Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, with that, in honor of the Month of the Military Child, we thank Speaker Pelosi for her generous donation of this time to the 30- Something Working Group. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. McNerney, thank you. It is wonderful we have someone of your stature and your commitment, that is willing to come to the floor and talk about the importance of making sure that we take care of not just the troops but of the troops' family members because they are making a decision to serve the public as well. They make sacrifices, and we all wanted to come together tonight as House Democrats and talk about the sacrifices that those families make. It is my distinct pleasure to yield to my colleague from Ohio, Congressman Zack Space, whose father served in the Marines during the Korean War, and who also serves on the Veterans' Affairs Committee and has been a passionate advocate on behalf of issues important to veterans and their families.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you so much, Mr. Space and thank you for your commitment. You really have been representing your district proudly, and I know they're proud of you. And I am honored to serve with you. We truly appreciate your being here this evening. It's now my pleasure to yield a few minutes to my 30 something colleague who is a little bit more familiar with the normal give and take that we have in the 30-Something group. This is a little more staid and low key for 30-Something, but we're trying to help you all keep up with the pace. And feel free, to my colleagues, to jump in. We usually have a little bit more dynamic style in the 30-Something instead of a one at a time type of approach. So my colleague, Congressman Altmire, from the great State of Pennsylvania, I have to tell a story before I yield to you. And you've heard me tell this before. Literally, I'm on the whip team for our caucus, and it was my responsibility right after Mr. Altmire's election to sidle over to him and talk to him about some legislation that we wanted him to vote with the caucus on. And literally, his first words to me were that he had to make sure what the impact was on veterans, and that he came here to make sure that the quality of life of our Nation's veterans was upheld and that that was paramount to him. So I thought that was really admirable and wonderful; and you have represented veterans in your community incredibly well. And I yield to my colleague from Pennsylvania.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, to bring us home, Mr. McNerney.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you, Ms. Davis. Mr. Speaker, I sense that our time is drawing to a close. The whole point of doing this 30-Something hour focused on the impact of deployments on military families was to try to improve the quality of their life and decrease the impact, the negative impact. I just want to show you an important statistic here is that less than 50 percent of military families felt that they had support available through all of the phases of their family members' deployment, and that is absolutely unconscionable. It is something that Chairman Filner and the members of the Armed Services Committee, as well as the Veterans' Affairs Committee, have been working very hard at trying to improve, and that is what the Democratic Caucus, under Speaker Pelosi's leadership, has been absolutely committed to. Mr. Speaker, I want to yield 30 seconds to Mr. Space, and then we will wrap up.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you so much, Mr. Sestak, for your 31 years of military service and now your continued public service to our country and to the citizens of Pennsylvania and your district. We really truly appreciate your expertise and the heart that you put into this job in representing your community. So thank you so much for joining us. It's my pleasure to turn to someone who I admire and respect and look up to. She is one of the few women that are in a leadership role in our Congress on the Armed Services Committee, and she is really a person who has broken through on the issues that are important to the military and the military families and provided a different perspective, as women often do. And this was such a tremendous source of pride for me, Ms. Davis, that you chair the Subcommittee on Military Personnel, which is an incredibly important assignment of the House Armed Services Committee; and you represent the community of San Diego so admirably in this institution, and you have been a champion on behalf of veterans and military families. It is my pleasure to yield to you. Thank you so much for joining us.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mrs. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Mrs. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the Aigen Haifa Chapter of American Friends of Magen David Adom. Magen David Adom is Israel's equivalent to the Red Cross. The chapter based out of Sunrise, Florida, is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel. Since its formation in 1992, the chapter has raised several million dollars. This money has gone to buy 11 ambulances that cost anywhere between $70 and $100 thousand. The money also helps build blood centers in Israel which supply 95 percent of the blood in the state to among others, hospitals and the military. Over the last three years, the chapter has been short handed. Many of us remember the destruction by Hurricane Wilma in 2005. This group felt it first hand, more than 50 of its 120 members have left and not returned to the area. But that has not stopped them from taking money out of their own pockets to donate to the state of Israel. On several occasions, a former member has passed away, and willed money to the organization so they could help their brothers and sisters in Israel. Madam Speaker, this group exemplifies some of the best that this country has to offer. I thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell all of America about some of the women and men in my district who work to make positive changes in the lives of others.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize April as National STD Awareness Month. As you may know, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released a disturbing statistic. One in four young women between the ages of 14 to 19 has a sexually transmitted disease, and it is likely that she does not even know it. This amounts to an estimated 3.2 million teen girls in America with at least one of four common STDs, including chlamydia and HPV. The good news is that these diseases and infections are preventable. We have a responsibility to make sure that parents and teenagers have the resources they need to make smart choices for their health and well-being. This includes access to education and access to affordable preventive health care and screening. As a Co-Chair of the Young Women's Task Force for the Women's Caucus, I call on my colleagues to take note of the CDC's startling statistic, and I congratulate Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones for introducing a resolution supporting National STD Awareness Month.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Speaker, before I begin, I would like to ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you to the gentlewoman from New York. Mr. Speaker, we think we have made a very strong case tonight at the beginning of the Week of the Young Child to make sure that there is a mandate for this Congress to increase the funding for Head Start, increase the funding for Child Care and Development Block Grants, and make sure that when those little babies are put on the crossroads of the path of their life, that we send them strongly down the right path so that they can have the best life that they can possibly have.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity that has been given to us by Speaker Pelosi tonight to talk about an issue that is affecting literally millions of families across America, and that is the lack of affordable child care and early childhood education. It is especially important to highlight these issues as this week marks the Week of the Young Child. For the next hour, we're going to focus on young children and how, over the last 7 years, we have failed to provide adequate and necessary funding for vital child care and early childhood education. And I can tell you, Madam Speaker, that as a mother of three young children--I have 8-year-old twins and an almost 5-year-old, 4\1/2\- year-old little girl--this is something that is near and dear to my heart. I remember the struggle that I went through when I first gave birth to my twins and had to go back to work, and we searched and searched for a quality child care program. We were turning our newborn babies, 3 months old, 4 months old, over to really, basically, someone we didn't know, someone to care for our little ones all day long. You know, we just couldn't even imagine turning over the care of our babies, our most precious resource, we couldn't imagine turning over our babies to anyone. So you can imagine the struggle that people go through when, on top of having to decide where they can take their children to be cared for while they work, that they also have to struggle through the angst of not knowing or not expecting that they can afford that care. And because we have continued to slash and burn from this administration the funding for Head Start and for the Child Care Development Block Grants programs, we absolutely wanted to come to the floor tonight and spend an hour, at least an hour, highlighting the needs that children in this country have, and particularly those of working families. And I'm going to be joined tonight by several of my colleagues. Before we begin, though, I do want to recognize and thank our good friend, Chairman George Miller of the Education and Labor Committee, and Chairman Kildee, Dale Kildee, for their leadership and their commitment to child care issues and education, as well as the Head Start and Child Care Development Block Grant Program funding. These are all programs that are near and dear to their hearts, and a number of these Members have submitted statements. We just have to highlight that there are children, especially those from low-income families, that need better access to high-quality early childhood programs. Across the Nation, Madam Speaker, child care fees average from $4,000 to $10,000 per year which exceed the cost of public universities in most States. Yet nationally, only one in seven children who are financially eligible for child care subsidies is being served. One in seven. And at this time, I would like to turn the podium over to a champion for America's children, the voice in this body that is consistently there for those who have no voice. She is the current Chair of the Woman's Caucus, Congressman Lois Capps of California.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Absolutely. I just wanted to insert that.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. It's not that the need is not there.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Is it really that if the funding is not there, then these centers can't afford to stay open?

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Absolutely. And I want to thank you so much for coming down and joining me tonight. What we have been trying to do is highlight the consequences to these horrendous policymaking decisions. And I talked about Jennifer a few minutes ago and what her situation is like. Some of my colleagues from the various States that are represented on this chart mentioned their own States' statistics this evening. But I want to give a fuller picture of what the real consequences are to not funding adequately Head Start and Child Care and Development Block Grants. So this is what it looks like in my State, Ms. Clarke: In my State of Florida, nearly 45,000 children are standing in line for child care. In other words, we have got almost 45,000 kids in my State who are eligible for child care, but they can't get it because we're not funding it adequately, I mean simply because we are not providing enough funds. I mean what are we spending it on? What is more important? Like you said, the gentleman that you said says the same refrain every single time, ``remember the children,'' that's what it is all about. I remember being pregnant with my twins and people telling me throughout my pregnancy, Oh, Debbie, you're life is going to change. Just wait. You're not going to believe it. You never imagined that you could care about something so much as when you give birth to your kids. And you sort of nod and smile, and you tell them, sure, you can imagine what it's going to be like. Well, you can't imagine. You can't imagine what it's going to be like until you have them. And that's what everybody tells you. You can't imagine that you could care and love something more than when you give birth to your children. And you would do anything to make sure that they were okay, that they had the best possible life that they could have. And when parents who are struggling to make sure that they can put food on the table, that they can pay the mortgage, not have the house foreclosed on, make sure that they can have time to go to their job, but, at the same time, have a high-quality child care situation so that they don't have to worry about the one or two or three or however many kids they have that they care more about than anything in the world, what it is this administration doing? Cutting the funding for our most precious resource. So it's not just Florida. It's not just New York. There are 207,000 kids in California on a waiting list. How about Georgia? Georgia, Ms. Clarke, that actually has a pre-K program funded by the lottery, which is supposed to provide a pre-K education to all the 4 year olds in that State, and there are only 6 million people in the State of Georgia as it is, there are 24,808, almost 25,000 kids on the waiting list for child care that they qualify for. In North Carolina almost 18,000 kids are on the waiting list, 15,000 in Texas, 207,000 in California. Those are kids that don't have access to child care who are eligible. Nationwide, it is 365,604 children who are waiting in line for child care. And what do those parents do? What do they do? They have to choose between working. If they don't work, how are they going to put food on the table? How are they going to be able to live? Many of these parents have to choose between whether they are going to be able to hold on to their children or not. The angst that I feel in my heart even thinking about having to make a choice like that. There is no one that should have to make that choice. And that the government, their own government, would deprive them of the ability to care for their kids is just mind-boggling.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Absolutely. And let's show people what we mean. And I know you have seen this information before. What we are talking about, when you describe the difference between a parent who can't decide to bring their child to a child care program because there is no money, they can't afford to pay for it, the Federal Government is slashing the funding for it so they don't have a slot funded for their child, even though they are eligible, what happens, like you said, is that you have the parents who can afford it when those kids get to public school, they have already been through several years of prekindergarten, and they arrive at school and start kindergarten at 5 years old ready to learn, which is what the goal of Head Start and these child care programs is. The Federal funding that we provide is designed to make sure those children get to school ready to learn. And this is the correlation of funding from the Federal Government for child care and Head Start and brain development. We are literally funding it in the opposite direction from the way the brain grows and develops and when we provide funding. So here is when you have the most brain growth, and the most rapid brain growth and the most important point in a child's life for that brain growth, and we are funding it the most when we are well beyond the points that the child's brain growth has not ceased, but certainly when it has slowed. This chart should be inversed. We should be funding the highest percentage when the child's brain is developing at its earliest point between birth and 5 years old. But we are doing the opposite. It makes absolutely no sense. It really boggles my mind. And that hurts. We are talking about real kids. I brought pictures of real children who are impacted by these decisions because I think we have to remember what we are talking about here. So often when we have discussions on the floor here, it becomes easy to become desensitized to the fact that we are talking about real people. These are real children who are being cared for. And I am going to tell their story in a little bit. But look at these beautiful children. And this is their caregiver. And I'm going to tell their story in a couple of minutes. But I just don't think it can be forgotten that every funding cut, every decision we make like this affects one of these precious babies. And I just can't even imagine how there is no heart in the White House. Although I shouldn't be shocked after almost 8 years of this administration. It is just unbelievable. We have got to make sure, and the reason that we are here tonight during the Week of the Young Child, is we have to make sure that we push in the next fiscal year, in fiscal year 2009, for an increase in Child Care and Development Block Grant funding the Head Start program. And Democrats have been fighting to make sure that we do that. We passed a wonderful Head Start bill. We have got to make sure that we reverse the lost ground that has occurred after 7 years of flat funding from this administration.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. It is the difference, literally, it's like when a baby is born, particularly to a working family that is not rolling in cash, that is literally struggling to put together their paychecks every month to meet their family's needs, it's like that baby's life begins on a crossroads. And we hold the key to which path they will end up on. If we decide, like this administration, like the Bush administration has consistently decided during their time in office to cut the funding for child care, subsidized child care and for Head Start, then we are, not always, because there are kids that avoid it, but we are making it much more likely that the path that those kids travel down end up sending them more likely into a life of crime, potentially into an inability or decision not to graduate from high school. They end up dropping out. They make the wrong choices because they don't learn at the earliest stage how to make the right choices. They don't learn the basics. They don't have all the tools that they need to draw upon to be strong, to deal with life's challenges. This is not exaggeration. This is real.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. It is. And it's hard to imagine what's more important. Should we continue to spend $14 million an hour in Iraq? Fourteen million dollars an hour is what we are spending in Iraq. Yet we can't come up with the funding that we need to make sure that all the kids in this country that are eligible for Head Start and for subsidized child care can actually go.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. It is unbelievable. So we are choosing to lock kids like that up and spend more money, much more money, than we would spend on them up front to make sure that they get the education and the early start and the building blocks for success that are so much less expensive, but are also just the right thing to do. But for the accident of your birth you should not be in a situation where some kids are getting those basics and other kids are thrown to the wolves. We have these programs so that we can equalize the situation in life for Americans. Look, we live in a capitalistic society. And that is absolutely the economy that we all support and know and revere. And it has served us well through more than 200 years. But because we live in a capitalistic society, it does not mean that we should be throwing our children, our most vulnerable, to the wolves but for the accident of their birth.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. You're absolutely right. I want to tell another story and highlight the impact on another family. We talked about the Head Start program. There are also child care providers who provide wonderful service in those subsidized child care programs. And we have had frozen Child Care and Development Block Grant funding that has led to stagnant and even decreasing reimbursement rates for providers who care for those children receiving subsidies. In 2006, only nine States paid reimbursement rates that were on par with what the Federal Government recommends. And one of those results is there's an alarming 35 percent turnover rate for child care providers because they can't afford to continue to work in that field. And I want to tell the story of a young woman named Kelly Matthews. Kelly is a child care provider in Iowa City, Iowa. I want to read you Kelly's story in her own words, because this is how she described her situation. She said, ``You and I share something important in common. We both go to work each day with a grounded, deeply held belief that we do our chosen work for one very simple reason, to change the world.'' And I know how many times I have said that the reason I do this job is to make the world a better place and to change the world. Kelly is right here with her kids in her program. She said, ``I don't work in the Halls of Congress, but in my home, caring for children in my Child Development Home in Iowa City. What other reason, aside from wishing to impact the future, could motivate someone to take on a job with modest pay, no benefits and no paid time off? This isn't about a `job' for me. This is my profession, my chosen life's work. And it is an amazing gift I am given each day to partner with the families I serve. ``I have built my childcare program around the ideas of community, caring for each other, and falling in love with learning. I love this work because I have carefully crafted a program where kids succeed in all these areas in amazing ways: When Claire (at 18 months) already knows how to comfort a friend, when Trae (at 5 years old) can easily count and set out the right number of plates for his friends at the lunch table, when Lexi (at 3 years old) works hard to write the names of the members of her family, when Gus (at 3 years old) knows how to care for his things and the things that belong to others, or when two toddlers are already capable of working out a conflict in a peaceful way without an adult's intervention,'' what I wouldn't give for that in my house, ``I know these children will be ready, not only for school, but just as importantly, for life. They will grow into adults that know how to take responsibility for themselves and how to care for others, how to problem solve and be creative in their endeavors, how to keep on trying, even when it is tricky.'' She said, ``I take this work seriously. Approximately 50 hours a week of my time with children in my home, plus all the additional hours of paperwork, supply shopping, continuing education, networking with my colleagues, and add to that total, developing and presenting hours of training to inspire other family childcare providers to constantly improve themselves and their programs. But for those of us committed to our professions and our vision of an inspired word, it is all in a day's work, isn't it?'' That is what Kelly Matthews, this wonderful woman with all her children in her program around her, had to say about her work, and it is the reason that we are standing here on the floor tonight at the beginning of the Week of the Young Child. I am so pleased that you have been able to join me, Ms. Clarke, and I turn it over to you to close us out.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, thank you very much to the Speaker, and we yield back the balance of our time.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. I thank Congresswoman Capps. You have just been an incredible leader on the issues that are important to women and young families, and it is so incredibly important in this Week of the Young Child that we have a leader like Congresswoman Capps, the Chair of the Women's Caucus, who has been such a stalwart on the issues that are important to young women and families; and it's just a pleasure to have her join us on the floor today. It is also a pleasure to have such a committed and passionate and compassionate father serving in the House of Representatives with us from Pennsylvania, a wonderful father of two young daughters and someone who has done an incredible job since he's joined the Congress after the 2006 election, Congressman Jason Altmire of Pennsylvania.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Thank you, Mr. Altmire. And thank you for your leadership and for giving your time in public service to make sure that the next generation is well represented here in the halls of Congress. It is incredibly important and so beneficial to the issues important to working families to have parents of young children serving in the Congress, having moms and dads who are living and dealing with these issues every day. We've got to make sure that we have their voice represented strongly in this House of Representatives. And now it's my privilege to turn the mic over to my good friend who represents the beautiful islands of Hawaii, the gentlewoman from Hawaii, Mazie Hirono.

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ

Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.