[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9056-9060]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      30-SOMETHING CAUCUS REPORTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Chocola). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) is 
recognized for half the time until midnight, approximately 36 minutes.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, we are here on our second weekly 30-
something working group, and I am joined by the gentleman from Florida 
(Mr. Meek). We started this last week on Tuesday. Every Tuesday night 
we are going to come here and talk about issues facing the young 
people, not only in our own communities in Florida or in the State of 
Ohio, not only young people who are at universities or private schools 
throughout the country, but people who are in their 20s, in their 30s 
and the kinds of challenges they are facing in society here today.
  As Members can see, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), who 
we would like to thank for the opportunity to do this, sponsoring the 
30-something working group, we are going to ask young people, and you 
do not have to be 30, you can be 20, 40, 50, to contact us by e-mail at 
[email protected], and we will repeat the mailing address 
later, but just to talk about issues that are facing young students, 
young people today.
  Last week we talked for about an hour about the challenges that are 
facing young people with summer jobs, student loans, Pell grants, and 
issues related to getting into college, having access to college, 
having access to higher education in this country. The majority of the 
discussion we talked about last week revolved around the priorities of 
the country. As we sit in this Chamber late on a Tuesday night, the 
issue again is priorities.
  We just want to communicate to young people today that there is 
active participation in this democracy in which young people who think 
that democracy does not matter, who think that their vote does not 
count, who think that somehow they cannot participate in the system, we 
are here to tell them that they can, and they do have an opportunity to 
participate in this system; and for two young people like the gentleman 
from Florida (Mr. Meek) and myself and several others who are here, 
have gotten to this establishment, this institution, the United States 
Congress, through the help of a lot of young people. You can either say 
no, reject the system, you can say no, we do not have an opportunity to 
talk, we do not have an opportunity for our voice to be heard, or you 
can say, yes. Yes, we can participate in the system; we can participate 
in our democracy.
  I heard some of the gentlemen before us talk about how the democratic 
process works and how people will, if given the opportunity, they will 
dictate what kind of government we get and what kind of government as 
citizens we receive; but it has to be active participation.

[[Page 9057]]

  We are here to say we believe, and I know I believe passionately and 
have spoken on the House floor and I know the gentleman from Florida 
(Mr. Meek) has also participated in these discussions, that we believe 
that the priorities of this institution over the last year, year and a 
half, several years, have not represented the interests of young 
people. The Republican Party has controlled the House since 1994. They 
have controlled the Senate for a good portion of the years since then. 
They have controlled the White House for the last 3\1/2\ years; and the 
agenda for young people, the agenda for students has not been 
addressed. As we talked about last week, our discussion had a lot to do 
with Pell grants and access to college.
  The question that we want to present to young people today, tonight, 
is: Do you agree with the priorities that this administration has 
established for you? Do you agree with trillions of dollars of tax cuts 
over the next 10 years? Do you agree with borrowing money to pay for 
the deficits that we have today in order to give tax cuts primarily to 
the top 1 and 2 percent? I know the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Meek), 
who has been very active in this discussion, has agreed with the 
majority of us on the Democratic side that we believe that money would 
be better spent balancing our budget, making sure we have fiscal 
responsibility in the country, and making sure we make the proper 
investments. We believe that some of those investments, and it would be 
misleading to say all of those investments, but a good portion or many 
of those investments should be made to our young people.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I want to say that the gentleman 
from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) has hit the nail on the head. I am glad we are 
here with our 30-something working group; and we are also joined by the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Linda T. Sanchez), as she was last 
week. We are showing a level of consistency; and just from last week, I 
hold in my hand, almost like the David Letterman Top 10, just some of 
the e-mails sent in from individuals who saw us here talking about 
issues not only facing college students, but also facing working 
families in America that are concerned about how they are going to pay 
back the second mortgage that they have taken out to allow their 
children to be educated, and also to students that are now working in 
student work study to try to pay for college. But they know they have 
loans that are under attack here in this Congress and the banking 
community is coming with a new scheme to have them pay more in interest 
rates rather than have a fixed low rate. I will talk about the e-mails 
later.
  But first, I could not help but look at rockthevote.com before I 
walked over here, and I can tell Members something that is very, very 
disturbing. We talk about direct democracy and young people being part 
of the process to correct the issues that we are here to talk about 
tonight, health care; and in many locations throughout the country and 
in some States, students are being told that they cannot register to 
vote on their college campus.
  This is very, very disturbing because it violates Federal law for a 
State to say you cannot vote, and if you are going to be on a college 
campus, the University of Ohio, whatever the case may be, if they are 
there, they are in school, they may register to vote. I would encourage 
parents and students that care about higher education, care about 
tuition costs, Pell grants and care about making sure that we have the 
workforce for the future to lead our country, I encourage them to go to 
rockthevote.com so they can learn more about this voter suppression.
  Mr. Speaker, I am from Florida, and we cannot wait until the last 
minute to inform not only parents who want their children to be 
politically active.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, on that point, we have many kids in 
school surrounded by their peers who want to participate in the 
process, who are campaigning for a certain candidate or referendum on a 
State ballot, but they are from another State. How do they register to 
vote? I remember being from Ohio, and I went to school in Bowling Green 
which is across the State, how do you get registered to vote? Should it 
be by absentee ballot? You have to send a formal letter and you have 
exams, and you are trying to balance your duties at school to try to 
achieve a better life; and it becomes a very complicated process, 
instead of saying register to vote where your school is and being able 
to participate in the process.
  There are many instances where we have a college or university in a 
congressional district that is controlled by a Member of Congress or a 
party that is not representative of the people who are at that 
university, where if all of those kids would be able to register to 
vote at that university, they would swing a congressional election.

                              {time}  2300

  Mr. MEEK of Florida. If I can, I just want to make sure that the 
listeners that are listening to us right now and also Members of the 
House, I would definitely urge them, because they should lead in this 
fight. Direct democracy is important, being able to do away with voter 
apathy. I do not believe that the folks that are not voting, that it is 
all voter apathy. It is voter access. I want to read something to you: 
Under Federal law, college students have the legal right to vote where 
their residence may be and that is at schools. The Supreme Court 
established this right in 1979. Yet 25 years later, many local elected 
officials across the country have not gotten the message. They are 
rejecting the voter registration applications of students claiming that 
they are not permanent residents in their community, but the Supreme 
Court has already said that this concept of permanent is not relevant 
to students. We have to get that word out.
  I would say to the parents that are listening to us tonight, your 
children can vote in the fall elections. Where will they be in late 
August or September? They are going to be in school. Where are they 
going to be in November? They are going to be in school. We have to 
make sure their voices are heard.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Go to rockthevote.com. Or, if the C-SPAN cameras 
can come in here, [email protected]. Send us some e-mails. 
We received a bunch just from last week, our first week here. Send us 
some e-mails. Let us know what you think, what your issues are so we 
can develop a students' bill of rights in order to advocate.
  I would like to welcome a great new Member of our freshman class the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Linda T. Sanchez).
  Ms. LINDA T. SANCHEZ of California. It is really great to be here. We 
are also joined by another colleague of ours, the gentleman from 
Alabama (Mr. Davis). Just to catch the tail end of your conversation, I 
wanted to say that there seems to be something wrong when people are 
advocating that young people get involved in politics and express their 
opinions and vote, and you have 18- to 35-year-olds who want to do just 
that and then the rules are set up in such a way that make it nearly 
impossible for them to participate. There is something wrong with a 
democracy that does not embrace making it easier for folks to 
participate in the political process and exercise their right to be 
heard.
  Not to get off topic, but one of the things that I wanted to talk 
about a little bit this evening is a subject that is troubling not just 
for students, for a lot of young adults all across America, folks that 
may have graduated from college and been out in the workforce for 
several years, but that is the need for access to health care. I can 
remember myself when I was at UCLA law school right after I graduated, 
there was this intense pressure to find a job, and I had this fear 
during the period when I was studying for my bar exam, I had this fear 
because I was not covered by any health insurance, this fear that if I 
did not get a job quickly after taking the bar, that I was pretty much 
going to be on my own where health care was concerned. I was fortunate 
in that when I graduated from law school, I graduated in a somewhat 
healthy

[[Page 9058]]

economy and there were quite a number of employment opportunities that 
presented themselves.
  But today students are not so lucky. They are graduating from 
universities and the job market is very dismal for them. Not only does 
that mean that they are going to have to struggle without having an 
income after they graduate and the thought of student loans on top of 
it, but chances are they probably will not be covered by any type of 
health care. As we rapidly approach the months of May and June, a lot 
of college students are going to be graduating and finding themselves 
in the situation that I have just described.
  I know of one particular instance in which a female college student 
recently shared a story with me regarding her personal hardship where 
health care was concerned. She is about to graduate from college in 
California and just received a scare by testing positive for an ovarian 
cyst. She does not know where to turn. She does not have any idea where 
she is going to get the money to pay for the necessary procedures; and 
if this situation is not bad enough because she is a student, currently 
some of the things are covered by student health, but imagine if she 
had just graduated and were covered by no health insurance whatsoever, 
she might not even be aware of the situation that she is in because she 
might not have gone to the doctor to be tested. I am sure she is not 
alone in that situation.
  I do not know what it is about young people, and to young people that 
may be watching this, I say you absolutely have a right to affordable 
and accessible health care. Do not think because you are young that 
that is one of the dues that you have to pay. You absolutely should 
have access to affordable health care. Do not sell yourself short and 
do not demand anything less. Do not think that because you are young, 
the government can ignore you. You have an opportunity. You have a 
voice. Exercise it. You have an opportunity to try to shape the policy 
that this Nation abides by. Be vocal about that.
  We have seen the number of people who are uninsured in this country 
continue to rise. That is just not the people that are uninsured, but 
there are many people who are underinsured, which means they have very 
superficial health care benefits; they are not really meaningful, they 
have high premiums, they have high deductibles. That means that people 
have just one more worry as they are starting out and embarking on what 
should be the rest of their lives and a positive experience.
  Four years ago, the President promised us action on health care but 
every year since then, more and more Americans have lost their health 
insurance. It is particularly dramatic in young people. Young adults 
comprise a disproportionately large share of the Nation's uninsured. 
Despite only representing 15 percent of the population, young adults 
account for 30 percent of those who go without health care in our 
country.
  It is a shame that an industrialized, modern society, supposedly the 
greatest country in the world, cannot find a way to make sure that 
every person in this country has access to health care. Those of you 
who are listening, all of us here on the floor tonight that are talking 
about these issues that impact young folks, we are fighting like crazy 
to try to make sure that big HMOs and pharmaceutical companies are not 
the ones that are receiving the benefits of the health care policy that 
we pass in this House. We are urging that 12 million young adults who 
currently find themselves without access to health care, to get 
involved politically, talk to your Representatives, let them know how 
critical this issue is for you.
  Mr. DAVIS of Alabama. I thank the gentlewoman, and let me certainly 
thank my colleagues from Ohio and Florida for their vision in putting 
this hour together and for making it a regular part of the 
congressional calendar and the congressional schedule. As I listened to 
the three of you before I had a chance to participate in this dialogue, 
something struck me. I am normally one who tends to be resistant to too 
many political analyses that rest on generation. I am one of these 
people who thinks that people try to load a whole lot of analytical 
content into that term when it should not always be there, but this is 
something that occurs to me from listening to all three of you. Maybe 
because we are new to this body, maybe because all four of us are 
relatively new to public life, maybe because all four of us are still 
young people, we still have a sense of the possible. We still have a 
sense of how the power in this institution and the power in this 
government can still be used to make better the lives of some of our 
people.
  Sometimes when I listen to our friends and our colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle, I honestly think one of the most fundamental 
differences is that they do not have a very strong sense of the 
possible. They pretty much want to take this country as we found it. 
They want to take the divisions in this country as we found them, and 
they are pretty much happy to get by with that. Maybe what separates us 
as younger Democrats and as Democrats is that we have a profound sense 
of what is possible.
  As I listened to the gentlewoman from California and I think about 
health care in this country, we do have an enormous amount still to do. 
One day some historian is going to look back at the fact that 4 years 
ago, we had a $122 billion surplus, and we somehow did not manage to 
spend a dime of it on providing health insurance for working Americans 
who need it, who are playing by the rules, who are doing everything 
that the system demands of them, and yet they somehow do not have 
health insurance. We had a $122 billion surplus and could not spend any 
of that largesse on addressing the problem of the uninsured. Here we 
are 3 years later, we have a $521 billion, and climbing, deficit. We 
are spending all of that money, and we are still not spending a dime of 
it on addressing the problem of the working uninsured. That is 
something that a lot of the young people who I hope are listening in 
their college classroom and in their college dorms tonight will hold us 
accountable for. That we have had an opportunity to spend an enormous 
amount of the Treasury in this country, and we have never touched this 
problem.
  Understand something very basic about the problem of the uninsured. 
Sometimes when we listen to the debate, we almost think that the 
uninsured are all poor people. This is the reality. A significant 
number of people who are uninsured are people who are working and 
people who are earning between $50,000 and $75,000. Not poor by any 
stretch of the imagination. A lot of these are people who are working 
as young lawyers. They are people who are working as young legal 
assistants. They are people who by no means are what we think of as 
being on the margins of society.

                              {time}  2310

  So I would simply make this point tonight when we talk about the 
obligation that we have as young leaders, one of the most fundamental 
obligations that we have is to maybe finish some of the business that 
some other people have left for us, to maybe find some way to deal with 
some of these problems that have been sitting and festering. Forty-two 
million Americans are uninsured. That means 42 million Americans are 
essentially one health crisis away from seeing their financial security 
wiped out.
  Again, my sense of the possible leads me to think that we can do 
something about that, and my sense of the possible leads me to believe 
that if we do not address this problem and we simply let it fester, 
that we are going to wake up one day in America, in this wonderful land 
of opportunity and we are going to see that we can split in two and 
become two Americas. We become one America for people who are well 
endowed and people who are wealthy. We become one America for those who 
are without.
  And I will close on this point. A lot of us are institutional 
lawyers. The gentlewoman from California (Ms. Linda T. Sanchez) I know 
is an attorney who practiced very ably in California. Unfortunately, in 
our profession

[[Page 9059]]

as lawyers, we kind of accept the fact that the more money one has, the 
better legal service they can get. It is just something that we accept.
  When it comes to accounting, as we are just finishing the tax season, 
the quality of one's bank account determines the quality of the 
accountants that they get. I hope that we never let ourselves lapse 
into a world where the quality of one's health and their capacity to 
fight the ravages of disease is a function of how much money they have 
got, because if we ever enter that kind of a world, we have entered a 
world that is fundamentally less fair than what we have had and we have 
entered a world that is less generous than what we need it to be.
  And I would just in conclusion say this: I know that all four of us 
are fans of Robert F. Kennedy and the vision that he had for America. 
He was fond of saying, when he concluded a lot of his speeches, ``Some 
men see things as they are and say why? I see things that never were 
and say why not?'' And I think that is our challenge as young 
Democrats, not just to see the things in this country that trouble us 
and raise our hands and say why, but to see a better and fairer world 
and to say why not?
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman was extremely articulate 
in his analysis of the situation that we are in, and I think he is 
right, that a lot of us that are here, and I have seen many Members who 
are just a few years older than us, have maintained that attitude that 
say this institution and politics in general is about what can be for 
the rest of society.
  We have talked a little bit about health care, and I think there are 
two ways to look at this. I think both are very valuable, but the one 
is we need to cover people because it is a justice issue. It is an 
issue where we all believe that every person in America should have 
adequate health care regardless of one's wealth, period, end of story. 
That should not be a debate that we are having in the 21st century in 
America.
  And as we provide health care for young people, we are beginning to 
educate them on the way to behave, the way to treat themselves, the way 
to be more healthy, so that when they are in the Medicare program one 
day, that they are not costing us as much money as they would have cost 
us had they not had the education that they had at a young age.
  This should not be just about providing health care coverage. This 
should also be about teaching wellness in our schools, whether it is 
through Leave No Child Behind or some other Federal program that we 
have, but to make sure we are teaching people at a very young age how 
wellness is the best way to approach life. That is one.
  And then the second reason is an economic argument. Imagine if we 
were providing health care to manufacturers here today. Young kids 
graduate from school. They go and they work. Maybe they do not even go 
to college. They go get a 2-year degree, run the new machines, have a 
technical degree, and they have health care. Imagine the burden that 
would be released from those people who were owning small manufacturing 
shops and the money that they would save that they could put back into 
their business to create economic wealth in the country again.
  So this is an investment that I think when we want the government to 
invest money, we say we want to get the best bang for the buck. We get 
a justice issue solved, and we also want to get economic development 
and assist small businesses in a way that they have not been assisted 
under the current regime that we have here in the United States.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, if I can, I just want to mention I 
am so glad that the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Linda T. Sanchez) 
is here and also the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Davis). The gentleman 
from Alabama (Mr. Davis) represents a rural part and a very poor part 
of Alabama, and I have heard him on many other occasions, not only in 
the Committee on the Budget, share the stories of his constituents, and 
I just want to steal from that for a minute.
  I represent Miami and also South Broward County, and it is a very 
urban area. I will share with my colleagues that not only with the 
educational institutions that we have there, we have children or we 
have young people that are gambling on health care. They do not have 
health care because they cannot afford health care, and they are what I 
call emergency room health care. As we speak right now, some mother or 
father has to take their child into an emergency room because they do 
not have health care coverage. They are working. They are not at home 
eating a bag of chips and drinking some sort of soda saying that, well, 
I do not want to work. They go to work every day. These individuals are 
walking into emergency rooms for their health care. Then we wonder why 
our health care cost is so high. Why do we have a pill in the hospital, 
Tylenol, that costs $10?
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, so in essence we do have universal 
health care in the country but it is through the emergency room.
  Mr. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I do not want to start talking, but 
the first thing we instituted in Iraq was universal health care. So I 
do not want to bounce back and forth, but the gentleman from Alabama is 
on the Committee on the Budget, and I am glad we have a diversity 
because I know the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Linda T. Sanchez) 
is on the Committee on the Judiciary and the gentleman from Ohio is on 
the Committee on Armed Services along with me, and I am on the Select 
Committee on Homeland Security; but really where the rubber meets the 
road is how we set our budget here, and then how we are setting up 
future generations and even this generation for failure. Can the 
gentleman from Alabama talk a little bit about that? Because I am so 
glad he is here and he is knowledgeable on the issue.
  Mr. DAVIS of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for raising 
the issue. One of the interesting things that we often hear in this 
town and we hear it from the other side of the aisle is we cannot 
justify their commitment, we are told, by the amount of money that we 
are spending. A lot of our colleagues and friends on the Republican 
side of the aisle say we care very deeply about health care, we care 
very deeply about education, we are just not spending a lot of money on 
those things and one cannot judge our commitment by that.
  Most American families, I think, realize that people spend money on 
the things they value. They do that in their homes and they do that in 
the United States Congress. We are steadily walking away from 
commitments that are decades-long commitments to improving the quality 
of our educational system, improving the quality of health care. We 
made a commitment, or our predecessors did, because none of us were 
here. Not a single one of us voted on Leave No Child Behind. But before 
we got here in this institution, this House passed a bill called Leave 
No Child Behind and made a commitment to improve education in this 
country. That commitment has never been funded adequately. It has never 
been funded to set the original vision that was laid out.
  And on health care, the prescription drug bill that all four of us 
voted against, incidentally, last November, this is a bill which has an 
enormous price tag. It is a bill that will leave large numbers of 
seniors still without prescription drug coverage. And in so many areas, 
and this is what is striking I think to a lot of our constituents, they 
hear about the obligations we are undertaking abroad. They hear about 
the commitment that we are making to improve the lives of people around 
the world. What they do not see is a commensurate commitment here at 
home.
  And I think we have to recognize that if we want our country to move 
forward, if we want to fix a firmer and better foundation for our 
people, that is a matter of resources. It is incredible that we have 
run up a $521 billion deficit and we have left so many national 
problems untouched. Now we know why. It is because we have made it a 
priority to cut taxes by $3 trillion over the last 3 years. We know 
why, because we have made a commitment to engage

[[Page 9060]]

in so many crises around the world when there are festering crises here 
at home. We know why. It is because we frankly have not had our 
priorities straight in this institution.
  I strongly believe that we have to identify the unfinished business 
of America, and as we move into this congressional and Presidential 
election, maybe there is one very clear and simple challenge we ought 
to issue to our colleagues and ideological opponents on the other side 
of the aisle.

                              {time}  2320

  A very simple question: They are fixated on fixing the world and 
remaking the world. We have to be fixated on remaking America. Because 
what are we fighting for abroad? If we are fighting for anything, it is 
for a vision of the promise of democracy. Well, if we believe in that 
promise of democracy and we believe that the promise of democracy means 
expanded opportunity, then surely we have to fight for that here at 
home.
  All of us, I know, have a great deal of admiration for John F. 
Kennedy. John F. Kennedy was a great Democratic President who believed 
that we can be bold in asserting our interests around the world, but 
that we can be equally bold in asserting our vision here at home.
  You would almost think you could not have it both ways. You would 
almost think you could not do both of those things, if you listened to 
some people in this town. We have to have enough confidence and enough 
belief in the better powers of our government and the better angels of 
our nature to try to transform America.
  I will make this last point. There is a reason, I believe, why so 
many of our people are disengaged and not voting; why so many young 
people, why so many Americans who are struggling economically do not 
even want to participate. It is because they often do not hear this 
institution speaking to their values. They often do not hear their 
needs and their concerns being addressed.
  They turn on the TV at 10 o'clock at night and hear us talking about 
a fair tax that is never going to be, some kind of a complicated 
esoteric tax thing that is never going to happen. They turn on the 
television in the middle of the day and they hear us talking about 
renaming bridges and post offices. They turn on the TV late at night 
and they hear us talking about cutting veterans benefits, the day we 
went to war in Iraq. So much of what they hear us say in this 
institution does not resonate, it does not seem a part of their lives.
  I think if we want to get people to vote, if we want to get people 
engaged, then they need to hear something of themselves in this place. 
They need to hear something of the echoes that are going all around 
American living rooms echoing in this chamber.
  It is a very real question of relevance, making the things that our 
people care about a part of our priorities in setting government.
  Ms. LINDA T. SANCHEZ of California. Mr. Speaker, I just want to make 
this one observation: When I was young I played sports and inevitably 
was plagued with injuries from time to time, and my mother once told me 
something, and I hate to admit when my mother was right, but she was so 
right.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Do not do it.
  Ms. LINDA T. SANCHEZ of California. Mom, here goes. She said, ``You 
do not feel it now because you are young. You have energy, you are 
strong, you recover quickly and you think you are indestructible. But 
when you get older, these injuries are going to come back to haunt 
you.''
  I do not particularly consider myself very old, but it is true. As 
somebody in my thirties, my soccer ankle that I broke three different 
times playing bothers me.
  For young people who do not have access to health care, who do not 
have access to treatments and medicines that can help prevent a minor 
injury from becoming a severe injury down the road, or prevent a mild 
form of a disease or an illness from becoming something full-blown, the 
sole thing standing between them and some kind of chronic illness or 
really devastating health problem is early access to preventive 
medicine and early access to medicine and to therapies that are going 
to help them.
  Again, it is kind of hard to think when you are 18 years old that you 
are going to be old and sick and frail one day, but if you do not have 
access to health care and you cannot get a head start and make sure 
that you get yearly visits so that you are checked out for any 
potential conditions, that is a potential that is a very real potential 
down the line.
  So, for young folks, again, I cannot stress this enough. I think 
sometimes we think, well, we are young, we are just starting out, we do 
not have the dream job that we are hoping for, but I am working full-
time to put myself through school or working full-time right now and 
have no health care benefits or very minimal health care benefits. You 
deserve better. Again, you need to exercise your voice and make sure 
that you are getting better.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, as we are wrapping 
up here, I want to thank the gentleman from Florida, the gentlewoman 
from California and the gentleman from Alabama.
  I want to take this opportunity to say e-mail us, 30-SomethingDems at 
mail.house.gov, and check out rockthevote.com for the voter 
suppression.
  I just want to read a couple e-mails real quickly that we received 
last week. Melanie from Maryland said that she heard us last week. It 
almost brought her to tears, that people in the Congress were actually 
talking about her.
  Amy from Abilene Christian University wrote. And there was also one 
other student who called and said he never watched C-SPAN, but ended up 
watching it for 45 minutes last week to watch ``Gregory Meeks, Tim Ryan 
and one other guy.'' That ``one other guy'' was the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Meek).
  We will be back next Tuesday. Drop an e-mail to us. We are going to 
continue to have this dialogue and make sure that the students and 20-
somethings and 30-somethings of this country are represented in the 
United States Congress.

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