mr. chairman , first i want to again thank the chairman for making my amendment in order . 
let me give a very short history , and then i will elaborate a little further . 
after the great society was less than sensitive to many urban areas in the united states , empowerment movements developed in america , led actually by a leftist named sal olinsky , that said local people , when they are being displaced , ought to have more input into the decisions that are being made in their lives . 
this happened originally in chicago and it is something that we are looking at doing in new orleans in the name of empowerment . 
we saw , when the republicans came to power in the 1980s and to the presidency , president reagan put jack kemp in charge of hud , housing and urban development , and we had tenant management and resident management moving to homeownership and we said , let the people make the decisions themselves . 
sometimes it was messy . 
sometimes we did not really like their decisions , just like sometimes we do not necessarily agree with the people who they elect to congress ; but we let the people make the decisions . 
head start , when it came in the 1970s as part of richard nixon 's efforts to block grant , to give more local empowerment to react to the programs of the 1960s , the heart and soul of this program was to say , we are going to let the parents , in these preschool situations , in these low-income situations , we are going to let them make the decisions . 
it is not going to be like ptas in schools where often they become fund-raising supplements and they are allowed to give their opinions , but they have no vote . 
we are going to let them actually vote . 
when you go into head start programs , they get to vote on what they are going to serve for lunch , they get to vote on the textbooks , they get to hire and fire the teachers . 
this bill , unfortunately , because of a broader concern about how to address some of the problems in head start , removes the voting rights , the actual powers of those parents . 
not because of any gao report . 
not because the gao report says there is a problem with the parents . 
there is no reference to the parents in the gao report , other than one . 
it says the tips of financial mismanagement came from the parents . 
it is not because of the boards because , in the gao report , the boards are only mentioned twice , because they had financial problems . 
the underlying part of the bill addresses the financial difficulties that we have , and we have added in our amendment to make sure that fraud is actually addressed because there the board has legal liability if there is fraud , but not what is being served for lunch or what textbook or even who is hired and fired . 
they have legal liability for fraud . 
that is already granted . 
but we made it clear that the board has the legal liability on fraud and they have the decision-making power on fraud . 
i somehow think that we have drifted into this policy that we think we know better than the people who are making the decisions themselves . 
how are we going to move ahead in new orleans with this attitude ? 
we can not one week strip the number one empowerment program in america , and the next week say we are going to empower in new orleans . 
mr. chairman , i reserve the balance of my time . 
