mr. speaker , i rise in support of the amendment today out of a bit of a sense of confusion as to why we really need to revisit this issue one more time . 
it is odd that in a nation at war that institutions of higher learning would take steps to limit the army and the navy , the marine corps , coast guard and other services ' access to their students . 
i wonder what they are afraid of as to why they would take this particular position . 
they pride themselves on having the brightest in america at their universities , particularly the ones in question . 
as an aside , i was at a university in january , excuse me , in november , at freshman orientation and saw a couple of co-eds walking across campus that obviously have impaired reading skills because they were both smoking . 
nevertheless , i wonder what they are afraid of . 
why are they afraid of the message of serving one 's country , of doing one 's duty . 
we can argue that the federal government should or should not be in a lot of different areas , but clearly national defense and raising an army is a mission of our founding fathers that none of us would argue with . 
i guess the point i would like to make is that if these colleges and universities feel so strongly that their students should not participate in our military , then let us do it with honor and voluntarily turn back the federal funding that supports many of the programs that they support through their universities . 
i would call on them and if they are really serious about limiting this , they are afraid of what our recruiters might say , that our recruiters might ask their young men and women to serve their country , to place their lives on the line , as many of the men and women who today serve our country in those armed forces are doing every day in iraq and afghanistan and other places around the world that we do not necessarily know about , but nevertheless they are serving , why they are afraid of this message ? 
why they do not think their students should have access to that ? 
i rise in support of this resolution and would ask those universities that feel strongly about this to voluntarily send back all the federal funding that they are currently getting and allow us to use those dollars in universities that are a little more in line with the issues that we are talking about today . 
