Greg Ganske: “prior to November 1994, as a practicing physician, I counseled parents who were seeking to adopt. Many times they would…”

“prior to November 1994, as a practicing physician, I counseled parents who were seeking to adopt. Many times they would come to me with a letter and a photograph of a child that they were going to adopt who might have a birth defect. Many of these children were from overseas. It always struck me as a wonderful thing for those families when they would bring those children to the United States and we would work with them to make them whole. But I also saw a lot of children in foster care, so while I was seeing the children that were being brought into the country for adoption, I was wondering, why are these children who are in foster care not getting homes? Foster care many times is a wonderful thing. The foster parents do a good job. The tragedy is that some of them do such a good job that they attach, they form attachments to those children, and the children also, but it is a temporary situation, and then they are torn apart. So part of what we are doing is this bill, and I speak in favor of the rule and in favor of the bill, this is a happy bill, is that we are doing to address one of the impediments, and that is the issue of race matching that I think has kept many of those children who are in foster care from getting the permanent homes that they need. I am very, very pleased that this bill is coming to the floor. It is one of the best things we have done in Congress.”