[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 1 (Tuesday, January 25, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: January 25, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                            CRIME IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Washington], is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. WASHINGTON. Mr. Speaker, as I ponder the President's possible 
remarks later this evening on the State of the Union, I thought it was 
important to discuss some things that address what I believe will be 
the principal subject of the President's remarks.
  I am happy that several of my colleagues who preceded me on the 
microphone today have seen fit to address some of these issues. It 
seems to me, and what I read in the paper suggests, that the President 
will deal principally with the issue of crime in America, the reform of 
our health care system and welfare reform.
  I wonder if we in the Congress have the collective courage, the 
strength and the statesmanship to rededicate ourselves to true reform. 
For true reform is what is necessary.
  Some of the problems that principally beset us are crime, health care 
and welfare reform. These are problems that concern all Americans. Any 
poll that is taken indicates that these are the principal issues, 
concerns and worries in the hearts and in the minds of the American 
people.
  As the gentleman from Texas, who immediately preceded me to the 
microphone, indicated, it depends on how you look at the statistics as 
to what they show you.
  The statistics recently released by the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation show that America's crime rate for the last 2 years 
actually declined by 5 percent. The last 2 years was the only period in 
the last 50 years in which the Congress of the United States did not 
pass a crime bill. So one could say that during the 2-year period when 
Congress did not pass a crime bill was the only time in the last 50 
years when the crime rate went down.
  So if we really want the crime rate to go down, we need to stop the 
Congress from passing crime bills, because most of what they are used 
for is re-election of Members of Congress. Most of what the crime bills 
are used for is the re-election of the Members of Congress.
  They make wonderful commercials. They look good on your resume. They 
are wonderful for television, where you can show yourself slamming the 
bars on some prison, but you fail to tell the citizens out there who 
are going to vote for you how much you are costing them.
  Some of my friends are in favor of the ``lock them up and throw the 
key away'' approach. Some of my friends are in favor of assisting the 
States by building regional prisons. But if my friend, who immediately 
preceded me to the microphone, would have his way, the gentleman from 
Texas [Mr. Chapman], we would require the States to impose upon their 
court system the requirement that 85 percent of a sentence be served.
  We are not going to pay for it. The States are going to have to pay 
for it. And in these days when most of us are speaking about unfunded 
mandates, here is another mandate.
  Now, we really do need to do something about crime. But the States 
can do much more about crime than the Federal Government, and I do not 
think they need our help. What we like to help them do is to run over 
each other getting to a microphone so we can tell the citizens how much 
we have done to protect them, how much we have done about crime, so 
that we can get re-elected.

                              {time}  1520

  Statistics of whether crime has decreased mean absolutely nothing. As 
I say, in the last 2 years crime has decreased by 5 percent, according 
to FBI statistics, but I don't know any people who are comforted by 
that because they are still afraid to walk the streets in the daytime 
and at night. Now they are afraid to go to the shopping malls. They are 
afraid to ride on the public transportation systems. They are afraid to 
send their children to school. Yet they are being told by the FBI that 
the crime statistics have gone down in the last 2 years by 5 percent.
  I do not know any people anywhere in America who are not afraid or 
have an all-permeating fear of drive-by shootings and random violence, 
and children being caught in the crossfire of automatic and 
semiautomatic weapons. The increase in the sale of burglar alarms and 
personal defense devices will tell us that people are afraid.
  People want something done about crime, but they are tired of paying 
to have something done about crime that does not do anything about 
crime. They have been paying out of the nose, they have been paying out 
of the pocket, they have been paying out of the ears, been paying out 
of everywhere that they can pay for the last 50 years of Congress to 
come up and engage in an exercise in futility, because we are not 
solving the problem.
  If every violent criminal in America today were locked up and put in 
prison, we would be safe for a little while. However, because we do not 
do anything about the people who are 17 and 16 and 15 and 14 and 13, if 
we locked up everybody that was over 17 who committed a violent crime 
for the rest of their life, and we do nothing more than what we are 
doing now for the people who are 4 and 5 and 6 and 7 and 8 and 16 and 
17, in 2 years or 3 years or 4 years we will be right back where we 
started, except we will have a whole lot more prisons built.
  Mr. Speaker, these prisons are not cheap. The average cost to build 
one cell in which two or three or four persons may be housed is 
$100,000. It costs us $100,000 each time we build another maximum 
security cell in which we can lock up these violent criminals. A lot of 
them need to be locked up. That is not the point of my discussion here 
today.
  In addition to that $100,000 to build this house in which we can 
house up to four of these individuals, we pay the princely sum of 
$25,000 per year for every year they are locked up for the rest of 
their lives. So if we take somebody who is 20, who is going to die when 
he is 70, we are going to spend 50 years at $25,000 keeping that person 
locked up in prison. They do not even have to pay for their own keep.
  We want to do something about crime. We are afraid. There is at least 
a perception that crime has gone out of control. Crime is hemorrhaging 
our country to the tune of $470 billion per year. We must have a 
response. The present response is not working.
  The other body has passed a crime bill in which they were able to 
find $22 billion to pay for prisons when just last year, in the same 
year when they found $22 billion to pay for prisons, they could not 
find $10 billion to pay for Head Start, Healthy Start, and summer jobs 
for some of the same people who are now incarcerated in prison.

  Since June 1993, the chairman, the gentleman from Michigan, John 
Conyers; the gentleman from Virginia, Robert Scott; the gentleman from 
North Carolina, Mel Watt; the gentleman from California, Xavier 
Becerra; the gentleman from California, Don Edwards; and I, along with 
many other Members of various interest groups and caucuses, 
organizations and groups, have been crafting and drafting a realistic, 
humanistic, doable approach to the problem of crime in America.
  In the past these crime bills have usually been simply ways of 
increasing various ways to execute people, limiting the constitutional 
rights of individuals who are charged with crimes, establishing 
mandatory minimum sentences that Federal judges say impose upon them a 
duty to act as a robot, rather than as an individual, and building more 
prisons.
  We have been good at all of those things. In the last 50 years we 
have built a lot more prisons, we have established a lot more mandatory 
minimum sentences for people to serve, we have abridged or suspended 
the constitutional rights of people who have engaged in criminal 
activity, and we have found new ways and better ways of executing other 
human beings.
  Mr. Speaker, crime, of course, in these 50 years has not decreased as 
a result of these various pieces of legislation, because as I noted, 
the only 2-year period in the last 50 years when we have not had a 
crime bill was the only 2-year period in the last 50 years when crime 
has actually gone down.
  What then is the purpose of the Congress passing all of these crime 
bills, the citizens want to know. Crime has not decreased as a result 
of the passage of this legislation, nor will it ever be totally 
eradicated as a result of legislation.
  I think it is time for a radically different approach to ensure that 
our constitutional rights are protected, to reduce recidivism in our 
Nation's prisons, to ensure that our Nation's schools are safe and our 
neighborhoods are safe, and to save a generation of mostly poor people 
who wallow in an endless cycle of despair, hopelessness, and pessimism.
  As the Members may know, Members of the House of Representatives and 
of the other body will take up the complex issue of crime this year. 
Several bills are currently on the table for consideration, most 
notably the Senate version of H.R. 3355, the House version of the same 
bill, and H.R. 3315, the Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Reform 
Act of 1993.
  Anticrime policies of the past 40 years have been a series of quick, 
cheap fixes. New prisons were built, mandatory minimums were imposed, 
constitutional protections have been eroded, in the name of public 
safety. Meanwhile, our economic and social programs that could have 
quickly brought crime down have been largely ignored. We have not 
created new educational opportunities for our people. We have not 
created new jobs for our people, and as a result, we have increased and 
included more affordable prison space for our people.

  Although this bill, 3355, was introduced as the Criminal Justice 
Reform Act, our goal today is to enter into a scientific analysis of 
the solution to crime in America. How should we spend whatever money we 
are going to spend on crime in America? What are we going to get for 
the $22 billion that the other body wants to spend? What alternatives 
exist to spending $22 billion, and at the end of the spending of the 
$22 billion have more people incarcerated, and more people needing to 
be incarcerated?
  Right now 25 percent of all African-Americans in this country are 
under the auspices of the criminal justice system. Twenty-five percent, 
one in four, black males between the age of 17 and 35 are either in 
prison or on probation or on parole, having been to prison. That is an 
alarming statistic. We must look at the alternatives, because it is 
clear that what we have been trying for the last 50 years has not been 
of benefit to any of our communities.
  We are afraid of each other. We do not face each other on the 
sidewalk and on the trains. We will not look at each other on the 
Metro, because we do not know who is the next criminal who is going to 
take out an AK-47 or an Uzi and start shooting people that he does not 
know, just because he has a gun.
  In the true spirit of cooperation and comity, we are willing and 
sincerely desire to work with all other Members of the House of 
Representatives and of the other body, groups and individuals, to make 
into fruition the most effective piece of legislation for the reduction 
of crime.
  It recognizes if we lock all the people who are currently committing 
crime up, but we do not go to the neighborhoods where we can almost 
point, we cannot name the child by name, but we can name the 
neighborhoods from which they will come. We can name the streets upon 
which they will be raised. We can name the schools that they are going 
to drop out of, We can name them almost by name. They are 4, 5, and 6 
years old now. Ten years from now they will be 14, 15, and 16 years 
old.
  If society does not intervene in their lives in a meaningful way in 
the next 10 years, they will go to prison. If society has its way, or 
some of society's members in this Congress have their way, they will 
stay in prison, perhaps for the rest of their lives.

                              {time}  1530

  And the subject of my discussion is not whether they should go to 
prison or whether they should stay in prison for the rest of their 
lives. It is whether we should have to pay for it, whether we should 
have to pay $100,000 to build a cell that will house up to four people, 
and then $25,000 per year in today's costs, Lord knows what it is going 
to be with the inflation rate in future years for the next 50 years to 
lock somebody up in prison when we could have prevented it. We can 
spend one-tenth of that amount per year for 10 years. We can spend 1 
year's cost of incarcerating an individual at $25,000 a year and spend 
$2,500 a year on these children when they are 4, 5, and 6 years old, 
and avoid the necessity of spending $25,000 per year on them when they 
get 14, 15 and 16 years old.
  That to me, Mr. Speaker, makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of 
sense to recognize that we are going to have to get at the root causes 
of what produces people who turn out to be criminals in our society.
  We know a lot of the reasons already. That is not to coddle them or 
excuse away their conduct. They have been engaged in antisocial 
behavior. Every child who grows up poor does not turn out to be a 
criminal. Most of them do not. We seem to have enough social 
scientists, enough behavioral scientists, and enough people like that 
to be able to go in and look and say 10 children grew up on this street 
in the 1960's. They were all born in this neighborhood. They were all 
about the same age. They played together on the playground. They went 
to the same elementary school together. Why is it that two of them 
turned to a life of crime and have committed offense, after offense, 
after offense? And why is it that two of them are now locked up in 
prison for the rest of their lives? Why is it that 1 out of 10 turn out 
to be a successful doctor contributing to the community? Why is it that 
another turns out to be a nurse or a nurse practitioner, or a janitor 
or a mechanic, or a person who makes a contribution to our society in 
one way or another? And it does not matter what they are doing. They 
are not commiting crimes. They are teaching other people, they are 
leading other people by example, they have become productive members of 
their community.
  We ought to be able to find the difference between the ones that go 
to prison and the ones who do not, and we need to know what those 
differences are, because we need to start spending our money wisely, 
and we need to start spending our money carefully, because the days are 
gone when the U.S. Government was a bottomless pit into which it could 
stick its hands to pull out money to pay for all of these programs. The 
days are gone when we are going to be able to throw money at the 
problem, no matter what we think the solution is, no matter whether we 
think the solution is going to work. Those days are gone. The taxpayers 
are watching the expenditures of their dollars carefully. It seems to 
me that we ought to give them a dollar's worth of thought for a 
dollar's worth of their money, and no thought has gone into these crime 
bills that are being circulated around here. There is nothing in there 
for the American who wants to worry about not only being safe today, 
but being safe tomorrow.
  These politicians would have you think that if we locked up all of 
the violent criminals then you can take the burglar bars off your 
house, and you can go in the Safeway or the convenient store late at 
night and not be worried about walking in in the middle of a robbery, 
or you can park at the ballgame and not worry about whether your car is 
going to be there when you get back, or you can get on the subway and 
not be worried about being the victim of a random AK-47 shooting, or 
you can stand on the street corner and talk to your friends and 
neighbors and not worry about being the victim of a drive-by shooting. 
But you know better. You know when this $22 billion is spent the 
Congress will be back after $22 billion more after that, and then 
another $50 billion more, and then $100 billion more. There is no end 
to how much they would make you pay to solve crime in America.
  But ask yourselves, Mr. and Mrs. America, of the $2.6 trillion you 
spent on crime in the last 40 years, what have you gotten for your 
money? You have elected a lot of politicians who have made a lot of 30-
second commercials where they get up with the red, white, and blue flag 
behind them and tell you how, by God, how tough they are on these 
criminals, and they want to lock them up and throw the key away with 
your money. They want to lock them up all right, with your money.
  What will they use for a commercial if they lock them all up and 
there are no more criminals? They will have something else to run on. 
They cannot run on communism anymore, because we do not have that bug-
a-boo. Crime is the thing that they use to strike fear in your heart so 
that they can get reelected. Make them think, make them come to the 
table. Next time they have a townhall meeting and get up and tell you 
how they are going so much for you about solving crime, just ask them, 
``Mr. Congressman, Mr. Congressman, if we spend this $22 billion on 
crime, can you assure me, Mr. Congressman, that crime is going to go 
down in America? Can you assure me, can you promise me, do you hold out 
any hope that that chart that keeps going up like this when we spend 
this $22 billion that you are going to make us spend will drop just an 
iota, just go down 1 percent, or one-tenth of 1 percent? Mr. 
Congressman, will there be less murders in America next year when we 
pass these new laws that you are telling us about? When we lock all of 
these people up in prison, Congressman, will that mean that my car will 
not get stolen, that I will not get carjacked, I will not be the victim 
of a drive-by shooting, Congressman?'' And the honest answer is no. 
This is not going to do any good, because we are spending a lot of the 
money on the back end of the factory that turns these young people out 
on our streets. We are not putting any money in on the front end.

  We know that 97 percent of the people in prison are high school 
dropouts. Hello. Ninety-seven percent of the people who end up in 
prison are high school dropouts.
  Now all high school dropouts do not end up in prison, but a 
disproportionately high number, as opposed to college graduates, or 
high school graduates, or trade school graduates end up in prison. Now 
it does not take a rocket scientist, which I am not, to figure out that 
there is some connection between lack of education and prison when 97 
percent of the people who are in prison quit school at the seventh or 
eighth grade.
  It seem to me that if we could find a way just to go back to the 
sixth grade and keep youngsters in the seventh grade, the eighth grade, 
and the ninth grade, we would be cutting down on the number of people 
we have to spend $25,000 a year apiece on to go to prison.
  There is an alternative that needs to be made a part of the 
discussion, and it is the crime bill about which I spoke earlier. What 
does this crime bill do that other bills do not do?
  First, it does away with mandatory minimum sentences for crimes. This 
would allow for more discretion in the hands of our judges and juries 
to determine what is the proper sentence for the crime that was 
committed. Every person who commits the same crime should not receive 
the same sentence. We ought to be able, a judge ought to be able to 
look into an individual's background and say this person has not ever 
committed a crime before, or this person has good family support, or 
this person has gotten a GED and college credits while they are in 
prison. The recidivism rate for people who get a college education or 
at least 2 years of college training while they are in prison, the rate 
at which they go back to prison is one-tenth that for people who do not 
get any training while they are in prison. The rate of those 
individuals who receive drug counseling while they are in prison is 
half of what it is for people who do not receive any drug counseling 
when they are in prison.
  The bill that I am talking about also strengthens the habeas corpus 
guidelines for prisoners so that a person gets one fair shot, one good 
trial, and if they are convicted, then we give them a fair trial before 
we hang them. It has no new death penalties in it, because death 
penalties do not do any thing but stop that individual. It is a 
legalized way for the State to engage in murder of its citizens.
  It allows for one demand drug treatment for all prisoners. The crisis 
of drugs in our communities needs to be dealt with as a health care 
crisis because that is what it is. It is not a criminal justice 
problem, it is a health care problem. If someone needs treatment for a 
disease, we should be able to provide that treatment whether they are 
in prison or out of prison.
  The bill also allows for after-release counseling and guidance for 
ex-offenders. This provision will help those who have paid their debt 
to society to become better incorporated into the mainstream of 
society.
  It puts more police officers on the streets. It bans 21 types of 
assault weapons. It imposes a tax on ammunition.

                              {time}  1540

  It requires higher standards in order to become a gun dealer, rather 
than paying Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms a $25 fee and becoming 
magically a gun dealer.
  It allows for the victims of crime to be recompensed for their losses 
and strengthens provisions for crimes against women.
  It is the goal of this bill that, through hard work and working with 
other Members and in comity and conversation with Members of this body, 
both Republican and Democrat, and a combination of legislative efforts, 
community spirit, and individual courage and responsibility, we can 
significantly decrease the incidence of crime in our homes, in our 
neighborhoods, in our schools, in our communities, and in our wonderful 
country.
  In the end no one solution will work, no one bill is going to be a 
magic panacea to solving the problem of crime in America. There are no 
cheap, easy solutions nor quick solutions available on the horizon. But 
the tremendous costs of crime in our community, as stated earlier 
estimated by Business Week magazine to be more than $470 billion each 
year, demands that we not give up.
  Our country's great wealth surely can be harnessed in an effective 
way to provide the remedies that would allow people to walk the streets 
without fear. We need to seriously consider alternatives that prevent 
individuals from becoming criminals in the first place rather than to 
spend all of our money punishing them once they become criminals. There 
is no way to end that pipeline.
  There are more people in this country who are 2 years old than there 
were 15 years ago; there are more people who are 3 years old; there are 
more people who are 4 years old. If we do not attend to assuring that 
we provide the means by which we prevent these individuals from 
becoming criminals 10 years from now, then we are looking in the wrong 
place for a solution to the wrong problem.
  Mr. Speaker, I think that the President will also address the 
question of health care in America this evening when he addresses our 
Nation in this State of the Union Address.
  Health care reform is perhaps the biggest political issue of our 
time.
  Most of the public response to the idea of health-care reform is 
reminiscent to the way most of us feel about our doctors when they 
begin spouting those doctor words that they know, that jargon that only 
doctors learn when they go to medical school. We trust they know what 
they are talking about, and at the end of the day that they do no harm.
  What is needed in order to solve the health-care dilemma that we have 
in our country where 37 million of our people have no form of health 
care whatsoever is a wide-open, far-ranging public debate about the 
deeper issues of health care than just the superficial issues that we 
are talking about. We need to discuss our attitudes towards life and 
death. We need to discuss the goals of medicine in our country. We need 
to discuss the meaning of health. We need to discuss the concept of 
suffering versus the concept of survival. We need to discuss who shall 
live and who shall die, and who shall decide who shall live and who 
shall die in our country.
  We must discuss these issues. But they have been currently supplanted 
by the rather narrow quibble over policy. The parodox of our current 
situation does require that we discuss policy.
  However, unless we address such basic existential and fundamental 
questions as those I have raised a moment ago, we stand little chance 
of solving our Nation's health-care crisis. Because 25 years ago, Mr. 
Speaker, 7.6 percent of our gross domestic product was devoted to 
health, 6.8 percent to education, 9.7 percent to defense. Today defense 
and education consume approximately 6 percent each, and health 
expenditures have climbed to 14 percent and will reach 18 percent by 
the year 2000.

  Most of the policymakers here in Washington have been focusing on the 
deficiencies and failures of modern medicine. They claim it is either 
greedy pharmaceutical companies or greedy insurance companies or 
unnecessary procedures or bureaucratic inefficiency and paperwork or 
expensive technologies and so forth. These discussions have taken 
control of the debate, and these ideas seemingly have taken over the 
Clinton administration's debate over health care.
  The administration seems to see the solutions to our health-care 
crisis in terms of improving the efficiency of the system without 
looking at the underpinnings that identify their approach including 
managed care, and those are the buzzwords for their program, such as 
managed care, HMO's and managed competition.
  Implicit in these recommendations is the assumption that the 
elimination of waste will obviate the need for rationing health care. 
Most Americans know that we already ration health care. We do it on the 
basis of wealth. We do it on the basis of geography. We do it on the 
basis of circumstances beyond the control of the individual, for if a 
person is wealthy, then they have as much health care as they can 
afford in this country. If a person is poor, all too often it is 
necessary for them to sleep on the floors of our public and charity 
hospitals for days on end before they receive the rationing that we 
call our health-care system, health-care delivery in our system.
  Our groups that are opposed to the President's plan who feel the 
government should take the predominant role in the health care of its 
people argue on behalf of a different approach. People ask how nations 
such as England and Canada can provide health care comparable to ours 
for much less money.
  First of all, England and Canada use the single-payer payment system; 
that is, the government pays for everyone's health care directly, and 
this system is an option, though highly efficient, that has been met 
with tremendous opposition in this country.
  Mr. Speaker, medical costs will bankrupt this country if we continue 
on the current trajectory. There are no data to demonstrate that 
improved management techniques will solve the problem.
  Managed care and managed competition save money in the short run, 
although examples of other managed care, managed industry, do not 
inspire much confidence. The utilities are an example of a managed 
industry, and the airlines are another example of a managed industry. 
Our recent history will teach us that we should not place all of our 
confidence in a managed industry purely for that purpose.
  But the bulk of the savings achieved by the health maintenance 
organizations has been achieved by cutting back on expensive, 
unprofitable facilities such as burn centers, trauma-care centers, 
neonatal intensive care units, and emergency rooms and the like. HMO's 
conduct what amounts to a hidden form of health-care rationing, 
confident in the knowledge that the cities, counties, and charitable 
organizations and the university hospitals are still around to pick up 
the slack where they do not treat burns and neonatal intensive-care 
patients in emergency rooms.
  As the managers of HMO's know only too well, the surest way to 
contain health-care spending is to limit access to health care and to 
rethink our ever expanding concept of health.
  If we must have allocation, the process should require open 
discussion such as what we are doing here today and what we will be 
doing in the days, weeks, and months ahead.

  When we are rationing life itself, the decision must be subjected to 
public scrutiny and debate. The first step is to set limits on health 
care according to the principles of equity and justice for all of our 
people. We can no longer leave to the marketplace decisions about 
access to medical care.
  We do not want kidneys to be sold to the highest bidder. Yet we 
tolerate something close to that right now; when it is necessary, 
although disgraceful, for a patient to have to advertise for a liver on 
Oprah, while the governor of Pennsylvania rushes to the head of the 
line to receive a new heart and liver transplant, something is wrong 
with the way we ration health care in our country. I do not begrudge 
the Governor of Pennsylvania the opportunity for a heart and liver 
transplant. It saved his life. But there were other people on the list 
for heart transplants and liver transplants long before it became 
necessary medically or even known medically that the Governor would 
need such a procedure.
  Mr. Speaker, access then to our scarce health-care resources must be 
organized along some equitable lines. I do not suggest that these are 
easy decisions. They are never easy decisions. They force us to face 
our own mortality and demand that we look beyond our own sympathies and 
interests to look to see what is in the greater good of our country.
  The ethical dilemmas do not end with access to scarce service or 
technology. Now come the trickier questions of deciding if and when 
that access should end.
  Most Americans spend the bulk of their health-care resources in the 
last 3 years of their lives; most of the money that Americans spend on 
health care is spent in the last 3 years of their lives. How then do we 
make those choices?
  I believe that some of the goals of any fair and just health-care 
system are the universal access to health care for all people, the 
quality of assurance in the health-care delivery system, health 
promotion and disease prevention, education and training of a diverse 
body of health-care providers, and cost containment. I have arrived at 
these goals as a result of several townhall meetings in my district as 
well as interfacing with constituents who are both lay people and 
physicians alike, and they tell me, together with my independent 
research, that these are worthwhile goals, and more importantly, 
obtainable goals.
  Under the Health Security Act as proposed by the President, most 
people, and I underline the word ``most,'' would obtain health-care 
insurance through one of two entities, either a local health alliance 
or a corporate alliance where available. Exceptions would be made for 
current medical care recipients, military personnel, veterans, and 
Native Americans, who would continue to be covered under their existing 
programs.
  Undocumented immigrants would not be covered under any program, Mr. 
Speaker, and I think that is a shame. We would run the risk of not 
providing health care for undocumented workers by exposing ourselves to 
the risk of harm of diseases that they will catch and transmit for lack 
of medical resources being made available to them. When I was growing 
up, that was called penny-wise and pound-foolish.
  But let me get back to the President's plan.
  Two basic types of plans would exist: a low-cost-sharing HMO-type 
plan, and a high-cost combination called preferred-provider style. 
Employers would pay 80 percent of the premiums for full-time workers 
and the worker would pay the remaining 20 percent. Employers would pay 
a smaller percentage for the cost of part-time workers, depending on 
how many hours per week they actually work. Most low-income workers and 
the unemployed have their share of insurance premiums at least 
partially subsidized by the Government.
  Deductibles and copayments would vary depending upon the type of plan 
selected by the beneficiaries. HMO's would typically have a $10 
copayment for doctors fees and a $5 copay for prescription drugs. Fee-
for-service plans would have a 20 percent copayment for doctors fees 
and hospital visits as well. Fee-for-service plans would have a $200-
per-person and a $400-per-family deductible.
  Combination plans would have a low copayment if you are treated by a 
preferred-provider doctor or hospital and a higher copayment if you are 
treated by a provider outside of the preferred network. All of the 
plans would cap out-of-pocket expenses at $1,500 per person and $3,000 
per family per year regardless of deductibles or copayments.
  Another approach to solving our health care problem in this country 
is called the single-payer approach. The single-payer system of health 
care guarantees universal access to comprehensive, quality health care 
at a price that Americans can afford. Under a single-payer plan, health 
care costs for all Americans would be paid by a single public entity, 
like social security or Medicare.
  The current network of 1,500 different insurance companies, each with 
its own rules, each with its own set of claims forms, each with its own 
level of services, would be replaced by a single agency that would pay 
all health care costs, all of the health care services for individuals. 
The Government agency would not run the health care facility, the 
delivery facilities, but would simply replace our current inefficient 
system of paying for the health care that is being delivered to our 
citizens. The present mix of private and public doctors, other medical 
professionals and health care facilities would remain. The singe-payer 
system would merely streamline the bill-paying process and eliminate 
the complex and repetitive billing and duplicative system which we now 
have which costs consumers billions of dollars per year paying the 
hospital and doctor bills alone.
  The single-payer system would curb health care costs through a global 
budget and a budget discipline unattainable when you have 1,500 
companies paying the bills.
  The single-payer system would be progressively financed through a 
combination of corporate and personal taxes. These taxes would replace 
the premium the people who have insurance now are paying in most cases, 
would end up being less money than they are paying in premiums, and 
would replace the out-of-pocket expenses that they now pay and claim 
back on our income tax return for individual as well as corporate 
health care costs, and overall, as I said earlier, the costs would go 
down. All health care revenues would be placed in a national health 
trust fund that could be used only for health care expenditures. The 
specific tax rate and fees would vary under the different single-payer 
proposals.
  If a single-payer system were in place, individuals would be issued a 
national ``health security card,'' which would be similar to a social 
security card that they now have. Individuals could go to the health 
care provider of their choice and receive treatment simply by 
presenting the card. Covered services would include all medically 
necessary procedures, as well as prescription drugs and long-term care. 
Under most single-payer plans, there is no copayment or deductible. The 
single-payer pays either directly at an annually negotiated payment 
structure or through negotiated annual budgets. Health care providers 
would be guaranteed payment, and they would no longer have to alter the 
treatment to fit the insurance status of their patients.
  The single-payer plan would be administered at the State level 
according to Federal standards, with the participation of consumers, 
businesses, and health care providers. By allowing for State 
administration, the health care system could be adjusted to reflect 
local conditions and needs.
  Going back to the beginning, Mr. Speaker, I said that I would support 
a health care system that would allow for universal access, have cost 
containment, that would include quality assurance in the delivery of 
health care services, that would promote disease prevention, that would 
promote health and wellness rather than illness, and which allows for a 
choice of doctors. The only plan that provides for all of these is the 
single-payer plan. That is why I am a proud cosponsor and supporter of 
the single-payer plan which is introduced as House Resolution 1200.

  A recent news report stated that over 600,000 Americans were going to 
Canada to get their health care. I believe that is a ringing 
endorsement of the single-payer approach to health care. It is 
impossible, however, to reform our health care system without reforming 
our welfare system.
  The President this evening, Mr. Speaker, is expected to propose a 
welfare reform package which the House would consider sometime this 
session. Both the Committee on Ways and Means and the Committee on 
Education and Labor are expected to hold hearings on the 
administration's plan once it is submitted to Congress.
  During the campaign, the candidate, William J. Clinton, said he would 
``end welfare as we know it by placing a time limit on the enrollment 
in aid to families with dependent children,'' which is called AFDC, 
which now serves 1 in 7 of our Nation's children. Almost 1 in 7 of all 
our children are receiving aid to families with dependent children 
benefits.
  In a companion pledge, candidate Clinton said he would end poverty of 
children with full-time working parents by changing the Tax Code. Among 
other things, the reform of welfare, according to the President, would 
accomplish several things. It would limit AFDC payments to 2 years and 
within that time would empower the parents, mostly mothers, with 
schooling, training, and child care needed to break the cycle of 
dependency.

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  I wish the President godspeed and success in that endeavor. However I 
remind him that the same Congress that must pass the limitations upon 
welfare mothers receiving benefits and providing schooling and training 
for welfare mothers and child care has failed, just last year, to 
provide day care funding, to provide benefits for young teenagers so 
that they will have jobs in the summer of 1993. I wish the President 
well.
  A welfare reform program must provide community service work for 
those who can work but are without private jobs after their AFDC ends. 
It must provide an earned income tax credit to make up the difference 
between full-time earnings of a family with children and the family's 
poverty level income threshold. We need to decide what it takes for a 
family to get by on, and if a member of the family is working and they 
are not coming up to the minimum that we said that they ought to have 
to get by on; say $20,000, the Government should provide the rest, 
should require that individual to receive additional training and 
schooling, get a GED and take college credits, and, otherwise, prepare 
themselves for jobs. But we are going to have to find some jobs, Mr. 
Speaker, that are available.
  We are preparing people right now for jobs that do not exist in this 
country. Most of our lower paying, low wage jobs are going to other 
countries. The President says he wants to start a national deadbeat 
data bank and use that and other means of enforcing child support 
against deadbeat parents, and I commend him for that.
  I applaud the efforts of the President within the budget 
reconciliation bill to improve the status of working families in this 
country. The children's initiative within the Budget Act, which 
included the earned income tax credit, expansion of the Food Stamp 
Program, increased funding for family preservation and childhood 
immunization were real, definitive first steps toward a real investment 
in human needs.
  Currently, Mr. Speaker, it is politically popular, however, to bash 
people on welfare. Welfare comes in many forms. A subsidy is welfare. 
When we pay a cotton farmer not to plant, Mr. Speaker, we are giving 
him or her welfare. When we pay for the bailout of the savings and loan 
debacle in this country, we are providing welfare, not only for the 
directors and investors of the savings and loan associations that went 
under, but we are providing welfare for the people who put their hard-
earned money into these savings and loans and lost it through the 
unscrupulous acts of the boards of directors.

  Welfare comes in many forms. It is not just for poor people. When we 
bailed out Chrysler Corporation 7 years ago, Mr. Speaker, that was 
welfare. But it is popular to bash welfare and put the face of the 
single, head-of-household mother on there as if she is the reason that 
there is a drain on the system.
  Several of my colleagues have gone to the step of introducing, or 
will introduce, bills that abolish AFDC, JOBS, the Food Stamps Program, 
and Job Training Partnership Act, and many other job training programs, 
put strict time limits on how long they can receive welfare in an era 
when 15 percent of our poor people are unemployed. It makes a lot of 
sense to take away their hope.
  In order to address human needs, Mr. Speaker, welfare reform must 
reduce the need for welfare. The reform of the Aid to Families With 
Dependent Children Program cannot succeed in the absence of a broader 
antipoverty strategy. Families are often forced to rely on welfare.
  I know a lot of people that had good jobs 3 years ago when they ran 
out of unemployment compensation because the Congress would not pass 
additional unemployment benefits. Some of these same Members who want 
to take away the welfare are the ones who would not provide 
unemployment benefits for these people who were out of a job. Welfare, 
in a majority of cases, is not a willing choice, and, where it is a 
willing choice, we ought to work to take it away, but the antipoverty 
program must include child support benefits of all children, improve 
unemployment insurance, universal access to health care, increased 
minimum wage, and a refundable child care credit.
  We just invest in education and training opportunities for welfare 
recipients. Federal funding for the job Opportunities and Basic Skills 
Program, or any successor programs, should be increased to expand 
education and training services that give participants the skills to a 
decent paying, steady, stable job.
  We must allow people to work for wages, not for welfare. Public 
sector employment created for people leaving the AFDC system must 
provide pay and benefits equal to other workers doing the same job 
without displacing current workers. The AFDC system should allow 
working parents to receive benefits and not be penalized for their own 
work effort. A safety net must be provided for those who wish to leave 
the AFDC system. Curtailing access to welfare without reducing the need 
for income support would only increase poverty and hurt needy families 
while increasing crime in our country.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, the welfare system must treat people with 
dignity. Family cap provisions or a limit on the number of children one 
can have, restrictions on migration and other measure that seek to 
punish certain behaviors hurt needy families and do nothing to help 
them escape from poverty. A reformed welfare system should emphasize 
incentives over penalties.
  Mr. Speaker, we in the Congress need a powerful sense of 
determination to banish the ugly blemishes of crime, of a lack of 
adequate health care and of poverty scarring the image of America. We 
can, of course, try to temporize, negotiate, small, inadequate changes 
and prolong the timetable of justice in the hope that the narcotic of 
delay will dull the pain of progress. We can try, but we will certainly 
fail. The shape of our Nation and the world will not permit the past 
luxury of gradualism and procrastination any longer.
  Solutions to the complex conundrums of crime, health care, and 
welfare will not be easy. This does not signify that they are 
impossible. Recognizing these complexities as challenges rather than as 
obstacles, Mr. Speaker, we will make real progress if we freely admit 
that there is no magic. We will make progress if we accept the fact 
that 14 years of deficit spending, ignorance to human needs and 
politically sexy, so-called solutions cannot be canceled out in 14 
minutes or 14 days, or 14 months of atonement. Neither can we allow the 
guilty to tailor their atonement in such a manner as to visit another 
14 years of deliberate hurt upon the victims.
  The debate about crime, health care, and welfare is at its least 
common denominator a struggle for opportunities. In asking for 
something the low and middle class are not seeking charity. The low and 
middle class do not want to languish on welfare rolls any more than the 
next person. The low and middle class, and the poor in this country, do 
not want to be given a job that they do not deserve. Neither, however, 
do they want to be told there is no place they can be trained to handle 
these jobs that will be created in the future.
  With equal opportunity must come the practical, realistic aid which 
will equip people to seize these opportunities. Giving a pair of shoes 
to a person who has not learned to walk is not just cruel, it is 
criminal.
  With real crime, real health care, and real welfare reform, Mr. 
Speaker, we can begin to find the answers to neutralizing the years of 
neglect and hopelessness. Whole generations have been left behind as a 
majority of the population has advanced. Those lost generations have 
never learned basic social skills at a functional level, the skills of 
reading and writing and arithmetic, and applying for a job and 
exercising the rights of citizenship, including the right to vote. That 
is why they are walking around not caring about our society. They think 
they are not a part of it, Mr. Speaker.
  Moreover, urban and suburban and rural poverty has not only stilled 
lives, it has created emotional disturbances, many of which manifest 
themselves in antisocial actions in the streets of Houston, TX, and 
Washington, DC, every day. The most tragic victims are the children of 
those parents who struggle and fail to provide not just food, clothing 
and shelter, but a stable environment for our children.

  I, too, sing America. The America I sing has stood solidly behind the 
commitment to the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness. The America that I sing is reinforced by a substantial 
investment in the financial and human capital needed to make her great. 
The America that I love, like many other of my colleagues and my 
family, recognize that we have paid a price for public service, some 
monetarily, but all of us with regard to the time that we in our 
families invest. We must remember the price because, when we do, Mr. 
Speaker, we as a Congress have the courage to dive on the grenade to 
live up to the challenge for our people and not just another 
commercial.

                              {time}  1610

  We must do the job that is necessary for all of our people.

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