[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 25 (Wednesday, February 8, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H1447-H1456]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 WILL WE BE BETTER OFF WHEN THE CONTRACT WITH AMERICA HAS BEEN PASSED?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Quinn). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 1995, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, jobs, the No. 1 concern of the overwhelming 
majority of Americans. Jobs are the No. 1 concern of the people, but 
you do not see that same concern reflected here in Washington around 
the floor of this House. The question that most Americans are asking is 
will we be better off when the 100 days are ended and the Contract With 
America has been passed. Does it matter one way or the other with 
respect to our concern about jobs and income? Will we be better off, 
those who have lost wages over the last 10 years? They have jobs, but 
the jobs are not paying as much as they paid before. So, will they have 
higher paid jobs after the Contract With America is passed? Will they 
be better off?
  No.
  There is a tremendous amount of downsizing that is taking place. 
Corporations are maximizing their profits. Profits are escalating, 
getting greater 
[[Page H1448]] and greater all the time. The wealth of the country is 
increasing dramatically. You know, we talk about taxes being too high, 
regulations being too great, and yet corporations are thriving, great 
profits are being made.
  We are the wealthiest country, the wealthiest Nation, that ever 
existed in the history of the world, and yet people are worried about 
losing their jobs. Those who have jobs are not being paid enough. Those 
who have jobs often fear that downsizing is going to lead to an end to 
those jobs, and there are large amounts who are unemployed. 
Unemployment now is officially at 5.7 present. That is the official 
rate.
  If you add those people who have been out of work for a long time and 
stopped looking, it is even higher than that. If you add those people 
that are working part time, it is even higher than that. Most people 
calculate the real unemployment rate as between 9 and 10 percent. 
Millions of Americans are out of work, about 12 million out of work.
  The welfare recipients will have to go to work at the end of 2 years. 
Most of them would love to have jobs. Most of them would be very 
willing to take jobs, but when they have to go to work in 2 years they 
will find there are no jobs out there because we have no policies here 
which are dedicated to dealing with the primary concern of Government 
that ought to be to manage and to influence the economy in a way that 
guarantees that every person can survive, and survival means jobs. If 
you have a job, when you provide jobs, you feed the hungry. But when 
you provide jobs, you take care of the sick. When you provide jobs, you 
take certain that people are not homeless. The highest of our Judeo-
Christian values, the highest of our family values, are reflected in 
the way we deal with the provision of jobs in our society.
  But here in Washington you do not hear any talk of any great amount 
of job creation in the Contract of America or even among the Democrats 
from the White House. We hear no realistic attempt to provide the kind 
of jobs that must be provided during this very critical period where 
Americans have expressed great stress.
                              {time}  2220

  We hear no realistic attempt to provide the kind of jobs that must be 
provided during this very critical period where Americans have 
expressed great stress. They have great anxiety about losing jobs, 
about jobs that are not paying well, and about the ongoing increase and 
escalation in the unemployment rate.
  Of course, the unemployment does not bother our official agencies 
like the Federal Reserve Board. The Federal Reserve Board seems to 
think unemployment is very good for people, it is good for the economy. 
So they take steps and promulgate policies which encourage 
unemployment. Whenever we have a great decrease in the amount of 
unemployment, they see that as a threat to the economy because it may 
raise inflation, and they cut off the supply of money so that those who 
create jobs through investment cannot create more jobs. They will hold 
down the employment so that labor will not be able to bid up its demand 
for higher wages, and therefore they will curb inflation.
  Mr. Greenspan of the Federal Reserve Board is the author of this. I 
very much strongly would like to recommend to Mr. Greenspan that if he 
thinks unemployment is good for the Nation's economy, he should do his 
patriotic duty and take off 1 month every month. Take his turn 
unemployed along with the millions of others so our economy can 
prosper.
  There are many other ways in which we show a callous disregard for 
the need to create employment opportunities for Americans. We have 
tremendous amounts of money that we are wasting that could be used in 
job creation.
  The previous speakers on the floor talked about what they were going 
to do to cut the budget of the United States. In several ways, they are 
going to cut it short-term and cut it long-term through a balanced 
budget amendment. I welcome the opportunity. I would like to join with 
them in cutting some of the waste out of our Government.
  Let us start with the agribusiness. Let us start with the 
agribusiness, which gets handouts from the Government of billions of 
dollars: $149 billion over the last 10 years has been poured into crop 
subsidies; $149 billion over the last 10 years.
  Take the State of Kansas alone: $8 billion in the State of Kansas has 
been received from the Government. A handout, a dole to the farmers; 
$20,000 to $40,000 annually goes to the average Kansas family.
  I welcome the opportunity to join with my colleagues in those kinds 
of cuts so the money can be transferred into job-creating programs that 
are being suggested, that are programs that really do something for the 
economy and for individuals.
  If we had a school building program, billions of dollars being spent 
for school building, instead of paying farmers not to grow grain, then 
the benefit received from the school would last for decades, because 
the school would be there to serve as part of the educational 
facilities network. You know that kind of benefit would be gained.
  If you use the money that you are wasting, giving a way to farmers 
not to grow grain, then of course you could also build some of the 
roads and the bridges that we need, which could be used for many 
decades to come, improving our transportation arteries and helping the 
economy overall.
  So we have a problem in that we refuse to look at the problem that is 
the real and most important problem. The problem should be the No. 1
 priority, and that is the creation of jobs so people have the 
opportunities to earn income and earn a living.

  This evening we would like to talk about the job situation from three 
basic viewpoints. We would like to show that the economic picture is 
much bleaker than what it shows on the surface. It is important for us 
to understand the current Bureau of Labor Standard estimates of the 
unemployment rate, first of all, are way, way off. They underestimate 
unemployment at least by 3.3 percent. As I said before, instead of a 
5.7 percent unemployment rate, if you looked at all of the people out 
of work and who stopped working, and the people who are working but 
working only half-time, then you would get an unemployment rate of 9 
percent.
  The No. 1 priority in America should be the creation of jobs, because 
we cannot stand a 9 percent unemployment rate. It hurts us in many 
ways. One of the ways it hurts us is just automatic common sense will 
tell you when people are working, they pay income taxes. When people 
are working, they do not have to be using unemployment insurance, they 
do not have to be using food stamps, or go on welfare. The 
Congressional Budget Office estimates for every 1-percent reduction in 
the amount of unemployment, the Government, the Treasury, will benefit 
by receiving $40 to $50 billion.
  In income tax they take in and the money they do not have to send 
out, it all adds up to a 1-percent increase in employment equals a $40 
to $50 billion gain for the Treasury. That is common sense.
  But nobody wants to look at that kind of common sense. We are instead 
ready to propose to $50 billion increase in defense. We declared there 
is a military threat at this particular time in the history of America 
and we must have $50 billion more over the next 5 to 6 years. We must 
build some more Seawolf submarines. I see in the budget the President 
asked for another Seawolf. Who needs that? I see we need more F-22's 
built at Marietta, GA. They may provide some employment, but for every 
dollar you spend on military spending, you could create twice as many 
jobs for the dollars spent on military spending. If you take the 
dollars you spend on military spending and put it into civilian jobs, 
you would create twice as many jobs. Study after study confirms that.
  We look at the picture, and the fact that the situation is such that 
it demands we take more aggressive action and make jobs the No. 1 
priority.
  We are also going to examine how the Republican plan for welfare 
forces people out of work after a 2-year time limit and creates a 
situation which is inhumane. Because if there are no jobs there, then 
we are forcing people into involuntary servitude. It is a form of 
slavery. Every person of African descent like myself will tell you we 
all 
[[Page H1449]] know that slavery provided jobs for everybody. There was 
no unemployment. In the state of slavery, everybody had a job. But who 
wants a job at that cost? That is what we are saying when we say that 
we are going to provide welfare for people.
  The highest benefits are received in my State probably and a few 
others. A family of three may get $6,000 or $7,000 a year from welfare, 
versus a farm family in Kansas that gets $20,000 to $40,000 a year for 
not growing grain from the same Government. But never mind. They will 
get $6,000 a year and be asked to work 40 hours a week in order to 
receive $6,000 a year. That is not a form of slavery, when you force 
that kind of situation on people?
  So unless we have jobs, unless the whole job
   market is dealt with so that not only do you have jobs for welfare 
recipients, but also for the people who have been unemployed for a long 
time and for people losing their jobs as a result of the downsizing, we 
cannot create just a group of jobs for welfare people and say we are 
going to provide jobs for people coming off welfare. That means 
everybody will want to get on welfare and will line up and be able to 
get a job. No, you have to improve the situation for the whole economy 
by creating thousands of new jobs.

  The Republican welfare reform proposal, folks, focuses too much 
attention on one kind of welfare, as I said before, and we missed the 
point by focusing in and bullying mothers who are taking care of 
children who receive aid to dependent children. Yes, that is a high 
cost; yes, most of them who are able-bodied should go to work. Nobody 
quarrels with that, and neither do the mothers themselves. They would 
love to go to work if they had a job that would pay a decent wage and 
also provide health care.
  It is the Medicaid, the health care, that keeps most people tied to 
the welfare system. There is nothing to be gained by accepting a 
minimum-wage job and losing the health care benefits for your family, 
and finding that as soon as someone gets sick, you will have to come 
back and go on welfare again.
  So by focusing on the aid to dependent children, you may save $16.5 
billion. If every one of them could miraculously be taken off welfare 
in 2 years, there would be a huge savings. On the other hand, we have 
far more costly forms of welfare through the dependent corporations, 
including the agribusinesses which I mentioned before.
  Let us deal with the kind of handouts, the doles that are being 
received by American corporations, and let us deal with the kind of 
dole that is being received by the American farmers if we really want 
to deal with waste in Government. I think if we dealt with it 
realistically, we would have the money we need to create a jobs program 
which would have an escalating effect. You provide a job opportunity to 
people who make salaries, and they go forward from there in order to 
take care of their own needs.

                              {time}  2230

  They will feed themselves or clothe themselves and you will have a 
much healthier economy and a healthy society.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to my colleague, the gentleman from Michigan 
[Mr. Bonior].
  Mr. BONIOR. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank him for 
his comments. I look forward to engaging the distinguished gentleman 
from New York [Mr. Owens] and the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] 
who was joined us as well in this discussion as it relates to our 
economy today.
  It was that great statesman Yogi Berra who once said that when you 
come to the fork in the road, you should take it.
  Thank you, Mr. Burton. The gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton] has a 
great sense of humor. He is on the other side of the aisle. It is 10:30 
in the evening, and he is laughing at my jokes. I appreciate it.
  Clearly, I think we have come to the fork in the road in this 
society. We are living through a time of great change, great change in 
this country. And I think the theme that my friend from New York has
 talked about this evening is one which is at the heart of what we as 
Democrats believe in. And that theme is that if you work hard, if you 
play by the rules, take responsibility for your own personal actions, 
you should be rewarded. And that belief is really central to what the 
Democratic Party is all about. You should be rewarded if you work hard.

  There are too many working people in this country today who feel like 
they are part of that old Abbott and Costello routine, where Bud Abbott 
says to Lou Costello, if you had 50 cents in one pocket and 75 cents in 
the other pocket, what would you have. And Costello says, somebody 
else's pants.
  I mean, people feel like they are working hard, but they are not 
being rewarded.
  We pointed with pride during this last campaign, I am going to be 
self-critical here, if I could, for a moment because I think we need 
to, as a party, that we created 5 million jobs. Well, we did create 5 
million jobs in this country, but what kind of jobs were they? They 
were not the kind of jobs that the American people wanted; 5 million 
jobs, and yet 60 percent of the people who were interviewed a week 
after the election said they thought they were in a recession. To some 
extent they were right. They were in a recession, because their wages 
had either been frozen or had declined since about 1985.
  None of us can be satisfied with the fact that the job leader in this 
recovery is not IBM. It is not General Motors; it is not Wal-Mart; it 
is a company called Manpower Services. Ever hear of Manpower Services? 
It is a company that offers jobs with no benefits, no health insurance, 
no retirement.
  How does that reward work? Economists like to point with pride to the 
fact that productivity and profits are reaching all time highs. but you 
cannot talk increased productivity and explain that as long as 
stockholders are making money, it is OK for them to ignore the rest of 
America. And that is exactly what is happening today in American 
society.
  When I grew up as a kid in the Detroit area in the 1950's and 1960's, 
if you went to work for GM or Ford or Chrysler, like many of my friends 
did, and you helped boost the profits of those companies, you got a 
piece of the pie. That is the way it worked. You got decent salary 
increases. You got decent benefits. But not today. Let me illustrate 
that.
  From 1947, right after the Second World War, to 1973, American 
workers gave their companies almost 90-percent increase in 
productivity. From 1947 to 1973, 90-percent increase in productivity. 
And in turn, they got back 99-percent increase in wages. Look at the 
figures from 1973 to 1982. Workers only got about half as much. From 
1982 to 1994, they got about one-third as much.
  So what is happening is that workers are working harder. They are 
working longer. They are as productive and, in many instances, more 
productive, and yet they are not seeing their standard of living 
increase.
  In fact, if you look at where all the increase in income has come 
into America in the last 10 years specifically, you will find that 97 
percent of income increases in America have gone to the top 20 percent 
of the population in terms of income-earning ability.
  The rest, 80 percent, the rest, 80 percent of America, has either 
stayed frozen or their wages have decreased.
  Despite a bumper last year in terms of jobs in our society, we have 
the slowest increase in wages since we have historically begun to keep 
track.
  The fact is, hard work has not been rewarded. And
   yet we give these people $225 billion a year in corporate welfare, 
as my friend from New York has pointed out.

  If we are really going to renew America civilization, we have got to 
focus on renewing the contract between employers and workers and not 
just the Contract With America. We have to renew that basic contract 
that if you put in a good day's work, you should be rewarded for it. 
There is some reciprocity there.
  Mr. OWENS. We heard previous speakers give us a progress report on 
the Contract With America. Do you see, after that contract is fulfilled 
at the level of the House of Representatives, and assuming that they 
pass most of the legislation related to the contract, do you see any 
impact on the lives of American working people? Will they be better off 
then than they are now?
  [[Page H1450]] Mr. BONIOR. It is interesting, I listened to their 
special order, and a couple of things that were mentioned. First of 
all, not to the point that you mentioned--well, I will get to the point 
that you mentioned, then I will return to my other point.
  I do not. I do not know how these process votes, line item veto, 
balanced budget amendment, which will not spell out where they are 
going to go with the balanced budget, some of the amendments that we 
considered in bills that we considered today, how they will have a 
specific affect on increasing people's living standards and increasing 
the spiritual awareness and the spirituality of their lives. I do not 
see any of that really having a direct effect on people's lives.
  The other point I wanted to make, in the special order that our 
colleagues gave this evening, they talked about how we had bottled up a 
lost of this legislation. Not so. Four of the pieces of legislation 
that we have passed so far we had on this very floor. We talked about 
the Congressional Accountability Act. In fact, it was our bill. We 
passed it. It was killed in the Senate by a Republican right before the 
end of the session. We brought line item veto to this House floor last 
year. We brought the balanced budget amendment to the floor last year. 
It did not pass. Both of them did not pass. So the question that we 
have been bottling things up is absolutely inaccurate.
  One thing that you will not find in the contract is the word 
``jobs.'' Another thing you will not find in the contract, two words, 
``good wages.'' You will not find that in their contract. Their 
contract does nothing to mention the question of minimum wage, which my 
friend from New York talked about a little earlier this evening. The 
minimum wage is a very important issue for this country, and it is not 
just teenagers we are talking about, who are trying to earn a few bucks 
on the side. We are talking about working people.
  Most people on minimum wage are over 26 years of age, and the 
represent in their earnings about 40 percent of the incomes of their 
families; 60 percent of these people are mothers. Most of them have 
kids that they are trying to provide for.
  If we are really going to renew this American civilization, we have 
got to get back to the contract between workers and their employers. 
And one of the first things we can do is increase the minimum wage.
  Now, we are not alone. The gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders], the 
gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens], the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. 
Bonior], we are not alone in calling for this. We have about 80 percent 
of the American people think that we should increase the minimum wage. 
You will not live on $8,600 a year, especially if you have children.
                              {time}  2240

  It is virtually impossible. It is below the poverty level. In fact, 
the poverty level line in this country has been going up steadily as 
our society expands, but the cost on the minimum wage has been going 
down, so there is a deepening gap between those who are working and 
those who are collecting welfare, in many instances. That is not 
rewarding work. We have to get back to rewarding work. If you work, you 
are going to be rewarded for it.
  It was a Republican, Christine Todd Whitman, who said it best. The 
day after she delivered the Republican response to the State of the 
Union, she said, and I quote, ``Obviously, in my State, if you try to 
live on a national minimum wage you couldn't do it. It is a sustenance 
wage.'' The minimum wage in her State is $5 an hour. Nationally, it is 
$4.25, which is about $8,600 a year. The average Member of Congress 
makes that much in 28 days. The average CEO of a Fortune 500 company 
makes that much in 28 hours, 28 hours.
  Mr. Speaker, these are the people who work in our hospitals, who 
change our bedpans, who do tough, often dirty, often demanding work, 
and they ought to be compensated for it.
  Mr. Speaker, as I said before, the average minimum-wage worker is not 
some pimply faced teenager who is trying to earn money for the weekend. 
Two-thirds of them are adults, and many of them with families. People 
have to ask themselves, ``Could you keep a family on $9,000 a year?'' 
These are the people who are working 40 hours a week, sometimes more, 
yet they are living in poverty today.
  What does that say about rewarding work? We are going to be doing 
welfare reform soon. It seems to me if we are going to be serious about 
it, we have to face this basic issue. When we raise this issue, some of 
our friends on the other side of the aisle say ``Well, we will trade 
you. We will make you a swap.'' It is like you are collecting baseball 
cards as kids, I will give you a Mickey Mantle for a Ted Williams, or 
if you are lucky enough to have a Mickey Mantle or a Ted Williams, it 
is a swap. What they want to trade, Bob Dole said it last week on one 
of those Sunday talk shows, he said: ``We will consider it if they give 
us a reduction in the capital gains tax.'' So basically he wants to 
swap raising the minimum wage for the people who make the least in our 
society for a tax cut for those who are making the most in our society. 
That is what we are dealing with here.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. OWENS. I yield to the gentleman from Vermont.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here with my friend 
the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior], and my friend, the gentleman 
from New York [Mr. Owens].
  We have heard a whole lot about the November 8 election and the so-
called mandate. I would say that the most interesting aspect of the 
November 8 election is that 62 percent of the American people did not 
vote. We do not discuss that. Always, it seems to me that the more 
important the issues are, the less discussion takes place here on the 
floor of the Congress. With 62 percent of the people not bothering to 
vote on election day, Mr. Speaker, with poor people virtually not 
voting at all, many working people not bothering to participate, what 
that tells me, Mr. Speaker, is that the ordinary American is by and 
large giving up on the political process, does not have very much faith 
that the U.S. Government is
 capable of responding to the terrible pain and to the terrible 
problems those people have.

  What in fact the ordinary people see, I think, is a lot of talk going 
on here in Congress, the White House, the Senate, and meanwhile the 
rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and the middle-class shrinks. 
Forty million Americans continue not to have any health insurance.
  As the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior] and the gentleman from 
New York [Mr. Owens] said, the minimum wage in terms of real purchasing 
power continues to decline. More and more of our young people are 
unable to get a college education. We have the dubious distinction of 
having the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized 
world. Twenty-two percent of our kids are living in poverty. Five 
million of our children are hungry. We hear here on the floor of the 
House, at a time when the richest 1 percent of the population owns more 
wealth than the bottom 90 percent, what we are hearing here on the 
floor of the House, we have to cut back on Medicare, we have to cut 
back on Medicaid, we have to cut back on veterans' programs, we have to 
cut back on nutrition programs for the elderly and for hungry children. 
That is what the Republican contract is about.
  In the meantime, as the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior] and the 
gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] have indicated, it is absolutely 
imperative that within that context, with the wealthiest 1 percent 
owning 37 percent of the wealth in America, obviously what we must do 
is give them more tax breaks. That is only fair. You cut back on 
nutrition programs for hungry children and you give the wealthiest 
people in this country more tax breaks, and of course, at the same time 
as we significantly expand military spending. That obviously makes 
sense to somebody, I am not sure to whom, but it must make sense to 
somebody.
  Mr. BONIOR. If the gentleman will yield, I have heard that formula 
before. Could the gentleman from Vermont maybe refresh our history and 
tell us, where have we seen that defense increase formula, tax cut 
formula, and what was the result of that?
  Mr. SANDERS. Obviously, that is what Reagonomics was about. That is 
[[Page H1451]] what the 1980's was about. During the 1980's, the 
richest one-half of 1 percent owned 55 percent of the total wealth that 
was created in that period. In the midst of all of this discussion, 
however, what frightens me the most is that ordinary people look out, 
and they are hurting very, very badly, as both of you have already 
talked about. The new jobs that are being created are low wage jobs, 
part-time jobs, temporary jobs without benefits. Yet, I do not hear a 
whole lot of discussion about those issues on the floor of the House. 
We spend weeks and weeks discussing this, and we discuss that, but 
suddenly, somehow, we do not talk, in my view, about the most important 
issue. In my humble opinion, the most important issue facing this 
country is the role of big money. Big money, and I must say, in all due 
respect to my friends, controls not only the Republican Party, has 
tremendous influence over the Democratic Party, has tremendous 
influence over the mass media.
  Interestingly enough, when we hear about the Contract With America 
and how they want a citizen legislature, they forget to talk about 
campaign finance reform.
  To the best of my knowledge, and maybe my friends here can correct me 
if I am wrong, my understanding is that today, or before the last 
election, some 20 percent of the Members of Congress were millionaires. 
Does that sound right to my friends?
  Mr. OWENS. I think the gentleman is correct, but the important thing 
is that on election day, even though there was a turnover, and the 36 
percent or 37 percent who went out to vote did vote for a major change, 
the exit polls, the interviews at the exit polls, indicated that people 
were voting because of their anxieties and their concern about their 
own incomes and their jobs.
  We have not addressed that, as you said. Millionaires are obviously 
the favored concern here. We have just gone through a situation where, 
you know, when Congress refused to consider or indicated that it would 
not favorably consider a $40 billion bailout for Mexico, a $20 billion 
bailout was voted from the White House, and millionaires obviously are 
a great concern here, because we hear much more talk about a capital 
gains tax cut than we hear about a program to create jobs.
  Millionaires are obviously in favor here, because it took some 
coaxing to get a proposal on the table for a minimum-wage increase. At 
least we have that and we are going forward. Most Americans agree, over
 80 percent agree, that a minimum-wage increase is very much in order, 
but there seems to be no great deal of enthusiasm in the leadership of 
our party.

  We are in a situation where the people who are controlling the 
greatest part of the wealth, and getting wealthier at a faster rate all 
the time, are the people who seem to be of greatest concern to 
Congress, while those who have the greatest anxieties about their jobs 
and are worried about losing their jobs and not earning adequate income 
are being ignored totally.
  Mr. SANDERS. If the gentleman will yield, let me just pick up on that 
perceptive point. We hear over and over again about welfare reform. We 
all agree that welfare reform is important. What we do not hear a whole 
lot is corporate welfare, the well over $100 billion in Federal 
subsidies that are going to large corporations and wealthy people.
  We hear about street crime, which is a very serious problem, but we 
do not hear a whole lot about corporate crime, about price-fixing, 
about monopoly power in this country.
  Right now, at a time when the wages, the real wages of American 
workers are in decline, interestingly enough, what is happening to the 
income of the CEO's? The reality is, of course, that the CEO's are 
earning significant increases in their income, at the same time as they 
are cutting back on jobs in America's major corporations.
  One of the interesting facts, to my mind, that we do not talk about 
enough is the fact that CEO's in America today, the heads of the 
largest corporations, are earning 149 times more than the average 
worker in their company. What about justice? What about family values? 
What about morality?

                              {time}  2250

  In fact, there was an interesting study done recently which showed 
that some of the highest paid CEO's who received the most significant 
increases in their incomes were precisely those CEO's who laid off the 
most workers. They seemed to get more money, they get incentives to lay 
off workers.
  Mr. OWENS. Will the gentleman slow down for a minute and explain what 
a CEO is, and let the American people understand what we are talking 
about in terms of the kinds of salaries or the kind of what they call a 
total remuneration package we are talking about? The average American 
CEO I understand makes no less than $1 million and some of them make 
above $20 million. People ought to understand we are talking about $20 
million in total compensation packages, salary, pension, et cetera.
  Mr. SANDERS. If the gentleman will yield, a recent study showed that 
the CEO's of 23 of the Nation's 27 top job destroyers, these are the 
large corporations who are downsizing, who are throwing workers out 
onto the street, those particular CEO's received raises last year 
averaging 30 percent. So in other words, it is good for business. We 
are going to really reward you, give you a major increase for throwing 
workers out on the street. The more you throw out, the bigger the 
increase would be.
  Mr. OWENS. Thirty percent equals what? Give us some examples in terms 
of the kind of amounts.
  Mr. SANDERS. We are talking about people like Mr. Eisner of Walt 
Disney earning well over I believe $100 million in income a year.
  Let me mention something else, because the problem goes well beyond 
just the United States. There was a study also done recently, when we 
talk about the world economy, if you can believe this, that 358 
billionaires worldwide have a combined net worth of $760 billion, which 
is equal to that of the bottom 45 percent of the world's population. 
That is 358 people who could sit, probably not so comfortably, but we 
could get them into this room right now, own more wealth than several 
billion people who constitute the bottom 45 percent of the world's 
population.
  Again, in our country the richest 1 percent of the population owns 
more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.
  Now I have not heard too much in the Contract With America about 
that. Maybe I missed it, but I do not think I heard that. Did the 
gentleman hear that?
  Mr. OWENS. The Contract With America does not talk about a number of 
things that ought to be put on the table. It certainly does not talk 
about the tremendous wealth of this country and how the wealthy are 
increasing at an escalating rate, increasing their profits while we 
cannot contemplate an increase in the minimum wage to $5.15 an hour. 
The contrast is overwhelming. We are the richest country that ever 
existed in the history of the world, and we take the position, or the 
position is taken in the contract for America that there is no room in 
there to provide a job for everybody, there is no room in there to 
provide health care, there is no room in this Nation and no resources 
to provide health care. And we do have 12 million people who are 
unemployed workers. And we said before the official statistics at 5.7 
percent would give us 7,498,000 unemployed workers. That is what we 
admit officially that we have. If you take those part-timers who are 
looking for full-time work, and you just count half of them because 
they are only working half time, you have another 2,346,000 people who 
are out of work. Discouraged workers who have not been looking for work 
for the past week are 1,783,000. Discouraged workers not looking in the 
past year, 440,000.
  These are figures that come from the Economic Policy Institute and 
they all add up to about 12 million people who are unemployed in this 
Nation.
  There is work to be done. It is not that there is no work to be done. 
We do need to build schools. We do need to take care of our 
infrastructure in terms of roads and highways. We do need to have 
workers in programs like Head Start and some other programs of the kind 
that were mentioned in the stimulus package that the administration 
introduced last year and it was passed on the floor of this House. 
Those kinds of programs are still needed to put people to work.
  It may be that there is some great adjustment taking place in the 
global 
[[Page H1452]] economy and that private enterprise will be able to 
provide all of the jobs we need by the year 2000. But right now there 
is a lack of jobs, and there is a need to address the problem of 
people's anxiety about jobs and those, of course, who are unemployed by 
the fact that they do not have any jobs. So we need a program right now 
to deal with the needs of 12 million people.
  Mr. SANDERS. I would just like to make a couple of points. Our 
Republican friends raise important issues and I think good issues and 
they talk about values, and values, in fact, are a very important part 
of what human life is. Life is not just dollars and cents; it goes 
deeper than that. But I have to raise the question about what kind of 
value system are we operating under when the very wealthiest people 
become wealthier, when we see a growth of billionaires at exactly the 
same time as we see more children in America who are hungry. What about 
those values? I yield to my friend.
  Mr. BONIOR. And what about the values of a society that fails to 
adequately reward work for those who are working and trying to work 
their way up in our society today? What does that say about a family, 
for instance, where because both parents might be working, one might be 
working at a minimum wage job, the other working at a regular, full-
time job, perhaps on a different schedule, a different shift, one is 
working 7 to 3, the other one is working maybe 4 to 11 in the evening 
and they do not see each other. The husband and wife do not see each 
other. They do not have a
 decent relationship because of it, and they do not spend time with 
their children. I saw a recent study that came out that said that 
people who are in that particular situation, the mother comes home and 
she spends 20 minutes with the children. The father comes home, he 
spends 5 minutes, and the rest of the time the kids are in front of the 
TV set, 3 or 4 hours a day. And they are not really getting very good 
quality stuff. I mean, they are tuned in to stuff where the kids are 
killing kids, and there is violence to an over extent even on the news. 
It is just not a good environment, and it does not facilitate the 
values of family, of love, of dignity, of working together as a unit. 
And it certainly does not speak well of our inability to try to help 
families like that in terms of their income and making their lives more 
decent.

  Mr. OWENS. I yield to the gentleman from Vermont. We also have been 
joined by the gentleman from California [Mr. Becerra], if he would like 
to take the other mike over here.
  Mr. SANDERS. All of us are members of the Progressive caucus, and 
some of those issues have already been raised, some of the ideas we are 
bringing forth that we think this Congress must deal with. As both the 
gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior] and the gentleman from New York 
[Mr. Owens] have said, it is very clear we need to raise the minimum 
wage; $4.25 does not make it. We need to raise the minimum wage.
  The President has come out with a proposal raising it 90 cents over 2 
years. I think that is the minimum we should do, but we have to move 
quickly and raise the minimum wage.
  The gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] has been talking about a 
very, very important issue. He points out we have billions of people 
who are unemployed. We have an infrastructure in this country that is 
crumbling. It makes no sense at all not to invest in our 
infrastructure, put over a million people to work rebuilding our 
physical and human infrastructure through a federally funded jobs 
program. We need to move in that direction.
  I think we four are in agreement that one of the reasons that the 
standard of living of working people is in decline has to do with our 
trade policy, which seems to be exporting jobs rather than product. We 
now have $150 billion in trade deficits this year which could equate to 
some 3 million jobs. Many of us in Congress are concerned about the 
impact of the NAFTA, GATT, most-favored-nation status with China. We 
want a fair trade policy, one that does not force American workers to 
compete against Chinese workers who make 20 cents an hour or the 
desperate people of Mexico who make $1 an hour.

                              {time}  2300

  Further, at a time when there are some people who are talking about 
cutbacks in Medicare and Medicaid, most of us believe that it is 
absolutely insane now that the cold war is over to be talking about a 
$50 billion increase in military spending. We are now spending $100 
billion a year defending Europe and Asia, and many of the countries in 
Europe are now wealthier than we are. Against whom? Whom? One hundred 
billion dollars a year. We must cut military spending, reinvest in 
America.
  And I think the last two points that I would make, and this chart 
deals with one of them, the Republicans have been very successful in 
making everybody antitax. The real question that we should be asking 
is, who is paying the taxes, who gets the tax breaks?
  Many of us support a tax cut for middle-income people. But we do 
think that the wealthiest people in this country who have gotten 
wealthier, we think that in terms of the corporate income tax, what you 
can see from this chart is that the percentage, the contribution, the 
corporations are making to the Federal coffers have declined 
precipitously over the last 50 years, and that means middle-income 
people are
 making up the difference. We want to make a progressive tax.

  Mr. BONIOR. The chart shows that in 1945 corporate, as a percent of 
Federal receipts from corporate income tax, was about 35 percent in 
1945. In 1985, it looks like from the chart it went down to about 10 
percent. Is that correct?
  Mr. SANDERS. That is correct.
  Mr. BONIOR. That is an amazing decrease. I mean, it is more than 
double the percent in decrease from 35 to about 10 or 12 percent now, 
back up to that in 1990. As a result of that, that has to be made up 
somewhere either in reduced services, which we certainly have had, but 
also in increased revenues that have been made up by the middle class. 
That is one of the reasons you have seen the stagnation in living 
standards of middle-income people.
  Mr. OWENS. We need a total overhaul of the tax structure. The 
personal income tax pits one group of Americans against another. 
Corporate income tax makes a great deal of sense.
  Taxes which are focused on businesses which are accumulating wealth 
and on individuals accumulating wealth are the taxes that ought to be 
raised to take care of our needs, and there are many needs that must be 
met with taxes, but the personal income tax should not bear the bulk of 
the burden as they are at present.
  I think the gentleman from California [Mr. Becerra] would like to 
show us a little bit more about taxes and the kind of swindle that is 
being proposed by the Contract on America.
  Mr. BECERRA. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. I am glad I 
have a chance to engage in the conversation with the three gentlemen 
who have spoken eloquently on this issue.
  It seems to be absurd. We are talking so much these days about 
reforming welfare, and we always seem to forget that welfare comes in 
many shapes and in many sizes and in some cases big sizes.
  When you take a look at the fact that welfare, as most people think 
of it, welfare to a woman and her children who cannot afford to live 
without some assistance from the Government, we are talking about 
something in the order of about $16.5 billion is what we give out to 
people who are poor and who need some assistance.
  Contrast that to welfare that we do not think of very often, but 
welfare that we give to corporations, welfare to the tune of about $225 
billion per year, money that we pay out as taxpayers by giving 
corporations tax breaks, letting them off from paying certain taxes. We 
have to make that up.
  So in this whole discussion that I hear going on about the minimum 
wage, about welfare reform, about trying to do something for the 
working man and the working woman, I think it is interesting to note a 
program that helps 10 million children that are in poverty is being 
discussed for radical, in many cases, reform, but programs that help 
corporations to the tune of $225 billion are not touched. In fact, 
Secretary Reich, from the Department of Labor, was criticized because 
he recently talked about reforming corporate welfare and the discussion 
about all of welfare reform.

[[Page H1453]]

  It seems to me even more difficult to comprehend this whole debate 
about reform when you look at the Republican Contract With America, and 
one of its proposals not only of reforming, so-called radical 
reforming, welfare, but also cutting the capital gains that will go 
mostly to wealthy Americans.
  And there I would refer my colleagues to
   chart. We want to find out what the Contract with America really 
does. Well, first, it guts welfare for the 10 million children who are 
in poverty, and at the same time, of course, the Contract with America 
says let us cut or let us give a tax break to those who have capital 
gains. In other words, if you own stock or if you happen to have a 
stamp collection or priceless art, and you want to sell that, you do 
not want to pay certain taxes on that capital gain, you want to be able 
to write some of that off.

  Mr. OWENS. I earn wages, and all of the wage earners of America pay 
taxes on their wages. Do they pay the same, pay taxes at the same rate 
that are currently on capital gains?
  Mr. BECERRA. Not at all.
  Mr. OWENS. Capital gains are a form of income also, by the way.
  Mr. BECERRA. That is correct.
  Mr. OWENS. It is mostly income you do not work for on an hourly 
basis. Is it presently taxed at the same rate as wages are taxed?
  Mr. BECERRA. Drastically differently. Wages are fully taxed. Capital 
gains are not. The proposal that the Republicans have in their Contract 
with America says let us give them a further break in their capital 
gains, but the interesting thing about this is who benefits, and if you 
look at the charts, you see really who will benefit. As Laura D'Andrea 
Tyson said, and she is the President's Chief of the Council of Economic 
Advisers, fully 75 percent of those capital gains will go to the 10 
percent richest Americans.
  Mr. OWENS. Will the gentleman repeat that? Seventy-five percent?
  Mr. BECERRA. Seventy-five percent; the 10 percent of richest 
Americans in this country will receive 75 percent of the tax cuts in 
the capital gains proposal in the Contract with America, and you can 
take a look. If you happen to earn somewhere between $30,000 and 
$40,000, every American family that has income of about $30,000 to 
$40,000 stands to get about 2\1/2\ percent of those capital gains cuts. 
That is sharing the wealth under the Contract on America.
  Mr. BONIOR. In the Contract on America, also the tax cut package that 
the Republicans are advocating, I wonder if the American people 
understand what that will cost in terms of revenue to the Federal 
Government.
  Mr. BECERRA. There are estimates it might be over $250 billion over 5 
years. The capital gains program alone will cost about $55 billion the 
first 5 years. There are some estimates that after 10 years that goes 
up to about $210 billion.
  Mr. BONIOR. On the capital gains portion.
  Mr. BECERRA. On the capital gains portion of the proposed tax cuts 
only.
  Mr. SANDERS. Are these the same group of people who are talking about 
cutting back on nutrition programs for hungry people and senior 
citizens because we have a terrible deficit? I just wanted to be clear. 
I was a little bit confused. Are these the same folks?
  Mr. BECERRA. That is correct. These are the same folks, too, who are 
saying we cannot afford to increase the minimum wage from $4.25 an 
hour.
  Mr. BONIOR. Are these the same folks that want to cut back veterans' 
benefits as well?
  Mr. BECERRA. The same ones that would probably cut veterans' 
benefits. Somehow we are going to have to balance the budget and give 
these tax cuts and still raise spending for defense, for military, and 
somehow with what is left in the budget to look at,
 not cut Social Security, not cut Medicare.

  Mr. BONIOR. There is a rumor going around here they also want to cut 
Medicare as well significantly for the elderly.
  Mr. BECERRA. That is right; that is right. You know, we should look 
at something here. Right now, the capital gains that we have in law 
right now costs this country between now and the next 5 years about $94 
billion. We are already paying $94 billion for that. That, if you think 
about it, amounts to about $362 for every man, woman, and child in this 
Nation, $362 that each American has to somehow make up for either 
through other taxes, personal income taxes or cuts in programs like 
Social Security, Medicare, Head Start, job training. Somehow we have to 
make up that $94 billion over 5 years. It does not just come freely.
  Either that or you increase the size of the deficit.
  So we have to take all of those things into consideration. Then you 
look at the minimum wage, and it is interesting, over the weekend on 
some of the TV talk shows, we heard a number of Republicans say that 
they opposed raising the minimum wage. They thought it was a job 
killer. They did not want to see it happen.
  But then all of a sudden you ask them, well, what happens if you get 
the capital gains tax cuts in exchange? All of a sudden they change 
their tune. All of a sudden, well, maybe they are willing to trade. 
Sure, would you not be willing to trade if you could get a $94 billion 
tax break and increase that to about $55 billion for the next 5 years, 
and up to $208 billion for the next 10 years, in exchange for 90 cents 
an hour more for people who are low income and barely surviving at the 
poverty level?
  Mr. OWENS. I thank the gentleman. I hope at this point each one of 
you could sort of sum up and show how all of this ties together, when 
you give the multibillion dollar tax cuts, and you have to go and cut 
something out of the budget, and what we have here is a display by what 
I call some high-technology barbarians who are approaching the 
situation without any heart at all. They want to throw a large part of 
American humanity overboard and just say we do not care; we do not care 
whether they have homes, we do not care whether they have food, we do 
not care whether they have medical care, we are going to help the rich 
get richer.
  It all ties together. They cannot help the rich get richer without 
committing these atrocities against the poor and atrocities are 
committed these days in ways where you do not have blood. When you 
refuse to raise the minimum wage, that is a kind of an atrocity. When 
you are going to force welfare mothers to get off welfare after 2 years 
and not bother to try to create an economy which is going to produce 
jobs for them to step into, those are atrocities without blood.
                              {time}  2310

  We have to see how it all holds together and make the American people 
understand that the Contract With America, which many of us call the 
Contract on America, is a very deadly approach indeed. We are dealing 
with a deadly approach to government which runs counter to the whole 
principle of government and the fact that society exists to take care 
of everybody, not just a few. The social order is threatened when you 
refuse to recognize the need to take care of all of the people.
  I yield to the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders].
  Mr. SANDERS. It think maybe we all want to summarize our views, and 
the fear that I have is that this country increasingly is moving away 
from our democratic traditions into an oligarchy, and all that those 
tax breaks for the wealthy do is they make the people on the top that 
much wealthier, and with that money what they do is buy television 
networks.
  I understand that the Speaker last night was at a fund raiser, a nice 
little dinner, I guess, and it only cost $50,000 a plate to go to that 
dinner in order to contribute to a TV network which will further 
propagate the rich person's point of view.
  Mr. BONIOR. And the gentleman should note that those $50,000 
contributions to that dinner were tax deductible because they went to a 
foundation that promoted this program that we have been criticizing.
  Mr. SANDERS. And the rich get richer, and meanwhile with that money 
they can contribute huge amounts of money to both political parties.
  This institution itself, 20 percent of the Members at least are 
millionaires. We expect that with the high cost of elections more and 
more millionaires will write out their own campaign checks and run for 
office.
  The answer, I think, is that working people, middle income people, 
low income people all over America, have got 
[[Page H1454]] to stand up and say, ``Excuse me. This country belongs 
to all the people and not just the very wealthy. You can't not vote. 
You can't not participate in the political process.''
  The big money people are here every single day. I say, ``We need your 
help. Stand up. Fight back.''
  Mr. OWENS. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior].
  Mr. BONIOR. I just want to thank my friend, the gentleman from 
Vermont [Mr. Sanders], and the distinguished gentleman from New York 
[Mr. Owens], and the gentleman from California [Mr. Becerra] for 
participating in this hour and for allowing me to share some thoughts 
with them.
  I guess in summation I would say that we live in a society with 
relatively limited resources with respect to how we operate here at the 
Federal Government level, and it seems to me, and I think it was 
demonstrated well by the discussion we have had and the charts that we 
have seen, that the very wealthy in our society have done extremely 
well, the most comfortable people in America have done incredibly well, 
particularly since 1979 when the rest of America had basically held on 
or their standard of living has decreased.
  The question is how do we bring some equity into this equation? How 
do we deal with bringing people into the middle class who are not 
there, bringing people off welfare and into a work situation where they 
can have some pride, dignity and raise their kids with a decent future 
ahead of them? How do we provide for the middle income people to put 
money into their pocket with respect to providing tax cuts for them and
 not for the wealthiest in our society?

  I think that is the challenge that we have. The goal in this country 
often for many people is to have some, to acquire some sort of wealth, 
and there is nothing wrong with that, but when you are dealing with 
limited resources, you have to make sure that those who need it the 
most have the opportunity to share in those resources.
  So, I thank my colleagues for yielding, and I look forward to working 
with them on these issues.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. 
Bonior].
  I yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. Becerra].
  Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, I will be brief because I think my two 
colleagues preceding me did a very fine job of summarizing what we are 
trying to say. All I would like to say is that we should take a little 
bit of time and think about what we mean by reform regarding welfare. 
You know, what is it and who really gets it? Then, once we do that, 
once we think about it, let us reform welfare, let us reform it so that 
we get people and corporations off of welfare, and let us make sure 
that our policies reward working people and not continue to lavish very 
costly tax breaks on the rich, and we should remember that the rich are 
the only group of people who made off like bandits during the Reagan 
years when we had exorbitant spending, and now we should come back and 
look at 1995 and say, ``It's time to reform, but what is reformed, 
let's do it right.''
  Mr. OWENS. I thank the gentleman from California [Mr. Becerra] for 
the closing remarks.
  Mr. Speaker, I submit two articles, one which appeared in the New 
York Times on February 6 entitled ``Farmers Brace for Stormy Debate 
over Subsidies'' which contains many of the facts concerning 
agribusinesses on the dole, and a second article that appeared on 
Tuesday, February 7, entitled ``Now, After $36 Billion Run, Coming 
Soon: `Star Wars II'--The New G.O.P. Plan Is Smaller but Still 
Costly.'' It also gives facts about increasing defense expenditures at 
a time when we are cutting programs for the poor.
  The articles referred to are as follows:
 Now, After $36 Billion Run, Coming Soon: ``Star Wars II''--New G.O.P. 
                   Plan Is Smaller, but Still Costly

                           (By Eric Schmitt)

       Washington, February 6.--Twelve years after President 
     Ronald Reagan first proposed his ``Star Wars'' antimissile 
     system that ultimately cost $36 billion, provoked much debate 
     and built nothing, Republicans are pressing to revive it, 
     although in a vastly different form.
       Mr. Reagan's dream of erecting an impregnable astrodome to 
     shield the United States against an onslaught of Soviet 
     nuclear-tipped missiles dissolved with the end of the cold 
     war. But in its place has risen a smaller, but still very 
     costly, plan to defend the continental United States against 
     a nuclear, chemical or biological attack from more than a 
     dozen rogue nations like Iraq or an accidental strike from 
     Russia.
       ``One day, mathematically, something bad can happen and you 
     ought to have a minimum screen on a continentwide basis, and 
     that's do-able,'' Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia told 
     reporters last month. ``And I think compared to the loss of 
     one city, it is clearly a very small investment, although 
     it's a lot of money over time.''
       Republicans want to more than double what the Clinton 
     Administration is spending to develop a national missile 
     defense, to at least $1 billion a year from $400 million a 
     year now. At a time of exceedingly tight budgets, experts say 
     such a network would cost $5 billion to $35 billion, 
     depending on its coverage and complexity, and could never 
     guarantee complete protection.
       The new ``Star Wars'' debate puts Republicans on a 
     collision course with the Administration over how quickly and 
     at what cost the United States should deploy a national 
     system. The Pentagon is developing national defenses, but at 
     a slower pace than Congress wants. Given that senior American 
     intelligence officials say a serious long-range missile 
     threat from countries other than Russia or China is still 10 
     years away, President Clinton's priority has been to build 
     better defenses for troops overseas to shoot down shorter-
     range missiles similar to the Scud rockets that Iraq launched 
     against Israel and Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf war.
       Hanging over the growing debate is a sore reminder of past 
     mistakes: So far, the United States has spent $36 billion on 
     ballistic missile defenses since 1984 without one working 
     system to show for it. Billions were poured into exotic space 
     weapons and laser beams that gave the program its fanciful 
     ``Star Wars'' nickname. Even the most hawkish generals at the 
     Pentagon fear that ratcheting up financing for national 
     defenses will only bleed away dwindling money for training, 
     new barracks and advanced fighter jets and warships.
       Representative Curt Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican on 
     the House National Security Committee, is one of many 
     missile-defense supporters who say the painful debate of the 
     1980's taught some hard lessons. ``The problem with `Star 
     Wars' was we gave the program a large blank check without 
     holding the appropriate officials accountable,'' Mr. Weldon 
     said. ``That's not going to happen again. This will not be a 
     black hole.''
       While Republicans express general support for a national 
     missile defense, there is no consensus among them on 
     important issues like cost, when to put such a system in 
     place or what technical design it should have.
       ``There are still a lot of outstanding questions,'' 
     acknowledged Senator Daniel R. Coats, an Indiana Republican 
     on the Armed Services Committee.
       Legislation that carried out the Contract With America, the 
     House Republicans' political manifesto, directs the 
     Administration to field ``a highly effective defense'' of the 
     United States ``at the earliest practical date,'' but offers 
     no other details.
       ``This proposal is broad and vague,'' Representative John 
     M. Spratt, Jr., a South Carolina Democrat who is a leading 
     Congressional authority on missile defenses, said at a 
     hearing of the National Security Committee last week. ``Is it 
     ground-based? Space-based? You haven't defined deployment. I 
     don't think you've laid down a policy here.''
       Indeed, the legislation, which the House will most likely 
     approve later this month and send to the Senate, leaves it up 
     to Defense Secretary William J. Perry to draft a deployment 
     plan within 60 days after the bill becomes law.
       After the pitched battles between the Reagan and Bush 
     administrations and Congress, the debate over missile 
     defenses died down when Mr. Clinton took office two years 
     ago. Republicans and Democrats alike agreed to improve the 
     country's battlefield, or theater, missile defenses after 
     Iraq fired dozens of Scud rockets in the Persian Gulf war.
       Indeed, when Mr. Perry's predecessor, Les Aspin, declared 
     the ``Star Wars'' program dead in 1993, it was already 
     moribund. The Administration merely made it official, and 
     earmarked two-thirds of the $3 billion annual missile-defense 
     budget to battlefield defenses like improved Patriot missiles 
     and the new Theater High-Altitude Area Defense, or Thaad, 
     which intercepts incoming missiles at even higher altitudes 
     and greater distances than the Patriot.
       But the Administration did not entirely give up on a 
     national missile defense. The Pentagon scaled it back to a 
     research program that would be developed by the year 2000 and 
     deployed depending on the threat.
       ``If the decision is made at that time to deploy, the 
     deployment will be made very rapidly, within another few 
     years,'' Mr. Perry said last month. Pentagon officials say 
     the projected threat over the next 10 years does not warrant 
     speedier deployment.
       But Republicans have seized on the Central Intelligence 
     Agency's estimate that 15 nations now have ballistic 
     missiles, and perhaps 20 will have them by the end of the 
     decade, to push for a faster timetable to put national 
     antimissile defenses either on the ground or in space.
       [[Page H1455]] As Senator Strom Thurmond, the South 
     Carolina Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee, 
     put it, ``Defense of our homeland against direct attack is a 
     priority enshrined in the Constitution, yet it is an aspect 
     of our national defense that has been woefully neglected.''
       Mr. Perry has said that one quick option would be to spend 
     $5 billion over next five years to field a ground-based 
     system using existing sensors, radars and missiles to defend 
     against a ``thin attack,'' a relatively small number of 
     missiles fired at once.
       Some Republicans, like Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, favor 
     waiting, as long as the threat is low, to develop the most 
     technologically advanced system possible, one that could 
     include space-based sensors and interceptors.
       But most Republicans say their first step will be to revive 
     efforts to deploy 100 missiles at one site--near Grand Forks, 
     N.D.--which is allowed under the 1972 Antiballistic Missile 
     Treaty. The site could protect the United States' midsection, 
     but not the coasts. The Administration had largely abandoned 
     this option.
       In 1993 the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, the 
     successor to the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, 
     which embodied the ``Star Wars'' program, said it would cost 
     $21.8 billion to develop and build a single site at Grand 
     Forks by the year 2004. To cover the entire 50 states would 
     require building five additional sites for an additional 
     $12.5 billion, the agency estimated.
       Ultimately, budget pressures may dictate the size and 
     deployment date of a national system.
       ``The budget hawks are prevailing,'' said Lawrence F. Di 
     Rita, a senior official at the Heritage Foundation, a 
     conservative research organization in Washington. ``So 
     whatover is proposed has to be technically feasible soon 
     enough so that the cost is bearable. This can't be a science 
     project.''
                                                                    ____


             Farmers Brace for Stormy Debate Over Subsidies

                          (By Keith Schneider)

       Arlington, Kan., Feb. 1--This wind-bullied land, the center 
     of America's wheat empire since the late 19th century, is 
     bracing for a political fight over farm subsidies like none 
     before.
       Of the 73 new Republicans in the House, 33 are from rural 
     agricultural districts and have been at the vanguard of the 
     movement to cut the Federal budget, curb regulations, and 
     limit the Government's authority to interfere in business.
       This more conservative Congress is writing a new farm 
     policy law this year, the first since 1990. In every previous 
     law since the first one was written during the Great 
     Depression, the paramount provision has been a contract in 
     which the Government helps to decide how much a farmer can 
     grow in exchange for guaranteeing to pay farmers a set price 
     for their crops.
       Now, the central question is: What arguments will farmers 
     and their conservative champions in the House and Senate use 
     to win support for one of the most costly and intrusive 
     Government programs of all?
       Here in Reno County and in more than 2,000 other rural 
     counties across the country, perhaps the only thing as 
     enduring as the great vaulted sky is the money that blows out 
     of Washington to support farm incomes. In the last 10 years, 
     $149 billion has been spent on crop subsidies nationwide, 
     nearly $8 billion of that in Kansas alone. Farm economists 
     say Kansas farmers typically gain $20,000 to $40,000 
     annually, far more than is received by families on welfare.
       Those indisputable facts of economic life in Kansas and 
     other farm states are now fueling a battle in Congress that 
     is being sharpened by deepening concern about costs.
       Senator Bob Dole, the Kansan who is majority leader, and 
     Representative Pat Roberts, the Kansan who is chairman of the 
     House Agriculture Committee, have both been advocates for 
     cutting the Government,
      returning more power to the states and balancing the Federal 
     budget. But both lawmakers have protected farm subsidies 
     for years, particularly for growers of wheat, the state's 
     most important crop.
       In a speech last month in St. Louis to the American Farm 
     Bureau Federation, Mr. Dole, who has helped shape farm policy 
     since he entered Congress in 1961, was guarded as he 
     discussed the coming debate, saying only that ``some cuts 
     will be made'' in farm programs.
       Mr. Roberts has been more voluble. In an interview, Mr. 
     Roberts defended the subsidies, saying that nationwide they 
     had decreased to $10.2 billion last year from $25.8 billion 
     in 1986. Still, Mr. Roberts's 66-county Congressional 
     district, which includes Reno County, received $5.45 billion 
     in farm subsidies over the last decade, more than any other, 
     according to the Environmental Working Group, a policy 
     analysis organization in Washington.
       Mr. Roberts vowed to defend those payments and his 
     constituents from being a target for budget cutters. 
     ``Farmers have already given at the office,'' he said. ``I 
     will make sure that if there are additional cuts, they are 
     not disproportionate on farmers.''
       Opposing the Kansas lawmakers is Senator Richard G. Lugar, 
     Republican of Indiana and chairman of the Senate Agriculture 
     Committee. He said in an interview that farm subsidies were 
     justifiably seen as a test of Republican resolve.
       ``We are being taunted with it almost daily,'' said Mr. 
     Lugar, who owns a farm. ``Will we act? I would guess that 
     subsidies will be cut at least in half over the next five 
     years. But I also see phasing out subsidies in five years, if 
     not completely then in such a way that there is only some 
     minimal safety net.''
       Here in Reno County, where most of the 1,540 farms receive 
     crop subsidies, growers are nervous even as they acknowledge 
     being somewhat embarrassed about accepting Government 
     handouts.
       ``It's like insurance,'' said Ronald Jacques, who votes 
     Republican and raises wheat and other crops on a 2,000-acre 
     farm 10 miles west of here. ``It's not all of your income by 
     any stretch, but it's a help. It's something you can count 
     on.''
       Budd Fountain, a retired employee of the United States 
     Department of Agriculture who raises 1,100 acres of wheat 
     here and received $14,000 last year in subsidy payments, 
     said: ``If they totally did away with the program, there 
     would be some problems. As long as Government is involved in 
     setting the supply, then the farmer has no choice because he 
     can't make his money from the market. The price is too low.''
       Whatever decisions are made by Congress this year, the 
     outcome will have a significant effect in counties like this 
     one, which received $148 million in farm program payments 
     over the last decade, according to the Environmental Working 
     Group.
       No policy ever devised by Congress has such power to shape 
     so much land and so many lives. It is a policy that farmers 
     eagerly accept even as they complain about the rules, the 
     bureaucracy and the Government's control of grain markets.
       When the Government called for maximum production of grain 
     in the 1970's, farmers here cut down trees that served as 
     wind breaks in order to plant every available acre.
       In the 1980's, when storehouses bulged with surpluses, the 
     Government paid farmers to plant grass to conserve topsoil, 
     making a quarter of the flat land here look like it did over 
     a century ago, before the prairie grasses were plowed under.
       But taking so much land out of production also reduced the 
     amount of seed, fertilizer and farm equipment being used, and 
     limited the demand for storage space in the big white grain 
     elevator hugging the railroad tracks here. Farm supply stores 
     went out of business, and the grain elevator was sold.
       In interviews here this week, farmers said they would 
     gladly give up subsidies if the Government also agreed to 
     withdraw from setting supplies. By controlling the supply, 
     the program controls demand and thereby prices.
       Without being able to control supply, they said, farmers 
     have little choice but to take the handouts because the 
     prices they have received at the market for wheat--from $3.02 
     to $3.72 over the last decade--are below the cost of 
     producing it.
       The program for wheat, which is similar to those for corn, 
     feed grains, rice and cotton, pays farmers the difference 
     between the market price for their crop, and a higher 
     ``target'' price that is set by Congress. Last year, the 
     difference was at times as much as 80 cents a bushel. The 
     wheat program cost taxpayers $2 billion, about a fifth of 
     which went to Kansas growers.
       As political pressure mounts to dismantle the programs, 
     farmers say, consumers do not recognize the advantages of 
     having stable grain supplies--and therefore stable prices--
     for such items as meat, bread and milk in the supermarket. If 
     the programs were ended, they add, grain supplies and prices 
     would be much more erratic.
       ``One thing overlooked by Democrats and Republicans in this 
     debate is that farm programs are really designed to give 
     consumers cheap food,'' said Jim French, who with his wife, 
     Lisa, raises cattle and wheat on a 1,200-acre farm in 
     Partridge, just north of here. ``But we've seen the 
     handwriting on the wall. In the early 1980's, we earned 
     $25,000 one year from the program, the most we've ever had. 
     That was our profit. Last year, our check was a little over 
     $6,000.''
       Farmers in this region offer many ideas about how to alter 
     the farm programs to reduce their costs and make them more 
     useful.
       Nathan Stillwell, a cattle rancher and wheat farmer who 
     lives just outside town urges the Government to relax the 
     strict rules, and give farmers more flexibility to decide 
     what to plant and how much. That will save money, he says, 
     and produce benefits for the environment because it will 
     allow farmers to rotate crops more easily, a soil-saving 
     practice that the programs have discouraged.
       Others, like Mr. Jacques, said that dismantling the 
     programs altogether would be possible as long as other 
     countries also ended the practice of subsidizing their 
     farmers. Grain markets are influenced by international 
     factors and as long as other countries continue to subsidize 
     their farmers, Americans will be at a disadvantage, he said.

  Mr. STOKES. Mr. Speaker, I believe in the same basic tenets that the 
Founders of the Republic believed in. America needs to live up to its 
pledge of being one nation that will provide every American an 
opportunity to earn a decent living. In today's society there can be no 
advancement without a decent job and a decent wage. We live in a nation 
which has veered away from its creed--from its pledge to all 
Americans--and is now called to conscience.
  [[Page H1456]] President Clinton has submitted to Congress his budget 
proposal for fiscal year 1996. Unlike the budgets submitted by 
Presidents Reagan and Bush, which were dead on arrival in Congress, I 
applaud President Clinton for presenting a budget that demonstrates his 
continued commitment to improving the lives of working Americans. His 
proposal would raise the current $4.25 hourly minimum wage to $5.15 
over a 2 year period.
  I support the President's position that the minimum wage should be 
increased. At a time when we are considering the reform of our Nation's 
welfare system, and putting more individuals to work, we need to be 
able to guaranteed our workers a wage they can live on.
  Mr. Speaker, in the United States, we continue to make strides toward 
full economic recovery, with 1994 noted as the best year for economic 
growth in 10 years. Yet, we continue to have a permanent class of 
working poor--individuals who go to work every day but find it 
impossible to make ends meet. These are the individuals who must choose 
between health care and day care; food for their children or 
electricity; warm clothing for their children or mortgage payments. It 
is these individuals for whom this modest increase in the minimum wage 
will make a significant difference.
  In my home district of Cuyahoga County, the percentage of households 
living below the poverty level is 20 percent. I therefore realize from 
firsthand experience why it is so imperative that we support the 
President's call for a minimum wage increase. I will certainly do all 
that I can to advance this important effort to improve the conditions 
of working Americans.
  Mr. Speaker, in Dr. Martin Luther King's lifetime, America needed a 
war on poverty. It is my hope that with this small step we will fulfill 
Dr. King's mission to end poverty for all Americans.
                             general leave

  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may 
have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks 
on the subject of my special order tonight.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Quinn). Is there objection to the 
request of the gentleman from New York?
  There was no objection.
  

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