Teachers are our greatest public servants; they spend their lives educating our young people and shaping our Nation for tomorrow.

To honor our national promise to our veterans, we must continue to improve services for our men and women in uniform today and provide long overdue benefits for the veterans and military retirees who have already served.

Small businesses drive this economy and it is unacceptable that the President's budget proposal does not give them the tools they need to be successful.

Teachers are our greatest public servants; they spend their lives educating our young people and shaping our Nation for tomorrow.

Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students.

I worked with the March of Dimes to enact legislation for a national birth defects prevention program to provide surveillance, research and preventive services aimed at reducing the rate of birth defects.

The Peace Corps is an outstanding organization that promotes peace through helping countless individuals who want to help build a better life for the community in which they serve.

Education is the silver bullet to improve this Nation's standing worldwide... and our teachers know that.

Education should be one of our top funding priorities; talking about it does not help the teachers and students who desperately need promises fulfilled.

When no other schools in the Southeastern Conference or the former Southwestern Conference would award them athletic scholarships, African Americans had been recruited by and playing for Texas Western since the 1950s.

I have fought to protect those benefits that ensure better salaries for teachers across the Nation such as grants to pay off student loans and funding for Teach for America. Still, we must all do more to show our continued appreciation for our Nation's leading role models.

It matters not what your individual position is on either war we are currently prosecuting - in Iraq or Afghanistan - certainly we can all agree protesting at military funerals is a cruel and unnecessary hardship on our military families during their most difficult hour.

This Congress has promised all manner of border security and port security to the tune of billions of dollars... yet we have - to date - funded our promises for port security at only $900 million. That's quite a distance between what we say and what we actually do.

In South Texas, we understand how vital port security is and we fear the day a weapon of mass destruction could be brought into a U.S. port in a container and cause hundreds of thousands of casualties.

This nation's 23 million small businesses need a budget that reflects their value to the economy.

Education makes children less dependent upon others and opens doors to better jobs and career possibilities.

Over the last five years, the Administration and the majority in Congress have appropriated less than $900 million for port security grants - despite the Coast Guard's determination that $5.4 billion is needed over 10 years.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the Peace Corps as it reached its 45th anniversary on March 1, 2006.

In addition to serving overseas, the Peace Corps' Crisis Corps Volunteers have helped their fellow Americans.

To date, nearly 100,000 Hispanics have died with AIDS. Since Hispanics are the fastest growing minority group in the United States, our challenge is even greater.

As a father and grandfather, I have witnessed firsthand the joy of new life entering the world. I know the pain and apprehension that goes along with premature births and birth defects.

For my constituents, owning a home is the culmination of many years of hard work and the realization of the American Dream. At no time should a local entity take those years of hard work solely to increase their tax revenue.

From the bitter cold winter at Valley Forge, to the mountains of Afghanistan and the deserts of Iraq, our soldiers have courageously answered when called, gone where ordered, and defended our nation with honor.

Supporting the troops has got to mean more than bumper stickers on pickup trucks, my friends. We need to give them what they need.

In fact, in 2002, the Secretary of Defense authorized such support on a reimbursable basis to organizations formerly components of the Department of Justice and Department of the Treasury and currently components of the Department of Homeland Security.

As a former veteran, I understand the needs of veterans, and have been clear - we will work together, stand together with the Administration, but we will also question their policies when they shortchange veterans and military retirees.

While I believe our Constitution allows for State and local governments to execute the power of eminent domain for those purposes that specifically serve the public good, condemning property solely to implement economic development plans is not serving the public good.

Education is the key to success in life and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students.

But, after all, we are a young nation, and vanity is a fault of youth.

Saddam Hussein has been tenacious in his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and, unless he is removed from power, he will eventually harm our nation and our allies. Every moment we delay allows him to grow stronger.

As a nation we should commit ourselves not only to the fight against terrorism, but to economic justice, defeat of the AIDS epidemic and vestiges of discriminatory policies of all kinds.

Once to every person and nation come the moment to decide. In the conflict of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.

We are a communicating nation which needs access to space, access to the seas.

While I recognize the great value and importance of prescription drugs and strongly support a continued U.S. focus on pharmaceutical research and development, our nation's seniors cannot be asked to subsidize the drug costs of other wealthy industrialized nations any longer.

Yesterday in this country we had people die of hunger and malnutrition. In some parts of this country, the infant mortality rate rivals that of sub-Saharan Africa. We have a public education system that ranks below that of almost any other Western nation.

What the F.D.I.C. does is to put the full faith and credit of the United States government behind every savings account in the nation, up to a limit that has changed over the years and stands now at $100,000.

This nation was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the principle - among others - that honest men may honestly disagree; that if they all say what they think, a majority of the people will be able to distinguish truth from error.

It affords me sincere pleasure to be able to apprise you of the entire removal of the Cherokee Nation of Indians to their new homes west of the Mississippi.

Our brave soldiers and support personnel are engaged in a battle as important as any the United States has ever before waged, for the success of democracy in Iraq is a crucial test of the ideals this Nation was founded upon.

Our nation is built on the bedrock principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

How strange it is that murder has the sanction of law in one and only one of the human relationships, and that is the most important of all, that of nation to nation.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

Faith crosses every border and touches every heart in every nation.

We would certainly welcome the recipient nation to put their inspectors on our shores, if they wanted to make that investment to help protect that shipment that is outgoing.

That co-operation and peace rather than industrial strife and strikes will best promote the prosperity of the employees the company and all of the people and even strengthen the nation.

From this bestial view that the human mind consists of only sense certainty, pleasure and pain, Locke developed an equally bestial theory of the nation. Man originally existed in a State of Nature of complete liberty.

Our success educationally, industrially and politically is based upon the protection of a nation founded by ourselves. And the nation can be nowhere else but in Africa.

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.

We need to address our Nation's mounting garbage problem by generating less garbage, particularly paper waste.