[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 44 (Thursday, March 9, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H2977-H2984]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


           THE RESCISSION PACKAGE OF THE REPUBLICAN MAJORITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Becerra] is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to come 
tonight and speak to my colleagues about something that will be coming 
before us next week. That is the Republican majority's rescission 
package, which, in essence, is the cuts that were made in the Committee 
on Appropriations in the last week or two to the tune of about $18 
billion, cuts that are going to be used, we first were told, for 
purposes of trying to finance the disaster relief efforts in places 
like California, as a result of the Northridge earthquake; in 
[[Page H2978]] places like Florida, that still have some final tasks to 
be done to take care of the hurricane disasters they suffered from; 
northern California, earthquake; the Midwest, floods; a number of 
different disasters that this country has experienced over the last 
couple of years.
  Unfortunately, if you take a closer look at this rescission package, 
you see something very, very disturbing. I would like to go into that a 
bit.
  Again, the rescission package, what it really means in plain English 
is that we have wiped out funding for certain programs which have 
already been approved for such funding. In other words, Mr. Chairman, 
last year's budget, which may have allocated $1 for a program, this 
past week the Committee on Appropriations went in and decided to make 
cuts in particular programs under which it has discretion to do so.
  It cannot touch things like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, 
because those are entitlement programs, and they are not discretionary. 
The discretionary programs include things like the Department of 
Defense, Department of Education, job training, veterans' benefits, and 
so forth.
  If you are concerned about the quality of public education in this 
country, teen drug use, the increasing potential of today's youth being 
involved in gang violence, in crime, if you are concerned about 
veterans, if you are concerned about housing for seniors that are on a 
limited budget, then you have good reason to be very concerned, if not 
outraged, about what the majority party has done with regard to this 
rescission package.
  The majority party's main target, as it turns out, happens to be kids 
and senior citizens. The GOP's main beneficiaries in this rescission 
package happen to be the very wealthy. Let us take a look at a few 
things done through this rescission package.
  I have put together a chart here to give us an idea of what happened 
with all the cuts that came out of the Committee on Appropriations 
recently. Who takes the hit? Of all the cuts, the close to $18 billion 
in cuts, 63 percent of those cuts will hit low-income individuals. 
Close to two-thirds of all the moneys cut come from programs that help 
veterans who are low-income, the elderly who are low-income, children, 
$17 billion. It will be interesting, because we will talk about where 
that money goes, and it is going to be interesting to find out why we 
had to cut $17.5 or so billion.
  Mr. Speaker, let me focus a little bit more on where those cuts are 
that we see here listed as having hit mostly the low income. Where did 
the money come from? For the most part you can see the biggest hit was 
taken by housing, housing for seniors, housing for low-income 
individuals, housing to help supplement those who are having a tough 
time making a living, that are working poor; job training, job 
experience. Of all the cuts 14 percent come from job training programs 
to help young people and those who are trying to get off of welfare, 
and those who are trying to get back on a job because the recession has 
caused them to lose their job as a result of downsizing in areas like 
the aerospace industry.
                              {time}  2200

  Health care, health cuts, 10 percent. Education, 9 percent. Within 
the other 25 percent, I should mention that we list veterans benefits 
programs. Let me give some quick details on some of those areas in 
cuts.
  Housing, $7.2 billion comes from housing; $2.7 billion comes in 
rental assistance for low-income families. That is about 62,000 
vouchers down the drain, 62,000 families that will not be able to 
qualify for some assistance to try to make sure they are able to rent a 
place to stay; $186 million comes from housing for persons with AIDS. 
In Los Angeles, I can tell you that thousands of people with AIDS will 
now probably find as a result that they will be denied certain housing 
because that assistance that was being provided for this population of 
needy individuals is now being cut.
  Job training cuts, $2.35 billion. Included in that is the complete 
elimination, not a cut, complete elimination of summer youth employment 
programs, $1.7 billion. That is money that has been used in a lot of 
different areas, including places like New York, in rural States, in 
places like Los Angeles, to try to help youth who otherwise might just 
hang around the street corner at night.
  The impact on Los Angeles of that cut, well, we can expect about 
23,000 kids to be denied job training and classroom instruction over 
the next year.
  Impact nationwide, probably about 600,000 children, not children, 
young adults, will be deprived of a chance to do some good work and 
learn something as they prepare themselves to become working adults.
  Education, $1.7 billion in cuts. What do we do? Well, eliminate the 
drug-free schools program. That is a program to try to make sure kids 
don't start using drugs and as we know, most folks who are arrested 
these days, it is as a result of using drugs, selling drugs or somehow 
drugs are related. Yet we are eliminating the drug-free schools program 
that tries to keep drugs out of the school and tries to make sure kids 
don't start using or selling drugs.
  What else? We eliminate also school construction programs. How many 
of our neighborhood schools need some type of refurbishing, how many of 
our neighborhoods just need schools? Well, we have eliminated a program 
for that. We have got massive reductions in grants to reform schools, 
so we finally get caught up in technology. We use money for homeless 
youth, to educate homeless youth, that is eliminated.
  We have a cut in national service. That is the program that ``Says 
young man, young woman, you are interested in going to college, you 
want to serve your community, we will give you a little money, pay you 
low wage, minimum wage, at the same time we'll also tell you that after 
a year you'll have a grant of about $4,700 that can be used for your 
education, only for your education. If you go on to college, we'll give 
you $4,700 to help offset some of the cost of that education.'' Huge 
cut in national service.
  Health cuts, $10 million cut in the Healthy Start Program. That is a 
program to help working women, poor women who have very little access 
to health care. It provides them with prenatal care so that they can 
make sure that they do not end up costing the local government and the 
community and its taxpayers additional dollars because they end up 
having a child that is born with low birthweight or some abnormality 
and has to go to the approximate intensive care units and costs us 10 
times as much as it would have cost to have given decent prenatal care.
  A $25 million hit on the WIC Program, Women, Infants, and Children 
Program; 100,000 women and kids are going to probably be denied proper 
nutrition.
  What else? Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. That is the 
program that helps low-income seniors, others who have a very difficult 
time during winter months in places where it is cold, to survive those 
chilling winter months. We are cutting $1.3 billion from that program.
  Other cuts, I will mention veterans' benefits, take a hit of about 
$206 million. That is a real slap in the face of our veterans who 
certainly do not believe they get enough as it is in the types of 
programs available under the Veterans' Administration. Yet they are 
going to take another hit.
  Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $47 million hit, a $94 million 
hit is projected for the next fiscal year. What we are doing with the 
Corporation for Public Broadcasting in Congress is the Republican 
majority is trying to get us to a glide path in about 3 or 4 years 
where we actually eliminate all funding for public broadcasting.
  The EPA--That is the Environmental Protection Agency, lots of 
cleanups to do, all the toxic dumps we
 know that are in our communities. Well, $1.3 billion mostly for Clean 
Water Infrastructure Program is being gutted.

  Where does all of this money go from this $17.5 billion or so bill 
that cuts from these programs? Let's take a look.
  We were told first that since the President sent a bill over 
requesting that we provide some additional moneys to help provide for 
disaster relief, as I mentioned earlier, that was one of the reasons 
the Committee on Appropriations had to find some way to fund it. We 
have never done it before where 
[[Page H2979]] in a disaster we have taken money from other programs to 
pay for a disaster, we have always said this is a disaster, we have 
always said this is a disaster, we have to pull together as Americans 
and find a way to help people. But this time we did it differently. But 
not only did we do it differently, let's take a look at what happened.
  The committee, the Republican majority, decided to give about $5.3 
billion for disaster relief. Yet they cut about $17.5 billion in 
programs. So where did the other two-thirds of the money go if only 
$5.3 billion went to disaster relief?
  Well, you see, the Republicans ran a campaign last year saying in 
their Contract on America that they were going to provide tax relief. 
The problem is the tax relief they are providing goes to the wealthy. 
So two-thirds of all the moneys cut, from veterans, from our schools, 
from programs that help children stay away from drugs and out of gangs 
and away from crime, from health care programs, from housing programs 
for seniors, for moneys that go to help AIDS victims, all of that is 
being packaged in the $17, $18 billion package. Less than one-third is 
going to go for actual disaster relief to help people who are still 
suffering from natural disasters, and two-thirds is going to go to tax 
cuts. I know I have a colleague who is going to join me in a few 
moments, I want to talk soon about to join me in few moments, I want to 
talk soon about what those tax cuts are going to do. But let me just 
make a couple of quick comments more.
  Why tax cuts now? But more importantly, when we looked at the 
programs that were being cut, why did we not see anything that hit the 
military? Are we so convinced that there is no fat in the Department of 
Defense? Is this not the same department that gave us $500 toilet seats 
and that gave us billion dollar cost overruns on military projects in 
the last few years? But why is it that we do not see a single cut 
there? But more importantly, why is it that about 2 weeks ago, this 
same House with majority Republican support passed out a bill that 
increased spending for the military, including moneys for star wars? 
Increasing money for the military spending, giving tax cuts to the 
wealthy, paying for it through cuts to low income and middle income 
people. That is what we see.
  If you do not believe it, let's take a look at one last chart.
  That tax cut that is in that Contract on America, where does it go? 
Part of it is for a a capital gains tax cut. It is important to 
understand that when you give a capital gains tax cut, that does not go 
to every American, and especially not to most working Americans who 
earn a wage. Most of that goes to people who are fairly wealthy, who 
have a lot of assets and who get to deduct some of the profits on those 
assets when they sell them. So much so that let's take a look at who 
benefits from that capital gains tax cult that the Republican majority 
is proposing in the House of Representatives. That tax cut, by the way, 
will cost over the next 10 years when it is implemented, should it ever 
get implemented, about $208 billion. That is $208 billion to our 
deficit over the next 10 years. Who gets the majority of the benefits 
of that? As you can see in this chart, and if it may be kind of small 
for people to see some of the type, this is broken down into different 
income levels.
  Less than $10,000 incomes, well, you're going to get about half of a 
percent of the benefits. If you earn between $10,000 and $20,000, well, 
your benefits will be about 0.8 percent of the entire cut. Well, 20 to 
$30,000, you get about 1.7 percent. So all the families in America that 
earn $20,000 to $30,000 can expect to get as a group 1.7 percent of the 
tax cuts under the capital gains tax cut; $30,000 to $40,000 income 
range, you'll get, as a group, about 2.6 percent of all that; $40,000 
to $50,000, you'll get about 3.2 percent of the benefits of that. If 
you make between $50,000 to $75,000, that whole group of Americans 
within the $50,000 to $75,000 income range will get about 9 percent of 
all the $208 billion in benefits. If you make between $75,000 and 
$100,000, you are going to get about 9.4 percent of that $208 billion 
in capital gains tax cut benefits. And If you happen to make more than 
$100,000, which represents about 9 percent of all taxes-filing, tax-
paying Americans, you get about 72.6
 percent of all the benefits. These are the folks that are going to 
make out like bandits from the capital gains tax cut. And who is 
getting cut to finance this capital gains tax cut? As I said in that 
rescission package, if only 5.3 billion is being used for disaster 
relief, the other $12 billion or so, which is coming out of low-income 
and middle-income individuals, families and children and seniors, is 
being used to finance this.

  Let me at this stage ask my colleague from Vermont to join me. I want 
to first thank him for taking the time at this late hour to come and 
chat with me a bit about this.
  Maybe he has a few comments he would like to make as well about what 
I have just had a chance to discuss.
  Mr. SANDERS. First I want to thank the gentleman from California for 
his wonderful presentation, because I think he hit the nail right on 
the head.
  Essentially what we are talking about tonight are priorities. That is 
what a government does, like every family in America. It has to make 
choices as to how it allocates money and where it saves money.
  What the gentleman said in terms of the rescission package is 
basically consistent with the whole thrust of the Contract With 
America. What that is about, as his charts have amply demonstrated, is 
that on one hand, despite all of the loud rhetoric about the terrible 
deficit and the $4.5 trillion national debt, the first point is our 
Republican friends are proposing massive tax breaks for the wealthiest 
people in America. Here we have a situation today where the gap between 
the rich and the poor in America has never been wider, the wealthiest 1 
percent of the population own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. 
We have a terrible deficit. All kinds of very serious social needs in 
America. And our Republican colleagues are proposing massive tax breaks 
for the wealthiest people in America.
  Now, that may make sense to somebody, but not to the many people in 
the State of Vermont and around this country that I talk to who work 
for a living. That is point number one.
  The second point that the gentleman from California made, which is 
also absolutely appropriate, is that today at a time when the cold war 
has finally ended, when the Soviet Union is no longer our enemy, Russia 
wants to join in NATO, many of the Communist bloc, former Communist 
bloc companies want to join in NATO, at a time when we have the ability 
to significantly lower military spending, to help us deal with the 
deficit, to help us pump money into all kinds of enormous needs that 
this country faces, our Republican friends, if you can believe it, and 
I know that many people may have a hard time actually believing it, are 
proposing tens of billions of dollars more for the star wars program.
  So tax breaks for the rich, more money for star wars, and for other 
military programs.
  If you are going to do those things, which will cost us tens of tens 
of billions of dollars and if you want to move toward a balanced budget 
in 7 years, something has got to give. That is the equation. Tax breaks 
for the rich, more money for star wars. Well, what has got to give?
  And the gentleman from California mentioned a number of the areas 
that have been affected by rescissions, that is, cutbacks in money that 
has already been appropriated.
  Let me reiterate some of them as they apply to the State of Vermont. 
I was particularly outraged that one of the areas where we saw the most 
savage cutbacks, $1.3 billion, was for the Low Income Heating 
Assistance Program, also referred to as LIHEAP. The LIHEAP program 
provides heating assistance to low-income people, many of them elderly 
people who live in cold climates. In my State of Vermont, the weather 
gets down to 20 below zero to 30 below zero. We have many elderly 
people who are living on very fixed incomes. These are people who often 
have to choose between heating their homes or buying the prescription 
drugs they need to ease their pain.
                              {time}  2215

  The LIHEAP program impacts upon 24,000 households in the State of 
Vermont. The Republican rescission package would cut back 100 percent, 
would eliminate the LIHEAP program.
  One of two things will happen as a result. Either elderly people will 
go cold 
[[Page H2980]] in Vermont and in Maine and throughout northern America, 
or they will take the little money they have to put into heating and 
not have the food that they need or the medicine that they need.
  I do not know about other people's priorities, but it does not make a 
whole lot of sense to me to talk about spending billions of dollars 
more for Star Wars to cut taxes for the rich by tens of billions of 
dollars and then force tens and tens of thousands of elderly people in 
America to go cold in the wintertime.
  Every politician who gets up here talks about the serious drug 
problems that we have. It is a problem in Vermont, it is a problem in 
California, it is a problem in Virginia, it is a problem all over 
America.
  In my State of Vermont I was recently at a town meeting in Bennington 
and teachers there talked about how important the drug education money 
that comes into that community is in keeping kids away from drugs. 
Every sensible human being understands that an ounce of prevention is 
worth a lot more than spending billions of dollars throwing people into 
jail. People in Vermont and all over this country are working day and 
night to keep kids away from drugs, away from gangs.
  This rescission program cuts back significantly on money that goes to 
help teachers and educators keep kids away from drugs. And on and on it 
goes, cutbacks for education, for people who are homeless.
  I think what the rescission package talks about is the priorities 
that some of our Republican friends have, and I think that they are not 
the priorities that the ordinary American people have. And I hope that 
out of this discussion tonight people all over this country will stand 
up and say, now wait a second, that is not what the United States of 
America is supposed to be, it is not supposed to be making the elderly 
go cold in the wintertime, it is not supposed to be taking away 
educational opportunity from homeless people.
  I would simply conclude my remarks by thanking the gentleman from 
California very much for this extremely important discussion.
  Mr. BERCERRA. I thank the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] for 
participating and I hope he will have a chance to stay and we will have 
a chance to indulge in further colloquy.
  I would like to recognize my other colleagues in a second. But I 
would like to make one quick point. The gentleman from Vermont left off 
on a very important note and I would like to follow up on that and 
return to this chart which shows where the money goes. As I said, only 
less than a third of the money is actually going to disaster relief. 
But let me talk a little bit about this disaster relief.
  Something very interesting was done here. It was a play with hands, 
you know it is a shuffle game. Part of that money that was cut in that 
$17.5 billion in cuts included the following: $350 million of unused 
funds from the Federal Highway Administration. That is money that was 
allocated for the Federal Highway Administration to help in the 
earthquake relief efforts to get roads and bridges back up to working 
condition. It has not yet been expended
 because we have not finished the fiscal year.

  So, what did the Republican majority do in the Committee on 
Appropriations? They cut that remaining $351 million, but interestingly 
enough we see we are getting $5.3 billion for disaster relief, so what 
they did was say we are taking $351 million, putting it in our pocket, 
pulling it out and saying now we are giving, about to give $5.3 billion 
for disaster relief. They do not tell you they really cut $351 million 
from disaster relief, they are just saying that they have made cuts and 
they are trying to say that they are mostly cuts in waste, fraud and 
abuse, but quite honestly we know it is much more than that.
  It is really discouraging to see how this is being done.
  Let me now take a moment to recognize a good friend and colleague 
from the State of Virginia [Mr. Scott], who is here I hope to join us 
and discuss some of these things as well.
  Mr. SCOTT. I thank the gentleman. It is a pleasure to join him and 
the gentleman from Vermont and the gentleman from New Jersey to discuss 
these rescissions. As the gentleman has indicated, the rescissions are 
going to pay mostly tax cuts.
  Comment was made earlier about school children and lunches and 
whether we are spending more money or less money. You can call it 
whatever you want, but if we adopt the Republican budget many school 
children who are eligible for school lunches today will not be eligible 
if that budget is adopted.
  Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield back the time 
for just a moment, we should give some detail because the gentleman who 
spoke earlier about this and said we are actually increasing the 
budgets over the next several years for those school, those child 
nutrition programs wants to leave the impression that actually we are 
giving more under this Republican proposal than was allocated under 
current law.
  Mr. SCOTT. Well, no, it is not more than current law; it is less than 
current law.
  If we continue going as we had planned, to cover the school children 
that need to be covered, more would be covered. They are going to cover 
less school children, and some eligible today will not be eligible with 
inflation; costs go up, more children show up in school, and if we 
continue at the rate they want to go, some children that are eligible 
today just simply will not be eligible if this budget is adopted, 
period.
  Mr. BECERRA. So in other words, the Republican proposals do increase 
from this current fiscal year what will be allotted next year, but they 
do not cover the true costs because they do not take into account the 
growth in the number of kids in the schools or the inflation rate.
  Mr. SCOTT. This is exactly right.
  Mr. BECERRA. So the schools will have to do with a little bit more 
money, but with more kids and inflation on top of that.
  Mr. SCOTT. And more costs and some children will not be able to get 
fed as a direct result of that budget.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to again thank the gentleman from 
California for having this special order. The 1995 rescissions touch 
many programs, but frankly the ones I want to talk about just very 
briefly are the targeted prevention-oriented programs.
  I am particularly concerned about the mean-spirited cuts in the Safe 
and Drug Free Schools and Communities Program and the Summer Jobs 
Program.
 These programs will not just suffer a reduction in funds, but are at 
risk of being completely eliminated. The Drug Free Schools Program and 
the Summer Jobs Program are not frivolous programs, they are designed 
with specific intentions. Drug Free Schools was authorized as a means 
to repeal the onslaught of drugs and violence in the schools. The most 
significant changes in 1994 included an emphasis on violence 
prevention.

  In the city of Richmond in my State of Virginia, we have a program 
called Richmond Youth Against Violence. Recognizing the overlap and 
risk factors for violence and substance abuse, the school system 
decided to focus on violence prevention as an effective means to reduce 
or eliminate drugs used by our young people.
  Richmond Youth Against Violence is operating in all eight middle 
schools. It teaches mediation, how to avoid violence and the 
circumstances of violence and provides counseling for students 
suspended for violence. Funds from the Drug Free Schools and 
Communities Act provided the startup money for Richmond Youth Against 
Violence, and it works. Through various evaluations, research on this 
program has shown that boys in the program do not display an increase 
in violence, violent behavior and they are less likely to initiate 
substance abuse activities.
  Mr. Speaker, the Summer Youth Program is another successful program. 
The GOP, however, has decided the program that gives over 1.2 million 
low-income youth their first opportunity at work and their first step 
toward learning work ethics has no place in the Republican Contract 
With America.
                      [[Page H2981]] {time}  2230

  Summer youth jobs has a long history. It started in 1964 and has been 
enjoyed by youth in inner cities and rural areas. Kids 14 to 21 are 
eligible for the program and they flock to it. Last year there were two 
applicants for every job in the summer program.
  For those who say that the program is ineffective, I say look at the 
research. The Department of Labor's inspector general says that the 
program is run very tightly and is well administered, and unlike the 
stereotypical welfare programs, the summer youth jobs program involves 
real jobs. It is not uncommon to see youth performing clerical work for 
city offices, supervising and tutoring children in day-care centers, 
serving as a nurse's assistant in a hospital.
  Work and study done by Westat, Incorporated on the 1993 summer job 
program gave high marks for the program. The supervisors who were 
surveyed reported that there are no serious problems related to kid's 
behavior, attendance or turnover, and, Mr. Speaker, we know the 
importance about feeling good about your job and feeling that what you 
are doing is worthwhile. The young people in the summer youth jobs 
program feel the same way, they work hard and feel good about their 
summer jobs.
  These two programs, like many others, like the education for homeless 
children and youth, the training for careers and early childhood 
development and training for careers, and counseling young children 
affected by violence, the literacy programs for prisoners, all have 
merit and need to be continued.
  Some may oppose the short-term costs, but I remind them of the long-
term risks. We cannot continue to undermine the programs which have 
been proven to deter violence and crime. We must also provide an 
environment for young people to gain the experience necessary for them 
to function as adults. Drug-free schools and communities program and 
the summer youth and jobs program accomplish these goals.
  In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, the prevention programs work. We can pay 
for them now or we can pay a lot more for prisons later. We need to 
defeat these mean-spirited, short-sighted rescissions.
  Mr. BECERRA. I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia for taking 
the time to come here and present a cappella testimony about why we 
should fear these cuts that are being proposed at this particular time.
  Let me at this time recognize another distinguished colleague and 
friend, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Andrews], and ask him if he 
has a few things would he like to say. And I thank my friend from 
California for giving me this time and organizing this discussion.
  Mr. Becerra in particular is to be commended for leading on this 
floor tonight a discussion of priorities in our country and where the 
taxpayer's money ought to go. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Becerra deserves 
particular praise because this may be the only discussion we have an 
opportunity to have about priorities under the way this bill is going 
to be brought to the floor, and I want to speak for just a few minutes 
about what is wrong with that and how that cuts off a real debate about 
where the public's money ought to go and what the Federal Government's 
priorities ought to be.
  Myself and Mr. Scott and Mr. Sanders and Mr. Becerra may have 
different priorities as to how this bill ought to come down. Frankly, I 
think it is an urgent priority to cut the size of the Federal budget 
and to make this government leaner and smaller and more efficient.
  I think it is a demanding priority that we find a way to lessen the 
burden of taxes on the American people, and perhaps there would be some 
agreement or disagreement among the four of us as Democrats on that 
point. The point is, this is the place where we are supposed to thrash 
out those differences over priorities and have our say.
  Mr. Speaker, as we all know, when a bill is brought to this floor, it 
is brought to the floor under something called a rule and the rule sets 
forth which amendments may be debated and voted upon and which 
amendments may not be debated and voted upon.
  This afternoon, March 9, the chairman of the Rules Committee, the 
distinguished Gerald Solomon of the State of New York circulated a 
letter, which I will make part of the record at the appropriate time, 
which outlines his proposals to what the rules should be under which 
this bill is brought to the floor, in other words, the rules of debate, 
what we can vote on and what we can't vote on.
  The rules of debate are totally closed, totally unfair, and will 
totally shut off the kind of priorities debate, Mr. Speaker, that Mr. 
Becerra has launched tonight. Let me give you some examples.
  The Republican bill that will be before us will cut a net $12 billion 
from this year's budget. Now, one could take one of three different 
positions on that--four, I guess. You could say that we should cut $12 
billion and these are the right $12 billion to cut, and you will have 
that chance because you will have a chance to vote for this bill. You 
can say that we shouldn't cut any of it, that we should add to the 
budget. You won't have that chance because you won't be permitted to 
add to the budget under this bill. You will only be permitted to 
subtract from it.
  Frankly, I find that OK but I don't think that others that don't find 
it OK should be denied the chance to add if they so desire.
  You might say we should cut less than $12 billion from the budget. 
You won't have that chance because the number that is fixed in this 
bill must be going forward and you may say, as I would, we should cut 
$12 billion but we should cut a different $12 billion than the 
Republican have proposed. I will not get that chance. Mr. Sanders will 
not get that chance. Mr. Becerra will not get that chance. Mr. Scott 
will not get that chance, nor will any of our colleagues under the 
rules being brought to the floor.
  Let me tell you what I want to do. I am working on and tomorrow will 
complete a proposal as a substitute for this rescission bill that 
doesn't cut the budget by $12 billion as our Republican friends would, 
but cuts it by $13 billion, but cuts it in different places.
  The Republican proposal says to an 82-year-old woman who has a fixed 
income of $9,000 a year and heating bills of $1,500 a year, that the 
little bit of help that she gets right now, the little bit of help, the 
couple hundred dollars she gets to pay her electric bill, her heating 
bill, will be eliminated next winter.
  I say instead we should cut research contracts that benefit Exxon and 
Mobil and Fortune 500 corporations that sell her the energy for that 
heat. Let's give this House a choice between cutting her heating 
subsidy and the research subsidy of the Fortune 500 energy companies 
that brought her her energy. We won't have that choice under this rule.
  I would say this, to a 17-year-old who is trying to work a summer job 
from a low-income family so he or she can earn money to get a college 
education. The Republican bill would say there will be no federally 
sponsored summer jobs anywhere in America starting this summer.
  So, Mr. Speaker, a young person who is listening to us tonight, 16 
years old, planned on getting a job this summer, maybe saving $500 or 
$600 or $1,000 toward their school tuition, no job, nothing this 
summer. I say, why don't we cut out some of the bureaucratic jobs in 
the Department of Agriculture, the press secretaries, the statistics 
gatherers, the people who compile information about the American 
agriculture system.
  I would say give us a choice between cutting summer jobs for young 
people around this country and bureaucratic jobs in the Department of 
Agriculture. we will not have that choice under this bill, and I will 
yield to Mr. Sanders for a moment.
  Mr. SANDERS. I thank my friend from New Jersey, as he opens up a 
whole area of discussion that I was intending to get to in a moment and 
I thank him for getting there earlier, and that is the whole issue of 
what some of us call corporate welfare.
  Now, at the same time as we are seeing massive cutbacks in heating 
programs for low-income senior citizens, cutbacks in drug prevention 
programs, cutbacks in programs for the homeless, does my friend from 
New Jersey or California or Virginia happen to notice 
[[Page H2982]] if there are any cutbacks in the corporate welfare 
programs that are providing tens and tens of billions of dollars of 
Federal subsidies and Federal aid and tax breaks for some of the 
largest corporations in the United States of America?
  Now, maybe they are there. I happen not to have seen them. I have a 
list of all of the programs. I did not see them.
  If I might for one moment, and there is a long list, the Progressive 
Policy Institute, I might say a conservative Democratic organization, 
suggested that there were tens and tens of billions of dollars of 
savings if the Congress had the guts to call for welfare reform on 
large corporations and wealthy people. we all know that.
  The savings can take place within the energy industry where there are 
huge tax subsidies for companies who are extracting oil, gas and 
minerals. There are special tax credits for producers of fuel from 
nonconventional sources. There are depletion cost allowances for oil, 
gas and nonfuel mineral firms. On and on it goes.
  My friend from New Jersey makes exactly the right point: We should 
have that debate right here on the floor in front of the American 
people as to how we proceed to save money. And reclaiming my time, I 
would say to my friend from Vermont, who truly is an Independent, not 
only the way he thinks, I have read the bill. There were 228 cuts in 
the bill. Virtually none of them cut out the kind of corporate welfare, 
the Wall Street welfare that you make reference to.
  So I would say to you that this bill, Mr. Speaker, demonstrates that 
the majority party of the Republicans are not against the welfare state 
at all. They are against the welfare state for those who tend to vote 
for the Democrats, but not for those who tend to vote for the 
Republicans. And this bill is ample evidence of that.
  Let me give you other examples of things we will not get a chance to 
vote on that some of us would prefer. This bill says that if you are a 
senior citizen living in what we call section 8 subsidized housing, 
what that means is you live in a senior citizens high-rise and your 
rent is limited to 30 percent of your income and a subsidy pays less. 
So let us say your income is $10,000 a year, you only pay $3,000 a year 
toward rent and if your rent is really $5,000, the Federal Government 
picks up the other $2,000 so you can rent a modest apartment in a 
senior high-rise.
  I have had senior citizens call me from around New Jersey scared to 
death that they are going to lose their apartments because of what is 
in this bill, because this bill eliminates $2.7 billion from that 
subsidy. You know what answer I could give them, Mr. Speaker? You just 
might lose your apartment, it is true.
  Some of us, instead of denying housing to senior citizens under this 
program, would like to stop building so many courthouses and Federal 
buildings around America. We would like to substitute a provision that 
says, Do not cut the housing for senior citizens to have an apartment. 
Stop building a courthouse everywhere that a certain Member of Congress 
who is well connected enough to get one built.
  Yes, we need courthouses in America, but I will tell you what. If we 
have to wait a few more years before we give a few more judges an 
elaborate place to sit and hear cases and save the money there and put 
it into keeping senior citizens in their homes and apartments, I think 
we should do that. And at the very least, Mr. Speaker, we ought to have 
that debate and we ought to have a choice, and this Republican rule 
will not let us do that.
  One more example. One more example. This Republican bill says we are 
going to take $105 million from the program that hires remedial reading 
teachers, speech therapists, child psychologists, and other educators 
that help young people with a learning disability get through their 
school years, and is going to take $38 million from a program that 
helps young children who do not speak English learn how to. If they 
come to this country from Vietnam or Cambodia or Mexico or Russia or 
Poland or wherever, $38 million so those teachers can help our children 
learn English first when they are in first grade. That is gone from 
this bill.
  Some of us would rather take the money from something called the 
Export-Import Bank, which is a program paid for, Mr. Speaker, by the 
people watching us tonight, that gives subsidies to major American 
corporations to help them underwrite the sale of their goods around the 
world.
  Now, let me say this. I hope that American companies are able to sell 
their goods around the world tenfold what they do right now because 
that is good for the country, but the people who will profit from 
selling those goods should underwrite the cost of selling those goods. 
The shareholders and investors of those companies ought to pick up the 
tab of this, not the American taxpayer.
  So let me summarize. I would like to see us vote on an amendment to 
substitute the cut that cuts heating assistance for senior citizens and 
instead cuts energy research that benefits oil companies. We will not 
get that chance.
  I would like to see us get rid of the cut that abolishes the summer 
job program for young people in urban and rural and suburban areas 
around this country, including my hometown, and give us a chance to get 
rid of some of the bureaucracy in the Department of Agriculture or the 
Commerce Department or the Department of the Treasury or wherever. We 
will not get that chance.
  I would like to see us restore the cut that would say to senior 
citizens, we are going to take away the subsidy that helps you get an 
apartment and instead stop building so many courthouses for so many 
judges
 and so many Federal buildings around America. We will not get that 
chance.

  I would like to restore the cut that says no more remedial reading 
teachers, no more education for children who cannot speak the English 
language as their first language, no more assistance for those 
children. I would like to get rid of some of the spending in the 
Export-Import Bank that helps IBM and AT&T sell their products around 
the world. We will not get that change.
  Now, my friends as a Democrat, I have been wanting to sponsor an 
initiative in the last Congress called the A-to-Z spending cuts plan. 
Any Member can come to this floor during a special session and propose 
his or her best idea to cut spending. There would then be a debate and 
a vote.
  When they were in the minority, my friends on the Republican side 
thought that was a terrific idea. The Speaker, the majority leader, the 
majority whip, all of them signed on to the bill and signed a petition 
forcing the bill to the floor that almost made it but did not. They 
thought it was a great idea that everybody's spending priorities could 
be brought here in debate.
  Now they are in charge. Now they have the majority. Now they can win 
any vote because they have a certain number of more votes than we do. 
Now they are not quite sure the idea is so good with the majority 
change in this House, Mr. Speaker, because the people are fed up with a 
system that is closed, that does not permit free and honest debate.
  We are going to have an opportunity to make a decision on Tuesday 
whether we have a free or honest debate about this rescissions bill. If 
you vote for the rule that Chairman Solomon wants, we are not going to 
have a free and honest debate. We are going to have a closed debate and 
a lousy bill. If you defeat the rule, give us a chance to offer these 
and other ideas and have the kind of discussion we are tonight, the 
public will be well served.
  I thank the gentleman from California [Mr. Becerra] for this time.
  Mr. BECERRA. I thank the gentleman for his eloquent words to make it 
clear it is not just an issue of substance when it comes to this issue 
of cuts and our priorities, but it is also an issue of mechanics, how 
we actually get to the point in the House of the people of making 
decisions for the people of America. And when it becomes clear to the 
people of America that their voice, through their Representatives, is 
not allowed to express itself because we cannot offer amendments, 
because we cannot try to sell the idea of where our priorities should 
be and instead must accept what is force fed to us, then clearly we are 
not doing the jobs as Representatives and clearly that frustrates the 
American people even more, as the gentleman so eloquently said with 
regard to why we had a change in November 1994. Clearly the 
[[Page H2983]] people are frustrated and we must do some things to 
change that.
  Let me point out a couple of things that disturb me most about this 
direction that we are heading, the fact that we have closed debates, 
the fact that we have these cuts that go after middle-income and lower-
income people, but yet will benefit the wealthy.
  I cannot understand why we are seeing proposals for a capital gains 
tax cut that, as you can see, will benefit the most wealthy. But when 
you take a look at how much the average annual tax cut will be received 
by the income groups, it is astonishing.
  If you earn $20,000 or below, you know how much you are going to get 
in tax cut relief over the year? About $7.63. That is what a family 
that earns $20,000 or below can expect to get from the capital gains 
tax cut proposal that the Republican majority in the House has 
proposed.
  How much tax relief will you get if you have earned between $20,000 
and $50,000 for the vast majority of American families? About $33 in 
the entire year. That is what a family will receive in tax relief from 
this Republican proposal.
  Now, if you are $50,000 to $100,000, what will you get back in extra 
income? About $124.
  Now, what happens if you earn between $100,000 and $200,000? Well, 
now you are going to get about 100 times what a person or a family 
earning $20,000 gets. You are going to get about $636 in that year.
  But what will 2 percent of America's tax filers get? The 2 percent 
wealthiest filers of tax forms in this country, the 2 percent 
wealthiest Americans, what will they get, those earning $200,000 and 
above? Four-thousand-three-hundred and fifty-seven dollars in a year.
  The folks that need it least get the most, and that, I think tells us 
a bit about the priorities of
 this new Congress, where we are heading. It seems anomalous to think 
that we are going to head in that direction but that is what it looks 
like.

  Mr. SANDERS. If the gentleman would yield.
  Mr. BECERRA. Of course.
  Mr. SANDERS. Let us reiterate what all four of us have been talking 
about. No. 1, with a huge deficit, huge national debt, and terrible 
social needs in America, there are significant increase tax breaks for 
the rich, at the same time as the gap between the rich and the poor has 
never been wider.

                              {time}  2245

  No. 2, despite the end of the cold war, increased military spending 
at a time, in my view, when we should be cutting back on the military. 
And then in order to move toward a balanced budget, savage cutbacks 
which go against low-income elderly people, including people in the 
northern part of America who will be cold this winter if our heat 
program is cut.
  Programs for homeless people; programs for children; cutbacks in the 
WIC Program. There is one program that Mr. Becerra touched upon earlier 
that I think we have not perhaps discussed enough and that is a $200 
million cutback for the veterans of America.
  I do not apologize to anybody for being an antiwar Congressman. Yes, 
I voted against the Persian Gulf war. I think very often we can resolve 
international conflict without wars.
  But it seems to me that if the Government of the United States of 
America sends people off to war and asks them to put their lives on the 
line, and they do that, and then they come back to America and 40 or 50 
years goes by, as in the case of World War II veterans and these 
veterans are sleeping down in VA hospitals throughout this country, it 
seems to me to be very, very wrong to say to those men and women who 
put their lives on the line, were wounded in body and wounded in 
spirit, that you say to them now, Hey, guess what? We have got a 
cutback on the VA hospitals. Thank you very much for putting your life 
on the line. Thank you for getting wounded, but now we have got a 
budget problem and we have to give tax breaks to the wealthiest people. 
We have to build the star wars. We have got to cutback for you.
  I think that this particular cut of $200 million is absolutely 
upcalled for. I fear very much that as the Contract With America 
progresses, and I had the opportunity of meeting with Jesse Brown, the 
very fine and excellent Secretary for Veterans Affairs, and he shares 
this fear, that in the months and months to come there will be 
increased cutbacks on the needs of our veterans.
  So, I think the bottom line is that we have got to get our priorities 
right and that is we respect those people who put their lives on the 
line and we will not go forward with those cuts.
  Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SANDERS. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.
  Mr. ANDREWS. The gentleman from Vermont makes an outstanding point 
about the veterans issue, and Mr. Sanders and I have our differences on 
defense policy and our voting records will reflect that, but let me 
chime in to support a point he just made and going back to the point I 
made about the choices that we are not going to be given a chance to 
make.
  This bill cuts $200 million out of this year's expenditures for the 
veterans' hospital system across the country and it forgives a $50 
million loan to the Government of Jordan.
  I am going to repeat that. This bill says to the Government of 
Jordan, You do not have to pay us the $50 million you owe us. We 
forgive you. Then it says to the veterans across this country, Oh, by 
the way, we are taking $200 million, four times that amount, out of 
your VA hospital system.
  Now, some of us would like to offer an amendment that would at least 
reduce that cut of the $200 million by not forgiving the $50 million 
loan to
 Jordan. A lot of us would like to be able to say maybe the Jordanians 
should find the $50 million and pay us back.

  I find it ironic that in the Persian Gulf war, which was the first 
vote that Mr. Sanders and I cast as Members of this House, at the time 
of that war the Jordanians chose to remain neutral. They chose not to 
take the side of the United States for their own reasons.
  The men and women who served in our Armed Forces did not choose to 
remain neutral. They swore allegiance to our country and served us. We 
are taking money away from them, who put their lives on the line, and 
then we are forgiving a loan to the Government of Jordan.
  Mr. SANDERS. To the best of my knowledge, King Hussein is not exactly 
on the welfare rolls as well.
  Mr. ANDREWS. I would assume King Hussein will not be receiving home 
heating assistance this winter.
  I yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. Becerra].
  Mr. BECERRA. I know that we are running short of time. I want to make 
sure that any of my colleagues have a chance to express themselves.
  I want to quote something that was said by the new chairman of the 
Committee on the Budget, Mr. John Kasich, who said this about deficit 
reduction. ``I do not think that Republican special interest programs 
ought to be spared. I think we ought to look at corporate welfare 
before this process is over.'' That is a quote in the Washington Post 
of yesterday.
  Well, I think those of us who are here, the four of us who are here, 
along with a number of my colleagues, I suspect both Democrat and 
Republican, are going to keep the chairman of the Budget Committee to 
his word. We want to see those cuts, because quite honestly, we have 
not seen them in this particular $15.5 billion recision package, but 
certainly we must see those.
  So I would say that in this new ``Newt'' world that we face, that the 
needs of hard-working, middle-class families should not take a back 
seat to the needs of the very affluent. But quite honestly, I cannot 
see anything that says that we are not going in that direction, when 
everything points to capital gains tax cuts. Cuts to the poor, cuts to 
the middle income in their programs. Not tax cuts, but spending cuts 
that would help them. Child Nutrition Program cuts, all of this, yet we 
are going to increase spending for the military.
  And somehow we get into this whole idea about a balanced budget 
amendment that was up here a couple of weeks ago for debater where we 
had the Republican majority saying we are going to balance the budget. 
And they are talking about balancing the budget, which is going to cost 
us over the 
[[Page H2984]] next 5 to 7 years, about $1.2 trillion and if you add 
the tax cuts that the Republicans are proposing, that adds another $200 
billion or so. And if you add the defense billions of dollars in 
military increases, that adds another $100 billion.
  You end up with $1.5 trillion deficit that you have to make up in 
about 7 years. And I take a look at that and find that they are saying 
they want to balance the budget and I take a look at where they are 
cutting now. It makes it clear to me what they are going to do to try 
to balance this budget, on whose backs they are going to do it, and it 
scares me.
  And I offer my colleagues the final chance to speak.
  Mr. SANDERS. I just want to thank the gentleman from California [Mr. 
Becerra]. I think this is an enormously important discussion dealing 
with what the priorities of America should be. And I thank you very 
much for leading this discussion.
  Mr. BECERRA. The gentleman from Virginia.
  Mr. SCOTT. I want to thank the gentleman from California. This is an 
excellent presentation. We have choices to make and we have to look at 
our priorities and the quality of life and what we are doing here as 
legislators. And I thank you for giving us the opportunity to bring 
these facts forward.
  Mr. ANDREWS. I join in thanking my friend from California. We are all 
equal Members of the People's House. We may disagree over what our 
priorities shall be, but we should never disagree over our right to 
debate those priorities.
  The majority is about to deny us that right unless we defeat the rule 
that comes before us on Tuesday night.
  Mr. BECERRA. I would say that the majority is not just denying the 
four of us, the majority of this House is now denying the American 
people the chance to express itself and that must change.
  I thank all of my colleagues for being here
  Mr. MONTGOMERY. Mr. Speaker, as the ranking member of the Committee 
on Veterans Affairs, I rise to urge all my colleagues to support an 
amendment to the rescission bill reported last Thursday by the 
Appropriations Committee. The amendment is modest in scope but vital to 
VA health care. It would restore the $206 million for veterans programs 
which the Committee on Appropriations proposes to rescind.
  These rescissions don't make good sense. These funds were 
appropriated by Congress only a few months ago, primarily to help meet 
a critical need to improve veterans' access to outpatient care. The six 
VA projects which the committee now proposes to cancel would serve 
areas where more than 1.2 million veterans reside.
  The budget for construction of veterans medical facilities has been 
pretty lean for the past 5 or 6 years. As a result, the VA says it now 
has almost 60 projects to improve outpatient services waiting to be 
funded. The VA could award construction contracts on these six projects 
in the next several months. We shouldn't put these projects off 1 day.
  These are projects that can make VA health care delivery more cost-
effective. This rescission bill would slam the door on veterans across 
this country. In some parts of the country, the VA doesn't have health 
facilities that meet veterans needs. In other places, the clinics are
 just too small. At one clinic, space is so tight that doctors are 
forced to perform eye examinations in the hallways. Veterans deserve 
better than this.

  An increasing number of veterans are women; over 1.2 million. Many VA 
outpatient clinics still lack privacy for women veterans. In the face 
of such conditions, the rescission bill is a giant step backward.
  Likewise, cutting funds for replacement equipment--as proposed by the 
rescission measure--forces VA to choose between obtaining a needed 
service at increased cost through contracting or continuing to use 
inefficient or even obsolete equipment. The VA's medical equipment 
backlog is more than $800 million. We must assure that VA care is care 
of high quality. Cutting back on VA funds to replace old equipment is 
putting our veterans at risk.
  I want to commend all of the Members who are working hard to restore 
these funds--the gentlewomen from Florida, Ms. Brown and Mrs. Thurman, 
the gentlewoman from Connecticut, Ms. DeLauro, Mr. Volkmer, Mr. Scott, 
Mr. Romero-Barcelo and the other Members who are gathered here tonight. 
They are all doing a good job looking out for our Nation's veterans.


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