[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 116 (Tuesday, July 18, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H7168-H7178]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           JOBS AND EDUCATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. McInnis). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.


                        turkish-occupied cyprus
  Mr. BILIRAKIS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. OWENS. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.
  Mr. BILIRAKIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York [Mr. 
Owens]. I appreciate it so very much. I will not take the full 5 
minutes.
  Mr. Speaker, as the gentlewoman from New York said, last fall, the 
President appointed Mr. Richard Beattie as special emissary to Cyprus 
to lend new impetus in resolving the Cyprus problem. Mr. Beattie, along 
with State Department Special Cyprus Coordinator, James Williams, have 
made several trips to Cyprus stressing U.S. resolve in achieving a 
lasting solution to the problems there.
  However, it is evident, Mr. Speaker, that a solution to the 21-year-
old problem on Cyprus will not be found until tensions are lessened on 
the island and the Turkish side agrees to come to the table and 
negotiate.
  I am satisfied that the Government of Cyprus remains committed to 
seeking a peaceful, just, and viable solution. The acceptance by the 
Turkish side of U.N. Resolution 939 and of Cyprus President Glafcos 
Clerides' demilitarization proposal would substantially enhance the 
prospects of a negotiated settlement.
  This past weekend, in my home in Florida, a gentleman said to me that 
in all the history of the country of Turkey, voluntary negotiations and 
agreements based on those negotiations are absent. He said, ``they 
don't negotiate.''
  I truly hope that he is wrong. Turkey has many internal problems. 
American taxpayer dollars are intended to help them with those 
problems, not to help them to wage invasions on their neighbors and to 
illegally occupy other lands. Common sense, a true caring for their own 
people, their domestic needs, and world opinion all would seem to 
dictate that Turkey would want to work things out on a problem that 
they just do not need.
  I feel that we in the Congress have a responsibility to use our 
influence to see that Cyprus is made whole again, to rescue the 
thousands of Greek-Cypriots who have become refugees in the land of 
their birth. Like those faithful Cypriots in my district and elsewhere, 
we must do our utmost in this cause.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, last week the House Appropriations 
Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education reported 
its appropriations bill for next year. The bill will be considered by 
the full committee on Thursday and by the full House next week.
  On previous occasions, Mr. Speaker, I made it clear that nothing is 
more important in this House, nothing that we contemplate and nothing 
that we legislate on is more important than jobs and education.

                              {time}  2130

  And in our complex society jobs and education are inextricably 
interwoven. We cannot really hope to have a decent job in this complex 
society unless you do have an education.
  When I came to Congress 13 years ago, I volunteered, and I wanted 
very much, to serve on the Education and Labor Committee. I thought 
that there would be a lot of competition for service on the committee 
which deals with education and jobs because in my district of course 
the most important thing that was clearly communicated to me by my 
constituents was a need for more jobs. We had one of the highest 
unemployment levels in the country concentrated in my district. People 
wanted jobs, they needed jobs, and of course, in order to qualify for 
some of the better jobs, they needed an education. I saw that right 
away. I wanted to serve on the Education and Labor Committee, and that 
was the name of the committee at that time, because of the fact that 
was the way I felt I could give the greatest amount of service to my 
constituents.
  To my great surprise I found there was no great amount of competition 
for service on the Education and Labor Committee. The smarter members 
of the freshman class when I came in all told me that the Education and 
Labor Committee is a graveyard. You cannot get any contributions for 
our campaigns by serving on the Education and Labor Committee, and, 
true to form, I found that it was easy for me to get a place on that 
committee, and I, of course, still wanted a place, but there were many 
vacancies on Education and Labor, and year after year there were 
vacancies, and people came on that committee only after they could not 
find any other place.
  But I think it was a great mistake on the part of those who chose 
that course. Nothing is more important than jobs and education. Nothing 
that we do is more important than what we do in order to encourage an 
economy which produces jobs and an economy which makes it possible for 
people to work and earn decent wages under conditions that are not 
life-threatening, under conditions that do not destroy the health of 
workers, and of course closely added to that is the need for education 
systems that allow people to qualify for these jobs, allow people to be 
able to operate and earn their own way in our complex society, and 
allow people also to meet other requirements in our very complex 
society.
  So jobs and education are very important. They are very important, 
and in the Congressional Black Caucus alternative budget the only area 
that we propose great increases in the budget, 

[[Page H 7169]]
although we were under the mandate to show a balanced budget over a 7-
year period, and we met the mandate, and we balanced the budget over a 
7-year period, we were not able to give increases elsewhere, but we did 
increase the education budget by 25 percent. We recognized that 
function 500, which is education and job training, was the area that 
had to be given priority.
  It was quite pleasant to note that the President, President Clinton, 
when he decided to announce his own 10-year budget, chose to emphasize 
and to clearly make education and job training as a priority. The 
President proposes to increase over a 10-year period by more than $40 
billion the education and job training budget. So we clearly have set 
that priority.
  We are quite distressed by the fact that the overall Republican 
budget cuts in domestic spending call for a 4-percent cut over the 4-
year period. Most programs will be cut only 4 percent if you average it
 all out. However the Republican appropriations bill shows that 
education has the lowest possible priorities because education is cut 
by 16 percent, not 4 percent, but by 16 percent, or $3.9 billion is cut 
out of funding for training and education and an additional 24 percent 
is cut out of other programs in function 500, labor programs, an 
additional $2.7 billion.

  Now what does this mean in terms of the contract for America, the 
contract on America, some of us say the contract against America? What 
is the vision of the people who are in charge? The Republican majority 
want to do what in the future? They want to do what in the present? 
They want to do what in the future which leads them to believe that 
education and job training should be assigned the lowest possible 
priorities? The Republicans have clearly said that they want to remake 
America. We are going to remake America. They are going to remake 
America this year largely through the appropriations process. They are 
not able to muster the kind of votes in the Senate that are going to 
allow them to remake America through an authorization process where 
committee by committee and bill by bill they would be able to pass a 
bill which--bills which pass the House, so they are going to do it 
through the appropriations and budget process.
  What do they do with jobs and education? Immediately they communicate 
to us that in the action taken by the Appropriations Committee the jobs 
and education are assigned a very low priority. The future of America, 
as envisioned by the Republicans in control of the House, is a future 
that does not need to have programs which provide the best possible 
education for the most people in America. The Nation does not need the 
best possible education system.
  Yes, it is true that the Federal Government does not run the 
education system in America. Everybody knows that we all agree that 
only about 7 percent of the total education budget is money that comes 
from the Federal Government. The Federal Government plays a minor role 
in education. But it is a very pivotal role, and it is a role that 
needs to be expanded, and not cut off, and not diminished.
  We have always prided ourselves on leaving education to the States 
and to the local school districts. Perhaps we have gone overboard. I 
think we have gone overboard and allowed too much to be left to the 
States and the local school boards over the years. We are not like 
France, or Great Britain, or Japan, or Germany. We do not have a highly 
centralized Department of Education running education for the whole 
country. We have never had that; there is no danger of us ever falling 
into that anytime soon in the next 100 years, I assure you, but we go 
to the other extreme. Instead of not only not having the highly 
centralized, centralized, overbearing direction of education from a 
central point, we are out of the picture too much, and the Federal 
Government has played too small a role, and for that reason our Nation 
has fallen behind in terms of the competence and productivity of its 
workers in terms of the reproduction of a labor force that is going to 
be able to meet the complexities of the future. We are in deep trouble 
because we have not played enough role. If the Federal Government were 
merely to get involved a little more, it would not hurt.
  In fact, we could easily go to the point where the Federal Government 
is supplying instead of the present 7 percent of the total education 
funding, it can supply 25 percent. In fact, we should move toward that 
goal where at least 25 percent of the total education funding in 
America is supplied by the Federal Government, and then we would have 
25 percent of the decisionmaking power. Even if we had 25 percent of 
the decisionmaking power, 75 percent of the decisionmaking power would 
still be left to the States and to the local governments. So there 
would be no domination of the Federal Government of education.
  We do not need to lessen and diminish our role in education. We need 
to increase our role in education. It is quite dangerous, any vision of 
America which says that education is not important. Well, that is the 
vision that is being offered by the present Republican majority.
  Perhaps it is because they are people whose mind-set is shaped by 
their philosophy that only an elite group can run America and only an 
elite group needs to get an education. I call them the elite minority 
that chooses to oppress the majority. Now that is a very difficult 
phenomenon in a democracy, and the great question is, Will the elite 
minority that controls the House now and controls the Senate, will an 
elite minority be able to stampede the great majority of Americans out 
there into accepting this oppression, accepting this denial of 
opportunity
 through education programs, accepting this large cut in job-training 
programs? Will the elite minority be able to stampede America, and 
divert their attention and get them interested in so many other things 
like abortion, and affirmative action, and voting rights, and various 
other immigrant-bashing, various other diversionary tactics, allow them 
to downgrade education, abandon job training, at the same time win 
votes? That is a great question; we do not know what the answer is 
going to be.

  I assume that the majority of Americans will clearly recognize the 
threat, the danger, to their own well-being of that kind of philosophy 
and an elitist group which wants to govern only for that small group. 
It is a danger to the majority. The majority certainly will have at 
their disposal the instruments for dealing with that kind of philosophy 
now that it is clearly revealed.
  It was not part of the Contract With America. Whether you like the 
Contract With America or not, in the Republican Contract With America 
they never stated we are going to downgrade the Federal involvement in 
education. They never stated we are going to give less money to job 
training, and less money to schools, and less money for drug-free 
schools and safe-schools programs. They never stated that. They never 
said we are going to cut school lunch programs. They never stated that. 
They never stated we are going to have fewer job training programs. In 
fact the impression was given that one of the things they definitely 
wanted to do was have everybody assume personal responsibility for 
themselves. The great emphasis was on reforming welfare, taking up the 
call of the President to change welfare as we know it.
  They certainly in the Contract With America said they would do 
something about welfare in terms of making people move from welfare to 
jobs, and yet the very area which allows people to move from welfare to 
jobs is the area of education and job training, and that is the area 
which the Republicans have chosen to cut the most, the most. Sixteen 
percent they are cutting in education, 24 percent in other labor and 
job-training programs, 16 percent, 24 percent, in areas where people 
need the greatest amount of help in order to become self-sufficient in 
order to be able to get off welfare, in order to, those not on welfare, 
to be able to go on and get the kind of training they need for the kind 
of highly specialized and complex jobs that are opening all the time. 
We cannot have an America that is moving forward if we do not have 
every possible opportunity to upgrade the work force, every possible 
opportunity for people to help themselves.
  Are Americans better off now than they were before the Contract With 
America started? Now that the Contract With America has been completed, 
are you better off now than you were before, or is the Republican 
concept of a Contract With America now 

[[Page H 7170]]
out of control? Have they gone into areas where the contract never 
intended to go because certain people want to get revenge on labor? 
Certain people want to experiment with their own ideas about education? 
Certain people see the Federal Government in a way of local 
experimentation that might be more advantageous for people who want to 
privatize the schools or who want to pursue certain elitist agendas 
that cannot be pursued if you have a Federal Government which is trying 
to set some standards.
  Goals 2000 is zeroed out. They do not want anything to do with Goals 
2000. Goals 2000 is now zeroed out by the Republican majority, but 
Goals 2000 was conceived of by a Republican President following the 
lead of another Republican President. The whole movement toward reform 
of the public school education began under Ronald Reagan with the 
report of ``A Nation at Risk.'' It was continued under George Bush when 
he set forth America 2000 and held a conference where he set forth six 
goals for American education.
  President Clinton was at that Governors' Conference which set those 
six goals. President Clinton has followed through from America 2000 to 
Goals 2000. If you like Goals 2000 and America 2000 side by side, you 
are going to find they have more in common, they have more 
similarities, than they have differences. One of the big differences of 
course in America 2000 President Bush was proposing vouchers and 
greater privatization of schools, and President Clinton removed that 
completely from Goals 2000, but in spirit the whole idea of 
establishing standards where every school system could use those 
standards as a model, not--there is nothing mandated about it, there is 
nothing--the Federal Government does to force anybody to do anything, 
but the Republicans want to move away from the establishment of those 
standards. There was great bipartisan agreement on the establishment of 
the standards.
  Goals 2000 went forward. It was passed, authorized, and funded with 
bipartisan support. Suddenly this new majority. The people who want to 
give us a contract have set off on a different course. They want to 
revolutionize in the wrong direction. Revolution is always a dangerous 
course. You know revolution is sometimes a necessary evil. You cannot 
change things any other way except by having a revolution.
  But even the best revolutions go wrong. Revolutions are inherently 
destructive. They move too fast so rapidly, they try to do so much, 
that inevitably they will do a lot that is wrong. Why? Why have a 
revolution in an area where we do not need a revolution, where we have 
an evolution, a steady progress. Slow but steady movement in the right 
direction is evolution.
                              {time}  2145

  We have a pretty rapid evolution in education, an improvement of 
education. So why throw in a revolution which cuts off the Federal 
involvement by cutting off all the funds for Goals 2000 and by also 
rolling back other programs like chapter 1. Been funded for more than 
25 years. Started under Lyndon Johnson to help poor school districts. 
Chapter 1, title I is now being cut drastically by the Republicans, an 
almost $1 billion cut.
  Head Start for the first time. No Republican President or Democratic 
President has ever cut Head Start, but Head Start is now being cut by 
$200 million by the majority, by the Republican majority in the latest 
proposals to come out of the subcommittee on the Labor, HHS, and 
Education appropriations. That is what we are up against.
  This Contract With America is out of control. The vision that the 
Republican majority has has to be examined and reexamined, because it 
is dangerous if it is a vision which sees education as being a low 
priority.
  The assault on education and labor certainly was not openly 
contemplated or stated as part of the Contract on America, Contract 
With America. The contract said nothing about moving not only to 
downgrade education and to cut off job training programs but also to 
attack the workplace.
  There is an assault on the protection of workers in the workplace. 
There is an assault on the Occupational Safety and Health 
Administration and all of the laws that they have promulgated to help 
protect the safety of workers.
  Much of this does not cost any money. Small amounts of money are 
involved, but the appropriations and budget process is being used in 
order to cut and destroy the effectiveness of these safety and health 
programs.
  They cannot pass bills and get them through the legislative process 
and get them signed by the executive branch. So in the absence of being 
able to pass authorizing legislation and get it signed into law, they 
are using the back-door approach of the budget and appropriations 
process.
  They have cut off large amounts of funding for OSHA, the Occupational 
Health and Safety organization. They have cut off money for the Mine 
Safety Health Administration. They have cut off money
 for the National Labor Relations Board.

  The largest cut of organizations and entities designed to help 
workers has been NLRB. Thirty percent has been cut. These big numbers 
might be hard to follow, but just consider your budget for your House 
for a week, and if it took a 30 percent cut, you know what 30 percent 
means, if you take your salary for 1 month and you take a 30 percent 
cut, I have some idea what 30 percent means.
  These are relatively small agencies of the Federal Government, the 
OSHA, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Mine Safety 
Administration, the research arm of OSHA called NIOSH, all very small 
pieces. Even the National Labor Relations Board, as comprehensive as it 
is and as important as it is to labor relations, it is still a small 
part of the overall executive budget.
  So when they make these cuts they do great damage. They make it 
almost impossible for the agencies to function, and they know that. 
They are legislating through the appropriations process, crippling the 
agencies. It is an assault on workers.
  And you might say, well, who cares about workers? Well, when we say 
workers, we do not mean people who are out there digging ditches 
necessarily, people who haul garbage. Workers are wage earners. Anybody 
who earns a wage is clearly a worker in the category of what we are 
talking about, and the vast majority of Americans are people who earn 
hourly wages or they earn salaries on the basis of hourly wages. They 
have salaries, but they pretty much work on the same basis as hourly 
workers. If they work over 40 hours, they want overtime, et cetera.
  So you have a vast number of people employed by other people who are 
wage earners or workers. If you want to call them, working class, 
middle class, or you can even reach out, include some small 
entrepreneurs. There are a lot of people with small businesses. They 
earn less than the average hourly wage earner, but they like the 
independence.
  In fact, one of the things that came out when we were doing the 
studies on health care last year in preparing health care legislation 
was that a large percentage of the small business owners of America 
have no health insurance. A large percentage of those people are 
independent, and they have their own business, and they deprive 
pleasure from that, and they contribute greatly to our economy, and we 
need more of
 them. They cannot afford to even pay for their own health insurance.

  So if you are talking about people working every day and they cannot 
afford to be without a week's worth of earnings, then you could include 
large numbers of small businesspeople in the same category.
  When you get through adding the hourly workers and the salary people 
who are really working on an hourly basis and you add to them the 
entrepreneurs and the small business owners, you are talking about two-
thirds of America. You are talking about working conditions and 
earnings for two-thirds of America. So it is two-thirds out there, at 
least, that we are talking about when we say that the Contract With 
America has chosen to assault working people, assault the working 
class.
  The middle class is a working class, anybody who is in those 
categories I mentioned before.

[[Page H 7171]]

  This assault is about more than money. Yes, the balancing of the 
budget has been touted as one of the major goals of the Republican 
majority, and it has been conceded by the White House and a lot of 
other people that maybe we should be unlike all of the other 
industrialized nations. Maybe this Nation should work toward a balanced 
budget. A balanced budget might be a good idea.
  It may not be absolutely necessary because there are a lot of other 
industrialized nations like Germany, France, Britain, Holland, that do 
not have balanced budgets, and they have larger national debts than we 
do, and they function pretty well, but let us break ground and lead the 
other industrialized nations into a situation where we have national 
balanced budgets.
  It might be good idea to save money on interest which is mounting all 
the time. All of it is worth experimenting with. We will accept the 
need for a balanced budget.
  The President makes much more sense than the Republican majority and 
the Congress. He says let us do it over a 10-year period. Let us not 
glorify suffering and pain. Let us try to minimize the suffering and 
pain. Let us not sit comfortably from our vantage point in the elite 
upper group expecting a tax cut while we let people suffer in the other 
two-thirds of the economy. Let us try to balance the budget in a way 
which is fair and spreads the burden to all of us. Maybe we should even 
balance the budget
 slowly and look for new sources of revenue.

  In the Congressional Black Caucus alternative budget, we proposed 
that we move toward an increase in the burden, the proportion of the 
burden of revenue of taxation that is borne by corporations. You know, 
we have in this country a strange phenomenon where since 1943 the 
amount of money--the percentage or the proportion of the overall tax 
burden borne by families and individuals has gone from 27 percent to 44 
percent. Individuals and families now bear 44 percent of the total tax 
burden.
  Corporations went in the other direction. They bore almost 40 percent 
of the total tax burden in 1943. They went from almost 40 percent of 
the total tax burden down to 11 percent. At one point it got as low as 
8 percent of the total tax burden.
  Stop and think about that. Every American who is angry out there 
ought to think about what he is angry at.
  You have got good reason to be angry. You have been swindled. Over 
the years, the Committee on Ways and Means has been owned by 
corporations. Over the years, the Committee on Ways and Means has 
allowed itself and the Congress, yours truly included, have sat 
paralyzed when Ways and Means bills are brought to the floor. You 
cannot amend them. You cannot do anything about them. And we have not 
fought vigorously enough and exposed what is going on to a great enough 
degree to make the American people understand. We have been swindled.
  At this point, after adjustments made by the Clinton administration, 
corporations are carrying about 11 percent of the total tax burden, 
while individuals and families are paying 44 percent of the total tax 
burden. And again, under Ronald Reagan it went as low as 8 percent. 
Corporations were paying as low as 8 percent. So there is good reason 
to be angry.
  But let me come back to my major point here. In the attack on 
workers, the budget is not of great concern. The numbers and the money 
is not of great concern. The attack on workers is an attempt to destroy 
a certain segment of our society, a certain segment of the political 
infrastructure, a certain segment that does not cater to the philosophy 
of the elite minority that is in charge now.
  That is what we are up against. This assault is designed to destroy 
the voices and the ability to
 participate in the political process of two-thirds of the Nation's 
people. It is assigned to wipe out any influence and any effectiveness 
that organized labor has. Because organized labor is a very small 
percentage of the total voting population out there, 16 million and 
going down, but they have a consolidated solidarity that allows them to 
have much more influence than the numbers would indicate, and they are 
one of the few organized forces that is not already controlled by the 
elite minority that is seeking to change, remake the government of 
America. They are not under the control of the people who are 
perpetrating the Contract With America. So they must be destroyed, and 
that is what this is all about.

  The assault on organized labor does not necessarily save money. But 
it accomplishes another purpose of wiping out the opposition. Couple 
the two, the assault on education with--an assault on education and job 
training with an assault on the instrument, the voice, the mechanism by 
which people can fight for more jobs and better jobs and fight for 
better education, and you have an indication of what the grand design 
of the elite minority is.
  They have a vision of the future. Their vision of the future and 
their vision of what America should be is an America that has no room 
for two-thirds of the people. We are not going to share the great 
wealth of America with two-thirds of the people. We are going to 
govern, according to the vision of the elite minority, govern in order 
to enhance the advantages and refurbish the luxuries of a small elite 
group, and that is what this grand design was all about.
  Turning to education for a minute, let us take a look at some of the 
cuts that were taken in the education area. Education for disadvantaged 
students, and Title I program, which supports tutoring and remedial 
education services for low income children and others who are falling 
behind in school, the House bill cuts the program by $1.1 billion. That 
is 17 percent. This is in one year. We are talking about the cuts in 
that 1-year period, not over the 7-year period; 1.1 million 
educationally disadvantaged students will be out of the program, 1.1 
million students around the country.
  The House appropriations bill destroys the drug free schools--the 
drug free and safe schools program. It cuts it 60 percent, eliminating 
services to 23 million school children.
  Adult education programs support literacy training and basic 
education for adults. The House bill gouges $25 million out of the 
program, denying services in this small program to 125,000 adults.
  It goes after Head Start, as I stated before. Head Start will have 
50,000 fewer children than before. We were proposing that Head Start be 
increased. George Bush increased Head Start programs. Ronald Reagan 
increased Head Start programs. For the first time, we have a cut in 
Head Start programs, after both parties have continually agreed that 
this was a program that works. It is a program where the funding--and 
youth employment and training programs, the House bill cuts total 
training for disadvantaged youth by 54 percent.
  To the youth of America, here is the message: Youth of America who 
are not in school, the programs are cut more than half. If you are in 
school, we are only cutting 16 percent.
                              {time}  2200

  If you are in school, we are only cutting 16 percent, but we care not 
about the future of the youth of America. We care about putting them in 
prison, we care about more money for prisons and more money to make 
certain that law enforcement operations round them up, but we are not 
interested in educating the youth of America.
  To the youth of America we are saying that the summer jobs program, 
which is already inadequate and funds too few youngsters, will be 
totally eliminated. It funds about 600,000 youngsters throughout 
America during the summer months. They get a job if they are low-income 
youth and they qualify. That is going to be eliminated totally, 
completely, zero funding is there. For year-round training programs for 
low-income youth, the cut will be 80 percent. That almost wipes it out. 
That leaves only 20 percent. Just stop and think, your monthly paycheck 
or your weekly paycheck, if you cut 80 percent out of it, if you take 
$8 out of every $10, what do you have left? You can understand how this 
is a destruction of a program. It does not exist anymore if you make 
that big a cut in the program.
  Training for dislocated workers, people who lose their jobs by having 
large defense plants close. We said they would be a priority. We 
promised them, we had a contract with them that as we 

[[Page H 7172]]
cut back on the expenditures for defense, workers in those plants would 
have an opportunity to be relocated, to be retrained, and we had 
special programs to do that. Now we are suddenly going to cut those 
programs 34 percent, $446 million. This will mean that 140,000 worker 
who are in the program already will be dropped out and no new workers 
of any substantial amount can come in.
  Training for low-income adults, those people on welfare that we yell 
we wanted to get off welfare and get a job, that will be cut by $225 
million, denying assistance to 74,000 that we now give assistance to to 
get off welfare, we are going to have that many fewer who will have the 
opportunity to get jobs and to get off welfare. This is what we mean 
when we say we are going to reform welfare, change it as we know it.
  It is really not necessary to decimate education and training in 
order to balance the budget. The issue is how we go about reaching the 
balanced budget and what programs should be given priority as I said 
before. The Republicans have clearly decided that education is not a 
priority. Their budget would cut education spending by $36 billion over 
the next 7 years. The Congressional Black Caucus, as I mentioned 
before, has put forward a detailed budget which would, like the 
Republican plan, eliminate the deficit over 7 years. We have told them 
how to do it. But our budget doubles the spending for education and 
training and other human investments. We make education our first 
priority. We make education our first priority, and President Clinton 
has also proposed in his 10-year balanced budget plan to make education 
the first priority. His budget calls for a $140 million over a 10-year 
period.
  It is important that the American people understand that this attack 
on education and training by the present Republican majority is 
unprecedented. Every single Federal education training and education 
program on the books, all that exist now, were enacted with bipartisan 
support. We had both Republicans and Democrats agreeing. Former Vice 
President Dan Quayle, not a liberal Republican, not a moderate 
Republican but proudly a very conservative Republican, he wrote the Job 
Training Partnership Act, which is the principal job training program 
in existence now. When he was a Senator, Dan Quayle wrote the Job 
Training Partnership Act. Now the Republicans are trying to rewrite 
history and they attack the same Job Training Partnership Act as a 
failed Democratic program and they want to destroy it. We have always 
proceeded on a bipartisan basis with every education and training 
program since I have been in this Congress. We have taken exhaustive 
painstaking steps and we have made every effort, even when it was quite 
annoying, to achieve consensus on every bill that we brought forward to 
the floor. Neither Republicans nor Democrats were happy with every 
provision of each bill that we passed over the last 13 years, but in 
their entirety each bill commanded overwhelming bipartisan support.
  At the start of this Congress, many believed that this bipartisan 
approach would continue under the Republican majority. At least in the 
area of education and job training, we thought we could continue the 
bipartisan support. After all, education and job training had not been 
mentioned in the
 so-called Contract With America. That turned out to be purely wishful 
thinking. There has been no moderation and no bipartisanship. Our 
Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities has turned into an 
unrelenting attack dog for the radical right, intent on dismantling and 
disemboweling each and every education and training program which 
serves the American people. They even took the first step immediately 
to change the name of the committee. It has always been called the 
Committee on Education and Labor. But instead of Committee on Education 
and Labor, they chose to rename it Committee on Economic and 
Educational Opportunities, leaving out Labor. The word labor is not 
contained in the name of the full committee, and the word labor is not 
contained in the name of any of the subcommittees. The attack on labor, 
the ideological obsession with destroying labor began with the renaming 
of this committee.

  Since January, the Committee on Economic and Educational 
Opportunities has taken some of the following actions. We have gutted 
the school lunch program, as everybody knows. We have told the children 
of America, the Nation needs your lunch. It is not enough to feed all 
the hungry. If the money runs out before the end of the year in the 
case of block grants to the States, children will have to just go 
hungry. We have to, after all, maintain the money in the budget in 
order to give a tax cut of more than $200 billion over a 7-year period 
to the richest Americans. We must save money. The Nation needs the 
lunch of school children in order to transfer those much-needed funds 
to the wealthiest Americans who need a tax cut. That is the plan of the 
controlling Republican majority.
  They have repealed Federal child abuse prevention programs, also. 
Most of our State laws and programs designed to prevent and prosecute 
child abuse originated with a series of Federal laws enacted during the 
1970's. These set out model laws, guidelines and programs and provided 
States with funds to implement them. By all accounts, it has been an 
extremely successful Federal-State partnership, improving the 
detection, the prosecution and the prevention of child abuse. 
Inexplicably and without a single hearing, the Committee on Economic 
and Educational Opportunities has gutted all of these laws and taken 
away the assistance that is provided to States and community-based and 
parent organizations. Before we adjourn in August for recess, there are 
indications that this committee will add substantially to this already 
impressive catalog of carnage.
  One of the bills that the committee proposes to act on is the 
elimination of the Department of Education. In 1995 in America at the 
end of the 20th century as we go toward the 21st century, they insist 
on pursuing this agenda of eliminating the Department of Education.
  As I said before, our Nation does not have a strong and over 
centralized Department of Education to begin with. We have too little 
direction from the Federal level in education.
  Now the Republicans are proposing to eliminate that. They will try to 
do it through the budget process, since they are not able to get 
agreement with the other body that they can eliminate it right away 
through an authorization process.
  They want to eliminate all small programs. The committee also plans 
to repeal nearly every remaining elementary and secondary education 
program on the books. They want to replace them with a lump sum, 
unrestricted block grant.
  The Republicans argue that many of these programs are too small to do 
any good and should be tossed out. The logic is bizarre. If a program 
is small and does not require much funding, if it is not hurting the 
balanced budget process, it is still tossed out. It is still destroyed 
because it is too small. You are either too large or too small.
  B-2 bomber programs, programs to fund the B-2 bomber, on the other 
hand, are gigantic programs. I guess it is their size, the size of the 
B-2 bomber program, is what makes it attractive. We can see nothing 
else attractive about the B-2 bomber program; the B-2 bomber program, 
which will absorb about $30 billion over the life of the program to 
build a bomber that nobody needs, that the President says he does not 
want, that the Secretary of Defense says he does not need, that the Air 
Force says they do not want.
  Nobody wants the B-2 bomber, but the House of Representatives insists 
on including it in the budget, maybe because it is such a large program 
that the size of it, the gigantic nature of it, is attractive by 
itself. Small programs are considered evil, useless, they must be 
eliminated. But a gigantic program that nobody wants, that will cost 
$30 billion or more, that at all costs we seek to retain. This is a 
kind of individual action that results from a vision of America which 
is distorted to begin with, a vision of America which is front-loaded 
to deal with the one-third elite population.
  If you are going to be concerned with the elitists, then you insist 
that there be a tax cut of more than $200 billion. If you going to be 
concerned with the elitists, you insist on the funding of a B-2 bomber. 
Who makes the profits on a B-2 bomber? The company that manufactures 
it, the district that is lucky 

[[Page H 7173]]
enough to get it as a plant where the planes or parts of it are going 
to be manufactured. You are playing to a very small group.
  If you took the same $30 billion and were to spend it in the civilian 
sector, you could create twice as many jobs. There are many studies 
that have been conducted and they all agree: Every dollar spent for 
military hardware would yield twice as many jobs if you spent them in 
the civilian sector. We could spend the B-2 bomber money any other way 
in the civilian sector and create jobs for twice as many people as are 
created by funding the B-2 bomber.
  The assault on education is an assault which is partly driven by a 
concern for money, the desire to save money by cutting back on the 
Title I program, the Head Start program, the school lunch program. All 
the money you save by cutting these programs can be used to fund the 
more than $200 billion tax cut for the rich, so we understand that that 
assault is driven by the need to get money to pay for the tax cut for 
the rich.
  The assault on labor is not saving tremendous amounts of money. That 
is an ideologically driven assault, an assault which shows that the 
Contract With America is out of control. There are certain people who 
want to get revenge on labor. There are certain people who think that 
you can silence a large segment of America if you destroy organized 
labor which is at the core of the opposition.
  So they have mounted this assault on labor unrelentingly starting 
with the Striker Replacement Act under the Democratic-controlled 
Congress. We twice passed a striker replacement act, which I call a 
right to strike act, because the provision in American labor law which 
allows employers to permanently replace workers, which is unlike any 
other industrialized nation except South Africa, that is a provision 
which takes away the right to strike. If you can be permanently 
replaced, then you really don't have the right to strike.
  We passed a bill twice in the House of Representatives under 
Democratic control. We did have a President who signed it. Now we have 
a President who has taken the initiative. The President has ordered 
that in the area of government contracting, they will not contract with 
any employer who practices the permanent replacement of strikers. Any 
company that engages in the permanent replacement of strikers cannot do 
business with the Federal Government under the Executive order issued 
by the President of the United States.
  That Executive order now has been challenged. Our committee, as part 
of its attack on labor, has proposed a bill to nullify the executive 
order on striker replacement. It was reported to the House by the full 
committee as H.R. 1176 on June 14, 1995.
  Those of us who are on the committee, of course, we fought the 
passage of it. But the Republican majority has the numbers. So the 
President's order, his Executive order which says that no contractor 
with the Federal Government would be allowed to practice the permanent 
replacement of strikers, that order is now under attack, and the 
committee has reported to the full House now a bill which will strike 
down and nullify the executive order of the President.
                              {time}  2215

  That is an unprecedented step, by the way. Congress very seldom takes 
steps to nullify an Executive order of a President.
  Another bill that they have passed out of the full Committee on 
Economic and Educational Opportunities, which used to be called the 
Education and Labor Committee, as part of the attack on labor, we 
passed what we call the Team Act. The full committee ordered H.R. 743, 
the Team Act, favorably reported on Thursday, June 22.
  The Team Act can be called more accurately the Company Union Act. The 
Team Act sets up a situation where companies can establish their own 
union. Nothing is more dangerous for unions than to have the employers, 
the management, be able to pick the people they want to bargain with 
and who they want to work with. The Team Act could be called the 
Company Union Act, and that is passed as part of the assault on labor. 
It has come out of the committee and has been reported to the floor.
  The OSHA reform, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, 
as I said before, is under attack. The OSHA reforms that have been 
proposed by the chairman of the subcommittee, Mr. Ballenger, he has 
introduced a bill, which is H.R. 1834, entitled, ``A Comprehensive 
Reform of OSHA,'' which could be better described as a death and injury 
act. It really guts the enforcement of OSHA and makes OSHA into an 
agency which has no viability. They cannot enforce any of their rules 
or their standards if they follow the procedures that are established 
in this act by Mr. Ballenger and the subcommittee. That has been 
introduced and is still in the process of holding hearings.
  The Fair Labor Standards Act reform is also under the Workforce 
Protection Subcommittee chaired by Mr. Ballenger, and they are 
proposing, first of all, to gut the overtime provisions of the Fair 
Labor Standards Act. Child labor sections of the act will be dealt with 
later. They are starting by gutting the most important provisions 
related to workers, and that is the provision for overtime. That is 
part of the assault on labor that has gone forward.
  Minimum wage. They refuse to deal with minimum wage at all. It is a 
negative assault on labor. By refusing to consider minimum wage or 
allowing any legislation to be considered which increases the minimum 
wage, they are assaulting two-thirds of the population out there 
suffering from increases in cost of living, living under an obsolete 
minimum wage standard.
  The President and the Democratic leadership of the Congress are 
sponsoring an increase in the minimum wage of 90 percent over a 2-year 
period. That is our answer to the assault on the wages of workers.
  The Davis-Bacon Act and the Service Contract Act, Davis-Bacon Service 
Contract Act protect workers when they are on government contracts. 
They must be paid the prevailing wages of a given area while they are 
working on a government contract program.
  This was a program that was developed by Republicans. Mr. Davis was a 
Republican; Mr. Bacon was a Republican. It has been legislation always 
supported by Republicans previously. But now this revolutionary 
Republican majority wants to wipe out totally, repeal the Davis-Bacon 
Act.
  Fortunately, they have not been able to do this through 
authorization, so one of the appropriations bills, the Transportation 
Subcommittee, has placed in the appropriations bill a provision cutting 
off all funds for the enforcement of Davis-Bacon on projects related to 
transportation. That is part of the assault on labor.
  On and on it goes. The assault on labor, the assault on education, 
the two primary programs necessary for two-thirds of Americans to 
survive those are unrelenting, and it must be stopped. It is quite 
tragic that the vision, the vision that is driving the Republican 
majority is a vision which is a danger for two-thirds of the 
population.
  Any vision for the future that caters to only a small percentage and 
refuses to endorse the principle of sharing the riches of our Nation, 
any such elite, selfish vision is a danger to the America of the 
future.
  Oh, beautiful and spacious skies and acres and miles of rich, 
productive farmland, this is America which God has been quite good to. 
God is good to America, and America should be good to its people by 
sharing the great wealth. Hills and mountains full of gold, silver, 
copper, and uranium for energy; nature yields so much to America.
  This is a land where democracy flourishes, a land with a written 
Constitution that establishes the framework for law and order, and the 
peace that comes
 as a result of that law and order makes rapid, unbroken progress 
possible. With all of the flaws and faults of our American system, we 
still have the best government that man has ever conceived.

  America with political freedom and a free marketplace, a land where 
science and technology expand with infinite possibilities. This great 
America, preserved and protected by thousands of nameless soldiers who 
fought the tyranny of Tojo in Asia and the tyranny of Hitler in Europe; 
this America made available to all of us by God, nature and the 
accidents of history; this America protected and perfected by so many 
from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and millions of unpaid 

[[Page H 7174]]
slaves who helped to build it. Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and 
all of the soldiers known and unknown, who fought to hold on to our 
freedoms and our opportunities. This America belongs to all of us.
  This is the America which we have to envisage; this is the America 
which you have to fight to keep; this is the America that the elite 
minority wants to destroy: The workers, the wage-earners, the salary 
workers, the small business people, the executives, the owners. This 
America does not belong to any one group, this belongs to all of the 
Americans.
  The elite oppressive minority shall not prevail. This America belongs 
to all of us, and we will fight to keep it. We must fight the assault 
on education; we must fight the assault on labor. We must fight to 
preserve the America for all Americans.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. McInnis). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox] is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to 
share a dialog with my colleagues on issues that are very important.
  We have talked to a great extent this evening and throughout the week 
about reform issues. One of the issues that I think is the most 
exciting that has taken place this week is one where Congressman Smith 
from the State of Washington has introduced landmark legislation today, 
which is in fact going to help revolutionize and improve the 
credibility, I believe, of campaigns nationally, and I hope that she is 
successful.
  I would ask you, Congresswoman Smith, if you could tell us the 
background of why you have brought this legislation forward, and what 
you hope to accomplish.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, first I want to thank the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox] for being one of the first people 
to stand up and say, this makes sense and I want to sign on the bill, 
and the gentleman is an original sponsor and a brave man in this place 
to make this change.
  This particular change is revolutionary. The reason it had to happen 
is this is a new Congress. We are doing business different. We are 
cleaning house, we have changed procedures. We had a major audit of 
everything going on, and now we need a new way of running campaigns. 
The old way just will not work any more.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. If the gentlewoman will yield, I think that 
is what the public said last November. They stated that they not only 
wanted the Congress to run better, be more accountable, spend less 
taxes and also spend less money, but they also said, what about 
cleaning up campaigns so that it is returned to the people and not 
controlled by special interests.
  Please tell us a little bit more about the background, if you would.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, in Washington State, in 1992, 
after 4 hard years, we finally passed campaign reform, similar to what 
I am introducing here, and that many of our Members are already 
rallying around. What it did is it says, no money from outside your 
State. It limited PACs severely to where they are there, but they do 
not talk a lot with money. It eliminated gift places, they were called, 
office funds, but it is where lobbyists gave gifts so you could buy 
stereos and fancy clothes and things like that, and it said, no fund-
raising while the legislature is in session. If you are voting, the 
money for your campaign should be contributed far, far away from 
voting. Therefore, it said no fund-raising. We are only in session 
there a few months, but it said, no fund-raising during the month 
before or the month after. So it sterilized.
  Mr. Speaker, what this does is about the same. It says, no money from 
outside your State. No more PAC money, no more D.C. fund-raisers. You 
go back home, you campaign at home; no more gifts, no more trips.
  We are going to change the culture. We are not going to ask all of 
the people here to jump in and change with their opponents, running 
back home and playing under the old set of rules. We are going to call 
unilaterally to disarm at a time certain to where everybody changes the 
rules and returns campaigns home.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Is it not true, Congresswoman Smith, that 
you are going to level the playing field so that it will not be just 
incumbents that get reelected, it will be actually the best candidate 
winning based on merit and not who has the biggest war chest?
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Definitely. And I think what is going to be 
hard for this place to get used to is some of the folks have been here 
20, 30 years, and some more than that. They have homes established 
here. Good people. They raised their children here. They have not had 
to spend as much time in their districts. They go back, they represent 
their people, but they do not spend much time there, or have to spend 
much time there. This will force them to go home.
  Then in the election year, if your opponent is out there in the 
streets going door-to-door and they are going out and saying, elect me, 
it will probably mean this Congress is not in session as much, and 
those people will have to spend more time in their States, which I 
think is really effective.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. If the gentlewoman will yield, they have to 
be more accountable back to the people.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Yes. But it will be kind of scary.
  This is revolutionary, but I think just like in Washington State, 
both sides of the aisle, both parties, everybody fought it for a long 
time. When they finally decided, some of them before it was passed, and 
some after, that it was OK, now they love it. Because no money can talk 
while they are voting. Lobbyists can talk with persuasion instead of 
their checkbooks. Now you will find that most people in Washington 
State jut cannot imagine going back under the old money system.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. If the gentleman will yield, what has been 
the rate of growth as your staff and you have brought these facts 
together for the House, both Republicans and Democrats? What is the 
total PAC contributions to House campaigns that the gentlewoman has 
charted here for us tonight?
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. I just happened to bring a chart to show 
the gentleman.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. That is good.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. As the gentleman will see, in 1984, just 10 
years ago, a little over, there were $80 million a year given by PACs, 
and now it is $132 million. I think what is significant about that is, 
and I should have another chart, it is four-to-one to incumbents. So 
what has happened, except for the little blip last year where some of 
us were, as I was, a write-in candidate, but some folks really had to 
take on an incumbent, and it was rare that an incumbent could go out 
even under a really good challenge. Because first of all, the incumbent 
had unlimited mailing, which we limit in this and do not let them mail 
90 days before the primary and 90 days after.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. If the gentlewoman will yield, what is the 
House rule now?
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. It is 60 days, and we are going to tighten 
it down so that it is even tighter.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. So what you have going to be able to do now 
is make sure that the newsletters or any other communications from an 
incumbent will actually be related back to governmental work as opposed 
to those items which are just being sent out in an attempt to be 
reelected.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. That is right. If you are trying to level 
the playing field and you are driving campaigns home and you do it all, 
but you leave the unlimited franking or reasonably unlimited franking, 
what happens is the incumbent has these great ideas about twice a week 
to send out to their colleagues to build their idea. If the idea is 
that great, it certainly is good in the first year of your term and not 
just extra good in the last. What we have found is that most of the 
franking is spent in the latter part of the term instead of the first 
part.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. If I understand correctly, not only is your 
legislation going to limit the time period by which franked mail can be 
sent, but as a result of your efforts and the other reformers that have 
worked with you in the House, we have now cut by one-third the amount 
of mail that can be franked generally for House Members.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. That is right. It will work really well, 
because 

[[Page H 7175]]
we will still be able to communicate, even ask people to come to town 
halls with fliers and things like that. They will not need as much in 
the next year, because we are going to cut out what they would mail 
when this passes. Therefore, it changes politics as usual in the year 
of the election, but still lets you work with your constituents and 
communicate with them.
  What we will see is what we saw in Washington State: campaigns 
dropped in cost by a third in one election cycle after the campaign 
measure passed, and it did not come from people. People's contributions 
went up, in fact. They realized they were really players.
  It came out of the 15 big. Those are the big corporate, the big labor 
and the big trial lawyer groups, real estate agent groups. all of those 
groups. All of a sudden they could not give like they could before, and 
it dropped campaign costs by a third. It dropped campaign costs for all 
candidates, so there was an equal playing field.
                              {time}  2230

  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. With regard to the political action 
committees, or PAC's, as you discussed what percentage have they been 
of incumbents' campaigns as relates to other expenditures?
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. I have just got 1994, but this seems to be 
pretty consistent. Incumbents were getting 53 percent of their 
contributions from individuals and 44 percent from PAC's and less than 
3 percent from parties. Challengers, on the other hand, were getting 11 
percent from PACs.
  When you take a look at this, obviously PAC's really weighed in 
heavily for incumbents and not near as heavy for challengers. If you 
want to win as a challenger, you had to get a lot more individuals, but 
this will change. In Washington State it just changed substantially.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. As far as the charts there, this is the 1994 
figures, the most recent campaigns then. You found, based on what 
happened in Washington State, that you had a dramatic change in the 
culture there? Is that right?
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Yes.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. What happened in Washington State that you 
are saying today to the American people we think is going to change for 
Congress as well?
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. We returned campaigns to people. Instead of 
the legislature operating with fundraisers and evening events and 
worrying about lobbyists' contributions, they were able to get about 
business. Instead of having the first few weeks right before the 
session started with dozens of campaign fundraisers every day, they 
were able to plan an agenda, because they could not raise money. 
Instead of the incumbent mass mailing in the last year to be sure they 
were reelected, they had to get out and get amongst people because they 
could not do it anymore. It did what we wanted to do. We had to return 
these campaigns to people and get them away from PAC's.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Part of the reform effort we have seen in 
the freshman class as a Republican has been the gentleman from Kansas 
[Mr. Brownback]. I would ask him to enter our colloquy and give us what 
he thinks is going to be really the next step.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Thank you very much for the gentleman yielding. I 
associate my comments with the gentlewoman from Washington and her 
comments about campaign finance reform, the excellent work she has done 
in the State of Washington. I think that can carry over to Washington, 
DC. We need to get this sort of reform taking place. I think the first 
step about being able to do that is bringing these sort of facts and 
figures out and bringing to the American people how campaigns are 
financed, how the system so much favors the incumbent. That is why a 
number of us support term limits. For one reason, the system so favors 
incumbents, this is the only way you can get at the system is through 
term limits.
  Another thing, another key portion of it is the campaign finance 
system. You can see the difference between incumbents and challengers 
on the chart the gentlewoman from Washington [Mrs. Smith] puts forward.
  I want to say this is a very, very important thing to look at. The 
American people, on November 8, 1994, said to us, ``Look, clean your 
own House up. Make the government smaller. Get that place under 
control. Return the people's House to the people.'' That to me is a lot 
of what this is about, returning the people's House to the people, 
having them fund it, having them finance it, having them see and be the 
focus of our point.
  When I go back to eastern Kansas where I represent and where I ran 
during the campaign, the people kept saying all the time during the 
campaign, ``Don't forget us, don't forget us.'' It seemed like an odd 
question to me. ``Why do you think we'd forget you?'' Then you start 
getting around the system and how it is built and how it is funded, how 
it operates, you see pretty quick why the people are scared we are 
going to forget them. I think the gentlewoman from Washington [Mrs. 
Smith] is on target. I applaud her efforts.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. I wanted to ask the gentlewoman further, 
your legislation does more than change the culture with regard to 
campaigns and how they are run and leveling the playing field for 
challengers, but this gift ban where we actually have lobbyists give 
lunches or golf and things like that, which the public does not 
appreciate nor understand, what would your bill do in a forward way?
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. You know, I think you keep saying my bill. 
This is several of our bills, yours, the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. 
Brownback], but the gift ban section come from an earlier bill that we 
introduced, the three of us, the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Brownback], 
myself, and you earlier in session, and I think either one of you could 
explain just as well as I can. But it obviously just abolishes gifts, 
but I would certainly yield to the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. 
Brownback] to probably explain that just as well as I can, probably 
better, because he has championed this issue.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. The gift ban is pretty simple. It is a ``just say no'' 
gift ban. That is just simple, saying ``no'' to gifts. The American 
people in many respects think the institution is bought and paid for 
sometimes by very small gifts and trinkets, other times by very big 
things, and the gift ban legislation says ``just say no,'' do not 
accept it, you do not need to take it, why have it. We are paid a 
reasonable salary, and we get reasonable pay for what we do here. Why 
do we need to have all of these gifts, plus why are we given gifts in 
the first place? Is there something going on untold that takes place? 
Some people think it is, some not.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. It could be you are so handsome, both of 
you, but I think it is something else.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. It has more to do with what we are voting 
on.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. That is right. I do have something I want 
to ask you. We have both got pressure on it from other Members. There 
is a lot of concern about the provisions that eliminate all trips from 
special interests or any group wanting to lobby this place. Address 
that, and why we all made that decision, because some of our colleagues 
are real concerned about the change, away from, to no trips.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. To me, the reason for it is very clear and very 
simple, and that is that frequently institutions or groups will seek to 
fly somebody as a Member of Congress to a particular place to be able 
to catch his ear for a longer period of time. I do not think people 
here are bought and sold for a trip. That does not take place. They get 
then additional time for the ability to influence a particular Member 
of Congress on a particular point of view. The people we represent do 
not get the same chance to do that. That is the idea with this. I do 
not think Members should be particularly scared about this provision at 
all, that this is something that we are saying if it is a reasonable 
trip, if it is worthwhile, we have travel accounts that are associated 
with this. If there are things that can be used that way, that that is 
the way that he ought to go with it, but it goes back to the people not 
trusting what takes place in the House of Representatives. This is 
their House. We are the people. We are the freshest from the folks. 
They are saying they do not trust it. Here is another way to try 

[[Page H 7176]]
to say, OK, there are some institutional flaws with it. Let us get rid 
of those. Let us get about our job and let us move on down the road. I 
think we can operate a very strong House of Representatives without 
these gifts being given.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Another reason why I think this makes sense 
is no one really comes here with the idea, ``I want to be in Congress 
to have a trip or a gift,'' and no one would come for that purpose, no 
one would stay for that purpose. Let us get rid of them, restore the 
confidence and credibility of the institution, along with the other 
kinds of reforms that are institutionally being made, whether it be 
legal reform, welfare reform, regulatory reform, all the things that 
help make the country work better, make sure that Government is more 
responsive by leading by example within this institution on the gift 
ban and reforms of campaigns; you are going to attract some quality 
people who never would have run before.
  With term limits, they will all follow us in Congress, revitalize it 
and make it a stronger, more accountable place.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. On that point, that is absolutely true, and plus one 
thing I would add, in a representative democracy, it is critical that 
people have trust and faith in the representative and the 
representative system. They have lost that faith. We have got to do 
what we can to restore that.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Well, you could not have said it any 
better. I have been wrestling with ways; a lot of amendments, a lot of 
the bills that have come forward on ethics in campaign and gifts have 
come from well-intentioned people, and they try so hard to get a bill 
that will make the people here happy and, and you go through the 
exceptions, and they might have some logic to them for some person, but 
when you put them all together and each of these bills that have come 
before us have exceptions, then there is still the problem of the 
appearance of evil. We know that most of our colleagues here are pretty 
honest people. Only a few break rules or are dishonest. They are here 
to do a good job.
  But the American people look at it and go, ``Just change,'' and I 
think that we cannot any longer just mickey with the system. I think we 
just have to change it to show them we are really a new Congress, a 
clean Congress.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. In terms of the legislation filed today and 
discussed before the press corps of Washington, where do you see the 
next step? How is it going to be passed? Many people who are entrenched 
in Washington do not want to see it. How will passage come besides 
having our support? Where do you think it is really going to have a 
maximum effort?
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. It is going to come from the American 
people. It is going to come from the American people. Our plan, as you 
know, is to go to large groups of Americans, organized groups and small 
groups, and bring them together and make sure that they lobby their 
legislator and tell them what they want. If they do not deliver the 
votes on this, this time next year we will be having the same debate 
because this place will not change itself. One thing we know after 
November, this place is really interested in what the voters think. We 
know they put us in, watching us, and I know they can take us out, and 
they are not going to accept the old. We have given them a taste of the 
new, of the change, of the clean Government. We have audited this 
place. We have reduced staff. We have opened up doors and blown out 
cobwebs that have never been there before, and they now know we can do 
it, and I do not think they are going to accept anything else but a 
cleaning.
  Next month the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Brownback] and myself will 
be speaking to the United We Stand conference in Dallas, with nearly 
10,000 activists from around the Nation. You will be contacting groups, 
I say to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox], and we will each 
individually divide up the Nation and get people to work this bill. 
People will deliver it, or it will not happen. We are going to do our 
part. I am going to do my part, and you both are.
  But it will take people.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Like what you did in Washington State, I say 
to the gentlewoman from Washington [Mrs. Smith]; that is how we will 
succeed here.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. The people let us not.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. One at a time. The people will make a 
difference. I could reflect also on another item today where reforms 
like yours being introduced, in fact, we came to fruition, one of the 
major items that we talked about on day one was to have a House audit 
so we could find out what the books were like and what the finances 
were of our own House for the first time ever. I would ask the 
gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Brownback] for his force reflections on 
where we are at this point, what has been discovered, and where we go 
from here.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. On day one of this new Congress, we said there were a 
number of reforms we would pass. One of those things on day one we said 
we would do was audit the House of Representatives for the first time 
in the history of this institution, long overdue, particularly when you 
consider this is the place that has had a House post office scandal, a 
bank scandal, a restaurant scandal, and any other number, and yet we 
did not need to have an audit. Well, yes, it needed an audit and we 
have had an audit released today.
  We told people on that opening day, and we told the auditors, 
``Follow your noses. See what you find in this particular audit, in 
this situation.'' Price Waterhouse, a private major accounting firm in 
this country, had over 100 auditors auditing the House of 
Representatives for the past, since that time, since January 4 when we 
passed that, and they only looked back at the past 15 months for as far 
as when we took over in November 1994, they looked back 15 months, so 
they are just talking about a time period from the middle of 1993 to 
November 1994, and auditing this institution back through that period 
of time. I think they need to go back further and look more thoroughly 
at this.
  But today they released this report, and it was a scathing indictment 
of the institution and the institutional failures, so much so that 
these auditors could not issue an opinion as to the fiscal soundness or 
the financial situation of the House of Representatives. They could not 
even issue an opinion. They said the records are so bad, they said we 
had two sets of books during this time period. Now, this is under the 
old Congress. This is under the Congress that was controlled by one 
party for 40 years in a row, so two sets of books. We could not find 
the audit trail sufficiently to be able to tell you what the financial 
conditions of the House of Representatives is today. They said that if 
this was a private business, you could not get a loan, because we could 
not say if your books were solid or not and, furthermore, you would be 
bankrupt.
  They said if you were a governmental institution, which this place 
is, you would have violated the law since 1990. We are on cash basis 
accounting. The whole Government went to accrual basis accounting the 
year I was born except for the House of Representatives.
  Now, this is itself a massive indictment of what took place 
financially in this institution, and this is just a 15-month window 
that we have examined, and that is coming out today.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. I also noticed in my copy of the report, 
which went to each Member, and it was a bipartisan initiative, it 
showed that actually bills had not been paid, equipment was not 
accounted for, and there were security problem with the computer 
system, within the internal system. I was happy to see at the end of 
the day, and I am sure you were as well, that every single Member of 
this Chamber
 voted to have the inspector general do the followup work required, 
hopefully with your help and the gentlewoman from Washington [Mrs. 
Smith] we will be able to go backward in time sufficiently suitable 
enough so we can get the other information we need so we do not see 
these institutional errors continue.

  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. If the gentleman will yield, you know, I 
looked at this, and again I am an optimist. I though how great we have 
the opportunity to change it, and this is a Congress that will. You 
know we can look back and spend a lot of time on being made, but we can 
look forward 

[[Page H 7177]]
and we can say we know what is wrong and we can make changes.
  But also I felt really good because many of the things recommended 
when it came to Government costs in this is too much, barbershops, 
beauty shops, all of those things we had already started fixing, the 
printing costs, all of those. I felt good we had already started 
changing. I felt good we could see where we could change, and that I 
believe we can move forward. And I also felt good that we are not as 
partisan as I have seen in the past and in other layers of Government. 
We are giving it to an outside counsel to look at. We are not playing 
around with it. We are not holding our own hearings on it. We are just 
saying, ``Here, you take it, and you followup on this,'' and I was 
proud of us for doing that. I think that was a very wise move for this 
institution to take, to not politically make this a football.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. If the gentlewoman would yield for just a moment, I 
think those are absolutely appropriate comments, and that is what the 
American people want us to do. They want us to clean our own house up 
first. They want us to produce a smaller Federal Government, clean up 
the House of Representatives, and return to the basic values that built 
the country, and we are getting a good start on doing those things.
  I am just amazed that when I ran for Congress, and I ran a lot 
saying, ``We're got to change Congress,'' I did not comment about--
enough about how bad the institution had----
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Did not even know.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Yes, I guess I didn't realize it, but to never have 
been audited, to have this sort of lack of ability to even be able to 
render an opinion, I mean the financial situation just stinks.
  What I am happy to see is we have blown the lid off of that. OK; it 
is no longer just this hidden little dirty secret that is only known 
around Washington.
  Look, here is the audit. I have got some summaries here. The audit is 
inches thick that we have released out today. Here is what it is, 
folks. Let us get to the bottom of this, and at least we have blown 
open the lids on the Capitol, and given the people's House back to the 
people, and to me this is part about reestablishing the faith of the 
American people in representative democracy which we absolutely have to 
do to continue to make the tough choices for the future of our great 
Nation, which I was just home in Kansas, and I was down in Pittsburg, 
KS, this past weekend, and people there are saying:
  ``I'm scared for our Nation.''
  ``I'm scared for our future.''
  What's going to take place in the future of this country?''
  Because they are just fearful we are going to be
   self-serving, we are not going to take care of the real business we 
need to, we are not going to clean up the House, and this is a further 
statement:

  ``No, we are.''
  It is a start. We passed the audit bill. Here is the first 
installment. We are going to continue on it, and we have got to get the 
bad odor out of the place that we are finally started on.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I think it is a fact that what 
is really clear here is that not only are we talking about reforming 
Government, and that is downsizing, privatizing, consolidating, 
eliminating agencies which have become bloated or duplicating what is 
in local governments, much with your work with the New Federalists, 
Congressman Brownback and Congresswoman Smith, but what we are also 
doing is, like you said earlier, the institution itself has become so 
inbred with the problems of the books having two systems, of having no 
change, kind of the status quo was maintained. We have a new sign on 
this House, said the status quo no longer lives here. Everyone is 
allowed to question everything.
  In fact, Mr. Speaker, the Speaker and the leadership is saying to 
freshmen, ``Please question the system,'' and that goes for the 
American public. If they got something they think where the Federal 
Government is off base, we are here as Representatives in Congress and 
the Senate so we can make those fundamental changes in the institution, 
in the Federal Government. We want to be more responsive, more 
accountable, spend less money, do more to help businesses grow, 
produce, and hire, give individuals to be all they can be as well, and 
by listening to the American public, going back as often as you do to 
Kansas and Linda does, Congresswoman Smith, to Washington, we will 
start hearing those kinds of suggestions which will be institutional as 
well as governmental.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. If the gentleman would yield, the gentleman from 
Minnesota [Mr. Gutknecht] that is also in our class, he has a saying 
that he uses from his grandmother. It says: ``If you always do what you 
always done, you'll always get what you always got.''
  It is her statement, and what I am so pleased about is that we are 
not just doing what we always done. The standard thing to do would be 
to say, OK, when you take over, ``Well, let's not really look at the 
books, the audits. You might get at your own Members. You might get at 
some people you don't want to.''
  No, no, we are going to audit the place. The thing we have to do now 
is be vigilant and make sure that this sticks, that the next time the 
auditors look at this place, and we do an annual audit, and they look 
at an audit, they can issue an opinion where the House of 
Representatives is, and they will not say this place stinks, which is 
what the auditor said today basically.
  I was in the committee where they released the information, and they 
were saying they cannot compare this to any other institution they have 
ever audited previously. I mean it has its own set of records, and it 
seems to serve its members more than be interested in accountability. 
It was the auditors' own statement. Well, that is a staining indictment 
on the system. I am glad to say that that system is being thrown out--
--
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. As far as I am concerned, we got a breath of 
fresh air coming through the Congress today not only with the audit, 
but with the legislation of the gentlewoman from Washington
 [Mrs. Smith] to get a new perspective. This may be a catalyst for 
change in government reform, political campaign reform, in gift ban, 
and I was just speaking to a taxi driver earlier this evening. He said:

  ``You know, I like it the way the place is being questioned now.'' He 
said, ``I'm reading more books on history. I'm looking into what the 
Government's doing. I'm glad that you freshmen are questioning things 
that I always thought should be questioned, and you're doing it, and 
whether you're a Republican or Democrat in this 104th Congress, things 
will get better, you'll be more accountable, and you're listening more 
to the folks back home.
  I think they want to make sure we continue doing it.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Yes, and if the gentleman would yield, that is the key 
to representative democracy, and they feel like all they have had is 
more of an imperial Congress than a representative democracy. We have 
got to continue. That is why campaign finance reform, gift ban, the 
continuation of the audit. Let us continue to looking forward and 
backward at what is taking place. We have got to reinstill that trust 
and faith in the American people and this institution.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield 
for a brief statement, I think though that we have to remember that we 
will only be able to do it if the American people are behind us and 
pushing. This place still have rooms that need to be cleaned, and it 
gets to be real hard for the oldtimers when they see so much happening, 
and so the American people are going to have to call and say, ``We want 
the Brownback-Smith-Fox or the Fox-Smith-Brownback Clean Campaign 
Act.'' They have to do that. They have to say, ``We want the Clean 
Campaign Act.'' They need to call their Members and tell them that, if 
they do not do that, it will not happen because this is going to be a 
tough change.
  When we get into this audit, they need to commend us for doing it, 
not point fingers at all of us for cleaning it up, and we need the 
support of the American people. This is going to be a tough job, and we 
cannot do it by ourselves.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Well, I want to thank the gentlewoman from 
Washington [Mrs. Smith] and the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Brownback] 
for their participation in this special 

[[Page H 7178]]
order tonight which dealt with reforming the Congress, and for keeping 
the revolution alive, and we thank them for their efforts and 
leadership.


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