[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 129 (Friday, August 4, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H8519-H8527]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         WHERE WE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF THE REMAKING OF AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. 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.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, we have just concluded the debate and the 
vote on the appropriations bill for the Education, Labor, and Human 
Services portion of the budget. We have almost concluded the entire 
appropriations process. The big one left, of course, is the Department 
of Defense. This process moves us a little further along the road 
toward the remaking of America.
  Speaker Gingrich and the Republican majority have said they intend to 
remake America. Speaker Gingrich also says that politics is war without 
blood. So we have concluded the first phase of the war. The Contract 
With America with just a warm-up. The budget and appropriations process 
really opened the blitzkrieg. The first phase of the blitzkrieg is 
about to come to an end.
  I think it is important to take this time to note that it has been 
devastating indeed. The people of America, the caring majority, the 
majority of the people in America, have been the victims of the 
beginning of this scorched Earth policy. Tremendous cuts have been made 
already, and this is just the first year in the effort to balance the 
budget in a 7-year period. This is the easiest one.
  These cuts will escalate greatly over the next few years. So whatever 
has begun today, as horrible as it may be, is only the beginning. It is 
very important that the American people understand that this is only 
the beginning, and $9 billion was cut from the Health and Human 
Services and Education and Labor budget, $9 billion for the budget year 
that begins October 1 1995 and goes to September 30, 1996.
  If $9 billion was cut in this first round, you can imagine how much 
more will have to be cut and will be cut in the second round, the next 
budget year, because the budget for this year still leaves the 
Republicans, who are controlling the process now, with a deficit of 
$170 billion, the House-Senate budget that concluded, under which we 
are laboring with respect to the appropriations now. That budget still 
left us with a deficit in 1996 of $170 billion. Over the next 7 years, 
that deficit will go down from $170 billion to
 a surplus of $.614 billion in the year 2002.

  In order to get that deficit down and end up with a surplus in the 
year 2002, drastic additional cuts have to be made. So it is important 
to understand where we are in the process of the remaking of America, 
in the process of this war without blood.
  Speaker Gingrich says that politics is war without blood, but he did 
not say it was without pain and he did not say it was without 
suffering. And there is a lot of blood, too. I think it is very 
important to note that in the process of making budget cuts in the 
appropriations process, the Committee on Appropriations went far beyond 
its jurisdiction, and they did a lot of legislating, against the rules; 
they violated the rules. This majority violates the rules whenever they 
see fit, and they have the same kind of contempt for rules that 
dictators and tyrants have. Rules are just to be played with the 
bourgeoisie and the folks who believe in little words on pieces of 
paper. They violate them when they get ready.
  So a massive violation of the rules occurred in this appropriations 
process with respect to the Labor, Education, and Human Services 
appropriation. They had a large number of legislative matters 
introduced into the process. One of those matters related to the 
enforcement of health and safety standards on jobs by OSHA, the 
Occupational Health and Safety Administration.
  One of those legislated items cut the effectiveness of OSHA by one-
third. By cutting the budget by one-third and specifically saying that 
the cuts have to apply to the enforcement process, OSHA's enforcement 
administration, enforcement process, the people in charge of enforcing 
the rules and regulations on health and safety, they could not spend 
but two-thirds of their last year's budget. They are cut by one-third.
  That is going to cause not just pain and suffering, but there will be 
some bleeding and dying, because last year 

[[Page H 8520]]
in America 10,000 workers bled and died on the job. Another 46,000 died 
as a result of diseases contracted or as a result of health conditions 
contracted on the job. They died elsewhere, but right on the job 10,000 
died.
  So in this process of making budget cuts, they have also legislated a 
less safe environment for all the workers in America. They have 
declared war on workers, and that war has casualties. That war has a 
body count. The body count and the casualties will go on.
  There were many other areas within this appropriations process where 
the Committee on Appropriations usurped the powers of the authorizing 
committees and legislated. They changed the National Labor Relations 
Board's ability to operate by cutting them by 30 percent. They are 
going after the workers. A major target in this war are working people. 
They say unions. They have a vendetta against the unions. They want to 
get revenge on the unions. But working people out there, most of them 
in America do not even belong to unions. In the process of getting 
revenge on he unions, they are destroying conditions for working people 
in general.
  The NLRB affects other people other than unions. OSHA affects other 
people. It is the workers of America, and everybody out there, who is 
not a big wage earner, not an executive or on a big salary. Sooner or 
later they fall into a category where they need to have some bargaining 
power or leverage. Most of us are workers. In the final analysis we are 
workers, and our working conditions are being steadily made more 
dangerous as a result of activities
 undertaken in an appropriations bill.

  The Committee on Appropriations exceeded its authority. It is just 
the beginning of a process which probably will go on for a long time to 
come. They have always exceeded their authority. I have always taken 
the position we do not need a Committee on Appropriations. The 
Committee on Appropriations makes the Congress sort of an inept 
dinosaur.
  We have a huge Committee on Appropriations with a huge budget, a huge 
staff, and they make the most important decisions about where money is 
going to be spent. But in the final analysis, the Committee on 
Appropriations has the least amount of information, because there are 
authorizing committees that spend all of their time on different 
segments of the governmental functions, of the policies that govern our 
country. The authorizing committees have the knowledge. The authorizing 
committees conduct the hearings. The authorizing committees accumulate 
the experience over time. But the power lies with the Committee on 
Appropriations.
  The appropriation committees, of course, were created as old-
fashioned, primitive methods of centralizing power. You centralize the 
real power in a body that is supposed to be a democratic, deliberative 
body, so it is easier to control by the Speaker and the leadership. 
That is why appropriation committees exist. But they used to pretend 
that they had limitations, and it was only going to deal with the 
actual appropriation of the funds.
  They are not pretending anymore. The appropriations committees have 
taken over and they have proceeded to legislate whenever they feel like 
it, which means that if we were to be honest with the American people 
we would close down part of the Congress. We could send all the Members 
home who do not serve on the Committee on Appropriations or the 
Committee on Rules or the Committee on Ways and Means. That is about 
one-third of the Members of Congress on those three committees.
  The rest of us really should not be drawing salaries, because we are 
not allowed to make decisions. We are not allowed to make important 
decisions. We play around at the edges. We have hearings, we pretend we 
have legislation. But in the final analysis, the clout lies with the 
Committee on Appropriations that is going to appropriate the money, and 
the Committee on Ways and Means is going to develop the revenue.
  Whenever the Committee on Ways and Means brings a bill to the floor, 
it does not even pretend to have a democratic process. In the 13 years 
I have been here, I have never seen a Committee on Ways and Means bill 
come to the floor which was an open rule, where the Members of Congress 
who do not serve on the Committee on Ways and Means had a possibility 
of having some kind of input, making some kind of decision. So the 
Committee on Ways and Means is totally in control of the revenue 
producing activities within this country.
                              {time}  1700

  The rest of us either say yes or no or vote present, but we do not 
have any input. We have a very inept dinosaur, a very inefficient 
dinosaur and you have, after all, in the House of Representatives, 435 
Members who are among the brightest and most energetic people in the 
country, who understand government, who understand human nature. They 
would not be here if they were not tremendously capable individuals. 
But they come here and they are immediately made irrelevant. They 
become obsolete if they do not get a place on the Committee on 
Appropriations or the Committee on Rules or the Committee on Ways and 
Means.
  And the Committee on Appropriations used to pretend that they had 
some use for the rest of us but in this last operation, certainly the 
Health and Human Services and Labor and Education budget, they made no 
pretense. Open legislation takes place throughout the bill and every 
effort to vote down that legislation, authorizing legislation, within 
the appropriations process, the majority beat it down with their 
numbers. They have the numbers and they can, of course, violate the 
rules and render us all ineffective.
  Nevertheless, we have to make do for the time being. Hopefully in the 
next Congress we can do something about the dinosaur and get rid of the 
overwhelming power of the Committee on Appropriations. Democrats were 
never that interested in doing that before, but maybe they can 
understand the evils now.
  What I wanted to do today is to let everybody understand that this 
process has just begun. First of all, the implications of the process 
over a 7-year period are devastating. I want you to understand that if 
the cuts are great this year, they have to be greater next year and 
greater the year after that, until we get down to the point where we 
have no more deficit. So that is one thing that has to be understood.
  The other thing to understand is that, and it is hard to understand. 
Until I became a legislator, although I thought I was pretty 
intelligent and pretty well educated, I could not understand all the 
machinations that take place here in Washington. We have passed it on 
the House of Representatives. We passed the Labor, Health and Human 
Services and Education budget. And we passed most of the other 
appropriations bills.
  They still have to go to a conference with the Senate and the Senate 
has not passed most of their appropriations bills. The Senate can move 
very fast when it wants to. So the likelihood is that in the month of 
September all of this is going to be completed by the Senate and the 
House, and the Senate operate from the same set of overall budget 
figures that the House operates from. There is an agreement between 
Senate and House, and we are proceeding on the basis of one set of 
budget cuts. So the Senate budget will cut Education, Health and Human 
Services as much as the House budget will cut it, as much as House 
appropriations cut it. The difference is where they will cut.
  The Senate may choose to not assassinate OSHA, not to try to destroy 
the health and safety standards of the workers of America. They may 
choose to instead take more money out of the Pell grants. They may 
choose instead to impose more of a burden on student loans. But 
overall, it is going to be just as bad because they have to stay within 
those budget figures.
  That is the other trick that we have to deal with. We have to 
understand that the Committee on the Budget has already set certain 
levels, and the Committee on the Budget has determined that you cannot 
cross lines. One of the charades that took place with respect to the 
Health and Human Services and Education budget was that if you wanted 
to restore the cut for Head Start--and these high technology barbarians 
have done something nobody else has done in the course of history of 
the Congress. President Bush did not 

[[Page H 8521]]
cut Head Start. President Reagan increased Head Start. Head Start has 
never been cut by any President. But they cut Head Start. If you wanted 
to restore Head Start cuts, you had to take it from somewhere else, but 
there is a bigger cut in title I.
  So if you wanted to restore Head Start, you could cut title I some 
more. If you want to restore title I, a billion dollars is a large 
amount of money because title I is the largest program of assistance to 
elementary and secondary education that takes place through the 
channels of the Federal Government. Everybody likes to think it is 
Federal money. The Federal Government gives back a portion of the 
budget, a portion of the people's money, because all taxes are
 local. All revenue derives from individuals and families and it is 
sent to Washington so it is getting our money back. We get back a very 
tiny amount of our money for education.

  The Federal Government only is involved in about 7 percent of the 
total expenditure for education, but its involvement comes through the 
title I program for elementary and secondary education. They are 
cutting that by more than a billion dollars. We could not restore any 
of that without cutting some other part of this same function 500.
  Yes, we could cut the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Board, and 
give a few million maybe back to Head Start, or we could cut OSHA or we 
could cut MSHA, the Mine Safety and Health Administration. You could 
have cannibalism, cannibalism among worthwhile programs. That choice 
you have. Let the programs eat each other. Because the trick is, you 
cannot go outside of the function of Health, Human Services and 
Education to get any money from the places where the real waste occurs.
  We cannot go back, we cannot go and take it from defense. You cannot, 
everybody knows where the waste is, but you cannot even propose it on 
the floor at the time of the deliberations on the Health and Human 
Services and Education bill.
  We know there is waste in the defense weapons systems. We know the B-
2 bomber is the most wasteful weapons system that we ever confronted. 
We know that because there is agreement at the Pentagon. They say it is 
wasteful. They do not need it. The Secretary of Defense says he does 
not need the B-2 bomber. The President says he does not need it. 
Everybody agrees except the Members of Congress, the Members of the 
House, that we do not need a B-2 bomber. So we put back $500 million in 
the annual budget and over the life of the B-2 bomber program, we are 
talking about $30-some billion. So if we wanted to take care of Head 
Start and wanted to take care of title I, Pell grants, OSHA, MHSA, all 
the worthwhile human services programs, you can easily do it if you are 
allowed to reach into the defense budget and get the waste out of there 
to take care of it. Because the defense numbers are tremendous numbers. 
Just take the B-2 bomber. You have a great solution to the problem over 
the last 7 years. By cutting out the B-2 bomber, we could refund these 
programs at the level that they existed before and even give them 
increases.
  So where are we in the process? I want to get back to that so that 
every American citizen listening will know that this complicated 
process is not so complicated after all.
  The appropriations process is about to come to an end in the House. 
The House Committee on Appropriations will consult with the Senate. 
They will come out with a joint conference report of what they both 
agree on. It will go to the President for the President's signature. 
Each one of these appropriations bills goes to the President 
separately. So the President will probably sign the defense 
appropriations. Unfortunately, there is not very much disagreement 
between the White House and the Congress on defense. When they should 
have been cutting this, they were not cutting either. So I suspect that 
the defense appropriations bill will probably be signed. It is the last 
one we do, but it may be the first one signed by the President. I 
suspect that the last thing the President will sign, if he ever signs 
it, would be the Education, Health and Human Services budget. In fact 
the President has already said he is likely to veto the appropriations 
bill if it comes to him in the form that passed the House of 
Representatives yesterday.
  If it comes that way, we know it will be vetoed. What happens when 
the President vetoes? Each one of the appropriations bills, the 
President has the option of signing it, it becomes law, and that will 
guide our expenditures for the next year. Or he can veto it and it 
comes back to the House of Representatives.
  If it comes back to the House, we can override it, if we have two-
thirds of the Members of the House vote to override. In the health and 
human services bill, there is no chance that there will be a two-thirds 
vote to override. In the housing, VA, veterans and housing bill, I do 
not think there is any chance that they will get an override.
  In a number of the key appropriations bills, there will not be a 
congressional vote great enough in the House of Representatives to 
override the veto. You should follow this. Every citizen should follow 
this, because what it means is that as we approach the deadline date of 
September 30, which is the end of the Federal fiscal year, these 
programs that do not have an appropriations bill, which is now law, the 
appropriations bill has not been turned into law, they have no way to 
continue operating. They run out of money.
  They have run out of money and a crisis is created. A crisis is 
created. The probability is that, given the games that the Republican 
majority is playing and given the extreme and mean positions that they 
have taken here on these vital programs, they will not agree to the 
continuing resolution. The way you continue programs when the money 
runs out is you have to vote for a continuing resolution, which covers 
all programs for which there has been no appropriations bill signed.
  The likelihood is that the same people who refused to vote decent 
amounts of funding for these programs to begin with are not going to 
accept a continuing resolution which continues them at the same level 
as last year. In fact, some of these same programs have already been 
cut this year in a rescission bill, which was promulgated by the 
Republican majority. And that rescission bill cut $16 billion out of 
this year's budget to make it impossible for some of these programs to 
continue because they have already been cut, regardless of what a 
continuing resolution says, they would have to receive a cut this year 
and then pick up on the continuing resolution, and it cannot be 
accomplished. So we are headed for a crisis, and every American should 
understand the nature of the crisis.
  In my district last week, in discussing the problem with some 
constituents, there was one elderly lady who said to me: Well, if the 
Government is out of money and we just do not have no more money, then 
I will make my sacrifice. I do not mind sacrificing just like everybody 
else. I do not mind the Medicare cuts. I do not mind making my share of 
the effort. I do not mind suffering if our Government is in trouble and 
they just do not have any more money.
  Well, that is a noble sentiment. I suspect that the majority of 
Americans feel the same way. When the suffering is necessary, they are 
willing to do it. In World War II, massive amounts of people were 
willing to suffer and endure. So it is nothing new. Americans are 
willing to suffer. But it is important that you understand that the 
suffering and the pain that is being inflicted is unnecessary.
  It is unnecessary for elderly people to worry about their Medicare 
payments. It is unnecessary to worry about whether you are going to be 
able to get into a nursing home or not. When your money runs out and 
you cannot afford Medicare anymore, you cannot afford to pay for your 
own health care, as thousands of elderly people spend down, they get 
very sick, the medical costs, despite the fact that they have Medicare, 
there is a portion they have to pay. They run out of money and they 
become poor as a result of bad health, as a result of operations, as a 
result of time in the hospital. And they can only be put in a nursing 
home if they are convalescing after an operation if they declare 
themselves poor and go onto Medicaid, the other part of the health care 
program that was created by Democrats.
  Remember, we are celebrating the 30th anniversary of Medicare. 
Medicare 

[[Page H 8522]]
was created by Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat. Medicaid was created by 
Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, just as Social Security was created by 
Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat.
  We are celebrating Medicare's 30th anniversary, and it is important 
to understand that there is no need for this in the richest country in 
the history of the world. The United States of America is the richest 
country that ever existed in the history of the world. They said, well, 
you might say there are some Arab countries that people per capita are 
richer than we are. There may be four or five countries in the world 
where per capita at a given moment they have higher incomes. But if you 
look at the assets and resources of these nations, you will find that 
it is all very much illusionary.
  Overnight something can happen to the oil prices in the world, and in 
Saudi Arabia the standard of living goes down drastically. In Kuwait, 
the standard of living is going down because they are not getting as 
much for their oil products as before. Nigeria, which has some of the 
finest-grade oil in the world, faces a crisis because there is a glut 
on the market, and oil prices still go down. So we are not in America 
dependent on any one set of natural resources.
                              {time}  1515

  We are not dependent on any one set of minerals or any one set of 
climatic conditions. There are well-established institutions. Our 
country, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, has produced an 
abundant supply of rich, natural resources and rich farm lands and 
growing seasons that allow us to maximize the amount of foodstuffs 
grown here. We could feed the whole world if we wanted to.
  All of that together adds up to riches that no other nation has. And 
you put it all together, there are riches that no other nation can 
begin to dream of.
  Add to that the law and order, the well-established legal system, an 
institutional government which stabilizes things so that you are not, 
even in the worst of times, and we may be going through some of those 
worst of times in terms of the democratic process, but even in the 
worst of times there are not cataclysmic shifts that overnight render 
our resources less potent and our economy cannot be brought down by any 
one turn of events.
  We are the richest Nation that ever existed in the history of the 
world. We should not be contemplating forcing suffering and pain upon 
the elderly. We should not be contemplating forcing children to go 
without decent lunches. They cannot get a decent meal anywhere else, 
even the school; with the help of the Federal Government, they should 
be able to get a decent lunch, because those same children will become 
the soldiers of tomorrow. They will become the workers of tomorrow. 
They will become the Congressmen and the leaders of tomorrow. Those 
same children.
  We are rich enough. We have the resources. The problem is that every 
American must understand, the problem is the attitude and the vision of 
the people who have the power now.
  When you have this train wreck, when there is a crisis created 
between the President and the Congress, the President vetoes the bills, 
they go back to the Congress, they cannot override. The Congress 
refuses to pass spending, a continuing resolution. When that happens, 
we should all be ready to join fully into the debate and understand 
what is happening.
  The new America is being shaped. If the people, if the great majority 
of Americans stand up and say: No, we will not accept anybody or any 
argument which tells us we are too poor to be able to take care of all 
the sick; we are too poor to be able to take care of the elderly; we 
are too poor to provide school lunches; we are too poor to provide a 
decent education for the generation of Americans who will have to work 
to keep the Social Security system going, to keep the Medicare system 
going. There are some people worried about Medicare becoming bankrupt, 
and it certainly will be bankrupt if our workers are not working and 
adding to the fund.
  Social Security will be bankrupt if our workers are not working and 
adding to the fund. If all of the jobs are shipped overseas or to 
Mexico and the workers are not contributing to the Social Security 
fund, the rich may still get rich by using the labor of people 
overseas, but the workers overseas do not pay into the Social Security 
fund. The workers overseas are not contributing to the future of 
America.
  You can get cheaper labor and use high-tech instruments and you can 
bring in from India some very well-educated computer programmers. But 
those Indian computer programmers are not paying into the Social 
Security. They have no stake in our society.
  We have to understand what all this means when they are trying to 
remake America by wiping out the
 working conditions for the workers of America; by lowering the wages 
of the workers of America; by creating conditions which make it very 
difficult to educate the vast population of America. We have to 
understand what is happening. The remaking of America may mean the 
destruction of America. We have to get involved.

  Nobody should accept the argument that we are too poor as a country, 
and I want to make my sacrifice. Do not rush to make a sacrifice for 
this particular agenda.
  Everybody should be in favor of cutting waste in government, and we 
certainly are. We do not want to spend a single dime that we do not 
have to spend. But do not rush into believing that the problem we face 
is because all of our education programs are wasteful or all of our 
health care programs are wasteful. That is not the problem.
  The problem is that there was a tremendous waste in government and 
the people in power do not want to confront that waste. The waste is in 
the B-2 bombers. The waste is in the Seawolf submarines. The waste is 
in the agricultural subsidies.
  We had an amendment on the floor which said, look, we do not want to 
cut subsidies for people who need subsidies, but for all of these 
people who are gentleman farmers and they only farm part time, if they 
have an income outside of their farming activities of $100,000 or more, 
then they should not be receiving subsidies. That is all we said; a 
simple, commonsense proposal was on the floor. Let us not give 
taxpayers' money to people who are farmers who have other incomes of 
$100,000 or more.
  That was voted down. That was massive waste confronted. The 
opportunity was there to curb that waste, but it was voted down.
  There were other examples, also. An amendment said, let us not 
subsidize tobacco. There is a great debate about tobacco and whether it 
is healthy to us and whether it is contributing to the destruction of 
the health care budget, because it creates a lot of very complicated 
illnesses which are very costly; whether it is destroying the morality 
of our youth.
  I am not going to get into that, but the question was, Should we 
subsidize it, should taxpayers continue to pay subsidies for promotion 
of tobacco products? That was voted down.
  So, before you accept the argument that massive cuts have to be made, 
and great amount of suffering has to take place in the Health and Human 
Services and Education budget, look carefully at the rest of the budget 
of the Federal Government. We have a whole series of things that we 
need to deal with in terms of cutting waste before we get there.
  We are talking about people who have a vision of America which 
includes B-2 bombers over school lunches. Seawolf submarines over 
nursing home care, home care for the elderly. That is their vision of 
America.
  What we have to understand is that in 1995, we have to deal with the 
long-range vision of America. The vision thing that President Bush had 
trouble dealing with; the Speaker of the House has no trouble dealing 
with that. There is a clear agenda and there is a clear sense of 
direction that has been set forth, whether you agree with it or not. At 
least you should applaud that there is a clear agenda.
  The agenda says that America should be only for the over-class. Only 
an elite group. We are going to have public policies, government 
policies, which take care of and even pamper the over-class. Pamper the 
people who have computers. Everybody who owns a
 computer is in the over-class automatically. You have to have a 
certain level of salary, send your kids to school and pay for it, if 
necessary, because the 

[[Page H 8523]]
agenda is to let the public school system collapse.

  They do not care whether public schools exist or not. They know that 
States are cutting back on education budgets. They know that cities are 
hard pressed and they are cutting education budgets. They know that the 
Federal Government gets all of its tax moneys from cities and towns and 
villages. We cannot say that Federal money is Federal money; therefore, 
it should never be used for education. People have a right to ask for 
some of the money back for education. Education is as legitimate an 
activity and function as any other if it is needed.
  So the vision of the elite, the majority Republicans here, have an 
elite vision, a vision to take care of the elite. The over-class will 
be taken care of. The over-class will be pampered and enhanced. The 
over-class will be enriched. The over-class will receive a tax cut. We 
will give them money while we are cutting programs, vitally needed 
programs from everybody else.
  That is their vision of America. Take care of the elite. Take care of 
the small group that went out to vote in 1994, November 1994. They came 
out and they voted and they always come out to vote. There is 
correlation between wealth and voting.
  The richest vote 100 percent of the time and the middle-class vote 75 
percent of the time. It is at the bottom, the people who are the 
poorest and need the help from the Government the most, the social 
contract benefits the most, who do not understand the relationship 
between their vote and public policies.
  The present majority has an agenda which says we will take care of 
those that we know vote. Their votes are guaranteed. If we take care of 
them in abundant ways and guarantee that all of the nuisances of a few 
extra taxes here and tax regulations there, if everything that in any 
way is a cobweb in their lives is removed, then we shall prevail. They 
will support us and we shall prevail because, after all, they are the 
big contributors.
  It is assumed that this process can go forward and they can continue 
to make these gigantic budget cuts, like the one that has just been 
made in the Health and Human Services and Education and Labor budget, 
and that no one will intervene; that all of us citizens can only sit 
back and watch, because if they have the majority, they can pass the 
bills.
  We can only wait to 1996, and they are hoping that we believe that is 
all we can do and, therefore, we will wait until 1996. The great 
majority of Americans who are affected by these cuts will be 
demoralized and think that there is no hope or they will believe, like 
the lady who says, ``I am ready to make my sacrifice, the Government is 
out of money and, therefore, I will suffer gladly for my country.''
  They believe they can prevail by sowing these kinds of lines of 
confusion out there, but they are not correct in assuming. Americans, 
the caring majority out there, the great majority who will be impacted 
by these cuts, my appeal is that you get up and start acting right now. 
My appeal is that you start understanding what is at stake right now.
  Public opinion is a very real force in our deliberations here. Every 
Member of Congress, Republican or Democrat, is watching public opinion. 
Every Member of Congress who wants to come back here cannot afford to 
ignore public opinion, and it is not generated out of thin air. People 
act. You have to tell your neighbors to wake up. There is a vision of
 America that is a dangerous one for us, and there is a vision of 
America which will destroy America for the majority of Americans.

  There is a vision of America which is really un-American, because it 
is geared toward an elite group, and over-class, an oligarchy. It is 
totally contradictory in respect to what this country is about.
  There is a vision of America that says we do not need public school 
education because we can educate our children or we can have 
privatization of education and accomplish more that way. Those of us 
that have some money and can afford to pay some portion of the cost can 
participate in the privatization process. We will educate our children.
  That vision of America is totally wrong because they are assuming 
that this country can exist with just an educated elite, with just a 
portion of the population educated. They have missed the point of 
America. They have missed the point that we are different from Europe 
and this country was built into a powerful Nation over a relatively 
short period of time because it reached out and provided opportunities 
for everybody. It reached out and made an attempt to provide education 
for everybody.
  In a modern society, a very complex modern society, the geniuses or 
the technicians and the scientists cannot be effective unless the 
people under them, the mechanics, the literacy level, the scientific 
literacy, the computer literacy of the total population contributes to 
what the elite over-class is able to accomplish.
  They will not prevail and they will not succeed, but they do not know 
this. They are going to try to take a shortcut and pamper, humor, take 
care of just the over-class and assume that they can build a nation on 
that.
  It is a vision that is a flawed vision. It is a vision that is the 
wrong vision and we need to offer another vision. That is why we did 
the Congressional Black Caucus budget, which had no chance of passing. 
We went through the motions and put it on the floor because we wanted 
to offer a different vision of America. We wanted to offer a vision of 
America which ran counter to the elitist vision. We wanted to show that 
you can have a great American Nation that is not elite.
  You can even balance the budget. You can balance the budget by 
eliminating the real waste. The real waste in defense, so the 
Congressional Black Caucus cut it by $350 billion over a 7-year period, 
a $350 billion cut. You can balance the budget if you do one other 
thing, which has to be part of the discussion.
  The old lady who believes that America is bankrupt and broke should 
know that over the last few decades the amount of money being 
contributed to help balance the budget by corporations, the revenue 
stream, revenue from corporations, has gone down since 1943 from a high 
point of 40 percent. The tax burden was borne by corporations by about 
40 percent in 1943.
                              {time}  1730

  Forty percent of our overall tax burden was borne by corporations, 27 
percent was borne by individuals and families. Over the last few 
decades, it has dropped from 40 percent to as low as 8 percent in 1980. 
The corporate burden, the corporate share of revenue, dropped as low as 
8 percent in 1980 and it is now at 11 percent.
  So of the money we raise from taxes, through taxes, taxation, revenue 
that is needed to run the Government, only 11 percent of that is 
contributed from corporate income.
  At the same time, individual taxes rose from 27 percent of the 
overall tax burden to 44 percent. We are paying 44 percent of the tax 
burden in 1995. In 1943, we were paying about 27 percent.
  So if people are angry about the fact that they as an individual and 
their family, they are paying too many taxes, their tax bill is too 
high, I agree with them. They are right.
  In order to relieve the tax burden, what we need to do is to return 
to some kind of fairness with respect to the corporate portion of the 
tax burden.
  In our Congressional Black Caucus budget, the major way we balanced 
the budget was to raise the corporate tax burden up to the level of 15 
percent. From 11 to 15 percent is not a great jump, but as you move it 
up, you create the possibility of balancing the budget without having 
to make cuts in Medicare, cuts in Medicaid. We even increased the 
budget for education by 25 percent. Education and job training budget 
was increased by 25 percent.
  So in this rich Nation of ours, we do not need to sacrifice the 
elderly. We do not need to sacrifice the health care of the elderly. We 
do not need to sacrifice school lunches. What we do need to do is have 
our own vision of America projected.
  The vision should include fairness in the tax burden. The bearing of 
the tax burden should be fair. When people fill out their income tax in 
April, the corporations should lessen their burden by shouldering more 
of the burden themselves.
  I am in favor of a tax cut. The majority of Republicans are not alone 
in the 

[[Page H 8524]]
proposal for a tax cut. We are in favor of a tax cut. In our 
Congressional Black Caucus budget, we propose a tax cut for the poorest 
Americans and we were able to give the tax cut at the same time we kept 
Medicare at the same level. We kept Medicaid at the same level. We were 
still able to give a tax cut to the people who need it most.
  I am in favor of more tax cuts for individuals and families, but that 
can be done only if we raise the tax burden for the corporations who 
have gotten away with buying out the Committee on Ways and Means over 
the last few decades. That Committee on Ways and Means that I said was 
so powerful before, their collusion with the corporations of America 
took the tax burden for corporations down from 40 to 8 percent in 1980, 
and now it is just 11 percent.
  Those are the people who want to bring us a new approach to taxes. 
They are talking about a flat tax. There are proposals for new taxes. 
In our discussion of what the vision of America should look like, we 
should not forget the revenue side. Liberals, progressives, Democrats, 
do not talk much about taxes in terms of revenue that has to be 
produced to keep our Nation going at the quality level that we think is 
necessary. We do not deal much with tax proposals. Only in reaction to 
Republicans do you define progressives, Democrats, and liberals.
  These are terrible names out of the mouths of
   some, but these are the people who have made America great. Franklin 
Roosevelt was a liberal. Lyndon Johnson was a liberal. Harry Truman was 
a liberal. The people who have made America great have not talked 
enough about taxes, and the organizations now which focus on the budget 
and appropriations process do not talk enough about the need to deal 
with creative taxation, creative revenue enhancement.

  How do we get more revenue with less pain? How do we relieve the 
American families and individuals of the burden of more taxes while we 
get the taxes that are necessary to run the Government? That is a 
question that is not discussed enough.
  It has to be discussed at every level. State governments are crying 
they have no more revenue sources. They want to give tax cuts to 
individuals and businesses in many cases, and everybody sits around 
mentioning the fact that we have to make these draconian cuts because 
there is just no more money.
  There are plenty of resources in the richest country that ever 
existed in the face of the history of the Earth. There were resources 
that were given by God still out there in our minerals. In the Midwest 
we give away gold mines, we give away uranium mines. We let people take 
these Government lands and mine minerals and we do not ask for a 
royalty. We ask for a minimum payment for land that belongs to the 
citizens. We can get more money into our revenue stream if we were to 
take a different approach and not give away our resources, our land 
resources out there in the West, Midwest and Far West.
  There is a great controversy about grazing land. Public grazing land 
is used by private ranchers. They pay one-tenth of the cost of the 
grazing land that they would pay if it was private land, one-tenth of 
the cost, and then they complain about that. They are complaining about 
Government intruding. They want to take it all. They do not want to pay 
anything. They do not want Government officials around watching them as 
they take advantage of the resources that belong to all Americans and 
then they complain about Government being on their back.
  In the plan that was proposed by the Congressional Black Caucus, and 
I served as the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus Alternative 
Budget Task Force. A plan was proposed by both the Congressional Black 
Caucus and the Progressive Caucus in the revenue area to give tax 
relief to working Americans.
  We wanted to reduce the taxes of working Americans by $112 billion 
over this 7-year period. We proposed to enact a tax credit equal to 20 
percent of an individual's FICA contribution, up to $200 per person 
annually. That means that everybody would get--take advantage of that, 
but we would go no higher than the $200 per person annually.
  It would be a small tax cut, but it would be symbolic, and it would 
be just a beginning. We would be proposing additional tax cuts for 
individuals and families because there is an imbalance. Individuals and 
families are paying too much of the tax burden. Corporations are paying 
too little.
  A vision of America and the future, a vision of America which is able 
to provide education for all who need education, a vision of America 
that can provide nursing home care for the elderly, Medicare, Medicaid, 
a vision of America that can provide decent housing for all Americans, 
that vision must include a revenue stream that will pay for all of that 
and we should not leave it to the Republicans to determine what that 
revenue stream is going to be. We have to work it out also.
  In our proposal, the body of our budget proposal,
   we propose that there should be established a commission on creative 
revenues. Just as we have a base closing commission after decades of 
trying to do it through the political channels and running into 
partisan politics, the only way we have made headway in closing bases, 
military bases, is by appointing a commission to make the 
recommendations.

  Congress has the final vote. Congress has the final vote. But the 
commission deliberates and looks at things in a rational way and 
proposes which bases should be closed. We need a commission to look at 
revenue possibilities, look at tax laws and the possible revisions of 
tax laws.
  Give that commission time to operate, time to deliberate. Give them 
whatever they need. Let them bring back recommendations to the Congress 
instead of it coming out of the Committee on Ways and Means, which is 
corrupted.
  The Committee on Ways and Means is a major part of the problem, never 
a part of the solution because they have allowed corporations to take 
over the committee. How else would you explain a drop in the share of 
the revenue burden by the corporations?
  The corporations were paying only 8 percent of the tax burden in 1980 
and 11 percent in 1995, whereas they were paying 40 percent in 1943. 
They control the Committee on Ways and Means. They got the laws enacted 
which allowed them to pay less and less taxes all the time.
  Do not go to the Committee on Ways and Means if you want justice in 
taxation. If you want justice in terms of the tax burden or the way it 
is borne in this country, leave out the Committee on Ways and Means. 
Have a tax commission, a specially appointed commission bring to the 
total Congress recommendations about where America should go in the 
next 7 to 10 years.
  The majority of the House and Senate have proposed a 7-year balancing 
the budget. The President has proposed a budget balancing process that 
will go over 10 years. I agree with the President. Why have the extra 
pain and suffering that is caused by trying to do it in a 7-year 
period?
  There is no great pressing emergency. We are not at war. There are no 
reasons why we cannot, if we want to balance the budget, do it over a 
10-year period, rather than 7-year period.
  Either way you do it, we should look more at the revenue problem. It 
is not just a matter of expenditure. As I said before, in our revenue 
section of the Congressional Black Caucus budget, the carrying majority 
budget for the Congressional Caucus was well as the Congressional Black 
Caucus, we proposed tax relief for working Americans over the 7-year 
period which would be a $112 billion tax cut. It is not as much as the 
320-some-billion-dollar cut that is being proposed by the Republicans.
  The Republican majority is proposing a 320-plus-billion-dollar tax 
cut over a 7-year period for the richest Americans, for the richest 
people in the country. They would benefit the most. That kind of tax 
cut will not help the situation. It will only make it more difficult.
  We also supported tax provisions in President Clinton's budget. We 
supported an effort to enhance tax compliance. We supported eliminating 
loopholes for multinational corporations. One of the ways that 
corporations get away with paying so little a portion of the revenue 
burden is that they have these loopholes like the following: If you 
change the foreign tax credit that 

[[Page H 8525]]
is given to multinational corporations, if you change the tax credit to 
a tax
 deduction, just that change would increase the amount of revenue 
gained over a 7-year period to $71 billion. We would get an additional 
$71 billion.

  Reform taxation of the income of multinational corporations, get 
another $86 billion. Capital gains reform would produce $67 billion. 
Corporate income tax reform, by eliminating the accelerated 
depreciation tricks, we could eliminate $162 billion over a 7-year 
period and on and on it goes.
  If you look at the revenue side and you look at how corporations 
continue to evade their fair share of burden, you would find that there 
are great things that could be done. There are also other creative 
processes that could be undertaken to generate revenue.
  We have just passed a telecommunications bill on the floor of the 
House. Telecommunications is an industry which 50 years ago was a very 
tiny industry compared to steel, compared to transportation, but 
telecommunications is the industry of the future. Telecommunications 
makes something almost out of nothing. They do not have the burden of 
having to have a source of natural resources, iron, ore or coal, good 
weather.
  It is all a matter of imagination and the way you manipulate the 
resources. You have to use technology to provide entertainment, to 
provide information. Technology has made the communications industry 
the technology industry, the telecommunications industry the industry 
of today and the industry of the future. Millions, billions of dollars 
are being made by people who are merely creative, clever, smart.
  Now, I have no problem with that. Making money is part of what the 
capitalist system is all about, but the capitalism of today and the 
capitalism of tomorrow should understand that taxation is the duty, the 
proper tax policies, tax policies which are fair and tax policies which 
go after those who are making the resources, making the money. They 
have the resources; they should be taxed.
  Telecommunications depends on the airwaves. The airwaves belong to 
all Americans. Broadcasting is regulated by the FCC because we do not 
have enough for everybody to have one as they see fit. It has to be 
regulated. It is a scarce resource. Because it is a scarce resource, it 
belongs to the American people.

                              {time}  1745

  The American people have a right to demand that they get more revenue 
from those resources. We also now are selling off spectrums up there 
above us, spectrums for a different kind of communication, not just 
broadband broadcasting. We have gotten commitments of $9 billion 
already.
  That should have a special taxation. We are selling it and the 
Government will reap a one time benefit of $9 billion for the contracts 
that are already under way. Why not have it permanently taxed so that 
future generations, as long as the Nation exists and the airwaves are 
above our heads, can benefit from that because it belongs to everybody.
  There was a motion on the floor, an amendment to require any drug 
companies that benefit from Federal research to pay a portion of that 
back in terms of lower drug prices. I say we should go further.
  Any company, whether it is a drug company or a telecommunications 
company, any company that benefits from Federal research have the 
Government as a permanent partner. There should be royalties on the 
products forever.
  We have numerous products that would not exist had
   it not been for military research--radar, computerization, all kinds 
of components of this big telecommunications revolution, and the great 
technological revolution, all of those components were developed 
through military research paid for by the American people.

  Why not have a royalty so that the American people every time a 
product is sold will benefit from the research that they paid for? On 
and on it goes.
  I want to close out by just saying that what I am trying to talk 
about is the fact that we have reached a landmark, a milestone, a major 
milestone in the process of remaking America.
  I take Speaker Gingrich and the majority Republicans very seriously 
when they say they are going to remake America, I believe that they are 
really going to try to do that, and they are smart enough to do what 
they say they are going to do if we do not stop them.
  I am all for remaking America, thinking as we go into the 21st 
century a vision of a new America is a proper vision. But what shall 
that vision be? I see a vision of an America that is the richest Nation 
on the face of the earth, the richest Nation that ever existed, and its 
resources are used in a way which benefits every American, resources 
are used in ways that benefit all Americans for education, for health 
care.
  The question is, Is the United States of America a Nation for the 
rich and powerful only? Shall the great majority of the population 
remain immobile while it is reduced to a status of urban serfs or 
suburban peasants?
  Shall the resources of the richest Nation that has ever existed in 
the history of the world be used primarily for the benefit of an 
oppressive elite minority or shall it be used for the benefit of all 
the people and shall a caring majority rise up and let it be known that 
they are going to determine what America looks like in the 21st century 
and it is going to be an America for everybody, an America that is 
fair, an America that is living up to the hope of the Constitution.
  Our job is to promote the general welfare, that is the welfare for 
everybody, not to cut school lunches, not to cut medicare, not to make 
life painful for the elderly and the weak. Our job is an America which 
has compassion.
                   My Advice To The Privileged Orders

  Mr. GONZALEZ. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that I may claim 
the remaining time to address the House.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fox of Pennsylvnia). Without objection, 
the balance of the time allocated to the minority leader is allocated 
to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Gonzalez].
  There was no objection.
  Mr. GONZALEZ. Mr. Speaker, 75 years ago, on August 18, 1920, the 
nineteenth amendment to the Constitution was ratified, giving women the 
right to vote after a long, bitter struggle. It is hard to imagine 
today a world in which women could not even vote and yet, that right 
has been established for a mere 75 years.
  And we are on the eve of a somber anniversary: the beginning of the 
age of nuclear terror, and the end of the gigantic slaughter that was 
World War II. For 50 years, we have lived under the shadow of nuclear 
obliteration; and while we now have reason to hope that the future of 
the world does not depend on terror, we do not truly know whether 50 
years from today, the world will celebrate a century free of nuclear 
war. We can only hope that this past 50 years will lead to another, and 
that the world will at last be free from the terror of mass war.
  There is another anniversary to celebrate: the 30th birthday of 
Medicare--the liberation of this Nation's elderly from the oppression 
of unaffordable, inaccessible medical care. Today there are 37 million 
Americans with the right to Medicare benefits. Not only has this 
liberated people from the fear of financial catastrophe because 
illness, it has made a huge difference in the quality and vitality of 
our senior citizens. Imagine this: in just 25 years the life expectancy 
of Americans jumped by a full 10 percent, from 70 to 76. Thanks to 
Social Security and Medicare, poverty and fear are no longer the 
universal fear of elderly Americans; they are not banished by any 
means, but there can be no doubt whatever that Medicare was the 
greatest emancipator of senior citizens in our history.
  The central struggle of human existence is against fear: what 
Franklin Roosevelt decried as ``blind, unreasoning fear.'' And he 
defined very well what should be the enduring goal of every government 
and every citizen: We look forward to a world founded upon four 
essential freedoms.
  The first is freedom of speech and expression--everywhere in the 
world.
  The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way--
everywhere in the world.
  The third is freedom from want.
  The fourth is freedom from fear.
  As much as anything, those brief lines sum up the struggles of 
history, and especially the struggles of our time. For all the struggle 
and slaughter of this century, all the scientific 

[[Page H 8526]]
progress, all the fantastic accumulation of goods, has been a more or 
less determined struggle to liberate human oppression and from the fear 
of those terrible threats. It is not a new struggle, but in this 
century, perhaps more than any other in history, we have the sense that 
it can be won; that humanity can be freed of these old and awful 
terrors.
  Of course the struggle does not take place in a smooth and 
predictable way; the miracle of antibiotics has ended the terror of 
some diseases, but new plagues appear; and the miracles of computers 
give us powers to process
 unimaginable amounts of information, but we lose individual privacy; 
and while revolutionary advances occur almost routinely, we live in 
growing fear of crime and violence. This uneven, unpredictable progress 
of humanity was very well described by Matthew Arnold, more than 100 
years ago:

       And we are here as on a darkling plain, Swept with confused 
     alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by 
     night.

  In other words, we struggle on, sometimes blindly and in confusion, 
in the belief and hope that we can prevail, that there will be a better 
day, and that humanity can improve itself. If we can establish the four 
freedoms, if we can banish those elemental fears of poverty and 
oppression--then all the struggles of this century, and all the others 
before it, will at long last secure us the comfort that while life 
lasts, it can be lived in freedom, real freedom.
  For if we abandon the struggle, we will surrender to the kind of 
cynicism that Sir Walter Scott long ago described in his skillful 
dissection of the Government of England. This comment is in the form of 
a last will and testament supposedly written by the mythical John Bull, 
the equivalent of our own Uncle Sam. This fictional last will said:

       I leave to my said children a great chest full of broken 
     promises and cracked oaths, likewise a vast cargo of ropes 
     made of sand.

  If our Government breaks faith with us, that is the kind of legacy we 
will inherit.
  And so on this 75th anniversary of women's right to vote, and on this 
50th anniversary of the nuclear age, and on this 30th anniversary of 
Medicare, we must renew our faith. Each one of these anniversaries is a 
revolutionary change; each one came after a long struggle; and each one 
must be jealously protected. The freedom to vote and have a voice is a 
new and precious, priceless thing; the nuclear bomb will either 
establish sanity among the nations or destroy them; and the promise of 
Medicare must be nurtured and guarded, lest it turn into ``great chest 
of broken promises and cracked oaths.''
  The problem of every generation is to keep from sliding backward. 
Today's generation is facing a harder struggle than some: for during 
the past 15 years the average American worker has seen real wages 
decline steadily. There is a real decline in all kinds of indices of 
personal economic security: wealth is increasingly concentrated in 
fewer hands; ordinary workers for a while stayed even by adding part 
time jobs, or by having a working spouse, but last year the number of 
families with two earners actually declined--meaning that adding a 
second income has just about reached its limit, and more and more 
families are seeing a growing gap between what they earn and what they 
need. In addition, the number of people in this country who are working 
strictly as temporaries is growing by leaps and bounds: these are folks 
who have little or no health insurance, and little or no retirement 
plan, and little or no hope of breaking out of temporary work and into 
a real career. These are not just kids working for the summer; and 
these are not clerks and laborers: increasingly, they are professionals 
including accountants, managers and lawyers. In other words, we are 
living in a time when personal economic security for a growing number 
of millions of people is evaporating, and for them, the future looks 
more fearful than promising, and more like a treadmill that runs faster 
and faster, rather than a road that rises to a brighter tomorrow.
  This new insecurity and the fear that it gives birth to, is a very 
large component of what is often called the politics of resentment--
which is politics that exploits the fear that someone else is gaining 
ground that ought to belong to you. It is politics built on the notion 
that your problems are the fault of somebody else. It is politics built 
on creating divisions and exploiting the fears that arise from those 
divisions.
  And how different this is from Lincoln's vision, delivered in his 
message to Congress, July 4, 1861, describing the government that the 
Civil War would soon be fought to preserve in these words:
  ``. . . government whose leading object is to elevate the condition 
of men--to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the 
paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start, 
and a fair chance in the race of life.''
  Those are words that could have been spoken by a Franklin Roosevelt, 
a John F. Kennedy or a Harry Truman--but can you imagine Phil Gramm 
saying words like those? Lincoln would be embarrassed by his party's 
retreat from his commitment to human decency and a Government dedicated 
to a new birth of freedom.
  It saddens me to see that the rulers of today's Congress want to 
slash and burn programs that are intended to--and have--lifted 
artificial weights from the shoulders of men by improving schools and 
making education affordable to all; and killing programs that create 
the dignity of productive work; by killing health research; by cutting 
Medicare itself; by killing virtually all opportunities to develop 
affordable housing; and even by prohibiting the issuance of regulations 
that establish safe limits for arsenic in drinking water, or 
regulations that make meat inspection far more effective and efficient; 
and by actions that altogether are intended to give the rich and 
powerful even greater advantages than they already enjoy, while 
throwing bars and locks on the courthouse doors, so that ordinary 
people can't even sue to correct wrongs. Far from a government that 
would lift artificial weights from all shoulders or one that works to 
clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all the new masters of Congress 
are throwing new weight on the backs of the poor, building new 
obstacles for women and placing fetters around the legs of everyone who 
starts life from a poor position.
  What a tragedy, that the Republican party should fall into the hands 
of its wildest, most unrestrained ideologues, whose actions daily 
become more oppressive and even irrational.
  But the politics of fear on which they depend cannot forever be 
exploited. There comes a time when people demand more than the 
entertaining diversions of Willie Horton ads, or of showboat 
investigative hearings; there comes a time when people want to know how 
the Government will help them win greater control over the forces that 
no individual can overcome alone. How are we going to endure that 
senior citizens continue to live in dignity, decency and security? How 
are we going to ensure that we are not going to have a newly 
impoverished generation? How are we going to ensure that the people of 
this country who have historically been denied a decent chance, 
actually do get that chance?
  Those are the real issues of our time.
  Through all our history, the sole purpose of Government in this 
country has been, as the Pilgrims wrote in the Mayflower Compact, to . 
. . combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our 
better Ordering and
 Preservation . . . And . . . do enact, constitute, and frame, such 
just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and offices, from 
time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the 
General Good of the Colony . . .

  And so as I said, we are here to celebrate the unity of generations.
  On this anniversary of Medicare, let us resolve never again to 
abandon whole generations to the daily threat of bankruptcy, in order 
to get decent medical care.
  Let us honor the tens of millions slaughtered in the wars of this 
century, by promising that we will do everything possible to end 
nuclear terror and mass war; because we can in no other way keep faith 
with the generations who made those sacrifices, and those new 
generations whose lives hang in the balance.
  And let us guard jealously our right to speak and be heard, our right 
to vote and our duty to be good, active and involved citizens.
  Above all, let us hold accountable those who today seek to dishonor 
the 

[[Page H 8527]]
commitment this country has had from its very beginning, . . . to enact 
. . . just and equal laws. The course of our progress has been too 
difficult, the struggle for protection of minorities, protection of our 
environment--and even the dignity, decency and freedom of Medicare; 
these things are too precious, too hard-won, and too vital for us to 
abandon. Let us keep faith with all generations, and with each other. 
Let us remember and honor and affirm the goal of the Lincolns, who 
struggled for a . . . government whose leading object is to elevate the 
condition of men--to lift artificial weights from all shoulders . . . 
to afford all an unfettered start, and a fair chance in the race of 
life.
  And let us at the same time hold accountable those who today seek to 
drive us backward. Such reactionaries have always plagued humanity, but 
if we are true to ourselves and to the generations that came before and 
go after us, we will never allow our government to bequeath us broken 
promises and cracked oaths and we will not see voting rights reduced 
nor Medicare's strong net reduced into ropes of sand.


                          ____________________