[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 83 (Monday, June 16, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H3800-H3803]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             SPECIAL ORDERS

                                 ______
                                 

             POLITICS AS USUAL BAD POLICY FOR FLOOD VICTIMS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Scarborough] is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Mr. Speaker, this past weekend and over the past 3 
or 4 weeks we have been hearing a lot on television about flood relief 
and the politization of that process, and we have been hearing about 
how flood victims got caught in the middle of a political gambit and 
they have actually been upset and injured by politics as usual in 
Washington, DC.
  Mr. Speaker, I wanted to come to the floor today because I have been 
looking through some newspapers across the country to see what they 
were doing outside the beltway and I wanted to check into some of the 
charges that actually what happened on this flood relief bill actually 
did affect flood victims, because we get in Washington and one hears 
different things.
  In fact, I heard the Vice President last week go before a press 
conference and say the following, and this is from the Philadelphia 
Inquirer dated last week: Vice President Gore accused the Republicans 
of issuing an ultimatum. Quote: ``They are saying to the American 
people, we want to make it clear that we will hurt you unless these 
provisions are accepted.''
  The charge is almost frantic, that actually there were people in this 
Chamber that wanted to hurt Americans if they did not go along with 
their own political agenda. It reminded me of some of the things that I 
heard in the past when the President and Vice President would come out 
to the press conference when we were trying to balance the budget and 
try to hide behind Medicare and try to scare senior citizens and talk 
about how we wanted to slash Medicare, when in fact we were trying to 
save Medicare and were putting out a proposal very similar to what the 
President was putting out.
  There is this tactic that they always seem to use. Every time you 
start to nail them down and try to force them to be physically 
responsible, they would say, oh, you are trying to hurt old people, you 
are trying to hurt senior citizens, you are trying to hurt young 
children, you are trying to hurt flood victims. So it was sort of these 
scare tactics to try to stop us from doing what needed to be done.
  During the flood relief bill, what some Members wanted to do was 
actually put in a provision that would prevent the Federal Government 
from ever shutting down again. But when this was attempted, the 
President, the Vice President, and many Members in this Chamber got out 
there saying, oh, you are hurting the flood victims, you are hurting 
the flood victims. I have to tell my colleagues as an American sitting 
out there on the couch watching TV, one would look at it and say, gee, 
how could anybody want to hurt the flood victims like that.
  Then, as is the case usually in Washington, DC, you peel away a layer 
of rhetoric, you peel away another layer of demagoguery and one gets 
down to the facts, and the facts look quite different from what 
politicians inside Washington, DC, are telling us.
  This is what the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote on Thursday, June 12. 
They quoted a political scientist from Carleton College in Minnesota, 
one of the affected areas, and his name is Steven Scheer and he is a 
political scientist. He said the following: ``Federal money is already 
flowing into the flood-damaged areas, so this is not going to affect 
things for a while,'' said this Minnesota political scientist. Yet, the 
Democrats indicate that people are drowning and starving as a result of 
this. It is not true.
  Let me say that again. It is not true. A political scientist who 
lives in Minnesota who studies politics and, more important, 
understands the pain and the suffering and the misery that the men and 
the women of the Midwest have been putting up with for so long says 
firsthand, ``the Federal money is already here.''
  If anybody said what happened in Washington over the past week or two 
did anything to directly hurt people in the Midwest, then according to 
this political scientist quoted by the Philadelphia Inquirer, it is not 
true. Federal money is already flowing, so this is not going to affect 
things for a while. Yet the Democrats indicate that people are drowning 
and starving as a result of this. It is not true.
  So one sits there and one asks oneself, if it is not true, according 
to this political scientist in Minnesota and others who understand the 
process, why would the Vice President of the United States come out and 
say that it was true that somehow what happened in Washington last week 
was going to hurt people in the Midwest, or why would the President 
make the same inferences, why would people on this floor storm up to 
the microphone day after day after day after day and say something that 
clearly did not reflect reality?
  Well, I guess unfortunately for too many in this Chamber it is 
politics as usual. If one cannot win by using the facts, then try to 
win by kind of shifting the facts around. Try to scare people. If one 
does not want people to sit down and know the real story, then kind of 
shuffle the deck a little bit and deal from the bottom of the deck once 
in a while and maybe one can confuse people enough. I mean maybe that 
is what they think. It is very unfortunate. But the reality is that 
flood money was sent to the Midwest and in fact has been fully funded 
for some time and will be fully funded for some time. But again, 
Democrats used this as a political attack last week for purely 
political purposes, and it is unfortunate.
  So when the Vice President says ``We want to make it clear that we 
will hurt you unless these provisions are accepted,'' it does not match 
up with reality. I can say as a Member from the State of Florida, which 
seems, unfortunately, seems to have a hurricane about two or three 
times a year, in my district especially--2 years ago we had two 
hurricanes in 1 month's time period--I understand firsthand about 
devastation. I understand about how in one day's time, a family's 
existence, a family's home, their property, their life, can be blown 
away with the wind, blown away by a flood.

  So the last thing that I am going to want to do, the last thing that 
anybody here is going to want to do is to do anything to hurt flood 
victims. Again, we did not do that, but we have people coming up here 
and demagoguing on the issue to try to scare them. I think it is really 
unfortunate.
  Again, that is what happened last year when we were talking about 
Medicare, when we were trying to save Medicare for senior citizens and 
keep it solvent. We had so many people coming down here and saying, oh, 
they are trying to cut Medicare, trying to do this, trying to do that, 
again, all for political points.
  I can tell my colleagues, as somebody who is relatively new to this 
Chamber, it gets awfully frustrating that we find that too many times 
debate in this great Chamber, which is really the center of freedom 
around the world, is resolved to name-calling and

[[Page H3801]]

demagoguing and fingerpointing, when it would be so much better for the 
American people if we just debated on the facts.
  Now, if we wanted to debate on the facts and if we wanted to find a 
situation that would hurt flood victims, I can give my colleagues one. 
I can tell my colleagues what will cause flood victims possibly the 
gravest risk in trying to put their lives back together as they seek 
assistance from Washington, DC. What will hurt flood victims in the 
Midwest the most, what will hurt victims of hurricanes in my part of 
the world, what will hurt earthquake victims on the west coast the most 
would be if this Federal Government ever shut down again and funding 
from Federal agencies were totally cut off. Because as I said before, 
those flood victims in the Midwest right now are fully funded for the 
next month or so, even without this emergency supplemental that we 
passed this last week. But if for some reason the White House and 
Congress got into a debate, got into a budget battle like we did a few 
years ago and the President, once again, vetoed every bill that 
Congress sent down over and over and over again, then the President's 
veto would have the effect of shutting down the Federal Government.

                              {time}  1215

  What do we do? I think we learned our lesson from last time. We 
wanted to purchase for the American people an insurance policy to make 
sure that the Federal Government never shuts down again, and to make 
sure that the flood victims in the Midwest and the victims of 
hurricanes in my region and earthquake victims in California do not get 
cut off from the Federal assistance that they say they need. So we put 
in a provision that is an insurance policy against the Federal 
Government ever shutting down.
  Mr. Speaker, again, in Washington, DC, things are not ever as they 
seem. I have to tell the Members, for the President of the United 
States to say time and time again, for the Vice President, for many 
Members in this Chamber to say, let us never shut down the Federal 
Government again, I would think that anybody giving them an insurance 
policy that would stop the Federal Government from ever shutting down 
again would be a pretty good thing.
  If we wanted to go a step further to make sure that the funding was 
at 100 percent, that they get every single cent that they would have 
gotten if we kept funding it at last year's level, we would make sure 
that this insurance policy paid these people at 100 percent. That is 
what we tried to do. I say, we tried to do. Actually, I did not vote 
for the CR bill that got down there, but we will get to the reason why 
in a second.
  But the Republican majority put a bill together that would have in it 
an insurance policy to keep the Federal Government open and going at 
100 percent funding so the flood victims would not be hurt. Yet, the 
President vetoed that. The Vice President came out, and boy, he was 
mad. He said, how could they dare hurt the American people, and all we 
were trying to do was actually trying to help by keeping the Federal 
Government funded at 100 percent, to make sure that the Federal 
Government would never shut down.
  Mr. Speaker, I cannot tell the Members over the past 2 or 3 years how 
many times I have seen people come to that podium and say, Mr. Speaker, 
we must never shut down the Federal Government again. We would almost 
think if they had sackcloths they would tear them off and they would 
throw ashes all over their faces. These people were worked up. A couple 
of times I thought they were going to dab their eyes with the ties that 
they had, with all their little children on there, to show how much 
they love children.
  Of course, those of us that happen to have children and love children 
but do not wear those ties, I guess, do not love children as much. But 
they would come down here and cry and whine, saying, how could we ever 
shut down the Federal Government again? You are going to hurt too many 
Americans. The children will be hurt. The grandparents will be hurt. 
Locusts will descend from the heavens. It will be the end of Western 
civilization as we know it or, as R.E.M. says, it is the end of the 
world as we know it.
  So we put in this bill a continuing resolution to make sure that the 
Federal Government is fully funded. Guess what the President does? He 
vetoes it. So we are sitting there trying to figure out, why would the 
President veto a bill that we sent to him when he has been saying for 3 
years that is what he wanted?
  Me not being a really bright guy, I get most of my news from 
newspapers. So I get this editorial. I read this editorial from the 
Wall Street Journal. All of a sudden, it starts to make a little bit of 
sense to me. Now I understand why the President vetoed this insurance 
policy against shutting down the Federal Government.
  The Wall Street Journal had it in their editorial on Tuesday last 
week, June 10. This is what the editorial says. They start out with a 
quote from President Clinton. He says this:
  `` `Shutting down the Government again would be unbelievably 
irresponsible.' So said President Clinton on January 20, 1996, when he 
was pinning blame for shutting down parts of the Federal Government on 
the Republican Congress. Yesterday he vetoed a GOP `disaster relief' 
spending bill that contained a provision to prevent precisely that sort 
of shutdown.
  ``What gives?,'' asks the Wall Street Journal. ``Won't a shutdown 
`cause disruption in the lives of millions of Americans,' as he said on 
November 14, 1995? What we have here is a moment of political 
revelation about the Clinton method: He wants to be able to threaten a 
shutdown, because he knows it'll help him preserve the still-outsized 
government we have. And as always, he wants an issue, in this case 
`disaster relief,' with which to demagogue his opponents.''
  This is the part I was talking about, about the flood relief bill 
getting shut down, vetoed this fall:
  If any of those 13 spending bills that Congress passes are not signed 
by the start of the new fiscal year in October, the agencies they fund 
can't legally open. Democratic Congresses missed this deadline all the 
time, instead passing continuing resolutions until the final bills were 
signed around Christmas. This is what the GOP Congress wants to do for 
fiscal year 1998, proposing to fund the Government at 100 percent of 
the 1997 levels until they can work out a compromise with the 
President.
  Again, this is that insurance policy that I was talking about. 
Democratic Congresses, when they ran the Government for 40 years, did 
these sorts of things all the time. You sign what is called a 
continuing resolution that funds the Government at 100 percent, to make 
sure it keeps going. But this is what the President used to try to veto 
the bill.
  ``This would keep the Government running, denying Mr. Clinton the 
chance to dump blame on the GOP. The President's political leverage 
would thus be reduced and he'd have to fight over each spending bill on 
the merits. Not that he is helpless: Unlike GOP Presidents, Mr. Clinton 
can now wield a line item veto, if he has the nerve. But this is trench 
warfare, where Congress can fight on more equal terms than the evening 
news.
  ``Mr. Clinton can't afford to admit to any of this political 
calculation, of course. That's why he's trying to change the subject 
entirely and make this a debate about `disaster relief,' which no one 
opposes. If Mr. Clinton really wants disaster relief, he can sign the 
bill.''
  Again, what you do, I guess, in Washington, when they have got you, 
when the President says for 3 years, give me a continuing resolution, 
give me an insurance policy to make sure the Federal Government never 
shuts down, and we give it to him, he changes the subject. He says, how 
can you hurt these poor flood victims?
  Of course, we were not hurting the poor flood victims. As the 
Philadelphia Inquirer again quoted the political scientist from 
Minnesota, Federal money is already flowing into the region, yet the 
Democrats are indicating people are drowning and starving as a result 
of this, but it is not true. The flood victims have been taken care of. 
They will continue to be taken care of.
  So unfortunately, all of these statements that have been made, 
according to this political scientist, just are not true. It is a 
political battle, it is a political battle that a lot of Americans

[[Page H3802]]

have not been following, but it is a political battle that is 
important, because as we go throughout the fall trying to balance the 
budget for the first time in a generation, trying to give tax relief 
back to working class Americans, and trying to save the next generation 
from the crushing debt that this generation is passing on to them, we 
have got to be able to negotiate with the President in good faith and 
make sure, and make sure, that he will do the type of things that 
Americans sent us to Washington to do: to balance the budget, to cut 
taxes, to send money, power, and influence back to the American people, 
and yes, to save the American dream for the 21st century.

  My son is visiting me this week up in Washington, DC. In fact, he is 
in the gallery right now. When I see him and his friends running around 
and playing, like any parent, you start saying, what is their life 
going to be like 10, 15, 20 years from now? What type of country are 
they going to live in?
  I want to make sure they live in an America where they can pursue the 
American dream, just like my parents made sure I was able to pursue the 
American dream, instead of having a country where they are paying 89 
percent in taxes to the Federal Government because of the huge Federal 
debt that Congress and Presidents have thrown on the American people 
over the past 40 years.
  We have to do something to make a difference, so that is why this 
insurance policy against shutting down the Federal Government was so 
important, and why it was so regrettable, first of all, that the 
President vetoed the bill, because he knew what was doing; and 
secondly, it was doubly regrettable that he would actually, and I want 
to be careful here, it is regrettable that he would use flood victims 
in an attempt to change the subject.
  Because the President knows, just like the political science 
professor in Minnesota knows, just like the Philadelphia Inquirer 
knows, just like the Wall Street Journal knows, just like everybody 
that has studied this issue knows, flood relief was pouring into the 
Midwest. This political battle in Washington, DC was not affecting 
them. In the end, the only real damage that was done was done on a 
public relations front to the Republican party.
  I am sure that we will all be big enough to dust ourselves off and 
get past that. That is really not my concern. It is not any member of 
the Republican party's concern, or at least it should not be. Our 
concern is making sure those people in the Midwest are taken care of, 
and they are. We wanted to make sure that the Federal Government was 
not going to be shut down this fall, and that Federal funding would 
truly not be cut off.
  Reviewing, Mr. Speaker, the President and Vice President say that 
this budget debate hurt people in the Midwest. It did not. It did not. 
The funding was already up there. As the Philadelphia Inquirer says, it 
was used for political purposes.
  Secondly, the President and the Democrats have been coming up here 
for years and have said that they want to make sure that the Federal 
Government never shuts down again. I guess they really do not care, in 
the end, do they? They had an opportunity. We gave them an insurance 
policy to make sure the Federal Government never shut down again, and 
they were all against it. So they can never say that again, right?
  I do not know. In Washington, DC, I think anything is possible. Maybe 
they will have the audacity to come up here in the next couple of 
weeks, months, years, and talk about how they want to make sure the 
Federal Government never shuts down again, but they had an opportunity 
last week to take care of that, and they decided that they would rather 
play political games than pass an insurance policy to make sure the 
Federal Government never shuts down again.
  The third thing I want to talk about and conclude on, Mr. Speaker, 
the third point is, there is a lot of disingenuousness that was going 
on in the Chamber last week when I heard so many Democrats come up and 
say, we want a clean bill. Mr. Speaker, send us a clean bill. This is 
about disaster relief. This is about flood victims. Send us a clean 
bill, they said.
  Did they want a clean bill? No, not really. Not really. Do Members 
want to know what a clean bill would have been? It would have been 
about a $750 million bill to take care of flood relief in the Midwest. 
Do Members know how much that $750 million bill ended up being? It was 
$8.4 billion. There was enough pork in that bill to feed everybody in 
Washington, DC for the next 6 months.
  There is a parking garage in Cleveland, OH, that somehow found its 
way into this emergency flood relief bill. In fact, when we tried to 
take it out Democrats on that side of the aisle said it was a deal 
killer. They needed that garage. Was it an emergency? No, it was not an 
emergency. Did it have anything to do with the flood? No, it did not 
have anything to do with the flood. Was keeping it in making it a clean 
flood bill? No, it certainly was not. That is pork, plain and simple. 
It had nothing to do with disaster relief.
  There are so many other issues. There was another provision that I 
read about in the New York Times where the New York Times wrote about 
how there was a movie theater that needed some repairs, needed some 
renovations, so it got shoved into this emergency flood bill.
  The New York Times went and talked to the manager of the theater, and 
said, is your theater in really dire need of repair? He said, well, no, 
not really. A couple of pipes have leaked, but other than that it is 
doing OK. It had nothing to do with the flood, was not even in the 
region, and yet another politician in Washington, DC saw that as a 
reason to shove some more pork into supposedly this emergency relief 
bill that the Democrats said they wanted to be clean.

                              {time}  1230

  And of course, there is also funding for apple orchardists; and I 
have had trouble tying that one to the flood. I guess the closest I 
could get was that maybe there were some apple orchard farmers in 
Washington State that might have seen the flood on TV, and maybe it 
traumatized them so much they could not go out and work in their 
orchards. I do not know. I could not figure it out.
  But once again, this funding had nothing to do with the flood relief. 
And yet it got shoved into that bill, and yet we had Democrats that 
actually had the audacity to come on this floor last week complaining 
about how they wanted a clean bill. Well, let me tell my colleagues, 
unfortunately, as I am finding in Washington, DC, there are not a whole 
heck of a lot of bills that end up being clean. There are not a whole 
heck of a lot of businesses where pork is not being shoved in left and 
right.
  For some reason, that is the way this place works. I do not like it, 
but it seems like that is the reality. But it is a reality that the 
Democrats mastered for 40 years while they were in the majority, while 
the deficit and the debt went up to $5 trillion. They are the ones that 
were shoving in parking garages into this flood bill and then coming 
back and talking in self-righteous indignation about how they wanted a 
clean flood bill and because the flood bill was not clean, they were 
going to veto it.
  And you know, by the end of it, I have got to admit, I was a little 
bit disillusioned. Like I said, I came here in 1994 and have been here 
for about 2 or 3 years. I just never knew it worked like this, that we 
could have people come on this floor and purposely make statements that 
they knew were false saying that somebody was trying to hurt flood 
victims by cutting off relief; and they knew that was false but they 
said it anyway to gain political points. I did not know that we could 
have the President of the United States and the Vice President and 
Democrats and some Republicans come on the floor and bang a podium as 
hard as they did saying, we must never shut down the Federal Government 
again; and then when we give them an insurance policy to make sure that 
the Federal Government never shuts down again, they veto it. I just 
never knew that people did that, that they could get away with that.
  I guess the third thing I did not know was that we can have the same 
people who were saying do not put pork into this bill, give us a cheap 
emergency relief bill; those same people, while they were saying that, 
were the very ones

[[Page H3803]]

that were shoving pork into the bill. Of course, both sides do that, we 
find out now. But only one side is the one that is preaching about how 
they are holier than thou and about how they are self-righteous. And it 
is just upsetting, it is disappointing. Because I think what it comes 
down to is there are a lot of people in this Chamber and down in the 
White House who think that the American people are stupid. That does 
not sound nice. It really does not sound nice. But I think they really 
believe the pollsters, and I think they believe the pundits that they 
can somehow fool all the people all the time. It just is not the case.
  I remember last year when we went through the Medicare crisis that we 
went through, the President of the United States had the Medicare 
trustees put a report together, and these Medicare trustees came back 
saying that, unless Medicare was reformed quickly, we would go bankrupt 
in 3 or 4 years. Well, that is serious.
  I think of my grandparents. I think of my mother and father, my 
mother in a week, I should not say in the House, but my mother in a 
week will turn 65 years old. This deeply affects all of us. And I think 
I am going to have to apologize to my mother for that for revealing her 
age. But it deeply affects all Americans. It deeply affects middle-
class Americans who are struggling to put up with the bills and the 
debts and the crises that they have to deal with day in and day out 
without having to worry about Medicare going bankrupt and having to 
take care of their parents, which they want to do but economically 
cannot do it.
  So when the President's Medicare task force comes out and says 
Medicare is going bankrupt, something has to be done, then doggone it, 
something has to be done. And so, we walked right into that. We, as the 
Republican Party, tried to do something about saving Medicare. And we 
know, most of the newspapers, most of the magazines said that what we 
did was laudable, that what we did was correct, that we could extend 
the life of Medicare for another 10 years.
  And so, we passed the bill and then the President vetoed the bill, 
shut down the Government by vetoing every appropriation bill we sent 
his way and said that we were slashing Medicare, that we were cutting 
Medicare, that we were hurting Medicare, that we were hurting senior 
citizens. Well, I guess, is it the chickens that come home to roost? I 
guess the chickens came home to roost last week, because a nearly 
identical bill came before Congress this year, and the same President 
and the same Democrats that last year were talking about how we were 
slashing Medicare voted almost unanimously to pass the bill. And they 
did so because they had to because now, instead of Medicare going 
bankrupt in 3 or 4 years, we find out that Medicare is going bankrupt 
in 2 or 3 years because, as usual, we choose politics over good 
practice and we choose demagoguery over common sense when it is time to 
gain political points in Washington, DC.
  It is sad. It is regrettable. It is unfortunate. But it is the way 
that this White House does business, and it is the way they have done 
business. And I think things not only need to change, I think things 
will change, because I do not believe that Americans are stupid. I do 
not believe that Americans think the worst of other people. I think 
Americans are a generous people. I think we are a proud people. And I 
think we are gifted. I think we can recognize what is right and what is 
wrong.
  If we have to save future generations from a staggering $5 trillion 
debt, we are going to do that. If we have to cut taxes for working-
class Americans because they are spending half of their year paying off 
the Federal Government, I think we will do that. If we have to save 
Medicare, if we have to save Social Security, I think in the end we 
will do that.
  We have done great things, great things over the past 20 years. 
Throughout the 1980's, we had the longest expansion of the economy ever 
in this history during peacetime, and we won the cold war. In the 
1990's, we have had a strong, strong economic expansion. Our economy is 
growing and we are doing some great things, but we have to continue and 
we have to fight. I think we have to look for the best in people. I 
think we have to give American people credit, that we just cannot trot 
out and say, oh, my opponents hate children, my opponents hate senior 
citizens, my opponents hate flood victims; because I think we are 
underestimating the brilliance of the American people.
  I think what has happened in the past couple weeks is regrettable, 
and I hope other Members will come to the floor and will set the record 
straight and will not run away from criticism like scalded dogs but 
instead will come to the floor and say three very simple things. The 
first thing is say, the liberals say we are trying to hurt flood 
victims. We are not trying to hurt flood victims. The money is still 
going up there, and we have proof and show the proof.

  The second thing they need to come out and say is, the Democrats and 
the liberals attack the conservatives, saying that they were not going 
to give the President a clean flood bill. What we need to say is, look 
at all the garbage that is shoved in that bill. If it is not a clean 
bill, the parking garage that was put in there and subsidies for apple 
orchardists that was put in and all the other things that were put in 
there did not make it any cleaner. We need to work together to make 
sure this type of bill never passes again.
  And the third thing we need to say is, OK, Mr. President, you have 
been saying for 3 years you do not want to shut down the Federal 
Government. OK, Mr. Vice President, you have been saying for 3 years 
you do not want to ever shut down the Federal Government. OK, Mr. 
Minority Leader, minority whip, you have been saying for 3 years you 
never want to shut down the Federal Government again. OK, fine, let us 
give the American people the insurance policy to make sure that the 
Federal Government never shuts down again, that flood relief is never 
cut off, that housing assistance to the poor is never cut off again, 
that all these other things that the Federal Government has been doing 
never gets cut off again by passing the insurance policy to keep the 
Federal Government running that this Congress passed a few weeks ago 
and that the President vetoed.
  I do not think we can afford those types of vetoes. We cannot afford 
the zigzagging. We cannot afford the mixed messages that we have been 
having for too long. And in conclusion, we cannot afford to have a 
silent majority in this House who will not stand up and speak out and 
tell the American people the truth.
  The American people are grown up. They are intelligent. They are 
brilliant. They have created the greatest governmental experiment, the 
greatest country in the history of civilization. They can take the 
truth. It is time for this silent majority to once again reassert 
itself, become a vocal majority, go out and tell the American people 
the truth, and prepare this country for the 21st century so my children 
and their children and the American people's future generations can 
prepare for the 21st century and chase the American dream into the next 
century like I was able to do.

                          ____________________