mr. speaker , i thank the gentleman from louisiana for yielding me this time .  the gentleman from washington ( mr. smith )  did talk about some issues that i think are very important , especially when he talked about education .  i think education is very important for the future of this economy .  if we look at education spending over the last 5 years , we have had dramatic increases in education , as far as the spending is concerned .  what we need to do now is focus on math , science , engineering and technology .  we know this is the direction the future economy is going .  the world is getting more technically complex , not less technically complex .  yet we have fewer people going into engineering .  we have fewer young women going into science .  we have fewer people going into the technologies , the maths and the sciences .  it should be concerning to us , and we need to take steps today .  i would welcome their support as to how we do that .  national science foundation money , the nsf has come up several times here .  we increased the nsf again this year , again .  over $ 5.6 billion will go into nsf this fiscal year and we have plans to increase that funding in the future , too .  innovative research is very important .  we need help from the other side of the aisle to get research and development tax relief permanent , and i think we can do that .  i just want to mention the supply-side tax cut did stimulate the economy .  we have more people working today than ever before in the history of our nation .  the average wage is higher than it has ever been in the history of this nation .  we have more people owning their own homes today than ever before in the history of this nation , and we have done it because we cut taxes .  more money got into the economy , and jobs started increasing .  but does that mean we should be satisfied ?  no .  we have barriers that need to be removed so that we can increase the number of jobs and the number of opportunities in america in the future .  i think it is important that we work together .  i look forward to working with the gentleman from new york ( mr. owens )  on issues like we addressed with sarbanes-oxley , corporate corruption , we had hearings .  we had hearings ; we had legislation on the floor .  we made progress .  we passed sarbanes-oxley .  and now there are white collar criminals in jail today .  corporate corruption was addressed and needs to be addressed in the future .  but certainly we made some movement .  but i welcome them .  i know we can agree on creating more jobs .  i think it is important that we work together to do that .  