[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 101 (Tuesday, June 20, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H6147-H6153]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                    STATE OF EMERGENCY IN GOVERNMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1996, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is recognized for 1 
hour as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, there is a state of emergency with respect to 
decisionmaking right here in this capital right now, and there are 
large numbers who do not recognize the fact that there is a state of 
emergency.
  We are faced with an unprecedented situation. Government is about to 
make a dramatic change, and most people, most groups who are going to 
be victimized by this dramatic change, do not quite seem to understand 
that there is no miracle in the offing, nothing will save us from the 
kind of decisionmaking that is taking place now which will result in 
some devastating cuts in program that benefit large numbers of the 
American people.
  There is a state of emergency, and we should understand that there is 
a state of emergency. Those who do not understand that we are caught up 
in extremism, driven by the radical right, public policy is being 
driven toward a dangerous cliff. We are going to go over that cliff if 
we do not summon our forces and begin to fight back and understand the 
kind of problem we face.
  To approach extremism and to try to combat extremism with moderation 
is to guarantee defeat. We must summon up the same kind of intensity 
that is being summoned against us. We must defend ourselves with the 
same kind of intensity.
  Let us take a look at the budget making process that is now begun. We 
have already passed the House of Representatives budget. The ruling 
majority, the Republicans, have passed a budget already. The Senate has 
passed a budget, and the Senate and House budgets do not differ 
dramatically. There are draconian cuts in both budgets.
  Granted, the Senate's wisdom seems to be to move much slower than the 
House budget, and that is under negotiation now, the House budget 
versus the Senate budget, two Republican majorities negotiating with 
each other.
  But there is extremism in both. Never before in the history of the 
country, this Nation has never seen before such drastic changes being 
pushed over such a short period of time.
  There is a document that was issued by the Republican majority in the 
House called ``Cutting Government,'' and I have it in my hand. Cutting 
Government was issued, and it is an indication of what was passed in 
the Republican majority's budget in the House of Representatives. 
Cutting Government summarizes extreme changes that are being proposed, 
extreme, and the sooner we all understand it, the better we will be 
able to marshal some kind of appropriate defense.
  Let me just read the first paragraph of the Cutting Government 
document. It reads as follows: ``The House committee on the budget 
proposes to terminate, block grant or privatize three Cabinet 
departments, 284 programs, 69 
[[Page H 6148]] commissions, 13 agencies, and privatize three 
commercial activities in our 1996 budget resolution.''
  That is the opening statement of the document, Cutting Government, 
from the Republican majority in the House of Representatives.
                              {time}  1915

  Unprecedented. Where else in the history of the Nation have we seen a 
Congress propose such drastic, reckless changes in such a short period 
of time, to cut 284 programs, to eliminate three Cabinet departments? 
Sixty-nine commissions are to be eliminated, 13 agencies to be 
eliminated, all in a 2-year period--really it is 1 year because a 
budget is a 1-year document. It is hoped that once they accomplish 
this, you know, that this is the worst possible scenario, that next 
year there would not be another budget which will make additional 
draconian cuts. I do not know what else there will be left to cut in 
such an extreme matter. They have set out a pattern which I assume will 
be followed next year, and I assume the pattern will be followed for 
the next 7 years because there is a 7-year budget that has been 
proposed. These are extreme measures, you know.
  They do not like to hear the word ``extreme'' around here. They do 
not like to have recognized exactly what is happening. These extreme 
measures are camouflaged under talk that makes it appear that this is 
all a matter of fiscal responsibility, that we are going to save the 
Government from bankruptcy. These extreme measures will hurt a great 
deal. They will hurt people in my district; they will hurt people right 
across the country.
  These are extreme measures and represent war being declared on 
certain categories of people in our society. They do not like to hear 
class warfare. The Republicans are quick to respond to any notion of an 
attack on the working class. This is an attack on the working poor, it 
is an attack on the working middle class, it is an attack on people who 
are not working and poor. That is class warfare; it is clearly an 
attack.
  You know, it is a blitzkrieg; that is a German word related to World 
War II that nobody wants to hear either. I am not implying that the 
Republicans are Fascists or Nazis. It is a figure of speech that I use 
when I say that they have launched a blitzkrieg because of the rapidity 
with which they are moving, and the destructive nature, the all-
encompassing destructive nature, of the budget process that has been 
launched by the Republicans: 284 programs to be eliminated, 3 Cabinet 
departments to be eliminated, 69 commissions to be eliminated, 13 
agencies to be eliminated; if this is not a blitzkrieg, then what is a 
blitzkrieg? You know, if this is not devastation that goes deep and is 
quite thorough, and to do it all within one budget over a 2-year 
period, 7 year period, to move that rapidly; if that is not a 
blitzkrieg, if that figure of speech is not appropriate, I do not know 
what figure of speech would be appropriate.
  On the other hand there are people who say we should not use such 
harsh language, that we are overdoing it when we talk about the fact 
that we are faced with an unprecedented situation in our history. We 
should respond in a more genteel terms. We should be civil in the face 
of uncivil actions that are uncivilly perpetrated against us. We should 
ignore the Speaker of the House when the Speaker of the House states 
that politics is war without blood.
  The Speaker of the House says politics is war without blood. He has 
proceeded to set a tone in the House which runs parallel to that 
statement. It has been pretty clear that we have been pursuing business 
here in a manner which very much resembles war. War requires enemies. 
War requires losers. I do not think that we define what happens here in 
the Congress, or here in Washington in the past, as being war without 
blood. We have defined it as being a
 contest between two responsible parties. Whether they agree or not, at 
least we did not consider that there must be ultimate losers, 
casualties. We did not put it in terms that made it appear that, you 
know, the Nation is going to suffer, a large segment is going to 
suffer, as a result of one group trampling over another.

  I said before we have been engaged in what I would consider to be a 
noble contest between two political parties. The contest is to 
determine who can provide the best possible government or what 
compromise will result--will result because you have two competing 
parties who both have the goal of improving the Government, of 
promoting the general welfare, of establishing an environment where 
people can pursue happiness in the easiest possible way with the least 
amount of impediments.
  I assume that a noble contest is what we were talking about, and the 
tone of our deliberations in the House and the tone of the deliberation 
of the Government in Washington are affected by the fact that many of 
the leaders in the past have considered us to be engaged in a noble 
contest to determine how best we can improve our Government to keep the 
great American experiment going forward and getting better all the 
time. But Speaker Gingrich has defined what is happening here as war 
without blood, and the attack launched by the budget process is a 
blitzkrieg, it is a war, it is scorched-earth warfare when you 
eliminate three Cabinet departments, you eliminate 284 programs, you 
eliminate 69 commissions, 13 agencies, and you privatize three major 
commercial activities all in a very short period of time. That is war, 
and, if we do not recognize, if the opposition, the Democrats, loyal 
opposition, does not recognize it, then they are doomed to failure.
  The great majority of the American people are going to be impacted, 
and the majority will be hurt, an elite group in the minority will 
benefit greatly from this blitzkrieg. They will be the winners. The 
majority of Americans will be hurt. They are going to be hurt, and we 
are going to have to hide our heads in shame if we do not offer a 
better defense.
  We may lose; after all, the Republicans have the numbers in the 
Senate, they have the numbers they need in the House of 
Representatives. We may lose, but at least we ought to rally ourselves 
and not fool ourselves about what we are confronted with and make an 
appropriate response.
  You know, to take another analogy from World War II, my father, who 
gave me the name ``Major,'' so you know he must have been interested in 
war and soldiering a great deal; he followed events in World War II 
very closely in the newspaper and magazines. He only had an eighth-
grade education, so he did not read scholarly journals, but I think he 
was as smart as anybody I ever met. He followed it very closely, and he 
explained to me at one point the tragedy of the blitzkrieg launched by 
Hitler against Poland and how they had these Panzer tanks. Hitler and 
his army mechanized, modernized, moving toward Warsaw, and the Polish 
sent the cavalry out to meet him. Poland sent men on horses, 
beautifully trained horses, beautifully trained riders, the old glory 
of the aristocracy riding with him. They sent horses out to meet tanks, 
and that is the danger that I see developing here, is that we are 
allowing ourselves to be lulled to sleep by some kind of gas or some 
kind of noxious fumes. Something is affecting us in ways which are 
inexplicable. We do not understand what we are up against. We are ready 
to send beautiful horses out to meet tanks, murderous tanks.
  On the one hand we say, well, you have the Republicans propose this 
reckless budget, extreme budget. They cannot get away with that. But 
the Republicans in the House control the votes, have enough votes to do 
it. The Republicans in the Senate have enough votes to do it. That is 
on the one hand.
  On the other hand you say, well, you got a Democratic President. A 
Democratic President will not let him get away with that, but recently 
the Democratic President says that he is in favor of moving in the same 
direction, not just moving toward a balanced budget, and wisely so. He 
makes a difference, that we will do it in 10 years, but the only 
difference that he proposes, that the cuts be a little less drastic, 
that the blitzkrieg be joined, not opposed, you know.
  That is on the one hand, the other hand, and you know there is just 
no other hand if the President, the Democrat who has the power to 
veto--all expecting the veto of the President to put a check on 
extremism; the veto of the President will slow down this blitzkrieg. 
The veto of the President will [[Page H 6149]] force a halt to the 
rapid movement toward the cliff, the dangerous cliff that our public 
policy is moving toward. The veto of the President would make it 
necessary to negotiate. There will be no unconditional surrender, but a 
negotiation which would at least preserve some of what is under attack 
here.
  But the President has said that he will join the rapid movement, and 
the only difference is he wants to slow it down or he wants to spread 
it out. That is the only difference. The President wants to balance the 
budget, and he refuses to talk about the one item that we know one 
could use to balance the budget in 7 years or in 10 years. You could 
balance the budget; we have proven that. The Congressional Black Caucus 
budget, which was introduced here on the floor here, said, if you 
insist on balancing the budget, we think it is very unwise to try and 
do it in 7 years, but whether you do it in 7 or 10 years, the way to 
balance the budget without forcing the draconian cuts in Medicare, the 
draconian cuts in Medicaid, the terrible cuts in education, without 
cutting the throat of the effort to improve education, which is so 
vital to our society, without those drastic moves you could still 
balance the budget if you would raise the percentage of the tax burden 
which is borne by the corporations. You could raise the percentage of 
the tax burden borne by the corporations, and there would be very 
little pain out there because the corporations are making tremendous 
amounts of money in our society at this point. Our economy is booming. 
Part of our economy is booming. The Wall Street economy where 
investments are made and the profits of corporations are up; that side 
of the economy is booming.
  There is another side of the economy, or another economy totally at 
this point which I call the job economy which has no relationship 
between the--there is no relationship between the booming Wall Street 
economy and the job economy. The job economy is suffering from less and 
less unemployment in certain places is quite high. Underemployment is 
rampant all over the country. People are working for less. When they 
have the good fortune to find a job and have a job, they are working 
for less, even in the ranks of middle management. They are working for 
much less. The downsizing, the streamlining, has driven down the 
quality of life and the standard of living of large numbers of middle-
class people who seemed quite safe before in our economy. The very 
industries which would drive the need for people in an information 
economy, an information-driven economy, that industry is automating so 
fast, streamlining its communications technologies and its 
computerization that large numbers of employees who were needed before 
are not needed now, or they can take portions of their operations 
overseas for cheaper and cheaper labor, and the cheap labor is not 
necessarily only the children in Bangladesh who make sneakers and who 
are forced to work long hours. Cheap labor sometimes are computer 
specialists, people who are programing computers in India and who are 
college graduates or from Eastern Europe who are college graduates, and 
they work for half of what the computer specialists or the computer 
programmers would make here in this country.
  So there are many ways in which our industries, American industries, 
can earn huge profits without improving the job situation. So we need a 
program to correct that. We need to deal with how Americans are going 
to protect their standard of living the way the Japanese protect their 
standard of living, the way the Germans protect their standard of 
living. We need a program.
                              {time}  1930

  Before we get to a comprehensive program to do that, one obvious step 
we should take is to take advantage of the fact that our corporations 
are making a lot of money. The profits are up very high, and yet they 
are paying less of a tax burden than families and individuals.
  In 1943, and I have a chart here which shows this, the Congressional 
Budget Office uses the same statistics. I think this chart came out of 
one of their documents, the Office of Management and Budget, nobody 
disputes the fact that these are facts. In 1943, 39.8 percent, of the 
tax burden, the revenue that runs our Government, came from 
corporations, corporate income taxes. In 1943, 39.8 percent almost 40 
percent. At the same time, in 1943, 27 percent of the tax burden, the 
revenues that run the country, came from individuals and families.
  I have repeated these facts several times here in this Chamber. You 
cannot repeat it too much, because at some time the American people 
have to wake up; at some time they have to realize they have a good 
reason to be angry. At some point they have to know where to direct 
their anger appropriately. The anger should be directed at the sellout 
that has taken place in this Congress, in this city, Washington, since 
1943. The tax burden that is borne by the corporations dropped all the 
way from 39.8 percent, almost 40 percent, to 8 percent in 1982, 8 
percent. It went all the way down from 40 percent to 8 percent in 1982.
  Now, how did that happen, while at the same time the individual share 
of the tax burden went from 27 percent in 1943 to 48 percent in 1982? 
And in 1995 we are looking at a situation where the individual taxes, 
individual and family income taxes, are still at 43.7 percent in terms 
of the total amount of revenue raised to run the country, while the 
corporate share is down still, not quite as low as it was under Ronald 
Reagan in 1982, not at 8 percent, but it is at 11 percent. Eleven 
percent.
  Now, if you want to balance the budget, then I was waiting for the 
President to say, ``Let's balance the budget by closing the corporate 
loopholes, by getting rid of the corporate welfare, by restoring a 
balance in the tax burden. Let's do it over 8 years.'' You could 
balance the budget and meet that need, if we consider that to be such a 
great need, without cutting Medicare 1 cent, without cutting Medicaid.
  Medicare and Medicaid should go back to where Hillary Clinton placed 
them. In her health plan we were going to make cuts in health care, but 
we were going to make them in the context of a plan which would provide 
better health care for all Americans, and, most of all, would cover all 
Americans. Within the context of that kind of plan, we were also going 
to be able to slow the rate of the rise in the cost of health care, 
which is what is being talked about now. The cuts being proposed now 
are being proposed without any discussion of providing health care to 
all Americans who are uncovered, or without any discussion of how 
health care can be improved.
  What am I talking about? I am saying that on the one hand, the 
Republicans in the House and the Senate propose to recklessly balance 
the budget by making cuts that are going to make large numbers of 
Americans suffer, by making cuts that are going to leave a mark on our 
infrastructure, our social infrastructure as well as our physical 
infrastructure, that will make it very difficult to overcome in future 
years. All of this is being done very rapidly, and nothing seems to be 
in place to stop it. The Republicans are moving rapidly, and the 
President now has joined the flow in the same direction, instead of 
being the opposition force, the one remaining opposition force we could 
rely on, the veto of the President.
  I projected on the floor of the House a few weeks ago that we would 
have a situation where the President would stand between the American 
majority, the caring majority of Americans who are going to be hurt by 
these cuts, he would stand between them and the Republican blitzkrieg, 
and force the issue by vetoing the appropriations bill. He cannot veto 
the budget. That will be decided in the next few days probably by the 
House and Senate, and the budget will be there. But the budget only 
sets the upper limits as to how each Committee on Appropriations can 
operate.
  The appropriations bills, one by one, go to the President. The 
President can veto them. The power to override the vetoes does not 
reside in either House, I do not believe. The Senate could override the 
vetoes and the House could not. The Democrats have enough coherence, 
unity, enough strength left to be able to assist the President in the 
veto process.
  Then negotiations would be forced. You have to have negotiations. We 
all remember the famous negotiations at the White House when we had 
gridlock
 
[[Page H 6150]]

with George Bush. George Bush, facing a democratically controlled House 
of Representatives and Senate, they had to negotiate a settlement. Each 
side had to give and take, and you had a balance coming out that nobody 
was really that happy with, but at least it did not wreck the country 
  overnight. It was not extremism of the kind we are faced with here.So 
if we do not have the hope that the President will stand against the 
blitzkrieg of the Republicans, then what do we have? All we have left 
is a possibility that the American people can be mobilized and public 
opinion can be so focused and so determined and communicated in such a 
forceful way that the President will wake up and change his course.
  Our hope is we can have the executive branch of Government stand firm 
against these draconian, disastrous cuts that will drive our Nation 
over the cliff into an abyss that will be very difficult to get out of.
  Let me just go into a little more detail, because people still do not 
believe that we are in a crisis. Nobody seems to understand what is in 
plain English. This is not so subtle. There is nothing hidden. It is 
all quite out in the open. There is no conspiracy. Republicans cannot 
be accused of a conspiracy. It is right out there in the open. 
Everybody has a copy of this list, ``Cutting Government.''
  Departments to be eliminated: The Department of Commerce, the 
Department of Education, the Department of Energy. They are to be 
eliminated. That is the Republican proposal. I understand the Senate 
only proposes to eliminate the Department of Commerce. We can be 
hopeful in the negotiations between the Senate and the House that we 
are going to save, if not all three of these departments, at least two 
of them.
  But that is a fact now. It is a very hard fact. One-half of the 
legislative process, one-half of the legislative branch of Government, 
is on record already to want to eliminate the Department of Commerce, 
the Department of Education, and the Department of Energy.
  They want to eliminate 13 agencies. I invite anybody who wants to go 
along with me to take out a pencil and write it down. If you do not 
have the list, I will give it all to you in detail. Details sometimes 
are very important. Maybe the details will awaken the American people 
to the fact we have a crisis. We have a state of emergency in decision 
making.
  The decisions that are going to be made in the next few months in 
Washington are going to leave us in a situation that will create 
massive amounts of pain and suffering. The decisions that are made are 
going to be very difficult to undo in the next few years. Something 
must be done to rally the American people, the public opinion, and 
communicate that to the executive branch, that they have to stand 
against this blitzkrieg that is going to make for so much pain and 
suffering.
  Agencies eliminated, 13. The Economic Development Administration, the 
Travel and Tourism Administration, International Trade Administration, 
Minority Business Development Administration, Maritime Administration, 
Federal Transit Administration, Agency for Health Care Policy Research, 
Corporation for National and Community Service, which was created by 
the National Community Service Act just 2 years ago, the Corporation 
for Public Broadcasting will be phased out over 3 years, Administrative 
Conference of United States, Legal Services Corporation, which has 
provided legal services for poor people since Lyndon Johnson created 
the Legal Services Program during the Great Society years in the 
1960's. That is going to be wiped out completely, eliminated like all 
the other agencies that I have just named. The State Justice Institute, 
the Office of Technology Assessment. All eliminated.
  Maybe this is too high up for most of you who are listening. You 
cannot comprehend what it means, because these are big agencies still. 
They are pretty big. Maybe you want to go to another level and let's 
talk about the 284 programs to be eliminated. The Housing Investment 
Guarantee Program, USDA's Strategic Space Plan, FMF, loans to Greece 
and Turkey, assistance to Eastern Europe and Russia, East-West Center, 
North-South Center, Office of the American Workplace, the SBA Tree 
Planting Program, DOT's Minority Resource Development Program, highway 
demonstration projects, mass transit operating assistance, Air Traffic 
Control Revitalization Act.
  There is an article today on the front page of one of the magazines 
that asks is the Government doing all they can to protect us in the sky 
when we are flying? Their answer is no, the Government is not. We are 
going to eliminate a portion of the effort to make it
 safer for us to travel by air.

  The National Highway Institute, the Office of Physical Fitness and 
Sports. Under Ronald Reagan I think we had a fitness program that was 
launched that has been quoted over and over again as having reaped 
great gains in terms of improvements in health and the movement in the 
direction which would lessen the cost of health care by having a more 
fit population.
  There is an assumption that any small program, because it is small, 
is undesirable. Some of the programs I am reading here are small, and 
they are deemed to be automatically undesirable and unproductive 
because they are small. There is nothing rational about that. That is 
totally irrational.
  I do not say that some of this reasoning does not come from the 
administration. The White House, the executive branch, started looking 
at everything small and deciding that we would consolidate. But every 
time they consolidate by bringing them together, one office under one 
umbrella, they would eliminate some of the funding, which means that 
consolidation was really a way to cut out some of the programs.
  It is like saying that fingers on your hand are undesirable and no 
good, unproductive, because they are smaller than the hand. We would be 
better off if we had just one lump here, consolidation. Let's 
consolidate all this stuff, and you have it all in one lump, and that 
is a great improvement automatically.
  Well, the animals on the earth that do not have the kind of finger 
separation and these smaller items here are not able to compete at all 
with the manual dexterity of the species homo sapiens. God knew what he 
was doing, and can we not follow the example? We make the assumption 
because the fingers are smaller than the hand, we would rather 
consolidate it in order to improve it. Many of these small programs are 
far more effective and far more beneficial than large programs. The 
cost benefits ratio for what we pay for these small programs as 
taxpayers, we get a far greater benefit out of them than you get from 
some of the better known, larger programs that are being protected, of 
course.
  The VISTA Program, volunteers in this country, originally created to 
sort of parallel the Peace Corps, where you would have volunteers in 
this country. Senior Volunteer Corps, Retired Senior Volunteer Corps, 
the Foster Grandparent Program, Senior Companion Program, Senior 
Demonstration Program, these programs are being eliminated because they 
are very small. They are very tiny, but they are very beneficial and 
nobody ever argues at any hearing or markup that the programs do not 
work.
                              {time}  1945

  They just are small, and they are going to be eliminated because they 
happen to be too small.
  Goals 2000, State and local education programs. Goals 2000 national 
programs, Goals 2000, parental assistance, small efforts in the 
Department of Education that represent a great deal of time, energy, 
brainpower, devotion, patience, Goals 2000 resulted from a long effort 
that began under Ronald Reagan when he commissioned a group to study 
the state of American education, public education. They came back with 
a report entitled ``A Nation at Risk.'' ``A Nation at Risk'' said that 
we are at risk in the modern world of not being able to compete 
globally with our competitors in trade, not being able to in technology 
or the use of technology match our competitors and produce the kind of 
products, the quality of products at the cost level necessary to be 
able to maintain our leadership in the world.
  Goals 2000 is a result of a long process begun then. First, ``A 
Nation at Risk'' report was issued by Ronald Reagan, and then George 
Bush came along and issued a position statement [[Page H 6151]] called 
American 2000. President Bush called a summit of Governors in Virginia, 
and the Governors decided to establish a six-point program, six goals 
for education. These are very, very energetic, knowledgeable people who 
participated in this process. More important than anything else, they 
were elected by the American people. They participated in the process 
together.
  It was not to the credit of President Bush, it was not the White 
House handing down something from Olympia and expecting all the States 
to comply. There was instead a participation of all existing Governors, 
including Governor Bill Clinton. So when Governor Bill Clinton became 
President, he was in a position to follow through. There was continuity 
from a Republican President to a Democratic President on the all-
important matter of education.
  Yes, the emphasis was different in terms of the great emphasis on 
vouchers and privatization of education that was written into the 
American 2000 program by President Bush and Secretary Alexander. That 
emphasis was not there in Goals 2000. But much of what was in America 
2000 under George Bush was retained in Goals 2000, especially the 
standard setting.
  There was agreement, Republican and Democrats all Governors, that you 
need to have some standards set. You need to have standards set with 
respect to the kind of curriculum, the quality of curriculum, the 
purpose and goals of curriculum. You need to have standards set in 
terms of how you were going to assess the performance of students, and 
they did not decide this among the Governors but in the Education and 
Labor Committee. We introduced a third set of standards called 
opportunity to learn standards that in addition to standards for 
curriculum and standards for the assessment of the performance of 
students, tests, there also should be standards for opportunity to 
learn, all the young people in the States given an opportunity to 
learn.
  All of these standards were set and would be voluntary. No State 
would have to do anything. The State has an option. The State would not 
have to accept the standards. The State would not have to accept 
standards for curriculum, standards for opportunity to learn. It is all 
voluntary, but even that, by the way, has been quite successful.
  There has been a national math curriculum issue, a national arts 
curriculum issue. The curriculum standards have moved forward. There is 
a national history curriculum in the works now, a lot of controversy 
about it, but it is moving forward. And for the first time the effort 
to improve American schools is on a systematic upward, forward, 
progressive path. But now we are going to eliminate that effort. The 
heart of the effort will be eliminated in this budget that eliminates 
284 programs.
  Education is a particular target. If you recall, when I read the 
names of the departments to be eliminated, education was one of the 
departments, one of the three departments proposed by the Republicans 
in the House to be eliminated. That alone, when a civilized nation in 
1995, given where the world is, how complicated it is, how competitive 
it is, when a civilized nation decides it wants to eliminate its 
Department of Education, then you have a state of emergency right 
there, even if it did no further damage.
  If no other reckless proposals were made, that alone is enough for 
the American people to understand that something is seriously wrong 
here in Washington. How can any civilized nation say it does not want 
to provide some kind of direction and some kind of effort to influence 
the way education is undertaken in the whole nation.
  We have a situation where local and state governments are primarily 
responsible for education. They always have been. There was an 
editorial in The Hill last week where one of the Members of the 
Education and Labor Committee argued that we have spent more and more 
on education, and education has gotten worse; and the Federal 
Government, therefore, should get out of the business of education. We 
spend more on education, but the money has come from the States and the 
local levels, and the States and the local governments have been in 
charge.
  Local school boards and the States have been in charge of education. 
They have the power, $360 to $380 billion. That is a lot of money spent 
on education last year. But only about 7 percent of that was Federal 
money. The rest of it came from the States and the localities.
  So 93 percent of the dollars, the cost is covered by State and local 
government. They have 93 percent of the power. The Federal Government 
is a small bit player in education. The largest program, the chapter 1 
program, is a $7 billion program out of that total of $360 to $380 
billion. So the Federal Government cannot be blamed if we have spent 
more money on education and got poor results because it has been a bit 
player, a tiny player. Its influence is at this point quite minimal. I 
think it would be very appropriate, highly desirable if the Federal 
Government's role in education increased to about 25 percent and the 
federal funding for education moved in the same way.
  If we were funding 25 percent of the total education budget of the 
country and we had 25 percent of the decisionmaking power, education 
would still be very much under the control of local governments, local 
school boards and the states. It would still be 75 percent. Anybody who 
has 75 percent of the power is in control.
  The Federal Government would have some influence and that is all it 
has ever had, a tiny amount of influence. So if education is in 
trouble, things have gone wrong, it is not because the Federal 
Government has had a major role and it is the cause. The Federal 
Government has come to this situation very late in the history of this 
nation. State governments have always been in control.
  Even this tiny effort now would be wiped out in the pending budget. 
Education for disadvantaged concentration grants, wiped out; education 
for disadvantaged targeted grants wiped out; impact aid, wiped out; 
education infrastructure, small program which was to begin the process 
of providing some help to have poor local school boards to remove 
asbestos or lead where it is a problem and make schools more healthy in 
areas where they do not have the money and will never be able to raise 
the money to do it so that kids would go to safe schools or schools 
that are not so life threatening as lead poisoning and asbestos are to 
young children, that is eliminated.
  Magnet schools assistance, eliminated; drop out prevention 
demonstrations, eliminated; bilingual education instruction services, 
eliminated; Gallaudet University will not be eliminated but they must 
combine four programs into one. National Institutes for the Deaf 
combined three programs into one. This is small efforts for people with 
disabilities, and they are squeezed also.
  The Eisenhower Leadership Program, the minority teacher recruitment, 
minority science improvement, innovative projects for community 
service, these are all tiny programs, but they have gone and assumed 
that because they are so tiny they are undesirable, unproductive and 
must be eliminated.
  Federal TRIO programs are tampered with, five programs are 
eliminated: National Science Scholars, National Academy of Science, 
Space and Technology, Teacher Corps. I am not reading them all. I am 
just reading a few of those on the list. Harris fellowships, Javits 
fellowships, graduate assistance in areas of national need. These are 
all graduate programs that will be fashioned by members of the 
Education and Labor Committee in response to longstanding needs. They 
are tiny programs, but they meet specific kinds of needs that have been 
identified for more aid in certain areas.
  Science is one of those areas. We need more aid for students who are 
studying, minority students studying science. Javits fellowships were a 
different kind of effort to aid minority students, not minority 
students, but students in general. Graduate assistance in areas of 
national need says it exactly as it is, areas of national need 
identified, public health people, people who could work with children 
with disabilities, various areas where you identify national need, 
there was an effort to target the funding. All of that eliminated. Too 
small.
  Nobody has ever said it does not work, they just said, it must go.
  Howard University academic program, Howard University endowment [[Page H 
6152]] program, elimination. We are talking about wiping out the Howard 
University academic program, Howard university research, Howard 
University Hospital, Howard University Clinical Center, Howard 
University construction, all that wiped out, about $110 million wiped 
out of Howard University's budget, which wipes out Howard University, 
because Howard University is the only federally funded university for 
primarily, it was created primarily, after the Civil War, for the newly 
freed slaves. But it serves students of all colors, races and creeds 
now, but it is federally funded primarily.
  It does receive funds from some other sources, but only tiny amounts. 
So when you take away federal funds from Howard University, you are 
saying we are wiping out Howard University. That is a serious action. 
That is certainly a state of emergency for Howard University, a state 
of emergency for education.
  Star Schools, eliminated; Ready to Learn Television, the whole area 
of technology, the use of mass media to improve education, to lower the 
cost of education, all of that discussed for many years in the 
Education and Labor Committee, the old Education and Labor Committee, 
which is now called the Committee on Economic and Educational 
Opportunities, the representatives that you elect, the representatives 
that you send here who are placed on authorizing committees labor to 
get the best wisdom in the country through hearings, through reading 
papers. Staff organizes legislation, and we created these programs in 
response to real needs.
  But now the power is in the Committee on the Budget and the Committee 
on Appropriations to wipe all this out, and it proceeded to destroy it. 
When I use the word blitzkrieg or scorched earth, it is quite 
appropriate. This is very thorough. This is very devastating, very 
destructive. It is public policy decisionmaking, but it is as deadly as 
knives and guns are on a smaller level.
  What is being done to our society, the torture and the maiming of our 
society is incomprehensible to most people. We do not think in those 
terms. One of the problems with the species Homo sapiens is that they 
are very physical. Species Homo sapiens only reacts to what it can see 
and feel, what our senses can identify.
  The cognitive process is more difficult to comprehend than we allow, 
and we allow it to be fooled and manipulated and misused by people who 
understand the cognitive processes better, who understand futurism and 
how to project and create new systems. And they understand the result 
of the systems that they create.
  They talk about a balanced budget amendment, but what they are doing 
is presenting a situation or creating a situation and an environment 
which will be hostile to social programs and sets up a situation which 
allows them to squeeze the social programs that they do not want out of 
existence.
                              {time}  2000

  Granted, another group could do that, and squeeze the defense 
programs and some of the undesirable programs that are being funded out 
of existence also, but the process is in the control of those who want 
to go after the programs that benefit the great majority of the 
American people.
  These people who are doing the squeezing, this list of programs to be 
eliminated and destroyed, which I will discontinue reading at this 
point, this list is promulgated by people who know very well what they 
are doing, and have targeted people programs, programs that do benefit 
the working poor, the working middle class, the poor who have no jobs, 
and large numbers of the upper middle class will also be hit.
  The professional classes will also be hit. The government workers, 
they are going after their pensions, and going to squeeze those. They 
know what they are doing. It is not by accident. Nothing has happened 
by accident. It is clearly understood what the process is.
  When they decide to do something in the opposite direction, which is 
clearly going to cost a lot of money, but they want to do it, they can 
be very reckless about doing it, very open.
  Mr. Speaker, I think that the discussion on the budget and the 
discussion on appropriations and the discussion about where the country 
is going with respect to fiscal responsibility, what the danger of 
bankruptcy might be, that discussion ought to be divided into two 
parts: before the B-2 bomber vote that took place last week, and after 
the B-2 bomber vote. The B-2 bomber is a defining point in this whole 
discussion. The funding for the B-2 bomber, the authorizing of the 
funding for the B-2 bomber, was on the floor. There was an amendment to 
eliminate the funding for the B-2 bomber.
  What is the B-2 bomber? It is a dream machine for people who want to 
sneak into areas through a stealth process with a bomber and drop 
bombs. It was originally conceived to go into the Soviet Union during a 
nuclear war and drop bombs on selected targets, and it would do this 
during a nuclear war by using the state-of-the-art stealth technology. 
It would not be observed. It could sneak in there and do it. With the 
whole world exploding around us, we would send this bomber in there and 
it would finish off targets in the Soviet Union.
  We say we still need it. It is under production already. The item on 
the floor was whether or not they should add additional B-2 bombers. 
The cost was about $30 billion, when we add the production costs and 
operations costs. The figure of $30 billion sticks out. We are talking 
about $30 billion in the budget.
  Mr. Speaker, I am saying the discussion before and after the B-2 
bomber tells us a great deal, because there were large numbers of 
people who insisted that they came here to cut government, to get 
government off the backs of people, to make government more effective 
and more efficient.
  There was a discussion on the floor of the B-2 bomber costing $30 
billion. Thirty billion dollars can buy a lot of hospital beds, it can 
buy a lot of school lunches. Thirty billion dollars can build beautiful 
new schools where there are unsafe schools with asbestos and lead 
poisoning. Thirty billion dollars can accomplish a great deal in our 
society in any of the areas of need.
  However, $30 billion was on the floor, and the deliberation was shall 
we go ahead with this madness and keep this $30 billion in the budget, 
or shall we
 be reasonable and sincere and show that we are honest about wanting to 
improve the efficiency of government, about wanting to save the Nation 
from bankruptcy, about wanting to keep our children from having to bear 
the burden of paying the debt we build up. All the rhetoric that has 
come around the balanced budget and the need to move forward to make 
these draconian cuts was on the table.

  The B-2 bomber, the Pentagon says they do not need it. The Secretary 
of Defense said ``We do not need the B-2 bomber.'' Nobody in the 
military wants the B-2 bomber. The President does not want the B-2 
bomber. The people who are the experts, people who have to fight the 
wars, say ``We do not need a B-2 bomber.'' Yet, $30 billion is on the 
table that we can realize and regain to do other things with, to go 
toward helping the deficit, to keep our children from having to pay 
these gigantic debts in the future.
  All of the rhetoric could be realized. All of the things promised in 
the rhetoric could be realized to a great degree with $30 billion on 
the floor. The military does not want it, the Air Force does not want 
it, the Secretary of Defense does not want it; yet, the majority of the 
people on the floor of the House of Representatives voted to keep the 
$30 billion in the budget for the B-2 bomber.
  Before the B-2 you might have said ``Some of these people are really 
sincere, especially the freshmen.'' The freshmen came with their eyes 
popping with sincerity, bright with sincerity. They said ``We do not 
care what it is, if it is wasteful, we will eliminate it.''
  Here is an example on the floor, a concrete physical example, a $30 
billion example of what you can do to help eliminate waste, make 
government more effective and efficient, and reduce the deficit. All 
the objectives can be met to the tune of $30 billion on the floor. Yet, 
the vote was that the majority says ``No, we will keep the B-2 
bomber,'' for whatever reasons.
  I do not stand here to impugn the motives of my colleagues, and 
Congressmen are not in the business of explaining the votes of other 
Congress persons. They can explain their own [[Page H 6153]] vote, but 
I think you ought to call up each one who voted to keep the B-2 bomber 
to explain ``What is the magic, what is it that we cannot see through 
simple, ordinary logic?''
  There may be some special kind of reasoning and logic, or some deep-
seated wisdom that the people who voted to keep this $30 billion 
monster in the budget have that the rest of us do not have. Let them 
explain. I see no rush to explain by many who voted.
  Of course, there were people who argued on the floor that we need to 
give our troops the very best, and the stealth bomber would help make 
it safer for our fliers, et cetera, et cetera. The fliers do not say 
that. The experts in the military do not say that. The generals do not 
say that. The Secretary of Defense does not say that. They all gave 
these arguments, running counter to the people we trust and pay to run 
our defense.
  Therefore, let the B-2 bomber be the deciding point in terms of 
determining the integrity and the consistency, the truthfulness of 
anybody who stands on this floor and calls for budget cuts. Let that be 
the determining, defining moment. It is worthy of saying ``Before the 
B-2 I saw you this way. After the B-2 you are exposed.''
  Across the B-2, across the spectrum, there are some other B-2 bomber 
types of votes. We are voting to keep in the F-22, a fighter plane that 
is the most sophisticated fighter plane ever conceived. It is not
 needed, also. There are many others. Then we are going to be 
considering very soon a reorganization of the agricultural bill, 
continuation of agricultural welfare. Here you have very dishonest 
discussions about to shape up, similar to the B-2 in terms of the 
rhetoric is in one place and the action is in another.

  If we want to eliminate welfare as we have known it, if we want to 
change welfare and eliminate welfare as we know it, then let us 
eliminate agricultural welfare as we know it. From New York, Chicago, 
Los Angeles, there are thousands, millions of people who would love to 
go to Kansas and be able to enjoy the benefits that Kansas farmers 
enjoy from the taxpayers. They get $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 checks 
each year of doing nothing. They get checks for not plowing the soil, 
for not growing grain. The checks are without question. They do not 
have to prove that they are poor.
  If you go in any city and say that you are desperately poor, you have 
no other means to feed your children, then you have to fill out forms. 
You have to have an audit of your expenses. Somebody has to investigate 
you before you get a penny. The average welfare check for Aid to 
Dependent Children recipients, for a family of three, is about $300 a 
month across the Nation, it being much lower in certain places, like 
Mississippi, and higher in places like New York. However, the average 
check is $300 a month for a family of three. Yet, you have to fill out 
numerous forms, be investigated, and establish the fact that you really 
need it. There is a means test.
  There is no means testing for farmers. There is no means testing. The 
rich farmers will get the same check that the poor farmers get. There 
is no means testing. Yes, true, when Franklin Roosevelt first 
established the program there were poor farmers in the Nation, and it 
served the purpose. That is no longer the case. We have rich farmers as 
well as poor farmers getting this welfare.
  My time is up, Mr. Speaker, but my point is we are on the verge of a 
major catastrophe here in Washington. A state of emergency exists. All 
of America should wake up, particularly the caring majority, the large 
majority of people who are going to have a great deal of pain and 
suffering generated for them as a result of these terrible decisions 
that are being made here.
  I hope people understand that in the final analysis, the war that is 
raging is for us to win. We are still a majority. We are not beggars. 
We are not in a situation where we have no arms to fight back with. We 
are still a majority. The caring majority can rally its forces and 
still prevail. We have to understand first that we are in a state of 
emergency, that we are threatened, before we rally, but we can and we 
shall overcome.


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