[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 37 (Tuesday, February 28, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H2386-H2391]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



[[Page H2386]]

 OUR DEMOCRACY DOES NOT ADDRESS OUR MOST SENSITIVE AND IMPORTANT ISSUES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Foley). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] is recognized for 60 
minutes.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to be joined by 
Representative Maurice Hinchey of the 26th District of New York State.
  Mr. Speaker, I think that one of the problems in our democracy is 
that we have a tendency not to address some of the most sensitive and 
important issues. We seem to get a little bit consumed with O.J. 
Simpson and soap operas and the baseball games and so forth. Yet the 
country faces enormous pressures, enormous problems, and we really do 
not get into them very often in any great depth.
  Let me begin the discussion with Representative Hinchey by raising a 
question, if I might, and, that is, many people in this country are 
concerned today about the degree to which in fact this Nation remains a 
democracy in which ordinary people are able to control their lives and 
control the future, as opposed to big-money interests which have such a 
profound impact on the political and economic life of this country.
  Representative Hinchey, do you have some thoughts on that?
  Mr. HINCHEY. I think it is obvious that we still have a democracy 
electorally. Everyone is encouraged, they are allowed and encouraged to 
participate in the electoral process. But more and more we are seeing a 
decline of economic democracy, and I think that the concentration of 
wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people is becoming more apparent 
almost yearly. I think that that has been particularly so over the 
course of the last 20 years. We have witnessed the decline of the 
middle class. We have witnessed a growing underclass in America, and 
obviously the concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer 
people.
  Also, the concentration of the ability to distribute information, the 
ownership of the instruments of communication in our society has become 
more and more concentrated, particularly over the course of the last 
decade.
  For example, we have had laws in this country up until fairly 
recently which said that if you owned a major newspaper in a particular 
city, you were not then to own a major television station, a radio 
station.
  The idea behind that, of course, was to prevent single individuals or 
single corporate individuals from controlling the means of 
communications or the means of distribution of information in a 
particular media market.
  That, unfortunately, was done away with in the decade of the 1980's. 
So what we are seeing now, and we have seen evidence of it here, I 
think, in this Congress, the relationship between some mass media 
moguls and the Speaker of this House currently, the concentration of 
the ability to distribute information in the hands of fewer and fewer 
people, and I think that is a means of eroding democratic principles 
and the idea of democracy.
  Mr. SANDERS. Let me ask you, you have been here now for over 2 years, 
I have been here for over 4 years. Is it your impression that if you 
were to turn on the television tonight and watch CBS or NBC that you 
would get an accurate understanding of, in fact, what is taking place 
in the U.S. Congress?
  Mr. HINCHEY. No, I don't think so. And I think that that is very 
unfortunate.
  The abdication of responsibility by the major networks to provide 
real information and real news is evident certainly in the period of my 
adulthood. I can recall a time when news broadcasts back in the 1960's 
and even in the 1970's were real, material broadcasts.
  The networks competed with each other in a way to try to distribute 
the best quality information through their news vehicles and a variety 
of important news items in their major newscasts, in the evening, and 
then late at night.
  We have seen recently the transformation of media news into more of a 
tabloid kind of presentation of information, sort of titillating 
things, having to do with a variety of things that do not really relate 
to the most important aspects of what is occurring in our country, 
politically, culturally, and economically.
                              {time}  2240

  Mr. SANDERS. If I may. There are some writers who have pointed out 
that increasingly the media, the corporate media, is owned by fewer and 
fewer larger multinational corporations. It is of concern to me, for 
example, that NBC is owned by the General Electric Corp., a company 
which is a major manufacturer of military hardware, a company which has 
a very poor labor relations record, a company which for a period of 
time under the Reagan administration paid very, very, little in taxes. 
The Fox network is owned by the huge international media corporation 
run by Rupert Murdoch who runs and controls media in several countries 
around the world.
  I think there is increasingly a danger not only in the United States 
but around the world that the people are getting their information from 
fewer and fewer people who will not tell people I think the truth, but 
will use their ownership of the media to protect their own private 
interests.
  As the gentleman knows, there has been a lot of discussion about the 
November 8 election in which the Republican Party took control of both 
the House and the Senate, but what is not often I think pointed out 
enough is that in that election 62 percent of the American people did 
not bother to vote. And that all over this country we have tens and 
tens of millions of people, primarily working people and low-income 
people, who are feeling enormous pain these days; they often do not 
have health insurance, they are working for low wages, their kids are 
unable to afford to go to college. For the first time in the history of 
the modern United States their children will have a lower standard of 
living than they do, yet with all of these problems, people do not go 
out and vote, because, I think, to a large degree they have given up on 
the political system, they do not see politics and government as it is 
presently constituted as a mechanism for them to improve their lives. 
Is that something the gentleman observes in his district?
  Mr. HINCHEY. I think so. I think it is something you can observe, a 
phenomena that is occurring across America in various places to one 
degree or another. More and more people are disaffected from the 
political process because they believe it is irrelevant to their lives, 
and there are few things that are happening, frankly, in this Chamber 
on a routine basis over the course of the last couple of months, there 
are few things that have happened here that are going to make in any 
way a material difference in the lives of any people.
  The kind of activity that has been going on here is not going to 
create one job, is not going to raise the standard of living of one 
person, is not going to make a material difference in the lives of 
anybody in this country, and that I think is very unfortunate.
  I think also the assault that we have seen on the public broadcasting 
system is also one that is alarming, because in the public broadcasting 
system we have the last vestiges of an attempt by the communications 
media to really communicate information that is relevant, that is 
important, that means something to people, and in a very serious way.
  Mr. SANDERS. I found it interesting that in the last month, as you 
know, the Speaker of the House, who is leading the effort to defund 
public television and public radio, held a fund raiser for his own 
private television network, and do you recall how much it cost a plate 
to attend that fund-raiser?
  Mr. HINCHEY. I am not really certain but I remember it was an 
extraordinary amount.
  Mr. SANDERS. Fifty thousand dollars a plate. It must have been a 
really good dinner for $50,000, but this is money that came from 
obviously some of the very wealthiest people in America who wanted to 
give the Speaker and his friends the opportunity to communicate with 
America, with their particular point of view. But at the same time, by 
accepting that money, they are in the process of trying to shut down 
the public broadcasting system. I suspect that that is not just a 
coincidence.
[[Page H2387]]

  Mr. HINCHEY. I do not think it is a coincidence at all. I think there 
is a very direct relationship to that and I suspect there is a very 
direct relationship between the book contract we have seen and the 
controversy around that with regard to the Speaker and his relationship 
to Mr. Murdoch. And it has been alleged there are some of these people 
who are interested, if they could manage to achieve it in some way, of 
taking over the public broadcasting system, because as I indicated and 
I think as anyone who has thought about it for 30 seconds realizes, the 
public broadcasting system is unfortunately, unfortunately because 
there ought to be many more aspects of this in American life, but 
unfortunately the last system that really attempts to communicate
 anything that is meaningful about what is happening in the American 
political process, and that is meaningful in an economic way to the 
lives of the vast majority of the American citizens.

  Mr. SANDERS. When I turn on the television and I sometimes go surfing 
as they say with the flipper and I am amazed that you can have a cable 
network, not a network but cable system with 20, 30, 40 channels and 
how little there is of value on any of those stations. We get a great 
deal of violence, we get our share of soap operas, we get old movies, 
we get all kinds of stuff, but it is amazing to me how little of 
television today is actually reflecting the reality of the lives that 
tens and millions of working people are living. The truth of the matter 
is in our country today we just do not talk about the pain that so many 
people are going through, just trying to get through the day.
  I think that one of the reasons that so few low-income people 
participate in the political process is that literally they almost do 
not have the energy to do it. If you go out and you work for 40 or 50 
hours a week, if you have kids to take care of, if you have a car that 
you have got to keep running, if you have to worry about the electric 
bill and the telephone bill, you know, you do not have a lot of free 
time to participate in the political process.
  And I think the more that people are hurting, the more they are 
obliged to pay attention to their own most basic needs and the needs of 
their families. Meanwhile, our wealthy friends can go flying around the 
country to go to meetings, they have large staffs of people.
  I find it very interesting and very alarming, when you talk about the 
role of money in politics, just some of the events that have taken 
place in the last month or two. We talked for a moment about the fact 
that Mr. Gingrich was able to have a fund-raiser for his television 
network for $50,000 a plate. Several weeks ago the Republican Party had 
a fund-raiser, they brought people together and in one night they 
raised $11 million for the Republican Party. Senator Phil Gramm who is 
one of the candidates seeking the Republican nomination for President 
held a fund-raiser, and on one night be raised over $3 million.
  One does not have to be a genius or a great political scientist to 
figure out why people are throwing so much money at political 
candidates. They are not donating that money, they are investing that 
money. They feel that if they can elect certain people, they will 
benefit from the decisions that those people make once they are office. 
And I think we are beginning to see that in terms of the Contract With 
America that we are debating virtually every day on the floor of the 
House.
  Representative Hinchey, how do you see the relationship between big 
money and the Republican Contract With America?
  Mr. HINCHEY. Well, I think the contract is first of all a very 
elitist document. It is elitist in the sense that whatever benefits are 
going to accrue as a result of the passage of these items that are 
contained in the contract, should any of them actually become law, will 
accrue to the richest 1 percent or the richest 5 percent perhaps of the 
American population.
  It is also a very radical document. It is radical in the sense that 
it is a departure in many ways from the historical context of the 
American experience going back over the 206 years of our history, and 
particularly over the course of the last 50 years when there has been a 
concentration and an effort really by both parties, more or less, to 
try to achieve a greater sense of economic justice and economic 
prosperity for the vast majority of Americans. Going back to the 
Eisenhower administration, and even during the Nixon administration, 
this country continued to make economic progress, and the middle-class 
people had jobs and had economic opportunity.
                              {time}  2250

  That is not part of this agenda. In fact, over the course of recent 
history, we have seen a loss in the standard of living, a loss of 
economic opportunity, a loss of availability of jobs, particularly 
decent-paying jobs that have associated with them the kinds of benefits 
that we are accustomed to, medical benefits and pension benefits and 
things of that nature. We have seen a dramatic decline in those jobs.
  Mr. SANDERS. If I may, I think the major point that we should be 
discussing on the floor of this House every single day and that should 
be discussed at length on the television and on the radio is why it is 
that over the last 20 years we have become a significantly poorer 
country, why the standard of living of working people has declined, why 
the gap between the rich and the poor has grown wider, why we have lost 
some 3 million manufacturing jobs as large corporations throw American 
workers out on the street and head to Mexico or to China, why it is 
that more and more people lack health insurance or are underinsured, 
why it is we have that. I wonder how many Americans know this. We have 
in the United States today by far the highest rate of childhood poverty 
in the industrialized world. Over 22 percent of the children in America 
are living in poverty. Many of our elderly people are living in 
poverty.
  The new jobs that are being created are significantly lower-wage jobs 
than was the case even 15 years ago, especially for the young men and 
women who are just graduating college. Why is all of this happening?
  Clearly those are the issues that we should be discussing, but 
unfortunately, we spend very little time doing that.
  Mr. HINCHEY. I think obviously you are right. These are the issues 
that concern me, and these are the issues that we ought to be talking 
about here in this institution, in this Chamber, in this room. We ought 
to be talking about the economic conditions that are afflicting the 
American people more and more.
  We have seen a stagnation in the standard of living of the vast 
majority of the American people, and even a decline in that standard of 
living substantially over the course of the last 20 years, going back 
to 1973, and especially since 1979, and I think that that is clearly 
associated with the decline in manufacturing jobs and other productive 
jobs, manufacturing, construction, the kinds of jobs that add value to 
material things and, therefore, create wealth. We have lost most of 
those jobs, many of those jobs, such that only 26 percent of the 
American work force today is engaged in those productive kinds of 
activities such as manufacturing, mining, and construction.
  When you contrast that with those statistics for other countries, you 
find that of the major industrial powers, we now have among the 
smallest percentage of people working in those kinds of occupations, 
and that is why we have had the decline in wealth and a decline in the 
standard of living of the majority of Americans.
  People are insecure. They do not know if their job is going to be 
there tomorrow or next week or next month. They worry deeply about the 
availability of meaningful employment for their children. They worry 
substantially about whether or not their children are going to enjoy 
the same standard of living that they have enjoyed, and they fear, in 
fact, their children's standard of living is going to be less than 
theirs. That is a dramatic departure from the experience of this 
country, particularly over the last 50 years since the Second World 
War.
  Mr. SANDERS. In a few moments, I hope we can get to the issue of 
trade and our current trade policy, because I think that relates very 
much to the circumstances you are talking about. [[Page H2388]] 
  Let us get back to the Contract With America. It seems to me that the 
essence of what the Contract With America is about are several things: 
No, 1, our Republicans want to provide very, very substantial tax 
breaks, primarily for the wealthiest people in this country. People 
earning over $100,000 a year would get at least half of the tax breaks, 
and as I understand it, people earning $200,000 a year or more would 
get about one-third of the tax breaks. These are the people whose 
incomes have soared during the last decade, who, in many instances, are 
already not paying their fair share of tax, but these are the people 
who are targeted for the major tax breaks under the Republicans.
  The second point that I think we should consider in the Republican 
Contract With America is that these folks who are talking about the 
need to move toward a balanced budget, balanced budget in 7 years, 
first, they are talking about huge tax breaks for the wealthy and, 
second of all, they are talking about a major increase in military 
spending, tax breaks for the rich and increase in military spending.
  Last week we had a rather vigorous debate here right on the floor of 
the House when our Republican friends suggested they wanted to bring 
back the star wars program; again, no one is clear about how much more 
money they want for it. We were not specific about the dollars. I think 
the estimate is another $30 or $40 billion for star wars alone, let 
alone for some other military programs.
  Mr. HINCHEY. It sounds eerily familiar, tax cuts for the very rich, 
substantial increases in military spending, balanced budget amendment.
  In the words of the great American philosopher, Yogi Berra, ``Deja vu 
all over again.'' It is 1981 all over again. It is the same 
prescription that brought us record budget deficits, the same 
prescription that brought us record debt, the budget deficit, and debt 
that we are trying to dig our way out of.
  The irony is, the inexplicable irony is that the same people in this 
House who pushed through those budgets in the 1980's that brought us 
that incredible
 debt fueled by those budget deficits year after year after year are 
now going back to try to bring us the same kind of disastrous economic 
policies now in the last few years of the decade of the 1990's, the 
same kind of prescription that is going to bring us the same disastrous 
consequences.

  Mr. SANDERS. If the Contract With America is going to provide 
tremendous tax breaks for the wealthy, and if it is going to provide 
enormous profits for military contractors and the others who are 
involved in star wars, and if we are to move toward a balanced budget 
within 7 years, clearly it does not take a Ph.D. in economics to figure 
out something has got to give. You cannot move toward a balanced 
budget, give tax breaks to the rich, expand military spending without 
making savage cutbacks in a wide variety of areas.
  And in the last week or two, we have finally begun to get some of the 
specifics as to where those rather savage cuts are going to come.
  Do you want to say a word on that?
  Mr. HINCHEY. Yes, I would.
  But first let me remind ourselves and anybody who might be watching 
this that during the debate on the balanced budget amendment in this 
House, we attempted to pass an amendment that would exclude Social 
Security which would take Social Security off the table, and an attempt 
to balance the budget so Social Security would not be in jeopardy. That 
amendment failed here. The majority party in this House defeated that 
amendment, so we can sense from that where lies one of the sources from 
which they intend to derive the revenue to balance this budget after 
the year 2002.
  Also, Medicare, the Medicare Program which is a health care program 
for our elderly citizens, the majority leader in the other House of 
this institution, when he was a Member of the House of Representatives, 
voted against Medicare. It is no surprise why he is against national 
health insurance and why he is for the balanced budget amendment today. 
They are going to go after Social Security. They are going to go after 
Medicare.
  Already we have seen them going after programs that affect the most 
vulnerable Americans, children, for example. They are cutting away at 
the school lunch program. There is going to be less availability of 
school lunches. They want to put it in a block grant, reduce the amount 
of money that is available for it, and send it down to the States. We 
know the consequences of that.
  The school lunch program is going to be less effective. Fewer 
children are going to benefit from it. Their learning is going to 
decline as a result of that. Their health is going to decline as a 
result of that, and we are going to have a weaker America.
  So those are the programs they are after, the WIC program, the food 
stamp program. That is where they are going to get the money for their 
tax cut for their wealthy friends.
  Mr. SANDERS. That is right. I think we should be very clear about 
what is going on.
  In this instance, we are not being rhetorical or cute by saying that 
literally we are talking about food coming out of the mouths of hungry 
children in order to provide tax breaks for some of the wealthiest 
people in this country, and I think that is, you know, there has been a 
whole lot of discussion about family values. I do not think that 
cutting back on school breakfast programs, school lunch programs, and 
in my State of Vermont, the WIC Program, which is the women and infants 
and children program by which low-income pregnant women are provided 
good nutrition and little kids are provided good nutrition, to 
eliminate that program and put it into the block grants is, to me, just 
incomprehensible.
  Furthermore, I think, as you know, and I know this affects your 
district which also has some cold winter as my district does, as the 
State of Vermont does, last week one of the subcommittees on 
Appropriations proposed, voted to, to eliminate the LIHEAP program, 
which is a program that provides fuel assistance for low income people 
in our districts where the weather gets 20 below zero. This is a 
serious matter. It is a question of whether people stay alive or not.
  Many of the recipients of that program in the State of Vermont are 
elderly people. So once more, tax breaks for the rich, increases in 
military spending, and star wars, and cutbacks for the most vulnerable 
people in our Nation.
                              {time}  2300

  Mr. HINCHEY. You are precisely correct. The HEAP, the Home Energy 
Assistance Program, is a program that assists primarily elderly people. 
It helps them heat their homes in the wintertime. When you live at the 
latitude that we do in New York and Vermont, we know the winters get 
quite cold.
  Elderly people are particularly susceptible to hypothermia. It does 
not have to stay too cold for too long for the life of an elderly 
person to become in jeopardy and for them to lose that life. So this 
HEAP program is literally, for people like that a matter of life and 
death.
  In another sense, though, the hypocrisy of the agenda of the majority 
party in this House is becoming more and more apparent. Their attack on 
the WIC program, which the gentleman mentioned, is a clear indication 
of that.
  The WIC Program is one of the most effective and efficient programs 
that we have, domestic programs that we have in the country. It has 
been shown statistically that for every dollar spent on the WIC Program 
we spend as a Nation, the American taxpayer saves $4. How does that 
happen? It happens in this way: The WIC Program provides nutrition for 
pregnant women, lactating mothers, and small infants. If a pregnant 
woman gets proper nutrition during her pregnancy, she is much less 
likely to give birth to a low-birthweight baby or a child that 
encounters other postnatal problems. When a child is born of low 
birthweight or has some other postnatal problem, all of the resources 
of the medical institution wherein that child is born are brought to 
bear to save that child's life. That requires an expenditure of ten's 
of thousands, if not, in some instances, hundreds of thousands of 
dollars. How much wiser to spend a few dollars to insure good nutrition 
for pregnant women in this country.
  This attack on WIC, mind you, is coming from people who profess to be 
[[Page H2389]] pro-life, who profess themselves, sanctimoniously, as 
the guardians of the infants and small children. While they say that 
out of one side of their mouth, they are attacking children, pregnant 
women, and the most vulnerable, and people least able fend for 
themselves in this society, children, elderly people, pregnant women. 
Those are the ones they are going after to get the money for their tax 
cuts for their wealthy friends.
  Mr. SANDERS. I think the gentleman is exactly right. He has 
characterized the WIC program exactly right. It is not only the right 
thing to do, it is the cost-effective, sensible thing to do. How much 
more sensible it is to keep low-income pregnant women healthy so they 
can give birth to healthy babies rather than have them give birth to 
low-birthweight babies and spending thousands of dollars to keep those 
babies alive. The WIC program has been shown time and time again to be 
a very successful and fully effective program.
  I must say that to understand fully what goes on in this Congress, we 
should examine the decency, the propriety of people who contribute or 
accept $50,000-a-plate contributions and then go out and cut back on 
programs for low-income pregnant women and hungry kids.
  We have talked about the impact of the Contract With America on the 
elderly, on children. But there are other constituencies who are also 
going to be affected by the Contract With America.
  One of the areas the contract is pointing its ugly finger at right 
now is at the young college students in America. Time and time again we 
hear on the floor of this House, we hear the leading business people of 
this country, we hear the President, we hear anybody who knows anything 
about what is going on in the international global economy, make the 
sensible and correct point that this country will not survive 
economically unless we have a well-educated workforce.
  The competition in Europe, in Asia, against as is very, very 
powerful. We need to have a well-educated workforce. Everybody agrees 
with that.
  Second of all, what everybody agrees with is that if young people are 
not able to get a college education, if they simply go out into the 
workforce with a high school degree, it is increasingly difficult to 
make a living.
  The new jobs that are being created for high school graduates are 
paying significantly lower wages than they paid 15 years ago.
  So, given that reality that we need a well-educated work force, that 
the jobs out there for high school graduates are low-paying, what sense 
in the world does it make to be cutting back drastically on the student 
grants and loan programs that enable millions of middle-income and 
working-class and low-income families to be able to afford to send 
their kids to college?
  We are talking about cutbacks in the Pell Grant program, cutbacks in 
the Stafford Loan Program, cutbacks in the work-study program, all of 
which will make it extremely hard for young people to go to college 
because the cost of higher education today is very high.
  Imagine how difficult it would be if we did not have the Federal 
assistance which currently exists. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense 
to me.
  Mr. HINCHEY. It does not make any sense. I cannot help but wonder 
what has happened to the great Republican Party, a party which had care 
and concern for the middle-class people of this country, particularly. 
Even Richard Nixon, when he was President, commented on the school 
lunch program, and he did so by saying that he knew a child would be 
able to learn much better if he has good nutrition. That child will be 
stronger, be able to accept knowledge easier, to learn, he will be able 
to be a better participant in school. President Nixon knew the value of 
the school lunch program.
  In my State, Nelson Rockefeller was responsible for the establishment 
of the State University of New York. He took a system of scattered and 
disparate normal schools and small colleges and brought them together 
in the most magnificent way and created one of the best State 
university systems in the Nation and one of the best public systems of 
higher education anywhere in the world. This was done by a great 
Republican Governor.
  Now we found Republicans in this House, the majority party in this 
House, attacking public education in the way that the gentleman 
described, hacking away at Pell grants, hacking away at new student 
loans, depriving more and more people of the opportunity to get a good 
education.
  Back in my State, the new administration in New York wants to raise 
the tuition at the State university system by over $1,000, $1,300. It 
is going to price out of the opportunity for higher education many 
middle-income people, concentrated more and more in the hands of 
wealthier and wealthier people. That is not what Nelson Rockefeller 
wanted that State university to be. He wanted it there for all people 
regardless of their income. And this new Republican Party inexplicably 
has gone far to the right and is destroying some of the basic elements 
of this society which were created by good, solid, responsible 
Republicans in prior times.
  Mr. SANDERS. It seems to me to be very sad to be contemplating the 
likelihood, the reality that if these trends continue, that higher 
education in America, which at good schools today costs $25,000, 
$28,000 a year, that if the Federal Government is not helping out 
middle class, the working-class families, higher education will simply 
be an avenue open only to the very wealthy. That seems to me to be a 
terrible thing not only for millions of families but a terrible thing 
for this country as well.
  Let me shift for a moment. We have talked about the impact of the 
Contract With America on those families hoping to send their kids to 
college. What about veterans? I find it interesting and I just this 
morning actually met with Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jesse Brown, 
who I think is doing an excellent job in advocating for the rights of 
veterans, who is deeply concerned about the rescission, the cutback of 
money already appropriated, which took place just last week, of some 
$200 million for veterans already.
                              {time}  2310

  He and I think many of us share the concern that next year under the 
Republican proposals there will be major cutbacks in veterans programs, 
including programs and money needed by the VA hospitals. It seems to me 
that we can disagree about the wisdom of this or that war. But if you 
are going to ask a young man or woman to go to war, to put his or her 
life on the line, you are signing, talk about a contract, there is not 
a deeper contract than you can sign. When the government declares a war 
and says, go out, you have made a contract in perpetuity, I think, with 
that individual. They cannot do more than put their life on the line. 
And it seems to me in absolute disgrace that anyone would contemplate, 
when the elderly now in our VA hospitals who fought in World War II, 
who fought in Korea, who need the help, to say to those people, we have 
a real deficit problem here, guys, we are going to have to cut back on 
your needs. Thanks for putting your life on the line. But now you are 
somewhat disposable. That seems to me to be very wrong.
  Mr. HINCHEY. I think absolutely so. There is no class of Americans to 
whom we owe a greater debt of gratitude than those who served in the 
military, particularly during times of conflict, during times of war, 
when they put themselves in jeopardy, put their lives on the line, were 
certainly in danger of that at any moment. We need to live up to our 
responsibilities to our veterans.
  The majority party in this House has just slashed away at veterans 
benefits. Outreach programs for veterans at veterans hospitals are 
going to be virtually eliminated if we pass what they have reported out 
of the committee so far. That is just one example of the way that they 
are striking away at veterans benefits.
  But the irony of it is that while they attack the veterans and the 
benefits and the responsibilities and obligations that we as a country 
owe to veterans, they wrap themselves in the flag by talking about a 
constitutional amendment against burning the flag. There was a great 
British parliamentarian who once observed that patriotism is the last 
refuge of a scoundrel. I have a friend who says that patriotism is 
often the first refuge of a scoundrel. [[Page H2390]] 
  I think that we may be seeing a little bit of that here in this 
proposed flag amendment, because I think
 that they are using this proposed flag amendment to hide their real 
agenda, which is to slash away at veterans benefits, to deprive 
veterans of what we owe them really for what they have done for this 
country, and take that money, again, to use it for tax cuts for the 
wealthiest Americans. It is a scandalous part, only one of many 
scandalous parts of this so-called Contract on America.

  Mr. SANDERS. You and I are members of the Progressive Caucus. The 
Progressive Caucus has brought forth a number of alternative ideas to 
the contract, and maybe it would be useful if we talked about some of 
the ideas and some of the legislation that we are working on.
  Recently, as you know, the president has come out to increase the 
minimum wage. You and I have supported legislation for several years 
which would raise the minimum wage to an even higher level. I 
introduced legislation 4 years ago which would raise the minimum age to 
$5.50 an hour. It seems to me that at a time when the purchasing power 
of the minimum wage today is 26 percent less than it was in 1970, in 
other words, our low-wage workers are significantly poorer and worse 
off than they were 25 years ago, that the time is long overdue, that we 
should be saying that if you are going to work 40 hours a week in the 
United States of America, you should not be living in poverty.
  Does that not make sense to you?
  Mr. HINCHEY. It makes a great deal of sense to me. It makes it even 
more difficult for me to understand how the majority leader in this 
House can say that he would like to see the minimum wage done away with 
completely. If he had anything to say about it, that is what would 
happen. He also said that he would fight with every fiber of his being 
an increase in the minimum wage.
  Well, look what has happened to the minimum wage. The president has 
proposed a modest increase from where it is now, at $4.25 an hour, to 
$5.15 an hour over the course of 2 years.
  If the minimum wage had kept pace with the cost of living in our 
country over the course of the last several years, it would at this 
moment as we stand here today, the last day of February 1995, the 
minimum wage would be more than $6 an hour. So even what the president 
is proposing will not take us to where the minimum wage ought to be at 
this moment, let
 alone where it ought to be 2 years from now.

  The minimum wage is a basic standard from which we attempt to elevate 
the standard of living of all Americans by placing a floor under the 
salary that should be paid for someone's labor. What more can a person 
give outside of family experience to someone else but their labor? They 
ought to be compensated for that appropriately. And in this, the 
wealthiest nation in the world, with the biggest economy in the world, 
we ought to be able to pay our workers at a rate that will afford them 
a decent standard of living.
  Mr. SANDERS. I think we should point out that one of the additional 
reasons why we need to raise the minimum wage is that many, many of the 
new jobs that are currently being created are, in fact, low-wage jobs. 
They are often part-time jobs. They are jobs without any health care or 
any other benefits. And it seems to me that if anyone is going to talk 
about welfare reform or anything else, we must make sure that in this 
country that those people who are working for a living have the right 
to live in dignity, have the right after 40 hours of work to keep their 
heads above poverty.
  I think you and I are going to go forward as vigorously as we can to 
demand hearings here in the House and in the Senate and pass the 
minimum wage. The President's bill does not go as far as I would like 
to see it go, but it is a step forward which would impact not only on 
those workers making $4.25, but obviously those workers making $4.50, 
$5 or $5.20 an hour as well.
  Mr. HINCHEY. And workers who are making higher levels than that 
because it will have a tendency to push up the wages of others as well. 
Because as we discussed earlier in our colloquy here this evening, we 
have seen the standard of living of Americans not keep pace with the 
cost of living or advance ahead of the cost of living but actually 
decline so that people are living today in a more difficult 
circumstance. The vast majority of Americans are having a tougher time 
making ends meet, paying the electric bill, as you said before, paying 
the rent, paying the mortgage, worrying about how they are going to put 
their kids through school. It is a more difficult proposition today as 
a result of the declining standard of living and one of the aspects of 
that is the failure of the minimum wage to keep pace with the
 cost of living.

  Mr. SANDERS. What particularly outrages me is that there is no 
country in the world where the gap not only between the rich and the 
poor but between the chief executive officers of the large corporations 
and their workers is as wide as it is in the United States. The last 
figure that I saw was that at a time when the CEO's are seeing 
tremendous increases in their incomes and workers incomes are 
declining, the gap is now 150 to one. I do not think, you used the 
words economic democracy a moment ago, I do not think that is what this 
country is supposed to be. It is not supposed to be an oligarchy. It is 
supposed to be a country in which we have a solid middle class where 
people who are working for a living are able to earn enough money to 
pay the bills and to raise their kids with a little bit of dignity.
  I think we should also point out, because the media does not do this 
terribly often, that one of the reasons that European and Scandinavian 
companies are coming to the United States today is that they find in 
America today the opportunity, unbelievable as it may sound, to hire 
cheap labor. For the same reason that American companies go to Mexico 
and China, some of the European companies are coming to America where 
you can get skilled, hard-working people who will work for 7 bucks an 
hour, $8 an hour, with very limited benefits. And clearly in Europe, 
workers earn a lot more than that.
  I think another point that I want to make, there was an article in, I 
think it was Newsweek recently, maybe it was Time, where they talked 
about the stress that the average American family is under. People are 
working longer and longer hours, having less vacation time. I think 
that is an issue that we should address as well.
  Mr. HINCHEY. Well, I think it is very clear that the working 
conditions here in the United States have deteriorated. The quality of 
the jobs is not keeping pace with what it ought to be. The level of 
benefits are far lower than they are in European countries where in 
many European countries it is customary for a person working in the 
first year to get 4 weeks vacation and some countries, Australia, it is 
even 6 weeks vacation. But here in the United States it is, you are 
lucky to get 2. And more importantly, more and more American companies 
are moving toward a situation where they hire part-time employees so 
that
 they do not have to provide benefits such as pension systems, things 
of that nature, health insurance. And that is one of the reasons why we 
have a larger growing number of people in the United States who are 
without health insurance. And that is one of the principal driving 
forces forcing up the cost of health care for all the rest of us.

  It is a major part of our economic problems over the course of the 
next several years. We need to get a handle, get control of our health 
care costs. And we cannot do it, because one of the reasons we cannot 
do it is because so many more people are without health insurance. And 
when they get health care they get it under the most expensive 
circumstances.
  So these are all part of pieces, part of a larger entity that has to 
do with what we ought to be doing in this House, and that is working to 
improve the standard of living of the majority of American people, 
making education more accessible to middle class working people, making 
good jobs available to middle class working people, jobs that pay a 
decent salary and provide health insurance and other reasonable 
benefits, the kinds of things that we have taken for granted in the 
past and which are being taken away from us insidiously as a result of 
the failure of this Congress to operate the way that it ought to.
[[Page H2391]]

                              {time}  2320

  If it was operating in the best interests of the American people, 
that is what it would be doing. It would be developing programs to 
create jobs and improve the standard of living, and making sure that 
when people work, they are compensated appropriately for that work and 
included in that compensation is basic health insurance and other kinds 
of fundamental benefits.
  Mr. SANDERS. Maybe when we talk about the decline in the standard of 
living of working people and the shrinking of the middle class, I think 
it ties, and we might want to end our discussion on this note, it ties 
into the whole issue of trade which has gotten a lot of attention 
recently in terms of the passage of NAFTA and GATT.
  NAFTA was passed some 14 or 15 months ago. We were told that with the 
passage of NAFTA, many new jobs would be created here in the United 
States. It would improve the Mexican economy. Fifteen months have come 
and gone.
  What is your impression about the impact of NAFTA?
  Mr. HINCHEY. I think we could spend, I tell the
   gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders], more than an hour on that 
discussion alone here this evening.

  But to make it brief, the effects have been frankly what you and I 
and others who voted against NAFTA predicted they would be. We said at 
that time that the peso was overvalued, that the Mexican economy was 
riddled with corruption and that if we were to pass NAFTA, it was 
really not a trade agreement but an investment agreement, it would 
siphon off investment capital from the United States down to Mexico and 
there would be a net loss of jobs from this country, and that is 
precisely what we have seen.
  We have seen a loss of 10,000 jobs, a net loss of 10,000 jobs from 
the United States to Mexico as a direct result of NAFTA. And we have 
seen the collapse of the Mexican economy.
  Our trade policies since 1979 and perhaps as early as 1973 have been 
a disaster for this country. We have taken it on the chin. We have been 
a sap for other countries. We have a built-in trade deficit now which 
is of historic proportions. That trade deficit means that we are 
subsidizing good jobs in other countries while we lose those good jobs 
here in America.
  We need to reverse our trade policies and focus on our own domestic 
economic needs. Trade is important only to the extent that it provides 
value to the United States, that it helps us improve the standard of 
living of the American people, that it provides more jobs for 
Americans.
  Our trade policies have taken us precisely 180 degrees in the 
opposite direction. That has been going on now for nearly 20 years. No 
wonder we are suffering the economic circumstances we are. That is a 
major part of our problem.
  Mr. SANDERS. I agree. And there is no question that with a $150 plus 
billion trade deficit, what that translates into is millions of decent 
manufacturing jobs that should exist in this country but that do not.
  When we talk about the global economy, I think what we have got to 
deal with is the fact that major corporations would much prefer to go 
to China where they could pay workers 20 cents an hour in an 
undemocratic society where workers cannot form free unions, where the 
environmental conditions or the workers' conditions are very, very bad.
  Obviously what has happened is companies have invested tens of 
billions of dollars in China. They have invested huge amounts of money 
in Mexico, in Malaysia, in countries where desperate people are forced 
to work for starvation wages, and at the same time they have thrown 
American workers out on the street.
  We must demand and create a process by which large American 
corporations reinvest in America and put our people back to work at 
good wages. Clearly as you indicate, current trade policy is doing 
exactly the opposite.
  Mr. HINCHEY. I want to thank you very much for giving me the 
opportunity to join you in this discussion this evening and for 
focusing the discussion exactly where it ought to be focused, on the 
economic issues, on ways that we can take in this Congress to improve 
the standard of living of American people.
  There is nothing more important for me. I know that is true with you. 
We have got to make sure as best we can that it becomes equally 
important for a larger number of people who serve in this Congress.


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