[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 55 (Tuesday, May 9, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H2310-H2315]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SUBURBAN CAUCUS AGENDA
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. KIRK. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the House and my colleague
from Georgia for arranging for this time to talk about a new suburban
agenda for the country, one that addresses key issues before families
in America and reflects the new suburban reality of the way we live our
lives.
This Congress is well known for being home to a Rural Caucus and an
Urban Affairs Caucus. But to date we have never had a Suburban Caucus
addressing the needs of suburban families. For us at this time we
should recognize not how Americans lived in the 20th century but how
they live now in the 21st century.
In the most recent election, over half of all voters were from
suburban families, and suburban communities are under attack. They are
under attack from gangs moving to the suburbs and taking on suburban
police departments. They are under attack from Internet predators. Over
50,000 of them online at any one time attempting to contact our kids.
We see a growing wave, a disappearance of green and open space that
need to be protected. And there is a general fear held by three-
quarters of the American public that it may be more difficult for their
kids to enter the middle class than it was for them.
Five dozen Members of Congress have gathered together to put together
a suburban agenda to address these needs. And one of those Members is
representing the Atlanta suburbs, Congressman Tom Price, and a member
of Suburban Agenda Caucus, and I yield to him.
Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank the
gentleman for his leadership. I appreciate the leadership allowing us
to bring this agenda forward.
When I go home, I am often times asked, How often do you get back?
How do you get that touchstone? How do you make certain that you are
staying in touch with your district? And most Members do go home every
weekend and that is important because it is important that we keep in
touch with our constituents and hear their views and their concerns.
Like most Members, I go home every week, most of us go home every
weekend, to my district which is the Sixth District of Georgia. It is a
wonderful place to represent. It is the northern suburban Atlanta area.
It is kind of the quintessential suburban district. It is full of
active and productive families, patriotic Americans, hardworking folks.
And when I am at home, yes, my constituents are concerned about the
war on terror, and, yes, they are concerned about the crisis of illegal
immigration; but, Mr. Speaker, they are also concerned about school
safety; and they are also concerned about easing the difficulty of
obtaining health care for themselves and their family and their
parents. And they are also concerned about increasing conservation of
our Nation's resources, and they are also concerned about being able to
afford a college education for their children. So tonight I am honored
to join the gentleman from Illinois. I appreciate his leadership in
this area, for what has been coined the Suburban Agenda.
I am pleased to support this agenda and this activity. I look forward
to assisting the gentleman from Illinois and others in shepherding this
legislation through the House. I am so honored to work with him in this
endeavor. I look forward to the discussion this evening.
Mr. KIRK. I thank the gentleman.
One of the critical problems we have is from powerful social
networking sites like MySpace.com and other sites that have given
online predators powerful tools to reach children. Our leader, the
author of the Delete Online Predators Act, is a Congressman from
Pennsylvania, Mike Fitzpatrick and I want to yield to him.
Mr. FITZPATRICK of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to join my
colleagues tonight as we unveil the Suburban Caucus' agenda for
America. Tonight we bring to the House floor strong forward-looking
legislation that would help America's families in some of the fastest
growing areas of our country.
I, along with our fellow caucus members, understand the issues that
suburban families face each day because each one of us lives in the
suburbs. I grew up in a place called Levittown, Pennsylvania, which
sits just a few miles north of Philadelphia. The majority of my
district is situated only 2 hours from New York City. My district
borders the Delaware River right across from Trenton, New Jersey, and I
am proud to represent neighborhoods in Northeast Philadelphia.
These are all suburban areas, places removed from cities, but
impacted by them on a daily basis. The suburbs have held a sentimental
sway in America since the fifties. Thousands of my constituents have
migrated away from New York and Philadelphia to live in my district in
search of a change of pace, the purchase of a new home, more space to
raise a family, a new economic opportunity. However, increased
urbanization has blurred the line between city and suburb, creating new
challenges that were unheard of only a decade before.
My constituents, like millions of other suburbanites, face
transportation challenges, threats from increased crime, environmental
concerns, financial worries, and concern over the state of their
children's education. In many ways they share the same concerns their
neighboring cities have, and those concerns need to be met with
attention from Congress.
The Suburban Caucus is dedicated to addressing these issues, and I am
proud to be a member of the caucus and to take part in tonight's
discussion.
Mr. Speaker, my most important job is my role as a father of six
children. In a world that moves and changes at a dizzying pace, being a
father gets harder all the time. Technology is one of the key concerns
I have as a parent, specifically the Internet and the sites my kids
visit, register with, and use on a daily basis.
The Internet is a wonderful invention. It has opened a window to the
world right in our homes. However, with the limitless possibilities
that window offers, we must be mindful of what we view and let into our
homes. One of the most interest and worrying development of late has
been the growth in what are called ``social networking sites.'' We have
all heard of them in one way or another. Sites like MySpace,
Friendster, and Face Book have literally exploded in popularity in just
a few short years. MySpace alone has just over 76 million users and
ranks as the sixth most popular English language Web site and the
eighth most popular site in the world. Everyone can use these sites.
Companies and colleges, teachers and students, young and old all make
use of networking sites to connect with people electronically, to share
pictures, information, course work, and common interests. These sites
have torn down the geographical divide that once prevented long
distance social relationships from forming, allowing instant
communication and connections to take place and a virtual second life
to take hold.
For adults, these sites are fairly benign. For children, they open
the door to many dangers, including online bullying and exposure to
child predators that have turned the Internet into a virtual hunting
ground for children.
Mr. Speaker, the dangers our children are exposed to by these sites
are clear and compelling. A Department of Justice survey found that one
in five children have received an unwanted sexual solicitation from
online interests in the past year alone. Mr. Speaker, one in five
children.
The FBI reports that child pornography cases have increased more than
2,000 percent over the past decade. And MySpace, which is self-
regulated, has removed an estimated 200,00 objectionable profiles since
it started in 2003. Look closely at local and national news stories and
you will see a troubling increase in cases of child sexual assault
where sites like MySpace and Friendster were a key component in the
crime.
That is why just this evening I introduced the Deleting Online
Predators Act, H.R. 5319, as part of the Suburban
[[Page H2311]]
Caucus agenda. Parents have the ability to screen their children's
Internet access at home, but this protection ends when their child
leaves for school or for the library. The Deleting Online Predators Act
requires schools and libraries to monitor the Internet activities and
implement technology to protect children from accessing commercial
networking sites like MySpace.com; and chat rooms which allow children
to be preyed upon by individuals seeking to do harm to our children;
and visual depictions that are obscene or child pornography.
Additionally, the legislation would require the Federal Trade
Commission to design and publish a unique Web site to serve as a
clearinghouse and resource for parents, teachers, and children for
information on the dangers of surfing the Internet. The Web site would
include detailed information about commercial networking sites like
MySpace. The FTC would also be responsible for issuing consumer alerts
to parents, teachers, school officials, and others regarding the
potential dangers of Internet child predators and others and their
ability to contact children through MySpace.com and other social
networking sites.
In addition, the bill would require the Federal Communication
Commission to establish an advisory board to review and report
commercial social networking sites like MySpace.com and chat rooms that
have shown to allow sexual predators easy access to personal
information of and contact with our Nation's children.
Make no mistake, our children on the Internet are at risk. Predators
will look for any way to talk to children online, whether through sites
like MySpace, instant messaging, or even online games. The best defense
against these people is to educate parents and children of the dangers
that come along with the Internet and by protecting our children during
the school day. There may be no one silver bullet solution to this
problem, Mr. Speaker, but this legislation takes a strong step forward
in deleting the presence of child predators online.
It is a step that must be taken and an action that families across
the Nation expect and deserve from their United States Congress.
Mr. KIRK. I thank the gentleman who has become the leader on
protecting kids from these new powerful tools online.
Suburban families have told us consistently that they want
congressional action on education, health care, conservation and the
economy; and one of our big reforms in the area of health care is
accelerating health care information technology. I yield to my
colleague from Georgia to talk about that major piece of legislation.
Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I thank the gentleman from Illinois once again
for his leadership and for yielding on this issue.
As you mentioned, right below those top button issues for folks all
across this Nation, but especially in the suburban area, if you ask
them what is important to them, education and health care are truly
right there. They are concerned about being able to have access to
health care. They are concerned about being able to afford health care.
They are concerned about health care for their parents, and they are
concerned about the accuracy of the records that are kept regarding
health care and the portability, moving those records around.
As a physician, I practiced medicine for over 20 years; and so many
things have changed in medicine, the different medications that we use,
the different surgical procedures that we perform. The vast majority of
those were not around 20 years ago, but what is around still, not just
from 20 years ago but from 40 years ago and 60 years ago is the paper
record of one's health care. Most of us go into the doctor and the
paper chart shuffles through the office. That was not all bad in that
time, but today we can cut down on the errors in health care. We can
cut down on the cost of health care. We can improve health care access
to folks, to go from a primary care physician to a special physician by
the use of health information technology.
Our colleague, Nancy Johnson from Connecticut, is introducing, along
with the Suburban Caucus, the Health Information Technology Promotion
Act. It will result in a remarkable incentive to fully promote
electronic medical records that will cut the costs and reduce medical
errors by over 80 percent is what the statistics will tell you.
Civilian patient records in New Orleans were wiped out. One of the
things that made it so was that there was not the portability of health
care for those individuals. But the electronic records for veterans
were fully protected and available at any VA hospital.
This is just a case in point for how much advantage we could gain as
a Nation having health records available in an electronic form. Over 60
percent of Americans support this, and it is imperative that we move in
this direction for safety reasons, for access reasons, and for ease of
availability of health care for all citizens across this Nation, and
especially in our suburban areas.
So I look forward again to working with my colleague from Illinois
and all members of the Suburban Caucus and the House to promote these
positive, positive agenda items in the area of health and elsewhere.
{time} 2045
Mr. KIRK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. We saw a dramatic
testament to the value of fully electronic medical records when
Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. The many civilian hospitals had not
yet upgraded to fully electronic medical records, and their record
rooms were flooded out. Many of those patients then lost their medical
histories, but the veterans in New Orleans did not have that problem.
Their records were already fully digitized, and so a veteran reporting
to a VA hospital in Houston or in Baton Rouge had their complete
medical history protected.
That is one key issue in the suburban agenda, but another is
protecting kids from predators, especially in schools. We heard of the
great tragedy of Jessica Lunsford, an example of inadequate screening
for people who come in contact with kids, and one of our experts on
this field is my colleague from the State of Florida, and I yield to
her.
Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. Mr. Speaker, thank you very much.
First of all, I apologize. I have a little bit of laryngitis here, but
I wanted to join you to express my support for the suburban agenda. You
have done a great job, and I know I heard Dr. Price say that he goes
home every weekend, as most of us do.
My district in Florida, the largest city I have is all of 21,000. I
have a lot of suburban areas and areas that we call unincorporated
areas, and the suburban agenda clearly is one that my constituents who
are not city folk, maybe they used to be but they are not anymore, can
really relate to. One of the concepts clearly is protecting our
children. Whether it is a grandmother who lives in Florida or whether
it is a young family that lives in Florida, they all want to make sure
that children are protected.
February 23 marked the 1-year anniversary of Jessica Lunsford's
death. Her dad, Mark, and her grandparents, Archie and Ruth Lunsford,
live in Citrus County in my district. I actually lived less than 5
miles from Jessica at the time that she was murdered.
If she were still with us today, she would have been in the fifth
grade, learning about decimals and fractions, the solar system and
certainly American government. Instead, her life was taken by a sex
offender who kidnapped, assaulted, and murdered her and then buried her
in his backyard. This tragedy all of America grieved for.
The irony of it is that the perpetrator actually worked at her
school. He was hired by a company that was doing some construction work
at her school.
Congressman Porter introduced the School Safety Acquiring Faculty
Excellence Act, which would permit school districts to access FBI
criminal data before hiring new employees.
My bill, the Jessica Lunsford Act, requires offenders to wear ankle
monitoring devices if they fail to report when they move from area to
area. In addition to the current fines and jail time under the Jessica
Lunsford Act, offenders would have to wear the GPS monitoring device
for 5 years and predators for 10 years.
Probation officers right now are not provided with notification of a
probationer's sex offender status from a previous crime. My legislation
requires that that record be given to the probation officer. I am sure,
Mr. Speaker,
[[Page H2312]]
that if the probation officer knew of this record that he never ever
would have allowed the predator to work in that school.
We need to make sure that we have this information out there and
available; and, certainly, protecting our children from those who would
do them harm, those who really are the lowest of our society, is so
very, very necessary; and I know that all of the members of the
Suburban Caucus are very, very supportive of protecting our children.
Like Dr. Price and many of you all here tonight, I, too, go home
every weekend. People are surprised to see me, but I tell them that I
do not ever want to start thinking like the Beltway mentality up here.
For that reason, I was delighted to participate and was a bit
encouraged that the Senate passed a version of the bill that we passed
here, actually that we passed to protect children. Whether there is a
conference committee or whether it is just something that is worked out
between the two chairmen of the Judiciary Committees, the Senate
chairman and our chairman here, certainly remains to be seen. But let
us make no mistake: we want to make sure that we protect our children.
I am so glad that you have included that issue in this suburban
agenda. My hat is off to you, and I am sure that all of the suburban
areas that we represent and yours will be very, very happy that we have
taken these issues on.
Mr. KIRK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman who lost Jessica
Lunsford in her own district.
Our leader on this issue is Congressman Jon Porter from Nevada, the
author of the School Safety Acquiring Faculty Excellence Act, and I
want to yield to him.
Mr. PORTER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague and friend from
Illinois (Mr. Kirk) for bringing us to together as a caucus that is
focused on, I think, issues that are impacting a lot of moms and dads
across this country, especially in a part of the country, suburbia,
where a lot of these folks are busy taking their kids to school,
getting off to work and do not necessarily have a lot of time to show
up for congressional hearings.
If we look back through the history, our leadership has been very
supportive. I appreciate Mr. Hastert and Mr. Boehner for allowing us
this time tonight on these key issues.
If we look back in time, about 40-some years ago, when I was a young
man in a small Catholic grade school in the Midwest, in the community
of Humbolt, Ohio, a number of challenges for teachers and challenges
for parents and students had a lot to do with spitwads. Maybe showing
up on time for class, making sure we are on time and making sure we got
good grades, of course, was a priority; but think how things have
changed. In those days, in my little Catholic grade school, we could
not wear blue jeans with rivets because we were afraid we would scratch
the desks.
Let us fast forward today into suburbia. Today, we have children in
the classroom that are trying to deal with drive-by shooting drills.
They have drive-by shooting drills in certain schools across the
country. We have children that need our special help more than ever,
with an environment that is ever-changing, and it is not about rivets
and blue jeans. It is about worrying about the Internet, worrying about
predators, worrying about predators that stalk our students, that hang
around the playgrounds.
If you look at suburbia and inner city and communities around the
country, if you look at police files, you will see that on maps they
put dots and marks where sexual predators live and they frequent
schools and hang around classrooms and hang around the ball fields.
Well, being a parent myself, and having two children that graduated
from the public school system in the community of Nevada and southern
Nevada, I trust that when our schools open and when our schools hire
teachers, that they are going to have the best tools available to
screen teachers, to make sure that we hire the best and the brightest
to take care of our children.
We are very fortunate that the bulk of all of our teachers across
this country are absolutely some of the finest. They care about their
children, they care about the school, and they care about educating our
precious resource, that is, our kids.
I cannot imagine the pain of a parent or a child that has been
molested or taken advantage of by a teacher or a faculty member at a
school somewhere across the country. We pick up the paper every day,
and there is a story about someone that slipped through the system, a
teacher or a faculty member somewhere that has applied and has found a
job and is employed with our children and teaching our children. I will
be honest with you, I cannot imagine the pain if my child or a friend
of mine's child was molested or assaulted.
In the late 1990s, 1998, this Congress in its wisdom passed
legislation to allow for complete background checks on teachers. That
was in 1998. Unfortunately, as we fast forward, that bill which was to
provide, again, complete knowledge, complete background checks to make
sure that our teachers are safe, to date, to 2006, only 26 States are
able to use the law that we passed in 1998. Again, that law was passed
as a reason to make sure our principals, our administrators have the
right tools to check the backgrounds of teachers. Like I said,
fortunately, 26 States today are using it; 24 are not. So almost half
are not using this tool that is available.
We use Nevada as an example. Clark County School District in southern
Nevada hires around 2,000 new teachers a year, another 3,000 or 4,000
faculty members, close to 6,000, 7,000 people a year. You go across the
State, you look at our growth, we are one of the fastest growing States
in the country. We need to build 2\1/2\ new schools each month. We also
need about 2,500 new teachers, but we have run into some problems.
Unfortunately, since 1998 only 26 States are using the background
check that is available due to constitutional challenges within their
States, due to bureaucratic challenges in their States. We want to make
sure in Nevada that when we check the background of a teacher that we
have the most up-to-date, up-to-the-minute information without
barriers.
Well, again, unfortunately, that tool has not been available to all
the States. So I proposed legislation, and it is H.R. 4894, the School
Safety Acquiring Faculty Excellence Act, and what it does is allows
every State to have access to information, both Federal and State
information, on criminal background checks on teachers. Again,
unfortunately, some of the States that we checked with, and we are
trying to hire new teachers, due to different reasons are not able to
provide the information that we need. So I encourage that we pass H.R.
4894.
It does a couple of things. One, it gives the tools to all the States
to check backgrounds through the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
through all that information so they can feel comfortable that they are
getting the latest up-to-date information. Number two, it streamlines
the process. Some States now, although they are doing background
checks, it could take weeks or months to get information on hiring a
new teacher.
So the bill really does two things. It provides immediate access so
there are fewer barriers so our administrators can have the proper
information to make sure our students are safe, and it provides for
those States that cannot currently follow the act of 1998 to gather
that information.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity. There is no more precious
resource than our children. We want to make sure that our parents, our
administrators and our teachers and, most certainly, our children have
the best available to them through the teachers that we are hiring; and
with that, again, I appreciate the time.
Mr. KIRK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Nevada because he
is the author of the lead bill of the suburban agenda, and that will be
coming up shortly in the Congress here.
We know that, for example, in the State of Michigan, schools
unwittingly hired 2,500 people convicted of sexual assault, murder and
other felonies, exactly because these predators fell between the cracks
of the various State registries which have been established and were
not brought together in a single Federal register.
[[Page H2313]]
One of the great problems that we have is also the emergence of
international drug gangs moving into suburban communities. There are
over 800,000 members of drug gangs now in America. It would be the
seventh largest army in the world, and we need action to make sure that
these gangs, sometimes suppressed inside large urban cores by capable
police departments like the Chicago Police Department, are now moving
into the suburbs. This is a phenomenon that we are not immune to in
Chicagoland. It is happening all over the country, and I yield to my
colleague from Atlanta to talk about the law enforcement situation that
they face with gangs in that community.
Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding.
I tell you, one of the things that excites me so about this suburban
agenda is that it addresses real issues of real people, in real life,
in real-time. Oftentimes, we deal with issues and they seem kind of out
there. They are far away, and they are issues that are difficult to get
your arms around; but I tell you, in my community, the issue of gangs
and gang violence has reared its head.
{time} 2100
When we have neighborhood meetings or you get together with PTA
groups and you talk about this, folks just shake their head. They say,
It doesn't make any sense. How can this be going on?
That is why I am so excited about the suburban agenda because what it
does is bring issues that people are talking about every single day in
our districts back at home and saying, Why can't we do something about
that? That is what Congressman Reichert has brought forward. H.R. 5291
is the Gang Elimination Act of 2006.
Will it eliminate gangs? No, but it will go a long, long way because
what it does is charge the Attorney General with identifying those
gangs that are the most egregious, that are the most violent, that are
the most threatening to our communities all across this Nation, a lot
of suburban areas, but all across this Nation and says, Let's get a
strategy down to make certain that we address these and start knocking
these gangs down, start making it so that these gangs are not able to
function in the way that they are able to function right now and not
able to threaten our families and our children.
Mr. KIRK. One of the critical problems we have, we have heard of
gangs like the Latin Kings and the Vice Lords and the Gangster
Disciples, but we have a new gang emerging called MS-13 that may have
reported, we don't know, links to international terror groups coming
out of drug activity south of the border that seem to have no
compunction with killing police officers, both on the West and East
coasts. This is not just a threat to kids in school, it is a homeland
defense issue.
Mr. PRICE of Georgia. You are absolutely right. Apparently, so many
of these gangs have a rite of passage that they institute for their
members. That rite of passage is often very violent. Sometimes it is
the murder of a member of the police force or a member of the
community.
And so this again is real-time issues, real issues that face our
communities all across this Nation each day. I am proud again to stand
with my colleagues here and I am so proud of Congressman Reichert for
his leadership on this issue. We look forward to having it passed.
Mr. KIRK. We all know Dave Reichert from Washington, who was the
national hero who tracked down the Green River killer and is someone
who understands well law enforcement challenges east of the Cascades in
Seattle.
One of the big issues we are also dealing with is a fear among
families in America that it may be more difficult for their children to
reach the middle class than it was for them. Another key item of the
suburban agenda would establish 401-kids, a tax-deferred savings
account for each child.
I want to yield to my colleague who shares Florida with the author of
that legislation, Clay Shaw.
Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Clay Shaw has introduced a bill called 401-kids. What it does is it
gives young families the opportunity to save for college for the
education expenses of their children tax-free. It is an awfully good
idea and one that many, many people are looking forward to taking
advantage of.
You know, when children are first born, you tend to think, Oh, it's
going to be so long, but as those of us whose children have grown now,
the time does fly by. So the best way to save, certainly whether it is
a parent or a grandparent, is by using a system similar to that which
many working people use, a 401(k) program.
Mr. Shaw's bill is one that allows you to set aside money tax-free so
it can grow, so it can help to pay for the education of our children.
And it is one that I have heard a lot of support for in my district. We
want to make sure that not only parents, but grandparents also can
participate in setting aside some money for the future education of the
generation who will be in college 18 years from now, or sooner.
One of the things that I wanted to also comment on, if you would
allow me, is if you put in the word ``gangs'' and your State into a
search engine, it is absolutely astonishing. Coming from Florida,
people may think that AARP is the only gang in town. I can assure you
that it is not. When we put this information in, we got three-and-a-
half pages of gangs that were listed. This is a problem for local law
enforcement.
Yesterday, I actually spoke to a man whose son was killed by a gang
in Pasco County. I assured him, and he hasn't heard anything from law
enforcement, this happened within the last month, that law enforcement
is not sitting by idly. Certainly they are involved with it, because it
also goes over into the hate crimes area. And the sheriff and the FBI
were all involved in this.
Unfortunately, these gangs have no morals, they have no respect for
life, and they are taking the lives and terrorizing many, many
communities. That is an area that the Suburban Caucus is also focusing
on and one that is very, very long overdue.
As I say, if you put in your State and the word ``gangs,'' you would
be absolutely amazed. Who would have thought that this would happen in
Florida?
Mr. KIRK. I thank the gentlelady.
We have seen a number of gangs morph from the view that we had of
them in the 1950s coming out of cartoon images like West Side Story of
the Jets and the Sharks, a group of local toughs that no longer exist.
These gangs are all connected to international drug cartels, many times
having weapons and contacts far exceeding local law enforcement,
especially suburban law enforcement.
And now the view that they have is that they merely need to move
outside of cities where they take on smaller police departments or high
school officials and security officials that are not well experienced
with these groups to continue their operations.
Congressman Reichert's Gang Elimination Act of 2006 makes common
sense. It simply says to the Attorney General, identify the top three
national drug threat gangs and put forward a plan to the Congress to
take them down within 4 years. It sets an example of those gangs that
if you represent a near and present danger to kids and to the homeland
security of the United States, that the U.S. Government is going to
take effective action.
The suburban agenda is very much about the security of families from
gang violence. It is also about financial security. It is building a
nest egg for each child with 401-kids family savings accounts. The
Congress should build success upon success. The creation of the 401(k)
program transformed the culture of the country to promote much greater
savings and investment for people's retirement. In 2001, the Congress
created 529 college savings plans, and over 7 million Americans have
saved over $75 billion in these accounts.
The 401-kids accounts expands the tax-free savings for each child's
college education to also allow the first-time purchase of a home. This
is something that much more greatly ensures access of our children into
the middle class. That opportunity is not just to build a nest egg for
the child, it also gives an opportunity for each parent to sit down
with that child and review how their
[[Page H2314]]
account is being built, what is the difference between a stock and a
bond and a regular savings account, how they did this year, to build a
culture of savings and investment for the rest of the child's life.
I yield to my colleague from Georgia.
Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Thank you so much. So much of what you have
just said makes sense. You talked about common sense. We could call
this suburban agenda the common-sense agenda really, because when moms
and dads sit at home and they try to figure out how to take care of
their health or their child's safety or their child's college
education, they want to know whether or not they are going to be able
to make that happen. One of the ways to do that is obviously through
increased savings.
When Congress finds something that works, we ought to do it, we ought
to do more of it, especially when it results in greater savings and
greater prosperity for so many individuals across our land. So with the
success of retirement security and the 401(k) plans and the success of
the 529 plans that you mentioned, we ought to build on that success.
That is exactly what the 401-kids family savings account does. I
think it is important. Education really is a key to advancing in
society.
But a college education isn't right for every single person. What the
401-kids family savings account recognizes is that that money may be
best used for purchasing a first home, or for starting a new business
for a child or with a child. That is expanding the success that we have
had with the 529 plans, common-sense kinds of solutions that I think
will be embraced by this entire House and, frankly, by all of America.
Mr. KIRK. I would say that we welcome Republicans, Democrats,
everyone, to join this agenda, because while this is popular, while
people want this to happen, it hasn't happened yet. This is an
incomplete agenda, where we have not set a national strategy to
eliminate gangs; we have not established 401-kids programs; we have not
interlinked the Federal databases on sexual predators; we have not
taken sufficient action on social networking sites like myspace.com to
protect kids.
All of this, then, builds up to a set of unfinished work which the
Congress should now finish in order to protect the lives of Americans.
One of the other issues that we hear about very often from suburban
families is that we need to take greater action for conservation, that
we support the national park system, we want it to be healthy and we
want it to grow, but we also want to protect green and open space right
near home. Without action by the Federal and State governments, there
might come a day when we would drive to work or school and see an
unending series of strip malls and no green or open space taken to
protect the environment in our local communities.
The suburban agenda also contains two pieces of legislation, one by
Jim Gerlach and the other by Mike Fitzpatrick, both of Pennsylvania,
that encourages donations of open space for conservation purposes and
also protects farmland from being gobbled up in suburban communities. I
think it is critical that we embrace a future in this country of
rapidly expanding suburban communities in which families 10 and 20
years from now also see green and open space and that they do not let
inaction by the government or a climate which does not encourage the
donation of these areas, to let these key properties go.
I yield to my colleague from Georgia.
Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
You are absolutely right. As the suburban areas expand, they often
eat up the green land and the open space that is available. Before you
know it, there is not enough parkland or open space that is left. And
you can't get it back. It doesn't come back.
I, like so many of my colleagues here in Congress, had the privilege
of serving in the State legislature. One of the bills that I was so
very proud of in the State legislature in Georgia was called the Green
Space bill. What it does is provide State resources to set aside on
future developments a certain percentage of land for open space, green
space.
I am so proud and privileged to be able to join my colleagues here in
the Suburban Caucus and my two colleagues from Pennsylvania, Mr.
Gerlach and Mr. Fitzpatrick, for promoting these bills that will
provide encouragement for the purchase of conservation easements, as it
does with Mr. Gerlach's bill, and increase tax easements to encourage
charitable contributions of real property for conservation and open
space purposes, which is Mr. Fitzpatrick's bill.
These are common-sense solutions. They are not mandates. They aren't
requirements. They aren't the heavy hand of the law. But what they are
are conservative principles being used for conservation.
I am so pleased to be able to stand with my colleagues and support
these positive steps forward.
Mr. KIRK. I thank the gentleman.
It was decisive action of this kind that saved the Wagner Farm in
Glenview, Illinois. We still celebrate the cows in that suburban
community, now intensely built up, but because of foresighted action by
the local community, that farm was preserved and it is helping educate
a number of kids in the area about different ways to live and to
preserve green space in their community.
I want to speak for a second about another bill, a bill that is later
on in the suburban agenda that defends the rights of teachers to be
able to search a child to make sure that their classroom is gun and
drug free.
A number of us, me included, hesitated seeing a child using our
training and our instinct as teachers, knowing that we probably have an
issue with a child, but under Federal law and current Supreme Court
decisions, we have to show a specific suspicion toward that child
before we can execute a search of their book bag, their clothes or
their locker.
I think that the country is ready to trust teachers, especially
people that are long-experienced, certified, full-time teachers, to use
their intuition and experience to defend a fundamental value, which is
that Americans have a right to a safe and drug-free school and that the
teachers and the administrators in that school know best how to
appreciate danger and handle it immediately.
{time} 2115
I recently talked with two teachers at Stevenson High School in
Lincolnshire, Illinois, where they said that they knew the children,
where they had a problem of a weapon potentially coming into the
school, but they hesitated. They hesitated because many families in the
neighborhood were lawyers, and they would worry about a big lawsuit and
jeopardizing their jobs. That hesitation so far in Lincolnshire,
Illinois, has not led to a tragedy.
But we have seen other tragedies, like at Columbine High School or in
my own district in Winnetka, Illinois, where Laurie Dann led an attack
against school kids with a gun.
Defending the rights of teachers to ensure the safety of their
classroom is what the Teacher Safety Act is all about from Congressman
Geoff Davis, and I think this once again represents commonsense action.
Why do we need to take Federal action on what should be a local
issue? Because the Federal courts have continually ruled on this issue,
and it is only by action of the Federal legislature that we can define
the rights of teachers to protect their classroom.
I yield to my colleague from Georgia.
Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Thank you so much. This is another one of those
items, as you mention, it is just common sense. When moms and dads at
home wonder why their kids are subjected to the kinds of threats that
they are at school, when a teacher stepping in at an appropriate time
could have solved that problem, it just doesn't make any sense to them.
And you mention why it needs to be done at the Federal level. When
individuals have access to Federal courts for these kinds of issues,
then it is imperative that Congress step in and act because the threat
of liability of a teacher ought not get in the way of the safety of our
children.
When you and I were going to school, our parents would say, look, I
don't care what you do, but you ought not upset the teacher. The
teacher is right. The teacher is, in essence, your parent while at
school, in loco parentis. I am not an attorney, but what that means is
that the teacher can act as the parent while the child is at school.
When
[[Page H2315]]
the child is at home, the parent certainly is able to search the child.
So that ought to be the case at school as well. And it is important
because of the day and time that we live in. Our children are subjected
to risks that you and I never dreamed about, and so it is imperative
that adults that are on the scene, the teachers in the classroom,
administrators in the school, be trusted to make the right decisions in
these areas and not be exposed to liability, not have to think in the
back of their mind, if I do that, will I get sued. That's just
foolishness, and it threatens our children.
So I am proud once again that you brought that forward.
Mr. KIRK. What we want is to give a message to the country's teachers
that when it comes to an issue of the safety and security of kids in
the classroom, do not hesitate. Do not worry about some impending
lawsuit. Make sure that your classroom is secure. We are going to trust
your judgement as a certified teacher, as a full-time employee of the
school, to make that call and to make sure the classroom is secure.
When you look at all of this, we know that the House has long been a
forum for issues on rural issues, and those are very important issues.
We have also been a forum for issues on urban communities, and those
are vital to the future of the country.
But there is a reality in the 21st century and it is that Americans,
a majority of them, live in suburbs. Suburban families face a number of
critical problems. There are drug gangs moving into suburbs that are
seeking to take on suburban law enforcement communities that do not
have the experience of big-city departments.
There are thousands of online predators who are trying to contact our
kids using powerful engines like MySpace.com.
We are watching as green and open space disappear in the suburbs. And
millions of Americans worry that it may be tougher for their children
to enter the middle class than it was for us.
Suburban families are under attack, and they need a voice in the
Congress; and that is why this agenda is coming forward.
These are critical issues in my district of Libertyville, Illinois.
They represent commonsense, practical, grass-roots solutions coming
from the communities to the Congress in a way that we welcome
Republicans and Democrats coming together to move this agenda forward.
We will be outlining all of this in detail tomorrow: a School Safety
Acquiring Faculty Excellence Act, which helps us screen and make sure
that everyone coming into contact with kids is safe and appropriate; a
Delete OnLine Predators Act to make sure that these powerful search
engines are not put in the service of online predators; a Gang
Elimination Act, making the commonsense step forward of identifying the
top gangs that are a threat to kids and the Homeland Security of the
country and to take them down; a Health Information Technology
Promotion Act to accelerate high technology, health information
technology to make sure that your medical record, when appropriately
available, is appropriate to every doctor that you see and is in a
survivable form in case there is a fire or other catastrophe. And,
last, a 401-Kids Tax Deferred Savings Account to have more guaranteed
access of children, not just in the suburbs, but also in cities and in
rural communities into the middle class with tax deferred savings from
the day a child is born.
I yield to my colleague from Georgia to wrap up.
Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I thank you so much for yielding and for your
leadership on this issue. I want to also thank once again our
leadership, the Speaker and majority leader, majority whip, conference
Chair, for allowing us to share with the House and with the American
people tonight this exciting, commonsense suburban agenda. And it's not
just for the suburban area, but the problems and challenges that we
have in suburban America oftentimes precede those that we see
elsewhere. And so it is so very important that we move this forward,
the commonsense suburban agenda.
As I mentioned before, folks in our districts are concerned about all
the big issues, the huge issues, the war on terror, the crisis of
illegal immigration; but they are also concerned about the issues of
school safety. They are also concerned about the issues of making
certain that their children are safe when they go on the Internet. They
are also concerned about the importance of having private personal
medical records and the ease of being able to take them from one doctor
to another. They are terribly concerned about making certain that we
preserve our Nation's open space and green space. And they are
concerned about the ability that they have to assist their children in
succeeding, whether it be through starting a business or providing a
college education for them.
So I commend the gentleman from Illinois so highly for his leadership
on this issue. He has been a champion for the entire length of time,
short time, that I have been in the United States Congress. It is a
privilege to stand with you this evening, and I look forward to
shepherding with you these issues through the United States House and
Congress.
Mr. KIRK. I thank the gentleman. Tomorrow, then, five dozen Members
of Congress come together to unveil the suburban agenda, many of these
pieces of legislation already with bipartisan support, and it
represents commonsense solutions addressing real issues before the
country, important issues for all families, and it represents a
critical agenda of key items of legislation addressing problems before
American families that can be done in this session of Congress.
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