mr. paulsen: mr. speaker, at this time, i would yield three minutes to the distinguished member of this subcommittee, mr. mcdermott of washington. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized for three minutes. without objection. mr. mcdermott: mr. speaker, i rise in support of this bill. we surely need to ensure that the tanf program does not expire, which is the basic purpose of this extend. but it would be -- we would be remiss if we didn't say that the status quo falls short of what is needed in these difficult times. nearly one out of every two americans -- more than one out of every two americans is scraping by in poverty or with very low income. talking about people below 44,000. the people who are just barely making it with a family of four in this country. that's what the census bureau found when they used the new supplemental poverty measure based on legislation i proposed in the congress. that means about 150 americans are struggling to get by. the response to this epidemic of suffe

mr. paulsen: since 1994, the president has abuse it's -- abused his power and actively worked to undermine the people of the belarusian people. the state department released a report on the human rights situation in belarus. and under this regime, belarusians have been subject to manipulated elections and oppression on the basis of political affiliation, ethnicity and religious beliefs. following the most recent election, security forces arrested presidential candidates and journalists. mr. speaker, it is unacceptable that this kind of oppression exists today in europe. and i hope that more americans will be a-- made aware of the tyranny in belarus. i thank the belarusian american youth association for bringing this to my attention and i stand with my constituents in support of freedom for the belarusian people and in opposition to this oppressive regime. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the chair lays before the house the following personal requests. the clerk: leaves of absences requested for mr. berman of california for today, mr.

mr. defazio: well, we've all heard too big to fail and bush secretary of the treasury, hank paulsen, and president bush bailed out a bunch of guys on wall street for their gambling and mistakes and putting taxpayers at risk. some principle that does not belong in the policy of this country. but now we got another one. too big to be counted. too big to be counted. this year the pentagon will spend $670 billion, about $2 billion a day, and it doesn't know where its money is. in fact, it doesn't know if it has spent money. here's a few examples. in march, 2000, the pentagon inspector general found that $7.6 trillion, t, trillion dollars in accounting entries, one third of them, $2.3 trillion, or $8,000 for every man, woman and child in america were completely untraceable, completely untraceable. $2.3 trillion. don't know where it went. don't know if they bought something and it was delivered. who knows. then in 2003 they found, and this is something i talked about all through my years in congress as the so-called inventory system at the pentagon which is absolutely absurd, the army lost tra