[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.
____________________