In The News

By HAILEY R. BRANSON
Colombian-born Maria Bastidas Betancourt, who is trying to become a U.S. citizen, doesn’t know if she wants to be a Democrat or Republican.

But the 17-year-old Jersey Village High School student hopes she can figure it out before she becomes old enough to vote, with some help from a trip to Washington D.C.

Bastidas Betancourt is one of 28 Houston-area students from Rep. John Culberson’s congressional district in the nation’s capital meeting members of Congress, the press and the Supreme Court while participating in the Bill Archer Internship Program.

Students represent each high school in Culberson’s district and were chosen through a competitive selection process for the program, which has been running since 1971, when it was founded by Archer. The Houston Republican, who was chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Mans Committee, represented the west-side district for 30 years until 2001.

The program and the students’ all-expenses paid trips to Washington are funded by private contributions, according to Culberson, and it is the only program of its kind. Students are chosen by their schools after giving presentations and demonstrating outstanding leadership skills.

Bastidas Betancourt, like all of the students, came to Washington with one issue that she believes to be the most important for today’s young people. For her, that issue is education.

By her first day of the program, she had a question ready for Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, the chairman of the House higher education subcommittee: What options are available for students who are not citizens and need financial assistance for college?

“I know the economy is a priority for everyone right now, but we need to make sure young people in the country have a college education that we can afford and that our parents can afford,” she said.

Another member of Congress who spoke to the students, Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, said the key thing politicians do is to focus on people one-on-one.

“It isn’t the grand scheme where we have the greatest impact, it’s the one-on-one interaction, whether it’s with a friend or a neighbor,” he said.

Brady and Culberson were two members of Texas’ congressional delegation who were scheduled to speak to the students. Others, from both sides of the aisle, included Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Reps. Pete Sessions, Michael McCaul, Gene Green, Ted Poe, Sheila Jackson Lee, Pete Olsen, Louie Gohmert, and Ron Paul.

“These young people will get more time with national leaders than will chairmen of national organizations,” Culberson said. “My biggest goal is to teach these students that the government is run by everyday people and to get them to see the human side.”

Taylor Adams, a student at Episcopal High School, said she was worried about the number of earmarks in Congress and has been reading up on them in the news.

Standing on the front steps of the Capitol, she asked Culberson what he thought of the billions of dollars being set aside in congressional earmarks, saying she read about $1.7 million being set aside to study pig odor.

“My job is to say no,” he replied. “Yes is very hard to earn. If it is an independent spending request, an earmark has got to be absolutely essential and in the Constitution.”

Culberson told the students that politicians on both side of the aisle have abused their spending abilities and said they had “burned out the no button” while voting down spending requests during the Bush administration.

Some students’ eyes grew wide when he openly criticized the Obama administration’s spending, and they laughed as he said, “I never miss a chance.”

Sixteen-year-old Joshua Abramovitch, a student at St. Thomas High School, said all young people should be concerned about the economy. He was thrilled, he said, to be able to ask politicians what they’re going to do to fix the financial crisis.

“Your admiration of politicians either increases, or it decreases, which I haven’t experienced yet,” he said. “It takes a special person to be a politician, and I couldn’t do it.”