People who confront important decisions affecting their lives, and the lives of others, should have all the valid health information we can give them. Young people are in fact more likely to make good decisions if they have comprehensive sex education. In fact, there is ample evidence that comprehensive sex education programs, which educate about both abstinence and contraception, are very effective.

And our citizens support comprehensive sex education. Recent studies indicate that more than 80 percent of the American public favors comprehensive approach to these programs. The views of teachers are similarly strong. Most people recognize that this is a health issue, and teaching this important information to our youth is more effective for teens making decisions than attempting to legislate morality. Comprehensive sex education does work, and is worthy of taxpayer support.

Second, I also look forward to hearing from two witnesses today about a program in Medicaid that allows health care coverage for families leaving welfare to go back to work: the Transitional Medical Assistance (TMA) program. Families that move off welfare to work often wind up in jobs that do not offer health insurance coverage or find that employer-sponsored coverage is too costly on the family’s limited budget. TMA allows families to keep their health insurance coverage that otherwise would be unavailable to them.

This program has been a great success, yet it is scheduled to expire this year. In the interest of extending coverage of TMA in the House welfare reform bill, I support the efforts of Chairman Tauzin to enact a simple one year extension of TMA. I hope, however, that we can ultimately find a way to make this program permanent.

There are two other issues that we will hear about today that I have a great interest in pursuing outside of tomorrow’s markup. First, in addition to reauthorizing TMA, we need to make it simpler both for the families who depend on it and for the states that administer it. Second, we will hear about giving states the option to cover legal immigrant children and pregnant women in Medicaid and CHIP. These families work and pay taxes just like the rest of us, yet when they struggle with health insurance, they often find themselves without any safety net. We should address this sooner rather than later.

Thank you.