[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 51 (Tuesday, May 3, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 3, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
    THE RELEVANCE OF ANTICRIME LEGISLATION AND BUDGET RESTRAINTS TO 
                         MEMBERS' CONSTITUENTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Boucher). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of February 11, 1994, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to use these 
special orders in order to tie together a number of very important 
things that are happening here with some of the kinds of catastrophes 
we see and the serious problems being experienced in my district.
  It is very difficult to relate to the constituents of one's district 
exactly what relevance the activities in Washington have to the day-to-
day problems they face. But they are quite relevant. Whatever we do 
down here is quite relevant.
  We have just passed a crime bill out of the House of Representatives. 
It has gone to conference with the Senate, and that crime bill is quite 
relevant to what is happening with crime in my district and all other 
districts. The crime bill was passed, and it calls for billions of 
dollars to be expended to build more prisons. It also calls for a 
three-strikes-and-you're-out provision for people to be placed in 
prison of life. Some very expensive measures are included in the crime 
bill.
  However, very little money is included for programs that were 
introduced by the Congressional Black Caucus which call for preventive 
efforts to be financed by the Federal Government, more after-school 
centers for young people, midnight basketball programs, and more 
treatment programs for drug addicts. A number of the things that were 
accepted in the bill are accepted with such small amounts of money that 
they will be quite ineffective once they are implemented.
  The crime bill had some good features. I do not want to criticize the 
total crime bill, and we do need some new policemen. Additional 
policemen would be allocated to communities based on the implementation 
of the authorization of the crime bill. A hundred thousand new 
policemen were requested by the President. The Senate and the House 
have different responses to that, but more policemen in the localities 
and more payment for police activities at the local level are very much 
needed across the country. Now, there are some other good features in 
the bill also, but there is a glaring omission from the bill, one that 
is hard to explain to my constituents. There is a glaring omission from 
the House bill of any concern with gun control. There are no provisions 
for dealing with gun control in any reasonable or meaningful manner.

  Guns are at the heart of the problem with crime. The deadliness of 
crime in our times is definitely related to the proliferation of large 
numbers of guns. We have more than 200 million guns already. These are 
handguns. We are not talking about rifles for hunting. We are talking 
about guns already out there to the tune of 200 million, and it is 
climbing every day, so that soon we will have a handgun for every 
American man, woman, and child. It is ridiculous, and yet our bill does 
nothing to deal with the handgun provisions. We are to be considering 
that in a separate bill this week.
  So my constituents ask me, ``Are you serious about crime? If you 
refuse to do anything about gun control, are you serious?''
  They ask me if we are serious about a number of things that are 
happening down here.
  We have a large number of people now who are offering themselves as 
experts on welfare reform. That is going to be at the top of the 
discussion for the next 2 or 3 months. Welfare reform is on everybody's 
mind because they want to make certain we do not continue to waste the 
funds of our Government by assisting individuals who are unworthy of it 
or individuals who could be working and taking care of poor children 
who ought to have their fathers taking care of them. There are a number 
of reasons why the American people get excited and sometimes hysterical 
about welfare.
  But my constituents ask me--and I agree 100 percent with them--if 
they are excited about Government waste, then why are we just excited 
about welfare reform? Why do we not reform some other things while we 
are at it? They ask, ``Why don't you have what you would call subsidy 
reform?''
  We have subsidies coming from the Federal Government where the 
taxpayers are paying people to do various things, and the taxpayers are 
assisting people who we say need assistance in the form of subsidies.
  We have subsidies for farmers. We pay farmers not to grow certain 
crops. We assist farmers with loans of various kinds. We have had this 
for years, for decades. Nobody has proposed that we take a look at the 
waste in these programs and cut back on the waste there.

  Farmers are only 2 percent of the population. They are less than 2 
percent of the total population of the United States, yet they absorb a 
large portion of the budget with these farm subsidy programs. Not only 
do we subsidize farmers with crop subsidies, but recently the 
Washington Post indicated that there is a great source of waste, a 
great deal of waste in the Farmers' Home Loan Mortgage Program. The 
Farmers' Home Loan Mortgage Program costs the taxpayers $11.5 billion 
in loans that were forgiven, loans that were delinquent and just 
written off and forgiven. Let me repeat that figure to every American 
citizen who is concerned about Government waste. The taxpayers of the 
United States gave the farmers of the United States $11.5 billion--that 
is not million. This amount of money, $11.5 billion, was given to the 
farmers. That is what happens when we forgive a loan. They had $11.5 
billion worth of loans. They were not paying on them, and for various 
reasons our Department of Agriculture forgave the loans, gave the 
taxpayers' money to the farmers.
  This is just a small segment of the population. The farmers only 
constitute 2 percent of the population.
  We all appreciate our farmers. We need the farmers. American farmers 
are the greatest farmers in the world. Our agricultural system produces 
food cheaper than any other system. But do the American people want to 
give away $11.5 billion when there are so many other needs that should 
be met?
  The Washington Post ran a story on the Farmers' Home Loan Mortgage 
giveaway on the front page of the paper. They also cited in a very long 
article four millionaires who are farmers on the side, millionaires who 
have not paid on their loans for 8 to 10 years. The loans they had were 
just sitting there. They were not paying on them. Nothing had been done 
to them. One of the so-called farmers who was a millionaire had $26 
million in assets. In other words, he had property and stocks and bonds 
and various things totaling $26 million, and yet he was not made to pay 
on his loan. He was delinquent on his loan.
  So if we are interested in saving money, why do we focus only on the 
recipients of welfare? Welfare is called Aid to Dependent Children, Aid 
to Families with Dependent Children.

                              {time}  1430

  So the families with children who for some reason cannot be taken 
care of, for some reason they have to have Government subsidy, we are 
singling them out and zeroing in on them and saying we have to have 
welfare reform, we have to save this money.
  Yes, wherever there are people who are abusing this program, we 
certainly should take some steps to deal with it. But what about the 
Farmers Home Loan Mortgage? Are we going to take some steps to deal 
with the $11.5 billion? Are we going to put some of those people in 
jail who did not pay their loans? Are we going to make some effort to 
collect it? What do we have to do? Do the taxpayers just have to give 
away $11.5 billion and nothing happens?
  I expected that on the floor of the Congress, once the article 
appeared on the front page of the Washington Post, that we would have 
numerous calls for an investigation. I expected we would have calls for 
special hearings. I expected that all of the freshmen who came last 
year, 110 freshmen, whose No. 1 item was lowering cost of Government, 
at least half of them would call for some special effort to deal with 
the waste of $11.5 billion. But it has not happened.
  There are some very strange things that happen in this Capitol, very 
strange things go on in Washington, and I find it very difficult to 
explain them to my constituents.
  I cannot explain why nobody is concerned with a giveaway of $11.5 
billion. But I am not surprised. I am not shocked. Because for many 
months, I stood on the floor of this House and asked the same questions 
about the savings and loan swindle.
  The savings and loans have swindled the American people out of 
billions of dollars. Billions of dollars were guaranteed by the 
taxpayers. The Federal deposit insurance guaranteed the deposits in the 
savings and loan banks, so that when they went bankrupt, when they 
collapsed, then taxpayer money had to be used to pay off the 
depositors.
  Stanford University predicts that before we are finally finished with 
the savings and loan swindle, the American taxpayers will be out $500 
billion. I did not say million, I said B, billion. The savings and loan 
swindle, which went on for the last 4 or 5 years, will cost the 
American taxpayers at least $500 billion before all of the operations 
are completed and all of the various agencies that were set up to 
recover the money, to take care of the depositors. Before it is all 
finished the taxpayers will be paying out, and getting nothing in 
return, $500 billion.

  We get nothing in return for this money. If you waste money in 
building an aircraft carrier that you do not need, or waste money in 
building a submarine you do not need, at least you have a piece of 
metal. You have something to show for it. In the case of the savings 
and loans, the money is gone.
  They say they were managed badly, the real estate market collapsed. 
But we have evidence it was not bad management in 90 percent of the 
cases. There were business swindles. Business swindles, where somebody 
would buy a piece of real estate and inflate the cost of it, then sell 
it to somebody and inflate the cost of that. Finally, everybody would 
get a loan and, finally, you have a piece of real estate costing a few 
thousand dollars that would be up to $1 million.
  The bank gives a loan on that $1 million to build the building. So 
you have a loan for the land which cost too much in the first place. 
Then you build a building, and they did not complete the building. So 
they never could occupy the building or get any income from the 
building. The whole thing collapsed to the tune of $20 or $30 million.
  They said that was mismanagement. You can't call us crooks.
  Everybody knew in every stage of the transaction they were ripping 
off the taxpayers; they were getting something they were not going to 
be able to pay back.
  But in the final analysis, the bank is left holding the bag. The bank 
cannot meet its obligation, the bank goes under, and the American 
taxpayers come in in the form of the Federal Deposit Insurance 
Corporation and they bail out the bank, which means that the American 
taxpayers are left holding the bag. They have paid the bill. And that 
will cost us $500 billion.
  So while we are considering all of these ways to save money, why are 
we not considering what is our next step in recovering some of the 
money lost through the savings and loans swindle? Why not have 
investigations? Why not have hearings? Why not take a look at where we 
are, 5 or 6 years now into the discovery and the exposure of the 
massive swindles of the savings and loans associations?
  Nobody wants to talk about that here in this Capitol. People get 
hysterical about wasting money on children who cannot help themselves, 
welfare dependent children, but nobody wants to talk about the massive 
amounts that we wasted through the savings and loans swindle.
  My constituents cannot understand it, and I don't think anybody else 
in America really can understand it. Why aren't our newspapers 
screaming loudly about this awful waste? Why aren't our major leaders 
talking about the impact on the economy of that kind of waste? You get 
nothing for it. The farmers are given $11.5 billion. You are getting 
nothing for it. What is it doing for the total economy? If the S&L 
swindle costs us $500 billion, we get nothing for it.
  There is another way to spend our money. Why not invest in activities 
which produce jobs? Why not go back to where we were a year ago when 
the President offered the stimulus package that was going to create 
programs which would build bridges, programs which would build 
highways, programs which would provide services in terms of more Head 
Start youngsters, increased assistance to build libraries and schools? 
Sixteen billion dollars, just a mere $16 billion, was dedicated to 
using the taxpayers' money to invest in activities which would generate 
income.
  Not only would income be generated from the jobs that were created, 
but the kinds of activities that the people who have the jobs were 
engaged in would be improving the economy, increasing the possibility 
of other economic activity. If you build better bridges and better 
roads and highways, then the movement of goods is made more efficient. 
If you give better training to students and job training to employees, 
they are able to take more skilled jobs. They earn more income. The 
income taxes come back to the Federal Government. So it is an 
investment.
  The stimulus program of the President made more sense than any 
program we have had on the table in the last 2 years. And yet that 
stimulus package was voted down by the Senate. We passed it in the 
House, but it was later voted down.
  My constituents want to know why don't we come forward with another 
stimulus package? Every week when I go home. I am from New York, so I 
am fortunate enough to be able to go home every week. In fact, I am so 
close to my constituents, they want me to come home every night.
  At least every week I am in the district, and I get greeted at the 
door of my office by men who are asking, when are the jobs coming? 
Congressman, when are the jobs coming? Nothing that happens is more 
important than the creation of jobs.
  To put it all together, I have talked about the crime bill. I talked 
about welfare reform. I am talking about waste in the farmers home loan 
mortgage program, I am talking about waste in the savings and loan 
swindle.
  I would like to see us deal with all of that waste and use the 
taxpayers' money instead in another direction, of creating jobs, of 
investing in activities which create jobs.
  We don't talk enough about jobs in this House. We don't talk enough 
about jobs in this Capitol. There is an assumption because we are in a 
capitalistic society, the free market prevails, that Government plays a 
minor role in the creation of jobs. While we recognize that jobs drive 
the economy and you can't have a working economy without jobs, you 
can't have a working economy unless you have income generating 
activity, because the income generating activity produces revenue, and 
revenue is what Government needs to survive on.
  We don't recognize that. We don't admit that the primary stimulus for 
the capitalistic economy of America has been for the last 50 years the 
Government, after we ended World War II, which was an activity where 
there was a great stimulus. But in our peacetime economy, the greatest 
stimulus for the economy has always been the Government.

                              {time}  1440

  The fact that we decided to go into an arms race with the Soviet 
Union meant that we poured billions of dollars into the defense 
industry, and the defense industry was the motor of our economy. What 
that defense industry motor showed us is that if you do not have 
defense as a motor to drive the economy, if you do not create jobs via 
defense, if the Government does not stimulate jobs that way, then it 
has to stimulate them some other way.
  Government must create jobs. We must go forward understanding that 
one of our primary responsibilities as legislators, one of the primary 
responsibilities of the decisionmakers here in this Capitol is to 
create jobs. People in my district do not understand why we do not 
spend more time talking about creating jobs. Why do we have lengthy 
discussions about crime and a crime bill and we do not recognize that 
people who have jobs, who have hope of some day getting a job, behave 
in ways which reduce crime.
  The No. 1 reason for crime is that people are seeking some income. 
They are trying to get it without having to go through the regular 
channels. And there are always crooks; there are always criminals in 
every society. But when you get a dramatic increase in the number of 
criminals, when you have large percentages of the population 
participating in criminal activity, there is something wrong with the 
society and the opportunities that the society is making available for 
the people of the society.
  A society is a social construct which is created in order to improve 
over the state of nature. If we were all out here in the jungle, it 
would be survival of the fittest, those who have bread, those who have 
bananas, those who have food would have it taken from them by those who 
are stronger. And the strongest would survive. We do not want that. All 
societies exist because they are trying to improve over the jungle, 
over the state of nature.
  So if a society exists as an improvement over a state of nature, it 
means that it makes certain kinds of contracts, a compact with the 
individual that we are going to provide the opportunity in this 
construct of ours for everybody to survive. Everybody should have an 
opportunity to survive. And survival in our times means everybody 
should have the opportunity to earn income legitimately. Everybody 
should have the opportunity to be able to work and get paid decent 
wages for their work, which brings me back to the question of welfare 
reform.
  We are talking about welfare reform. Suddenly people who have never, 
ever talked to a welfare recipient are declaring that they are experts 
on welfare. Plans are being offered by people who have never indicated 
any interest in poor people. All of a sudden there are all kinds of 
experts.
  Welfare reform should begin with the assumption that if you had jobs, 
people would prefer those jobs and they would take those jobs and you 
would not have to subsidize them in some other way. We will always have 
a need to subsidize people who are disabled, people with disabilities, 
some of those who cannot get jobs would have to be subsidized. The 
elderly would have to be subsidized. Children with no parents would 
have to be subsidized. But there are large numbers of people who are 
receiving aid from the Government of some form, food stamps, public 
housing, various kinds of subsidies, because they cannot get a job 
which pays an income high enough to cover those necessities.
  So if you want to deal with those necessities, then create jobs and 
let people just get a job, earn income. That is the simplest solution. 
A lot of the social problems that result from people not having jobs, a 
lot of tension created that breaks families apart, broken families 
which create situations where children are more likely to get into 
trouble, stress creates situations where people are more vulnerable and 
likely to become alcoholics or they are likely to become drug addicts, 
a lot of things that happen in our society would not happen if you had 
a way for people to earn a living. If they had income, they would solve 
their own problems.
  If there was a hope that jobs would be there, if youngsters 
understood that at the end of the schooling process, there is a job 
waiting and people have education, there is a difference of people who 
have education and those that do not have education. Those who do have 
education do get jobs. They are able to make a living. If you had that 
kind of hope held up, a large part of the schooling problems and 
problems that we encounter with our young people would be resolved.
  So the job becomes the key factor. If that is the key factor, why do 
we not concentrate on producing more jobs.
  There is a lot of hypocrisy that comes out of the mouths of those who 
have insisted that we want to end welfare as we know it. They want to 
end welfare and make people go to work, as if all those welfare 
recipients out there do not want to go to work. Where are the jobs? And 
in numerous situations we have seen a few jobs open up in the big 
cities. There was one dramatic illustration in Chicago where one of the 
big hotel chains opened a new hotel in Chicago and they took 
photographs, so they were available for everybody to see, of people 
going around the block. It was the middle of winter. They are lined up, 
10,000 people came out for a few hundred jobs; 10,000 people came out. 
Everywhere else that you announce jobs, if you announce jobs in New 
York City, you will have thousands of people applying for 40, 50 jobs. 
The problem is jobs. So why do we not concentrate on creating jobs?

  Why do I say the people who are pushing welfare reform are 
hypocritical? Because they do not want to talk about the fact that 
welfare was created because it is cheaper to put a person on welfare 
and pay them some pittance amount of money and say that you are trying 
to help them survive and you are trying to help their children than it 
is to give them a job.
  A minimum wage job with health benefits will cost far more than any 1 
of the 50 States now pay to welfare recipients.
  A family of four gets far less than they would get with a combination 
of a minimum wage job and a health benefit. There are minimum wage jobs 
that are not worth it because if you do not have the health benefit, 
then the person who gets off welfare gets a minimum wage job, no health 
benefit, they are in worse trouble than they were before if they have a 
family. The minute one of the kids get sick, they have no way to take 
care of them. This keeps a lot of people on welfare because they want 
the health benefit.
  Health reform, health care reform becomes very important in this 
whole matter of being able to reform welfare, being able to provide 
jobs, because if the employer cannot provide the health benefits, then 
of course with a national health care reform package, we will provide 
the benefits and enable the person to make a decision without taking a 
job, without having to consider the loss of their Medicaid benefits. 
Again, the problem goes back to the creation of jobs. What are we going 
to do in this society to create jobs? And in the process of creating 
jobs we solve and resolve a lot of problems. There is always a great 
deal of work to be done.
  In our society right now there are jobs waiting in terms of work to 
be done. We just need a way to pay people to do it.
  Our infrastructure is still crumbling, highways, bridges which always 
come to mind, but across the country, a large percentage of our 
schools, our public schools are so dilapidated and so decaying that 
they are dangerous. In New York City, the opening of school last fall 
was delayed for 2 weeks because we had large numbers of schools with 
asbestos at a level which was dangerous for young people. We still have 
large numbers of schools which have lead pipes and a lead problem. Lead 
and asbestos problems in public schools generate a health problem which 
is immediate and very dangerous, because science has shown that 
ingestion of lead or asbestos by young children, the damage created is 
far greater than it is with adults.
  So we have unsafe schools in many places in the country and certainly 
in our big cities. Just to repair and replace some of those schools 
would create thousands of jobs. The work is there to be done. We need 
some way to pay people to do it. The schools in New York, we would like 
to put in more computers and even the better schools that want to put 
in computers and more audiovisual devices, we find that the lines which 
go into the schools, the telephone lines are inadequate. We cannot have 
modern wiring. We cannot have modern computerization of the schools 
because of the fact that we need to have new lines go in via the 
telephone company.

                              {time}  1450

  There is work to be done there. Somebody needs to be paid to do it.
  We are going into the age of telecommunications wrapped around the 
whole world. The telecommunications people are talking about supplying 
500 channels, 500 cable channels that can be supplied. The question is, 
what is going to go over those channels. How are we going to train 
people to deal with the wiring of the whole world?
  South Africa has just become free. The great demand for education in 
South Africa, the great demand for new housing in South Africa, the 
great demand for the building of a new infrastructure, they will look 
to some other nation to help with that.
  There are jobs that are possible, but people have to be trained for 
those jobs. They have to be educated for those jobs. In some cases, 
only the Government can provide the payroll.
  This is nothing new. We provide the payroll for General Motors when 
they build tanks. All of the tanks used by the military in this country 
are built in this country. They are built by workers in this country. 
We provide the payroll for that.
  When we build aircraft carriers, an aircraft carrier cost $3.35 
billion, they are built not far from here. The only place in the world 
that builds aircraft carriers is Newport News, VA.
  When in Newport News the Government gives a contract to build an 
aircraft carrier for $3.5 billion, that puts a whole lot of people to 
work, not only in Newport News, but making all the parts, supplying all 
the various parts, means a whole lot of other people in other States 
across the country are also involved in building that aircraft carrier, 
so those people are on the public payroll. They are on our taxpayers' 
payroll.
  In Groton, CT, we built a Sea Wolf submarine. When President Clinton 
became President he decided to build one more Sea Wolf submarine. We 
did not need a Sea Wolf submarine because the conflict with the Soviet 
Union was over. There was nowhere to use a Sea Wolf submarine.
  The decision was made in order to keep people working. I think it was 
an expensive way to provide jobs, to build a Sea Wolf submarine, but my 
point here is that the people who built the Sea Wolf submarine are on 
the public payroll. The contract would not be there if the Government 
did not order the Sea Wolf submarine.
  We have had for years a $200, $300, $400 billion defense budget. 
Right now, with the Soviet Union gone and no other superpower existing 
in the world, we still have a $260 billion defense budget. We are still 
building planes, tanks, various kinds of equipment, because we say it 
may be needed.
  I will not quarrel right now with whether it is going to be needed at 
all, but everybody who is involved in that activity, $260 billion, they 
are on the public payroll. We are providing those jobs. I have no 
quarrel with using Government money to provide jobs, but let us admit 
that it is a legitimate function of Government to provide jobs.
  Once we have no more excuses to build planes and tanks and bombs, let 
us use Government money to provide jobs in other areas. Let us use 
Government money to build the highways and the schools. Let us use 
Government money to take care of the needs of human beings, to provide 
new kinds of methods and equipment, supplies, for education.
  My constituents do not understand why we do not use our Government 
money in more reasonable ways. My constituents do not understand why, 
as a member of the Committee on Education and Labor, I had to spend 3 
days in a House-Senate session debating something called Opportunity to 
Learn standards. When I tell them I spent the equivalent of 3 days 
debating back and forth whether we should have Opportunity to Learn 
standards written into the Goal 2000 legislation on education, they are 
baffled.
  Opportunity to Learn standards are merely a statement of common 
sense. In the Goals 2000 legislation, the President of the United 
States is agreeing with the previous President that the Federal 
Government ought to get involved more in education reform.
  What they are saying in Goals 2000 is that we should begin with a 
world-class curriculum, a standard curriculum, or curriculum standards, 
not a curriculum that is standardized, but curriculum standards; so we 
set those standards and invite all of the States, nobody is mandated, 
all of the States are invited to participate and come up with standards 
that are similar to the standards we set, as they establish a 
curriculum which will be not exactly the same across the country, but 
very similar.

  In addition to the curriculum standards, we are going to establish 
world-class tests so all the youngsters in the country will be taking 
the same test. With those tests we will measure how much of this world-
class curriculum they are absorbing.
  Those two items put the burden of educational improvement on the 
backs of the students, and that is altogether fitting. Students must 
shoulder that burden.
  When I proposed a third set of standards, standards related to the 
delivery system, how are you going to help these youngsters pass these 
tests, what are you going to do which will facilitate their being able 
to learn so that they will be able to pass the tests, absorb the world-
class curriculum, that is when the debate began. How are you going to 
do that? We have to talk in concrete terms.
  We started talking then about, are you going to make sure that every 
youngster in America is in a building which, first of all, is safe, 
does not have asbestos, does not have lead, is safe? After the building 
is safe, are you going to make sure it is conducive to learning? Will 
there be proper lighting? Will there be space? Will the student enjoy 
going to school every day? Are you going to build science laboratories 
in every school, make sure that the schools that are teaching science 
have the laboratories and the equipment in the laboratories to teach 
science?
  In New York City, not only do we have no science labs and science 
equipment in the junior high schools, a survey 2 years ago showed that 
in two-thirds of the schools, the two-thirds of the schools where 
African-American and Latino youngsters were predominantly in the 
student body, those two-thirds of the schools had teachers teaching 
math and science who had never majored in math and science in college, 
so the basic item, the teacher, was not qualified to really help those 
young people to pass any test on science or math.
  In Goals 2000, we have six subjects that are going to have these 
world-class curriculums established. One of them is math. One is 
science. Another is geography.
  As I pushed the idea of Opportunity to Learn standards, I asked the 
question, ``Can we have standards which say that every school should 
have books that are current?'' We have facts that show that in the 
books of the school libraries across America, the average copyright 
date is 1965. If the copyright date is 1965, that means the book was 
published in 1965. The information in the book is 1965 information.
  How can you learn geography from books that are almost 30 years old, 
25 years old? How can you learn history, current history? There are at 
least 30 countries that exist now that did not exist in 1965, so how 
can you learn history and geography if you do not have appropriate 
books? Opportunity to Learn standards means that you are going to 
address this problem: What are the States doing to facilitate learning? 
Common sense.
  We got tremendous opposition, because it means you have to talk about 
spending money. In order to deal with the Opportunity to Learn 
standards, you are going to have to spend money to build buildings, you 
are going to have to spend money to build laboratories. You are going 
to have to spend far more money than we are willing to spend on 
education to make sure every lab is equipped with the right equipment. 
You are going to have to buy books. You are going to have to do what 
any sophomore in high school would tell you is necessary for learning.
  But the Governors rose in rebellion against the idea of the 
Opportunity to Learn standards. The administration rose in rebellion. 
The Wall Street Journal condemned me as a person who was going to 
create an opportunity for parents to sue, because they saw parents 
awakening.
  If parents see a situation where their kids are being pushed in this 
world-class curriculum, and the kids have to take the tests and their 
whole lives depend on these tests, then parents are going to say, 
``What about this other standard? Are you really providing the 
opportunity to learn to my child?'' And the pressure in the courts and 
the pressure politically is what they anticipate, and would not respond 
to.
  Why not? Why not use the billions of dollars that are going to waste 
to build decent schools and to equip those schools with the best 
possible equipment? Why not use the billions of dollars to train 
teachers who really know how to teach science and math, so no 
schoolroom where science and math is being taught has to have a teacher 
who does not know the subject?

                              {time}  1500

  Why not? We have the money. We are not a desperately poor country as 
many speakers on the floor of this House would make us out to be, we 
have to watch every penny. Yes, we ought to watch every penny, but we 
ought to watch how we take the pennies away from the great bottomless 
pits of waste and dedicate them to the activities that are constructive 
and will help people to learn the skills they need in order to gain the 
jobs that they need, to earn the incomes that they need, in order for 
them to take care of themselves.
  I am all in favor of people getting off welfare, 2 years and get off, 
OK. I have no problem with that. But guarantee a job. Let the 
Government guarantee a job for every person who gets off welfare.
  I would go even further. I introduced legislation when I first 
arrived here in 1983. In January 1983 I introduced a bill which said we 
ought to amend the Constitution to guarantee the right to a job 
opportunity to every American who wants to work. That is pie in the 
sky, my colleagues told me, and they still tell me that. But for the 
future our society is going to exist in peace and harmony with 
opportunity for all only if it creates job opportunities for all, only 
if we have jobs and get rid of the kinds of tensions and the kind of 
oppression that exists at this point in parts of my district.
  Parts of my district, like most inner city communities, are under 
siege. They feel they are under siege because they waited all of those 
years for Ronald Reagan to go, 8 years, and then 4 more years for 
George Bush to go, and finally we had a President who said he cared 
about the people. Finally we had Democratic control of the House, the 
Senate and the White House. And all we hear now is obscene, irrational 
rattling on and on about how important it is to build more prisons, how 
important it is to have more death penalties, how absolutely important 
it is to get people off welfare in 2 years. But no talk about creating 
jobs.
  One strike and the administration was out. The administration made an 
attempt, a valid attempt to get a stimulus package passed, $16 billion 
in expenditures, $3 billion in tax cuts and tax credits, et cetera, $19 
billion total. We barely got it passed on the floor of the House, but 
it passed. And then it was filibustered to death on the floor of the 
Senate.
  Now we have no desire to go back and try again, it appears. Nothing 
else makes sense that we do down here unless we do go back and address 
the serious vacuum that has been created by the absence of a stimulus 
package sponsored by the Federal Government. A huge package, greater 
than $16 billion is necessary now.
  What we have done over the last 3 years is accepted stimulus through 
the back door. In other words, another way to put it was God has forced 
us to offer stimulus packages to certain parts of the country. We 
passed a few months ago an earthquake relief bill for California, $8 
billion in earthquake relief. Now God created the earthquake, nature 
created the earthquake. It was something we had no control over. The 
people who were involved as victims deserve assistance. Our Government 
should come to the aid of people who are victims of earthquakes.
  That $8 billion is a stimulus, however, regardless of what purpose, 
it is a stimulus to the economy of California. The economy of 
California has bounded back. It is moving now. They paid big bonuses, 
billions of dollars to rebuild the freeway. Everybody worked on the 
freeway. Many of the contractors got an extra bonus, and they did other 
things, and on and on it goes. The economy is jumping as a result of $8 
billion in stimulus.
  Last year we appropriated $6 billion to the Midwest flood victims, so 
the States in the Midwest who were so unfortunate as to have floods 
destroying homes and crops, et cetera, God at work again, nature at 
work, we came to their aid. We had a $6 billion flood relief package. 
That $6 billion helps victims, and I am all in favor of helping the 
victims of floods.
  But that is a stimulus for the economy of those areas. It is Federal 
money going to those areas to provide funding for rebuilding homes, 
rebuilding roads, activity which stimulates income, which generates 
income. And the economy of those areas are benefiting from our Federal 
Government's help.
  Before that, during the last year of the Bush administration, we 
appropriated $6 billion for hurricane victim relief in Florida, 
hurricane victims. Again, God at work, nature at work. But it is a 
stimulus for the State of Florida, Federal money not coming out of the 
State coffers poured into Florida to do what is necessary to help the 
victims which becomes an economic stimulus. It creates jobs, generates 
income.
  Would it not be logical and fair to look at the economy of the big 
cities like New York, and Chicago, and Los Angeles, the inner cities of 
those areas where unemployment has been at the level for the last 12 or 
13 years, a level which is twice as high as the average unemployment 
across the whole Nation? In the neighborhoods where unemployment has 
been twice as high as the average national unemployment, why not 
declare them disaster areas? They are disasters created by man, not 
God, not nature. But we have managed the economy in ways which has 
drained the job producing activities out of those areas.
  One of the ways we manage the economy is the deposits paid by city 
people were taken to the Midwest and the Far West to build shopping 
malls with all of the savings and loan money that got pumped down the 
drain, and the deposits were put in in the big cities, and in many 
cases in the East and in the Midwest they would not invest in 
neighborhoods in the inner cities because they said the investments 
would not be safe. So they built shopping malls in Texas or apartment 
houses in Texas, or Colorado, the areas where we have the greatest 
amount of savings and loan swindles. The economy was grossly 
mismanaged.
  People say New York has always got its hand out asking the Federal 
Government to do something for New York. New York State in the past 20 
years has always paid more tax money into the Federal Government's 
coffers than it has gotten back. New York State has always paid more 
into the Federal coffers. Two years ago it was $16 billion more that 
went into the Federal Government than came back to New York. The year 
before that it was $23 billion more came from New York and went into 
the Federal coffers than we got back in terms of Federal expenditures.
  So the mismanagement of the economy means we are draining away 
resources from areas, creating situations where the jobs are not there, 
and we walk away and do nothing. When we call for a stimulus package 
that might help New York and the big cities, suddenly people think it 
is going to bankrupt the country. An earthquake, no questions asked. A 
flood, no questions asked. A hurricane, no questions asked.
  Let us grow up and join the 20th century. Let us stop being 
superstitious, folks running around responding to nature and to God and 
recognize that there are other kinds of disasters, and disasters exist 
in our big cities and our inner cities. A disaster exists in most of my 
district, and my folks do not understand, my constituents do not 
understand why we do not come to their aid, why we do not give them 
some relief, some disaster relief.
  On the floor of this House this kind of sensible, logical dialog is 
almost impossible to find. Nobody wants to talk about why we do not use 
the tremendous riches and resources of this Nation to come to the aid 
of victims of 12 years of unemployment, 12 years of no opportunities, 
12 years of people being forced to pick up the crumbs, 12 years of 
suffering, 12 years of pressure, 12 years which have generated more 
addicts, more alcoholics.
  It is only jobs we ask. We do not need a complicated welfare reform 
program. Just give us the jobs.

                              {time}  1510

  Give us the jobs. There is work to be done. All we need is somebody 
to pay for the work. If there is nobody else to pay for the work, if 
private enterprise will not do it, then let the Government do it.
  If you want to play the games we play down here in terms of every new 
program must have a way, must identify the sources of funding, then 
every day I can give you a new source of funding for a jobs program on 
the streets of our cities.
  We can start with the CIA. You know, we tried to cut the CIA 10 
percent the last time they were up for appropriation, and nobody wanted 
to listen, an overwhelming defeat for a cut of the CIA.
  This past week we had an agent of the CIA, a very high-placed person, 
who turned out to be a double agent. We will not go into the story. But 
in his farewell address before he went off to prison, he stated that 
the CIA was a big joke; the CIA is an agency of old boys spending the 
taxpayers' money, playing games and doing nothing. He felt he should 
rip it off. Because what else? You know, everybody else was ripping it 
off, too.
  That is oversimplifying, but what Eldridge Ames said ought to be 
investigated. A multibillion-dollar operation, we have an intelligence 
operation which the New York Times and other reliable sources estimate 
to be $28 billion to $30 billion, $28 billion to $30 billion in 
intelligence activity in 1994, the same as we had 3 or 4 years ago just 
before the Evil Empire dissolved and the major superpower competition 
went off the radar screen. We still have an expenditure of $28 billion 
to $30 billion.
  If you want to find the money to pay for a jobs program in the big 
cities, give us a billion a year from the CIA until it gets down, from 
our intelligence operations, the CIA included, until it gets down to 
some reasonable size. You might consider just abolishing the CIA and 
let the FBI and the local police and State Department perform the 
functions they are supposed to perform, because as Eldridge Ames 
pointed out, many of the agents who were supposed to be experts in 
certain countries do not know the language of the country, so they are 
sitting at a desk in Washington making decisions and analyses about 
that country.
  We could save a whole lot of money in the payment to agents and 
double agents. If Eldridge Ames was receiving $2 million from the 
broke, bankrupt Soviet Union, and they were paying him $2 million to 
spy on us, then has anybody considered what we must be paying Russian 
agents to spy on the Russians? If the going rate for the Russians is $2 
million, then we must be paying the Russian spies much more than that. 
To do what? Useless spying. Who needs it?
  We are paying for expense accounts. We are paying for femmes fatales 
and agents provocateurs and information sources. There is a cloak-and-
dagger game going on out there which has no relevance to anything.
  As Eldridge Ames pointed out, most of the information our CIA gathers 
can be gotten from some other source with far less cost.
  So let us begin by cutting back on the CIA and pumping that money 
into jobs in the inner cities, or let us be serious about the Farmers 
Home Loan Mortgage.
  If we have given away already $11.5 billion in debts forgiven, let us 
resolve that we are going to go out and collect the rest of the loans 
or do something to get the taxpayers' money back. Let us take that 
money and put it into the inner cities.
  Let us take another look at the savings-and-loan swindles, and let us 
decide that we are really going to be serious this time and make people 
pay back a lot of the money they walked off with or go to prison. That 
is a source of funding for jobs programs in the inner cities.
  Let us stop building more aircraft carriers and Seawolf submarines 
just to provide jobs. You can provide three or four times more jobs 
with the same amount of money than it takes to build weapons systems 
that are never going to be utilized.
  Let us get serious. I want the people who are in my district to know 
that when they are faced with budget cuts by the city, and the city has 
cut 70 percent of the youth programs out of the budget because they 
say, ``We cannot afford it''; the city is cutting back on all kinds of 
programs that existed before. All that relates to what happens down 
here in Washington, because New York State is sending still money to 
the Federal Government that it does not get back in the form of 
services and programs. So it relates to the Federal Government. It 
relates to the Federal Government, because all taxes begin at the local 
level.
  There are no taxes generated in Washington, DC. The taxes are 
generated from people all over the country.
  Last April 15 the taxes flowed out of the local areas into 
Washington. It is our money. Taxpayers should demand that the money be 
utilized in ways that are more productive, that the waste stop, that 
the hysteria about crime, the hysteria about welfare reform, the 
hysteria be replaced with some honest discussion of what shall the 
Government do to assist the economy. What shall the Government do to 
provide income-generating activities? What shall our Government do to 
provide jobs?
  I want to close by saying that there was a program on television a 
couple weeks ago called ``Survival Against the Odds'' or ``Surviving 
the Odds,'' ``Surviving the Odds.'' It was directed at what shall we do 
in our communities to help African-American males. African-American 
males, in large numbers, are already in the criminal justice system. 
One-fourth of African-American males between the ages of 18 and 25 are 
somwhere in the criminal justice system. They are either on probation, 
on parole, or they are in prison. That is a lot of people, one-fourth 
of the African-American males in this country, at this point, before we 
start three strikes and you are out, before we start a massive campaign 
to stop crime, already one-fourth.
  What do we do about them? The television program addressed this in 
many ways. I was shocked, after listening to it for a whole hour, to 
not hear any discussion of jobs and what jobs have to do with young 
people. The existence of jobs, the existence of opportunity, the 
existence of an economy which is expanding, all of that is necessary to 
create hope.
  Why should young people have hope if they cannot at least look 
forward to having a job so they can bring home a paycheck? Why can they 
have hope if they do not have an opportunity to utilize the education 
they might get if they stay in school?
  We have a stagnation that is setting in in our whole economy, and not 
only our young people are at risk, not only are our young people in the 
inner cities or in districts like my district in Brooklyn at risk, but 
large numbers of people who have jobs now are at risk.
  If we continue to fail to recognize the supreme duty of our 
Government is to make certain that the economy is working, to creat 
jobs, we are at risk.
  There is competition of all kinds, people who have Ph.D.'s who are 
nuclear scientists, they are at risk, too, because we have nuclear 
scientists in other parts of the world who are working for less than 
minimum wage. The Soviet Union has nuclear scientists right now who are 
working for less than minimum wage. They may be utilized instead of our 
own nuclear scientists. We have computer programmers who are at risk, 
because large numbers of computer programmers are being brought in from 
countries like India, and they work for at least half as much as a 
computer programmer that comes out of our colleges and universities 
work for.
  If we do not creat more jobs, if the Government is not directing its 
attention, its focus, on income-producing activities and jobs including 
watching our trade agreements and our agreements which allow people to 
bring in low-paid workers to work in our own economy, if we do not do 
all of that, then we are headed for a situation where there will be 
increasing amounts of hostility, of tension, outrage, and explosion.
  People in my district want to know why Government does not have more 
common sense. I think we ought to try to answer that question more on 
the floor of this House, and the way to do that is to spend more 
attention on programs that create jobs.
  Let us go back to the stimulus package. If the President will not 
offer another stimulus package in order to create jobs, it is the duty 
of every Member of Congress to develop ways in which we can develop a 
package that is based on utilization of the taxpayers' money for 
investment, not for waste, but for investment to create jobs, to create 
opportunity.

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