[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 134 (Thursday, August 10, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12306-S12307]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                           AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

 Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I call my colleagues' attention 
to an important addition to the debate concerning preferential policies 
in America. Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp 
recently published in the Washington Post an article that I believe 
goes to the heart of our troubles with affirmative action. Mr. Kemp 
first notes that affirmative action based on racial quotas and racial 
preferences is ``wrong in principle and ruinous in practice.'' He goes 
on to issue a call for policymakers to come forward with truly positive 
proposals--affirmative efforts--to replace it. Mr. Kemp has spent his 
public career valiantly fighting for an opportunity society. In this 
article, he continues that fight, arguing for school vouchers, tax and 
regulatory reforms, and other programs aimed at giving every American 
the chance to work for a decent education and a decent job in our free 
market economy.
  Mr. President, I commend Secretary Kemp's article to all our 
colleagues. In conjunction with Senator Lieberman, I will be presenting 
legislation in a few weeks aimed at furthering the cause of equal 
opportunity. By reducing taxes and regulations, particularly in 
distressed areas denoted enterprise zones, this bill will encourage 
economic opportunity. By providing for school choice in these same 
areas it will promote educational opportunities. In sum, it is an 
attempt to make the opportunity society a reality, particularly for 
America's inner cities and other distressed areas.
  I request that the following be entered into the Record:
                [From the Washington Post, Aug. 6, 1995]

         Affirmative Action: The ``Radical Republican'' Example

                             (By Jack Kemp)

       The scene is Washington: a Republican President, new to the 
     White House, defiantly throwing down the gauntlet to a 
     Republican Congress, saying he will veto any bill that 
     proposes to do more for ``black Americans'' than for 
     ``whites.'' This is not some fast-forward vision of 1997 and 
     the first days of a new Republican White House. It's a 
     flashback to 1866. The agency to be vetoed was the Freedman's 
     Bureau, established in President Lincoln's administration to 
     ``affirmatively'' assist the recently emancipated African 
     Americans. The president--Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's 
     successor--worried that any ``affirmative action'' would hurt 
     the white population by specifically helping ``Negroes.''
       I offer this page from history not to prove once again that 
     politically, there is not much new under the sun but to 
     illustrate that the issues of race and equality are woven 
     into the essence of our American experience. While our 
     present-day passions on the subject of affirmative action 
     open old wounds, they also summon us to moral leadership of 
     Lincolnesque proportions.
       Thus far the summons goes unanswered by both liberals and 
     conservatives alike. The 

[[Page S 12307]]
     unreconstructed liberal notion of endless racial reparations and race-
     based preferences is doubly guilty: wrong in principle and 
     ruinous in practice. President Clinton's much-vaunted 
     affirmative action review produced more of a bumper sticker 
     than a policy; Clinton's focus-group-fashioned ``mend it, not 
     end it'' slogan makes a far better rhyme than reason.
       The same, however, is true of the new affirmative action 
     ``abolitionist'' position, which heralds equality but seldom 
     addresses the way to truly give all people an equal footing. 
     Critics are right in asserting that ``affirmative action'' 
     quotas have contributed to the poisoning of race relations in 
     this country. But critics must offer much more than just 
     opposition and reproach. We know what they are against, but 
     what are they for?
       ``A colorblind society,'' comes their response. Of course, 
     the goal of equal opportunity is paramount and a worthy 
     destiny to seek. But to say that we have arrived at that goal 
     is simply not true. My friends on the right call for a 
     colorblind society and then quote Martin Luther King's 
     inspirational ``I have a dream'' speech, in which he imagined 
     a nation in which every American would be judged not on the 
     color of his or her skin but on the ``content of his 
     character.'' All too often, though, they neglect to quote the 
     end of his speech, where he describes the painful plight of 
     minority America: ``The Negro,'' King said, ``lives on a 
     lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of 
     material prosperity.''
       Much has changed in the 30 years since King stood on the 
     steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Minority enterprises have 
     begun to gain a foothold, although there are far too few of 
     them. But can anyone venture to the crumbling brick and 
     mortar of Cabrini Green Public Housing, or the fear-ridden 
     projects of Bed-Stuy or the streets lined with the unemployed 
     in South Central LA or East St. Louis and believe that what 
     he sees there today would pass as progress since Dr. King's 
     day?
       This is not to negate the gains made by so many in the 
     black and minority communities. But for large numbers the 
     situation has not only not improved in 30 years, it has grown 
     dramatically worse--with a welfare system that entraps rather 
     than empowers, punishes work and marriage and prevents access 
     to capital, credit and property.
       Reality requires that we admit two things--difficult 
     admissions for both liberals and conservatives. First, that a 
     race conscious policy of quotas and rigid preferences has 
     helped make matters worse. Second, and more important, the 
     Good Shepherd reminds all of us that our work is not done, 
     and as we think about moving into the 21st century, we must 
     not leave anyone behind.
       Sound policy begins with strong principles. Affirmative 
     action based on quotas is wrong--wrong because it is 
     antithetical to the genius of the American idea: individual 
     liberty. Counting by race in order to remedy past wrongs or 
     rewarding special groups by taking from others perpetuates 
     and even deepens the divisions between us. But race-based 
     politics is even more wrong and must be repudiated by men and 
     women of civility and compassion.
       Instead, like the ``radical Republicans'' of Lincoln's day, 
     who overrode President Johnson's veto on the Freedman's 
     Bureau, we would honor the past by creating a future more in 
     keeping with our revolutionary founding ideals of equality. 
     In this way, the eventual ending of affirmative action is 
     only a beginning--the political predicate of a new promise of 
     outreach in the name of greater opportunity for access to 
     capital, credit, prosperity, jobs and educational choice for 
     all.
       The time has definitely come for a new approach an 
     ``affirmative action'' based not just on gender or race or 
     ethnicity but ultimately based on need. ``Affirmative'' 
     because government authority must be employed to remove the 
     obstacles to upward mobility and human advancement. 
     ``Action'' because democratic societies must act positively 
     and create real equality of opportunity--without promising 
     equality of reward.
       Affirmative opportunity in America begins with education, 
     America's schools, particularly our urban public schools, are 
     depriving minority and low-income children of the education 
     that may be their passport out of poverty. Even the poorest 
     parent must have the option more affluent families enjoy; the 
     right to send their children to the school of their choice. 
     Affirmative effort means ending the educational monopoly that 
     makes poor public school students into pawns of the 
     educational bureaucracy. And we should be paving the way to a 
     voucher and magnet school system of public and private school 
     choice.
       Opportunity means an entryway into the job market. That 
     mean removing barriers for job creation and entrepreneurship 
     and expanding access to capital and credit. According to the 
     Wall Street Journal, from 1982 to 1987, the number of black-
     owned firms increased by nearly 38 percent, about triple the 
     overall business growth rate during that period. Hispanic-
     owned businesses soared by 57 percent, and their sales nearly 
     tripled.
       Even so, of the 14 million small businesses in existence 
     across the United States today, fewer than 2 percent are 
     black-owned. And of $27 to $28 trillion of capital in this 
     country, less than one percent is in black ownership. 
     Affirmative effort would take aim at expanding capital and 
     credit as the lifeblood of business formation and job 
     creation--including an aggressive effort to end the red-
     lining of our inner cities and a radical redesign of our tax 
     code to remove barriers to broader ownership of capital, 
     savings and credit.
       Opportunity means the ability to accumulate property. 
     Affirmative effort would mean an end to every federal program 
     that penalizes the poor for managing to save and accumulate 
     their own assets. An AFDC mother's thrift and foresight in 
     putting money away for a child's future should not be 
     penalized by the government welfare system as fraud as is 
     currently the case.
       Finally, real opportunity for racial and ethnic 
     reconciliation requires an expanding economy--one that 
     invites the effort and enterprise of all Americans, including 
     minorities and women. A real pro-growth policy must include 
     policies ranging from enterprise zones in our cities to a 
     commitment to lowering barriers to global trade. It should 
     also offer relief from red tape and regulation and freedom 
     from punitive tax policies. Each is part of an affirmative 
     action that can ``move America forward without leaving anyone 
     behind.''
       Now that we have opened a somewhat hysterical dialogue on 
     affirmative action, we can never go back--only forward. Our 
     challenge is to put aside the past--abandon the endless round 
     of recrimination and a politics that feeds on division, 
     exclusion, anger and envy. We must reaffirm, as Lincoln did 
     at his moment of maximum crisis, a vision of the ``better 
     angels of our nature,'' a big-hearted view of the nation we 
     were always meant to become and must become if we are to 
     enter the 21st century as the model of liberal democracy and 
     market-oriented capitalism the world needs to see.
     

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