[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 47 (Tuesday, March 14, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H3090-H3091]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                              {time}  1300
                          THE RESCISSION BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 1995, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Brown] is recognized 
during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I was in Twinsburg, OH, in 
my district, Ohio's 13th District in northeast Ohio, visiting the 
community center and meeting with parents, children, teachers, and 
nurses and talking about the Women, Infants and Children's Program and 
the School Lunch Program.
  Some of the people I met with, some of the parents, were unemployed. 
Most of them were working part-time or full-time, generally for minimum 
wage. Often many of these parents, basically all of those parents' 
children were getting school lunches, because their income was not high 
enough that they paid full price for these lunches.
  Those parents, those teachers, those children, especially those 
nurses, could simply not understand why extremists in this body, in 
Congress, want to cut school lunches, want to cut senior nutrition, 
want to cut programs like Women, Infants and Children; Programs that 
have been in effect, in terms of the School Lunch Program, for 
literally five decades, started by Harry Truman in 1946.
  Other programs, like WIC, that have been in effect and working for a 
couple of decades. Programs that help young people grow, help pregnant 
women, help those children with nutrition and counseling. The WIC 
program, especially. And this was what was called a WIC center in 
Twinsburg.
  The WIC Program is not just a giveaway program. It is a program where 
working class mothers come in with their children, come in while they 
are pregnant and get some nutritional supplements and are counseled, 
generally less educated women are counseled about nutrition while they 
are pregnant to make sure they have a healthy baby. The, after the baby 
is born, for the next 5 years they come into WIC regularly and are 
counseled about nutrition and can get immunized, either there or are 
directed where they can get immunized in the first 2 years of the 
baby's life; all the things that we need for the future of this 
country.
  These people did not understand why the extremists in Congress want 
to make these cuts. What they did understand is that School lunches, 
Children's nutrition Programs, programs like counseling for WIC, 
immunizations, all these things are the investment for the future and 
they make sense for this country.
  They do understand that, OK, we might save a few dollars making cuts 
now, but in the end, long term, we will pay more money for welfare for 
children as they get older and have bad nutrition and did not have the 
advantages when they were younger. They are more likely to be on 
welfare and more likely to be in prison. And these young families did 
understand that. That that simply is bad public policy long term.
  I am a deficit hog. I voted for budget cut after budget cut after 
budget cut in this body. But we should not be stupid about it. There is 
no reason to make cuts that affect our children and affect our future 
the way that cutting school lunches and cutting programs like WIC and 
nutrition programs like that would mean.
  Three weeks ago this body passed an increase in military spending of 
$3.2 billion. The extremists here are cutting nutrition, children's 
long-term-for-the-future programs on the one hand and increasing 
military spending $3 billion on the other hand, for a military in a 
country where our military budget is larger than the next nine 
countries in the world. Yet we are increasing military spending, 
cutting school lunches and WIC Programs, and at the same time the 
extremists in this body want to see major tax cuts for the wealthiest 
taxpayers.
  Just recently the Republican leaders in the Committee on Ways and 
Means have called for an end to the alternative minimum tax. You may 
remember about 10 years ago President Reagan and most of the country 
were outraged that many large corporations in this country were able, 
through all kinds of use of accountants and lawyers and all their tax 
breaks and loopholes, literally to avoid paying any Federal tax and 
sometimes actually getting the government to pay them money through 
some rebate programs.
  Many large corporations fell into the category. So Congress and 
President Reagan enacted something called the alternative minimum tax 
to make sure that every large corporation in this country did, in fact, 
pay some corporate income tax to the Government. They want to eliminate 
that alternative minimum tax. On the one hand we are increasing 
military spending, we are eliminating a tax on major corporations--
these are corporations that 
[[Page H3091]] have $250 million or larger in assets--and we are 
cutting Nutrition Programs and School Lunch Programs and WIC Programs.
  In the other end of that, they want to give capital gains tax breaks 
which will go to the richest 1 or 2 or 3 percent in this country, in 
large part. The great majority of capital gains, 87 percent of capital 
gains cuts, go to the wealthiest people in this country.
  This whole Contract With America disturbs me, Mr. Speaker, because it 
is transferring money from the middle class to the rich. It doesn't 
make sense and I ask for the defeat of the rescission bill this week.


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