[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10988-10991]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   RECOGNIZING THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM

  Mr. PETRI. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the 
concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 372) recognizing the 50th 
Anniversary of the Interstate Highway System.
  The Clerk read as follows:

                            H. Con. Res. 372

       Whereas on June 29, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower 
     signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 to establish a 
     41,000-mile National System of Interstate and Defense 
     Highways, known as the ``Interstate Highway System'', and the 
     Highway Revenue Act of 1956 to create a Highway Trust Fund;
       Whereas in 1990, the National System of Interstate and 
     Defense Highways was renamed the ``Dwight D. Eisenhower 
     National System of Interstate and Defense Highways'' to 
     recognize President Eisenhower's role in the creation of the 
     system;
       Whereas in 2006, this web of superhighways, now spanning a 
     total of 46,876 miles throughout the United States, has had a 
     powerful and positive impact on our national life;
       Whereas the Interstate Highway System has proven vital in 
     transporting people and goods from one region to another 
     speedily and safely;
       Whereas the Interstate Highway System has facilitated trade 
     both within our national borders and globally and helped 
     create unprecedented economic expansion and opportunities for 
     millions of Americans;
       Whereas the Interstate Highway System has brought diverse 
     communities throughout our land closer together and kept us 
     connected to one another as well as the larger world;
       Whereas the Interstate Highway System has made it easier 
     and often more enjoyable to travel to long-distance 
     destinations and spend time with family members and friends 
     who live far away;
       Whereas the Interstate Highway System is a pivotal 
     component in our national system of defense and emergency 
     preparedness efforts;
       Whereas the Interstate Highway System remains one of our 
     country's paramount assets as well as a symbol of human 
     ingenuity and freedom; and
       Whereas this anniversary provides an occasion to both honor 
     one of the largest public works achievements of all time and 
     reflect on how it can remain effective in the years ahead: 
     Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate 
     concurring),
     That Congress--
       (1) recognizes the golden anniversary year of the Dwight D. 
     Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense 
     Highways;
       (2) recognizes the achievements of the Federal Highway 
     Administration (and its predecessor, the Bureau of Public 
     Roads), the State departments of transportation, and the 
     highway construction industry, including contractors, 
     designers, engineers, laborers, materials producers, and 
     equipment companies, for their contributions to the 
     construction of the Interstate Highway System and the quality 
     of life of the citizens of the United States; and
       (3) encourages citizens, communities, government agencies, 
     and other organizations to promote and participate in 
     celebratory and educational activities marking this uniquely 
     important and historic milestone.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Wisconsin (Mr. Petri) and the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar) 
each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin.


                             General Leave

  Mr. PETRI. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may 
have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and 
include extraneous material on House Concurrent Resolution 372.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Wisconsin?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. PETRI. Mr. Speaker. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Thursday, June 29, will mark the 50th anniversary of the Federal law 
that brought America its unparalleled interstate highway system. This 
46,508-mile web of superhighways has transformed our Nation and our 
Nation's economy. It is a symbol of freedom and it is a tribute to 
human ingenuity.
  As America entered the 20th century, good roads, even paved roads, 
were not common. In addition, it was rare for roads in one State to 
link up with roads in adjacent States. Roads might lead outward from 
cities, even to State lines, but there was no guarantee they would meet 
other roads in neighboring States. The concept of an interstate system 
as we know it today can be traced back to a 1939 report to Congress 
called ``Toll Roads and Free Roads.''
  In 1944, the National Highway Committee, appointed by President 
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and headed by Commissioner of Public Roads 
Thomas MacDonald, produced plans for a national system of approximately 
34,000 miles of expressways.
  However, it was the efforts of President Dwight David Eisenhower that 
gave us the interstate highway system we have today. Eisenhower 
personally witnessed the need for a national highway system in 1919, 
when as a young lieutenant colonel in the Army he helped staff a convoy 
of 81 military vehicles from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco. It is 
kind of a modern day Lewis and Clark Expedition. The journey took 62 
days, and the convoy averaged 6 miles per hour. On today's interstate 
system, such a trip could be easily completed in less than a week.
  During the journey, Lieutenant Colonel Eisenhower formed the opinion 
that the United States desperately needed a better highway system. 
Eisenhower made the creation of an interstate system a keystone of his 
domestic agenda when he came into office in the early 1950s.
  Eisenhower's original effort to pass legislation to create an 
interstate system went down in defeat in July of 1955. He was unwilling 
to accept defeat, however, and he resumed his campaign in 1956. 
Eisenhower's plan required the Federal Government to bear the majority 
of the construction cost, recognizing this massive public works project 
was vital to interstate commerce, national defense, and economic 
growth. His plan also established a user fee-based financing plan 
through a gas tax and this funding source is still the bedrock of the 
current Federal Aid Highway Program.
  Congress passed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 in June of 1956, 
and on June 29, 1956, President Eisenhower signed the bill into law and 
set in motion the interstate system as we know it today.
  I am honored to be here this afternoon to recognize the 50th 
anniversary of the interstate system, and I look forward to taking part 
in the other events that are planned throughout this month to honor 
this historic anniversary.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

[[Page 10989]]

  I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for his very thoughtful 
historical rendition of the evolution of the interstate highway 
program.
  This resolution honors the golden anniversary of the Dwight D. 
Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. But the 
original interstate highway, one that linked several States, was 
charted by George Washington in 1784, a year after the Revolutionary 
War concluded. Traveling to the Ohio country on horseback, Washington 
carefully observed the people and the land. He saw that settlers were 
trapped, that they could fall under the control, as he wrote, of ``the 
Spaniards on their right or Great Britain on their left.'' He 
recognized the need to unite our new Nation by opening, as he called 
it, a smooth way through the Appalachian Mountains to enable the 
settlers, again as he put it, ``to pass our markets before the trade 
may get into another channel.'' A quaint way of saying things.
  Washington determined the best route through the mountains was 
Nemacolin's Trail, a network of old Indian hunting paths that 
Washington knew well from his early days as a surveyor. It took almost 
50 years to convert the trail into the first federally funded 
interstate highway that we now know as the National Road.
  There is little dispute that, as Chairman Petri mentioned earlier, 
Thomas Harris MacDonald, chief of the Bureau of Public Roads for 34 
years, from 1919 to 1953, was the visionary who developed the initial 
plans for the present day interstate highway system. In fact, Chief 
MacDonald's stature was such that when I started here on the Hill as a 
junior staff person on the Subcommittee on Rivers and Harbors of the 
Committee on Public Works his name was revered. The people almost bowed 
in mentioning his name. He really developed the plans for the present 
interstate highway system.
  In 1938, the Congress mandated development of a plan for an 
interstate highway system. MacDonald laid out the plan in a report 
entitled ``Toll Roads and Free Roads,'' 1939. Based on that report, 
Congress in 1944, as it could see the end of World War II, directed the 
Bureau of Public Roads to undertake a study of a nationwide system of 
interconnected highways, totaling some 44,000 miles.

                              {time}  1330

  That national system of interstate highways directive by the 
Congress, was carried out by the Bureau of Public Roads, with a plan to 
link major cities; that is, those of 50,000 population and more. But it 
did not provide a funding mechanism.
  And in the aftermath of World War II, as the Nation rushed to 
reintegrate the 16 million men and women who served the U.S. in the 
great war, put aside the development of a highway plan as we rushed to 
convert to civilian purposes industries that had built machinery of 
war.
  But MacDonald continued working tirelessly with State departments of 
highways, with urban planners, with others, to continue developing this 
idea of an interstate highway system. He had sustained it through the 
Great Depression, he had sustained the idea through World War II.
  He was not dismayed by the rush to civilianize the war-time economy 
of the United States. He kept working on this until his retirement in 
1953. Indeed it was, as Chairman Petri said, President Dwight 
Eisenhower who exercised the political will and leadership to take this 
vision to reality.
  But there was also another force, the increasing congestion on our 
Nation's highways, and with it, the increasing death rate on our 
Nation's highways. It was projected in 1951, 1952, that if we did not 
do something about the congestion on our highways and the rising death 
toll, we would be killing 100,000 people a year on America's highways. 
That was the driving force behind moving to the next stage and bringing 
the vision of an interstate system to reality.
  I will not repeat the very thoughtful and I think erudite 
presentation that Mr. Petri cited of President Eisenhower as a 
lieutenant colonel taking the convoy across the United States. He 
stated that was an experience that lingered in Colonel Eisenhower, 
General Eisenhower, President Eisenhower's mind as he confronted this 
issue.
  His great thought was to tap GEN Lucius Clay to head a commission to 
take the idea of the 1944 Congress report, the MacDonald report, and 
work with the Governors again, with other interested parties, and 
develop a plan to finance this system. That is what the Clay Commission 
report did that was really different.
  It set forth a plan for a viable funding mechanism to undertake the 
interstate highway system with an idea that you would have a dedicated 
revenue stream so that at the beginning of the project planners could 
see their way to the end of that project.
  That was what truly launched the interstate highway construction 
program. My predecessor, John Blatnik, who served in this body for 28 
years on the Committee on Public Works and was its chairman for 4 
years, was one of the five House co-authors. It was largely the House 
of Representatives that drove this issue forward.
  I remember many discussions with Mr. Blatnik talking about the 
discussions that went late into the evenings and about how to finance 
the interstate highway system.
  President Eisenhower's Secretary of the Treasury favored a bonding 
program, which would have greatly enriched Wall Street investors, but 
the House held out for an egalitarian tax that everybody would pay, 
calling it a fee, a fee to build the interstate highway system.
  And that fee started out to be 3 cents, a fuel excise tax. But after 
one year of experience with the 3-cent tax, they realized this was not 
going to be enough and came back the following year, in 1957, and 
passed 1 additional cent, an increase in that fee. That passed this 
body, if you can imagine it, on a voice vote. We can hardly pass 
anything on a voice vote today. But that was done in those days, 
because there was a need to move ahead.
  The original authorization was for a system of 42,500 miles and 
today, as Mr. Petri already said, it is 46,876 miles. You have to keep 
asking the Highway Administration how many more miles have been added 
because some continue to creep in as designated segments of the 
interstate.
  But the States responded immediately. Eisenhower signed the bill into 
law June 29, 1956. By September, projects were under construction, 
because the States were ready. They knew they had to move ahead 
quickly. They knew we needed this system of divided, access-controlled, 
interconnecting highways that would theoretically allow you to travel 
from coast to coast or from border to border without a traffic light.
  Now, of course today that is not possible, but the principle of coast 
to coast and border to border travel was realized with the interstate 
highway system. We now have invested $128.9 billion, the Federal 
Government in partnership with the States, the Federal share an 
estimated $114.3 billion.
  And the marvel is that this system that represents 1 percent, just a 
little over 1 percent of the Nation's total public road mileage, 
carries 24 percent of all the highway travel, 40 percent of all travel 
by single-unit and combination trucks, 721 billion vehicle miles 
estimated to travel annually on the interstate highway system.
  It is the marvel of the world. Every year there are delegations from 
other countries who come here to meet with us on the Committee on 
Transportation and Infrastructure to ask how did you do it? How did you 
finance it? How do you keep it going? How do you keep it in good shape? 
It is an engineering marvel of the world.
  Washington, President Washington, General Washington's original 
version of a national road has now been fulfilled.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. PETRI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
Kansas (Mr. Moran).
  Mr. MORAN of Kansas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from 
Wisconsin for yielding me time.

[[Page 10990]]

  Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the resolution. I thank the 
gentleman from Michigan for his remarks. My particular interest in this 
legislation, in honoring the interstate transportation system, is the 
gentleman that has been mentioned in both remarks, and that is 
President Eisenhower, a fellow Kansan, and that historic moment on June 
29, 1956, when our President initiated the interstate highway system, 
is one that we memorialize in Kansas. We are very much a 
transportation-dependent State. We are land-locked in the middle of the 
country and roads and highways that lead elsewhere are lawfully 
important to us, particularly in the sense of commerce and moving 
industrial goods and agricultural commodities to market.
  But President Eisenhower, in his life and his involvement in the 
interstate system, is memorialized in Abilene, Kansas, his hometown, at 
the Eisenhower Center where photographs of the interstate construction 
are on display.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise this afternoon just to again remark about this 
remarkable individual, this former general, this former President of 
the United States, who had the foresight as a military leader and 
commander to bring the country together in regard to a transportation 
system that is so important to us today.
  So as a Kansan, I am here to pay tribute not only to the interstate 
system, but to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. I thank the committee 
and the gentleman for yielding me the time and for bringing this 
occasion to the House floor today. I urge my colleagues to support this 
historic occurrence that matters so much to Kansas and Americans in 
2006, 50 years later.
  Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Speaker, can I inquire how much time is remaining 
on our side?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 9 minutes remaining.
  Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member for the time. I 
too rise to commemorate the 50th anniversary, the great vision of 
President and GEN Dwight David Eisenhower, in terms of the national 
highway system.
  Fifty years. It is a long time. And now we need to look forward to 
the next half of the first century of the national highway system, and 
that is going to constitute quite a challenge. We, just after some 
lengthy struggle, finally reauthorized the highway program with 
SAFETEA-LU last summer.
  But what we see looming before us is a system that is starting to 
show its age. The cracked bridge problem in Oregon, failing bridges 
that were constructed actually with 1950s technology, just before we 
moved to prestressed concrete, the cast-in-place bridges, and other 
places around the country. The system is showing its age, the wear and 
tear, it is showing in places that it is not up to the task of current 
traffic volumes, and we need to look to the future of this great artery 
of commerce and transportation and recreation transport for Americans, 
daily commutes to work, to long trips to far-away places within this 
wonderful country.
  And that is a challenge that the chairman of the committee has begun 
to address with hearings to look at what the future sources of funding 
will be to meet even greater demands than the initial construction of 
this system.
  So I rise today both to commemorate the 50th anniversary and the 
visionaries who gave us this great system, and to join with my 
colleagues here who I know will be part of the solution about how it is 
going to be celebrated yet another 50 years from today as still an 
essential artery for commerce and transportation in the United States, 
because visionaries in this and some near subsequent Congresses 
recognized the need to continue to invest, reinvest and enhance the 
system.
  Mr. PETRI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New 
Jersey (Mr. Garrett).
  Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for the 
work on this legislation today and for making note of the anniversary 
of the interstate highway system, and as we also honor the work of our 
past President Eisenhower for his work to make sure that we bear the 
fruits of the system 50 years later.
  The 50th anniversary, we come here today on, but perhaps at this time 
it is appropriate also that standing on his shoulders we could do what 
he would like to see at this point in time as we move forward to the 
second half of that century to build upon what he has already done, to 
create a new system as we honor his work of the past.
  You know, this new system would be one in which we return some of the 
authority that we have now assumed on the Federal level back to the 
States to give them more discretion, basically to maximize the 
resources that are out there to create that great transportation system 
that we have in this country today. We could do that by returning 
primary transportation authority and responsibility and taxing 
authority back to the States.
  What would this do? This would free State transportation dollars from 
the Federal micromanagement that we have seen in the past and other 
budgetary pressures as well. It would let people back at the States, 
people who actually use these roads and bridges and tunnels and what 
have you, to help make the decisions to decide when, how and where and 
how they are going to finance them. They would make the decisions in 
the future how they would finance it, they would make the decisions how 
they would be regulated.
  You know, Mr. Speaker, I say in conclusion on this that we can honor 
this President who was indeed a great President for what he did for 
this country, but you know he was a greater general for all that he did 
for this country as well. And as a general he knew that sometimes the 
best decisions were made by those field commanders who were in the 
field. And I would just suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that now is the 
time to allow the States to assume command.
  Mr. PETRI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Mica).
  Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, first of all I want to thank 
the chairman of our Highway Subcommittee and the ranking member for 
their leadership and taking time to recognize our interstate system. It 
is one of our most important Federal assets, particularly as we pay 
tribute now to the 50th anniversary of our interstate system founded in 
1956. You have heard some references to President Eisenhower and his 
vision, a conservative Republican President in 1956.
  And actually some of the history of the idea and really the push for 
an interstate system was delivered by Vice President Nixon on July 12, 
1954.

                              {time}  1345

  Vice President Nixon was sent to the National Governors Conference in 
Lake George in New York, where the Governors had assembled. At that 
conference, in 1954, is where he proposed to all the Governors on 
behalf of President Eisenhower an interstate system.
  Now, you have to put this in perspective, folks, because the Federal 
budget was $71 billion in 1954, and he was proposing what would be 
probably a half a trillion dollar system and infrastructure project in 
that day. I am sure there must have been a couple of people who said, 
that is going to be a highway to nowhere.
  But, again, that is the kind of vision, that is the kind of foresight 
leadership that has meant so much to this Nation, particularly because 
our roads, our ports, our airports are all the heart of our 
infrastructure and allow us to do the business of our country. The 
business of our country is commerce.
  The current state of our interstate, I am sad to rise on the 50th 
anniversary and say that it is in disrepair. We heard Mr. DeFazio talk 
about it, but we are congested from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from 
sea to shining sea. Our interstate needs cry out for help. We need new 
financing. We need new projects and partnerships to move the business 
of this country on our interstate highways that are clogged.
  We do have two problems. One is financing. We are looking, instead of 
a trillion-dollar system that might have been proposed in 1954, 
trillions of dollars in infrastructure. The other thing

[[Page 10991]]

is regulatory reform. These projects get bogged down in delay. We need 
to speed up that process which in time can also have costs attached to 
it.
  So we need a vision like Richard Nixon proposed to the Governors 
association in Lake George in 1954. We need the vision of Dwight David 
Eisenhower, a conservative Republican President who proposed an 
interstate system which now links one end of this country and all 
corners of this Nation together.
  Again, this is important, not just looking at the past, but looking 
at the future and building on what we have inherited and the 
significant milestone and anniversary in the history of our interstate 
system.
  Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, what was unique about and continues to be unique about 
the interstate highway system is the Federal-State partnership that I 
referenced earlier, not public-private financing, not bond financing, 
as was proposed by Eisenhower's Secretary of Treasury and rejected by 
this House of Representatives, but a shared partnership, shared in 
financing 90 percent Federal, 10 percent State, shared in designing the 
route structure and the system to connect cities of 50,000 or greater 
population throughout this country, and to vastly enhance safety.
  What we are hearing since enactment of SAFETEA-LU that took the 
Federal highway program to new financing, $286.3 billion, is worry 
about availability of funds for the future and the surface 
transportation subcommittee, under the leadership of the gentleman from 
Wisconsin, has held several very thoughtful, productive, in-depth 
hearings on how not only the interstate, but how the total national 
highway system will be financed in the coming years.
  We also directed a commission to be established in the enactment of 
SAFETEA-LU to evaluate financing plans and to report back to the 
Congress on financing.
  I am not enamored of public-private financing issues. I am not 
enamored and am very much opposed to toll systems. They will not be a 
sustained program. Toll roads, toll bridges would not have brought us 
the interstate highway system that we have, we enjoy today that was a 
marvel of the industrial world.
  We need to sustain the highway trust fund, keep it a user-based 
system, and its inherent genius is that it never has nor can it or ever 
will it run a deficit. In contrast, the surplus funds in the highway 
trust fund for many years, from 1968 through 1998, were used to 
finance, to cover up deficits and finance other activities of the 
Federal Government. We must not allow that to recur, although it has.
  There is a surplus built up where the trust fund is being used to 
overshadow parts of the deficit. We must continue this sustained 
financing, self-supporting financing mechanism that does not run a 
deficit, that is user-based, that is broad-based, that is egalitarian 
in its application.
  For President Eisenhower, I would say history should and has already 
judged him very warmly, not only for his military leadership, but for 
what he has done for infrastructure and his support, not just passing, 
but from personal experience of the interstate highway system, which we 
have already discussed. But he signed into law the legislation 
establishing the St. Lawrence Seaway, providing for the U.S. 
partnership in Canada in opening the fourth sea coast of the United 
States, and creation of the FAA from the old Civil Aeronautics 
Authority, the first-ever construction funding to help build runways to 
accommodate the Jet Age in 1958, which was just dawning upon America.
  We didn't know what to do with this new-type civilian aircraft, but 
we knew and engineers knew that they had to have better runways, better 
taxiways, better terminals. President Eisenhower understood that and 
signed into law the legislation not only to create the Federal Aviation 
Administration and the old CAA, but also funding for the construction 
of the needed high-quality runways to accommodate the Jet Age.
  His legacy is really remarkable when we think back in perspective of 
what was needed to build the base of America, build our economic 
strength through our transportation infrastructure. What we celebrate 
in this legislation today is the accomplishment of that interstate 
highway system. It is a golden anniversary. As my colleague from 
Oregon, Mr. DeFazio, said, I am looking forward to the next 50 years, 
provided there is enough fuel to get us there.
  I join with my good friend and colleague from the State of Wisconsin 
(Mr. Petri). His leadership on the subcommittee of surface 
transportation has been superb in asking all Members to join in support 
of this legislation honoring the 50th anniversary of the interstate 
highway program.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. PETRI. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, just to conclude and build on the remarks of the dean of 
our committee, Mr. Oberstar, we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of 
a remarkable thing, a generation of Americans, some have said the 
Greatest Generation, that thought not just of itself, but of its 
country and its future and invested in the future.
  They were not borrowing against existing assets, against existing 
assets for current expenses. Instead, they were taxing themselves or 
paying fees themselves to build for the future to create a greater, 
productive enterprise here in the United States, one symbol of that, of 
what we are celebrating today, the 50th anniversary of the interstate 
highway system, the envy of the world, the backbone of the strongest 
economy in the world.
  I had the opportunity, as a much younger person, to meet Dwight 
Eisenhower on several occasions. I got out of school when I was in 
fourth grade to go down to the railway station in Fond du Lac, 
Wisconsin, one of the last whistle-stop campaign trips, and again once 
while in high school. These groups come from all over the country to 
visit their legislators and so on. I was with a group about to meet 
President Eisenhower in the Rose Garden in the White House.
  But in those days Presidents would often, not only Eisenhower, 
address the country. Not because there was some great crisis, but 
because they were always trying to rally people to a constructive 
cause. I remember him often speaking and saying as a former general who 
had known war that the true strength of a country was not embodied just 
in its army, though military, though that was a part of it; the true 
strength of a country was the moral fiber of its people and the 
productive capacity of its economy.
  If those were tended to, you could always build military strength out 
of that. But if you relied solely on military strength, you would have 
a hollow strength and would not have the sustainability that the strong 
economy and character of the people could provide to face any threat.
  Part of that strength is our interstate highway system. He led us to 
build it. It is our job to sustain and to renew it in future 
generations and, as a part of that, to commemorate its great 
contribution and success through this resolution. I urge all Members to 
join us in supporting it.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Petri) that the House suspend the rules 
and agree to the concurrent resolution, H. Con. Res. 372.
  The question was taken; and (two-thirds having voted in favor 
thereof) the rules were suspended and the concurrent resolution was 
agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

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