[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 33 (Tuesday, March 22, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 22, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                  THE CONGRESSIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Eshoo). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from New Hampshire [Mr. Swett] is recognized for 
60 minutes.
  Mr. SWETT. Madam Speaker, I want to shift gears a little bit. I think 
that we have heard enough about one person's perspective. It is time to 
talk a little bit about how government might make it work a little bit 
better.
  Several weeks ago I gave a speech here on the House floor in which I 
sought to begin a dialog about the need for a new way of doing business 
in Washington. My remarks tonight will be a continuation of that 
dialog.
  All to often, Madam Speaker, debates here in Washington do not focus 
on real problems and real solutions that have to do with real people, 
people who are out in the neighborhoods, people who are back in the 
districts, people who want their lives improved and need that through 
better government. Debates become battles between extremes with each 
side employing hyperbole in order to make a point. Neither side bothers 
to really listen to the opposite point of view, and each side blasts 
the other with sound bites designed for partisan advantage. This 
extremism is creating false impressions, false questions, false choices 
and ultimately, I believe, faulty public policy because real problems 
and real solutions are not typically part of the debate.
  Madam Speaker, the time has come to stand back and say, ``Enough. 
Enough ideological extremism, enough rancorous partisanship, enough 
hyperbole in the debate. The time has come to devise a new way of doing 
business in Washington which focuses on the reality and not on the 
rhetoric.''
  Madam Speaker, that is what this series of speeches is all about. It 
is designed to provide a forum for an emerging coalition in the House 
of Representatives known as the New Democrats, a small group of 
Democrats dedicated to getting results and to building accountability 
into government programs.
  This new coalition is building in strength. New Democrats played a 
prominent role in developing the Penny-Kasich amendment which sought to 
cut government spending an additional $90 billion over and above the 
budget cuts proposed by President Clinton. New Democrats are also 
helping to propel a piece of legislation coauthored by the gentleman 
from Connecticut [Mr. Shays], a Republican, and myself, a Democrat from 
New Hampshire, called the Congressional Accountability Act.
  Madam Speaker, the idea behind the Congressional Accountability Act 
is simple. Congress should live by the same laws that it passes for the 
rest of the country. Amazing as it may seem, Congress is currently 
exempt from the laws that it passes for the rest of the land and does 
not have to comply with laws such as health and safety laws, equal 
employment laws and labor laws. The Congressional Accountability Act 
will change all of that and require Congress to abide by the laws that 
Congress passes. Simple enough idea; I think its time is about upon us.
  In my comments tonight, Madam Speaker, I would like to talk about the 
need for an increased accountability in government funded scientific 
research, an area I have become familiar with through my work on the 
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, a committee that I have 
served on since I first came to Congress in 1991. It is a committee 
that I believe is going to have a great deal to do with the future of 
this country because in this committee we are researching the 
technologies that are going to bring this country to the brink of the 
competitiveness that we need to possess in order to excel in the 
world's markets. This is a committee that is going to be acting as the 
fertilizer, as it were, for all the fields of science where we hope to 
harvest great technologies that will not only help this country, but 
help the world.
  The gentleman from California [Mr. Brown], chairman of the Committee 
on Science, Space, and Technology, has made great strides in increasing 
accountability in government funded science through his efforts to 
eliminate academic earmarking. This is something that he has done for 
many years, and I have to say I have appreciated his efforts knowing 
that, as the chairman of the Committee on Science, Space, and 
Technology, it is sometimes looked upon in the science community as 
somewhat of an oxymoron. But I believe that more needs to be done now.
  Madam Speaker, the Federal Government spends billions of dollars each 
year on research. I am concerned, however, that a lack of 
accountability is how some of these funds are being spent, and we do 
not readlly know if we are getting any bang, let alone a small bang, 
for our buck.

  To help illustrate what I am getting at, Madam Speaker, I would like 
to read from an article that I have here about scientific integrity 
that is written by a physics Nobel laureate named Richard Feynman. The 
title of the article is called, ``Cargo Cult Science.'' These are 
Richard Feynman's words regarding science in the federally funded 
science programs.
  First, Madam Speaker, I have to tell my colleagues, ``You have to 
understand this man is a Mark Twain with a Nobel science award so he 
has a sense of humor that I think is something that you have got to 
first recognize is coming. Otherwise you might question the prose that 
he uses.''
  He writes:
  ``During the Middle Ages there are all kinds of crazy ideas such as 
that a piece of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method 
was discovered for separating ideas which was to try to see if it 
worked and, if it didn't work, to eliminate it. This method became 
organized into science, and it developed very well so that we are now 
in the scientific age. I've concluded, however, that it's not a very 
scientific world. We need to do a much better job of looking into 
theories that don't work and science that isn't science.
  ``Examples of what I'd like to call cargo cult science: In the South 
Seas after World War II there was a cargo cult of people. During the 
war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they 
wanted the same things to happen again. So they arranged to make things 
like runways, to put fires out along those runways, to make a wooden 
hut for a man to sit in and with two wooden pieces on his head like 
head phones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennae. They waited 
for the planes to land. They did everything right. The form was 
perfect. It looked exactly the way it had looked before, but it didn't 
work. Planes didn't land.
  ``This is what I call cargo cult science because they followed all 
the precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they were 
missing something essential because the planes didn't land. It wasn't 
something simple like the ear phones were the wrong shape. It is our 
responsibility, as scientists, not to fool the layman when talking as 
scientists.

                              {time}  2150

  For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a friend, 
you have to remember this is a fine man, he is still talking. I was 
talking to a friend who was going to go on the radio. He does work on 
cosmology and astronomy, and he wondered how he might explain what the 
applications of his work were.
  Well, I said, there aren't any. He said yes, but then we will not 
support for research of this kind.
  That is dishonest. If you are representing yourself as a scientist, 
then you should explain to the layman what you are doing. And if they 
do not support you under those circumstances, then that is their 
decision.
  That is what Richard Feinman believes is cargo science, looking for 
something to come because you have set up a group of theories or 
preconceptions that ultimately are based on really the wrong facts.
  There is another problem I think that exists in government in the 
science fields today, and I have not got a fancy name for it. But it 
really has to do with setting up programs for the sake of running those 
programs and not for the sake of discovering what might come of 
theories that are postulated when those programs are first initiated.
  There is a tremendous fear that as we go into the laboratory in 
federally funded programs, if we do not come out with the outcomes we 
said we were going to come out with when we went into the programs, if 
you can keep this all straight, that we ultimately will lose the 
funding that we originated the program with.
  You have to realize that in order for science to really be effective 
and to really be meaningful, there has to be failure. Because the 
theory is being postulated and it has to be proven or disproven. And so 
often the theories that are not disproven continue to gain evidence, 
but sometimes that evidence may be worked around so that it never gets 
represented back to those who oversee those programs as a faulty 
theory.
  Now, let me give an example where I think the U.S. Government is 
wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on cargo cult science, science 
which is missing an essential element.
  Before I do that, I think it is only fair and it is really actually 
most appropriate that I commend the administration and particularly 
Secretary O'Leary for the job she has done as she has come into the 
Department of Energy and found many of the things that I am talking 
about and has moved to make changes so that we can eliminate these 
kinds of problems.

  One very good example that has come about through this change in 
attitude, not necessarily specifically tied to the Department of 
Energy, but certainly having to do with big science projects, is the 
superconducting super collider, which recently, just last year, was 
voted down by the House of Representatives and the Senate, and whose 
funding was discontinued because it in fact was draining the budget.
  Secretary O'Leary has gone beyond into the Department of Energy and 
found there are problems with the outcomes or there are problems with 
the experiments that have been performed on human beings over the past 
40 years, and she has brought about a new openness in the department 
where she is looking into the effects that these experiments have had 
on the human subjects.
  These are the things I think that are going to bring good science 
back into the laboratories funded by the Department of Energy, and I 
think that Secretary O'Leary is the person who is going to be greatly 
responsible for this under the leadership of President Clinton and Vice 
President Al Gore.
  But for decades, scientists at the Department of Energy have been 
pursuing energy's Holy Grail, fusion energy, the same force that makes 
the sunshine and makes hydrogen bombs explode.
  Theoretically, fusion has the potential to be a safe, secure, and 
affordable source of energy for thousands of years, but after 40 years 
and almost $10 billion of government-funded research, experts say 
commercial fusion energy is still at least a half a century away.
  That is almost unbelievable, for me to sit down and to ask those 
scientists that are dealing with this technology, what is the outcome 
of their research? When do they expect to realize that outcome? And to 
find that they have difficulty defining that outcome and cannot give a 
date by which time they expect to accomplish anything, and that date is 
certainly outside the life span of many people, most people that are 
living in this country today.
  The DOE's current fusion research effort is focused almost 
exclusively on one fusion concept known as the tokamak, a technology 
designed by the Russians back in the 1960's. According to the DOE's 
current schedule, which presumes continued funding for hundreds of 
millions of dollars each year, they plan to build a demonstration 
tokamak reactor sometime around the year 2040, give or take a year or 
two.
  The problem is that U.S. utilities, who are supposed to be the 
beneficiaries of this research, because, remember, we are trying to 
harness the power of the sun and put it to good use as a clean, 
environmentally benign technology that will light all our homes and 
power all our electric cars and do all the things that we need to have 
it do, the U.S. utilities have said that even if such a reactor could 
be built, they would not want to buy one because of its extreme 
complexity, inordinately high cost, unreliability. And I just said it 
was supposed to be clean? No. It has extreme problems with radioactive 
waste.
  That is because when the tritium is put into this accelerator, into 
this magnetic donut, the tokamak, it in fact causes radioactive 
infiltration of the core. And all of a sudden what once was 
nonradioactive and benign has become radioactive and has to be disposed 
of in the proper fashion.
  Now, this is not a simple, small rod that we currently deal with in 
the nuclear reactors of today. This is an entire structure, whose walls 
weaken with the increased radioactivity, which ultimately I guess would 
have to be buried under a mountain of cement or dismantled piecemeal 
and broken into pieces and put away in some safe location where it 
cannot affect the general public.
  Someone is going to have to do that. That person is going to be 
susceptible to that radioactivity.
  Faced with this situation, it seems to me that DOE scientists with 
integrity, not the integrity of the cosmologist or astronomer, but the 
integrity of a scientist who is looking for answers and willing to face 
failure in the pursuit of those answers, should step forward and say 
something like this: ``Despite all the work we have done, the tokamak 
fusion concept is not going to lead to a commercially feasible system. 
We should scrap it and go back to the drawing board.''
  That is a scary thing for anyone in the DOE or in the laboratories in 
this country to confess to, because right now the way we are set up, if 
they make that confession, they lose their funding, their program is 
over, and their job goes with it.
  So that has not happened. Scientists receiving funding from the 
current program have not said anything, at least publicly, because they 
do not want to threaten their funding.
  I say at least publicly, because I am hearing things privately that 
have motivated me to come to the floor and to use this as one example 
of where we are not looking for, nor achieving, accountability in our 
government programs.
  As a result, we are continuing to waste hundreds of millions of 
dollars annually, something which according to the utilities, will not 
lead to a commercially feasible reactor.
  The logical question to ask is how has this been allowed to happen? 
The answer is very simple: Because there is a lack of accountability in 
monitoring the scientific programs in the government of the United 
States of America.
  Incredible as it may seem, no one has held the Department of Energy 
accountable for the results from their fusion program. As it is 
described in cargo cult science, despite the best efforts of the 
members of the cargo cult, the planes did not land.
  They have not come in. We have been constructing an airfield of 
bamboo and wood, and we have not been able to really establish the 
right programs that will meet the immediate and near-term future needs 
of this country. We are working on something that we have had a hard 
time defining and a harder time determining when it will, in fact, come 
into play.
  There is very little, there is no public, no private money going into 
this project, or very little. And my guess is, if you follow the 
dollars, you are seeing that utilities, that those that are interested 
in developing new and alternative energies have decided that this is 
not a project that they should invest in. They are, rather, putting 
their money in alternative fusion projects.
  Similarly, the Department of Energy's current fusion program is 
missing another essential understanding. Not only are they not 
understanding that the planes will not land using the tokamak, they do 
not understand that the program should be leading toward the 
development of a commercially feasible fusion power system. I do not 
mean to say that we should not support basic fusion or basic fusion 
research. I believe that we should. But what we should not do, however, 
is continue putting all of our research money into an outdated 
technology. We should not continue funding scientists who claim that 
the plane will land, that the tokamak will lead to a commercially 
feasible system, when clearly it will not, not within the foreseeable 
future.
  We need to put accountability back into the fusion program. We need 
to take the hundreds of millions of dollars that are spent every year 
and allocate them into a field that is fertilized, where there are 
alternative fusion programs that are currently being funded by the 
private sector.
  The funding that the private sector is investing in these programs, 
plus what additional monies the U.S. Government could put into them, 
would not even come close to what is being spent on the tokamak 
project. That allows us to do one or two things: to allow the 
engineering for the tokamak project to reach a critical point where it 
can be terminated, because there are additional political problems with 
this program where, when we are talking about the ITER project, which 
is the international tokamak that is being developed by the Europeans, 
the Japanese, the United States and other foreign countries, they have 
run up against a roadblock where they politically cannot choose a site 
to locate this project.
  But more importantly, we have a deficit that we have got to deal 
with. This is something I think responsible government has to take a 
very close look at and a responsible look at. That is why I think this 
is a program that we are going to have to look at very closely in terms 
of responsibility, in terms of accountability, in terms of whether big 
science or diverse, multiple, smaller science projects are the best 
policy for the Department of Energy and other Departments that deal 
with scientific research.
  I hope in the weeks ahead, as we have an opportunity to debate 
certain projects like tokamak, we can look at these not in terms of 
wiping out programs but in terms of redirecting monies so that we can 
put some against a deficit that clearly needs to be brought down and 
eliminated, that we can clean up and tighten up programs that are 
wasteful and eliminate programs that are unnecessary and bring on board 
programs that might give us more options in the not-too-distant future 
and, hopefully, develop an opportunity to bring about good science that 
addresses the needs of Americans today and in the near term in the next 
several generations.
  I am honored to have with me one of my colleagues from Minnesota, 
Congressman Penny, who I know is very interested in congressional 
accountability and Government accountability and bringing about some 
kind of responsible management of taxpayers' dollars in Government.
  I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Penny] to let him say 
his piece on Government accountability. I thank him for coming down to 
share this time with me.
  Mr. PENNY. Madam Speaker, at the outset, I want to compliment the 
gentleman for his excellent presentation on the issue of fusion 
research. This country has not handled its energy policy nearly as well 
as it should. Here, almost 20 years after the initial oil shock, we are 
addicted to oil as ever. We import, frankly, more oil today than we did 
20 years ago, and we have done precious little to seriously explore 
energy alternatives in the past 20 years.
  Fusion may be an option for the future, if it is the right kind of 
fusion, if it is environmentally safe, but as you have pointed out so 
eloquently this evening, even in that area we seem to have had a 
misguided or misdirected notion of the sort of research in this arena 
that best fits our Nation's future needs.

  I simply want to assure him that as he uses his influence within 
Congress to address that issue that he certainly will have my support, 
because I believe we can do better, smarter research in this area and 
maybe save a few dollars in the bargain. That certainly is a goal to be 
applauded.
  If I might, I want to draw attention to the need to help the 
President this year with his goal of reprioritization. He submitted a 
budget to the Congress, a budget which we adopted last week, which 
calls upon this institution to implement several billion dollars' worth 
of spending cuts in existing discretionary programs in order to 
facilitate some of the high priority investments that the 
administration wants to finance.
  The President's task will not be easy. We saw many of his 
recommendations for budget cuts set by the roadside last year as his 
budget traveled through the congressional process. And as a 
consequence, some of the change that he promised was not delivered at 
the end of the day.
  This year we have an even tighter budget. I would say, in credit to 
the gentleman from New Hampshire, that he was a part of a strong and 
vocal element within the Democratic Party that led the fight for fiscal 
responsibility and deeper spending cuts as part of last year's budget 
and an attempt to make even deeper cuts at the end of the session last 
November.
  As a consequence of those efforts, this year we do have a tighter 
budget. It will force more difficult choices. And the President has 
presented to Congress 100 program cancellations and 200 program cuts, 
which he wants us to enact.
  We can debate whether all of that money should be transferred to high 
priority investments or whether some of that money could actually be 
used to further reduce the deficit. But nonetheless, this President is 
providing leadership in suggesting to the Congress that there are 
programs in our budget that have long ago outlived their usefulness and 
ought to be discarded.
  There are other programs of lower priority that ought to be cut to 
make room for new priority items for the 1990's. As we proceed with 
appropriation bills in the coming months, I would hope that within the 
Democratic Caucus we could provide a strong coalition of votes in 
support of implementing the President's agenda for spending cuts. It 
seems to me if there is one signal we can send to the public that we 
are getting serious about setting priorities at the national level and 
living within a budget, it is at least to have a good number of 
Democrats in evidence during the appropriation cycle who are willing to 
cast a vote in support of the cuts that the President has recommended, 
because as the gentleman from New Hampshire so well knows, too often 
these cuts are recommended but the senior leaders and the spenders 
within our party find a way to avoid those cuts, and the spending 
machine just keeps on running down the track. We need to be an element 
within the Democratic Party that stands with the President in support 
of those cuts and tries to make them a reality.
  I would enlist your support in that effort, as we move into the 
appropriation cycle in just a few weeks.

                              {time}  2210

  Mr. SWETT. If I may reclaim my time from the gentleman from 
Minnesota, I think he brings up a very good point. The one thing we as 
New Democrats are going to have to do is, in a very constructive way, 
being about accountability in spending, and ensure that those cuts are 
going against either eliminating bad programs and being reinvested, as 
Rob Shapiro from the Progressive Policy Institute says, into programs 
that are going to bring about new growth and new opportunity, or that 
they will reduce the deficit, and hopefully eliminate the deficit and 
help us bring down the debt.
  The point the gentleman is making I think bears repeating, because my 
sense is until this body fully embraces this understanding, and allows 
for a program to be cut and that money not to immediately be spent on 
other existing programs that are not being looked at from an 
accountability perspective, we are going to continue to wreak havoc 
throughout the system. I am hearing from people like the chairman, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Brown], very grave concerns about 
reducing programs like the tokamak before we have control over where 
that money goes, so it does not have the opportunity of going into 
smarter, better, more responsive science and technology.
  I would ask the gentleman, how is that going to play out, based on 
the many years of experience the gentleman has had in the body and the 
changes that he senses, as he completes his last term.
  Mr. PENNY. I would begin by responding that if we cannot be willing 
soldiers in the President's effort to cut less important programs to 
make room for emerging priorities, then we are not going to fare very 
well at any other level, whether it is within your committee in dealing 
with fusion research, in trying to reallocate that to a more beneficial 
purpose, or whether it is within the Agriculture Committee as we 
attempt to, perhaps, modify our price support program, or our foreign 
credit programs, in deference to a smarter way of investing those 
dollars in our rural economy, perhaps other policies or programs that 
have more to do with job creation and growth than the expenditures that 
are now a part of our farm policy.
  I would say that if the President cannot succeed in winning from 
Congress the cuts that he has requested, there is precious little hope 
that we can take this a step forward and approach this issue in the 
committees of Congress on that same basis.

  I share with you enthusiasm for the report of the Progressive Policy 
Institute in which they have recommended a cut-and-invest strategy, 
where they have a long list, several hundred programs, as well as some 
tax breaks, some questionable tax breaks, which they would cancel in 
favor of an investment strategy.
  Some of those savings from program cuts and tax benefit eliminations 
would go to reduce the deficit, but some of that would then be 
transferred to the investment programs in research and in public 
infrastructure and in education, which will build for a stronger 
future.
  The President has begun in a very modest way to point us in that 
direction. Your committee has the challenge of doing that in the arena 
of scientific research and energy research. My committee has the 
responsibility to do that for the health of our rural economy. All of 
us have to take this cut-and-invest attitude about our spending 
priorities in the years ahead, both for the sake of the deficit and for 
the sake of the future growth of our Nation's economy.
  If you do not mind, could I touch on another topic, as long as we 
have some time remaining this evening? If the gentleman wants to 
distance himself from these remarks, I would certainly understand his 
sentiments in that regard.
  Madam Speaker, I want to talk a little bit about the health care 
bill, which is following an all-too-familiar course through the Halls 
of Congress. Like so many issues in the past, it is being handled in 
three separate committees, each committee having total jurisdiction 
over the health care menu, each committee likely to develop a different 
proposal. It is redundant, it is time consuming, it is like lobbyist 
heaven, because the interest groups will make a lot of money from their 
membership as they gin up the fear factor about what one committee or 
another might do.
  It is going to keep us all terribly busy for the next several months, 
but at the end of the day, we are really going to be back to square 
one, because it is likely we will have three separate plans developed 
by three separate committees, none of which can command 218 votes, a 
majority of support here on the House floor, so we will have to then 
trade back and forth, make amendments, and try to meld at that point in 
time a middle ground approach to health care reform that garners the 
necessary support within Congress to become the law of the land.
  I have been greatly distressed by the approach that has been taken 
within this Congress on this issue, because to date in the committee 
hearings that have been held there is precious little pretense of 
bipartisanship. At the subcommittee level in the Committee on Ways and 
Means, we have seen any number of close votes on important policy 
decisions, like employer mandates and cigarette taxes, you name it, 
assume basically party line votes; close votes, party line votes.
  I am convinced that we cannot pass health care reform without 
significant bipartisan support. For those that do not talk Washington's 
language, that means Democrats and Republicans voting for this bill in 
significant numbers.
  I am a bit distressed that time and again leaders in my party, 
including the White House, the President and others in the 
administration, pretend bipartisanship, talk bipartisanship, and yet 
they have prepared a very partisan bill, a bill which, upon 
introduction, garnered support only from Democrats, no Republican 
cosponsors, and now a strategy on the part of the White House and 
within the Congress that seems to be pushing this issue forward on a 
strictly party line basis.
  That may be possible at the committee level. It is not possible here 
on the House floor. I am firmly convinced that we will not pass health 
care reform without meaningful participation from the Republican 
Caucus, nor should we pass health care reform in a strictly partisan 
fashion.
  There are some things that we have to accept going into this debate. 
If we want Republican support, we probably have to negotiate, if not 
back off entirely, from this notion of employer mandates. But it is not 
simply Republicans that balk at the idea of a mandate of that sort. Any 
number of Democrats in this Congress fail to be convinced that a 
mandate is the best way to move toward universal coverage for all 
Americans under a reasonable health care policy.
  Price controls: When have they ever worked? I think it is immensely 
difficult for us to get Republican support for a bill that has 
Government price controls. One of their own, President Nixon, attempted 
price controls, not a terribly successful undertaking some 20 years 
ago. It seems we should learn from past experience and not pretend that 
price controls can work today, when they have never worked throughout 
our Nation's history.
  Deficit reduction: Can we actually save money with health care 
reform? We all had better hope so, because last year we did about as 
much as this Congress is capable of doing in terms of cutting the 
defense budget, we did about as much as the public will stand for in 
terms of tax increases, even though primarily those increases only fell 
on the wealthy, and now that we have a budget freeze on the 
discretionary programs. We are beginning to see that we have to pick 
and choose within that tighter budget to take care of priorities while 
cutting lower priority items.
  There is precious little we can do to further reduce the deficit if 
we do not cut entitlement spending significantly, and the biggest chunk 
of the entitlement agenda is health care spending. It is the fastest 
growing element in the entitlement budget, growing at a double digit 
rate per year, projected to increase perhaps 10, 11 percent for 
Medicare and Medicaid costs in the coming year alone.

                              {time}  2220

  So deficit reduction has to be evident in health care reform or it is 
really a waste of our time to talk about it, because without cost 
savings in our Federal health care programs, we will never see the end 
of Government deficit spending.
  Yet there is no deficit reduction evident in the President's health 
care plan. In the first 5 years of their plan, the Congressional Budget 
Office indicates that they are $70 billion to $80 billion over budget, 
and at the very best, the rhetoric from the White House would lead us 
to believe that within the first 5 years they may be able to keep their 
program deficit neutral, which means it will not increase the deficit, 
but neither will it reduce the deficit. We have to do better or we will 
have failed the American people on the critical question of whether we 
can rein in the costs of health care, not only for the private sector 
but for the Government as well, because it is the part of our budget 
that is running away from us at a rapid rate.
  A party vote for health care reform at the end of this legislative 
session would be a disaster for the country. Two hundred eighteen votes 
from Democrats alone does not represent to the American public a 
serious and sincere effort to resolve this issue in the best interests 
of the country. It will represent to them a fiercely partisan effort to 
do it our way and to reject any and all suggestions from the 
Republicans as if they have nothing of worth to offer in this debate, 
and that is ridiculous on its face to suggest that there is nothing to 
be offered by the Republicans in the context of a health care debate 
that may be productive and useful and could become part of a meaningful 
health care reform plan.
  I do not think, speaking strictly as a Democrat, that we as a party 
want to go down the same path that we traveled on the budget resolution 
and the budget reconciliation bill last year in which in the final 
analysis we passed it with only one vote to spare. And the public was 
outraged, because after a decade of deficit spending, after voting for 
change in the White House, after voting in numbers approaching 20 
million for an independent candidate as a way of sending a message of 
revulsion to both the Democrats and the Republicans, what they saw in 
Washington last year was a strictly partisan shooting match in which 
the Democrats pushed through their own version of a budget plan, one 
that did buy us some near-term relief on the deficit, but one that does 
not offer any long-term solution to or deficit problem. The public will 
not be impressed this year with a strictly partisan health care plan, 
just as they were not impressed last year with a strictly partisan 
budget.
  As Yogi Berra once said, it is deja vu all over again, and that is 
what the American public is going to say if they see this Congress and 
this White House walk down a partisan path on health care reform the 
way we did on the 1993 budget.
  As I said earlier, the public will not trust a partisan health care 
reform initiative. I come from the State of Minnesota where we have a 
major health care reform program in place today. It is controversial. 
It has been to some degree disruptive. Not all of the players in the 
health care system are entirely satisfied with the impact of this 
reform on them and their livelihood or their comfort level. But it has 
been generally accepted because it was passed in a bipartisan fashion 
by the State legislature, a legislature controlled by Democrats, and 
signed into law by a Republican Governor. In other words, the political 
process reached a consensus and developed a plan that represented the 
best contributions of both parties and developed a plan that was 
somewhere within the mainstream of the electorate, a plan they could 
understand and accept, not a plan that frightened them and sent them 
into fits of rage and anger.
  If we want health care reform to work, the American public must 
accept it, and their trust level rises only a couple of inches off the 
floor for either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. If we 
want them to have a higher level of trust for the product of our work, 
we must demonstrate to them that leaders and Members in both political 
parties are working together in the best interests of the country for a 
bipartisan health plan. A bipartisan health plan will be more saleable 
among the electorate because based on the bipartisanship required to 
develop the plan, the public will accept it as a plan that is not 
radical, a plan that is not designed for partisan purposes, a plan that 
is sensitive to various points of view, because bipartisanship suggests 
to them that all points of view were heard.
  History shows us quite clearly that monumental legislation, landmark 
legislation throughout the years has always been approved with strong 
bipartisan support. Let us not break with history just because of some 
notion in today's Washington because one party now controls both 
houses, the House and Senate and the White House, and therefore one 
party has all of the answers. The most important legislation in our 
Nation's history, including domestic legislation in the 1930's, in the 
1950's and in the 1960's always enjoyed broad bipartisan support, and 
we ought to follow that example on health care reform.

  I am amazed, after having said all of that, that so many leaders in 
my own party at the national level seem to resist the obvious. It is 
clear that there have been many signals in the past months to confirm 
that, that Senator Dole is ready to deal on health care reform. It is 
undeniable that Senator Moynihan, the chairman of the Finance 
Committee, has been publicly advocating a bipartisan approach to health 
care reform for some time now. In the House, the only proposal that has 
broad bipartisan support is the Cooper-Grandy bill, and yet that is the 
only proposal that seems to be on the enemies' list as far as many of 
our Democrat leaders and as far as the White House are concerned. But 
we ought to respect the work and embrace the work of this bipartisan 
group rather than rejecting it as we have to date.
  And there are many Republicans, like the 92 group. I am not even sure 
they call themselves that any longer. They would clearly want to be 
part of a serious health care reform effort. They include Members like 
Nancy Johnson who serves on one of the pertinent committees, and Steve 
Gunderson of Wisconsin. These legislators and others would prefer to be 
part of a solution because they are serious legislators, not partisan 
game players. And I have to believe, because I have worked with him now 
for 12 years, I have to believe that minority leader Bob Michel would 
like nothing more in his final year in Congress as he approaches 
retirement than to be able to be a part of something really important 
for the country's future, and that is a resolution of the inequities 
and the inadequacies of our current health care system.
  So the evidence is obvious that bipartisanship is possible, and it 
amazes me that our party is so resistant to these indications on the 
part of our Republican colleagues that they are ready to come to the 
table. Again, I would say bipartisanship is not only possible on this 
issue, it is preferable.
  Stealing from Yogi Berra one last time, when you come to the fork in 
the road, take it. We are at that fork in the road, and the right path 
to follow is the path toward bipartisan health care reform.

                              {time}  2230

  Mr. SWETT. I thank the gentleman from Minnesota.
  I would add the words of the great New Hampshire-New England poet, 
Robert Frost, that the path taken, or the path chosen be the one that 
is less taken. I think that represents the path of bipartisanship. 
Because that really is the real problem that we are facing here in the 
Congress today.
  If you look at the society around us, if you see how crime rages in 
the streets, how special interests control the actions here in 
Congress, the divisiveness between groups, whether they be ethnic or 
economic or geographic, all of these differences and divisive elements 
throughout our society, I think, would begin to heal, would begin to 
come together if they saw in the Nation's power structure here in the 
House of Representatives and in the Senate a willingness to begin to 
reason and respect and incorporate the viewpoints of both sides of the 
aisle.
  Mr. PENNY. If I might ask for the gentleman to yield again, our 
forefathers had it right. They envisioned a Congress in which the 
divergent views of a diverse Nation would be brought to bear on the 
debate within this very Chamber, and that by our example in reaching a 
consensus on critical issues, profoundly important to the Nation's 
future, we would convey to the American public that same sense of 
cooperation and consensus and togetherness and teamwork, but we exhibit 
that behavior far too infrequently here in the halls of Congress, and I 
do not think it is any surprise that the country today seems as divided 
and torn and distressed within many of our Nation's communities, 
because leaders at the top do not set the right example of working 
together for the common good. And so we essentially convey to everyone 
that you are on your own; cooperation, conciliation, accommodation is 
an infringement on your individual rights.
  There is no larger goal, there is no larger purpose; get your own; 
get it while the getting is good.
  We have to be better than that. I think our Founding Fathers intended 
that we be better than that.
  Mr. SWETT. I do not think you and I come from two unique and totally 
different districts that are at odds with the rest of the country.
  When I see people around the country, and I talk to them, they are 
looking for people who can view the large vision and who are willing to 
work within that vision to bring about these kinds of resolutions that 
have respect for the difference of opinions, for the variety of the 
Members, whether they be Members of the Black Caucus, the Hispanic 
caucus, the Republic caucus, the Democratic caucus, and the problem is 
that there is so much division it really does bring us back to cargo 
science.

  We are here giving speeches and our rhetoric speaks of the 
differences between us, and we think that through those differences we 
are getting at the proper or the improper elements of a piece of 
legislation, where what we ought to really be doing is seeking out the 
common ground, finding where we can agree and building upon that, 
because only if we start building upon that common foundation are we 
going to get the plane to land.
  We are only going to be able to see something come in that really has 
lasting integrity. If we agree that this common problem and these 
common elements of the solution ought to be incorporated, certainly one 
side is going to hold sway over the other. There is going to be 
extremely rancorous debate at times, but that does not mean that we 
cannot ultimately craft a solution to problems, whether it be welfare 
reform, crime, health care reform, you name it, the budget, all of 
these things are going to have to incorporate some kind of reasoned and 
realistic accommodation of one side or the other.
  That does not make me a worse Democrat. I think it makes me a better 
U.S. citizen, and I think that is something that we both believe has to 
take precedence as we debate and as we look at and as we cultivate and 
as we ultimately impart at least our vision of what this country ought 
to be and can be.
  Mr. PENNY. If the gentleman would yield again, there is no clearer 
example of heated debate involving intense differences than the example 
our Founding Fathers set in Philadelphia as they worked in 1778 to 
craft our Nation's Constitution.
  There were philosophical differences. There were regional 
differences. There were differences based on age and experience. The 
debate there raged on for weeks and was rancorous and cantankerous at 
times, but in the final analysis, they set aside their differences and 
focused on the common ground. The product of their work was this 
Nation's Constitution which has lived on for these 200 years which is 
ample evidence of the virtue of the more bipartisan approach to dealing 
with the legislative issues facing this Nation.
  And to get back to the quote from Robert Frost, it goes as this: 
``Two roads diverged in the woods, and I, I took the one less traveled 
by, and it has made all the difference.''
  In modern-day Congress, I have now been here 11 years, and you have 
been here less than half that time. I have seen far too little 
bipartisanship. It is the road less traveled by. But if we finally get 
on that road, I am convinced that for the workings of this institution 
and for the interests of this Nation, it will make all the difference.
  Mr. SWETT. And I would conclude by just putting a cap on the 
discussion about the U.S. Constitution.
  Society at that time had in it the virtues, the values, the structure 
that allowed for the debate to go forward.
  The name of the resolution to the problems that confronted our 
founding forefathers was none other than the Connecticut Compromise, 
and how well we would be to incorporate the language or the vocabulary, 
the word ``compromise'' back into our debate that would allow us to go 
forward with discussions that would ultimately allow us to find 
resolution incorporating a little bit of everybody's ideas.
  We have a President, I believe, who understands this value. There are 
individuals in this Congress, I believe, who want to incorporate these 
philosophies. We also are coming off of a time, and we still see the 
results in some Members' philosophies, that want to divide and conquer 
and destroy in order to build up out of the ashes. We cannot fall prey 
to that mentality. We have to hopefully see the greater glory and the 
greater value in incorporating the vision of our founding forefathers 
in coming up with the kinds of solutions that I think ultimately can be 
far more exciting, far more productive, and far more impacting on the 
attitudes of all Americans.
  Because they are out there waiting for this to happen, and their 
trust in Government, their belief in our abilities is not going to come 
forward based on partisan votes where only Democrats pass legislation 
or only Republicans are able to thwart legislation. They are only going 
to trust this Government when we come to a place where they see there 
is openness, there is a willingness to entertain all viewpoints, there 
is real debate about real issues establishing real commonality in 
discussing differences and ultimately enacting, not rhetoric, but real 
solutions that are going to make differences in people's lives.
  If we can do that, then I think more important than what we do, how 
we do it will make all the difference, and that is the road I think we 
should take.
  I thank the gentleman very much for sharing in my time.

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