[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 72 (Wednesday, May 3, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H4534-H4541]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                         BARBARIANS AT THE GATE

  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 just returned from recess this week, and 
it is a fairly slow week here in the Congress. But next week we will 
move into the process of finalizing the budget for the coming budget 
year, which begins October 1. It is a situation which I am quite 
concerned about.
  There is a kind of calm around here before the storm. As far as I am 
concerned, I feel a sense of dread before a massacre takes place, 
because that is what I feel is in store; a massacre of very useful 
programs is about to occur in this budget finalization process that is 
going to start next week.
  We already have a $17 billion rescission package. The majority party, 
the Republicans in this House, have already reached into this year's 
budget and pulled back $17 billion, mostly from very good programs. So 
$17 billion is being cut out of the budget that is now in process, now 
going on.
  The budget year that will end on September 30, they are trying to 
take out $17 billion. The Senate has passed their version of the 
rescission package, and a conference is about to occur. There is 
nothing to feel optimistic about there. They put back a few vital 
items. I heard the Senate is going to restore the Summer Youth 
Employment Program. The Summer Youth Employment Program employs 
millions of young people across the country every summer. That had been 
wiped out by the Republican-controlled House rescission budget. Now the 
Senate says they will put it back, and I hope that they do restore 
that.
  But I hope the President vetoes the whole bill. I hope that he 
understands there are numerous other cuts in that same $17 billion 
package, for instance, the cutting of the Department of Housing and 
Urban Development to the tune of $7 billion. You cut $7 billion out of 
the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and most of the money 
that is cut is for low income housing. I hope that the President will 
veto the whole package. But I dread what is going to happen with that 
package, that rescission package.
  But beyond that, I dread the budget finalization process, because 
what has happened with the rescissions package is a preview of coming 
attractions, a preview of where this majority in this House is going.
  It is not exaggerating to say that we are about to behold something 
similar to a group of barbarians burning down a city. It is not 
exaggerating, because we are going to destroy, and maybe this is a 
serious flaw, a serious weakness in the Constitution of the United 
States, that a party in power for 2 years can wreck havoc. It can 
destroy a great deal.
  You can destroy the Department of Education by just denying funding. 
You can vote the funding out. It is difficult to vote down the 
authority for the agency, but if you don't fund it, you can destroy it, 
or so cripple it, until to matter who comes into power the next year, 
they will have to try to rebuild a crippled agency.
  That has been the history of the Department of Education. It has 
always been a crippled agency. It came into 
[[Page H4535]] being with great controversy. Thank God Jimmy Carter 
created the Department of Education finally. But during the years of 
Ronald Reagan they tried to destroy the Department of Education, and it 
has never been able to function fully. But finally it has begun to 
function and do the kinds of things it needs to do in terms of 
leadership.
  The threat now is in the process of cutting the budget, one of the 
items that is being targeted by the Republican majority is the 
Department of Education. We are going to eliminate the Department of 
Education, in an age when high technology is so important, in an age 
when we say that every worker, every student, should strive to go to 
college, and in order to do that they have to come out of high school 
with the best possible education in order to get a decent job and 
function in a very complex society. At this time we are hearing leaders 
in this House talk about eliminating the Department of Education.
  An invaluable piece of our civilization is about to be assaulted in 
this budget making process. A way of life created for Americans by 
Americans is about to be wrecked. That is how serious this year is.
  Why is this year so different from any other? Because the majority 
party in the House, which is the same as the majority party in the 
Senate, have made it clear that they want to assault many of the 
programs that have been created over the last 60 years. They want to 
get rid of what has been painstakingly developed since Franklin 
Roosevelt's days. They want
 to get rid of the kinds of programs that make our society as great as 
it is. They want to get rid of the kinds of programs that reach out and 
say to every American that our great wealth, the fact that we are the 
wealthiest Nation that ever existed in the history of the world, is to 
be shared not equally, and we are not communists, we are not proposing 
that everybody should have an equal share, but we are proposing that 
everybody should have some share of it and some kind of decent living 
as a result of a prosperous America.

  Now there is a barbaric philosophy. And I want to just pause for a 
minute and say I would like to see us lower our voices and use less 
extremist language. So I do not want to call my colleagues who propose 
these doctrines barbarians. I think that is a little extreme. I just 
want to focus on each act. A decent person can be guilty of a barbaric 
act. So you have some decent people who, I will not question their 
decency in general, but they are subscribing to barbaric policies, 
barbaric actions.
  Let me give you one or two examples, and I will come back in more 
detail later on. It is a barbaric action to propose that we fund a 
Seawolf submarine for about $2.1 billion, and at the same time propose 
to cut the school lunch programs by about $2 billion. There is 
controversy about whether the school lunch programs have been cut or 
not. I think the conservative Congressional Budget Office has put that 
to rest. The conservative estimate of the conservative Congressional 
Budget Office is at least $2 billion will be cut from the program. It 
will lose that much over the 5-year period it is being proposed. So at 
least $2 billion. I think it will be more like $6 billion, but we will 
take the more conservative estimate.
  You are going to cut school lunches by $2 billion, hungry kids will 
have less food, and at the same time propose to build a Seawolf 
submarine. What is a Seawolf submarine and what does it contribute to 
anything? Nothing. A Seawolf submarine would have been useful in a way 
with the Soviet Union. But the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore. No 
other nation has these submarines.
  What I am trying to do is bring this down to a level where it can be 
clearly understood. When I say a barbaric act has taken place when you 
propose to fund an obsolete weapon like a Seawolf submarine at the cost 
of $2.1 billion, while at the same time cutting school lunches by a 
like amount, that is a barbarian's reasoning at work. There is no 
sense, no compassion.
  What will the Seawolf submarine do for America? It can do nothing 
now. It could have been very useful in a war with the Soviet Union. 
They have very sophisticated submarines; therefore, we had to prepare a 
more sophisticated submarine. We already have Seawolf submarines. Why 
build one more? The cold war has been over for several years. The 
Soviet Union is not building any more submarines.
  This submarine cannot be used for peaceful purposes. If you do not 
use it for warfare, you can take the kids on a ride under the sea, you 
could put it in New York harbor and use it as a tourist attraction. But 
that is too dangerous. They will not use submarines for tourist 
attractions, because even the best submarine is risky to the point 
where you wouldn't take kids for joy rides underneath the sea. So it 
has no peaceful purpose. yet we are going to build another Seawolf 
submarine.
  We are going to continue funding the Central Intelligence Agency to 
the tune of at least $28 billion, at least $28 billion. We do not know, 
because it is still secret. The Soviet Union has revealed secrets about 
their secret intelligence agency, but we haven't divulged the budget to 
the American people, so we just guess at $28 billion. It is a barbaric 
act to say we should continue the funding of the CIA at that level, 
while at the same time you cut the Summer Youth Employment Program, a 
program that provides jobs for youth during the summer and costs so 
much less. It is a barbaric act.
                              {time}  1330

  I will come back with more examples later on. But this is what we are 
up against.
  I said that we have high-technology barbarians in charge in the 
House. I would like to retract that and say that the people are not 
barbarians because they certainly love their families; they do a lot of 
things that are decent every day. It is not that they are barbarians, 
but they are committing barbaric acts. We need to pinpoint each act one 
by one.
  In New York City, we have some barbaric philosophy that has been 
proposed recently. We have this epidemic of barbarity in public service 
breaking out all over in New York State government, New York City 
government. We are proposing to give huge tax cuts to the rich while we 
are cutting programs for Medicare and Medicaid already.
  The mayor of New York, I think, has expressed it openly. He has said 
what most of the leaders in the House of Representatives have not been 
willing to say. The mayor of New York has come right out and said it:

       Poor people, if they would please get out of town, get out 
     of town and we will not have to be bothered with them. We 
     would like to have policies which do not encourage poor 
     people to stay around.

  The mayor of New York City actually came out and said that. In the 
process of saying he did not say it, he kept saying things which were 
just as horrible, that as you cut programs and you squeeze 
neighborhoods and you refuse to build more housing and you cut the 
hospitals and you make life unbearable for poor people, let them get 
out of town, let them go. That is the kind of economic cleansing, it is 
a new statement by a public official of what many others are thinking 
but they are not stating.
  We had a gentleman named Roger Star who was prominent in city civic 
circles and once served on the editorial board of the New York Times 
even who years ago said we should pursue a policy of ethnic, of planned 
shrinkage, that New York City should pursue a policy of planned 
shrinkage. That is, do not build any housing for the poor, do not 
bother to create infrastructures in a poor neighborhood for new sewer 
systems and new water systems, et cetera, do not do those things and do 
not build and, therefore, you plan, as a result of pursuing those 
policies, there will be a shrinkage of the city. As you shrink the city 
and the number of people in it, certainly the
 number of poor people, the responsibilities of the city go down and 
you can give tax cuts to the rich and take care of them as a result.

  That was a private citizen making that statement. It was horrible 
enough then, but now we have the mayor of the city, the mayor who was 
elected by the people to govern all of the people. As you know, we know 
as elected officials here in the Congress, once we are elected, we are 
no longer elected to serve the people who elected us or the members of 
our party, we are elected to serve everybody. This mayor is openly 
saying that he really does not want to take care of a large part of the 
population of New York City.
  [[Page H4536]] Economic cleansing has been openly admitted, the 
philosophy. That is a barbaric philosphy. The thinking is barbaric; the 
policy is barbaric. I will come back to that later on.
  What I am trying to say here is that I want to emphasize that the 
budget-making process that we are about to undertake is the most 
important thing that this Congress does. It is the most important event 
that happens in Washington. The budget-making process in any government 
is very important. I have used the example before of the British 
Government; the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation takes several 
days, used to take several days to just discuss the national budget. 
Nothing is more important than the budget-making process, whether you 
are making budgets at the Federal level or you are making the budget, 
going through the budget making-process at the State level or the city 
level.
  Citizens should pay close attention because how we spend our money 
shows what our priorities are, how we spend our money shows what our 
values are. And how we spend our money determines whether our side is 
going to function properly or not. So in the budget-making process, all 
things that are most important to government and society are in motion 
at that time. Everything of value will be impacted by the budget 
process. And the budget process takes place first, but the 
appropriations process follows that and the two are inseparable.
  The budget process sets general guidelines, the appropriations 
process spells out the details and they cannot be separated. The budget 
and appropriations process are the most important functions of our 
Government or any other government.
  How and why is this budget and appropriations
   process different from all others? I have said it is different from 
all others because in power now we have a majority that insists that 
America is facing a crisis. They have created a crisis atmosphere. They 
have created a goal that is very difficult to attain, the goal of a 
balanced budget by the year 2002. If you insist that we have to balance 
the budget by the year 2002, then you have to take some drastic 
measures to do that. You cannot accomplish that unless you take drastic 
measures to cut the existing budget, unless you bring an axe to chop 
down programs that were created carefully over a 50- or 60-year period.

  We had the New Deal. We had the Great Society. And there is a 
tendency to take all of this for granted. The Great Society was sort of 
an offshoot of the New Deal. Lyndon Johnson was a disciple of Franklin 
Roosevelt, and although we might criticize President Johnson for making 
many connections with foreign policy and with the Vietnam war, we 
recognize his devotion to the principles of Franklin Roosevelt as 
expressed through the Great Society programs: The Community Action 
program, the Medicaid program, the Medicare program; these things did 
not come from God directly. They did not fall out of heaven. They were 
created by Democratic administrations, and they represent an expression 
of the very best that is in America.
  America, we have some things in our past and our tradition which we 
are not proud of, but we certainly can be proud of the tradition that 
is reflected in the New Deal and in the Great Society because it 
reflects a reaching out and a caring for all of the people of America 
and it was all done without a revolution. We have done more for human 
beings and for the citizens of our Nation without a revolution than 
other countries have done that had revolutions which professed to have 
this purpose.
  But now we are engaged in a situation where in 2 years, in 2 years 
the people who have come to power are going to take advantage of a 
weakness in the Constitution. There are no safeguards in the 
Constitution against having a 2-year period be a period where you can 
destroy what was created in 60 years.
  There is something wrong with our Constitution. I do not propose to 
talk about it now. I do not know what the remedy is, but it has just 
occurred to me as a result of the kind of protestations and the kind of
 declarations that have been made by the majority Republicans in the 
House this year, it just dawned on a lot of us that in 2 years you 
really can have a structure of the policies of the country totally 
turned around, totally altered. That is a great deal of change to take 
place in 2 years. It is revolutionary.

  I have a suspicion of revolutions. We should always be suspicious of 
revolutions. Revolutions at best are necessary evils when there is no 
other alternative. Revolutions always cause almost as much harm as they 
do good because of the very nature of the upheaval of revolutions means 
that a lot of people are going to be trampled on, a lot of suffering is 
going to take place that would not take place if you follow an 
evolutionary process.
  We have in America always followed an evolutionary process, even at 
the time of greatest crisis during the Depression, the transfer from 
Herbert Hoover to Franklin Roosevelt was not a revolution. It was an 
evolution. It was a use of the legislative process at its very best. 
Franklin Roosevelt did not go into the basement of the White House as 
Oliver North did and come up with secret plans about how to make the 
American Government operate in a way which was not approved by the 
Congress. Franklin Roosevelt came to the Congress, the New Deal 
legislation was passed in concert with the Congress.
  Step by step we worked our way through a very difficult period. We 
entered World War II, and the same process was followed as we moved 
through the necessary processes to win World War II under the 
leadership of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. So we have always 
moved in an evolutionary way. Sometimes you have to speed up the 
evolutionary process, and sometimes the approach to the evolutionary 
process has to be comprehensive, across the board you have to move and 
move fast, but to move in a way that is being proposed now, where an 
artificial crisis is created, an umbrella of emergency has been 
created. So we have a situation where extreme changes, extreme radical 
changes can be justified because we have created a crisis.
  Who is it who said that we have to have a balanced budget by the year 
2002? What economist has said that that is absolutely necessary to keep 
our economy healthy? Our deficit is coming down already. Our deficit 
has never been as great as certain European countries who are not in a 
panic and not making their people suffer in order to get a balanced 
budget within a 7-year period. Where did this come from? Olympia? Did 
some oracle predict that we had to have a balanced budget by the year 
2002?
  That is an artificial goal. A crisis that is created by setting that, 
the rationale for it, we still do not know. It is forcing us into a 
revolutionary mode. You are going to have to make $700 billion in 
savings. You have to pull out of the process, out of the present budget 
over a 7-year period, you have to get $700 billion.
  My colleagues previously were discussing the Medicare cuts, because 
one of the places where you have the largest Government expenditures is 
in health care costs, Medicare being probably one of the highest 
expenditures.
  Medicare is on the chopping block now because if you have to save 
$700 billion over the next 5 to 7 years, where are you going to get it? 
It is like slick Willie Sutton who when he was asked, why do you rob 
banks, said that is where the money is. They are going to take it from 
Medicare because that is where the money is.
  They are going to take it from Medicaid, too. Medicaid is a health 
care program for the poorest people in the country. And they are going 
to rob Medicaid, too. But nobody is discussing that because Medicaid 
does not have any defenders in this capital, in the city of Washington 
you do not hear from the White House any discussion of drastic cuts 
that are being proposed for Medicaid. You do not hear them on the Hill, 
here in Congress, but they are going to cut Medicaid for poor people 
drastically also.
  Cuts are already under way in the States and in cities across America 
to cut health care for poor people. What is the problem when you start 
cutting health care for poor people? When the Medicaid program was 
first developed a statement was made which is still true. The statement 
is that there is no such thing as bargain basement, second-class health 
care. Health care is either adequate or it is not adequate. You 
[[Page H4537]] cannot have second-class, bargain basement health care, 
health care where you use old needles to save money because if you use 
old needles to give injections, you are likely to create more disease 
than you are to create health.
  You cannot have health care where the hospitals do not wash the linen 
except once a week. You cannot have health care where a doctor makes a 
diagnosis that a patient needs a certain medication that exists and we 
know it exists and the doctor decides that that is too expensive for 
that person. That is not health care. That is making judgments about 
human beings that nobody should have the right to make.
  So health care costs cannot be trimmed and cannot be cut without 
damaging the health care process. It is either adequate health care or 
it is not. So when Medicare cuts are made, what we are saying is we are 
going to give bargain basement health care to poor people and that is 
going to be inadequate health care. And those of us who are here, those 
who propose it and those who are against it, we all know that what we 
are doing is unethical and dangerous, but there are going to be cuts 
for Medicaid and there are going to be cuts for Medicare if they 
continue to insist, if they insist that we have to balance our budget 
in America by the year 2002.
  Now, why does it make sense to balance the budget? They offer this 
homespun logic that says every family balances its budget. You know 
they have to balance your budget.

                              {time}  1345

  That seems like a great truth, something that Einstein might endorse, 
except any mother, any father, anybody in any family knows that you do 
not balance your budget, you do not balance your budget year by year. 
Your mortgage is not paid for in 1 year. Your mortgage is spread out 
over a long period of time. Otherwise you could not afford, you cannot 
pay for a house--there are some rich and famous Americans who can, but 
most of us cannot pay for a house in 1 year. You cannot pay for your 
car in the same year, either. Most of us cannot pay for a car, so you 
do not balance your budget.
  Balanced budgets are not something that heaven smiles upon because 
they work in the economy. They are something invented by the Republican 
majority here as a great good that we should all strive for which does 
not exist. They say cities and States have balanced budgets. Most 
cities and States do not have balanced budgets, they have operating 
budgets that are balanced and then they have capital budgets. They take 
all the items, like your car and your house and things that have to be 
paid for over a long period of time, because they are so tremendously 
expensive, and they put that in a capital budget.
  What this Government needs to do, if you want to have an intelligent 
approach to the budget, is we should have a capital budget for items 
that cost a lot of money over a long period of time, and an operating 
budget for the items that you pay for on a yearly basis.
  I would be the first to support a balanced budget operating budget if 
you want to propose it that way, as long as you take the capital items 
like the building of airports and highways, and if we need new weapon 
systems in the future, weapon systems are a large expenditure that come 
out, and you can look at it in a more intelligent way.
  However, the people who are in charge now, they have the votes. They 
say we are going to have a balanced budget. It is dogmatic, it is not 
scientific, it is not logical, but they have the votes, so they have 
created a crisis.
  I serve as the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus Alternative 
Committee on the Budget. We hope that we are going to be able to offer 
an alternative budget on the floor, and show our vision of where 
America should be going and how you can deal with the budget versus the 
vision of the majority that is in control right now. We are going to do 
that, despite the fact that we have been told that no budget will be 
allowed on the floor for discussion unless it meets the requirement 
that has been set forth to move toward balance.
  You have to have a balanced budget, a budget which is going toward 
balance, by the year 2002. That means that since our budgets are really 
projected on a 5-year period, not a 7-year period, we have to show in 
our fifth year in our budget that the deficit is down to $59 billion, 
which means that in 2 more years it will be eliminated completely. We 
are going to accept their challenge.
  I am not sure what the Democratic minority is going to do as a whole, 
but the Congressional Black Caucus, we will accept that challenge. We 
will show how, even if you accept the illogical, unscientific approach 
of the Republican majority, you can produce a budget that will be in 
balance by the year 2002, and you can still do that without making 
large numbers of Americans suffer. You can do it without cutting 
Medicaid drastically; you can do it without cutting Medicare 
drastically. What you have to do, however, is stop the fantasy, stop 
the fantasy of increasing
 the defense budget because you identify with that in some kind of 
romantic way.

  The defense budget cannot be increased while you are making all of 
these cuts. We do not need to increase the defense budget. We need to 
cut, instead, the $100 billion for overseas bases. We are still 
supplying bases in Germany and Japan. These are prosperous nations. 
They can take care of their own needs if they want to man those bases, 
or even if they do not need the bases, they are there for the security 
of Europe as a whole, or the bases are there for the security of Asia 
as a whole, then Japan should pay their share of maintaining security 
in the world.
  It is about time. They are rich nations, Germany and Japan. Let them 
pay for the security of Europe instead of an egotistical America. Our 
ego is costing us billions of dollars, an egotistical sense that we, we 
should make sure that Europe is secure by paying for the bases in 
Europe. We should make certain that Asia is secure by paying for the 
bases in Europe. Ego. That is how Tom Sawyer whitewashed the fence.
  Japan and Germany stand back and they chuckle while their economies 
go forward, while their workers earn higher pay, they have longer 
vacations, their society is much more secure than ours. They chuckle at 
our egotism that says we must maintain bases across the world in order 
to guarantee security and freedom, we must have a huge Navy that 
guarantees the freedom of the sea lanes of the world.
  Why do we have to have a huge Navy to guarantee the freedom of the 
sea lanes of the world? If we want the freedom and security of the sea 
lanes to be guaranteed, let us give more support to the United Nations 
and let us have all nations join together to guarantee the security and 
the freedom of the sea lanes of the world.
  It is our ego that costs us billions of dollars in defense, while 
other nations sit back and let us do it and chuckle at us while they 
pour their resources into their economy. They pour their resources into 
the creation of jobs.
  In our budget, if you want to insist on balancing the budget, we say 
to the Republican majority, then let us balance the budget by cutting 
those things which are not necessary, like $100 billion in overseas 
bases.
  We have, unfortunately, an attitude, a philosophy, that comes first. 
The attitude has to be confronted. We have to confront the fact that we 
are dealing with an elitist attitude, an attitude which says that we 
want an America which gets rid of all of the people who are a nuisance 
to those rich and famous who want to have an opportunity to make more 
and more money faster and faster.
  We already have the largest corporations in the world. The Fortune 
500 corporations are bigger than most of the countries in the world, 
their budgets. They have more money, more assets than most of the 
countries in the world. We already have more billionaires than any 
other country in the world. We do not have maybe the richest person in 
the world, maybe Japan or Germany might have him, but we have more 
people in the category of billionaires than any other nation in the 
world, yet we want to set conditions which will guarantee that they get 
rich faster, instead of setting conditions and making policies that 
guarantee that the pie is shared.
  All of us participated in the building of America. Every soldier that 
died in every war made a contribution. Every person that worked in the 
factories during the war made a contribution. 
[[Page H4538]] Every engineer that took the work of a genius and 
translated it into some practical application, you know, everybody 
participated in the building of this civilization and this society.
  Everybody deserves some rewards. Not everybody deserves to be rich, 
but everybody deserves to have a decent opportunity to pursue 
happiness, the right to the pursuit of happiness. We have forgotten 
that it is our duty as a government to supply the right to pursue 
happiness.
  Let us just take a moment to look at the study that was reported in 
the New York Times on Monday, April 17. The study was reported, and I 
also have an editorial, and I am not sure if it was on the same day, 
but it was either on the following day or the same day. On Monday, 
April 17, the article said ``The gap in wealth in the U.S. is called 
the widest in the West.''
  In the previous special order with my colleagues, I mentioned this, 
and they talked about it, too, we have a situation where the United 
States has replaced Great Britain as being the nation where the gap 
between the rich and poor is the widest. There is a chart which shows 
that over the years, since 1925, in Great Britain, the gap between the 
wealthiest people and the poorest people has come down steadily, while 
the gap in America has risen steadily, and we are way above the British 
at this point. The gap between the average income of the richest and 
the poor is wider in America than it is in Germany, in Japan, or 
anywhere else in the world.
  Mr. Speaker, I will include this article which appeared in the New 
York Times on April 17 for the Record:
                [From the New York Times, Apr. 17, 1995]

        Gap in Wealth in the United States Called Widest in West

                          (By Keith Bradsher)

       Washington, April 12.--New studies on the growing 
     concentration of American wealth and income challenge a 
     cherished part of the country's self-image: They show that 
     rather than being an egalitarian society, the United States 
     has become the most economically stratified of industrial 
     nations.
       Even class societies like Britain, which inherited large 
     differences in income and wealth over centuries going back to 
     their feudal pasts, now have greater economic equality than 
     the United States, according to the latest economic and 
     statistical research, much of which is to be published soon.
       Economic inequality has been on the rise in the United 
     States since the 1970's. Since 1992, when Bill Clinton 
     charged that Republican tax cuts in the 1980's had broadened 
     the gap between the rich and the middle class, it has become 
     more sharply focused as a political issue.
       Many of the new studies are based on the data available 
     then, but provide new analyses that coincide with a vigorous 
     debate in Congress over provisions in the Republican Contract 
     With America.
       Indeed, the drive by Republicans to reduce Federal welfare 
     programs and cut taxes is expected, at least in the short 
     term, to widen disparities between rich and poor.
       Federal Reserve figures from 1989, the most recent 
     available, show that the wealthiest 1 percent of American 
     households--with net worth of at least $2.3 million each--
     owns nearly 40 percent of the nation's wealth. By contrast, 
     the wealthiest 1 percent of the British population owns about 
     18 percent of the wealth there--down from 59 percent in the 
     early 1920's.
       Further down the scale, the top 20 percent of Americans--
     households worth $180,000 or more--have more than 80 percent 
     of the country's wealth, a figure higher than in other 
     industrial nations.
       Income statistics are similarly skewed. At the bottom end 
     of the scale, the lowest-earning 20 percent of Americans earn 
     only 5.7 percent of all the after-tax income paid to 
     individuals in the United States each year. In Finland, a 
     nation with an exceptionally even distribution of income, the 
     lowest-earning 20 percent receive 10.8 percent of such 
     income.
       The top 20 percent of American households in terms of 
     income--$55,000 or more--have 55 percent of all after-tax 
     income.
       ``We are the most unequal industrialized country in terms 
     of income and wealth, and we're growing more unequal faster 
     than the other industrialized countries,'' said Edward N. 
     Wolff, an economics professor at New York University. He will 
     publish two papers in coming months that compare wealth 
     patterns in Western countries.
       Liberal social scientists worry about poor people's 
     shrinking share of the nation's resources, and the 
     consequences in terms of economic performance and social 
     tension.
       Margaret Weir, a senior fellow in government studies at the 
     Brookings Institution, called the higher concentration of 
     incomes and wealth ``quite divisive,'' especially in a 
     country where the political system requires so much campaign 
     money.
       ``It tilts the political system toward those who have more 
     resources,'' she said, adding that financial extremes also 
     undermined the ``sense of community and commonality of 
     purpose.''
       Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on 
     Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington research group, 
     observed, ``When you have a child poverty rate that is four 
     times the average of Western European countries that are our 
     principal industrial competitors, and when those children are 
     a significant part of our future work force, you have to 
     worry about the competitive effects as well as the social-
     fabric effects.''
       Conservatives have tended to pay less attention to rising 
     inequality, and some express skepticism about the statistics 
     of their significance. Marvin H. Kosters, an economist at the 
     American Enterprise Institute here, said he thought the gap, 
     as measured, was being used as a false villain. ``I think we 
     have important sociological problems,'' he said, ``but I 
     don't think this gets at it all that well.''
       Murray L. Weidenbaum, professor of economics at Washington 
     University in St. Louis and chairman of the Council of 
     Economic Advisers under President Ronald Reagan in 1981-1982, 
     said he thought the measures tended to overstate the gap by 
     overlooking Government programs like food stamps or Medicaid.
       Still, he said he was uncomfortable with greater 
     concentration of wealth ``unless there's a rapid turnover'' 
     in which ``this year's losers will be next year's winners.''
       He noted that many wealthy people have bad years and that a 
     lot of middle-class people, like graduate students, briefly 
     look statistically as if they are starving. The United States 
     does have ``very substantial mobility,'' he added.
       Mr. Weidenbaum said he doubted that the Republican agenda, 
     if it became law, would have any substantial effect on the 
     gap. He added that the ``static'' impact might be somewhat 
     more concentration, but that the ``dynamic'' impact would 
     produce a bigger economic pie for all to share.
       There is no agreement as to why inequality is rising faster 
     in the United States than elsewhere. Explanations include 
     falling wages for unskilled workers as automation spreads, 
     low tax rates on the rich during the 1980's, relatively low 
     minimum wages, the decline of trade unions and the rapid rise 
     in the 1980's of the stock and bond markets, in which rich 
     people are heavily invested.
       The most common view seems to be that the United States has 
     witnessed the more extreme effects of several international 
     trends toward greater economic inequality. ``While many of 
     the countries experienced many pieces of inequality, the 
     United States is the one country that seems to have 
     experienced all the pieces,'' said Peter T. Gottschalk, an 
     economics professor at Boston College.
       Mr. Wolff's papers are based on data that run through 1989. 
     But Census Bureau figures show that the trend toward greater 
     income inequality continued during the first year of the 
     Clinton Administration. While incomes rose for the most 
     affluent two-fifths of the nation's households as the economy 
     expanded in 1993, the rest of the country suffered from 
     falling incomes, after adjusting for inflation.
       ``U.S. wage distribution is more unequal than other 
     countries and we do less in terms of tax and transfer 
     policy'' to cushion the disparities, said Timothy M. 
     Smeeding, an American who is director of the Luxembourg 
     Income Study Project. Mr. Smeeding is writing two papers 
     drawing international comparisons of income.
       The project, based in Walferdange, Luxembourg, is supported 
     by the national science foundations of nearly two dozen 
     countries including the United States, and has gathered 
     Government data from the member nations showing that the 
     United States has the greatest inequalities in income 
     distribution.
       Most economists believe that wealth and income are more 
     concentrated in the United States than in Japan. But while 
     data show that wealth is more equitably distributed in Japan, 
     the Government there has not released enough detailed 
     information to make statistical comparisons possible.
       Anecdotal information strongly suggests that Japan has a 
     more equal distribution of income. The chief executives of 
     Japanese manufacturing companies, for example, make an 
     average of 10 times the pay of their workers. American chief 
     executives in manufacturing are paid 25 times more, according 
     to a 1994 study by Towers Perrin, a management consulting 
     company.
       Professor Gottschalk said Canada and the Netherlands seemed 
     to have avoided the trend toward relatively higher wages for 
     high-skilled workers because they had sharply increased the 
     number of college graduates. But other trends toward 
     inequality, like a widening wage gap between experienced and 
     inexperienced workers, have affected these two countries, as 
     well.
       The time American inequality began to increase is also 
     debated, with various economists putting it anywhere from the 
     mid-1970's to the early 1980's. The double-digit inflation 
     and stock market slumps that followed the quadrupling of oil 
     prices in 1973 temporarily produced greater equality, as the 
     stocks and bonds of the rich lost value. But that effect 
     gradually disappeared, with Mr. Wolff's data showing that the 
     concentration of wealth among the richest has consistently 
     exceeded Britain's level since 1978. British records are 
     especially complete, making such comparisons easier.
       The comparison with Britain is all the more striking 
     because President Reagan and 
     [[Page H4539]] former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher 
     pursued broadly similar economic policies in the 1980's.
       Rising housing prices have helped the British middle class 
     and limited the growth in inequality there. Still, Mr. 
     Gottschalk said most evidence indicated that income 
     inequality rose much faster in the United States and Britian 
     than elsewhere.
       Richard V. Burkhauser, an economics professor at Syracuse 
     University, said that in studying thousands of people in 
     Germany and the United States over seven-year periods in the 
     1980's, he found that the two countries had roughly the same 
     level of social mobility.
       As part of the Contract With America's tax provisions, the 
     House on April 5 approved an increase in individuals' 
     exemptions from the estate tax, which is the main Federal tax 
     on wealth. By the Treasury's estimate, this could cut in half 
     the number of people subject to the tax, to one-half of 1 
     percent of the estates of those dying each year.
       Republicans have argued that the overall tax-cut provisions 
     would reduce annual tax bills by roughly equal percentages 
     for rich and poor. Democrats say that because the annual tax 
     bills of rich Americans are much larger, reducing them by 
     about the same percentage means that most of the money goes 
     to the rich rather than the poor or the middle class, further 
     concentrating wealth and income.

  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I will read from the editorial a few excerpts 
that I did not have a chance to cover before. The New York Times is not 
a radical publication. The New York Times editorial says the following: 
``After years of little change, inequality exploded in America starting 
in the 1970's. According to Prof. Edward Wolff of New York University, 
three-quarters of the income gains during the 1980's and 100 percent of 
the increased wealth went to the top 20 percent of the families.'' In 
America, the top 20 percent got three-quarters of all the income gains. 
The 80 percent on the bottom, 8 out of 10, shared the rest.
  I continue the quote from the New York Times: ``The richest 1 percent 
of households control about 40 percent of the nation's wealth.'' One 
percent versus 99 percent. The other 99 percent take the rest. ``. . . 
1 percent control 40 percent of the nation's wealth--twice as much as 
the figure in Britain, which has the greatest inequality in Western 
Europe.''
  In Britain, which used to have the greatest inequality between the 
rich and the poor, now we have twice as much inequality in the New 
World, in America. We fought the British, we got rid of that system, 
that privilege and wealth. Now we have twice as much inequality as 
Britain.
  ``In Germany,'' and I am quoting from the New York Times editorial, 
``High-wage families earn about 2.5 times as much as low-wage 
workers,'' 2.5 times. The number in Germany has been falling. In 
America the figure is that the high-wage families in America earn four 
times as much as low-wage families, and the high-wage families' 
percentage of income is rising.
  The difference between the high-wage families and the low-wage 
families, people who work every day for wages, we are not talking about 
wealthy people who have stocks and bonds and they get their income from 
their investments, we are talking about wage earners, people who work 
every day, the highest wages in America have been going up for the top 
and down for the bottom, so you have the top wage earners, the 
difference is four times as great.
  I continue to read from the editorial in the New York Times: ``The 
best guess about the factor behind the burgeoning inequality is 
technology; the wage gap between high- and low-skilled workers in 
America doubled during the 1980's. College graduates used to earn about 
30 percent more than high school graduates, but now they earn 60 
percent more.'' College graduates used to earn 30 percent more than 
just mere high school graduates, and now they earn 60 percent more.
  Why is it barbaric that the Republican budget proposals are going to 
cut the student loan program by $12 billion over 5 years? Why is it a 
barbaric act, an act that has no vision, no logic, no science? Because 
you limit, when you make those kinds of cuts and make it more difficult 
for people to go to college, you limit the number of people who can 
enter the high-technology job market, and you cut off the possibilities 
of their earning livings at that level.
  I go back to the New York Times article: ``Prof. Sheldon Danziger of 
the University of Michigan estimates that trends in private pay rates 
explain about 85 percent of recent increases in inequality; Reagan-Bush 
tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts for the poor explain much of 
the other 15 percent.''
  However, even if government is not the main factor, and this is the 
New York Times, not me, I think government policies are certainly not 
what makes the economy, but government policies are the main factor in 
the way a society operates, including the economy. To quote the New 
York Times, ``Even if government is not the main factor, it could be a 
part of the solution. Changes in the Canadian economy during the 1980's 
also hit hard at low-wage workers,'' changes in the Canadian economy.
  In Canada, there the government stepped in to keep poverty rates on a 
downward path. In the United States, poverty rose, but in Canada, 
poverty dropped, because the government policies were used to intervene 
in their economy in ways to help the poor.
  ``House Republicans are now,'' and I am still quoting the New York 
Times, ``House Republicans are now pushing the Federal budget in the 
wrong direction. At a time when employers are crying out for well-
educated workers, the GOP proposes to cut back money for training and 
educational assistance. America needs better Head Start, primary and 
secondary education. It needs to train high school dropouts and welfare 
mothers. The GOP policy would leave the untrained stranded. That would 
harm the Nation's long-term productivity--and further distort an 
increasingly tilted economy.''
                              {time}  1400

  Mr. Speaker, I imclude the New York Times editorial in its entirety 
at this point in the Record:

                       The Rich Get Richer Faster

       The gap between rich and poor is vast in the United 
     States--and recent studies show it growing faster here than 
     anywhere else in the West. The trend is largely the result of 
     technological forces at work around the world. But the United 
     States Government has done little to ameliorate the problem. 
     Indeed, if the Republicans get their way on the budget, the 
     Government will make a troubling trend measurably worse.
       Some inequality is necessary if society wants to reward 
     investors for taking risks and individuals for working hard 
     and well. But excessive inequality can break the spirit of 
     those trapped in society's cellar--and exacerbate social 
     tensions.
       After years of little change, inequality exploded in 
     America starting in the 1970's. According to Prof. Edward 
     Wolff of New York University, three-quarters of the income 
     gains during the 1980's and 100 percent of the increased 
     wealth went to the top 20 percent of families.
       The richest 1 percent of households control about 40 
     percent of the nation's wealth--twice as much as the figure 
     in Britain, which has the greatest inequality in Western 
     Europe. In Germany, high-wage families earn about 2.5 times 
     as much as low-wage workers; the number has been falling. In 
     America the figure is above 4 times, and rising.
       Interpreting these trends requires caution. Inequality rose 
     here in the 1980's in part because the United States created 
     far more jobs--many low-paid--than did Western Europe. Low-
     paying jobs are better than no jobs. Rising inequality in the 
     United States has also been caused in substantial part by 
     middle-class families that moved up the income ladder, 
     opening a gap with those below them.
       About half of Americans move a substantial distance up or 
     down the income ladder over a typical five-year period. In a 
     mobile society, where workers rotate among high-and low-
     earning jobs, earning gaps are less frightening because any 
     given job would be less entrapping.
       But mobility has offset none of the increased inequality of 
     income. Studies at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University 
     show that mobility in America is not higher than in Germany. 
     Nor does mobility here appear to be higher today than it was 
     in the early 1970's.
       The best guess about the factor behind burgeoning 
     inequality is technology; the wage gap between high- and low-
     skilled workers in America doubled during the 1980's. College 
     graduates used to earn about 30 percent more than high school 
     graduates, but now earn 60 percent more. Prof. Sheldon 
     Danziger of the University of Michigan estimates that trends 
     in private pay rates explain about 85 percent of recent 
     increases in inequality; Reagan-Bush tax cuts for the rich 
     and spending cuts for the poor explain much of the other 15 
     percent.
       But even if government is not the main actor, it could be 
     part of the solution. Changes in the Canadian economy during 
     the 1980's also hit hard at low-wage workers. But there the 
     Government stepped in to keep poverty rates on a downward 
     path. I the United States, poverty rose.
       House Republicans are now pushing the Federal budget in the 
     wrong direction. At a 
     [[Page H4540]] time when employers are crying out for well-
     educated workers, the G.O.P. proposes to cut back money for 
     training and educational assistance. America needs better 
     Head Start, primary and secondary education. It needs to 
     train high school dropouts and welfare mothers. The G.O.P. 
     policy would leave the untrained stranded. That would harm 
     the nation's long-term productivity--and further distort an 
     increasingly tilted economy.

  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I just want to reemphasize something I read 
from the editorial earlier:

       Some inequality is necessary if society wants to reward 
     investors for taking risks and individuals for working hard 
     and well. But excessive inequality can break the spirit of 
     those trapped in society's cellar--and exacerbate social 
     tensions.

  We are not proposing a change in capitalism. We are not proposing an 
attack on capitalism. Capitalism is the way of the world. It is the 
best economy that mankind has been able to fashion. But capitalism 
should be tempered by democratic government. Democratic government 
should extol the necessity to make sure that there are safety nets, 
that the wealth is shared. When people go to work for Xerox or IBM or 
Microsoft, they do not take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the 
United States. They do not have to be true to the doctrine expressed in 
the Declaration of Independence. The pursuit of happiness is not a 
concern of a corporation, per se. The pursuit of happiness of the 
American people is not their concern. The pursuit of profit is their 
business. But government must make certain that in the process of 
pursuing profits, corporations are part of a total society and that 
policies are promulgated where everybody is properly taken care of, not 
everybody shares equally but we have public policies which guarantee 
that everybody will have decent housing, public policies which 
guarantee that the opportunity to get an education will be provided.
  We cannot afford to have a budget like the budget that is about to be 
proposed by the Republican majority that is going to slash job training 
programs tremendously, they are going to slash education programs, and, 
of course, there is a notion existing that they may completely 
eradicate the Department of Education.
  What does it say to the world, to the civilized world, to the other 
industrialized nations that the United States of America is going to 
eliminate the Department of Education? What does it say to the other 
competitors that we have in the world about our future competitiveness? 
I think they will chuckle and say we are going to have less of a 
problem with a competitive America in the future if they are going to 
eliminate a Department of Education at the Federal level which gives a 
sense of direction for education in the country as a whole.
  It is not responsible, we do not have a system like France or Great 
Britain or most of the European countries, we do not have a centralized 
system of education. The education budget in this country, most of it 
is paid for by State and local governments. The proportion of the 
budget of the Federal Government's share of the budget is about 8 
percent now, fluctuating between 8 and 6 percent. Under Ronald Reagan 
it went down to about 6 percent. But at most it is 8 percent of the 
total budget. Of the more than $360 billion spent on education from 
kindergarten to higher education last year, the Federal Government only 
paid for about 8 percent of that. So it is not our contribution 
financially that is so important. It is the leadership that the Federal 
Government offers in terms of giving a sense of direction to where we 
have to go in the global economy in order to be competitive. It is the 
leadership of the Federal Government that brought forth a document 
called ``A Nation At Risk'' where we said this Nation cannot survive 
unless we pay more attention to how our children are educated in order 
to be able to compete in the modern world. It is the leadership that 
led George Bush to put out America 2000, his own program for improving 
education.
  Behind George Bush came President Clinton with Goals 2000. Goals 2000 
is not so different from America 2000. They were both at the same 
conference where the Governors came up with the same six ways to 
improve education.
  We were moving forward, we are moving forward in terms of Federal 
participation without Federal domination of education. The Federal 
Government offers leadership. But now I dread the budget that is coming 
because that budget proposes to eliminate the Department of Education. 
That is a barbaric act. It would be a barbaric act, an unreasonable 
act, an unscientific act to eliminate the Department of Education at 
this time.
  I say the barbaric philosophy, people who are committing barbaric 
acts are a real danger. They are not barbarians themselves but each act 
should be examined by itself. I think I mentioned before a philosophy 
of economic cleansing that has been proposed by the mayor of New York 
City. The mayor of New York City is a nice guy when you get to know 
him. He is a decent fellow, he has a family, he has kids.
 I cannot call him a barbarian, but I can think of no more barbaric 
thinking than to believe that poor people should get out of town, they 
should leave, in order to make the city's economic situation better. 
That is barbaric in the extreme. It is a philosophy of ethnic cleansing 
that has been expressed by an elected official. Those who think it, I 
consider that bad enough, but this has been expressed and it must be 
challenged.

  The mayor of New York City cannot say to the poor people of New York 
City, ``You don't belong here.'' He cannot say to the African-Americans 
in New York City, ``You don't belong here.'' New York City was a major 
slave port. Millions of slaves were poured into New York City in its 
early days. As New York City was built starting at the waterfront and 
moved back up to Central Park, even when Central Park was cleared, 
there are photographs of slaves working to clear the ground. That city 
was built in its infancy by slave labor. There is a Negro burial ground 
that was unearthed as they were building a new Federal building in a 
downtown section of Manhattan, and the Negro burial ground revealed 
massive numbers of graves, there must have been epidemic sickness, 
large numbers of people died, large numbers of children died. In order 
for there to be so many graves and so many people dying, there had to 
be many slaves there and they were the ones who cut down the trees, 
made the lumber, did the construction. Long before the white immigrants 
came, the slaves who were kidnapped and who were the hostages and not 
immigrants, they helped to build New York City. And now to say to the 
descendants of those slaves who built New York City, ``Get out of town, 
you're not wanted.''
  Where will they go? Where will the poor people of New York City go? 
Who else wants them if New York City does not want them? Will they go 
to Marietta, GA, where they are building the F-22 fighter plane? The F-
22 fighter plane is one of those obsolete weapon systems that we do not 
need. We do not need a fighter plane more sophisticated than the one we 
already have because the Soviet Union is not building another one. We 
have the best already, so why build another one? It is going to cost us 
$12 billion over the next 5 years to continue creating, building the F-
22.
  Can you give us some jobs in the F-22 plant in Marietta, GA, which 
happens to be the Speaker's district? Can you give us jobs for the poor 
of New York City? Can we send them to Marietta, GA?
  Where will they go? Can we send them to Groton, CT, where they are 
building another Seawolf submarine? Can you give the poor people of New 
York jobs at Groton, CT, where they are building another Seawolf 
submarine?
  Can they go to Texas where they made a killing? Texas is responsible 
for the savings and loan debacle. Half of the savings and loans that 
collapsed, half the swindles took place in Texas.
  But they benefited even from the collapse because, since they have 
most of the problem in their State, the Resolution Trust Corporation 
and all of the effort to straighten out the debacle created by the 
savings and loan swindle, half of it is in Texas. So workers are hired 
by the Resolution Trust Corporation, by those people who are trying to 
straighten out the savings and loan mess. They are Texas workers, so 
Texas benefits twice.
  Can we get some jobs for New Yorkers in Texas so that they can 
benefit from the savings and loan swindle, jobs that are created as we 
try to straighten it out? Where can the New York City poor people go?
  [[Page H4541]] Can they go to Kansas? In Kansas you have families who 
are farm families, and they have been averaging $30,000 to $40,000 in 
government checks over the last decade. According to an article in the 
New York Times, they get $30,000 to $40,000 for doing nothing, except 
what they do raises the price of food, and we pay more for food in New 
York because we are keeping the price of farm products high by 
subsidizing them with taxpayers' money.
  There is something barbaric about paying people not to grow food and 
driving up the price so the poorest people have to pay more money. The 
farm price program was created by the New Deal, by Franklin Roosevelt, 
when farmers were poor, to save poor farmers, when large numbers of 
people lived on the land. But now we have less than 2 percent of the 
population of the United States living on farms, and we are spending 
billions of dollars to take care of those pretty well-to-do farmers and 
the agribusinesses.
  I want to read one more editorial from the New York Times about the 
farm program. This is a program which we all accept nobody wants to 
cut. Recently the President made a trip to Iowa, and he pledged that he
 would defend Federal farm subsidies to the end.

  The New York Times editorial says that farmers, quoting the New York 
Times, farmers are the Nation's richest welfare recipients.

       Farmers are the Nation's richest welfare recipients. Full-
     time farmers typically earn four times as much as nonfarm 
     families.
       The Federal Government pays farmers and huge agribusinesses 
     not to grow crops or send food abroad. Mr. Clinton says that 
     is a nifty way to boost exports, but taxpayers who foot the 
     bill might take exception.
       The Federal program stifles food production, which jacks up 
     prices and hurts both consumers and the economy. The farm 
     program costs taxpayers about $10 billion a year and adds an 
     equal amount to food bills, driving up the price of milk, 
     fruit, sugar and many other necessities by about 10 percent.

  That quote was from the New York Times editorial, which is entitled 
``Mr. Clinton Bows to Farmers.''
  Many of those farmers live in Kansas, the State of Kansas. Can we 
send New York City's poor to Kansas to share in the welfare checks that 
the farmers get? Our welfare checks average no more than $600 for a 
family of three a month, so surely the welfare recipients in New York 
would greatly benefit if they could get welfare checks at the level of 
the checks that are being received by the farmers in Kansas.
  Mr. Giuliano should know that there is nowhere else for the poor to 
go. They will not take them in Kansas; in Texas; in Groton, CT; in 
Marietta, GA. They have a right to stay in New York City. The 
inhabitants have a right, the citizens have rights.
  If a government cannot take care of the needs of their citizens, they 
cannot provide decent services, they cannot provide educational 
opportunities, then that government should resign. The public officials 
who cannot do that should resign. Do not exhort the people to leave. 
That is barbaric. That is not ethnic cleansing, it is economic 
cleansing, since you want all the poor to go.
  First we had the tax on the illegal immigrants. Then we had a tax on 
the legal immigrants. Now we want all poor people to go. That is 
barbaric. We must resist that kind of barbarism.
  In closing, what I am saying is that the budget process is taking 
place at every level in the country. In New York State, the budget was 
supposed to be completed and submitted on April 1. Now it is more than 
a month later and it is not completed because there is a struggle under 
way in New York State between the elite oppressive minority--you have 
the same elite oppressive minority with the philosophy that the poor 
are expendable, that you can throw overboard certain people. You have 
the high-technology barbarians in control in New York State, and in New 
York City, in city hall you have the same philosophy in the mayor.
  Yes, there are budget cuts that have to be made. Yes, there is a need 
to balance the budget, and Democrats should not get off the hook. We 
should come forward with proposals about how the budget should be 
balanced. We should not hesitate to talk about revenue.
  In New York City, the State has always robbed the city blind in terms 
of revenue, doing very little for the city. They have taken far too 
much from the city. In New York City, you have a Port of New York City, 
a Port Authority of New York-New Jersey which owns all the most 
valuable land where the airport is and the ships dock. Revenue that 
ought to be going to the city is going to the Port Authority. That 
ought to be corrected.
  In New York City, you have two- and three-family homeowners who pay 
taxes which are far lower, about one-fourth the taxes that are being 
paid by the people who live in the suburbs surrounding New York. You 
have a number of ways that revenue could be increased.
  Yes, we do need to decrease expenditures. Yes, we do need to adjust 
programs. There is not a program that has ever been invented that could 
not be trimmed, could not be adjusted, could not be refined. All that 
should take place in an atmosphere of an evolutionary process, and not 
a revolutionary process which says that ``We are going to destroy, we 
are going to slash and burn, we are going to have a blitzkrieg attack 
on all the social programs that were invented, that were developed over 
the last 60 years.''
  We do not need to go into the budget process next week with so much 
dread, so much fear, so much foreboding. We do not have to look forward 
to a process that is going to tear down and wreck the best that America 
has ever built.
                              {time}  1415

  It could be very different. We could go forward with a philosophy of 
FDR ringing in our ears. There is nothing radical or new. The ``FDR's 
Economic Bill of Rights,'' I ran across it in a magazine the other day, 
and I will just close with this. Franklin Delano Roosevelt said many 
years ago:

       In our day these economic truths have become accepted as 
     self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of 
     Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can 
     be established for all regardless of station, or race or 
     creed.
       Among these are:
       The right to a useful and remunerative job in the 
     industries, or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
       The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and 
     clothing and recreation;
       The right of farmers to raise and sell their products at a 
     return which will give them and their families a decent 
     living;
       The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade 
     in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and 
     domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
       The right of every family to a decent home;
       The right of adequate medical care and the opportunity to 
     achieve and enjoy good health;
       The right of adequate protection from the economic fears of 
     old age, and sickness, and accident and unemployment;
       And finally, the right to a good education.

  All of these ideas were espoused by Franklin Roosevelt many years 
ago. You have heard the Speaker of this House quote Roosevelt and speak 
of him admirably as a person who created new order in our society. Why 
does he want to tear down an order that was created by Franklin 
Roosevelt as we go forward in the budget process and appropriations 
process? This Nation is great because carefully, painstakingly we built 
a system that demonstrated we care about everybody in America. Let us 
not let the oppressive elite minority destroy what has been put there 
by and for a caring majority.

                          ____________________