It is with pride that I rise to pay tribute to the Bronx Puerto Rican Day Parade, on its eleventh year of celebrating the culture and contributions of the Puerto Rican community to our nation.

It is with enthusiasm that I ask my colleagues to join me in paying tribute to this wonderful celebration of Puerto Rican culture, which has brought pride to the Bronx community.

It feels wonderful that so many people can have this experience, which will change the lives of many of them.

It is an honor for me to join once again the hundreds of thousands of people who will march with pride from Mount Eden to 161st Street along the Grand Concourse in celebration of our Puerto Rican heritage.

H.R. 1995 takes away the guarantee of smaller classes by rolling class size reduction funds into a block grant for professional development purposes and class size reduction.

Overall, H.R. 1995 would divert resources away from districts, like many of those in New York City, that need the money the most.

We must not abandon our commitment to class size reduction and to helping our neediest students.

How can the American public have faith that we are going to improve their schools when nearly all education groups oppose the proposed education bill?

They want smaller classes. They want assurances that money isn't going to be taken from their low-income school districts and transferred to districts with more resources.

H.R. 1995 severely undermines the original goal of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act--to provide assistance to the neediest students.

This summer Queens Theatre in the Park will present the 3rd Latino Arts Festival to celebrate the contributions of Latino and Latin American artists to the cultural life of Queens and the greater New York metropolitan area.

I urge anybody in the New York metropolitan area these next couple of weeks to get out to Queens and experience this celebration of Latino culture.

A terrorist attack anywhere in the world is a threat to all of us.

One of the worst terrorist attacks in the 1990s was the bombing of the AMIA Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

I can upon our own government and the Argentine government to do everything in their power to close this horrible chapter in our fight against terror.

the perpetrators of these terrorist attacks have not yet been brought to justice.

The absence of swift and sure justice for the terrorists who carried out these attacks is a tragic mockery of the memory of those who lost their lives.

The greatest gift we can give to their friends and family is to bring their killers to justice.