[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15317-15323]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          THE SUBURBAN AGENDA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Berkley). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. KIRK. Madam Speaker, as we begin the work of this Congress, we 
should follow several key principles. Our first principle, which should 
be the main work of this House, should be focused on key major issues 
before the country; the second principle is that we should be effective 
and enact solutions for the American people; and the third is that we 
should use this debate to build consensus to deploy bipartisan action 
on behalf of our country.
  One commentator looking at the record of the current Congress said 
that we are packing two days of debate into a four-day workweek. When 
you look at the record of this Congress so far, you can see that we 
have taken action on 13 bills to name a Federal building or post office 
or to build a road, we have enacted five bills to extend preexisting 
laws that were already on the books or passed last year, and we have 
passed eight bills cosponsored by a large number of Republicans or 
passed entirely without opposition. It is not an impressive record of 
work so far. And when you look at the actions of this Congress, you can 
see many pieces of legislation on which there has been no action in 
this Congress, despite a great need by the American people.
  One of the key pieces of legislation that passed in the 109th 
Congress was the Deleting Online Predators Act. This is a bill which 
would protect children from online predators, especially those who use 
social networking sites like MySpace.com, the number one website on the 
planet, where the Center For National Missing and Exploited Children 
reports that at any one time there are 50,000 sexual predators online 
trying to get the attention of children.
  This legislation, the Deleting Online Predators Act, passed the House 
of Representatives last year by a vote of 410-15. It stalled in the 
Senate, and as of yet in this Congress there has been no action 
whatsoever.
  In the last Congress, we also passed the Student and Teacher Safety 
Act. The Student and Teacher Safety Act was endorsed by the National 
Education Association and would say that for any registered full-time 
teacher in America, that they have complete discretion to search a book 
bag or a locker to make sure that the classroom was gun-free. As a 
former teacher myself and as someone who has worked with many teachers, 
I think it is appropriate for the Congress to use a teacher's full-time 
professional judgment to make sure that their classroom, their 
workplace, was a safe place to be, not just for teachers, but 
especially for children.
  When we have seen attacks in places like Winnetka, Illinois, or 
Columbine, or even Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia, we 
can see that there is a need to fully empower teachers with the right 
to search to make sure that their facilities are safe. The Student and 
Teacher Safety Act passed the House unanimously in the last Congress, 
was delayed in the United States Senate, and no action has been taken 
this year.
  The Congress in the last term also passed the Open Space and Farmland 
Preservation Act. We have seen throughout America, especially in 
suburban communities, rapidly disappearing green and open space. It is 
very important for us to defend the National Park System. In fact, I 
think the country should set a long-term goal of doubling the size of 
the National Park System. But we also want to make sure that we 
preserve green and open space close to where Americans live, in the 
suburbs.
  This act would establish new and local grant programs to help protect 
suburban open space. Without action by the Congress, in 20 years time, 
many of the areas where we currently see green and open space could be 
an unending series of strip malls, removing an ambience, hurting our 
environment and delaying our ability to take effective action on global 
climate change. This legislation passed unanimously in the last 
Congress, but this Congress has failed to take any action on it.
  One of the critical issues before this Congress is whether to pay 
Members of Congress who have been convicted of a felony and who have 
lost all of their appeals and beyond the shadow of a doubt stand 
condemned before the American people, and yet still collect a pension 
for their service in the Congress.
  We have seen Members of Congress, like Dan Rostenkowski or Bob Ney or 
Duke Cunningham or James Traficant, all completely convicted by a jury 
of their peers beyond the shadow of a doubt, Members of Congress who 
lost or did not exercise any of their appeals, who are currently or 
have served in jail, and yet today or in months past have collected 
their congressional pensions from the jailhouse ATM.
  In 1996, the Congress passed comprehensive reforms to kill the 
pension for any Member of Congress convicted of any one of 21 separate 
public integrity felonies. It was a bipartisan victory, with the full 
support of Speaker Hastert and Speaker Pelosi. This legislation, once 
again, was delayed and killed in the United States Senate.
  Today we have seen Members like Congressman Jefferson from Louisiana, 
indicted on 16 felony counts, and, but for this legislation, would have 
a right as a nine term Member of Congress, if convicted and if losing 
all of their appeals, to collect a $50,000 a year pension, even if 
convicted for betraying the very taxpayers that pay that pension.

                              {time}  2100

  The Congress in February passed very limited pension reform 
legislation which wouldn't kill the pension for a Member of Congress on 
conviction of 21 felonies, but instead would only kill that pension for 
conviction of any one of four felonies. And basic felonies like wire 
fraud and income tax invasion would still allow the payment of a 
congressional pension.
  Despite limited action by the Congress in January both in the House 
and Senate, legislation to kill the pension of a Member of Congress 
convicted of a felony has been completely stalled, completely stalled 
in February, in March, in April, in May, and now in the first weeks of 
June with no action and potential actions against other Members of 
Congress convicted of a felony.
  In my view, the hundreds of thousands of dollars paid each year to 
Members of Congress convicted of a felony are a travesty and should be 
stopped by the elected representatives of the American people to defend 
the taxpayer.
  All of this details the lack of a substantive agenda by this Congress 
which should be put before the American people working on issues that 
they care about, on key challenges before their families. As I have 
outlined, beyond naming some Post Offices, designating some roads, and 
passing legislation on which there is little to no debate, this 
Congress has not done much yet and right now is falling beneath its 
potential as a great deliberative body of one of the world's premier 
democracies.
  What I would like to do tonight is lay out a new agenda, an agenda 
that would be meaningful to many Americans and taking on key problems 
before them.
  This action was proffered before in the enactment of the suburban 
agenda last year which took action on a number of key items like the 
School Safety Acquiring Faculty Excellence Act authored by the 
gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Porter). That bill basically took up the 
issue of Jessica Lunsford who was killed by someone employed by a 
school who had never had a background check. Despite his clear and 
demonstrable criminal record, this man was

[[Page 15318]]

allowed to be in close contact with children leading to a tragic 
result.
  The School Safety Acquiring Faculty Excellence Act passed the 
Congress and allowed every school in the country access to national 
criminal databases in order to ensure that every activity was taken to 
make sure that people who are put in close contact with children did 
not represent a clear and present danger to their safety.
  The Congress also took on the issue of open space by passing the 
Charitable Donations For Open Space Act. This improved the treatment of 
conservation easements and other open space donations critical to 
preserving green and open space in the suburbs.
  We also looked at the issue of helping families with expanding 
college costs by expanding permanently the charter of so-called 529 
college savings account.
  In my home State of Illinois, these are called ``bright start 
accounts.'' And by permanently extending these tax deferred savings 
plans, we helped Americans with their college savings.
  With those pieces of legislation, and the ones I talked about earlier 
which passed the House in an overwhelming bipartisan fashion but were 
killed in the Senate, we laid out a work plan for the Congress strongly 
supported by the American people with overwhelming bipartisan support 
on the Republican and Democratic side.
  But as I detailed, key pieces of legislation remain to be enacted 
like the Deleting Online Predators Act, like the Two Student and 
Teacher Safety Act, like the Open Space and Farmland Preservation Act. 
Persistence is a value strongly rewarded in the United States Congress, 
and following on that value, we have laid out a new suburban agenda for 
this year. The suburban agenda outlines a number of key pieces of 
legislation that directly meets the needs of American people in 
bipartisan ways to make sure that we are working on the key issues of 
the day and move the ball effectively, building bipartisan consensus.
  Key items on the suburban agenda include the Gang Elimination Act by 
Representative Reichert, which looks at a key problem in the United 
States which is of internationally connected drug gangs representing 
major franchises in criminal activity, moving to the suburbs, 
potentially overwhelming suburban law enforcement communities. While 
large cities like New York or Chicago have large gang intelligence 
units and years of experience in dealing with international drug gangs, 
drug gangs that are now moving to the suburbs can quickly overwhelm a 
small police force like the one in Waukegan, Illinois, that is facing a 
criminal empire that comprises thousands of potential gang members, and 
links to a number of countries.
  The Gang Elimination Act calls for the Justice Department to identify 
the top three national drug gangs and lay out a 4-year strategy for 
taking those drug gangs down. This is something entirely appropriate, 
to lay out a mandate for whoever is our next President of the United 
States to make sure that we remove this threat to the American people.
  If you added up all of the documented gang members who are in the 
United States, it would total the size of the seventh largest army on 
the planet. The average gang shooter in my State of Illinois is in the 
7th grade, and this is a threat that the Federal Government in 
Washington can help law enforcement deal with.
  A second piece of the suburban agenda is the 401 Kids Family Savings 
Account Act by the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Biggert). We look at 
key figures like 70 percent of Americans fear it will be more difficult 
for their children to remain in the middle class than it was for them. 
You have to simply ask the question: How likely or how easy will it be 
for your children to afford the very house that they are being raised 
in?
  Access to college in our view is a critical step to making sure that 
your children have a chance to be full and successful members of the 
middle class. When we have seen universities like George Washington 
University now totaling $50,000 a year for tuition, we can see a 
substantial roadblock in the way of the future success of one's son or 
daughter.
  The 401 Kids Family Savings Account, and previous legislation modeled 
after it, would allow every American to build success upon success. One 
of the best things that the Congress has done is to allow every 
American working with the opportunity to establish a 401(k) retirement 
program to build tax deferred savings for their families.
  Tens of millions of Americans have now established those 401(k) 
programs, and we would like every American to have a chance, an 
opportunity, to establish a 401 kids account for their new son or 
daughter, from the first day they are born, tax deferred savings for 
college, for the first-time purchase of a home or for starting a new 
business.
  This would not only help boost the savings of the United States, but 
it would be a dramatic way to upgrade the financial education of 
American children because these 401 kids account statements would come 
into parents and allow each one of them to sit down with their son or 
daughter and see how a disciplined pattern of savings and investment 
could build a lifetime of good habits for that child.
  One of the other pieces of legislation is the Health Insurance For 
Life Act by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Dent). The Health 
Insurance For Life Act would basically look at a key problem in today's 
America which is that the average American family, especially in the 
suburbs, will have seven jobs over their lifetime, and we still have 
thousands of Americans exercising their COBRA rights to continue their 
health care coverage. Under Federal law if you have been covered by an 
employer-provided health care plan, if you lose your job, you can still 
continue health care and insurance for your family for at least 18 
months at your own expense. But many Americans hit the end of that 18-
month limit and they will not be allowed to have a safe place to cover 
their family without extension of these rights.
  The Health Insurance Portability Act, otherwise known as the Health 
Insurance For Life Act of 2007, would allow families at their own cost 
to continue their health care insurance so there is always in a seven-
job career a safe place for their family to be covered. And there would 
always be an option to maintain that coverage.
  As I mentioned before, one of the key parts of our agenda is the 
Deleting Online Predators Act because throughout America we have not 
seen a reduction in people who would seek to use the new and powerful 
tools of the web and the Internet, and especially social networking 
sites, to reach out and attack children. It is already common knowledge 
through the culture, and especially through shows like Dateline NBC, 
that we have seen repeat offenders, even on the same network news show.
  The suburban agenda also includes other key items. The one at the 
bottom is very important for the mid-21st century, and that is the 
Senior Safety For Dignity Act. The Senior Safety For Dignity Act 
updates a set of bill of rights for Americans who need nursing home 
care to ensure that they maintain their dignity. This is legislation 
put forward by Mrs. Ginny Brown-Waite of Florida.
  The Senior Safety For Dignity Act is very important because in our 
country the baby boom is aging. The first baby boomer collects a 
retirement check in 2009. The number of retirees in America will go 
from 35 million to almost 90 million, and the need for nursing home 
care in our country will grow. We need to upgrade the bill of rights 
for Americans in nursing homes because of the large expansion in 
capability that we will need in our country and to make sure that the 
quality of care is maintained.
  One of the experts in this Congress is my colleague, a physician and 
a Member from Georgia, Dr. Price, who can comment on a number of these 
key issues.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. It really is a privilege for me to come to the 
floor tonight and work with you, Mr. Kirk, for a few moments and to 
explain to our colleagues here in the House and to the Speaker about 
the suburban agenda, a very important area. I appreciate

[[Page 15319]]

your leadership in this area. You have been steadfast in making certain 
that these issues, and they may not be top-tier issues, they may not be 
headlines in all of our newspapers, but your district, like my 
district, I have a suburban district outside of Atlanta, and folks 
there are concerned about what folks all across this Nation are 
concerned about.
  Mr. KIRK. We have seen consistently that while events in Iran or 
Iraq, while issues concerning global climate change, and of course the 
immigration bill in the Senate are all front-burner issues, but for 
American families, education, health care, protecting the environment 
and saving for college are important issues.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. That really is true. When I talk with groups at 
home, and once we get past the hot button, the headline issues of Iraq 
and immigration and the like, people are concerned about education for 
their kids and they are concerned about health care for themselves and 
their parents. They are concerned about security and quality of life 
issues in their community to make certain that there is going to be 
green space and there are places where can take their kids.
  I was sitting in my office and I had to come down and join you. These 
are not Republican issues or Democrat issues, these are American 
issues.

                              {time}  2115

  They're issues that I think all of the House can rally around. And 
you mentioned the health care issue, and as a physician, I understand 
as well as anybody I suspect about the importance of being able to 
provide health insurance for families.
  We live in a world now where jobs aren't constant. It used to be that 
your dad and my dad and other folks, they'd get a job and they'd be 
with that same company 25, 30, 35 years, and they'd get a gold watch 
and they'd move on and they'd take that health care with them. Now, 
that's not the case. Our children will have 7, 8, 9, 10 different jobs, 
10 different employers and oftentimes having themselves as being self-
employed.
  Mr. KIRK. One solution would be to have the government take over 
everyone's health care and to make sure we take action that breaks the 
link between you and your physician and insert a large bureaucracy that 
currently runs the post office and now put it in charge of your health 
care.
  Many of us think that that may not be the way to go. The way to go is 
to make sure that for many Americans, they like the health insurance 
plan that they're on, and then they would like to carry that through 
the five to seven jobs that they will have in the 21st century.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Exactly. And that hits the nail right on the 
head. People want to know that their health care is going to be 
consistent and they have the ability, along with their physicians, to 
make health care decisions, which is why the Health Insurance 
Portability Act that Congressman Dent is reintroducing is so important.
  It makes it so, as I understand, that if an individual changes jobs, 
that they're able to provide that COBRA insurance for as long as 
needed. So it makes it so they can continue that COBRA insurance for a 
much longer period of time, to tide them over until they're with 
another employer or they can be able to provide for individual 
insurance on their own.
  It's not the be-all-and-end-all, but it is a particularly important 
piece of the puzzle that makes it so that people can maintain their own 
health insurance, and I know that you agree with that.
  Mr. KIRK. The need here is to remove the fear that somehow a loss of 
a job or discovery of a preexisting condition will deny Americans and 
their families health care insurance. What we want to make sure is you 
already have a right under Federal law to extend your health care 
insurance for 18 months. Now, we're not talking about extending it 
indefinitely, because when an American reaches age 65, you're going to 
be covered by Medicare, and if you fall below the poverty line, you're 
going to be covered by Medicaid.
  But for large numbers of people, especially looking at an unsure job 
market, we want to have them assured by this piece of legislation that 
there's always a safe place for their family to be covered.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Exactly, and that gets to the number of 
uninsured that we have in this Nation. There are 45, 46, 47 million 
individuals who at some point during this calendar year will be without 
health insurance. Those aren't the folks that are on Medicaid. Those 
aren't the folks that are on Medicare. Those are the folks that are 
between jobs oftentimes, who are unable to continue the COBRA insurance 
that they ought to be able to, and this is what this bill would do. It 
would really, really solve one of the major problems that we have with 
working Americans who do indeed want to provide health insurance for 
families.
  So I commend you for your leadership on this issue and so many 
others.
  The Senior Safety Indignity Act is extremely important. I served in 
the State legislature, as I know many folks in this chamber did, and 
every single year we would hear horror stories about problems of health 
care workers in the nursing home or extended care facility arena.
  And in Georgia what we tried to do was a similar kind of thing to 
make certain that background checks were available, and this would 
provide that kind of security and that kind of important information 
for individuals in the senior centers so that we know that the folks 
who were going to be assisting seniors and caring for seniors have the 
appropriate skills and the appropriate background in order to do that.
  Mr. KIRK. The gentleman is one of the most respected physicians here 
in the Congress. The difficulty before this country is that the baby 
boom began when the troops came home in 1945. So, for an American born 
in that key year, you're going to be collecting a retirement check in 
2009 when you hit your 65th birthday. There are so many Americans that 
then enter the retirement cohort and that may need nursing home care. 
That is the critical reason why this Congress may have to work on fewer 
bills naming post offices and designating roads and more on making sure 
that we maintain quality senior care as the baby boom generation 
retires.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I appreciate that, and the point that you're 
making is so vital for all of us in this chamber to appreciate, and 
that is, that we've now been in session 5\1/2\ months, and we've passed 
and sent to the President about 28 to 30 pieces of legislation. Almost 
the majority of those are naming a building or naming a post office or 
renaming a building or renaming a post office.
  And these issues here, if you look down the list of those seven 
issues, from the gang elimination to teacher and student safety, to 
other education issues with 401 Kids Family Savings Act or the Health 
Insurance Act that we talked about, the Deleting Online Predators Act, 
open space, Senior Safety Act, these are the issues that are of vital 
importance to the American people all across this Nation. These are 
issues that, frankly, ought to get the vast majority of Members of this 
chamber on both sides of the aisle's support so that we could move 
forward with real legislation for real people.
  Mr. KIRK. I take the gentleman's point. When you look at our 
legislative work, in 5\1/2\ months, in such promise with the new 
Congress, what we've done, these are all great Americans who should be 
honored, but these actions should not be the sum total of what the 
Congress has done.
  We've named the Gale McGee Post Office; the Rush Hudson Limbaugh, 
Sr., Post Office; Scipio Jones Post Office; the Lane Evans, one of my 
colleagues from Illinois, Post Office. All good Americans that should 
be honored, but this should not be the sum total of the work of the 
Congress.
  The country witnessed a tragedy in Blacksburg, Virginia, with the 
attack on Virginia Tech. A number of experienced educators saw some 
warning signs, as we saw before at Columbine High School, as we saw 
before in the Winnetka school system when Laurie Dann attacked it.

[[Page 15320]]

  The Student and Teacher Safety Act is common-sense legislation that 
this Congress should take up. It says to any full-time teacher, you 
know the warning signs, you know your children that are in the 
classrooms, and we want to make sure that you don't have to fear a 
trial lawyer and you don't have to get a warrant. If you suspect that a 
threat to your classroom, to your kids has come into a locker or in 
through a bookbag, and now the classroom is a dangerous place, you have 
complete authority to remove that danger.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. And you're right. The incident at Virginia Tech 
was so astounding and so horrific for all of us to witness, and our 
hearts and our prayers still go out to those families.
  But I understand, as I know you do, that there were individuals who 
were reticent to bring that out into the open before it happened, bring 
that individual who apparently committed that awful, awful tragedy out 
into the open for fear of potential liability.
  That's no way for a Nation to live. That's no way for a responsible 
people to have to operate, to have to think in the back of their mind, 
well, can I do what's right or do I have to worry about an attorney, do 
I have to worry about a lawsuit.
  This is the kind of legislation that we, as a Congress, if we adopted 
these seven items, I suspect that the American people would say this is 
a Congress that has acted appropriately, and we would all be able to 
stand proud and with that poster and present it to our constituents and 
say this is a responsible agenda for the American people.
  My concern right now over the next three weeks, as you well know, 
we're entering appropriations time. It is very likely that none of 
these things, none of them, will be even brought to the floor during 
this period of time and that we'll get bound up in the process of 
spending hard-earned taxpayer money, trying to be responsible in that 
endeavor. But these issues that are supported by 60, 70, 80 percent of 
the American people, we ought to be able to take those off the table 
right away.
  Mr. KIRK. I'm worried, too. The gentleman can talk about Atlanta. In 
Chicago, in the Chicagoland area, we are now seeing a great expansion 
of large national gang franchises like the Latin Kings, like the 
Gangster Disciples, et cetera, moving into the suburbs. A suburban 
police department has far fewer resources than a big city like Chicago 
and Atlanta to fight these, and so that's where the Federal Government 
can come in.
  We're particularly concerned about a gang that some Americans have 
heard about called Mara Salvatrucha, MS-13, which seems to be 
particularly violent and one in which there are tantalizing clues that 
there may have been discussions with terrorist organizations with links 
overseas because the leaders of MS-13 don't have obviously any 
patriotic feeling toward the United States, and if they could link up 
to a terrorist organization for money, they would.
  In the city of Chicago, we have now seen these gangs moving into 
places like Waukegan or Aurora or Joliet. I don't know about Atlanta, 
but it seems like particularly appropriate when you see that the 
average gang shooter for these international drug gangs is in the 7th 
grade.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. We have similar experiences in the city of 
Atlanta and then in the surrounding area. I don't represent any of the 
city of Atlanta itself. My district abuts the city of Atlanta, but I 
have small cities, some as small as 8- to 12,000 residents. I have some 
as large as 80- to 100,000, and then some unincorporated county areas.
  But the resources that they have with which to fight gangs aren't the 
kind of resources that large metropolitan cities have, large urban 
areas have, and this bill, introduced by Representative Dave Weichert 
who himself is a hero in the law enforcement arena, having been the 
sheriff out in Washington State.
  Mr. KIRK. With the Green River killer.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Apprehended the Green River killer, and such a 
hero he is, and we ought to as a House of Representatives and as a 
Nation recognize that this Act, this would allow police departments and 
law enforcement officials all across this Nation to know that there are 
resources being brought to bear to identify, like MS-13, to identify 
those gangs that are the greatest threat to our communities, the 
greatest threat to our constituents all across this Nation, that there 
is a unified strategy that is going to be brought to bear in order to 
make it so that we prevail in this war.
  Mr. KIRK. I'm particularly worried because in the recent failed 
Senate immigration bill there was an amendment put forward to deny 
documented members of international drug gangs the chance to enter the 
pathway to citizenship that the legislation proposed. That amendment 
failed.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. This immigration bill that was just in the 
Senate last week, many of us had great concerns over, but are you 
telling me that there was a portion of the bill that it would allow 
gang members who had been convicted of a felony, that if they were 
found to be illegal, that they couldn't be deported; is that what you 
are saying?
  Mr. KIRK. The proposed amendment would have denied any documented 
member of an international drug gang from the chance to apply for the 
pathway to citizenship that it proposed, and that amendment was 
defeated 51-46.
  When we came together and proposed the Gang Elimination Act, we at 
least looked at the several hundred thousand documented gang members in 
the United States and said how do we deal with this problem.
  Sometimes I have to have the concern that this Congress may take 
action in which that number would increase, making the problem even 
worse by action of the Federal Government. That's why I think 
refocusing our work for actions beyond naming of post offices to 
looking at how small suburban communities are being overwhelmed by 
large gangs with international links, some of whom may add to members 
if the wrong legislation should pass the Congress, that is an issue 
that should be squarely put before this Congress.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I couldn't agree more, and there was such great 
promise for this new Congress, this new majority, not of which we're a 
part of, but this new majority that was swept in and began in January 
and all sorts of wonderful promises about great legislation and being 
responsive to the concerns of Americans all across the Nation. And what 
we've had is a legislative agenda that hasn't done that.
  And so you and I stand here tonight inviting our colleagues on both 
sides of the aisle to embrace this suburban agenda, embrace an agenda 
that 70, 80 percent of the American people would support with common-
sense pieces of legislation that address security, that address health 
care, that address education, that address caring for our seniors, that 
address green space. It just astounds me that we can't get that kind of 
support on both sides.

                              {time}  2130

  Mr. KIRK. It's okay to criticize, if we find that in 5\1/2\ months we 
haven't done as much as we had hoped. But Americans, I think, at our 
core, look for solutions. This Congress has 18 months to go. So it's 
not enough just to criticize. You then have to put forward a positive 
agenda of not only saying we haven't done enough, and maybe we should 
not just consider 13 bills to name Federal property and 5 bills to 
extend preexisting law, but work at these problems. Then the question 
is, what is your agenda?
  To date, I haven't seen a comprehensive agenda for the other side. I 
know that a vast majority of Republicans and Democrats will join on 
this agenda. When we look, we have a critical problem with online 
predators, at any one time, 50,000 online predators contacting kids. 
There are hundreds of contacts in each month, in my own congressional 
district.
  Now, people like Julie Wachtheim, the President of Wheeling High 
School, who, minutes after putting her class photo on a new MySpace 
page was contacted by a sexual predator using an advanced search engine 
that obviously

[[Page 15321]]

showed us that he was contacting not just her, but hundreds of other 
young girls, in an attempt to find someone. I am not sure if that is 
the case in the Atlanta suburbs as well, but I think this is beginning 
to be a real threat to Americans. This was not part of our growing up.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. No, absolutely.
  Mr. KIRK. The Internet was largely invented in 1996 after you and I 
had both completed college. But this is part of our children's growing 
up. I think this calls for congressional action.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I appreciate that. It's not that the Internet 
is bad, it's just that this is a different world, and the Internet is 
now like Main Street of 20 or 30 years ago, where you would have to be 
wary of strangers, and our parents told us about strangers on Main 
Street and how to deal with them. It's much more difficult when those 
strangers are able to come literally into your own home and entice 
young people who may not have their guard up as much.
  We have story after story, time after time you will hear law 
enforcement officers talk about the challenges that they have in even 
getting young people to admit that, in fact, they have been susceptible 
or been approached by this kind of behavior. But it is rampant out 
there. It's absolutely rampant. There is not any reason that we ought 
not to be able to pass some commonsense legislation like the Deleting 
Online Predators Act like you have introduced in this House of 
Representatives, which is something that ought to be supported by 70, 
80, 90 percent of our colleagues here, something that ought to go, 
frankly, in front of the appropriations battles we are about to wage 
over the next 3 to 6 weeks as we work as diligently as we can to 
responsibly spend hard-earned taxpayer money. But this is something 
that we ought to be able to coalesce behind.
  Mr. KIRK. I don't know of a single community in my district that 
hasn't been touched by this tragedy yet.
  What we are talking about is laying out a new set of rules of the 
road in the 21st century to protect children, like advising parents 
through the Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade 
Commission, that growing up in America today means having the computer 
in the living room rather than the child's bedroom, with a casual look 
and walk-bys by the parent so you can see who is trying to contact your 
kids.
  Like one Pennsylvania mother said, in the 21st century I have a 
complete right to all of my children's passwords to make sure that I 
know who is trying to contact my young, minor child, and then to make 
sure that there are protections at school and in libraries. In my 
district, we have found some predators who are using library computers, 
school staff that were using library computers to contact kids, to make 
sure that our schools do not enable virtual hunting grounds to find 
kids. All of this is exactly what the Congress should work on, a new 
technology, which has an unintended effect of creating a new danger, 
and then Congress stepping in to make sure that danger is removed. We 
are not working on that right now.
  With the eight bills cosponsored by Republicans or passed without 
opposition, five extending preexisting public law or order, and 
thirteen to name Federal property or to build a road, that action has 
not been taken. Action has not also been taken to kill the pension for 
a Member of Congress convicted of a felony.
  We have just seen one of our colleagues indicted for 16 felonies. We 
have seen some of our colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, convicted, 
and yet they are paid their pension by the very taxpayers they have 
betrayed.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. That's the kind of perpetuation of business as 
usual here in Washington, that the folks at home just say what on earth 
are you doing when an individual can be convicted of a felony, and 
continue to get their pension, they just shake their head. They throw 
their hands up in the air, and they say, what are you doing? Why can't 
you do something responsible, which is why this positive agenda, 
suburban agenda, which is all things again that the vast majority of 
Members of this House ought to be supporting, which is why we ought to 
be pushing that forward.
  I, for the life of me, I can't answer why we ought not to be able to 
deal with these things before we launch into the battles over the 
appropriations bills.
  Do you have any sense as to why the majority party won't allow these 
kinds of bills to come to the floor?
  Mr. KIRK. I just worry. Right now, the Congress took very limited 
action to kill the pensions for Members of Congress back on January 23, 
but then see stalled action. We have taken no action on ethics reform, 
killing pensions for Members of Congress convicted of felonies in 
February, no action in March, no action in April, no action in May, no 
action now for the first few weeks of June.
  You worry because senior Members of Congress have the largest 
pensions, and they are in charge of this place. Why is it that we are 
delaying action on this critical reform?
  I always thought that the most important thing about such a reform is 
to prevent crime. You know, if you kill the pension for a Member of 
Congress convicted of a felony, you almost turn their family members, 
their spouses, into adjuncts of the Ethics Committee, because they are 
worried about their future retirement income. That's as it should be, 
keeping everyone on the straight and narrow.
  The State of Illinois is not seen as the cleanest State in the Union. 
Yet even under our State law, we kill the pension for public officials 
convicted of a felony, like even Governor Ryan, who just lost his 
appeal to do that.
  I worry, though, that we haven't taken any of these actions. We have 
stalled actions on all of these items, with an overwhelming number of 
Republicans, Democrats and independents, wanting action on health care 
and making sure that we can afford college, and so far this Congress 
has fallen short of its potential.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Not only fallen short, but I would suggest to 
my good friend from Illinois that the majority party has seemed to 
raise hiding and decreasing transparency and accountability in a very 
important area to a huge degree, and that is the area of earmarks, the 
area of special projects, pork projects, special projects for Members.
  What we have just learned in the past week or so is that the 
Appropriations chair has said well, we won't be debating any of these 
earmarks, these special projects on the floor of the House. We won't be 
debating them. What we will do is parachute them in, air drop them in a 
conference committee so that there can be no light, no sunshine on 
these earmarks.
  That's the kind of priority that concerns me about this majority 
party, that they have a priority for decreasing transparency and 
decreasing accountability for spending, but they also, by the same 
token, will not address the concerns of the vast majority of Americans 
all across our Nation.
  In the area of security, in the area of education, in the area of 
health care, in the area of senior security, in the area of green space 
in our communities, a wonderful, positive agenda that we have put 
before this Congress and, in fact, it's getting no visibility here on 
floor of the House.
  Mr. KIRK. I am just worried, too, because we have now talked about 
how George Washington University is talking about $50,000 for 1-year of 
tuition, the first university in the country to break that mark. So you 
look at a 4-year bachelor's degree at $200,000, post tax, far beyond 
the ability of a middle-class family to reach that level.
  So what should the Congress do? Should we have the government take 
over all college education? Should the government control prices? 
Should we have more controls from the House of Representatives so that 
those who run every other government bureaucracies now run every 
education institution in the country? I would say no. I would say that 
we have had too many shortages and too much waste if a bureaucracy can 
take control of a college.
  On the other hand, could we all join together to increase savings and 
investment for each American family to

[[Page 15322]]

build success upon success, the 401(k) program, by authorizing each 
American family the day that your son or daughter is born to establish 
a 401 kids tax-deferred savings account.
  When we look at how this Congress can sometimes change culture, we 
have seen that 401(k), an obscure section of the IRS code, has now 
become part of the lexicon off our country because of how successful it 
is.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Exactly.
  Mr. KIRK. We had a time, probably, when there was a good cigar 
salesman out there that made it de rigeur that every young father would 
buy cigars for everyone when they had a new child. That is probably 
part of the 20th century and not part of the 21st century.
  So what is it that we can do that becomes part of the cultural 
experience of every American when their son or daughter is born? One of 
the things we can do is pass this bill so that every dad on their way 
home, or mom, if she is so inclined, can stop by some sort of financial 
institution or a savings and loan or a credit union, and establish a 
401Kids account for their son or daughter.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Wouldn't that be wonderful. What a grand 
legacy. The bill you are referring to is H.R. 87, primary sponsorship 
by Judy Biggert. It's something that's near and dear to our hearts in 
Georgia. As you may recall, Senator Paul Coverdale, the late Paul 
Coverdale, served in the United States Senate. One of his goals was to 
make certain that there was an ability by all families to be able to 
afford a college education for their children. He fought as hard as he 
could during his tenure in the United States Senate to make certain 
that happened.
  This is an extension of that. This is a wonderful, would provide a 
wonderful opportunity for families to put aside a little money in a 
tax-free mechanism to be able to cover college education for their 
children.
  Mr. KIRK. In the State of Illinois, under section 529, which is a 
charter that allows States to set up college savings program, we call 
them Bright Start accounts. What does Georgia call its college saving 
program?
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. We have the HOPE Scholarship savings plan in 
Georgia, which is remarkably successful. But there is no reason we 
ought not extend it because what we provide in Georgia is you can't use 
that money out of state.
  Mr. KIRK. Right. So the problem we have now is that we have not fully 
taken advantage of the successes that we have already put in place, 
that Congress lets each State establish a college charter savings plan 
like HOPE Scholarship in Georgia or Bright Start in Illinois. But 
these, each State program, has restrictions and the inability to 
transfer freely throughout the country.
  One of the great things about the 401(k) program is that it allows, 
not only, for Americans to transfer their accounts between employers, 
but no difficulty to transfer between States. Should not we give that 
opportunity to each young son or daughter in America so that we can 
save and invest for college?
  We know, already, with $70 billion invested in HOPE scholarships or 
in Bright Start accounts throughout the country, that this has been a 
great success. How much more of a success will we have if we simply 
gave the full national charter to 401Kids accounts. I come out of a 
military background, if you are transferred, or you are part of a large 
organization, you may live in several States and have the ability to 
fully transfer these amounts in a national program, bottom line, to 
make sure that there is much more money available for your son or 
daughter to be in college.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Absolutely. What a great template to use. What 
a wonderful model with the 401(k) program, which is familiar to 
millions, tens of millions, if not over 100 million Americans, who have 
some type of 401(k) program. They understand how simple it is, how easy 
it is, how almost painless it is to be able to plan for the future to 
put that money aside, and to have a vehicle that models itself off of 
that, after that, as the 401Kids program would do, to allow moms and 
dads all across this Nation to be able to put a little money aside on a 
regular basis. When Junior grows up, they will recognize at the age of 
15 or 16 that he or she indeed will be able to have the ability to go 
to the college of his or her choice and realize their his or her 
potential and their dreams.
  Mr. KIRK. We have now seen also with the 401(k) program a change in 
how Americans look at the economy for the future. There was a time in 
which most Americans owned no stock and saw the New York Stock Exchange 
or the other exchanges as something far away, not part of their lives, 
and maybe for rich people only.
  The 401(k) program changed all of that.

                              {time}  2145

  And so now we have tens of millions of Americans who are investors, 
and changing that one cultural attribute that we maybe shouldn't have, 
which is looking too much for the short term, and helping the whole 
country change into a new investor mentality, to invest for the long 
haul, to look at high technology and other investments to see that 
savings can be built up in a far more substantial way, beyond just a 
savings account at a bank if they can be put into long term stocks and 
bonds.
  These are habits that have been built for adults, but have not been 
inculcated in children; that if we start 401 kids accounts with your 
son or daughter's name on that account, that as your child gets to be 
10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 years old, it gives an education opportunity to 
say to your daughter, look at what we've done in just the last year and 
how much this has gone up, hoping that this will set an example for the 
rest of her life, making sure that she has successful habits to save 
and invest for the future.
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. What a wonderful vision and what a wonderful 
dream. We've all heard the stories of the entrepreneur individual with 
a significant amount of resources who went into a community and said to 
a high school or a middle school class that normally wouldn't 
necessarily have the resources to go to college, any of you that 
complete your high school education in a way that would allow you to 
enter a college, I'll fund that college education. This would transfer 
that, and those kids then do extremely well, so much better than their 
peers in other classes who haven't been given that assurance.
  This is the kind of program that would give that assurance to every 
young child all across this Nation, to allow their parents to be able 
to put aside a little bit of money, a little resources over the 
lifetime of their child so that they can then afford the college 
education and open the dreams for each and every child.
  Mr. KIRK. Just to sum up the key principles that I think we should 
follow, this Congress, this House should work on the major issues 
before the American people and especially their families, Number 1.
  Number 2, we should take effective action that enacts solutions to 
problems that American families face.
  And Number 3, that we should work to build consensus to sustain 
bipartisan action. We should not operate this House in a way that, as 
one person said, packs 2 days of debate into a 4-day work week; that 
this House can do much more than name Post Offices or designate roads; 
that we are here not just criticizing, we're laying out an agenda that, 
based on the last Congress, we know an overwhelming number of Democrats 
and Republicans will join, like the Deleting On-Line Predators Act that 
passed 410-15; like the Student and Teacher Safety Act endorsed by the 
National Education Association that passed unanimously; like the Open 
Space and Farm Land Preservation Act that also passed unanimously.
  If we can join together on these items, key pieces of legislation, 
already bipartisan cosponsors laid out, I think we would help this 
Congress reach more of the potential than currently in 5 months of work 
it's failed to do.
  But to conclude, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

[[Page 15323]]


  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. I know that our time is short, but I just want 
to commend you once again for your you leadership in this area. These 
are issues that concern all Americans, issues of education, issues of 
safety, issues of security, issues of health care, and they are issues 
that the vast majority of us ought to support.
  So I challenge our friends on both sides of the aisle to step forward 
and support a positive agenda for the American people. It's outlined 
right here.
  I want to commend you for your leadership, and I appreciate the 
opportunity to join you tonight.
  Mr. KIRK. I thank you. And I commend everyone, that if you'd like to 
learn more about the suburban agenda, you can go on to our website, 
www.house.gov/Kirk for an outline of the suburban agenda. This is not 
just an us-only agenda. This is an agenda that we hope will be matched 
from the other side. But refocusing our work on health care, on 
education, on environmental protection and on economic growth, so that 
this Congress can realize it's full potential far better than in the 
first 5 months of our activity.

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