Maxine Waters

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. I yield to the gentleman from Alabama.

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute to explain to the gentleman that this is not an imposition on the rest of the country; this is a carve-out for California. This is a protection for what we have already done. We have protections in the law from 1996; and what we are saying is, you should not have national standards that are less than what we have produced in California. I have tried to protect that. I thought that I had. And as our ranking member said, a mistake was made. We thought, based on the representations of everybody, that it had been protected. And now I am here with an amendment that simply says, leave California alone and allow the better consumer laws to stand in California. Do not preempt these laws with standards that are less than what we have in California.

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, first let me say that the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Oxley) and the ranking member, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank), worked very, very hard to get a bipartisan bill to bring everybody together, along with the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus). I think everybody put their best foot forward on this legislation, and I am just sorry that I am not able to support the bill simply because I have to protect California. I think there was a misunderstanding somewhere along the way. I made lot of inquiries about whether or not post-1996 legislation or laws were protected in this bill. I was led to believe that they were protected, but now I find that they were not protected, and what we stand to do is literally undo or preempt much of the good consumer legislation that has been produced in my State. So I must object to the permanent preemption provisions that are proposed in this bill, the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act. I believe that the States should be free to adopt more extensive consumer protections than those that are provided in this Fair Credit Reporting Act. I believe that the national standards contained in the Fair Credit Reporting Act should be the floor, not a ceiling, on the protections available to consumers. States should have the right to provide additional protections. I will ask my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, do any of you know what the next major consumer problem will be in the year 2010? In 1996, when the amendment to the Fair Credit Reporting Act was established, identity theft was not even on the radar. We had never even heard of identity theft. The idea that someone would violate a person by stealing their identity and accessing their financial records was not an issue we were familiar with. Now it is the fastest growing consumer complaint to the FTC, with over 200,000 complaints in 2002 alone. As Californians, our laws on such emerging consumer issues as identify theft represent the gold standard in consumer protection, and that is why I am asking for support on an amendment to carve out all of California laws enacted since the passage of 1996 amendments to the Fair Credit Reporting Act from preemption provisions contained in the bill. There has been an attempt, well, I do not know what happened, but, again, there was a misunderstanding, and I was misled. All of the consumer protections that were enacted after 1996, with the exception of California Civil Code 1785.25(a) regarding furnishers, are preemptable. So, I have a long list. For example, let me tell you what is preempted. Consumer reporting agencies must disclose the names and addresses of all sources of information used in Consumer Reports. That is California law, now preempted if this passes. California also requires consumer reporting agencies to, with a reasonable degree of certainty, match at least three categories of identifying information within the consumer's file with the information provided by a retailer. The categories of identifying information may include the consumer's first and last name, month and date of birth, driver's license number, place of employment, current residence, previous residence, or Social Security number. This effectively reduces a successful attempt at identity theft and reduces the chances for mistaken identity. Another preemption, a consumer has the right to receive his or her credit score, the key factors in any related information. Another preemption. A consumer would be able to have a security freeze placed on his or her credit report by making a request in writing by certified mail with a consumer credit reporting agency. A security freeze prohibits the consumer reporting agency from releasing the consumer's credit report or any information from it without the expressed authorization of the consumer. It would preempt it. Upon receipt from a victim of identity theft of a police report or valid investigative report, a consumer reporting agency must provide a victim of identity theft with up to 12 copies of their credit report during a consecutive 12-month period free of charge. It is very hard to straighten up this identity theft. Sometimes it takes 3 to 4 years. But if you are getting that credit report every month and you can compare what has been taken off, what has been left on, where the mistakes are, you can wind out of this thing. With strong consumer protections, Federal preemption of States would not be necessary because Federal law would be the floor, rather than the ceiling. Then, again, as all of you are aware, this past August, California signed into law SB1, which provides strong consumer protections that should be the law of the land. You are going to hear more about this in an amendment additional to mine that will be presented. But, again, let me just say that whatever the mistakes were, I should have been involved in the manager's amendment to correct these problems. I have not been placed in there. So I do not know what we are going to do, but I ask my colleagues to please consider what has been done here.

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Ms. WATERS. Reclaiming my time, we have to compare it issue-by-issue and then determine whether or not, in fact, you have done better or you have done worse.

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee) for all the work she has done on this most important issue. Mr. Chairman, if anybody had told me that I would be on the floor of Congress arguing States' rights, facing off with a conservative from Alabama, I would have told them they are crazy. But I am here today arguing States' rights on one of the most important issues confronting Americans today, and that is privacy. Americans do not want people peeping into their bedrooms. They do not want folks eavesdropping on their calls. And they sure do not want financial institutions selling their personal and financial information. And that is what this is all about. This bill would require financial institutions to first obtain a consumer's explicit consent before selling or sharing their personal or financial information with affiliates or third-party companies for any purpose other than to complete a transaction initiated by the consumer. What right do we have as Federal lawmakers saying to the American citizens that we do not care that they want their privacy protected; that we are the Federal Government; that we do not care what the States want because we have decided we want national standards for the convenience of the financial institutions. We do not want the financial institutions to have to be inconvenienced by having a State like California have better consumer laws than they have in these national standards. I just do not believe the way this argument is going. I cannot believe that I am standing here defending the privacy rights and the States' rights of Americans against the conservatives on the other side of the aisle. Mr. Chairman, it is just too much for me to absorb at this moment. Let me say we have worked hard in California to have better consumer laws, and I dare say if we do not get it on this side, we are going to have to fight in the other body. But in the final analysis, we also have the ballot in California. We will go to the ballot to deal with this issue.

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I was hopeful that my friends on the opposite side of the aisle would have the good sense not to oppose something like this. This is so ridiculous. This is so ridiculous that they could absolutely defend a credit card company increasing your interest rates, even though you are paying your bills on time every month. You are paying your bills on time, you have not missed a payment, but because you did not pay Nordstrom's or Gap, and you may have a dispute with them, they are going to raise your interest rates. Then, my friends on the opposite side of the aisle will say, they have to do that; and if we do not allow them to do that, that will have a chilling effect on credit. Well, I think what one of my friends on this side of the aisle just said to me makes a lot of sense. She said, you know, this is nothing but a racket. You are defending a racket. You are defending a racket that is exploiting the people for no good reason. They simply want to make more money, and they can come up with any excuse, any way possible to get more money, to gouge your constituents; and you would stand here and argue that unless we allow them to gouge your constituents, you will have a chilling effect on them being able to get some credit. Give me a break. This is the greatest ripoff I have ever seen. And to add to it that if you are paying your bills on time, you are not missing a payment, and you go out and borrow some money because you may have a situation where you need more money, they look at that and say, oh, they went out and they borrowed some more money; I can use this, and I can describe it as a credit risk. Up with the interest rates. Oh, you are better legislators than that. You do not want to do that to your consumers. You do not want to undermine them that way. You do not want to have the dollars that they are working hard to earn pulled out of their pockets in this racket. Support the amendment. That is the decent thing to do.

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, there are two different issues here. When we did this work in committee, we thought that we had protected the consumer laws that were made in California after 1996; and everybody, all of our staff people, everybody thought so, on both sides of the aisle.

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, how much time is remaining?

Ms. WATERS. No. As the ranking member tried to explain, there are two different issues here today.

Ms. WATERS. No. I just read a number of them a few minutes ago in my presentation that had to do with some other laws, with credit reports and some other kinds of things.

Ms. WATERS. Yes.

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, Los Angeles International Airport, which is located in my congressional district, is the third largest airport in the United States, with capacity to serve 78 million air passengers per year. The operator of LAX has proposed a rather controversial airport modernization project that would include the construction of a remote passenger check-in facility. The details of this proposal and the environmental impact report were released on July 9, 2003, and are now open for public comment. There is a strong coalition in the district opposed to this plan. Supporters of the proposed project to construct a remote passenger check-in facility claim that the facility is necessary to improve the safety and security of LAX, and, they claim, to prevent terrorist attacks at LAX. However, it is even more likely that the concentration of passengers in a remote passenger check-in facility could actually reduce the safety and security of LAX. The Rand Corporation conducted a security study of the proposed remote passenger check-in facility which was released May 14, 2003. The study concluded that the proposed project would not significantly improve the security of LAX. The study also suggested that concentrating passengers in the remote passenger check-in facility would make this facility the likely target of a terrorist attack. The study even suggested that concentrating passengers in a remote passenger check-in facility would exacerbate the effects of such an attack. Mr. Chairman, this idea is not only opposed by many of the homeowner groups in the area, it is basically opposed by the coalition throughout southern California who is trying to get LAX to move to a regional response to passenger increase. The Rand study did conclude that limiting the capacity of the airport would reduce the overall vulnerability of LAX to terrorist attacks. However, this could be accomplished by maintaining LAX at its existing capacity with no additional airport construction projects. My amendment would require the Secretary of Homeland Security to review the proposed project to construct a remote passenger check-in facility at LAX to determine whether the project, as designed, will protect the safety and security of air passengers and the general public. The amendment would also prohibit the construction of this project until such time as the Secretary of Homeland Security has completed the review and determined that the project will improve protection of the safety and security of air passengers and the general public. We cannot afford to experiment with the safety and security of the American people. Mr. Chairman, we have gone through 9/11 and we have created Homeland Security, and it seems to me that Homeland Security cannot be excluded from the review of these so-called expansion projects or reconfiguration projects, whatever name they come under, in the many airports in this country, if in fact we are concerned about the security of airports, and I know that we are, and I am certainly concerned about LAX. It has been said more than once that LAX is a target and that it is at risk. We should not allow politicians to expand airports, to create construction projects. We should not allow politicians to do this without the benefit of the kind of review that will go even beyond what FAA has been doing in the past and would include the considerations of Homeland Security. Why did we develop a whole Department on Homeland Security if we cannot include in it the review of these proposed projects for reconfiguration and expansion by elected officials and politicians in all of these local areas? I know that my colleague on the other side of the aisle has reserved a point of order, and I respect that; but I would just ask my colleagues to find some way to work with me, to take a look at these kinds of expansion or reconfiguration projects. Mine may be the one that is being brought to you today, but this is going to happen all over the country. What are these local city councils, what are the mayors, what are the Governors, what are they doing? Are they expanding construction in the name of politics, looking towards the next election, or do we have really security factors built in to these kinds of projects? I would ask you to find a way to work with me on this. Point of Order

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I rise to express my serious concerns about the fiscal year 2004 VA-HUD Appropriations bill. This bill fundamentally shortchanges our veterans and it is no way to thank them for their sacrifice and their service. Just about every day, we hear about one of our soldiers dying in Iraq for a war that was based on questionable evidence and inaccurate information from both our intelligence community and from the Administration. Just as often, although we don't hear about it as much, our soldiers are being injured in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, the Philippines and the dozens of other countries to which they have been deployed. I thank each and every soldier for his or her courage, dedication and sacrifice made in order to protect our country and defend our freedom. However, when it comes to thanking our soldiers and our veterans, it is not enough just to stand up and give a speech or wave a flag. My colleagues and I want to ensure that our soldiers have all the resources they need whenever they are deployed. Yet, we also must make certain that our soldiers have the resources they need when they return home. We must provide our soldiers and our veterans with the health care, the disability compensation, education and the many other benefits that they have earned and deserve. This bill fails to provide the necessary resources our veterans need. the President and his party would rather provide trillions of dollars in tax cuts than pay for the health care of those who protect our freedom. It's tragic the way that this Administration pays lip-service to our soldiers but fails to fund programs that can improve the quality of lives of those who serve. Because of the Bush tax cuts, this bill provides the VA with $1.8 billion less than was promised even in the Republican Budget Resolution. In fact, the $25.2 billion in VA funding in this bill does not even keep up with inflation which will put an even greater strain on the VA's already scarce resources. There is already a shortage of qualified doctors and nurses. This bill will only exacerbate the problem. Too many of our veterans are forced to wait six or eight months to see a doctor. Because of the seriousness of their injuries, some even die before they have the opportunity to see a doctor. The inadequate funding in this bill will do nothing to alleviate the waiting periods. This is no way to treat our veterans. We can and must do better than this sorry bill. I urge my colleagues to reject this bill, reject these unfair tax cuts, and provide the resources our veterans need.

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, the hardworking, dedicated employees who sit here on the dias behind the Well of the House are the heart and soul of this institution. Their sacrifice and service are the glue that enables the House to proceed with its business and that helps all of us to serve our constituents and the American people. On a daily basis, the employees who sit on the dais are an invaluable resource to all of us who are privileged to serve in the House of Representatives. They serve all of us, without regard to party. Every day that the house is in session, and certainly when we have weeks as lengthy and as challenging as this one, we all surely have to admire the selfless devotion to service that keeps the House staff at their posts working to serve all of us. Whether it is two or three o'clock in the morning during a heavy legislative week, or simply recording the proceedings on a routine Suspensions Monday, no matter what the challenges may be, our reading and journal clerks are always here to assist us and serve this institution. It is all too rare that we say thank you for their hard work, their patience, their good humor, and their devotion to this body. Today, however, is a very special occasion and I want to take this time to thank and salute one of the giants of the staff of the House. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to thank and pay tribute to the House's Chief Journal Clerk, Eve Butler-Gee, who will be retiring when we adjourn at the end of this legislative week for our Summer recess. According to the Congressional Research Service, Eve is the first woman Journal Clerk in the history of the House of Representatives. Ms. Butler-Gee and her three Assistant Journal Clerks are always on duty at the rostrum to ensure that the House meets its constitutional responsibility to maintain an official record of the parliamentary proceedings of the House. Eve has done a great deal to modernize Journal procedures and enhance the professionalism of the Journal clerks. Eve began her professional career in the House while in her early twenties. She left the House in the middle of her working years to work for a charitable foundation, and then returned to the House in 1987 when then Minority Leader Bob Michel appointed her as the Minority Enrolling Clerk of the House. In her tenure as the Journal Clerk, like all those who have preceded her and all those Clerks who will follow her, Eve has been a witness to history, to events of great joy, those of great sadness, events that often truly have changed the shape of our world. What remarkable stories she will take with her as she concludes her service! I could use my time to review more of Eve's professional accomplishments, but those of us who are privileged to know her, and to experience her wisdom, her humor, her warmth and friendliness, know that Eve is so much more than her resume. Eve has been a good friend to all of us and a person whose service has brought great credit upon this institution. I understand that Eve intends to spend her retirement traveling, enjoying her family, pursuing her interests in writing and community theater, and continuing active service with the Episcopal Church. I value Eve's ability and her diligent service greatly. What I value even more is the friendship and warmth that she brought to all of her contacts with me, and, I know, with so many other Members. So I conclude simply by saying: Thank you, Eve for your pioneering service, for your professionalism, and for your friendship. I wish you well and know that the future will continue to hold great things for you. Congratulations and Godspeed in your retirement.

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the substitute because Head Start is very dear to me. I love Head Start. Thirty-eight years ago I helped to organize one of the first Head Start programs in the Los Angeles area. Head Start happened to change my life, and I have seen what Head Start can do for families and for the children. They talk about wanting to make Head Start better. Let me tell the Members, Head Start created new ways by which to deal with education for poor children. Five children to every one adult. In the public schools they still do not have the right ratios, classrooms all over this country, 25 and 35 and 45 children to one adult. Nutrition for every child, parental involvement for every child. All kinds of services. Physical examinations. They are going to help make Head Start better? We have the President and people on other side of the aisle talking about Leave No Child Behind. They need to put some money into the public schools so they can receive these children from Head Start who are doing better, who are ready to learn. This is a sad moment for me. I never thought I would come to the Congress of the United States and be involved with the demise of the Head Start program. Shame on you, Republicans. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to this bill. You don't fix what isn't broken. Head Start has achieved tremendous successes in helping the most vulnerable of our children. It does not need a legislative fix. It needs funding so that Head Start can reach the 40 percent of eligible children it does not presently serve. With this bill, the Republican party is undermining our efforts to help these children get an education and break the cycle of poverty that plagues so many of them. This bill is just the latest example of Republicans choosing to leave our children behind. They have consistently underfunded the President's so-called signature education program, Leave No Child Behind. And, they refuse to pass a child tax credit that would benefit millions of children. Now, they seek changes that would ruin the most successful early childhood education program we have. It is a crime and every Member of Congress should oppose this bill. Mr. Chairman, there are two fundamental flaws contained in this bill. The first is the block grant provision that will ruin the program. Block granting will gut the high quality, comprehensive services that are the hallmark of Head Start and weaken the program's educational performance standards. It also will weaken oversight and evaluation of the program. But what I fear the most, is that block granting will significantly waken the important role of parents in their children's education. We all know that teaching effective parenting strategies and involving parents in their children's education is strongly related to children's achievement in school. The Castle substitute purports to provide for parental involvement while the original Republican bill did not. What is clear is that the Castle substitute is not as strong on parent involvement as the existing Head Start program. Why should we recklessly experiment when we have a Head Start program that effectively involves parents in their children's education? We should stick with what works. In fact, experts have often cited the Head Start-parent partnership as one of the most successful aspects of the Head Start program. To retreat from our emphasis on the importance of this relationship, would be to turn back the clock on our commitment to improving the lives of adults. It also would be a profound insult to the millions of parents who have been inspired to improve their parenting skills, volunteer in the program or return to school. My other concern is with section 654, which would allow Head Start programs run by faith-based organizations to discriminate on the basis of religion. Mr. Chairman, this is appalling. One of the greatest strengths of Head Start is the diversity of individuals who participate in, and work, for the Head Start program. Yet, if the Congress supports this provision, one of the historic foundations of Head Start will crumble. Teachers will not be hired or parents will be unable to volunteer simply because they do not share the views of the religious organization's teachings. This provision will severely hamper the program and goes against what we stand for as Americans. Mr. Chairman, the groups that understand children, who understand the struggles of low-income families, all oppose this bill. The scope of groups that oppose H.R. 2210 is truly breathtaking. Civil rights groups, labor, business, teachers, the National Head Start Association, early education experts--they all oppose this bill because they understand that the holistic approach that Head Start employs works. And it works very, very well. We have heard it before, but I'm going to say it again: ``Head Start ain't broke, so don't try to fix it.'' Mr. Chairman, this is a bad bill. I urge my colleagues to reject it.

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for allowing me this time, and I must tell my colleagues that as I stand here today, my heart is broken. It is broken because after 38 years of a successful program we allowed 90 minutes on a closed rule to destroy Head Start. It is shameful. Republicans ought to know and understand what they are doing. It is another blow that you are striking against children, and poor children and poor families at that. Mr. Speaker, I cannot help it that the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) and others do not understand how Head Start was organized, the delegate agencies, to keep it closer to the communities. We bypassed the Governors on purpose to keep them from snatching the money from Head Start, and my colleagues are throwing it back into a block grant. That money is going to be siphoned off in even States like mine where we have a $38 billion deficit. My Republican colleagues want to throw it back into school systems and preschool programs that have no mandates, that do not mandate parental involvement, that will not guarantee nutrition programs, that will not give the physical examinations to help identify the deficiencies that these children have before we put them in the classroom and help get them ready for school. Everyone has admitted that Head Start is successful. Each of my colleagues says that as they get up to destroy it. If it is successful, why then are we messing with Head Start? We need to try and do something about K through 12. When we send kids to Head Start, they are doing well. Sometimes they lose it because the school systems are not ready for them. Mr. Speaker, we need more money in Head Start. It is only servicing 60 percent of the children who need it. We have waiting lists. To add insult to injury, not only do my colleagues dismantle this program by putting it into a block grant, then they bring on discrimination and only allow those parents to participate who are of the same religion of some of the delegate agencies that are trying to run a Head Start program. Again, it is shameful. You break my heart today, and you dismantle a program that is desperately needed.

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Washington for yielding me this time, and I rise to oppose H.R. 2739, which would implement the United States-Singapore Free Trade Agreement. I am especially opposed to the intellectual property rights provisions contained in chapter 16 of this agreement because they could restrict the access of the people of Singapore to affordable medicines for HIV/AIDS and other diseases. The agreement delays the introduction of generic competition and extends patent terms, thus extending the length of time during which people in Singapore would be required to pay monopoly prices for medicines. The agreement also restricts Singapore's use of compulsory licensing and parallel importation mechanisms that allow governments to override patents in order to protect public health. If the United States- Singapore Free Trade Agreement becomes a template for negotiations with other developing countries, people throughout the developing world will find it harder to gain access to affordable medicines. Currently, access to medicines is severely limited in developing countries because developing countries cannot afford to purchase medicines at the prices charged by the multinational pharmaceutical companies. More than 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS worldwide, and over 95 percent of them live in developing countries. Yet many of the medicines that treat people with HIV/AIDS here in the United States are unavailable in most developing countries. Patients in developing countries with other diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, also lack access to lifesaving medicines. The Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health affirmed the rights of developing countries to take measures to protect public health and promote access to medicines. This declaration was adopted by the World Trade Organization at the Fourth Ministerial Conference at Doha, Qatar, on November 14, 2001. The Fast Track bill passed by Congress last year specifically directs the President to negotiate trade agreements that are consistent with the provisions of the Doha Declaration. We cannot trust this administration to negotiate free trade agreements with developing countries when the administration ignores the explicit instructions of Congress in the Fast Track bill to respect the Doha Declaration and allow developing countries to take appropriate measures to protect public health. I urge my colleagues to support the rights of developing countries to promote access to affordable medicines by opposing the U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement.

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the Jackson amendment to add $480 million in emergency funds for Africa. This amendment would add $300 million for debt relief for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, $150 million for child survival programs in Africa, $20 million for economic support funds for Africa and $10 million for the African Development Fund. This bill underfunds a number of accounts that provide assistance to the people of sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest region of the world. More than 300 million people in sub-Saharan Africa survive on under $1 per day. Almost half of the continent does not have access to safe water sources. Only one in three African children completes elementary school, and one in three people in sub-Saharan Africa does not get enough to eat every day. Average life expectancy in Africa is just 49 years. In the countries hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic, life expectancy is just 30 years. As a member who has been working on the issue of debt relief for poor countries for many years, I am especially concerned about the lack of funding in this bill for debt relief for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Enhanced HIPC Initiative was developed to free impoverished countries from the burden of debts and allow them to invest their resources in AIDS treatment and prevention, health care, education and poverty reduction programs. Most of the funds necessary to provide debt relief to the countries that are eligible for participation in the Enhanced HIPC Initiative were appropriated in the years 1999 through 2002. The President requested $300 million in fiscal year 2004 to provide debt relief to the Congo, but these funds were eliminated from this bill. The Jackson amendment would restore the $300 million included in the President's request and permit the Congo to benefit from the Enhanced HIPC Initiative. The President recently returned from a trip to several African countries. During his trip, he talked about American support for Africa and American programs that provide assistance for Africa's development. However, if Congress does not appropriate the funds to implement African development programs, American support for Africa will be mere rhetoric. The Jackson amendment would provide funds to these critical development programs that promote American goodwill in Africa, while assisting some of the world's poorest people. I urge my colleagues to support the Jackson amendment. Point of Order

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I rise to support section 568 of H.R. 2800, the Foreign Operations Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2004. Section 568 gives the President the authority to reduce the debts that poor countries owe the United States as a result of prior loans under various foreign assistance programs. This authority is included routinely in foreign operations appropriations bills. The rules governing the debates on prior foreign operations appropriations bills always have protected this language from points of order. Unfortunately, this year, the Rules Committee reported and the House passed a rule that fails to protect subsection (a) paragraph (3) of section 568 from points of order against the inclusion of authorizing language in an appropriations bill. Section 568(a)(3) specifically gives the President the authority to reduce debts resulting from prior loans under agricultural programs and food assistance programs. The rest of section 568 is protected from all points of order, as it should be. As a Member of Congress who has been working on the issue of debt relief for poor countries for many years, I am especially disappointed that the Rules Committee did not protect section 568 in its entirety from all points of order. Section 568 is critical to enable the President to reduce and reschedule poor countries debts. Section 568 is especially important for poor countries that do not currently qualify for other debt relief programs, such as the Enhanced HIPC Initiative. The President recently reduced the Congo's debts using the authority included in section 568. The Congo is an extremely impoverished country that is emerging from years of violent conflict. The Congo lacks the political institutions necessary to develop the detailed economic plans and poverty reduction strategies, which countries must develop to qualify for participation in the Enhanced HIPC Initiative. The debt reduction provided under section 568 will free the Congo from the burden of substantial debt payments and assist the Congo in developing the political institutions necessary to qualify for other debt relief and foreign assistance programs. If section 568(a)(3) is stricken on a point of order, we will narrow the President's authority to reduce poor countries' debts significantly and needlessly. Striking section 568(a)(3) would force poor countries that receive debt reduction to continue making substantial debt payments on debts that arise under certain foreign assistance programs while debts that arise under other foreign assistance programs are reduced. The President's authority to reduce debts should not depend upon whether a loan was issued under one foreign assistance program rather than another. The President must have the authority to reduce the debts of poor countries whenever it is appropriate. I urge my colleagues not to insist on a point of order against section 568(a)(3) and to support section 568 in its entirety.

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the Kilpatrick amendment to add $300 million for global HIV/AIDS programs. I thank the gentlewoman for persevering, despite the fact that the committee did not do what it should have done in moving forward to get this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I would like to explain to my colleagues what it is like to be African American in this Congress and have to fight, scratch, and claw for everything that we get, domestically and internationally. Mr. Chairman, to be African American in the Congress of the United States and to watch the carnage in Liberia, to watch the children who lost limbs in Sierra Leone, to have watched the genocide up in Rwanda, with 800,000 bodies floating down the river, to watch a continent in trouble, not too many years away from just having attained independence, and a long way to go to perfect this thing called democracy; to watch them struggle; to see the men and women who die and the children, and have to come to this Congress and beg my colleagues to just do the right thing is not easy. It would be easier, Mr. Chairman, to just walk away and to say, I am tired of trying to convince my colleagues who claim to be about the same business that I am about: humanitarian efforts for the world. It is very difficult. But we continue to do this because we must do it. If we do not do it, nobody else will do it for us. So we are here today begging for $300 million to help fulfill the commitment that this President made for $15 billion over the next 5 years to deal with the pandemic in Africa. We have got colleagues and Members who travel to Africa all the time. They come back from a CODEL and they tell us what they have seen and what they have heard and how they have gone to some clinic and how they have seen dying and starving children. But then, when they reach the Congress of the United States, they are willing to forget what they have seen and not to remember what they experienced and to do some kind of political maneuvering and compromising to hold back on the promises that they have made and the words that they have spoken. Mr. Chairman, the HIV/AIDS epidemic is having a devastating impact on Africa and the world. Over 60 million people have been infected by the AIDS virus since the beginning of the epidemic, and 42 million people are currently living with this dreadful disease. In sub-Saharan Africa, more than 29 million people are living with the AIDS virus, 4 million of whom are in desperate need of treatment. The HIV/AIDS epidemic has already curtailed the economic development of many countries in Africa. AIDS is responsible for shortages of skilled workers and teachers, high rates of absenteeism and labor turnover, and the death of workers and managers throughout business and government. Teachers and other skilled workers can be very difficult to replace. Tragically, in some parts of Africa, employers even find it necessary to hire two workers for every job opening because they expect one of them to die of AIDS. On May 1, 2003, the House passed H.R. 1298, the global AIDS bill, which authorizes appropriations of $3 billion per year over 5 years for global HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention efforts. This bill, which is critically needed and long overdue, was signed into law by the President on May 27. Unfortunately, the foreign operations appropriations bill for fiscal year 2004 does not fully fund the global AIDS bill. This bill includes only $1.4 billion for global AIDS programs. An additional $644 million was included in the labor-HHS appropriations bill, bringing the total funding for global AIDS programs to $2 billion, not the $3 billion that is authorized for fiscal year 2004. Mr. Chairman, HIV/AIDS has taken the lives of over 3 million people and newly infected 5 million more in the last year. The President and the Congress promised the world community that we would spend $3 billion per year to fight this devastating disease. Mr. Chairman, I am tired of scratching. I am tired of begging. I am tired of trying to have to leverage everything possible. But I am going to continue to do it, along with my colleagues, because fair is fair. We need the money. Our people are dying. We ask you to simply do the right thing

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus for this and many of the other Special Orders he has organized in order to make sure that everyone in this Chamber and throughout the country understands the grave changes the President and the Republican Party are trying to make to the Head Start program. Mr. Speaker, 38 years ago, I had the great fortune to help organize one of the first Head Start programs in this country under the War on Poverty. My involvement with Head Start has been one of the most defining experiences of my life. Not only did I help to organize one of the first Head Start programs in the country working with the community, I went to work for Head Start as an assistant teacher and I was inspired to go back to school and to get my degree. Not only was I inspired, I saw the inspiration that Head Start did for many parents, many folks in the community. Today I sat in the Committee on Rules where I went to try and offer some amendments to strengthen the Head Start program and to not allow the Head Start program to be block-granted to the States. I literally sat there and listened to the chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce and others talking about Head Start without really knowing or understanding what Head Start is. I did not recognize the program that they were talking about. And it dawned on me that they did not know this program. It dawned on me that many of them had never spent any time in a Head Start classroom. I heard descriptions of what the Republicans would like to do with the Head Start program, talking about somehow making it a program where children would be involved with literacy and trying to prepare them for the public schools and education in new and different ways. Mr. Speaker, they did not know that in the beginning of Head Start, a lot of work was done to determine what would be the best way to provide an early childhood education experience for children who came from disadvantaged homes and disadvantaged communities. We tested everything from Montessori to other approaches to dealing with children. Finally it was concluded, after all of the study and all of the work, that the way to deal with the children from disadvantaged communities was to focus on the whole child, the entire child, and bring the family in to helping to determine the educational destiny of their children. In doing so, we felt that all of the children needed to have a physical examination to determine their health. We also thought that it was important to have a strong parent involvement component in this program. We also knew that it was important to have nutrition involved in the program. And we were right. And we also determined that we had to reduce the ratio of children to teachers, because at that time single-teacher classrooms headed by one teacher was trying to manage 35 and 40 kids in the public schools. So we reduced those ratios to 1 to 5. For a classroom of 15, one adult to every five students in the Head Start class. And it worked. Because we had physical examinations, we discovered learning disabilities, dyslexia, other kinds of problems, sight problems, hearing problems, all kinds of problems that would have caused children to fail, to be placed in special education classes and not to be able to succeed; and we dealt with that, with this new model that was created. And now we have people talking about they want a program to teach literacy. They do not understand that when you build self-esteem, when you introduce children to books for the first time, when you teach them to love books and to care for books, that is the best way to get children reading. When you teach the parents through the parent involvement program to read to the children, you are developing children who not only will love reading and love books but will become great readers and will be very, very literate and be able to succeed in the public schools and in the schools that they will go to. I listened to those who were describing how they wanted to change the program. They really do not have any good reasons for changing this program. The only thing that they are doing is carrying out a conservative Republican philosophy that gets government out of providing a real safety net for the least of these. They are not only following the line, the philosophy of the Republican Party in divesting itself from programs that invest in people. We see it every day. It is not only Head Start. It is the section 8 program where they are trying to get out of the business of helping to provide safe and secure housing for people who cannot afford it with a subsidy; and so they are marching down this conservative road, of divesting government from being involved in programs that were created under the Great Society, programs of Johnson and Kennedy and getting rid of government responsibility. Unfortunately, we are in the minority around here and we may not be able to stop them. They were so arrogant that they are going to have a closed rule where we will not be able to offer any amendments. They are going to have a closed rule so that there will not be any discussion and any real debate about how we ought to be strengthening Head Start. And the arrogance goes further than that. They are going to debate this on a Friday when people are rushing off to catch airplanes so that they can limit the debate and shut it down and literally roll out of here having block-granted Head Start and eight of our programs. This is sinful and it is shameful. They are destroying one of the most successful programs that we have ever had in this country, a program that has been commended and supported by every President since the inception of Head Start. There is no reason for this. Some of the amendments that I tried to offer, one was an amendment that would allow parents to count the hours they volunteer in a Head Start classroom against welfare work requirements. Another would establish a parent service awards program. The amendment would authorize a $1,000 voucher to up to 5,000 individuals to be used for the cost of any education or job training program approved by any State or the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Eligible recipients of the award are parents who volunteer in the classroom at least 5 hours a week for the entire Head Start year. A third would require each Head Start program to establish and maintain a waiting list of all children who are eligible for and apply for enrollment in a Head Start program, but are unable to participate because of lack of funding. If there is funding remaining after the initial disbursement of funds, this amendment authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to distribute the remaining funds. And the last would remove title II of the bill and thereby ensure that Head Start can function as designed with strong educational standards, low child-to-staff ratios, and high-quality social services. In addition, the amendment ensures that funds designated for Head Start will go directly to local Head Start programs and the States will not have the opportunity to divert Head Start funds to close gaps in their budget or for other priorities. I was not the only Member of Congress up there. In fact, I would guess there were 15 or 20 Members who were present, all interested in offering an amendment or two in an attempt to minimize the damage that the Republicans are doing to the Head Start program. Many of these amendments were well thought out and would improve the program. Yet the chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner), has requested a closed rule with no amendments to be permitted except maybe a manager's amendment and a Democratic substitute. Let me just close, Mr. Speaker, by saying, if, in fact, this Congress allows the block-granting of Head Start, it will be one of the worst public policy decisions that has been made in the history of the Congress of the United States of America. Any time you have public policymakers who are willing to take a successful program that has been lauded and commended by everybody and there is nobody supporting the block-granting of the program, nobody asking that some changes like this be made to the program and undermine the ability of poor children and low-income, working families to have an experience of preschool that would help to make children more successful, then we ought to be called to task for it, and we ought to be challenged in our elections for it. We do not need to do this. I would ask the Republicans to rethink this wrongheaded policy. They may not do it, but we will all pay a price in the long run for it.