[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 138 (Thursday, September 7, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H8670-H8676]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PLANNING FOR AMERICA'S ECONOMY
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hoekstra). 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, yesterday I concluded some remarks related to
the state of the economy and what it means to working people and
members of labor unions. I hastily discussed a solution to the problem
at that time. Today I would like to go back and do a more thorough
discussion of the solution to the problem.
I laid out the problem yesterday. I think it is only fitting that we
spend as much time discussing a proposed solution to it.
I do want to recapitulate a statement that started the whole process
yesterday. That was a statement, I had read a series of statements that
I had read from an article that was produced by Lester Thurow. It was
an op-ed article in the Sunday, September 3, New York Times.
I was struck by the opening paragraph of that article. The opening
paragraph I would like to quote again:
No country without a revolution or military defeat and
subsequent occupation has ever experienced such a sharp shift
in the distribution of earnings as America has in the last
generation. At no other time have median wages of American
men fallen for more than two decades. Never before have a
majority of American workers suffered real wage reductions
while the per capita domestic product was advancing.
I think that is a very strong statement by Lester Thurow, who is a
professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He
is just making a factual statement. But it is a very compact and
focused statement that all of us ought to really think seriously about.
Mr. Thurow is not a progressive or liberal or politician. Mr. Thurow
is an economist. Mr. Thurow I think has been on record numerous times
as supporting free trade. He probably supported NAFTA and GATT. Mr.
Thurow is not an ideologue. He is an economist, very much respected.
Written about 10 books. He has been on the Hill at various hearings
testifying numerous times before the Senate and the House, well
respected.
I think it is important to take a look at that opening statement and
some other things he says, including a statement at the end of his
article where he talks about the family.
The traditional family--I am quoting Mr. Thurow again: The
traditional family is being destroyed not by misguided social welfare
programs coming from
Washington, although there are some Government initiatives that have
undermined family structure, but by a modern economic system that is
not congruent with family values. Besides falling real wages, America's
other economic problems pale in significance. The remedies lie in major
public and private investments in research and development and in
creating skilled workers to ensure that tomorrow's high-wage brain
power industries generate much of their employment in the United
States. Yet if one looks at the weak policy proposals of both Democrats
and Republicans, it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.
So Mr. Thurow, the economist, professor of economics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has sort of summed up the
predicament of where we are, and he only touched on the solution. When
he says we need a remedy in the area of public and private investment
and research and development and in creating skilled workers to ensure
that tomorrow's high-wage brain power industries generate much of their
employment in the
[[Page H 8671]]
United States, I would like to begin at that point really today.
The question is, what are we doing? Mr. Thurow seems to think
Democrats are not doing anything significant and also Republicans are
not doing anything significant to deal with the remedy. We have a
phenomenon which is very real. Everybody factually agrees that this is
an unprecedented phenomenon. No country without a revolution or a
military defeat and subsequent occupation has ever experienced such a
sharp shift in the distribution of earnings as America has in the last
generation.
At no other time have median wages of American men fallen for more
than two decades. Never before have a majority of American workers
suffered real wage reduction while the per capita domestic product was
advancing. Our gross national product is advancing. The profits of our
corporations are escalating. They have increased over the last 10
years. They are at record levels this year and last year.
We have a very productive economy. We have a very productive private
sector, but all boats are not being lifted. In fact, at another point
in his article, Mr. Thurow, Dr. Thurow says that the tide rose but 80
percent of the boats sank.
So we have a situation, the tide is rising, continues to rise, but
the boats are sinking. The productivity is going up. The profits are
going up. But jobs are being lost.
We hear numbers every month about the number of jobs created, how so
many more jobs are being created. But it is a simple fact that almost
everybody knows that the jobs that are being created are in the service
sector at far lower wages than the jobs that are being lost. And every
day there are new announcements of mergers and various new arrangements
among the private sector, conglomerates, that result in a decrease in
the number of jobs available, a downsizing and streamlining of jobs so
people in large numbers are losing out as the economy overall advances.
What do you do when America's gross national product is increasing, the
profits are increasing, what happens, what has to happen?
Twenty percent, according to Mr. Thurow, among the men, the top 20
percent of the labor force has been winning all of the country's wage
increases for more than two decades. So 20 percent are doing fairly
well right now.
There is a danger though, because at another point Mr. Thurow points
out that with our global economy where anything can be made anywhere
and sold anywhere,
the supply of cheap, often well-educated labor in the Third World is
having a big effect on First World wages. So the men in that 20 percent
are also threatened.
He points out with an example. Quoting Mr. Thurow: One month's wages
for a Seattle software engineer gets the entire--gets the same company
an equally good engineer in Bangalore, India, for a whole year. In
other words, the Bangalore, India, software engineer will work for one-
twelfth of the wages of the Seattle engineer, software engineer.
Educated, educated, high skilled, that is a new threat.
So to dwell on looking at the solution, we have unprecedented
prosperity on one hand. The prosperity is defined as the gross national
product increase, profits increase, private sector is booming. CEO's
are making far more than they ever made. How do we deal with a
situation where there is a great transition taking place? Yes, we
cannot run back the clock. We cannot deny the global economy.
I do not think we should have moved as fast as we did on NAFTA and
GATT, but the reality is that the global marketplace is taking hold.
Reality is that capitalism is the economy of the present and capitalism
will be the economy of the future. There is no alternative to
capitalism. There are variations on it. The Chinese are moving toward a
capitalism that is very different from the capitalism in America and
the Russians are planning on a capitalism that is very, different.
The French practice a capitalism on an ongoing basis that is very,
very different. There are differences, but basically capitalism is the
way of the future. The market economy is the way of the future. Nobody
wants to turn back the clock. I do not think they have the power to
turn back the clock. But how do you operate within the situation that
exists? It is the reality, and what is the creative approach to this
reality?
One creative approach of course is to move to capture a portion of
the resources of the productivity, of the profits and use a portion of
those profits to fund, to finance a transition. We hope that, as it has
been in the past, of an industrial revolution, we hope this information
age revolution will also over time work itself out.
Nobody can predict what capitalism is going to
do. Nobody can predict the future with any certainty. It is not
planned, capitalism is not planned. So we have to depend on the same
kind of phenomena that developed in the industrial revolution and hope
that it is going to work itself out over time.
Over time, we are going to have things happen which we cannot even
predict now. But we know we are in a transition right now. We know that
for the last two decades the wages of American men have fallen. We know
that for the last two decades, only 20 percent of the labor force has
benefited from the economy and that fewer and fewer of them are
included in the big economic boom that is going on now. So how do we
handle it?
We have to finance a transition. We have to realize, this is the
transitional period, this is the period where large numbers of people
are beginning to feel the pinch. Large numbers are suffering. This is a
period where the trend is pretty clear. More jobs are going to be lost
over the next year or so.
There may probably be an escalation of the number of jobs that are
lost in middle management, of the number of jobs that are loss in
clerical pursuits, of the number of jobs that are lost in semi-skilled
factory work because the gains of computerization and automation
eliminate those people first.
The irony of it is that you may have unskilled workers having more
opportunities in a few years than the highly educated. The educated
people, you may reverse this whole thing. The service people may be
able to drive their wages up because the supply of service people
especially in services like plumbing and electricians and a number of
service people may find that they can command higher and higher wages
because there is a greater need for them and they cannot be replaced.
{time} 1945
You cannot move their jobs overseas. If you are going to build
houses, you cannot take a carpenter's job and take it overseas and
build housing, if you are going to install plumbing, et cetera.
There are some jobs that will be able to make some demands, but the
largest number of people are employed in manufacturing jobs, in big
financial organizations, the clerical jobs, et cetera. They are
definitely, the trend is obvious, going to be without jobs.
How do we deal with this transitional period? It may last for 10
years, it may last for another 20 years, but definitely we are in a
transitional period.
It is not the job of the private sector to deal with this problem.
The private sector is in business to make money. Capitalism, they may
have ads on the television that say that they exist to make America
great, they exist to improve life for humankind, and you have all heard
the ads for General Motors and General Electric and Archer Daniels
Midland. They all have an image to project, to make it appear that one
of their primary concerns is the fate of humankind or the comfort of
the Nation.
Those are all auxiliary concerns. I will not question their motives,
but they do not pretend that that is their primary business. Every
private sector enterprise is in business to make money, to earn
profits, and they are driven by the need for profits.
It does not matter how prosperous they are, they cannot afford to let
competitors get ahead of them in terms of their profit margin. It only
spells trouble down the road. Even IBM slipped and stumbled. You can
never get too big in the private sector, in the capitalist economy, so
big that you are secure.
We cannot criticize private industry for making profits. Let us get
off the sentimental trip of expecting private industry to take care of
the needs of the people. Private industry is not responsible for
providing an economy
[[Page H 8672]]
which is fair and just. Private industry is not responsible for
providing job training. It is the Government.
We are elected officials, Congress Members, Members of the Senate,
Members of the House, members of the State legislatures, members of the
city councils, the mayors. We are elected to look after the general
welfare, to provide for the general welfare. It is our duty.
If that means that we upset some of the profitmaking enterprises,
that we upset the corporations, that we upset the people who are
generating the wealth in some way, then so be it. It is our duty to
take care of the general welfare.
Only elected officials have that duty. Corporations do not have that
duty. Corporations would not be able to exist if they assumed that
duty. Whatever they say, attempt to project to confuse us, they are not
concerned with the general welfare except as a peripheral issue.
If we are responsible, if the President of the United States is
responsible for the state of the American economy, and the Congress and
all the other elected officials who make decisions about the lives of
people and who are responsible for keeping our society going, then we
must take action to deal with a transitional period where things are
happening that never happened before.
We never saw prosperity before which was not shared by all of the
people. We never saw prosperity before which did not automatically
trickle down. This trickling down stopped some time ago. According to
Mr. Thurow, we have been in this predicament for two
decades now, 20 years. We are still talking about trickle-down
economics.
We are still talking about giving big tax breaks to corporations,
letting them invest in activities which create jobs. Well, they invest,
but they may make their investment in more machinery, more automation,
more computerization, or they may make their investment overseas.
Wherever the profits will be highest or whatever actions produce the
highest profits is what they will do. That is what they are paid to do,
but they must look at the situation and say, what can we do in this
situation?
One of the things that we have to do is look at taxation policies,
because only through gaining more revenue will we be able to finance a
transition period. I am sorry, that is one way. One way to finance a
transition period is to streamline expenditures, change our
expenditures and our priorities, and use the money that we save in
Government from changing the priorities and from eliminating waste to
finance a transition period agenda. The other way is to reach into the
area of prosperity, the corporate sector, and get more revenues to deal
with the crisis that we face.
Of course the knee-jerk reaction of both parties is that this is a
tax-and-spend liberal you have got talking to you, this is a tax-and-
spend liberal who wants to go after more taxes. How dare anybody
propose more taxes.
Well, this particular liberal says we need less taxation in the area
of income tax on families and individuals. In 1943 families and
individuals were paying 27 percent of the total tax burden.
Corporations in 1943 were responsible for 40 percent, 39.8 percent of
the total tax burden.
So corporations over the period since 1943, to the present, have been
able to manipulate the tax laws, or they have been able to convince and
to do whatever is necessary to get Government decisionmakers, most of
them on the Committee on Ways and Means of the House or the Finance
Committee of the Senate, and the rest of us who vote for the things
that they bring to the floor. When the Committee on Ways and Means
comes to the floor, they will not allow any amendments.
It is very difficult to make any adjustments, but as a Member I
cannot tell my constituents that I do not have some burden of guilt on
me. Everybody who is a decisionmaker that allows this to happen is
guilty. We have been guilty of allowing the American people to be
swindled since 1943, because the amount of taxes being paid by
corporations has gone steadily down to the point now where it is 11.1
percent of the total tax burden, while the amount of taxes paid by
individuals and families has gone up from 27 percent to 44.1 percent.
We have created a reason for the American people to be angry at us,
only you have to know how to focus your anger. You have a right to be
angry about high taxes. The taxes are not fair, not just. Individuals
and families are paying too much in taxes. You heard this from a
liberal, a progressive. Corporations, on the other hand, have swindled
us because they are paying far less than their fair share.
What we need is a balance of the tax burden. While we are trying to
balance the budget, we should consider balancing the tax burden. We
should not rush into this. There is no need to be revolutionary about
it. Let us move it slowly and set as an objective an equalization of
the tax burden by the year 2005.
I agree with the President's analysis that we should not rush things
and remake Government in 7 years. Let us take 10 years to remake
Government.
Let us set a goal. Let us say that by the year 2005, we are going to
balance the tax burden and have corporations paying an equal amount of
the tax burden with individuals and families. If you set that kind of
goal and follow it, you can only win the praises of the people because
that means taxes come down for families and individuals. It means that
nobody can make the charge of tax-and-spend when it comes to families
and individuals certainly. It means that fairness will relieve American
families of a burden and the people who are making the money, the
corporations are making the money, there is no relationship between
their profits and the number of people who are working. The number of
people that are working goes down, people are making as individuals and
families less money, corporations are making more money, it is only
fair, and even if they were not, it would only be fair that we balance
off the tax burden.
Why in 1943 was it the opposite? Why was almost 40 percent of the tax
burden being carried by corporations and only 27 percent by
individuals? And why now is it so out of balance? It went down even as
low as 8 percent under Ronald Reagan in 1982. Eight percent was the
portion of the burden being borne by corporations while individuals at
that time were still at 44 percent. So you have a situation where part
of the solution is we need more revenue directed at job training and
education. That is the obvious way. There may be some other things that
can be done to solve the present problem. We need more revenue directed
at job training and education in order to be able to get out of the
present bind where the workers and individuals of this Nation are
slipping further and further behind while the corporate sector, 5
percent of the population, is going ahead with higher and higher
profits.
A just solution is the duty of the people who are elected, the
President, Members of Congress, Members of the Senate, we have a duty
to solve this problem. I see no other way to solve it unless you have
the resources to solve it with. What would you do with the resources
that you gained from raising taxes on corporations? You would use it to
make an unprecedented education system in this country, an education
system which nobody can sit and predict what the components should be,
but we could begin a process of working at it with research and
development, with
implementation of experimentation, with the application of
computerization and automation and all kinds of new things which would
help enhance the education system, an education system for tomorrow
that is unlike any that exists now in Japan or Germany, that is not the
way to go. We need an exciting classroom that captures the attention of
young people and holds them. We need a classroom that can put a
youngster who is a slow learner off into a corner and by use of some
kind of repetitive action, either by a computerized program or a
videotape that he responds to interactively, there are a number of
things underway now which offer the answer for the future. We need all
of those things. We need to have every American school have whatever is
available. We know that computerization requires that students be
computer literate for tomorrow. We know that already. So there should
not be a school in the country that does not have an ample supply of
computers.
[[Page H 8673]]
Oh, they cost a lot of money, we might say. Let us get whatever money
we need to do that by cutting waste, setting priorities differently,
and by raising new revenues where we need them. Those are the two
approaches that we should follow.
It is doable. The American people have to say it must be done. The
American people have to say, we are angry and we know what we are angry
about. We are angry and we are angry at Government. We are angry at
elected officials and we have good reason to be angry at elected
officials.
People say, well, why are they not angry at corporations? The
corporations took their jobs. That is a waste of energy. Corporations
are in business to make money. Therefore, you have to turn to your
elected officials and say to the elected officials, you have to hold
the corporations in line in terms of their responsibilities, and their
responsibility, the major contribution they can make, is to generate
more revenue where revenue is needed in order to finance a transition
period while we deal with the problem of a declining standard of living
of American families and American workers.
Herein lies the solution. I think we need to appoint a tax
commission, a commission on creative revenues. I think we ought to have
a commission similar to the base closing commission, some kind of
objective group of experts who would come back to the Congress and the
President, and we would have the final say, Congress has the final word
on the base closings commission. For years we could not close bases,
for years, they were an inefficient, wasteful operation out there and
it has not been totally solved. The base closing commission has
problems, it is not perfect, but we are moving at a much more
reasonable, scientific, logical way to close down bases than we ever
did before. Hard decisions are being made by the base closing
commission in connection with elected officials. Let us have a creative
revenue commission that does the same kind of thing. Instead of relying
on the Committee on Ways and Means, which has sold us out, which has
swindled the American people since 1943, since the corporate sector
started getting greater and greater breaks, paying less and less taxes
and the individuals and families started paying more, you have a
situation where our interests wee not being served by the Ways and
Means Committee or the Senate Finance Committee. The political process
has broken down.
{time} 2000
And it seems never to be able to get itself together again.
I do not have any faith, there are no proposals on the table to give
you any reason to believe that it is going to start self-correcting. In
the absence of self-correcting, we need outside forces. We have
brilliant people in America that could be a part of a creative revenue
situation.
Let me say to every State and every city that you have a similar
problem and many States now have surpluses and are prosperous. Many
cities are prosperous, but have little surplus. But there are an equal
number or a majority of cities across the country who are struggling to
make revenues and expenditures balance, so cities are in great trouble.
There are a number of States in great difficulty in terms of making
revenues and expenditures balance, so you have the same problem.
There ought to be a clear message sent out to liberals and to
progressives, and the people on my side of the aisle, Democrats,
whatever name you want to take or want to be called, we need to
preoccupy ourselves. We need to focus far more on revenue. Revenue
policies and tax policies have been neglected by the progressives and
the liberals. We do not have any new ideas to propose.
We have not seen any new ideas for a long, long time. Somehow we
think that that is the dirty part of it. We will just focus on the
expenditures and set priorities and talking about people's needs, all
of which are necessary.
People need Medicare, and we are going to fight hard to make certain
that Medicare benefits are not cut. We are going to fight hard to make
certain that Medicare premiums do not go up. We do not want senior
citizens eating dog food in order to pay for their medicine and medical
care. We are not going to change in that area.
Liberals will be liberals. The Nation cannot exist without us. We are
going to fight hard to get the school lunch program back on track so
that little kids will not have to sacrifice their lunches to balance
the budget.
We are going to continue to do all of those, but some amount of
energy must be addressed to the revenue question. In all of this, Ways
and Means will be the star. Ways and Means will be on the front stage
here in the Congress and across the country.
You have already budgets of cities and States that have made drastic
cuts. Large numbers of people, say in the City of New York, in my
district, have told me we do not want to make these sacrifices. We
think we still need these services. We think that old people should
have home care because home care makes more sense than nursing homes.
We think that we should still have decent meals for elderly people
because that keeps them healthy and it saves money in terms of hospital
care.
And we want to continue our senior citizens programs. We want to
continue our programs for young children and make certain that those
immunizations take place. And if that means we have to have some
outreach workers to make certain that certain kinds of people get those
shots, then we want to do that. We want to continue.
But we realize the city is broke. We are willing to sacrifice. We
know we have to give up something. If our city is broke, we want to be
loyal and good citizens and understand.
My message to you in New York City, New York State, is, yes, we want
to be understanding. We should never, never ever waste public money or
private money. We should always be vigilant, and in the process of
pruning the budget and making city government or State government or
national government work efficiently and effectively as an eternal and
ongoing process. Vigilance is necessary to make certain that every
dollar that is taken in in revenue is spent wisely. That is necessary.
We should do more in that area.
On the other hand, do not accept the idea, do not accept the
propaganda that the city is broke automatically or the State is broke.
In New York City, for example, the revenue possibilities are as great
as ever.
New York City once had a City University that was completely free. No
tuition was charged at all. That was during the Depression. During the
Depression we had a free university; the revenue being generated was
meager. But this was because the people who were in charge of the
government, the decision-makers, the elected officials felt it was
important, important to the people and the people in charge of the
government, their families were the people who were going to those free
universities.
Now it is a bit different. The power is in the hands of a different
set of people, and they have imposed tuition, and they are now saying,
we cannot keep going; we have to cut back. The result is that large
numbers of people who qualify, students who qualify and should be in
college will not be able to go to college. We do not have to make that
sacrifice.
What the college professors in New York City should do is put their
brains to work and talk to their students and link up with elected
officials. In New York City you ought to have a discussion of creative
revenue policies. What are the creative revenue policies to make us
more aggressively take advantage of the fact that New York City is
strategically located? It is strategically located and has a harbor, a
shipping industry, is strategically located in terms of air lanes
coming from Europe. There is a big volume of travel business from
overseas that comes into New York City.
The city has been giving that away for decades. There is a Port of
New York and New Jersey Authority. That Authority is an independent
authority. That Authority pays interest on bonds. That Authority is run
by people who have salaries which are twice the salaries of city
officials or State officials, as most public authorities do. They do
not have the same level of salaries as people who are public officials.
They make decisions, often bad decisions, without any accountability to
the taxpayers or the voters. And they have
[[Page H 8674]]
been doing that for years. They have been squandering money for years.
New York City citizens could be more aggressive in taking back the
source of revenues generated for the Port Authority of New York and New
Jersey. This is just one example that we have been talking about for
years, but very few people have done anything about it.
We have a Republican mayor that I disagree with on a number of other
things, but he has taken the initiative and he has made it quite clear
he is not going to tolerate the continued swindling of New York City by
the Port Authority.
New York City has a large tourism business, in fact, probably
unequaled in the country. The largest industry in the New York City is
tourism. This has not come home to most people. It has been happening
for the last 10 years, but they have not gotten the message. It is the
second largest business in New York State.
Agriculture is still the largest industry in New York State. But in
New York City, tourism is the number one industry. Why? Because New
York City is strategically located, as I said before, in terms of
traveling, but it has a history that interests people all over the
world. It has monuments that interest people.
There are things in New York City that the world will always be
interested in. Most people in their lifetimes across the whole Planet
Earth would like to see New York City sometime in their lifetime, once
in their lifetime. A lot of people say, I do not want to live there,
but I would like to see it. And that is one of the greatest advantages.
Tourism.
The fact is that New York City has a diversified population, these
terrible immigrants that people talk about. We have more than anybody
else. We have a greater mixture. There may be some place in the country
that has certain immigrant groups that are larger, but we have the
greatest mixture in New York City. We could double the tourist industry
if the decision-makers in New York City, the city council and the mayor
would say, we are going to take this diversity and build on it.
The fact that we have people from China, from Bangladesh,
restaurants, Pakistani, Vietnam, to say nothing of all the Caribbean
countries, you could have a festival in New York City every week of a
different nationality or different ethnic group and promote the kind of
thing that brings people into New York City in large numbers to spend
their money in various ways. It is a gold mine. The diversity of New
York is a gold mine.
Let me give you one example in the heart of my district on Eastern
Parkway. In the heart of the 11th Congressional District we have a West
Indian Labor Day parade. It has mushroomed in 20 years from a few
blocks to something like 50 blocks, and it is the largest tourist event
in New York City now, 2 million people. And police always make
conservative estimates; this is the police estimate.
Last Monday on Labor Day, 2 million people turned out for the West
Indian parade. They do not call it a parade, it is a carnival. They set
up food stands. You cannot walk, there are so many people spread along
the parkway. People come from all over the world
because you have people of Caribbean descent in Canada and London.
They come for the carnival and parade, 2 million people.
Can you imagine how much revenue the industry receives from the
impact? Those who come from outside have to have hotels. They have to
travel in. All kinds of expenditures that come from the outside. Those
who are on the inside spend money in great volumes for the various
things that are for sale.
And the city has ways to collect this revenue, but it turns over the
economy. If the city collects not a dime, the people who are selling
the wares and participating in the activity are earning money in a way
which generates money for the overall gross income of New York City.
Here is a tourist event started by amateurs that generates this kind
of money. What if the city planned and made planning to have some kind
of festive every week of the year with a different ethnic group?
And we have a City University system which has 200,000 students. This
is before the budget cutbacks and the raising of tuition, but I suspect
it is hovering around 195,000 students. You have 200,000 students in
the City University system. This is not the State university, just the
City of New York. You have all those professors.
You could have an institute for each one of the ethnic groups in the
city. An institute which would help plan these things. You could have a
welcoming committee for the visitors from Indonesia, Pakistan. You
could have a welcoming committee organized by the city so that the
activities are organized and the middle-class families of the world who
are traveling, you can come to New York and expect more than just to
see the sights. You can expect to be welcomed and have some of your
human needs taken care of.
You take China. We have a large Chinese population in New York. The
best Chinese food in the world; a politically active population.
China, with 1 billion people and growing, broken out of economic
stagnation. China is creating a middle-class. If you have a billion
people and 1 quarter of that billion people become middle-class, that
is 250 million people. If 1 quarter of the 250 million decide to make a
trip to New York once every year, we would be overwhelmed by Chinese
tourists. But they are coming. It is going to happen.
You can double the revenue from tourism. You can double the economic
activity from tourism in New York City if you plan for it and if you
encourage it.
Every Eastern European country, you could have an exchange program.
There are a thousand ways that we should take the initiative and say
that we liberals and progressives are going to seize the initiative and
force new activities which generate revenue.
And on the national level as well, this is a diverse Nation. Instead
of bashing immigrants, we should look at what that means in terms of a
tourism industry. Our initiatives in tourism are paltry as a Nation.
States do a better job of encouraging tourism. But nationally, we are
not in the same league with Italy and France. They know how to promote
tourism. They do whatever is necessary to make certain that people come
from the outside to spend their money in their countries. They have all
kinds of tricks and special coupons for gasoline and all kinds of
tricks, not tricks, but options, inducements, incentives.
We do not do that. We are arrogant about it all. They are going to
come or not come. We will encourage a few things by sending out
brochures, but revenue can be generated for the whole country if we
just organize better the tourism industry.
Mr. Abercrombie of Hawaii is disgusted by the fact that he cannot get
an adequate response to the growth of the tourism industry. I will not
dwell on that. That is just one example.
I want to bring it home to New Yorkers. Instead of despairing, you
have a mayor that says the city is broke. We cannot do any more. We are
going to have a different standard of living and quality of life. City
University cannot only not be free, but we are going to raise the
tuition so that it is going to be as high as Ivy League schools.
{time} 2015
In order to have a different solution in New York City, the liberals,
the progressives, have to concern themselves also with taxes and
revenue as well as streamlining new priorities, setting new priorities.
At the national level, the priorities are all mixed up.
Today we had a vote on the defense appropriations bill, and while
this Nation needs to be investing in research and development and needs
to be creating skilled workers to insure that tomorrow's highways,
brainpower industries generate much of the employment in the United
States, going back to Mr. Thurow's article, while we should be doing
that, instead of investing in research and development and in
education, we made dramatic cuts, drastic cuts in research and
development and in education.
Before we went on recess, we had an appropriations bill for
education, health and human services and education. Specifically,
education suffered about $3 billion in cuts. The Head Start program,
for the first time in history of the program, was cut. The title I
program was cut by $1.1 billion.
It is the biggest cut. It is the biggest program. Title I is the only
program
[[Page H 8675]]
that funnels Federal funds into public schools, into elementary and
secondary schools.
At a time when we need to be increasing our brainpower, improving our
educational system, even the programs that exist already are
drastically cut. Large numbers of job training programs were wiped out.
They say they do no good and, therefore, they should be wiped out.
But we have had some weapons systems and some activities in
government that have had problems that did no good. We do not wipe them
out. The CIA has been in trouble for a long time. The CIA is a great
embarrassment to everybody. We do not wipe it out. We insist on
restructuring the CIA, get a new director, have some new codes, appoint
a commission. Nobody wants to wipe out the CIA.
We do not even cut the CIA. One of the items on the floor of the
House today was an amendment to cut the portion of the CIA budget which
deals with satellite activities, information-gathering activities only,
which is estimated to be about $16 billion. We have to say estimate
because we do not know the details of the CIA budget, of the
intelligence budget. You are not allowed to do that unless you want to
go to the secret room and, not a secret room, go to the room where the
budget is as a Member of Congress, and behold the budget of the CIA and
the other intelligence gathering activities. Once you look at it, you
cannot talk about it. Nobody wants to go and look at it because they
are muzzled. You cannot criticize. You are a traitor if you talk about
it after you look at it. Everything is topsecret.
So estimates that are never disputed are that $28 billion goes into
total intelligence operations, a minimum of $28 billion. In the past we
have had a budget amendment on the floor to cut the CIA budget by 10
percent totally across the board, the intelligence budget. That 10
percent of $28 billion would yield $2.8 billion a year. We said do it
for 5 years so the CIA budget is cut in half.
Today we were proposing less, just a portion of the CIA budget which
deals with intelligence-gathering operations, with satellites and
military aspects of it, which is estimated at $16 billion. We were
going to cut that by 10 percent. That is $1.6 billion.
When we first introduced the amendment to cut the CIA, we got 104
votes. The second year we introduced it, we got 107 votes. Today we got
less than 95 votes.
In a time when the state of the emergency is beginning to manifest
itself clearer and clearer every day, at a time when it is clear that
we need to devote some resources to deal with the economic emergency
that we have in this country, the Members of Congress, Democrats and
Republicans, refuse to cut a wasteful CIA budget.
Aldrich Ames and his capers have shown us something is radically
wrong with the CIA. Not only are we funding a wasteful operation, but
the Aldrich Ames affair shows we are funding a dangerous operation
where people are in high places, are allowed to get to high places
because of a lack of accountability and standards, and an outright bum,
an outright bum was allowed to rise to the top where he was directing
the agents who were related to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and
Aldrich Ames is responsible for the death of at least 10 agents, at
least 10. He is not talking yet. He is in prison, but not fully
talking. But they have admitted that he has caused the deaths of at
least 10 agents.
He has received at least $2 million from the Soviet Union. Even after
the cold war ended, he was still on the payroll, and it was estimated
that he was supposed to go, in the end, go to Russia, and there was a
big mansion built for him. I suppose they are going to put him in the
annals of history because who else has made such a fool of the American
intelligence community, this man in high places who broke every rule.
He was a drunk, an alcoholic. He used safe houses. We probably have
beautiful safe houses that we pay a lot of money for across the world.
He used safe houses for his sexual escapades.
He broke all the rules. But he was the son of a former CIA employee.
He was a member of the old-boy network. So he was allowed to do this
because the agency is not into anything of great significance. If it
had been into some significant activity, he would have been exposed a
long time ago, with Aldrich Ames's traitorous activities, with the
death of 10 agents, at least they admit 10 agents dies, peace and war
have not been affected at all. Nobody will say that he had any impact
on peace and war in the world. Nobody will say that he had any impact
on the security of the United States, because whatever those agents
knew and whatever games they were playing, whatever cop-and-robber
activities they were engaged in were insignificant.
Most of what Aldrich Ames was doing in getting people killed was
insignificant to the welfare of the people of the United States,
insignificant to the security of the United States, and yet the
Democrats and Republicans both refuse to cut the CIA budget just 10
percent.
That is not the only major vote that was on the floor of the House
today. There was a vote for the B-2 bomber, an amendment to strike the
B-2 bomber from the appropriations bill. The B-2 bomber the President
says he does not want or need. The Joint Chiefs of Staff said, ``We do
not want or need the B-2 bomber,'' that whatever functions the B-2
bomber could serve can be served in other ways that are more effective
and more efficient. The chief of the Air Force says they do not need
the B-2 bomber. The Secretary of Defense says, ``We do not want the B-2
bomber.'' All of the people that we pay to render expertise on these
decisions say. ``We do not want the B-2 bomber,'' and yet the amendment
to delete the B-2
bomber on the floor of this House, despite the fact that both
Republicans and Democrats supported the amendment, Republicans came
over in large numbers, led by the chairman of the Committee on the
Budget, the Republican Committee on the Budget, the man who, despite
the unpopularity of it, will put his vote where his philosophy is, it
still lost by 3 votes. It still lost by 3 votes; by 3 votes, the
Members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans, said, ``We want to keep
a weapon that everybody says is wasteful.''
Over the life of the B-2 bomber production, we are talking about $30-
some billion. Right away I think $30 million is involved in the next
year's budget over the life of it, we are talking about $30-some
billion, and yet Republicans and Democrats say ``no.''
What is the reason for rational people, elected by the people of the
United States, to fund a weapon that the experts do not want, that the
military people do not want? What is the rationale for that?
I will not answer that question. I will let you call your Congressman
and ask them how they voted, and let them answer it. But it is clearly
an example of how the priorities that we need to be shaping for this
transitional period are not being dealt with.
We do not need any more money from taxes, either for families and
individuals or corporations, until we eliminate those kinds of wasteful
activities and wasteful weapons systems.
We are not living up to the promise that we made in terms of
streamlining the budget. The President made it. The Democrats made it.
And the Republicans made it. And yet there are tremendous examples of
waste, all of which I will not go into. We will not deal with the farm
program. We will not deal with the subsidies that go to the farmers in
Kansas, which average between $30,000 and $40,000 per family, and it
has been doing that for the last 20 years, and they will not cut those
subsidies. Farmers are no longer the poor people that Franklin
Roosevelt decided to subsidize.
Farmers are corporations now. Only 2 percent of the population lives
on farms. But look at the size of the budget, between $12 billion and
$20 billion, which go into various farm programs. We could move to
seriously cut the waste and take that waste and put it into job
training, education, research and development, and deal with the
problems Mr. Thurow talks about. We could deal with the problems that
we are in a global economy, and our greatest asset will be an educated
population, a highly skilled population, a population that is fueled by
economic activity that becomes more and more complex all the time but
stays ahead of our competition in the rest of the world. This is the
answer to the problems that Mr. Thurow lays out.
[[Page H 8676]]
We can talk in empty terms about family values all we want, but
unless we increase the wages of American families, families will
continue to fall apart. Mr. Thurow says that in the modern economy all
over the world, except in Japan, there is a phenomenon which has been
documented all over the world, except in Japan, men are leaving their
families in order to deal with the economic crisis. That is a terrible
indictment of males, but males are faster to leave their families than
females. Everybody knows that. Males are leaving their families all
over the world in order to deal with the crisis of not having enough
wages to take care of their families. They run away. When men leave
their families, their individual quality of life improves because all
they have to do is take care of themselves while the family's quality
of life that they left behind goes down.
He points out if women start doing that, we are in real trouble. If
women start to opt out and leave their children, then only the
Government decides. Somebody has to take care of them. We will be in
the position of having them shot down in the street like they are shot
down in the street in Brazil. Orphaned children, with no homes, are
often killed wholesale at night in Brazil. Their civilization has come
to that.
I conclude by saying Mr. Thurow's article should be read by every
Member of Congress, by every voter out there, just to get an analysis
that is mainly objective. He is respected. He is not a liberal; I mean
he is not an ideologue. Take a look at his facts. Take a look at his
compilation of what is going on in the world and in this country and
understand the economic implications.
We have to do something about the phenomenon where no country without
a revolution or a military defeat and subsequent occupation has ever
experienced such a sharp shift in the distributions of earnings as
America has in the last generation. At no other time have median wages
of American men fallen for more than two decades. Never before have a
majority of American workers suffered real wage reductions while the
per capita domestic product was advancing.
We are in a unique period, a transitional period. The only people who
can solve this problem are members of government, the President, the
Congress, the elected officials all over the country. It is our duty to
bite the bullet and come up with some solutions to this drastically
changing economy and society.
I hope that in the next few weeks ahead we will bear this in mind.
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