The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“STUDENTS' VIEWS OF ISSUES FACING YOUTH” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Transportation was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E1526-E1527 on Aug. 3, 1998.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
STUDENTS' VIEWS OF ISSUES FACING YOUTH
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HON. BERNARD SANDERS
of vermont
in the house of representatives
Monday, August 3, 1998
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to have printed in the Record statements by high school students from my home state of Vermont, who were speaking at my recent town meeting on issues facing young people today. I am asking that you please insert these statements in the Congressional Record as I believe that the views of these young people will benefit my colleagues.
Statement by David Hay Regarding VA Health Care
David Hay: For the record, my name is David Hay.
Congressman Sanders: Thank you very much for coming.
David Hay: I would like to talk about my dad. My dad is a Vietnam veteran who is permanently and totally disabled due to the war, and dying due to Agent Orange-related illnesses. He is on medication for seizure disorder, depression, physical pain, various forms of hepatitis and other diseases, including emphysema.
Even with these medications, he is sometimes confined to the house with pain and sickness. He gets about two to three hours of sleep at night, and sometimes none at all. He spends the first part of the morning vomiting and then takes his medications, and endeavors not to vomit in order that the medications may be effective.
My dad's average weight was 180 to 190 pounds. Now he is lucky to reach 130 pounds. He has to force-feed himself. No matter how much he eats, he still loses weight. He will gain ten pounds one week and loss 15 the next. When he wakes up from sleeping, he can hardly walk twenty feet from loss of breath. My dad is not old, he just turned 52.
Part of the reason why he is so sick is because of the medication he receives from the Veterans Association Hospital in White River Junction. It is not rare at all for him to receive the wrong medication, or a synthetic medication that affects him badly, or a prescribed medication for him that counteracts with other medications. They are constantly changing his prescription. These medications affect with malice his breathing, appetite, sleeping pattern, thoughts and pain.
Just three weeks ago, I was at home reading the warning label on one of his inhalers. It said not to take it with seizure medication. My dad has to take seizure medications every day, as with the inhalers. He has been using the inhaler for over a year, and both were given to him by the VA. And there are many other vets that this happens to.
I was wondering what you or Congress could do to correct the carelessness of the Veterans Association Hospital, if there could be laws or regulations that the doctors must look into background of the patient and the current medication the patient might be on before prescribing more drugs that could harm or even kill the patient, and if there are such laws and regulations, what can we do to enforce them.
Congressman Sanders: Thank you very much David.
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Statement by Kayla Gildersleeve and Tess Gross Regarding Strengthening
Pollution Standards
Kayla Gildersleeve: Our presentation is focused on a topic that a lot of people have never even heard of before, the CAFE standards, which stands for the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards.
Tess Gross: The Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards are also known as the CAFE standards. In the mid-'70s Congress created the CAFE standards to regulate the amount of gas used per mile by cars, and because they thought the U.S. needed economic independence, less dependence on foreign oil, and because they noticed the deterioration of the environment.
Between 1973 and 1987, American cars increased their average fuel efficiency from 14 miles per gallon to 28 miles per gallon. Without the government's involvement, cars would not have become so efficient so quickly.
Kayla Gildersleeve: Consumer Reports Magazine noted that this trend is now being reversed. Vehicles made in 1998 have the lowest average fuel efficiency for American cars in 16 years. According to the New York Times, 1996 was the first year in which cars going into the junkyard got better mileage than ones rolling off the dealers' lots.
There are several causes for this declining efficiency. During the Reagan and Bush administrations, the Department of Transportation allowed the standards to be rolled back, and the preferences of American car buyers have changed. Over 30 percent of new vehicles are trucks, sport utility vehicles and other four-wheel drive vehicles. These very inefficient vehicles are used by most of their owners as passenger cars, yet the government doesn't require them to meet the same fuel economy standards that the cars must meet.
Most truck owners are more likely to use their trucks to travel to the Grand Union than to a construction site. The government should recognize this fact and increase the requirements for sport utility vehicles.
Tess Gross: America needs to make more efforts to consume less of the world's resources. Americans make up 5 percent of the world's population, but use 26 percent of the world's oil. Some Americans wish to provide more oil for the nation by drilling Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This action would have a huge environmental impact, but would only provide one-tenth of the oil that would be saved by raising auto efficiency to an average of 40 miles per gallon.
Since cars increased their mile-per-gallon performance nearly 100 percent between 1973 and 1988, big, gas-guzzling autos and sport utility vehicles are now reversing this process. Sport utility vehicles, minivans and pickup trucks are subject to much less stringent requirements than cars.
In conclusion, we believe that, in order to help fix the environment, increase economic independence, lessen the United States' dependency on foreign oil, and to save millions of dollars from importing oil, we would need to see a great improvement in the CAFE standards.
Kayla Gildersleeve: In 1991 hundreds of thousands of soldiers went to the Persian Gulf to fight in a war that was fought for a variety of reasons, but primarily to protect the America's oil supply. This example alone should be enough to convince Americans that we should be consuming less oil.
Many changes will have to occur in American society to dramatically reduce America's consumption of oil. One of the simplest and quickest changes that we can make is for Congress to raise fuel economy requirement for new passenger vehicles, and all the vehicles that are used primarily for transporting people, including sport utility vehicles.
There are many benefits: A cleaner environment, reduced emissions of greenhouse gases, and less potential for being drawn into a military conflict to protect our foreign oil supply.
Congressman Sanders: Thank you very much.
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Statement by Nicholas Webb, Ginger Irish and Palmer Legare Regarding
Safety Issues for Gay Students
Nicholas Webb: Last night, my mother said, ``You know, Nick, I would never have chosen to have a gay son, but of all the people in the world, I would still have chosen you.'' The truth of the matter is, you can't pick your children.
And with that thought, I ask you, if your child, best friend, or someone close to you were gay, could they be honest with you? Too often, the answer is no. That is why the Gay-Straight Alliance at CVU was started, to provide people of all sexualities a safe avenue of support.
One in ten people are gay, and 30 percent of them are suicidal. And even my own parents don't fully understand homosexuality, but the important thing is that they accept it and they support me.
If you answered no to the previous questions, then I tell you with all factuality that you are endangering lives, quite possibly the lives of your children and loved ones.
Too often have people come to me and ask me if they should tell their parents that they are gay. Too often have I witnessed 15-year-old kids getting kicked out of their house simply because of their sexuality. If they even questioned talking about such an important issue to their own family, how can you expect them to live and trust their family?
We, the leaders of gay-straight alliances across the state, are helping to make schools safer for homosexual, bisexual and transgender students. But it is up to you, the society, to make your own homes and communities safe. It could be your child or your child's best friend who realizes how unfriendly and condemning this country, this state is to homosexuals. It could be them that decide it is not worth it to live in such a place.
Understand that, whether you believe in homosexuality or not, it's there, and you got to accept it. It's time for people to, once again, rise above another form of racism, the discrimination of sexual preference.
Finally, I ask you, each and every one of you, that if you think you know someone who is gay, or if you think that your child just might not be heterosexual, why can't they tell you and why aren't you helping them? Because only inadvertently do we actually hurt the ones we love.
Ginger Irish: Because of the reasons Nick has outlined, straight members of the CVU community have reached out to support GLVTU and to make our school a safer place for everyone. In the past year, our GSA has spoken to health classes, planned an AIDS awareness day, and has had various speakers come to our school to discuss sexuality issues.
Some of the closed-mindedness of students at our school has manifested itself in comments such as, ``Oh, are you in that gay club?'' But, over the course of the past year, students have learned to use gay-sensitive language, and have made leaps and bounds in accepting homosexuality as an integral part of our society.
As the leader and coordinator of the GSA next year, I plan to continue educating the student body and faculty. Through this education, and continual awareness, I hope to make CVU a safe environment for all students questioning their sexuality.
Accepting homosexuality within our community can open our eyes to all differences among people, such as race, disability or gender. The GSA will continue to make CVU a melting pot for diversity among all its members.
Palmer Legare: First, I would like to say that I was originally going to come here and make my own presentation, but because there are so many gay-straight alliances here, a lot of us had to combine, and leave out a lot of important parts.
But I wanted to come and talk about the importance of a public person like you going out and taking a public stand on this issue, as opposed to simply making a policy and law, which is also important. And I want to give an example of how inefficient a good policy can be without much publicity.
In 1995, a law was passed in Vermont saying that all public schools had to add sexual orientation to the anti-harassment list by 1997. Well, a couple of years later, I and some other people started looking into schools and what was going on. And we found out that, actually, less than half of the schools that were all supposed to have this, had it--less than half.
We continued to look, and even the ones that did have the anti-harassment policy didn't know how to enforce it. Oftentimes, the teachers didn't know that the school had the policy, and, often, the students didn't know that the school had the policy.
Recently Governor Dean has taken a new strategy, and, last week, he actually went to U32 and spoke publicly about the importance of speaking out against homophobia, and we expect that this is going to make a lot of change, and make a lot of other schools realize that they need this policy. And we ask that you also do something similar to that, maybe go to gay-straight alliances and speak, and maybe go to a place like Outright, which works with gay and lesbian teens.
Congressman Sanders: Thank you very much.
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