[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 39 (Tuesday, March 31, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H1834-H1835]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        A VISION FOR THE FUTURE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Neumann) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight for a very special reason. A 
lot of times we talk about having a vision for the future of this 
country, and we talk about a social vision for the future of this 
country and we get all confused about Washington's role in that social 
vision. This morning I was reading the Washington Times, and there is 
an article that I would just like to call everyone's attention to, 
because it says a lot about this vision.
  We talk a lot, first, about education and how we can make education 
number one in the world. We talk here in Washington about how if we get 
out of the way and get control of education back into the hands of the 
parents and the community, and we get our parents back actively 
involved in making the decision on where their kids could go to school, 
and what should be taught in the schools. If we can get the parents 
involved actively in these kids lives, then education will once again 
be number one in the world, and that is the best thing we could do here 
in Washington.
  This article this morning that I was reading talks about a lot of the 
other implications of getting the parents back involved in the lives of 
the kids. This article was a national study of 12,000 teens, and they 
found the influences of family, school and personal character, and they 
found that these influences can either protect teens from all kinds of 
problems or result in teens having more problems.
  Listen to some of these results, because these are the issues we talk 
about here in Washington, and we sometimes get hung up out here in 
Washington about how Washington can fix these problems.
  How do we stop teenagers from cigarette use? Listen to what they 
found in this survey of 12,000 students. Cigarette use among teens: How 
do you slow it down? Number one, parent, family, connectedness. Parents 
and family doing things together.
  Number two, parent at home before and after school, at dinner time, 
and at bedtime.
  Number three, parents and teens do activities together regularly.
  Notice what is missing from this list? There is no new Washington 
program to solve the problem, but rather parents involved with their 
teenagers.
  Let's go on to another one. Alcohol use among teens. You see this 
idea of getting parents back involved in education of their kids is 
going to have a lot of side effects. Let's talk about alcohol use among 
teenagers.
  Number one among these 12,000 students surveyed, number one to slow 
alcohol use among teenagers, parent-family connectedness.
  Number two, parent at home before and after school, at dinner time, 
and at bedtime. And listen to this one: Teen religious identity. You 
want to slow down alcohol use amongst teenagers? Parents need to be 
involved with their kids once again.
  Marijuana use, how do you stop marijuana use amongst teenagers? 
Again, no new Washington program, no new Washington spending, number 
one to stop marijuana use amongst kids, remember, this was 12,000 
students surveyed: Parent-family connectedness. Parents doing things 
with their kids.
  Number two, parents at home before and after school, at dinner time 
and bedtime. Notice the consistency here. When the parents are around 
for their kids, the abuse of whether it is alcohol or cigarettes or 
marijuana goes down dramatically.

[[Page H1835]]

  How do you solve teen pregnancy in the United States of America? You 
are here in Washington. You would think the solution to teen pregnancy 
is handing out condoms in school. That is not how you solve it.
  Listen to what 12,000 students told in answer to this survey: The 
best way, teens need to know that parents disapprove of teen use of 
birth control. The number one thing that resulted in fewer teenage 
pregnancies was when the teens know that parents disapprove of birth 
control activities.
  What do we do here in Washington? We encourage additional birth 
control, and it is exactly the opposite outcome of what we should be 
doing.
  Number two, parents and teens do activities together regularly. This 
is how you slow teen pregnancy in America. Number one and two are 
exactly the opposite of what we are recommending here in Washington.
  Number three, teen use birth control properly at first and last act. 
Again, that is three, that is down the list with these students as 
opposed to parents being actively involved with their kids.
  I pointed this out because there is a lot of discussion in this city 
about how Washington can solve these problems, and the reality is when 
you actually talk to the students, the right answer is parents being 
actively involved with their kids is the best thing that can happen.

  Now, what could Washington do to help this situation? We have a tax 
rate that says $37 out of every $100 that a typical American family 
earns gets paid into taxes to the government in one shape or form or 
another, either State, Federal, local or property taxes.
  So if we really want to help solve the problems of cigarette use in 
teens, alcohol use in teens, marijuana use in teens, if we want to slow 
the pregnancy rate amongst teenage girls, if we really want to help 
with these things, why don't we talk about reducing this tax burden on 
families so that one of the parents or both of the parents can be home 
more often and more actively involved with their kids?

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