[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 37 (Tuesday, February 28, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H2311-H2312]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


          CONTRACT WITH AMERICA TOUGH ON CHILDREN AND ELDERLY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Miller] is 
recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, there was great celebration by 
the Republicans on the 50th day of their Contract With America of the 
first 100 days that they had programmed to rewrite the Federal 
Government and its rules and regulations. Yet on the 51st and 52d day 
we found out what this contract was really about. It was a contract on 
the elderly and the children of this Nation, between the actions taken 
in the Committee on Education and Labor and the actions taken in the 
Committee on Appropriations.
  We saw in the Committee on Appropriations in the rescissions bill to 
cut money out of existing programs, 63 percent of all the cuts affect 
low-income Americans, children, and seniors. These same people are only 
responsible for 12 percent of the discretionary spending within the 
budget. That means three times the amount is being cut from these 
programs for elderly housing, to help elderly people pay their heating 
bills, and nutrition for our children, and the most vulnerable, and 
that is pregnant women at risk of giving birth to a low-birth-weight 
child and a newborn child born at low birth weight that needs 
nutritional help at the first moments of life. That is what the 
Contract With America has become, a Contract on America's children.
  In this morning's Washington Post, Louis Sullivan, the Secretary of 
HHS under President Bush, writes an article about the importance of the 
Women, Infants, and Children Program. This is a program that has now 
been in existence 20 years. It may be the most successful program in 
the world in combatig low-birth-weight babies, premature births, and 
the results that fllow from those two events.
  This has been our insurance policy to protect the taxpayers against 
the hundreds of thousands of dollars that a premature birth of a low-
birth-weight baby will cost those taxpayers in the first few days and 
weeks of life. This has been a program that has reduced the incidence 
of low-birth-weight births by some 33 percent among the participants in 
that program. This is a program that does that for about $1.50 a day, 
and this is a program that the Gingrich Republicans and the Committee 
on Education and Labor lockstep voted to cut the money from last week.
  So as we move into the second 50 days of the contract, we see a much 
meaner, a much more callous approach to the children of this Nation. 
What is at stake here? What is at stake here is the ability of 
thousands of women who have been medically certified to be at 
nutritional risk and at risk of giving birth to a low-birth-weight baby 
of having a successful pregnancy. What these cuts mean, and the cuts in 
the Committee on Appropriations last week, is that this year 100,000 
pregnant women and newborn infants will not be allowed to participate 
in this program that has had dramatic success in helping the brain 
development of these children, in helping carry these fetuses to term, 
and having healthy pregnancies.
  That is what the Republicans' contract wants to do. That is what 
Speaker Gingrich instructed the Committee on Education and Labor to do. 
Many of those Republicans privately were saying they hate to do this, 
this should not be done, they know it is wrong, but this is what the 
contract calls for. They have a greater allegiance to the contract, a 
public relations stunt drawn up by a pollster, than they do to 
America's children and to the pregnant women of this
 country that run the risk of having a pregnancy go wrong and to have 
to suffer all that that means.

  What we are trying to assure with the Women, Infants, and Children 
Program is that these pregnant women will have the same joy I had at 
the birth of my two sons, the same joy that I had at the birth of my 
granddaughter; a healthy pregnancy and the kind of care that a woman 
needs before she delivers that birth, so that she can experience that 
joy, so that family can have that, and not have to experience the 
sadness of having a low-birth- [[Page H2312]] weight baby and the 
critical care that must be delivered in the intensive care and the 
neonatal intensive care units of our hospitals around this country.
  Yet we see that those are the ones that the Ginrich Republicans have 
focused in on like a laser. They went immediately to those programs to 
cut that out. Out of the child nutrition programs and the WIC programs, 
we see over $7 billion over the next 5 years being taken out of those 
programs. This year we see $25 million directly taken out of the Women, 
Infants, and Children Program. Surely--surely the voters of America, 
the Republicans of America, do not believe that the first efforts in 
trying to balance the budget should be on the backs of these poor 
children, of these women at risk in their pregnancies, and of these 
newborn infants that are struggling, struggling to hold on to life, 
because we were not able to give them the attention during the 
pregnancy that we should have.

                              {time}  0950

  Surely that is not what this is all about. Nor should it be allowed 
to stand. People should call their Members of Congress and tell them 
that they want this 20-year program of success maintained. We are 
talking about $1.50 a day during the term of that pregnancy. That 
should not be on the chopping block out of humanity and out of caring 
for these children and for these pregnant women.

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