[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 62 (Tuesday, April 4, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H4164-H4167]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                              {time}  1945
                       BUDGET ITEMS INTERRELATED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 1995, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lengthy discussion of the tax 
cut that will be on the floor tomorrow. It is very relevant to the 
subject that I would like to discuss and that is the coming budget. It 
is all interwoven. You cannot separate one part from the other. The $17 
billion in rescissions that have been passed by the House already, the 
tax cut tomorrow, the coming budget that we will deal with in May, all 
of it is interrelated and very complex.
  I wished there was some way to really simplify it so anybody could 
understand it without all of these lengthy discussions, but the 
discussion is necessary. The charts and the graphs, all of it is 
necessary but I think it could be summarized and we could take some 
guides to lead into an understanding of what is happening.
  There are a few basic facts that must be understood from the 
beginning and I want to start by explaining an interchange, a dialogue 
that I had with one of the speakers where I said that under Jimmy 
Carter the deficit was less than $100 billion and under Ronald Reagan 
it went up to $400 billion. I want to correct that. The deficit for one 
year under Jimmy Carter never exceeded $100 billion. I think the 
highest annual deficit that Jimmy Carter had in the budget was $64 or 
$68 billion. Under Ronald Reagan, it soared to an annual deficit of 
$400 billion. It all added up to, between the time Jimmy Carter left 
and the time Ronald Reagan left and the present, a $3 trillion 
difference. The deficit when Jimmy Carter left office was $1 trillion, 
overall deficit, and it is now $4 trillion. But the annual amount was 
as low as $64 or $68 billion under Jimmy Carter. It is the highest 
annual deficit that he ever created. Under Ronald Reagan it went up to 
more than $400 billion.
  Part of the reason it went up so high under Ronald Reagan was due to 
the fact that there was a philosophy dubbed by many before he was 
elected as voodoo economics which said that you could lower taxes, 
lower taxes but increase revenue. We have heard the same argument here 
on the floor today. Instead of offering it in a voodoo economic 
package, he came with higher
 mathematics and said something about cosines and sines and I guess 
what simultaneous equations must have shown. He said it was 
complicated. We 
[[Page H4165]] could not see the chart that he showed. But no matter 
how complicated you make it, he is still saying the same thing that 
Ronald Reagan said: You can lower taxes and at the same time increase 
revenue.
  No matter how many charts you bring, experience, the years under 
Ronald Reagan and the years after that have shown us that the lower 
taxes produce lower revenues. Why do you have a deficit? Because the 
revenues could not keep pace with the spending. The revenues did not 
match the previous revenues even after you had found ways to lower 
taxes. It is simple and any high school sophomore would validate that. 
You cannot lower taxes and increase revenues at the same time.
  That is a basic set that we have to put in place. We have to 
understand part of the problem is the continuing addiction to voodoo 
economics, the continuing addiction to a kind of magic, an attempt to 
make the public believe that you can have everything at the same time.
  The Contract With America proposes, first, to balance the budget by 
the year 2002 in a 7-year period. We usually handle budgets over a 5-
year period. They projected they could balance the budget by the year 
2002 and they have issued a statement that any budget that comes on the 
floor of the House during the budget debate in May must show that it is 
on a glide path toward a balanced budget by the year 2002.
  If it is on the glide path toward a balanced budget by the year 2002, 
it means about $59 billion is the amount of the deficit 5 years from 
now. Our budgets are using 5-year projections, so the budgets that come 
to the floor will be for a 5-year period and you must show that the 
deficit is down to $59 billion by the 5th year, which means that it is 
estimated in 2 more years that the budget would be totally balanced.
  They have created that condition, the insistence that there must be a 
balanced budget by the year 2002. At the same time, the same Contract 
With America says we are going to increase the defense budget. We are 
going to increase the defense budget dramatically, although there is 
absolutely no need to increase the defense budget. I will talk about 
that later.
  It insists that the defense budget must be increased. So you are 
going to balance the budget, you are going to increase the defense 
budget, and on top of that, there will be a cut in taxes, a cut in 
taxes which would generate additional deficit if you do not have 
simultaneous cuts in expenditures.
  So we are down to the problem, is what shall the expenditures be that 
are cut. If you out there have asked the question, ``Why did the 
Contract With America in the fine print or no print at all, why did it 
go into such strange budget saving tactics as cutting school lunches?'' 
The Congressional Budget Office says that, yes, there will be a cut 
over a 5-year period, it is more than $2 billion when you add all the 
factors in. The conservative Congressional Budget Office confirms that 
there will be a cut of $2 billion, a savings of slightly more than $2 
billion.
  Why did the Republican majority reach into the school lunch program 
to get a paltry $2 billion? Because that is part of what they need to 
make all of these magical things work together. In order to balance the 
budget by the year 2002 and give a tax cut, they need every dime they 
can get.
  So they have reached into the school lunch program. They have reached 
into the Aid to Families With Dependent Children Program and related 
programs, food stamps. They have reached in there to get additional 
billions of dollars. They are cutting in order to be able to give the 
tax cut and at the same time move toward a balanced budget.
  Why do we have to have in the middle of the year a rescission package 
which reaches into an existing budget? We are in this budget year now. 
We have allocated that money after a lot of deliberation. We authorized 
the money. We appropriated the money. It is in the budget now, but they 
reached in to get $17 billion, slightly more than $17 billion to pull 
it out in order to save money and move toward the balanced budget and 
to give money for a tax cut.
  What do they get? What did they reach in to get? The biggest cut was 
on low-income housing in HUD. Seven billion dollars was cut out of the 
Department of Housing and Urban Development, most of it for low-income 
housing.
  What did the get from education? Most of the programs they cut in 
education, $1.7 or $1.8 billion out of the education budget.
  Now they are contemplating moving toward a cut in the student loan 
program. The student loan program is subsidized. We pay interest on the 
loans during the time the students are in college. And what they are 
saying is we will take that away, which increases the amount of the 
student loan programs to the students and places a burden on that 
segment of our population which we are most dependent upon to carry 
forward the America of the year 2000, the America of new world order 
which must have the best possible technicians and scientists and 
managers. They will come out of your colleges and universities.
  So we are going to tamper with the mechanisms that allow us to 
educate students. We are going to lessen the numbers of students.
  So these are the parameters of what we are dealing with. Where shall 
we get the money to balance the budget and, at the same time, give this 
tremendous tax cut to the rich?
  Because I think all the charts confess, when it is all over, the 
charts say that the rich will get the biggest benefits on the 
Republican side. We heard arguments that, yes, the rich are paying the 
most taxes; and by, yes, they are paying the most taxes, they, in 
essence, said, of course they will get the benefits because they are 
paying the most taxes.
  I am sure there are many Americans out there who would like to share 
in the wealth and would be happy to pay the taxes that the very wealthy 
pay. If they had more money they would pay more taxes, and they would 
be quite pleased to be in that category.
  So any way you cut it there is an admission that the people who are 
going to gain most from the tax cut are the wealthiest Americans. They 
gave the percentages. They showed the graphs and the charts. I will not 
go back into that, but it is clear what is going to happen.
  Then the last speaker issued a challenge: What are you going to cut 
if you are not going to deal with the deficit? It looks as if any 
Democrats who want to bring a budget to the floor of the House and 
offer that budget as an alternative budget is going to have to play by 
the rules that have been set by the Republican majority. They say you 
must present a budget which shows that it is going to be balanced by 
the year 2002.
  Any budget that comes to the floor as a substitute, and we hope that 
they will allow
 substitute budgets as we have had in past years, will have to be on a 
glide path and have a deficit in 5 years of no less than $59 billion.

  So I am the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus alternative 
budget. We are working hard to prepare that alternative budget. We 
accept the challenge. We do not think that it is necessary.
  We do not think that you should create an artificial crisis the way 
the Republican majority has done. They created an artificial crisis, 
and we have to squeeze everybody very hard in order to meet these 
artificially created goals. But if that is the challenge, we accept the 
challenge.
  The last speaker sort of threw that challenge to the Democrat side 
here and said, ``What are you going to cut.'' Well, we say that we will 
balance the budget. We will cut what is necessary in order to balance 
any budget we bring, and we are going to make cuts that need to be cut.
  There is waste in government. There is waste in government that can 
be cut. There is waste in the defense budget that can be cut. There is 
a bloated CIA that can be cut. There are places where we will show that 
the American people can get a better deal with a more streamlined 
government without having to cut the people who are most in need.
  The Congressional Black Caucus will again offer its own substitute 
budget as we move toward the year 2000 and into the 221st century. More 
than ever before, our alternative budget is needed to offer a vision of 
America which includes all of the people.
  [[Page H4166]] The vision of America offered by the Contract With 
America and the Republican majority is a vision for an elite minority. 
An elite minority will be taken care of, and they are proposing to go 
dump overboard certain other groups. They are going to play a game of 
triage and just forget about certain segments of America.
  They have cut part of the budget which deals with children with 
disabilities. Part of the Social Security budget has already been 
proposed to be cut. They are cutting school lunch programs. They are 
going to cut the aid to dependent children programs. Wherever they are 
cutting, low income housing, the HEAP program which provides money for 
heat for people during the winter, all of those cuts are for people 
most in need. Americans who are most in need are the ones who are going 
to be cut.
  We are going to show how we can offer a vision of
   America that does not play the game of triage, that is a vision of 
America which includes all of the people.

  To counter the scorched earth approach of the oppressive elite 
minority which presently controls the House of Representatives, the 
Congressional Black Caucus must discharge its long-standing obligation 
to present a budget which promotes the general welfare and advances the 
interests of the caring majority. The overwhelming majority of American 
people can be taken care of in the process of moving toward the year 
2000 and balancing the budget and streamlining government.
  The CBC, the Congressional Black Caucus caring majority alternative 
budget will encompass the interests of all Americans. However, it will 
also represent a moral counterattack against the forces of the 
oppressive elite minority which have launched a blitzkrieg against the 
political, economic and social infrastructure of the African-American 
community. Our budget will speak for the caring majority of America.
  It will also specifically address the issue of what the oppressive 
elite minority which presently controls the House of Representatives 
intends to do to the black community in America, to the African-
American community. We have been singled out for special attention. 
Black people in America are presently being subjected to a powerful and 
dangerous double-barrel assault. Devastating budget cuts of programs 
developed over the last 60 years threaten to deny basic necessities to 
ordinary black citizens and thus break their spirits and cripple their 
will to fight back.
                              {time}  2000

  At the same time, a dirty war, assault on affirmative action, 
designed to serve as a campaign weapon in the 1996 elections, will seek 
to brainwash America into the belief that every black is a new kind of 
Willie Horton threatening to rob them of their job.
  You will recall in the Bush campaign against Dukakis, they were 
running neck and neck until an advertising campaign was introduced of a 
monstrous person who had been in prison and released and committed 
murder and all of a sudden, all you saw on the screens was this black 
Willie Horton and the threat that he was to the American people and 
that turned the tide and the polls began to show Mr. Bush climbing over 
Mr. Dukakis.
  It was such a great success, it has been repeated in various ways 
since then. In the campaign of Harvey Gant against a senator, who is 
now sitting in the Senate from North Carolina, there was a close race 
until the senator from North Carolina introduced a campaign ad which 
showed a white hand with a job application and a black hand reaching 
out to take the job application away from them. So that kind of racist 
appeal, the gut racist appeal, has proven to be workable.
  It is a case where civilized people appeal to very primitive 
instincts. Parties that used to act very responsibly, both the 
Republican party and the Democratic party, the leadership at one time 
refused to succumb to the temptation to make their campaigns racist. 
But the Republicans broke with that tradition when Ronald Reagan 
decided to go to Philadelphia, MS and launch his campaign. 
Philadelphia, MS is a place where three civil rights workers were 
murdered, two Jewish young people and a black--Chaney, Schwerner, and 
Goodman were murdered in Philadelphia, MS. Mr. Reagan chose to go there 
to launch his campaign and send a message to the south and the people 
who believed, like those in Philadelphia, MS, that there was a new 
Republican party.
  And since then the use of racism, the use of racism in campaigns has 
been dignified, has been made acceptable. So we go from Philadelphia, 
MS to Willie Horton and now the kingpin of the 1996 campaign is going 
to be an assault on affirmative action.
  The budget process is one attack on the African-American community. 
The assault on affirmative action is the other.
  Tonight I am dealing with the budget process. For African-Americans, 
the present declaration of war by the oppressive elite majority which 
controls the Congress represents the clearest and most overwhelming 
threat to the black community since the first black reconstruction 
effort was brutally demolished shortly after the Civil War. There were 
many Members of Congress who were black at one time and, shortly after 
the Civil War, when the reconstruction effort was underway, they came 
into Congress. And after the Hayes agreement, the blacks were driven 
from Congress as they were driven from office all over the country. And 
the Ku Klux Klan began the riots and murder, brutality, lynching, 100 
years of that took place.
  So we are not going back to that, but there is an attempt to roll us 
back into that by taking the second reconstruction, we call the second 
reconstruction from the time of Martin Luther King, the Montgomery bus 
boycott to the time we got the Voting Rights Act.
  It was the launching of the second reconstruction, that 
reconstruction now they are going to attempt to demolish. The CBC 
caring majority alternative budget will be a major component of the 
master plan which will guide the counteroffensive that we must launch 
in order to guarantee our survival. Because this budget will clarify 
and highlight important goals and objectives for all of us, it will 
serve to strengthen and accelerate a renewed struggle by the African-
American community with the help of the other millions who make up the 
caring majority. The other millions are the enlightened white 
Americans, Latinos, Asians, native Americans, Jews, Christians, 
immigrants, and important people everywhere.
  We are confident that with their help, the total caring majority, we 
will be able to defeat the deadly design of the oppressive elite 
majority. We are confident that we should be able to overcome.
  We have, in the Congressional Black Caucus, laid out a set of about 
11 basic principles and themes that will guide our preparation of the 
budget. As you know, we will not be doing the budget until May. The 
Committee on the Budget is late in that process so we will not be 
considering it on the floor here until May. But we have set out a set 
of principles that will guide us.
  First of all, we began by condemning the entire rescission package 
that I have just spoken about a few moments ago. The rescission package 
was the launching of those devastating cuts primarily aimed at the 
poor, the urban poor and more specifically aimed at the African-
American community. At least 65 percent of the cuts in that $17 billion 
rescission package, 65 percent of those cuts are aimed at poor urban 
communities. We condemn that. We hope that the President will veto that 
package. We hope that the Senate, first of all, the Senate will make 
some drastic changes. But if they do not make those changes, we hope 
that the President will veto that package. It is necessary that those 
$17 billion in cuts not take place in this year's budget.
  We also particularly condemn the zeroing out of the Summer Youth 
Employment Program. We call for the immediate restoration, as the 
number one item that is most urgent, immediate restoration of the 
summer youth employment program. The Summer Youth Employment Program 
provides jobs for teenagers during the summer. It is a very successful 
program. It has worked very well. Nobody challenges its effectiveness. 
It provides 32,000 jobs in New York City. And in big cities all across 
America it provides thousands of jobs during the summer for teenagers.
  [[Page H4167]] Why must this program be zeroed out? No reason has 
been given except that it is part of the plot aimed at the poorest 
communities, the urban communities and particularly aimed at the 
African-American community. We insist that the teenage employment 
program in the summer be restored.
  Item three is the basic principle that we support a tax cut for the 
working class, as set forth in the progressive caucus budget. They have 
a tax cut for the people who make the least amount of money, and we are 
united with the progressive caucus on giving a tax cut to the people 
who are working people and need the cut the most.
  Item five, we support the establishment of a commission on creative 
new revenue options to develop new sources of Federal revenue and shift 
the primary tax burden from personal income taxes.
  I agree with the other side that personal income taxes should be cut. 
We should find ways to cut them and cut them fairly. Personal income 
taxes are too great a portion of the overall Federal revenue package.
  There was a time when corporate income taxes bore at least half the 
burden of the Federal revenue package. Corporate income taxes need to 
be raised. But that is not creative. That is just an adjustment that 
needs to happen. We need to look at more creative sources of revenue.
  As I have said on this floor before, we are selling the spectrum 
above us. There was a time when the Government gave land out to people. 
They did not sell it. When this country was first established, you got 
land grants and there were land rushes, various ways that people were 
almost given the land.
  Now we have above our heads a realization that above our heads is 
wealth. The atmosphere above our heads, the spectrum can be sold and is 
being sold. Why not find ways to get more revenue from the leasing or 
the selling of the spectrum?
  Technology has brought us to this point. The technology was produced 
by the genius of people over many, many years, but it has brought us to 
the point where suddenly the atmosphere above our heads is valuable. It 
is worth a great deal of money. Let us find a way to tax that for the 
benefit of all Americans. That is just one of the taxes.
  Let us place a royalty on all the products that have been developed 
with Government research. Let us go back and place a royalty on them 
and let us make certain that all future products developed with 
Government research have a royalty on them which exists forever, going 
to the American people, giving the American people the benefits of 
those technological advances.
  There are a number of ways we could change the tax structure, end 
personal income taxes as we know it. Get rid of personal income taxes 
or bring it down to such a low level that it is a minor part of the 
budget by finding other creative ways to tax people. We want to call 
for this commission.
  I see the leadership of the Senate, the Republican leadership of the 
Senate, the Republican leadership of the House have called for a 
similar commission. We join with them in the call for the commission, 
and we would like to offer some ideas. And if they are not going to be 
creative, we call for creation of a special commission that is going to 
look for real creative options and not find new ways to bleed the same 
old people with personal income taxes.
  We have a very important item in this set of principles with respect 
to cutting programs and cutting expenditures. We support means testing 
for all agricultural subsidy programs. Here is a bombshell. Here is 
Republican pork. Here is rancid Republican pork.
  Go look in the districts of people who represent Kansas and a large 
part of the Midwest, who claim that they do not want any help from 
Government. They have been getting help from Government for years and 
years. A program created by the New Deal to help farmers has been 
expanded to a program which is an almost racketeering enterprise. 
Checks are being pumped into big cities to people who have never set 
foot on a farm. So the agriculture subsidy programs and various 
programs run by the Department of Agriculture need to be examined 
closely.
  We propose to streamline and downsize the huge Department of 
Agriculture. They did a great job so we have a most effective industry, 
an agriculture industry that is unparalleled anywhere in the world. 
Government can step out now. The agriculture does not need to be the 
second largest bureaucracy. Right now the Department of Agriculture is 
the second largest bureaucracy in the country, second only to the 
Pentagon in the number of employees.
  Instead of calling for the eradication of the Department of 
Education, which we need very badly, let us downsize and streamline the 
Department of Agriculture. We will show you how to save money in that 
process.
  We support the collection of fees for the difference between current 
rates and market rates for electric power, the various power marketing 
commissions, administrations are giving away revenue that could be 
gained by charging market rates for electricity where Federal projects 
are involved in pricing that electricity.
  We support the maintenance of foreign aid at the present level. We 
support the continuation of Federal benefits to all eligible 
immigrants. We support the elevation of education and job training as 
the highest priority item in the budget. We are going to offer 
increases. We are going to call for increases in education programs. We 
want Head Start to be available for all eligible children, all eligible 
children. We want no cuts in the college student loan programs or the 
work study programs or anything related to higher education. We are 
going to place the increases where they should be.
  Finally, we will call the drastic cuts in defense. We do not need, 
after the cold war is over and the evil empire is defeated, we do not 
need to spend $28 billion, $28 billion for the CIA. We could, over the 
5-year period, cut the CIA by 10 percent a year and by the fifth year 
you would have it down to about a $14 billion budget. Nobody really 
knows. This is a conservative estimate, that the CIA and intelligence 
agentagency budget is $28 billion.
  First of all, we would like to end the secrecy. We see no reason why 
the American people cannot know exactly what this fumbling, very 
deadly, some things have been revealed, it is a very dangerous agency. 
It should let the American people know what the budget is. We want to 
cut the budget that is there.
  We certainly want to cut the F-22. The F-22 is a fighter plane, the 
most sophisticated ever conceived. It is being manufactured in the 
district of the Speaker of the House, Marietta, GA. It has great 
benefits for the district, but we do not need it. We do not need a 
super-sophisticated fighter plane because we already own the most 
sophisticated fighter plane already. If the Russians are not building 
another one, no other country is building another one, why do we need a 
plane to compete with our own sophisticated fighter plane?
  So we will cut the defense budget. The Congressional Black Caucus 
budget will go forward to achieve balance, but we will show you where 
the waste is. We will show you what sensible, compassionate people will 
look at.
  We can cut without throwing people overboard. We can cut and have a 
balanced budget, a sensible budget without cutting school lunches, 
without making the lives of senior citizens miserable. We do not want 
to touch Medicaid. We do not want to touch Medicare. We can show you 
what the vision of America should really be like.
  We represent the caring majority as opposed to the oppressive elite 
majority. Our budget will reflect that. The caring majority budget will 
be for all of the people of America.


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