[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 114 (Tuesday, September 13, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H7838-H7843]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   METHAMPHETAMINE CRISIS IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) is 
recognized for

[[Page H7839]]

60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, I was privileged to hear British Prime 
Minister Tony Blair speak in this Chamber some time ago, and one 
comment he made particularly caught my attention, and this is what he 
said. He said, ``As Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a 
time invincible but, in fact, it is transitory.''
  I believe he was referring to the fact that nothing lasts forever, 
particularly in regards to civilizations; nations eventually decline 
and they fall. History teaches that most of the world's great powers 
are not overcome by external force, but rather disintegrate internally. 
Let us examine three such cases.
  First of all, you might hearken back to Rome 2,000 years ago. It 
ruled the entire civilized world. At that time it appeared to be 
invincible, and eventually it fell from preeminence; and the reasons 
that historians give for Rome's fall, and I am abbreviating somewhat, 
was a general decline in morality, increasing corruption and 
instability in leadership, and increasing public addiction to ever more 
violent public spectacles. And all of us, I think, can remember some of 
the stories about the Roman mob and their insatiable desire to be 
entertained, an increase in crime and prostitution, a populace that 
became more self-absorbed, apathetic and unwilling to sacrifice for the 
common good.
  The second case would be that of Great Britain itself, which maybe 
Tony Blair was referring to.

                              {time}  2000

  Certainly, Great Britain has not gone into tremendous decline, but it 
was once a global power and was certainly the strongest, most 
predominant nation in the world for a period of 100, 150 years, and of 
course, that has changed. That empire slowly crumbled during the mid-
1800s, and the reasons given for that decline were, A, that they lost 
national resolve to maintain their territory. It was far flung; and, of 
course, it was very difficult to maintain all of those colonies. The 
values that led to ascendency were eventually eroded, and spiritual 
underpinnings certainly shifted in the country.
  A third example would be that of Russia; and, of course, Russia, up 
until just 20, 25 years ago, was one of the world's two great 
superpowers. In a matter of months, Russia disintegrated before our 
very eyes. It was startling how quickly it happened.
  Alexander Solzehenitsyn reflected on this fall when he observed, and 
this is what he said, Over a half century ago, while I was still a 
child, I recall a number of older people offering the following 
explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia, and he 
quoted them. He said, Men have forgotten God; that is why all of this 
has happened.
  Marx and Lenin over time had dismantled Russia's religious heritage. 
Its value system and Russia's foundation, even though it did well for a 
period of 60, 70 years, was fundamentally flawed. Eventually, Russia 
collapsed like a house of cards with nothing to sustain it.
  There was some common themes on these historical collapses. Number 
one, the people became less willing to sacrifice for others and for 
their country; citizens became more self-absorbed; greater desire for 
the State to provide for them; weakening of commonly-held values; and, 
generally, a decline in spiritual commitment.
  What does all this have to do with the United States and our present 
situation? We have the most powerful military, the strongest economy, 
the most stable government of any nation in the world at the present 
time. It is very easy to think that we are invincible, but I would like 
to remind those who are watching that, as Tony Blair stated, as Britain 
knows, all predominant power for a time seems invincible, but, in fact, 
it is transitory.
  The reason I am speaking tonight, Mr. Speaker, is that my experience 
over a considerable time of working with young people, 36 years in the 
coaching profession, I witnessed some things that were somewhat 
disturbing and somewhat concerning. The young men that I worked with 
were more talented each year; and yet they showed more signs of stress, 
more personal struggles, less moral clarity. They were more troubled as 
time went on, and I think some of this struggle can be reflected on the 
chart that we see here.
  What this indicates is the juvenile court caseload from roughly 1960 
up until about 2000, and we see the trend line is ever upward, and the 
caseload went up by 400 percent. Obviously, something was going on with 
our young people during that period of time.
  Some of the things that I witnessed that I think were contributing to 
this issue was the fact that, number one, there were changes in the 
family. The family is the basic social unit in our culture. In 1960, 
the out-of-wedlock birth rate was 5 percent. Today, it hovers at around 
33 percent, an increase of 600 percent over those years of roughly 45 
years.
  In 1960, the great majority of children lived with both of their 
parents. Today, nearly one-half of our young people grow up without 
both biological parents. Roughly one-half of our young people have 
endured some type of significant trauma in their lives early on, and 
sometimes this leaves some scars that are irreparable.
  Only 7 percent of today's families are traditional families, meaning 
that we have both a father and a mother and one parent or the other, 
usually the mother but sometimes the father, is at home full-time. In 
our culture today, ofttimes after 3 p.m. there is nobody home. The 
traditional family is no longer traditional anymore.
  Parents today spend 40 percent less time with their children than 
they did a generation ago. The divorce rate has increased roughly 300 
percent since 1960, and 24 million children live without their 
biological father. If your father bails out on you, sometimes even 
before he has even seen you or even knows you, it leaves some scars, 
and these wounds are difficult to heal; you are always trying to fill 
that psyche with all the wrong things. Fatherless children are more 
likely to be abused, more likely to have mental and emotional problems. 
They are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, commit suicide, commit 
a crime and be promiscuous.
  A greeting card company a few years ago had an experiment. It was 
Mother's Day, and they went to a prison. They said, we will offer a 
free Mother's Day card for any prisoner who would like to have one and 
would like to write to his mother. They had just about 100 percent 
takers. Almost every prisoner got a card and sent it to his mother, and 
so they were somewhat encouraged by that success. They decided they 
would try the same thing on Father's Day. The interesting thing was, as 
they offered those cards, they had not one taker in that whole prison. 
That indicates the power of fatherlessness and the fact that it is so 
prevalent and the damage that it does to so many of our young people.
  The family certainly in our culture still has some strength, but it 
is not as stable overall as it was 30, 40 years ago. We have taken 
these young people with a launching pad, the family has maybe not 
broken but it is cracked to some degree, and we thrust them into an 
environment that has changed dramatically over the years.
  In 1960, drug abuse was almost unheard of. I remember when I first 
started coaching I think I had heard of marijuana. I had never known of 
anyone that had used it. Methamphetamine was something I had never 
heard of. Cocaine I had never heard of. Heroin was something that was 
maybe used in Eastern countries, but, again, I had never seen it. 
Things have changed certainly in our culture.
  Alcohol abuse involving underage drinkers has certainly exploded, and 
there is a developmental aspect to underage drinking that many people 
in our culture are just beginning to discover. I think I can show you 
rather graphically here an example of how this works.
  This is a brain scan of two 15-year olds. The one on the left is 
someone who does not use alcohol. The brain scan on the right is a 15-
year old binge drinker, someone who drinks regularly at a very young 
age. They were both sober at the time they were given a math problem to 
solve; and, as they worked on the problem, a brain scan was taken. You 
can see here the brain cells that are firing in this brain. You know 
there is certainly a good deal of cognitive activity that is occurring;

[[Page H7840]]

and, on the other hand, in the brain of the binge drinker we see a 
rather graphic difference.
  Many of our young people are starting to use alcohol at age 11, 12, 
13, 14; and it is a whole different ball game when you start using it 
at that early age than if you start drinking when you are 21, 22, 23 
because of the developmental aspect. This is something that many people 
in our culture do not realize. Many high school dropouts, many people 
who are doing very poorly in school, very poor academic performance are 
related in many ways to underage drinking and alcohol consumption at an 
early age.
  A National Academy of Science study shows that alcohol kills roughly 
6\1/2\ times more children than all other drugs combined; 6\1/2\ times 
more is due to alcohol abuse. Alcohol and underage drinking costs the 
United States $53 billion annually. In my home State of Nebraska, that 
figure is roughly $435 million a year, according to a Pacific Institute 
study that was done in 2001.
  We have roughly 3 million teenage alcoholics in our country today; 
and, obviously, this is by far our biggest drug problem. The alarming 
thing that has happened is we have seen a tremendous increase in 
alcoholism and drinking problems on the part of young women. At one 
time, most of the drinking problem was centered in young men; and now 
we find that young women are drinking as much and, in some cases, even 
more than young men.
  We also find that young people tend to binge drink. They drink to get 
drunk. They, on the average, will consume twice as much alcohol at a 
sitting as an adult will. Of course, this leads to all kinds of 
problems. Twenty percent of our eighth graders drink regularly, and 
children who drink before age 15, and the average young person who 
starts to drink does start drinking before age 15, is four times more 
likely to become an alcoholic than someone who starts using alcohol at 
age 21. Certainly, early alcohol usage leads directly to marijuana, 
cocaine, methamphetamine, ecstasy and so on.
  The other thing that is of some concern, Mr. Speaker, is the fact 
that we inundate our young people with alcohol advertising. Our young 
people see 96 ads promoting alcohol use, ofttimes with young people in 
the advertising itself, 96 ads for every one that they see that might 
discourage underage drinking. The predominant attitude in this country 
is that underage drinking is something that is reasonably acceptable. 
We have not done a good job of advertising and trying to alleviate this 
problem.
  Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent to fight drug production in 
Afghanistan, in Colombia, around the world; and a fraction of that 
money that would be spent on underage drinking would be much more cost-
effective because we spend very, very little in that regard.
  We have got a bill here in Congress called the Stop Underage Drinking 
Act, which we think will be very helpful. It would provide $51 million 
on a national advertising campaign, much like we have used to try to 
curb tobacco use on the part of young people. We think this would be 
very helpful.
  Anyway, we have obviously got a problem with underage drinking, and 
the next issue is something I would like to visit about a little bit, 
and that is a problem that is threatening to overcome and overwhelm our 
country.
  In 1990, these two red States, Texas and California, each had 20 meth 
labs. All the rest of the States did not have that many. 
Methamphetamine was a problem primarily in Texas and California in 
1990. Then we see the change that begins to occur. By 1998, in 8 years, 
we see that about 50 percent, or a little bit more of the country, was 
now subject to a great many methamphetamine labs. Certainly, meth labs 
are not only the indicator. Because maybe 80 percent, 70 percent of 
meth that comes into our country comes from superlabs, mostly from down 
in Mexico, but the existence of these labs shows the scope and the 
influence of methamphetamine.
  More recently, in 2004, we now see that almost every State, with the 
exception of just a few States in the Northeast, had at least 20 meth 
labs or more. Some of these, for instance, Missouri, I believe, had 
something like 2,700 meth labs, Iowa had 1,300, Nebraska had 300, 
Oklahoma had several hundred, and on and on and on.
  This has become a very, very powerful, very addictive drug that is 
really affecting our whole population but particularly our young 
people.
  This series of pictures here shows rather graphically the influence 
of methamphetamine. This was a young woman who was first arrested, and 
her family gave these pictures to authorities hoping that they would be 
shown, and she was arrested every year for a period of 10 years. Here 
she may have been around 30 years of age, fairly attractive, very 
young, and you see the changes each successive year. Then it looks like 
maybe about here she may have begun to inject methamphetamine because 
you see a rather marked change in her appearance. This is the final 
picture in the 10th year, and this picture was taken in the morgue. She 
lasted 10 years, which many people do not.

                              {time}  2015

  It is very graphic, but it shows the devastating effect of 
methamphetamine and what it is doing to our population.
  So I present this, Mr. Speaker, by way of simply indicating that 
there are some things in our culture that are disturbing, some things 
that we certainly need to address as directly as we can.
  One thing we are really concerned about is that the Byrne funding, 
which helps fight methamphetamine at the local level, has been 
drastically reduced. We cut it in half this year in the House. This was 
done primarily because of budget cuts, and this is absolutely something 
that cannot be ignored. This problem must be addressed, and we are 
hoping that that funding might be restored as we go to conference with 
the Senate, because they have included many of these funds.
  We also find that the United States is a very violent Nation, 
currently the most violent Nation in the world for young people. We 
have the highest homicide rate, the highest teen suicide rate, and the 
most assaults. So rather a difficult, discouraging picture as far as 
some of our young people.
  Also, pornography has exploded. I remember Senator Jim Exon from 
Nebraska, when the Internet was first coming into its prominence, began 
to think about the fact that pornography could be a major problem on 
the Internet; and he introduced legislation in the Senate to try to 
control the effect of pornography on the Internet. I remember some 
people laughed at his efforts. Some people made fun of him at the time. 
But he obviously was ahead of his time, because at the present time 
there are over 1 million porn sites on the Internet. Not 100,000, not 
1,000, but 1 million. So nine out of 10 children ages 9 to 16 have 
viewed pornography on the Internet, and most of this viewing has been 
unintentional. They have simply run into it. This was according to a 
study done by the London School of Economics in January of 2002.
  Some of our leading corporations, such as AT&T, have been involved in 
the marketing of hard-core pornography. At one time AT&T was kind of 
the gold standard as far as our corporate clients were concerned. I am 
not sure they are still doing this, but there was a time where they 
actually were doing some marketing of this type of pornography.
  Search words on the Internet, such as Barbie, Disney, ESPN, and even 
at one time my name, if a young person was going to do a research 
article on his Congressman and looked up my name, it brought up a porn 
site. So this shows the pernicious effect and the somewhat deviant 
attitude of some people in that business, because these are all search 
words that are very innocent, and a young person would have no way of 
knowing when they type those words in that they would see something of 
a hard-core pornographic nature.
  A poll in 2004 found that 82 percent of adult Americans surveyed said 
that the Federal laws against Internet obscenity should be vigorously 
enforced. And I think most Americans would agree they are really 
concerned about what is happening. There are some safeguards; but they 
are very, very difficult sometimes to implement.
  Video games have certainly been a problem as well. Eight- to 18-year-
old young people average 40 minutes per day playing video games; and of 
course some of these video games, not all of

[[Page H7841]]

them, some are very good and some are wholesome, but they have become 
increasingly more violent. Some teach stalking and killing of victims 
similar to military training video games. In one, Grand Theft Auto San 
Andreas, a person who does a particularly good job of shooting people 
is rewarded by pornography.
  Now, fortunately, some stores voluntarily began to pull this off the 
shelves, but the rating system that is currently used by the video 
games is so flawed that a parent has almost no way of knowing when they 
purchase that game exactly what they are getting for their young 
person. And many parents, unfortunately, do not sit there and watch 
exactly what is going on in those games, because embedded in them 
sometimes is some very pernicious material.
  Some of the music, some television, many movies are very graphic; and 
certainly that content would have been impossible to present 20 or 30 
years ago in our country. It simply would not have been tolerated. So I 
am concerned because I have some grandchildren ages 6 through 12, and 
many people I think are concerned about their children.
  So, number one, the family has certainly changed. It is less stable. 
The environment is more hostile that we thrust these young people into. 
And, third, the value system in our country seems to have shifted.
  Many people are aware of Stephen Covey's book ``The 7 Habits of 
Highly Successful People.'' In the early parts of that book, he did a 
survey of the literature that had to do with success, since he was 
writing a book about success. He surveyed all the literature in the 
history of our Nation that had to do with success, and what he found 
was something that was rather interesting. He said during the first 
150-odd years of our Nation's history success was defined primarily in 
terms of character traits. A successful person was honest. A successful 
person was trustworthy. A successful person was hard working. A 
successful person was generous, and on and on and on.
  Then he said about 50 or 60 years ago a definite shift began to 
appear in the literature, and success was no longer defined in terms of 
character traits, but success began to be defined primarily in terms of 
financial acumen. If you had a lot of wealth, you were considered 
successful. If you had celebrity and people wanted to be around you and 
wanted your autograph, you were successful. If you had power, you were 
successful. So you may not have had very good character; but if you had 
those other things, you were defined as being successful.
  So there was a definite shift in terms of what we saw as being valued 
in terms of our value system. So it is no wonder that young people are 
somewhat confused as they encounter all of these things that are facing 
them.
  We have also certainly in our culture seen a breakdown of integrity 
in the business community to some degree; in athletics; even some 
people in the press have not behaved well; in the church; in politics. 
In all segments of our society there are those who have not behaved in 
ways that are very admirable. So the predominant world view today, and 
certainly that on the college campus, is something called post-
modernism.

  Now, post-modernism basically adheres to the idea that there are no 
moral absolutes. There is no absolute truth. And therefore what is true 
for you may not be true for me, or may not be true for somebody else. 
So we kind of define our own sense of right or wrong. So adultery, 
murder, even child abuse may not be absolutely wrong. There may be 
circumstances where this can be approved and understood. The only 
absolute wrong according to post-modernism is if you declare that 
something is absolutely wrong, then I guess that would be absolutely 
wrong, because there are no moral absolutes.
  So in view of the family breakdown, a decline of the culture and 
shifting of values, it is an extremely difficult time for our children. 
We are asking them to weave their way through a mine field littered 
with alcohol, drug abuse, harmful video games, some music, television 
and movies that are not very wholesome, promiscuity, gangs, violent 
behavior, and broken homes. And we are asking most of them to weave 
their way through with less parental guidance and an ever-shifting 
value system.
  So I have been rather hard, I guess, on some aspects of our culture; 
yet I do not want to leave this without talking about some of the 
things that we might begin to be proud of as well. D'Toqueville, the 
Frenchman who came here and examined our culture about a century ago, 
said this: ``America is great because America is good.'' And we have 
seen some of that with Hurricane Katrina. We have seen an outpouring. 
We saw it when the Twin Towers came down. We have seen it with the 
tsunami. So we still are a generous, caring people. There are many 
great things about America, but there are some things we certainly need 
to look at.
  So D'Toqueville wrote this 200 years ago, and I guess the question 
is, are his observations still true today. I think to some degree they 
are, but there are still some disturbing signs of change, and those are 
the things I have tried to enumerate.
  So the question is, what can be done? We do have some difficult 
situations, particularly involving our young people; and so one thing 
that appears to me to work very well is mentoring, which is something I 
have been really interested in, my wife and I both. Basically, 
mentoring is simply providing an adult who, number one, cares in the 
life of a young person.
  I will tell you a quick story. We had a mentor in Omaha, Nebraska, 
who had a young man who was his mentee. And the young man, who was 14 
at the time, had a cerebral hemorrhage and was partially paralyzed. At 
that time, I think many mentors would have said, well, I probably need 
to find another mentee because the young man was not able to go to 
school, was not able to speak very well, and could not move around. But 
what this mentor did was he stayed with that young man. He even drove 
him daily, for a period of time, 60 miles to get rehabilitation. And, 
basically, through the efforts of that mentor, this young man today is 
going to school and will graduate from school and is doing well.
  So a mentor is someone who cares and someone who cares in a way that 
is consistent. There is a commitment there that goes beyond a warm and 
fuzzy feeling.
  The second thing that a mentor does is a mentor affirms a young 
person. As a coach, I saw that so clearly. If you told a young person 
that you were not sure he could play for you, that you were not sure he 
had a future, it would not be long before he would begin to play down 
to that expectation and often would not stay with it. On the other 
hand, if you told him you believed in him, you thought he was going to 
be a great player, that he had a future, ofttimes he would grow into 
that which he did not even know he was capable of becoming.
  I remember in 1994, we had a great quarterback named Tommy Fraser who 
went down with an injury. And the young man who was number two on the 
depth chart, was from a small school in western Kansas. He had athletic 
talent. He had not had great success on his football team in high 
school. His team had not done all that well. They had been okay. And 
all of a sudden he was going to be thrust into this situation. I 
remember we told him, Brook, we believe in you. We think you will be a 
great player. Brook grew before our very eyes and took us to an 
undefeated season.
  So affirmation is critical, and it is something that a mentor can 
provide. Because so many young people in our culture today simply do 
not have anyone who says to them on a regular basis, you know, way to 
go, I believe in you, or I know you can do this, or you can do it. So 
affirmation is critical.
  The last thing I think a mentor does, and of course there are many 
things they can do, but one thing that is important is to provide a 
vision. So many of our young people today have really not witnessed 
somebody in their immediate vicinity or in their immediate life who 
gets up and maybe goes to work every day, or someone who has graduated 
from high school, and certainly not one who has gone to college.
  I will tell you a story about a young man who lived out in western 
Nebraska about 1895, and this young guy was the son of a Civil War 
veteran. The Civil War veteran had a drinking problem, and he had four 
children. He had a very little homestead, and the future did not look 
very good. There was a traveling preacher out there that got hold

[[Page H7842]]

of this young guy and saw something in him that he liked, and he began 
to affirm him and he began to say, you know, I think you could go to 
college.
  Now, the odds of that young man going to college were probably one in 
a thousand from that circumstance at that particular time in history. 
And on top of that, he said, I think you could be a great preacher. He 
said I think you have a real future. So lo and behold, this young guy 
began to believe it and began to accept that vision, and he got on a 
train and went about 300 miles and went to college and played football 
and became a preacher, and a very distinguished preacher.
  Now, the reason that that was so interesting was that that guy, that 
person who mentored him, who began to provide that vision made a huge 
difference in that person's life, and that person was my grandfather. I 
am sure that my life is different today because of the influence of 
that itinerant preacher on my grandfather. So mentoring has a ripple 
effect. It affects one generation and then the next generation and the 
next. So there is an eternal quality about investing in the life of 
another person.

                              {time}  2030

  Mentoring does work. It reduces dropout rates, drug and alcohol 
abuse, teenage pregnancy, violence, absenteeism from school; and it 
improves graduation rates and also improves relationships between peers 
and the relationship between the mentored child and parents. So it is a 
win-win situation.
  Congress has provided $184 million over the past 5 years for 
mentoring of young people which has reached hundreds of thousands of 
young people around the country. This is a good thing, and we think 
this is something that is certainly appropriate for Congress to do. 
But, right now, we have roughly 18 million children in our country who 
badly need a mentor; and yet we have only about 2 to 2.5 million 
actually being mentored. So only one out of nine children who needs a 
mentor has one.
  We feel America is great, America is good, but we have so many 
retired people, so many people who could spare one or two hours a week 
to make a difference in the life of a young person. We really need to 
grasp hold of this idea of mentoring.
  In addition to mentoring, something that can be done certainly is 
legislation. I think that the Congress, particularly this House, in 
many cases has attempted to address some of the ills that are befalling 
our young people. Certainly some of the problems that we are seeing 
with gambling on the Internet is something that this House has 
attempted to deal with, with very limited success.
  A piece of legislation that I have been involved with with the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Baca), the Software Accuracy and Fraud 
Evaluation Rating Act, or SAFE Rating Act, is an important piece of 
legislation because it would require the Federal Trade Commission to 
study the voluntary rating system of the video game system to determine 
if its practices are unfair or deceptive.
  There is no question that video games currently are not being 
accurately rated and in many cases are very misleading. So we think 
that this is a piece of legislation that could be addressed and would 
make a difference.
  Another thing that certainly could help our culture at the present 
time is a fundamental shift in many of the court decisions regarding 
the first amendment. I do not mean to imply that the first amendment is 
not important, that the first amendment should not be upheld, but some 
of the interpretations that have revolved around the first amendment 
have led our Nation in a direction that may not be the way our Founders 
originally thought it should go. I will show a chart that depicts some 
of these court decisions.
  We can see in 1997 the Supreme Court ruled that indecent speech is 
protect by the first amendment and overturned the Communications 
Decency Act. This was a bill passed by Congress regarding indecent 
speech, and the Supreme Court basically ruled that indecent speech is 
protected by the first amendment. This was a fairly important decision.
  In 1998, the Supreme Court refused to rule decisively on the Child 
Online Protection Act, thereby allowing the legislation to remain law 
while preventing it from taking effect. This particular bill provided 
protection against obscenity on the Internet, and yet it was never 
enacted into law because of the Supreme Court ruling.
  In 2002, the Supreme Court overturned the Child Pornography 
Prevention Act, ruling that child pornography must involve minors 
engaged in sexual activity to meet the legal definition of obscenity to 
lose first amendment protection. So what this means is if there was a 
cyber simulation of child pornography, that it was legal. Of course, it 
is impossible to distinguish if something is done well using electronic 
means, whether they are using actual children or not. So this was a 
blow to the people trying to control indecency on the Internet.
  And, in 2002, a three-judge Federal court declared the Children 
Internet Protection Act requirement that all schools and libraries 
receiving Federal funds use Internet filtering material to protect 
minors from harmful materials on the Internet unconstitutional. So even 
in a public funded library children are not necessarily protected from 
obscenity.
  All of these things would lead one to believe that certainly some of 
the court rules have not been friendly toward our young people, 
particularly with regard to the issues of pornography.
  Some people say pornography is not really a problem because it is 
harmless, it does not really hurt anybody, and it does not really 
affect anything. But if Members think about it, we spend billions and 
billions of dollars on advertising. If that advertising did not change 
behavior, I am sure that money would not be spent. Advertising 
absolutely does change behavior. What you see, think and read about 
changes the way you perceive things and the way you act.
  That is true very much also with pornography. As a result, we have a 
great many women and children in our country who are suffering because 
of this and because of the fact that we have been either unwilling or 
unable to control something that we think has been very pernicious in 
our society.
  The other thing that I would like to visit about briefly tonight is 
the issue of school prayer. I am not somebody that is off the charts in 
this regard. I certainly do not believe that a teacher should be 
allowed to proselytize in the classroom. I do not believe that the 
principal should get on the intercom every morning and lead a prayer, 
but I would say that the pendulum has swung awfully far.
  In 1962, the Supreme Court ruled the following prayer 
unconstitutional, and this is what the prayer was.
  ``Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence on Thee, and we beg Thy 
blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.''
  This is fairly innocuous. It does not seem terribly threatening, and 
yet I can see where possibly this is something that the court would get 
involved with, and they did rule this unconstitutional, and that 
started the ball rolling down the hill.
  So it would appear that many of the court rulings have been contrary 
to the thinking of many of our Founding Fathers. Benjamin Franklin 
said, ``We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings that except 
the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly 
believe this. I also believe that without His concurring aid, we shall 
succeed in the political building no better than the builders of Babel; 
we shall be divided by our little, partial local interests; our 
projects will be confounded; and we ourselves shall become a reproach 
and a byword down to future ages.
  ``I therefore beg leave to move that, henceforth, prayers imploring 
the assistance of Heaven and its blessing on our deliberation be held 
in this assembly every morning before we proceed to business.''
  Because of Franklin's speech in this Chamber, of course, this Chamber 
has been built since Franklin, but in the House and in the Congress 
every morning there are prayers that are held. Yet we are really 
restricting prayer in so many other arenas.
  George Washington said, ``The propitious smiles of Heaven can never 
be expected on a Nation that disregards the internal rules of order and 
right which Heaven itself has ordained.''

[[Page H7843]]

  David Barton said, ``Franklin had warned that `forgetting God' and 
imagining that we no longer needed his `concurring aid' would result in 
internal disputes that decay the Nation's prestige and reputation, and 
a diminished national success. Washington had warned that if religious 
principles were excluded, the Nation's morality and political 
prosperity would suffer. Yet despite such clear words, in cases 
beginning in 1962, the court offered rulings which eventually divorced 
the Nation, its schools and its public affairs from more than three 
centuries of its heritage; America is now learning experientially what 
both Washington and Franklin knew to be true; we are suffering in the 
very areas that they predicted.''
  Barton's warnings may be somewhat dire, but I do believe there is 
something to what he says. We certainly have disregarded some of the 
warnings of the early framers of the Constitution, and we have strayed 
far afield from what the original intent of those who wrote the 
Constitution appeared to be.
  So despite the fact that the Constitution does not contain a 
separation of church and State clause, that phrase is not in the 
Constitution, in 1992 the Supreme Court declared an invocation and 
benediction at a graduation ceremony unconstitutional. So at a 
graduation ceremony you could not have an opening prayer or a 
benediction. Of course, as I said earlier, we begin the legislative day 
in this House with prayer every day.
  The court held that a minute of silence in a school was 
unconstitutional. This seems a little bit beyond the pale to me that 
students could not have a minute of silence. They could think about 
history, they could pray, look out the window, but this was ruled as 
unconstitutional.
  The court also ruled that a student-led prayer at a football game was 
unconstitutional. This was a prayer that the students had voted to 
have, and it was led by a student, it was outside the school building, 
and yet the court said the football players had to be there and the 
cheerleaders had to be there, and they might hear a prayer that was 
offensive to them. Therefore, you could not have a prayer. Again, that 
seems a little bit far afield.
  As many of us know, the words ``under God'' were struck from the 
Pledge of Allegiance by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and that 
was thrown out by the Supreme Court because they said the parent 
bringing the case had no legal standing. In other words, the father was 
not the legal guardian of the young woman, the young girl that he was 
providing in the case. So the court did not rule it out. They did not 
throw out the ruling by the Ninth Circuit based on its merits but 
rather because of no legal standing, and I am sure we will see that 
reintroduced in the court again in some fairly recent date.
  The Constitution is increasingly being interpreted as a ``living 
document'' and legal decisions increasingly come down based not on what 
the law states but rather based upon the personal ideology of the 
jurist. So the philosophical bent of the Supreme Court justices and 
district court justices determines very largely the course of this 
Nation in many important areas.
  So we are now faced with the confirmation of Judge Roberts, and it is 
a very serious business. And we have one other vacancy on the Supreme 
Court, the first time in a long time we have had a situation like this. 
The direction that the court goes is going to be very important.
  I know of nothing personally regarding Judge Roberts that would lead 
me to believe that he would not try to be a strict constructionist, 
that he would not try to interpret the Constitution as it is written, 
and I do not believe he would be a biased person. I am sure there would 
be those that disagree, but these are critical sometimes, Mr. Speaker, 
and these decisions will be very important.
  So the makeup of the courts and the will of Congress will greatly 
influence whether we continue to drift further from our heritage or 
draw closer to those values upon which our Nation was founded. The 
willingness of Congress to focus on the pernicious influences impacting 
our children, the willingness of the American people to demand that 
those profiteering at the expense of our culture and our young people 
be reined in, will largely shape the future of our Nation.
  Terrorism is an ever-present threat, the economy is of concern, and 
natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina are a tremendous threat to us. 
However, terrorism, economic distress and natural disasters will not 
prevail as long as our national character is sound. We are engaged in a 
cultural and spiritual struggle of huge proportions, and I can only 
hope that the principles upon which this Nation was founded remain 
preeminent.
  As Congress addresses important issues such as those that I have 
mentioned, it is critical that we not lose sight of the fact that our 
Nation's survival is directly linked to the character of our people; 
and I would urge Congress to think about these things and particularly 
to try to guard the future for our young people, because the future of 
this Nation is our young people. If we continue to let some of these 
pernicious influences that we now see impacting them so greatly 
continue, it may certainly render us one of those nations that become 
somewhat like Rome, like Great Britain, and also like we have seen with 
the Soviet Union. So it is important that we be vigilant.

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