mr. kinzinger: 60% of the afghan people are under the age of 20. it is a new society. mr. speaker, i'm concerned that we're on the verge of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. i would call on the president to announce a smaller post-2014 force and send a message to the taliban that we will not back down and you will never rule afghanistan again. and yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. are there further one-minute requests? the chair lays before the house the following personal requests. the clerk: leave of absence requested for mr. culberson of texas for today. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, the request is granted. under the speaker's announced policy of january 3, 2013, the gentlewoman from alabama, mrs. roby, is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader. mrs. roby: thank you, mr. speaker. i am so pleased to have the opportunity tonight to b we her our colleagues, eager to discuss solutions, solutions for our country, solutions for our economy. and so i'm just going to invite my

mr. kinzinger: that's a great story. look, i just had a town hall meeting in rochford, illinois, yesterday and you get folks from all ends of the political spectrum. we can have that respectful conversation. you have everything from folks at say, you know, hey, look, all you have to do is -- as was mentioned, enforce existing laws, put more people on the border. then you have a lot of people that say, hey, we just need to not have any more border enforcement and just allow everybody here to become u.s. citizens and i think obviously the answer is somewhere frankly in the middle of that. when you talk to folks, it doesn't matter if they're on the right or left or somewhere in between, everybody has a heart. everybody cares about people. and when you talk about the fact that, as mr. gardner mentioned, you know, there are people here that are 5 years old. i know -- by no fault of their own. sometimes 12 years old. or now they're getting ready to go to college and they realize they're not here legaly. this is something we ou

mr. kinzinger, for five minutes. mr. kinzinger: thank you, mr. speaker. this is a very important issue that unfortunately hasn't gotten as much attention lately as it should. i'm a veteran of iraq and afghanistan, spent most of my time in iraq, but i remember i was in a nation outside of afghanistan getting ready to fly an airplane one day, this was back in the mid 2000's, mr. speaker, the majority leader from the other chamber basically got on television and said, the war in iraq is lost. he said it's lost. it's done. it's over. i remember that. because i was on a treadmill getting ready to go fly a mission into afghanistan when i heard that. the interesting thing about that is i guarantee you our enemy in iraq probably cheered loudly at the moment they saw the majority leader from the senate say those words. we know that something very courageous happened, the president of the united states at the time said, not only is the war not lost, we are sending more troops and we are going to win this thing and we did. we saw the enemy realize that america could

mr. kinzinger: wouldn't it be nice to have conversations like that all the time. people believe that coal is bad. i disagree. they believe it. and i'm sure my friend from virginia would love to debate them. i remember hearing rhetoric about our parties supporting black lungs and that rhetoric at's meant to fuel instability, anger and division. that's what is disappointing to me. mr. speaker, as i look to the president to lead this country, i want to look at a man who, of his past and who he is, a very dynamic person. came from very tough circumstances to become president of the united states. i wish he would say, you know what? my job is to lead this conversation about jobs and the economy. my job is to lead this conversation, look, we tried stimulus spending. i really thought it would work, but it didn't. some republicans, why don't you come to the white house? why don't you have a conversation with me? i haven't been invited for years. maybe we aren't going to find any agreement, but at least we can respect each other's opinions and say what do we need to do to