[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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