[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 20]
[House]
[Page 28371]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          PROTECTING CHILDREN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Franks) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, most of my adult life has been 
related to children's issues. Before I came to Congress, I had the 
privilege of serving in the Arizona House of Representatives as 
chairman of the Subcommittee on Child Protection and Family 
Preservation.
  Later, I was director of the Arizona Governor's Office for Children, 
which had oversight of all of the State's programs for children in 
Arizona.
  I was also chairman of both the Arizona State Children's Cabinet and 
the Interagency Study Committee on Children and AIDS.
  And for another 4\1/2\ years, Mr. Speaker, I had the privilege of 
being the executive director of the Arizona Family Research Institute.
  I later wrote the Arizona scholarship tax credit legislation, a 
version of which has now gone through five States and serves to 
scholarship more than 100,000 low-income children who go to a school of 
their parents' choice.
  I also wrote Arizona's child obscenity and pornography bill, which 
became a national precedent and protects children from the insidious 
harm of both adult and child pornography.
  Mr. Speaker, the reason I say those things is that there is one 
critical component of protecting innocent children I have learned over 
and over again; and that is if you desire to protect children, you must 
protect the family. Because either families, or government bureaucrats, 
will ultimately make the decisions about nearly all aspects of our 
children's lives.
  The proposed SCHIP legislation funds and empowers government 
bureaucracies and not families. It is a quintessential example of a 
misguided and overreaching program that is an entitlement program and 
affixes itself to a funding mechanism that is a declining revenue 
source. Not only does it place this generation of children into a 
Hillary-care, government-run health care system, but it also places the 
burden of cost on the next generation of children, Mr. Speaker, and 
those many times who will be forced to pay for it will be those making 
less money than those benefiting from the program.
  Mr. Speaker, Americans care desperately about their children. And, 
unfortunately, in this SCHIP debate, liberal Democrats are exploiting 
America's love for children for temporary political gain. The majority 
has cast this entire debate in terms of Republicans being against 
children and Democrats being for them. For a Republican like myself who 
has spent their entire life dedicated to children's issues, it is an 
equation that I have to reject in the strongest possible terms. And it 
is especially difficult for me, Mr. Speaker, in light of the fact that 
the same party who says they advocate for poor children leaves the very 
poorest children of all out of the equation.
  It is the Democrat Party, Mr. Speaker, that has for decades fought 
for an abortion-on-demand policy that has allowed thousands of unborn 
children to be killed in America every day.
  At the beginning of this Congress, newly elected Democrat Speaker  
Nancy Pelosi said, ``We are here for the children.'' And she called the 
House to order for ``all of America's children.''
  But she didn't mean all of them, Mr. Speaker. In fact, most Democrat 
Members of this body, including Speaker Pelosi, voted against, in the 
last Congress, allowing unborn children to even receive anesthetic when 
undergoing abortion procedures so torturous that they would be a felony 
if performed on an animal.
  Mr. Speaker, behind me this picture is a little baby who deserves to 
be protected like every other child in this country, and yet before the 
sun sets in America today, 4,000 unborn children will be killed through 
abortion on demand, and, Mr. Speaker, their mothers will never be the 
same.
  The Democrat Speaker and the majority of this Congress have to 
somehow understand that there are better ways to help mothers than 
killing their children for them. And they must also realize that they 
can never have credibility as advocates for children while they still 
support an abortion-on-demand policy that has killed nearly 50 million 
innocent children.
  Mr. Speaker, it is time for Members of this body to come together and 
to truly do the right thing for all of America's children, even those 
yet unborn.

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