Media Center

Mr. SCOTT of Georgia. Thank you, Madam Chairman, for giving me this opportunity. I want to speak very briefly about this bill. This is a very, very important bill. It is critical to the future of education of our young people.

Let me start out by letting you know how important this is to my State of Georgia, and especially the metro Atlanta area. The metro Atlanta area is the third fastest growing child population in this country. Some 120,000 school children will enter area schools over the next 5 years. They need additional space. They're meeting in trailers. They're meeting in broken down buildings. They need help.

Now, Madam Chairman, I just came from a trip from Afghanistan and Iraq, and I'm very proud to say our soldiers are doing a wonderful job and all of our contractors are doing a wonderful job. They come to tell us, oh, we're doing great, we're building these many schools, we're building these many hospitals, which is wonderful, but then to come back here and to see us crawling and falling back instead of going forward to do the same thing for our own people. Not since 2001, 7 years ago, was the last time we even gave direct Federal aid to the States and the counties of our Nation to build schools, to help repair schools.

This bill is important because not only does it build schools, it builds them in a way that helps our environment, it builds them in a way that preserves our energy, cuts down on emissions that help global warming. It is an effective measure, Madam Chairman. It is a bill we must pass, and the time to do it is now.