[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 65 (Friday, April 7, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5540-S5542]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


             THE REAL MEANING OF THE CONTRACT WITH AMERICA

  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, for almost 100 days now, we have been 
hearing about the Contract With America--here in Washington and in my 
home State of South Dakota.
  This week we get their contact with America. Every time you open a 
newspaper or turn on your TV or your radio--or even your computer--some 
Republican is speaking in superlatives about what is happening in 
Congress. Not everyone shares that enthusiasm.
  One of the most astute assessments I have heard of the Republicans' 
100 days was offered last week by a Capitol tour guide. When someone 
asked him what had passed so far in this Congress, he said, ``About 12 
weeks.''
  I can tell you a lot more has happened in South Dakota during those 
12 weeks. Farmers and ranchers, who have been gearing up for the spring 
planting and helping their livestock through the calving season, are 
grappling with the harsh realities of low commodity and livestock 
prices, hoping there will be enough to support their families.
  On Main Streets in cities and towns across South Dakota, small 
business owners and employees are working longer and harder just to 
maintain their incomes.
  In other words, life is going on in South Dakota, and people are 
trying to move forward, looking toward change in Washington to help 
them realize their dreams.
  The tradition of scrutinizing the first 100 days really began, as you 
know, with President Franklin Roosevelt. Most students of government 
still consider the first 100 days of the New Deal to be the most 
successful in the history of the Federal Government. And no wonder. By 
the end of President Roosevelt's first 100 days, Congress had passed an 
extraordinary package of 15 bills that fundamentally changed the 
relationship between business and Government, and individuals and 
Government.
  It was an agenda that was firmly rooted in FDR's belief, as he said, 
that ``the future lies with those wise political leaders who realize 
that the great public is interested more in good government than in 
politics.'' That is a sentiment you won't find in the Republicans' 
Contract With America. For it was politics pure and simple--the 1994 
election and a mountain of polling data--that gave us the so-called 
contract.
  [[Page S5541]] Franklin Roosevelt knew to be skeptical of people, 
like so many in this new Republican majority, who promise easy 
solutions to hard problems. He could easily be speaking of today's 
Republican majority when he commented on their predecessors more than 
60 years ago.
  ``Let me warn you and let me warn the Nation,'' he said, ``against 
the smooth evasions of those who say, `Of course we agree with all 
these things.
  ```We believe in Social Security. We believe in work for the 
unemployed. We believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to 
die, we believe in all these things. But we do not like the way the 
present administration is doing them. Just turn them over to us. We 
will do all of them. We will do more of them. We will do them better. 
And most of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything.'''
  Does this sound familiar? It should. That is the Big Lie on which the 
contract is constructed: ``We can balance the budget. We can increase 
military spending. We can give more tax breaks to the rich. And it will 
not cost anybody anything. In fact, you and your family are going to 
get money back.''
  Clearly, the promise to fundamentally change the Federal Government 
sounded very good to some people last November. But were they voting 
for the Republican contract? The fact is, they were not. Less than 5 
percent of Americans had even heard of the contract on Election Day. 
Even now, polls show that the more people hear about the contract, the 
more nervous they get. And with good reason. To paraphrase Pogo, we 
have met the enemy in the Republicans' contract, and it is us.
  It is not big-money special interests the Contract targets--
Republicans have invited the lobbyists into their offices to rewrite 
the laws. The enemy in the Republican contract is not even the infamous 
waste, fraud, and abuse.
  It is working families and their children in South Dakota and across 
the Nation.
  They can wrap it up in new spinmeister packaging, but the struggle at 
the center of the contract is the same struggle that has defined the 
difference between the Republican and Democratic Parties for 
generations.
  It is the struggle between the rich and the rest of us.
  We do not have any billionaires in South Dakota who will benefit from 
the tax loophole Republicans are fighting to protect that allow 
billionaires to renounce their citizenship to avoid paying taxes on the 
fortunes they have made in our country.
  We do not have a lot of powerful corporate lobbyists who have gained 
unprecedented access to the Congress.
  What we do have in South Dakota are hard-working families who wamt 
change, who want more opportunities for themselves, and a better future 
for their children.
  Republicans were on the wrong side of this struggle before, and they 
are on the wrong side now. We have heard a lot about the casualties of 
the contract, but the biggest casualty is not a person or a group. It 
is Americans' sense of values--our sense of fairness. Most of all, it 
is our fragile but essential belief that if we work hard, we can make a 
better life for ourselves and our kids.
  This ethic, this belief, was ingrained in all South Dakotans. This 
belief, this value, is essential to our survival as a democracy.
  De Tocqueville wrote that it is our values, even more than our laws, 
that enable Americans to maintain this democracy, and that fundamental 
insight into our character remains true to this day.
  If people do not know the difference between right and wrong, all the 
prisons in the world will not keep us safe. If children come to school 
with no sense of discipline, no respect for authority, the best 
teachers and, the best computers in the world will not make a 
difference. And if young people grow up in a society that does not 
reward honest work, no welfare reform plan in the world will work.
  We cannot solve our problems with a law or a check--or even the 
threat of no check. If we want to restore the American dream, we have 
got to restore American values. And that means
 strengthening America's families. Families are where values are taught 
and learned. But teaching values takes time. It takes time.

  And time is something that most families have less of every year. I 
hear this every time I go home.
  One story this year that didn't get perhaps quite as much attention 
as it deserved was a series of strikes by autoworkers who were 
protesting mandatory 50- and 60-hour workweeks.
  The workers said the extra pay just wasn't worth the price they were 
paying in burnout and in time spent away from their families.
  The conflict many workers feel between trying to be both good 
providers and good parents was best summed up by a single mother at a 
GM factory in Michigan who had just put her son in counseling and just 
learned that her 18-year-old daughter was pregnant.
  You know what she said? She said, ``I keep thinking that maybe if I'd 
been able to spend more time with them this wouldn't have happened.''
  That is a conflict more parents live with each year. From the late 
1960's to the late 1980's, the average workyear for American workers 
increased by 163 hours. You know what that is? That's an extra month 
each year.
  Today, fewer than one-third of American families have time to eat 
even one meal a day together. And nearly 7 million children--including 
half a million pre-school kids--spend at least part of each day all 
alone.
  Why are parents spending less time with their kids? The answer is 
simple: In spite of an unprecedented effort by the Clinton 
administration to create more than 6 million new jobs, the real income 
of most Americans is declining.
  Each year, it takes more people working more hours in a family just 
to afford the basic. Eighty percent of America's families have not seen 
their incomes rise since the 1970's. Eighty percent. And this is true 
despite huge increases in two-income and even three-income families.
  Even in the 1990's, the richest one-third of Americans are getting 
richer, while incomes for everyone else keep falling. And let me tell 
you, that is fundamentally wrong. And Democrats must fight it.
  Not long ago I had a young father tell me, ``Either I can spend time 
with my family or support them--but not both.'' Those are not 
conditions for teaching moral values. They are an invitation to moral 
anarchy. And the extreme agenda of the new majority--despite all its 
pious and populist rhetoric--is almost certain to make matters worse.
  Because it is designed to reward the rich and the well-connected at 
the expense of America's middle-class families. That is wrong and 
Democrats must fight it, make no mistake: The new Republican agenda is 
worse than indifferent to the needs of working families. It is 
downright hostile to them. It is trickle-down economics with a 
vengeance. And if it is enacted, it will destroy much of the middle 
class.
  If you doubt it, just look at some of the tax changes Republicans are 
proposing:
  One of the more moderate members of the Republican party is proposing 
that we repeal income taxes on stock profits. In other words, let's tax 
only wages. And some Republicans want to protect the tax loophole that 
allows billionaires to renounce their U.S. citizenship to avoid paying 
taxes on the fortunes they have made in this country.
  You know, when George Washington found out that Benedict Arnold was a 
traitor he probably thought about a lot of things. He probably thought 
about flogging him. He probably thought about hanging him. He probably 
thought about taking everything he owned. But I guarantee you one thing 
he never thought about was giving him a tax break.
  What kind of contract is that?
  Of course, many of us feel that the contract is more noteworthy for 
what it leaves out than for what little it actually does. The contract 
offers no blueprint to create more jobs or better-paying jobs. And, it 
offers no plan to fix any of the other problems that are undermining 
Americans' economic security.
  Quite the opposite, the Republican agenda makes it harder for people 
to climb the economic ladder by gutting worker training programs and 
college loans.
  Under the Republican contract, 27,165 South Dakota college students 
will pay 
 [[Page S5542]] more for their student loans. Who knows how many who 
cannot afford the higher priced loans will simply drop out.
  It makes it harder for poor families to escape welfare by blocking 
any increase in the minimum wage.
  The Republican agenda leaves virtually every American family at risk 
of financial ruin by refusing to reform health care. For some, the past 
100 days simply means that more people are without health insurance in 
South Dakota and a lot of people--and hoping they do not end up like 
some of their neighbors--the 1,200 retirees of the Morrell meatpacking 
company in Sioux Falls, who suddenly lost their health benefits 2 
months ago.
  And, the contract undermines our effort to enforce laws protecting 
Americans from polluted air and water, from spoiled meat and killer 
toys and a whole host of other dangers.
  The big winners in the contract are the lobbyists and special 
interests, who Republicans have invited--quite literally--into 
committee rooms to write the laws as they choose.
  The big losers, of course, are working families, who are going to end 
up picking up the tab for the special interests--the same as they did 
in the 1980's. That is wrong, too, and Democrats will fight it.
  The biggest problem with the contract is not simply that it threatens 
to bankrupt working families economically. It is also morally bankrupt. 
Democrats have a responsibility to challenge not just the details of 
the contract, but the underlying values as well. We need to raise our 
voices, particularly in the face of the extreme new agenda of the 
Republican Party.
  We need to find new ways, new technologies, to communicate our basic 
beliefs, and, we need to expand the debate to include values that 
matter to working families. Values like fairness and tolerance, genuine 
opportunity, and generational progress.
  More important, we need to make sure that our values shape our public 
policy. Too often, government policies do not reflect our nation's 
values. Sometimes they have actually exacerbate the conditions they 
were created to eliminate.
  No matter how noble their original purpose, when we try to protect 
failed programs, we undermine the credibility of government and thus 
the ability of government to help the people who deserve help.
  So, making sure our values shape our public policies mean, first of 
all, acknowledging when something is not working. Making sure our 
values shape our public policies also means reforming our welfare 
system so that it rewards work. It means encouraging families to be 
strong and to stay strong. Making sure our values shape our public 
policies means we need truth-in-sentencing laws. We need to hold people 
responsible for their actions. And we need to protect people from crime 
in the first place.
  President Clinton and a Democratic Congress last year passed a tough 
new crime bill that puts 100,000 more police on the street, including 
77 in my home State. Now Republicans want to gut that bill. That is 
dead wrong. And Democrats will fight it.
  Making sure our values shape our public policies means we need to 
listen to average people, not campaign contributors. In Washington and 
in every State capitol in this country, holy wars are being waged with 
unholy amounts of money. People don't know where the buck stops 
anymore. They only know it stops the debate.
  And this is wrong. And Democrats will fight it--by pushing for real 
campaign finance reform--in this session of Congress.
  Making sure our values shape our public policies means helping 
workers learn new skills so they can keep their job or get a new one. 
Not long ago, Speaker Gingrich called unemployment insurance ``vacation 
pay for freeloaders.'' Republicans may think that makes a good sound 
bite, but it's small and insensitive. If we value work, then let us 
treat workers with dignity. Give them the tools and training they need 
to earn their own way, and they will not need unemployment insurance or 
anything else from government.
  Finally, making sure our values shape our public policies means 
helping middle-class pay for college with affordable loans or the sweat 
equity that comes from national service.
  In asking Congress to do these things, Democrats are only asking the 
Republican majority to do what the American people expect them to do: 
to lead. Their refusal to even discuss our proposals makes it clear 
that Republicans do not oppose the way we Democrats have done the job 
of fighting for working families and children. They are fundamentally 
opposed to the job being done at all.
  I said at the beginning of my remarks that the American people did 
not vote for the Republican contract because most had not even heard of 
it. Instead, they were voting to continue the original Contract With 
America. They voted to make America a place, once again, where people 
still believe in values like tolerance and fairness, and parents still 
have the time to teach those values to their children.
  America can be what America was, a place where you can get ahead if 
you work hard. We can make America that kind of place again. But it's 
going to take more than angry demagoguery and more than the mad dash of 
100 days.
  Americans understand that. Because leaders like Franklin Roosevelt 
taught us. President Roosevelt led this Nation through a depression and 
a world war. He knew that good government is government which unites 
this country, not divides it. It is government that offers hope, not 
fear--that proposes real solutions where there are real problems. He 
led, so others were willing to follow.
  As a former history professor, Newt Gingrich should remember the 
words of his favorite President who said that ``the only limit to our 
realization will be our doubts of today.''
  While Democrats do not advocate going back to the programs of the New 
Deal, we believe that the values that shaped that agenda are as valid 
today as they have ever been. The realization of tomorrow must be built 
from the realization of strong national leadership today, the kind of 
leadership the American people have turned to throughout our history, 
and to which future generations must turn, not just for 100 days, but 
for that many years, and more.


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