opportunity for me to share in this essential order, and I thank the gentleman from Kansas for his extraordinary good work, his dedication, and giving us the opportunity to be in the majority.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, we have about 3 more minutes, and I want to make sure that the gentleman is able to finish up on those issues that are important to him.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I don't see anywhere in there, any savings in Medicare or Medicaid that contributed to the tax cuts. The tax cuts were funded, taken care of before we ever voted on Medicaid or Medicare.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would further yield so that I could just elaborate, that is what we do in our appropriations votes, when we vote out our appropriations bills to fund the Treasury Department or to fund HUD or any of these other programs, we reduce the amount of money that we are allowing these departments to have.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, it is because we are spending more money in all of those areas.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, thank you for taking the time to allow me to address the House. I would like to say that I will basically be making some comments and then yielding to my good friend, the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Tiahrt], who will demonstrate some of what I am saying and amplify and also go on into other areas. Mr. Speaker, really what I wanted to address the House about was why we are doing what we are doing and what are we doing. Mr. Speaker, we have three basic goals as this Republican majority. Our first goal is to get our financial house in order and balance our Federal budget. We would like to do that no later than 7 years. We would like to do it sooner, but 7 is the outer limit to balancing that Federal budget. Our second task is to save our trust funds, particularly Medicare, which starts to go insolvent next year and becomes bankrupt in 7 years. Our third effort is to transform our social and corporate welfare state into an opportunity society. Mr. Speaker, the bottom line to this effort is: Get our financial House in Order; balance our budget; save our trust funds, particularly Medicare, which is going bankrupt; and transform our social and corporate welfare state into an opportunity society. Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot of dialog in the last few months about whether we are cutting or increasing. The gentleman from Kansas is going to be able to demonstrate what truly is a cut and what is not, but I would like to begin to start that dialog by dealing with five issues that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle refer to as cuts. One is the earned income tax credit; another is the School Lunch Program; another is the Student Loan Program; a fourth is the Medicaid Program; and a fifth is the Medicare Program. [[Page H 11748]] Mr. Speaker, in none of these five areas did we cut the programs. We increased spending. We allow these programs to grow significantly. What we did is we slowed their growth, and slowing their growth is absolutely essential. I have been in Congress now 8 years, but before that I was in the State House in Connecticut. As a State legislator, I had to balance our State budget. I was basically amazed that a Member of Congress could seven vote for a budget that was not balanced. Unless, obviously, our country is in hard economic times and we need an economic generator, but to do it continually when times were bad and when times were good, to continue to deficit spend. I always vowed that if I came to Washington, that my first issue would be to get our financial house in order and balance our Federal budget. One of my first recognitions was, however, that I only got to vote on a third of the budget. I only got to vote on what came out of the Committee on Appropriations. Mr. Speaker, we refer to what comes out of the Committee on Appropriations as discretionary spending. It is the spending that funds the domestic discretionary funding, and also foreign aid, what we call international expenditure, and the third is defense spending. All of that is voted out on 13 separate appropriations bills by the Committee on Appropriations. Sometimes we collect them all into one bill. Mr. Speaker, what we did not get to vote on, and what I have never voted on in my now eight years in Congress, I have never been able to vote on significant changes to entitlements. Entitlements are Social Security; they are Medicare; they are Medicaid; they are certain welfare programs; they are certain farm aid programs. If a citizen fits the title, they get the expenditure. Mr. Speaker, this Republican majority made a determination that we were not going to change Social Security, but the rest of the budget, the 75 percent that is left over, 76 or 77 percent that is left over, we would begin to address; not just the one-third that is the discretionary spending. We made a determination with our Contract With America, which by the way is a positive plan that does not criticize Democrats, does not criticize President Clinton. It was a plan that we agreed to. Not just the individuals who are incumbent Members, but those who were challengers. We agreed that if we were elected and were the majority, we would move forward on 8 reforms in the opening day of the session and 10 reforms during the first 100 days. One of those reforms was a balanced budget amendment. We made a determination with the balanced budget amendment that we would not just vote for a balanced budget amendment, but we would vote to balance the budget. The only way we can do that is to address the incredible challenge that we have with our entitlements, particularly Medicare and Medicaid. Now, what happens with the earned income tax credit? This is basically an affirmative payment that the Government makes to those who make the very least amount in our country. It is basically for the working poor, primarily. It is an attempt to get them off of welfare and not see a significant drop where they start to pay a lot of taxes. It is an effort to say they will actually get an assistance from the Government to get them up to the level where they get a livable wage. Democrats, the minority party on the other side of the aisle, they say that we are cutting the earned income tax credit. What is happening with the earned income tax credit is that it is going from $19.8 billion this year to $27.5 billion in the seventh year, the year 2002. Only in this place, in Washington, when we go from $19.8 billion to $27.5 billion could anyone literally call it a cut. It is nothing, it cannot even come close to being called a cut. It is going to grow, and it is going to expand. We are going to see a significant increase. Same thing with school lunch. School lunch over a 5-year period, now it is $6.3 billion, it will grow to $7.8 billion. How can you say when something goes from $6.3 billion to $7.8 billion it is a cut? You cannot call it a cut. You could say we slowed the growth of spending, but that even is a 5-year plan. It continues to go up even more. Student loan really gets me. The argument that we are cutting student loans is an absurdity. It goes from $24.5 billion this year. In the fifth year it grows to $33 billion. In the sixth year, it grows to $36 billion. In the 7th year, so from 24 to 36, it grows by 50 percent basically in 7 years. Only in Washington when you see such a large growth in student loans do people call it a cut. What are we doing? We are saying that grace period, when you have left school and then you get a job, that grace period where the Government would pay the interest rate, we defer the payment for that grace period, but then you have to pay the interest rate. If you had a loan of $17,000, and that $17,000 loan during the course of payment, you would be paying an additional $9 more a month, basically the cost of a movie and a soda, popcorn or basically the cost of a pizza, once a month. Now, I am just going to address two issues, Medicaid and Medicare, and then I am going to yield to my colleague from Kansas. I serve as the chairman of the task force, the working group on the Committee on the Budget overseeing health. We basically served into this process the issue of Medicaid and Medicare. Medicaid and Medicare collectively are 17.6 percent of our budget. They are growing, doubling basically every 6 or 7 years. They are becoming so large in their expenditure that they are squeezing out the rest of the budget, so that our domestic discretionary, our defense spending, our international, that appropriated item keeps coming down and down. We even spend, because of our incredible deficits, $233 billion just on interest on the national debt. But what are we doing with Medicaid and Medicare? We are going to allow Medicaid to grow with what it is today at $89 billion to $124 billion in the seventh year. We are going to spend, we spent in the last 7 years $444 billion on Medicaid. In the next 7 years we are going to spend $773 billion. We are spending $329 billion more in the next 7 years for Medicaid. That is a 73 percent increase in spending over the next 7 years as opposed to the last 7 years. Only in this place, in this city, when you spend so much do people call it a cut. Now, what are we doing with Medicare? Medicare is where I will end by basic comments and then yield to my colleague from Kansas. Medicare is a plan that I am so excited about. Yet, when I have gone back into my district, I have had people describe to me a plan they think we are voting on that has nothing to do with what we are voting on. I think I am against that plan. What are we doing? We spend $178 billion today. In the seventh year we are going to spend $273 billion. That is a 54- percent increase from now until the seventh year. In the last 7 years we spent $926 billion. In the next 7 years we are going to spend $1,600 billion, or $1.6 trillion. That is $674 billion of new money in the next 7 years, a 73-percent increase again. But people say, OK, you are spending more, but what about all the new beneficiaries, all the new elderly? Had you added up all the new elderly on a per beneficiary, per elderly basis, we are going to go from $4,800 per beneficiary today to $6,700 per beneficiary in the seventh year, a 40-percent increase. So we are going to spend 40 percent more per beneficiary. Only in this city when you spend 40 percent more per beneficiary do people call it a cut. We are spending far more than the inflation rate necessary to have an excellent program. What we are going to do is slow the growth of this program. But to do that, we have no increase, we create no new copayment and increase no copayment. We create no new deductible or increase any deductible. The beneficiary premium, part B, stays at 31.5 percent, and the taxpayer pays 68.5 percent. That is the difference, that is what the taxpayers are paying. They will continue to pay 68.5 percent. The beneficiary will continue to pay 31.5 percent. As health care cost go up, that 31.5 percent will mean that beneficiaries from part B will pay an additional amount per month as they have during each of the last 7 years where they have paid more. [[Page H 11749]] Then people say, OK, I see that. I understand that. No increase in deductions. No increase in copayment. My premium stays the same. It does change for one group. If you make over $100,000 and you are single, you pay all of Medicare part B. If you are married and you make over $150, you pay all of Medicare part B. You still get Medicare part A as is. That has not changed. Then the last argument is, the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Shays] and the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Tiahrt], can I keep my doctors? Why are you kicking me out of this program? We are not. You can stay in this program. If you want the traditional Medicare Program, this 1960's model fee-for-service program with your doctors, just the way it has gone before, you get to keep that plan. But if you want to get eyeglass care or dental care or a rebate in your copayment or a rebate in your premium or a no deduction, you will be able to join a host of plans that will be provided giving you this kind of choice. Concluding my remarks, I get health care from the Federal Government. I pay 28 percent of the cost. The Government and the taxpayers pay 72 percent of the cost. I get choice in my health care plan. My constituents have said, I want choice like you have it. We are allowing Medicare patients to have choice. They can keep what they have or they can get into whole new different programs that are going to be provided which we call MedicarePlus. I will conclude my comments. I am delighted to yield to my colleague from Kansas who really can show much of what I have said and elaborate on that, but candidly provide new information just illustrating from charts that he has how important it is for us to get our financial house in order. I intend to be here for part of his dialogue. I might interrupt him on occasion, but I yield to the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Tiahrt]. I look forward to hearing what he has to say.

Mr. SHAYS. I would just make the point that, even with our 7 years plan, the national debt goes on another trillion dollars. Here we are having people saying we cannot do it in 7 years and that we need to stretch it out. Even then, we are allowing the debt to go up because we are trying to have a glide path where ultimately our expenses, slowing the growth of our expenses runs into revenue. But to me that 7 year balanced budget is the outer limit of what we should be doing.

Mr. SHAYS. Just looking at that, the point needs to be made that the Congressional Budget Office has scored the President's budget and said his annual deficits are over $200 billion during each of the next few years. That blue line just shows how we are going to get those deficits down to zero in the seventh year.

Mr. SHAYS. Before you leave Alan Greenspan, I would just like to mention that he made a point to us in the committee. Some members said, ``Well, Mr. Greenspan, isn't there a danger that Congress could cut too much and slow the growth of our economy?'' And he gave a very interesting response. He said to this Congressman--he said, ``Congressman, Congressman I don't go to sleep at night fearful that when I wake up the next morning Congress will have cut too much.'' His biggest point to us, his biggest point to us was, that, if we balance the Federal budget, interest rates will drop significantly, and I think you have a chart that illustrates the significance of that, if you, for instance, could just explain it.

Mr. SHAYS. The other point I would just make, that if businesses have less interest to pay on their plant and equipment, they are going to invest more in higher productivity, they are going to build new plant and equipment, create more jobs, and the American worker, the American worker, is going to be more productive. If the American worker is more productive, they are going to get more dollars for what they do.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. You do not mean the Speaker; you mean a speaker?

Mr. SHAYS. And the way that someone who is listening tonight could decide if they fit the category of our colleagues, the other side of the aisle that say we are giving only to the wealthy, two-thirds of our tax cuts go for the $500 tax credit. So all you have to do is ask yourself, if you have two kids and you get $1,000 back next April, are you wealthy? Seventy-five percent of all families make less than $75,000. So I would just like to, if I could, just make this last point on Medicare and then, because there are so many of us here, I helped head the task force on the Committee on the Budget on health care, Medicare and Medicaid. And so I really got into this issue of Medicare. I am so excited about our Medicare Program. I would debate anyone anywhere this issue. Bottomline to it is, it is going to go from $178 billion to $273 billion in the 7th year, as was alluded to, a 54- percent increase. We are going to spend $674 billion more in the next 7 years than we did in the last 7 years. We are going to spend 40 percent more per beneficiary. We are going to allow everyone to stay in their fee-for-service program or if they want they can get off and get private care. They do not have to leave. If they leave, and they do not like it, they have 2 years every month to come back. In other words, during a 2-year window they can come back in. I know that there are so many of us that would like to contribute to this conversation, but I would just say, just knowing what I know about Medicare, we are going to spend so much more, and only in this city when you spend so much more do they call it a cut. There is nothing courageous about voting for Medicare, what we have done, because we made it a better program. I cannot wait for our senior citizens to realize and finally have the opportunity--I will close this way, all my constituents have said, Congressman, you get Federal health care, I want the same choices you get. That is what we have done. We have given them the same choices we have. I pay 28 percent of my health care cost, and the Government pays 72 percent. We are allowing beneficiaries to now choose among a whole host of different health care plans. I just want to thank you for allowing me to join this.

Mr. SHAYS. I just want to thank the gentleman for yielding to me and say that I went to one of my colleagues and I asked, how long have you been here? And the good gentleman from Georgia reminded me, he, too, is a freshman. You all have had such an impact that it seems like we have known each other for years and years and years. You brought us over the top, not just in terms of being in the majority but in terms of getting our financial house in order and balancing our budget. Mr. Shadegg was mentioning Mr. Greenspan coming to one of our budget hearings. One of the other things that Mr. Greenspan said, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle were saying, are you not afraid that we will cut too much and that we will slow down the economy? And Mr. Greenspan responded, he said, Congressman, I do not go to sleep at night fearful that I will wake up the next morning and that Congress will have cut too much. [[Page H 11674]] And we have to be very careful because we can give the impression that we are making these dramatic changes and some of them are, but we are still allowing our budget to grow. We have spending increases, and we have to be up front on that. It will grow significantly each year. Some things we are cutting. Discretionary spending, there are not just real cuts but absolute cuts. Foreign aid, there are absolute reductions. Defense is going to stay basically the same. It is a freeze, but we are oversubscribed in programs. So we are going to see real cuts in defense programs. But when it comes to the entitlements, which are half of our budget, they are continuing to grow significantly and will continue to grow in the outer years. And I think about it and then the tie-in somehow that some of our colleagues want to make with Medicare and the tax cut. We paid for our tax cut long ago in cuts in discretionary spending and in the increased benefit to or country by balancing our budget. That is called the fiscal dividend. I was not an advocate of the tax cuts. I would say that if we could balance the budget in 4 years, I would not be advocating any tax cut. But if it is going to take us 7 years to get our financial house in order, I am very enthusiastic on tax cuts. The gentleman mentioned he was born in 1952. I was born in 1945. My parents, in the 1940's and 1950's raised four boys. I was the youngest of four. In today's dollars, they could take an equivalent of $8,200 per child off the bottom line of their income. They would have been able to take basically $32,800 off. So if they made $50,000, they would only be paying taxes on a small part of it. A family today, if they could take that same benefit my parents did, my parents could take the equivalent in today of $8,200. We only allow families to take $2,500. That is why I am particularly enthusiastic for the $500 tax credit.

Mr. SHAYS. Within those five programs, each of those programs can offer a whole wide range of different eyeglasses, dental care, rebates to your co-payment offer deduction.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I have to say that one of the unsung heroes in this Congress is the gentleman from New York [Mr. Paxon], because he has made all the difference in our having a Republican majority and the opportunity to save this country and to turn it from the direction it has headed. I would applaud, if I was allowed to.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Diaz-Balart] for the work he has done in trying to awaken us to the need to be very aggressive as we deal with Mr. Castro. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to address the House for the 4 minutes I have remaining to respond very strongly to the fact that we have three basic goals in this Republican majority. One, we want to get our financial house in order and balance our budget. The second issue is that we want to save our trust funds, particularly Medicare, and in the process preserve and strengthen it. Also, just as importantly, we want to change this social and corporate welfare state into an opportunity society. Now, in the process of doing this, I have heard tremendous reference to the fact that we are cutting certain programs that we are not cutting. Admittedly, discretionary spending is going down. There are real cuts in discretionary spending. Foreign aid is being cut. Defense is a hard freeze, but we are oversubscribed in defense programs, so there will be cuts in defense. But when we come to the earned income tax credit, it is going up, it is not going down. It is going from $19.8 billion this year to $27.4 billion in 7 years. Only in this city, and where the virus has spread, when you go from $19.8 billion to $27.4 billion do people call it a cut. The School Lunch Program, calling it a cut when it goes in 5 years from $6.3 billion to $7.8 billion. How can that be a cut? It is an increase any way you look at it. Student loans, over a 5-year program it is going to go from $24 to $33 billion. I say again, only in this city when you go from $24 to $33 billion in student loans is it a cut. Now, what we are doing is saying students are going to pay the interest rate from the moment they graduate until that grace period ends. That will accrue to them. It will cost them, over the life of the program, $9 more a month if they borrowed $17,000. Then, Medicaid. Medicaid is not being cut, it is going up. It is going up from $89 to $124 billion. We are going to spend over $329 billion more on Medicaid than we did in the last 7 years, we are going to spend in the next 7. That is a 73-percent increase. Medicare is going to go from $178 to $278 billion, $178 to $278 billion over 7 years. That is a 54-percent increase. Or, in terms of what we spent in the last [[Page H 11670]] 7 years, we spent $926 billion, it is going to go up to $1.6 trillion. That is a difference of $674 billion of new money, 73 percent more than we are going to put in Medicare in the next 7 years than we did in the last 7. Then if you want to know what it is on a per-beneficiary, it is going to go up 40 percent. Only in this city, when you spend more money like we are spending, do people call it a cut. Now, why are we doing this? We are doing this because our national debt has gone up and up and up. It was about $375 billion around 1975. Democrats and Republicans can share the blame in why these deficits go up. A White House that was Republican, a Congress that was Democrat. That is the past and both fingers were on it. But we have an opportunity now to get our financial house in order and stop increasing our national debt. I just want to say that I am absolutely determined that there is not a chance that I will vote to increase the national debt until this President agrees to a 7-year budget. I want to say, contrary to what my colleague from Connecticut said, we are not saying it has to be our budget, we are just simply saying it has to be a 7-year budget. We will work out our difference, some of what the President wants, some of what we want. The bottom line, we have to get our financial house in order in 7 years. That is the outer edge. It would be better if we did it in 4 or 5 years.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I will yield very briefly.

Mr. SHAYS

Mr. SHAYS. I appreciate the gentleman yielding to me. I was here at another special order, and I knew that you were going to talk about Jimmy Ryce. I think of that precious young man and his precious parents who are wrestling with where he is now. And I just felt inclined, wanted to hear what you had to say and to pay respect for Jimmy Ryce and the thousands of other young children that have been taken away from their parents. And then when I mentioned that to you, you asked me to read a statement from another of your colleagues from Florida, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who I would like at this time to read her statement. She cannot be here tonight, but I think it is important that her feelings about this case and others like it be put in the Record. So I would just read her statement at this time. It begins: Mr. Speaker, one of the silent and most devastating crimes to which some in our society remain oblivious to is the large number of children and young adult persons who are kidnapped and reported as missing within our local communities every year. Most recently in my local community is the case of ten year old little Jimmy Ryce, who, upon walking from his school bus stop to his home in the Redlands neighborhood of South Florida, was kidnapped and has yet to be found. Another case which to some may tragically and foolishly believe is yesterday's news, is the case of Shannon Melendi, a young resident of my Congressional district, who while attending Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, was kidnapped over a year and eight months ago and has yet to be found. All of us want answers to Shannon's mysterious and sad disappearance. And as all of us in the local South Florida community presently suffer the pain and anguish of little Jimmy Ryce's parents, whose son was kidnapped 51 long days ago, and we join them in their search for Jimmy, I am more sure than ever that someone must be held accountable for the loss and uncertainty that they feel today. As the extensive manhunt continues within South Florida for Jimmy, I feel that all of us, as parents and as legislators, must become aware of this inhuman and horrible act that today afflicts my local community, but tomorrow, could very well affect yours. As I stated, another victim of this heinous crime is Miami resident Shannon Melendi, who, in spite of a national manhunt, has yet to have been found, a year and eight months later after she was seen at her place of work, the Softball Club, in Atlanta. Shannon was not only an outstanding student and a presidential scholarship recipient while attending Miami Southwest High School, my alma mater, but also a dedicated member of her school community, who did her best to represent the junior and senior classes of which she was president. Even though a suspect is now in prison, he has yet to confess to a crime, and Shannon remains missing. Her family, from her grandparents to her younger sister, remain distraught and afflicted with a heavy emotional burden as they wait for Shannon to come home to them once again. [[Page H 11681]] Is the FBI doing enough? Is the local police? I strongly believe that more must be done. As the mother of two young girls and a Florida certified teacher, I am very worried about any cases of abducted children. Worse still is the fact that as the number of kidnappings increase, there are even more missing children who were yesterday's news and who perhaps will never be accounted for. I ask you, Mr. Speaker, has our society become so evil that our children cannot even venture from their homes in order to attend school, without the fear of being kidnapped? Have our communities become so unsafe and insecure that parents, such as those of Jimmy Ryce, cannot even allow their children to walk home after school from their bus stop? Have we come to the point when well meaning parents, such as the Melendi's, cannot send their child to a prominent university for fear that their children will be kidnapped? Are the abductions of little Jimmy Ryce and Shannon Melendi rare occurrences? Or are they some of the ever increasing number of children who are kidnapped throughout the nation. Something must be done so other children and their families do not suffer in the same manner. I ask you, Mr. Speaker, what are we as legislators and the representatives of our local communities to do in order to deter this abhorrent crime? We cannot merely sit back and wait for Jimmy or Shannon, and all other abducted children, to turn up. We must take action and form a strong stance against this atrocious act so that your children, my children and our children's children, do not suffer the gut wrenching loss and uncertainty that the families of Jimmy Ryce and Shannon Melendi feel, as they search for leads and wait for a precious missing child. I would just like to thank the gentleman from Florida and to let him know that your purpose, I think, is well-intended and I think serves a tremendous effort in helping Jimmy Ryce and others be found. I want to thank you for your special order and to just let you know that someone from Connecticut has taken a good look at that young man and I just hope there are so many others that we can be alert and make sure that Jimmy Ryce is returned to his parents well and safe and that they can hug him and caress him and just welcome him back into their family. I hope that day comes.