[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 32 (Tuesday, February 21, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H1956-H1957]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           THE SELF-EMPLOYED DEDUCTION FOR HEALTH CARE COSTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Texas [Ms. Jackson-Lee] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  (Ms. JACKSON-LEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend 
her remarks.)
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE. Madam Speaker, to my colleagues, I would like to 
say, let me acknowledge this evening my recognition and appreciation 
for the Houston Livestock and Rodeo Show, an entity in the city of 
Houston and the county of Harris in the State of Texas that has worked 
so hard to provide opportunities for inner-city youth and youth 
throughout our community by providing not only entertainment with real 
cowboys but also scholarships for greater opportunity. And they seek to 
provide those scholarships to a wide diversity of individuals in our 
city and in our county and in our State.
  But as well tonight I want to speak just a moment about the vote that 
I took this evening. Tonight I voted for working Americans from all 
backgrounds. Specifically I voted to extend permanently the current 25-
percent health insurance deduction for the self-employed. However, in 
addition, I voted for more hard-working Americans, employees whose 
employers do not subsidize their health care, having a deduction 
beginning now in 1996. This deduction would be phased in. In 1996, the 
deduction would be 15 percent of the employee's health insurance 
premiums and by 2000, the deduction would increase to 25 percent of the 
premium just like the deduction for self-employed individuals. The 
McDermott-Gibbons substitute was clearly the better deal for the needs 
of working Americans, the self-employed, and for employees with no 
health insurance. We fixed what was broken, a good deal. However, what 
the McDermott-Gibbons legislation did not do was give a raw deal to a 
valuable goal to allow minorities to access fairly ownership of radio 
and television broadcast stations and to increase minority ownership of 
cable television systems as well.
  Certainly, the Republicans know what controlling the media is all 
about, while they will blast the talk shows with the misrepresentation 
that 
[[Page H1957]] their bill helped Americans with health care, false. It 
leaves out secretaries and clerks and other workers without health 
insurance, and it does so by breaking the backs of hard-working 
minority entrepreneurs who, since 1978 and with the FCC's section 1071, 
have moved from less than one-half percent minority radio and TV 
broadcast ownership to now about 3 percent.
  Why slam all of our desires for good health care with the divisive 
dismantling of the mere empowerment of minority purchases of broadcast 
media? Let us reform FCC section 1071. I want to do that. I am a 
taxpayer, and I support taxpayer reform.
  However, let us not stop the access to the first amendment of hard-
working business persons never before given such a chance. This is 
simply a back door attempt, poised to further undermine racial 
cooperation in this country. If it was not, we would not have heard the 
Republicans raising the high platitudes of color blindness and the 
raising of Hispanic and African-American self-employed persons as a 
reason for their support of busting a program that would allow 
minorities for the first time to own radio and TV stations. The money 
to pay for the health insurance deductions for the self-employed and 
hard-working employees, as I voted for, is already there. Without the 
talk show fodder already being prepared for tomorrow, ``we won the 
first blow to show those minorities that we live in a color-blind 
society.'' Well, the headline will already be stated and will read 
tomorrow, and should really be reading, ``The Republicans do it again. 
Real working Americans, secretaries, clerks, and others left with no 
health insurance deductions and, yes, minorities again sent into media 
darkness, again, another blow to the first amendment.''


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