[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 156 (Tuesday, October 10, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H9776-H9782]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 THE BUDGET AND APPROPRIATIONS PROCESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is recognized for 60 
minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, the previous dialog is very much in concert 
with what I would like to talk about. I have been talking about the 
budget and appropriations process as being one of the most important 
things that has happened in this Congress in the last 20 years.
  It is always important every session of Congress what we do with the 
budget and appropriations process. Nothing is more important than the 
budget and appropriations process. But in particular in a year when the 
Contract With America insists that we must balance the budget, and 
balancing the budget means making horrendous cuts of programs that have 
existed for the last 50 years, it is very important that we follow 
carefully this budget and appropriations process.
  We are now in a period where a great deal of stagnation has occurred. 
The first appropriations bills have gone to the White House, the 
appropriation for the actual budget of the House of Representatives and 
the Senate, and the President has vetoed it because he wants to have 
that bill as a part of the bigger discussion. The other major 
appropriations bills are moving quite slowly and we have passed a 
continuing resolution.
  I have previously talked about a continuing resolution. We have 
passed a continuing resolution to allow the Congress 6 more weeks to 
reach a point where it can meet the requirements of having all the 
appropriations bills passed for this fiscal year which began October 1.
  I want to talk about the need for, in this process, a more honest 
dialog. I think that is what the previous two speakers were talking 
about, the need for honest dialog as we move into this very important 
discussion and very important negotiations that will take place between 
a Republican-controlled House and Senate and a Democratic President in 
the White House.

                              {time}  1715

  The scenario is going to be pretty much as I predicted some time ago. 
The major appropriations bills will be vetoed by the President. He has 
already pledged that he will veto the Education, Human Services, Labor 
appropriations bills, and he said he is going to veto any bill which 
has the Medicare cuts that are being proposed. So we know that the 
major bills will be vetoed.
  We know that there are not enough votes. The Republican majority does 
not have enough votes to override these vetoes. We know that the 
discussions are going to take place. Negotiations are at a very intense 
level at the White House with the President. These are going to be mega 
negotiations, and those negotiations are going to determine the 
direction of America for the next 10 or 20 years.
  What comes out of those negotiations will give us some breathing room 
to take these massive changes at a slower pace. What comes out of the 
negotiations could be an agreement that will move America in the wrong 
direction. We do not want that to happen.
  We would like to have those negotiations take place, and I think that 
the American public needs to understand that they have a major role to 
play in the coming negotiations between the Republican-controlled 
Congress and the Democratic President. Public opinion is always 
important. Both the President and the Republican leadership will be 
watching public opinion as we move into those negotiations. The public 
has to be involved. They have to understand what is going on.
  In order to do that, of course, we need an honest discourse. We need 
some admissions, like the one that the two previous speakers were 
trying to get from the Republicans, the admission that they never 
supported Medicare. Ninety percent of Republicans have always been 
against Medicare. So if they never supported Medicare, it should be 
known, it should be on the table. Their argument that they are moving 
to try to prevent a bankruptcy of Medicare, you can have reasonable 
doubts raised if you know that they never supported Medicare when it 
was first proposed by Lyndon Johnson. Ninety percent of the Republicans 
voted against it. They have consistently been against Medicare. So why 
should you believe that, if 90 percent of them were against it in the 
first place, they are honestly seeking to save it from bankruptcy?

  Why not believe instead the Democratic argument? A bill has been 
introduced to follow through on that argument that if you really are 
worried about bankruptcy, the commission recommended that you had a 
problem of about $90 billion and that over this 7-year period a $90 
billion problem exists and a cut of $90 billion is necessary? That can 
be achieved by cutting real waste.
  But if you try to cut $270 billion, then you are getting into the 
heart of the program, the benefits. You are going to be forced to raise 
premiums.
  The honesty would help a great deal to let the American people know 
from the outset that we are talking about a $90 billion problem and not 
a $270 billion problem. The $270 billion is needed because the greater 
portion of that money will go toward the provision of a tax cut for the 
wealthiest Americans.
  We need some honesty.
  I was fortunate last night to be a part of a very honest dialog in 
Durham, NC. I was invited by a workers' committee for occupational 
safety and health. They had a hearing, which is a people's hearing to 
bring some honesty into the discussion of the OSHA problem. That kind 
of thing should be taking place all over America. People are going to 
have to come out, have your own hearings, have your own forums, have 
your own discussion, and take a close look at what is going on.
  Last week, 100 economists declared, and many of these economists are 
Nobel Prize winners, they declared there is a great need in America for 
an increase in the minimum wage. What is on the table is the Gephardt 
bill, which I am a cosponsor of, which calls for an increase of about 
90 cents in the minimum wage over two steps, not very much, but at 
least that is needed.
  We need an honest discussion. And if you have 100 economists who say 
that this increase is necessary and who show that inflation has eroded 
the wages of American workers to the point where they are making far 
less than they were making 20 or 30 years ago, then we can go forward 
accepting the fact that these are economists trained to do this. We 
accept their wisdom on so many other issues. Why not accept it on the 
minimum wage and go forward?
  So the honesty in the dialog is very important. You know, the Roman 
Empire had some of the best systems in the world in terms of their 
system for justice and government, et cetera. You know, part of the 
reason the Roman Empire declined is because, despite the fact they had 
the systems, the people who were running the systems began to take them 
as a joke. They began to violate those systems and refused to deal with 
those systems in an honest way, and the rot that went into those 
systems led to the destruction of the Roman Empire.
  This Nation is in a position where, unless we bring some honesty in 
our dialog and discourse, we certainly are going to not be able to get 
through this critical period on negotiation with an outcome, a final 
product that is going to carry America forward.
  On the subject of honesty in Medicare and Medicaid, nothing is more 
important, because that is the biggest program that is on the chopping 
block, biggest in terms of its impact on American people, not just the 
dollar figure but the impact on the American people. Both Medicare and 
Medicaid will impact on the lives of most Americans.
  We would not want a situation where we have less health care and we 
have 

[[Page H 9777]]
fewer people covered than we had last year when we were proposing a 
movement toward universal coverage.
  I am going to yield to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior], our 
whip, to help us to bring some kind of reasonableness back into this 
dialog on Medicare and Medicaid.
  Mr. BONIOR. I thank my colleague for yielding and for taking the time 
to talk about these two important issues today.
  What is happening on Medicare and Medicaid is truly revolutionary in 
the sense that the majority in this institution wants to cut out of 
those two programs roughly $450 billion over a 7-year period, $182 
billion out of Medicaid and $270 billion, as my friend from New York 
has suggested, on Medicare.
  Do not take our word for it. If you think $270 billion is going way 
overboard, take the word of a Republican congressman from the State of 
Iowa, the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Ganske]. The gentleman from Iowa 
[Mr. Ganske] just got here. He is a freshman. He is also a medical 
doctor. Let me read to you what he says about these cuts. He said in 
the Des Moines Register on the October 3, 1995.

       I guarantee you that these reductions would be bad for 
     quality health care, not just for our senior citizens but 
     also for working families. If Medicare and Medicaid cuts are 
     too deep, hospitals and doctors will shy away from serving 
     the elderly and the poor and will try to push costs to the 
     nonelderly, which could further increase the number of 
     uninsured or the quality of the whole health care system 
     could decline.

  That is from a Republican medical doctor who serves in this body on 
this side of the aisle, a new Member who got here. He understands the 
draconian nature of these cuts.
  When we talk about Medicaid, most people think it is a program just 
for the poor. It is not. About 60 percent of Medicaid goes to long-term 
care for the elderly, for nursing home and skilled care, and people 
ought to also understand that two out of every five children in the 
United States get their health care through Medicaid. These are 
terribly important programs for our people and for our country.
  In addition, the gentleman, my friend from New York, talked about 
truth in the discussion of these two issues. What we have not heard and 
what you are not going to hear on the other side of the aisle is what 
they are doing to nursing home regulations. I happened to wake up on 
Saturday, and I am not getting the Detroit News or the Detroit Free 
Press, because both of those papers are practicing, in my estimation, 
unfair labor practices against the union. There has been a strike going 
on. I got the New York Times: I went over to the store and got the New 
York Times. Here is the headline in the Saturday New York Times, 
``Bills Would Relax Federal Controls on Nursing Home Care. Repeal of 
'87 Law Sought.''
  Now, what are they doing by repealing these regulations on nursing 
homes? Well, let me tell you what they are doing. They are repealing 
the minimum quality standards for nursing homes.
  Remember when we had in this country a hue and a cry about drugging 
patients in nursing homes, strapping them in straitjackets to their 
beds, abusing patients in nursing homes? We put together some basic 
standards of human decency that nursing homes had to follow. Those are 
being repealed in their proposal on Medicaid. They repeal the minimum 
quality standards for nursing homes. They repeal the guaranteed 
coverage for people with Alzheimer's. They repeal guaranteed coverage 
for veterans in nursing home care. They repeal protection against 
impoverishment of spouses. Right now, you do not lose your home. You 
get to keep a little cash if you use all your assets and have a wife or 
a husband in a nursing facility, because we know they are extremely 
expensive. Under this, there is no protection. You lose the house, you 
lose everything. The spouse could be impoverished. They repeal 
protection against liens on homes of spouses. They repeal financial 
protections for children of nursing home residents. That is how far 
they have gone. It is truly draconian.
  So I say to my friend from New York, this issue of Medicaid and 
Medicare is critically important for this country. People just need to 
focus back, if they could remember what it was like in the 1940's and 
the 1950's before we had Medicare in this country. I mean, we had a 
huge number of seniors, I think it is somewhere in the neighborhood of 
40 percent of the seniors were living in poverty in America. The reason 
was, once they got sick, they had no health care coverage. It would 
wipe them out. It not only would wipe them out, it would affect their 
children and grandchildren, who, in many instances, would take them in 
and take care of them and would financially burden them.
  We have reduced that poverty rate tremendously. We have cut it by 
more than half, and it is because of Medicare, because of the Medicare 
legislation, a promise we made to our seniors that was passed and 
became law in 1965.

  This proposal that is before this Congress and is being discussed 
right now on the House Committee on Ways and Means takes $270 billion 
out of it--$270 billion--not to reduce the deficit, not to cut the 
budget, not to fix the system, but, as my friend from New York and as 
my friends from the States of Texas and Colorado mentioned a little 
earlier, to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals and 
corporations in America today. That is what is going on here.
  It is an incredible shift in resources in this country from the 
elderly, from working families, and from the poor into the pockets of 
those who really are doing very well. Fifty percent of their tax cuts 
are to go to people who make over $100,000 a year or more, and it just 
seems to me, and I would say to my friend from New York, that we have 
an obligation to do all that we can in these waning hours and to try to 
get the American people interested in coming out, speaking out. We are 
starting to do that now.
  I am hearing it all over in my district. They are saying, ``Stop this 
insanity before it goes any further. Stop these extreme views on the 
other side of the aisle before they improverish families all over this 
country once again as they did, as families were impoverished in the 
1940's and the 1950's.''
  Let me just say to my friend from New York, I want to thank him for 
taking out this special order and encourage my colleagues who are 
listening to his special order and who may in fact be on the floor to 
do what we can in these waning hours to make the American people aware 
of the draconian nature of these cuts. They are severe. They are 
brutal. They will raise the premiums that seniors will pay for part B 
of Medicare from around $45 a month to $90 a month. The Senate bill was 
incorporateed. They will raise your deductible.
  None of that is going to go into the Medicare trust fund. All of it 
is to the general fund to be used for tax cuts.
  I thank my colleague for yielding a little bit of time to me, and I 
appreciate his comments.
  Mr. OWENS. I thank the gentleman, and I want to reinforce and 
reemphasize what he said.
  We are not going to get an honest dialog if we depend on the talk 
show hosts only, the editorial boards of the newspapers. We are not 
going to get an honest dialog which puts forth the most important facts 
and the most important aspects of the situation. It is going to be 
necessary for people to demand, to ask the right questions, and begin 
to ask more questions and demand some solid, solid answers.

                              {time}  1730

  It is not going to happen unless we have quite an outpouring of 
activity on the part of the general public. This is true of the 
Medicare-Medicaid situation; it is true across-the-board.
  On this whole matter of trying to balance the budget within 7 years, 
it may be desirable to balance the Federal budget, but why do we have 
to do it in 7 years? We could move at a slower pace and accomplish the 
same thing without having all the tremendous, draconian cuts and 
dislocations that are taking place.
  In this matter of balancing the budget, I have repeatedly said, and I 
will say it again, and I have a chart which reemphasizes what I said 
before, part of the answer, part of the solution to the problem of 
balancing the budget, is to take a look at what has happened to taxes 
in America since 1943. Part of the answer of balancing the budget is 
what we did with the Congressional Black Caucus budget. We looked at 
the situation in terms of the tremendous low 

[[Page H 9778]]
percentage of the tax burden borne by corporate America, how since 
1943, when the corporations were responsible for 39.8 percent of the 
tax burden, and I have the fractions here, I usually say 40 percent, 
but 39.8 percent if you want to follow the chart in a detailed way, 
39.8 percent of the tax burden was borne by corporations in 1943 and 
individuals and families were responsible for only 27.1 percent of the 
tax burdens.
  By 1983, we had a cataclysmic shift. Instead of individuals being 
responsible for 27.1 percent, they found themselves responsible for 
48.1 percent of the total tax burden, and the percentage of the 
responsibility of the corporations in America dropped as low as 6.2 
percent in 1983.
  That is a low point. But it is not too different in terms of ratio 
right now in 1995. Individuals and families are bearing 43.7 percent of 
the overall tax burden, while corporations are bearing only 11.2 
percent of the overall tax burden. Other taxes, excise taxes and duties 
and other things make up the rest of the revenue collected.
  But if you look at this, you can see how the American people have 
been swindled. Unfortunately, I cannot blame all of this on the 
Republicans, because Democrats were running the Committee on Ways and 
Means for a large percentage of the time here. There were Republican 
Presidents who had trickle-down theories and pushed it down, under 
Ronald Reagan down to 6.2 percent with his trickle-down theories.

  Here is the great swindle that the American people ought to be angry 
about, but in the discourse, the dialog about the balanced budget, we 
cannot get this argument to surface. The editorial pages have not dealt 
with it at all. No columnists seem to be able to see the obvious. 
Nobody wants to take a look at the need to balance things off.
  You can balance the budget if you raise from that 11.2 percent, raise 
the corporate percentage of the tax burden up to 16 percent. We would 
balance the budget in the alternative budget presented by the 
Congressional Black Caucus. We balance the budget without cutting 
Medicare or Medicare 1 cent. We even increased education by 25 percent.
  The key to it, in addition to cutting defense and cutting corporate 
welfare, is to raise the tax burden on corporations up to 16 percent. 
You can have a tax cut in our alternative budget. We had a tax cut for 
individuals who deserved a tax cut in the middle- and working-class 
families. You can lower the tax burden for individuals and families 
while you raise the tax burden on corporations, and you still will wipe 
out the deficit and not have to make the draconian cuts.
  Mr. BONIOR. If the gentleman will yield further, that is a very 
interesting chart. I want to draw my colleagues' attention to the 
middle two bars. The blue represents family individual share of 
revenues and the red is the corporate share.
  What is interesting about that chart is that you see in 1983, 48 
percent of the burden fell on families and only 6.2 percent on 
corporations, which is a huge change from 40 years ago when they were 
picking up 40 percent of the share. But in addition to that, I want to 
point out something that is relevant to the tax bill that the 
Republicans passed here 4 or 5 years ago.
  That 6.2 percent was so embarrassingly low that we changed it in 
1985, and the reason we changed it is, we found that between 1981 and 
1985, 130 of the top 250 corporations in America paid no Federal 
corporate income tax. So we introduced legislation here and we even 
embarrassed Ronald Reagan into joining us. He knew that was 
inequitable, and they were required to pay a minimum tax, called an 
alternative minimum tax. They have to pay something, so the burden is 
not so heavy on middle-income working people across this country. That 
has been in effect for 10 years, this alternative minimum tax.

  What did they do on this side of the aisle when they took over and 
took charge of this place? When they had their tax bill on the floor 
about 4 or 5 months ago, they repealed the alternative minimum tax. 
They repealed it. So now we are going to get back to the situation 
where that red bar is going to go down again, and that blue bar, which 
is working families and middle-income people, is going to rise again.
  I thank my colleague for showing that to us this evening.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I would like to point 
out I have been talking about this for 3 months now, and I have yet to 
see any major columnist discuss it, I have yet to see any editorial 
board discuss it. Rush Limbaugh, who follows me very closely and often 
targets me for his ridicule and comments, does not talk about this. I 
would like to send a message to Rush and his staff to, at least, put 
this on your agenda and comment on it.
  Let us introduce it into the dialog and explain to us why in this 
period where corporations are making very high profits, Wall Street is 
booming, why in this period of transition, where strange things are 
taking place in our economy, while Wall Street is booming, corporations 
are making high profits, there is a great deal of downsizing and 
streamlining which leads to high unemployment, and, worse than high 
unemployment, underemployment. People are getting new jobs, but they 
are making far less than they made before.
  This has been a transition period, and the way to get through the 
transition period and finance the kinds of programs that are needed for 
job retraining, for education, which the President has emphasized that 
education is vital in this particular situation that we face, we need a 
way to finance it. Instead of cutting the education budget by $4 
billion and cutting the job training budget by another $5 billion, we 
should be financing with an increase in the taxes on those who can pay 
them, the corporations, the necessary ingredients of a transition 
program. And we know that education and job training are vital to that 
transition situation.
  Otherwise we are in a situation where the standard of living of 
Americans is going to be falling rapidly. The 5 percent will continue 
to get far richer than before, while the people who make up the other 
95 percent, especially those in the very middle, continue to get 
poorer.

  Mr. BONIOR. If the gentleman will yield on the education point, I 
think you have touched on another point that the American people are 
starting to feel and understand now.
  What our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have done on 
education is really emasculated the programs that were put in place in 
order for people to climb the ladder of success in this country. That 
is the way people move economically and socially in this country, 
through education.
  But if you look at the budget, the School to Work Program, 70 percent 
of kids in this country do not go to college, do not finish college. 
Yet we have nothing in place--we had nothing in place--where we could 
match their interests and their skills with what is in the workplace. 
So we developed this program called School to Work, patterned after 
what they do in Germany.
  They have a very good apprenticeship program there. You work 2\1/2\ 
days and go to school 2\1/2\ days, and learn a skill that will be 
useful. Instead of flipping hamburgers, you will be able to do 
something productive. In Germany this program works well. They have 
over 400 choices for kids; computer programming, journalism, you can 
get your education 2\1/2\ days a week. You get experience first hand 
and provide that business community with the expertise you develop once 
you graduate from high school.
  It is a good program, and we have instituted it here recently, a 
couple of years ago in the Congress. We have pilot programs in the 
country. It is working well.
  What did we do 2 weeks ago? We zeroed out School to Work. And it is 
not just School to Work. It is vocational education, it is Pell grants 
for kids who want to go to college that have been cut, it is Perkins 
loans, it is Stafford loans.
  I was just at Wayne State University in Detroit with my friend John 
Dingell the other day. Thirteen thousand of those kids rely on Federal 
loans to get through school. They are working one and two jobs a year. 
And these programs are being cut. They are being cut by our colleagues 
on this side of the aisle.
  What disturbs me is that Speaker Gingrich got through school on a 
student loan. Phil Gramm got through 

[[Page H 9779]]
school on a student loan. In fact, if it was not for student loans, 
they would not be where they are today, which is the only good reason 
to be against student loans, from my perspective. But they got there, 
and now they want to take the ladder and yank it up and will not let 
anybody else climb it.
  So they are taking away the tools that people have to move off 
welfare and to move into the higher levels, economic levels, in this 
country in education. I think the American people are starting to see 
that, they are starting to understand it. They started right at the 
bottom in terms of school lunch programs for the smallest of our 
children, and they have worked their way through vocational education 
and tech prep, and they have cut these programs for student loans. They 
are hurting our society.
  We have always prided ourselves on the fact that we would invest in 
our people. We always as a country decided in times of crisis, after 
the Second World War we did the GI bill. After the Soviets launched 
Sputnik, we did the National Defense Act.
  Education is the key. What you earn depends to a large extent on what 
you can learn in school. It creates a more civilized society. And it 
seems to me that we are going in the wrong direction. We in this budget 
that my friend from New York is talking about today are spending $50 
billion on a B-2 program, a bomber that cannot tell the difference 
between a mountain and a thunderstorm. We are spending $50 billion on a 
star wars program to intercept missiles in space, when clearly that 
threat, while it is still there, has diminished considerably with the 
fall of the Soviet Union. We are producing hardware that, quite 
frankly, we do not need, that would be better used in providing kids 
with an education in this country.
  So I thank my colleague for raising that point.
  Mr. OWENS. I thank the gentleman for reemphasizing the fact that 
education has been recognized by the best minds in America as being a 
No. 1 priority. We understand we are in a technological and scientific 
revolution. We understand that you need the best minds possible in 
order to compete in this global economy. Yet we have not acted 
accordingly. The dialog has not placed that emphasis where it belongs. 
I submit, again, the article by Lester Thurow which appeared on 
September 3, 1995, this year. Thurow, who is a professor of economics 
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has testified on the Hill 
before many committees. He is recognized as an authority.
  I think his warning ought to be heeded. He has written many books. He 
is not a Democrat or a Republican. I think it is an objective voice. 
And when he starts this article with the following paragraph, we ought 
to all take heed. It ought to be a part of the ongoing dialogue. The 
newspapers ought to pick it up, the talk radio hosts. I recommend to 
Rush Limbaugh, that you read the article. You do not read anything, but 
you have your staff read the article thoroughly and comment on it to 
your audience even, who needs to understand what the best minds in 
America are saying about the phenomena we face.
  I will only read the first paragraph, because previously I have 
introduced the entire article into the Record:

       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.

                              {time}  1745

  Never before have a majority of American workers suffered real wage 
reductions while the per capita domestic product was advancing.
  Here is a situation we are in, and, in order to deal with it, we 
ought to raise the level of the dialog by analyzing and listening to 
the voice of people like Mr. Lester Thurow. We ought to take a close 
look at the big-spender lists that are compiled by certain groups, and 
I understand I was singled out on Rush Limbaugh's show as 1 of the 10 
big spenders in the Congress. Well, let us have some honesty in that 
dialog. It is also a distorted dialog because Rush has people who know 
how to add, but he does not have people who know how to subtract.
  You know, as the minority whip has just said a few minutes ago, we 
are spending money on programs that will, weapons systems that are, no 
good, and I am on record as being against the spending of $33 billion 
for the F-22 that happens to be manufactured in Marietta, GA, which is 
the district of the Speaker of the House; $33 billion ought to be 
subtracted from my big-spender total, Rush. Tell your staff to get a 
specialist who knows how to subtract. The only people you have know how 
to add. Subtract the money from the Seawolf submarine, which I oppose. 
We do not need to spend $2.1 billion to build another Seawolf 
submarine. Subtract the money which I propose we cut from the CIA 
budget. We proposed a modest cut of 10 percent over a 5-year period, 
and the CIA accepts the basic figure that they are spending, about $28 
billion per year, the CIA and other intelligence operations related to 
the CIA. If you cut that $28 billion by 10 percent a year, you would 
have $2.8 billion. You could restore the cuts in the title I program 
for education for the disadvantaged. You could restore the cut in Head 
Start. The $2.8 billion a year out of the CIA would be quite an 
important amount of money when you consider the small, but very 
effective, programs that have been cut which spend far less. Take that 
off my total, Mr. Limbaugh. I oppose star wars, the wasting of money 
for a program that most scientists said never made much sense anyhow 
and would not be effective. There is no power in the world capable of 
really firing that kind of, offering the kind of, threat, that they 
insist is there. I oppose that. Subtract that from the total. Let us 
have some honesty in the dialog.
  You know, Mr. Limbaugh has targeted me. I would like to say, you 
know, I am honored to have such enemies. You know the full-disclosure 
laws that affect the Congress I would like to see applied to some of 
our talk show hosts so that in the dialog you know who you are 
listening to. You will be listening to a multimillionaire when you 
listen to Rush Limbaugh, and you ought to know that. You can check my 
disclosure record and see exactly what I am worth and where it comes 
from. It is quite a paltry sum, I assure you. Senator Byrd in the 
Senate recently proposed that we have talk show hosts fill out 
disclosure forms in the same way that Members of Congress and the 
Senate are required to fill out disclosure forms. I think that makes a 
lot of sense because regular talk show hosts are privileged people. The 
American people are making available, especially those who are using 
broadcast television, they are making available a limited asset, a 
limited communications medium. We do not have an unlimited number of 
opportunities for people to broadcast. It is regulated by the Federal 
Communications Commission because it is limited, and people who are 
using radio and using broadcast television are people in a special 
category who ought to be considered in the same manner as public 
officials. At least let us know where your income comes from and let 
the people who are listening be able to determine what your point of 
view is, how it is influenced, and have as much information on your 
financial status as we have on public officials because really the talk 
show hosts, especially the more arrogant ones, have taken a role which 
is similar to public officials. They should not do that, but the kind 
of world we are living in, the entertainment, and the sports, and the 
religion, and politics are all merging together. We cannot separate it. 
We would like to see it remain separated, but it is all merging 
together, and people are often listening to entertainers who have 
opinions that they are pumping out over the airways, and they are 
caught off guard, and they absorb a lot of that.
  So the reality is that is what we are faced with, so let us take a 
look at the people that are privileged to use broadcast television, 
broadcast waves of radio, like Mr. Limbaugh. You know, he is really not 
a public official. He is like very close to, I understand, the Speaker 
of the House. He could be called the jester of the Speaker, you know, 
the joker.
  In Shakespeare's plays, Mr. Speaker, they always have comic relief, a 
jester, a joker, and not always was it comic relief. They did have some 
insights sometime. I think in King Lear they do not call him a jester. 
He is called a fool. King Lear refers to his jester as 

[[Page H 9780]]
his fool, but the fool is not stupid. I remember that play very well. I 
had to do quite a bit of work on it, and I know that the fool made some 
of the most insightful comments, so the fool is not stupid, Mr. 
Limbaugh is not stupid, but he still is not a major player, he is a 
fool. You know, the fool in King Lear disappeared, and there is a great 
deal of discussion in literature about whatever happened to the fool. 
As we know, King Lear went down the hill. He had two daughters he gave 
his fortune to, and they were not very grateful, and they took all that 
he had, and he went mad in the end. The fool disappeared because the 
fool was no fool. The fool was a mercenary. He just walked out of the 
situation. You know, King Lear later died as a result of being in 
prison and tortured, and his daughter, the good daughter, was hanged, 
and the question is what happened to the fool. Was a fool being a 
mercenary, not a central player, moved off of the scene? I am sure when 
you have multimillion-dollar jesters on television they should not 
labor under the illusion that they are major players, but they are 
significant. You know, they do make a contribution, and we welcome the 
contribution of the jesters and the fools, but we do not take it too 
seriously.
  Let me just talk about one more thing in terms of the distorted and 
dishonest dialog. Unfortunately my colleague from Texas previously made 
a comment about New York versus Texas with respect to Medicaid and how 
Texas only gets 50 percent of what New York gets. He did not bother to 
round the dialog out by saying New York at the local level and the 
State level puts in far more than Texas and, as a result of what the 
State and the local governments put into Medicare and Medicaid, they 
get more from the Federal Government. That would have rounded off the 
dialog.
  You hear a lot of discussions about New York. The Speaker has always, 
you know, for the whole time that I have been here, he has always used 
New York as a favorite whipping boy, and now that he is Speaker he has 
not stopped at all. So he recently called New York a great wasteland. 
Let us round out the dialog and take a look at New York versus the 
Nation. New York right now is the State which supplies the greatest 
amount of money to the Federal Treasury in ratio to what they get back. 
We pay into the Federal coffers as of last year, the last year that the 
figures are available, for 1994, the fiscal year 1994, we paid in $18 
billion more into the Federal Treasury than we got back from New York. 
If New York were able to take that $18 billion, we could solve all our 
fiscal problems, I assure you, but $18 billion more went out of New 
York to the Federal Treasury than came back in terms of Federal 
outlays, and you are going to have to take my word for it.
  I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.
  Mr. BONIOR. Does the gentleman know where that $18 billion went? I 
have an idea where some of it went. It went to the Speaker's district. 
The Speaker represents Cobb County in Georgia.
  Now Cobb County gets probably more Federal aid and assistance than 
any other county in the country. It is in the top two or three in the 
country.
  Mr. OWENS. The gentleman is correct.
  The gentleman is from Michigan. Michigan is a loser State. Michigan 
paid $10 billion more into the Federal coffers than it got back from 
the Federal Government, $10 billion.
  Now people talk about the Rust Belt and the Northeast as had it 
economically. They are not growing, but for some reason all of the 
Great Lakes States were losers. The Great Lakes States lost more than 
anybody else collectively. Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, 
Wisconsin; they lost $42 billion in this balance-of-payment game. They 
paid $42 billion more into the Federal Government than they got back.
  New York was the State with the highest. You know we do not have the 
highest population. California. Something has happened in California. 
They are very smart. California did pay in more than they got out, but 
only 3 billion; 3.7 billion was paid into the coffers more than they 
got back. California has learned how to get their money back. Something 
is happening. It is the largest State, but New York is still the 
biggest loser, 18 billion, 18.8 billion, by the way almost 19 billion 
versus California's 3.7 billion. So, when they slur New York and talk 
about New York being a wasteland and a drain on the Federal Government, 
let us take a close look at the implications. Let us take a close look 
at the implications of all this talk about States rights economically 
and pushing down programs, you know in these various grants that go to 
the States, and flat grants, and you are going to let the State run the 
situation. New York may work out very well if you keep going in that 
direction and you let New York stand alone in its own financing and not 
have to pay into the Federal coffer because the gainer States are the 
ones with the loudest voice around here about States' rights and 
wanting to change the system.

  The biggest gainers are in the South. The biggest gainers are 
Alabama, and Georgia, and Kentucky. Mississippi is one of the biggest 
gainers. The absolutely biggest gainer is next door to us in Virginia.
  I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.
  Mr. BONIOR. Maybe those States like Georgia that send folks up here, 
some folks up here like the Speaker who advocate getting Government off 
our backs, maybe we ought to get Government off the backs of the people 
down in Georgia and stop the sucking sound of the Federal dollars from 
all these other States going into Georgia.
  Mr. OWENS. There is a sucking sound out of New York, there is a 
sucking sound out of Michigan, out of all the Great Lakes States, the 
northeast States. There is a sucking sound moving the money mostly into 
the South and the Midwest, and those are the people who yell the 
loudest about getting Government off our backs and not wanting 
Government to be a part of solving their problems. Let us really take a 
close look and have an honest dialog about this whole matter about 
which States' populations are paying more into the Federal coffers, who 
is paying for the Medicare and Medicaid, who is paying for the defense 
budget. Let us take a close look at it and have an honest dialog about 
it.
  I thank the gentleman for his comments, and I am quoting, you know, 
for the benefit of Rush Limbaugh and all the others, I am quoting from 
a document called the Federal Budget and the States, Fiscal Year 1994 
and an introduction by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and it is published by 
the offices of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the Taubman Center 
for State and Local Government of the John F. Kennedy School of 
Government, Harvard University.
  So, I urge you, Mr. Limbaugh, to have your folks get a copy, and you 
can check and see that everything that I am saying today is well 
analyzed, and well documented, and acceptable, and you ought to offer 
it to your audience as a dialog, as part of a dialog of honesty, about 
what is happening in the finances for the United States of America.
  Some of the people who are pushing so hard for States to have control 
of programs worry me a great deal because we may be in for a 
Balkanization of the United States. What if we had 50 States which 
became 50 countries? What if we followed the pattern of the Soviet 
Union and we broke up? New York would be able to make it, ladies and 
gentlemen. New York would not have a problem. They have problems 
economically, they come and they go. Somehow we continue to pour more 
into the Federal coffers than we get back.

                              {time}  1800

  Mississippi would have a major problem. Georgia would have a problem. 
The losers and the gainers are clearly stated here. You ought to take a 
hard look at it. The biggest gainers, of course, are the South Atlantic 
States, they all gain, and the east South Central States, they all 
gain. It is quite an eye opener. I urge you to get a copy of the 
Federal Budget and the States, published by the Taubman Center for 
State and Local Government. I urge Mr. Limbaugh to make sure that his 
extensive staff gets a copy and discusses that with the people.
  The dialog ought to be more honest. Stop slurring New York. The 
generosity of the people of New York should be 

[[Page H 9781]]
appreciated, because over many decades, New York has done this. They 
have paid more into the Federal coffers than they ever gotten back. I 
think Franklin Roosevelt, who was a genius, clearly understood with the 
New Deal policies that you were going to be moving vast dollar amounts 
of wealth from the Northeast, including New York State, into the rest 
of the country, from the west coast into the rest of the country. This 
generosity was not by naive people. Lyndon Johnson often boasted of the 
fact that every time he conceived of the new program, the Southern 
States would gain. He often sold his programs openly to the southerners 
in decisionmaking power in the Senate and in the House by saying, 
``Look, if you take Medicare, Medicare, if you go with me on Medicare, 
if you go with me on Medicaid, it is not going to be your problem. You 
are not going to have to cough up the money. The money is going to come 
out of the Northeastern States. The money is going to come out of the 
Great Lakes States, the industrial States. The money is going to flow 
to Alabama, to Georgia, to Mississippi.'' It is still flowing that way.
  Let us be honest about the dailog. Do not slur New York. Appreciate 
New York. Appreciate Michigan.
  We have this distorted dialog in many ways, and I am going to do 
something I have not done so far this year. That is, I want to comment 
on the O.J. Simpson case. I have not been following it very closely. 
The average sophomore in high school knows more about it than I do. I 
am doing to limit my comments. First of all, I accept the President's 
statement that the jury has made a decision. As Americans we should 
also respect the decision of the jury.
  But I have been a little upset and even became quite angry about the 
fact that the inner-city ladies on the jury, that is what they have 
been referred to as, inner-city ladies, have been unreasonably 
vilified. They have been criticized, they have been treated with great 
contempt. I must come to their defense and say that that is a great 
example, a great manifestation of the kind of dishonest and distorted 
dialogs that Americans have become comfortable with. The fact that this 
is a race situation, everybody has become very comfortable accepting 
that this is a conflict between American blacks and the rest of the 
population, it is a black-white situation.
  Ted Koppel goes on and on with special 1\1/2\ hour shows, and they 
play out these distorted arguments that do not address some very 
obvious situations and very obvious facts. No. 1, the system says that 
if you have reasonable doubt, reasonable doubt, you should find a 
defendant not guilty. Whose reasonable doubt? The reasonable doubt of 
the people on the jury.
  Was there reason for them to have reasonable doubt? Oh, yes, there 
was. Why was there reason for the people on the jury to have reasonable 
doubt? Because they had a set of architects and engineers to 
manufacture that reasonable doubt probably unparalleled in murder trial 
history. You have Mr. Dershowitz, you had Mr. Bailey, you had Mr. 
Shecht, you had Mr. Cochran. A lot has been made of the fact that 
Johnny Cochran was on stage in front of the cameras, so it is Johnny 
Cochran versus the prosecution team, but most of the defense team was 
white. It was interracial. I think Mr. Shapiro was the original lead 
attorney, and maybe in charge of the whole thing. I do not know. It is 
said Johnny Cochran's final speech was not necessarily written by 
Johnny Cochran. The team put it together.
  You have architects and engineers of reasonable doubt, the best in 
America, the best that America has. Automatically, a person on the jury 
must have been influenced by the quality of the lawyers, the reputation 
of the lawyers. If I was sitting on the jury, I am quite an admirer of 
Alan Dershowitz, and if he was a lawyer for the defendant, I would be 
influenced. My doubt would be pricked. Mr. F. Lee Bailey, who has 
written books and was famous, it would be pricked also.
  When you have that kind of team of attorneys, automatically their 
presence creates some doubt, but the way they handle a case, so 
skillfully, given the fact that they have great skills and unlimited 
funds, so they could have an investigation and find out things about 
Mark Furman that nobody else would admit, all of that would create 
reasonable doubt, an interracial team of the top lawyers in America.

  Bigger than the racial factor or the racial card was the dollar card. 
Why is it that nobody was honest enough to discuss the dollar card, the 
money involved in this case? Why is not Ted Koppel on ``Nightline'' 
discussing that? Why are not the editorial boards that insist on 
commenting on this case, even though they said it is over, on and on 
they go with the comments, why are they displaying great contempt for 
the inner city women, and implying that they were ignorant, and 
therefore they had reasonable doubt because they were ignorant? No, 
they had reasonable doubt because the architects of reasonable doubt 
put those doubts there on the one hand, the best paid lawyers in 
America. And probably that trial, more was spent on it than has been 
spent on any murder trial in America. That interracial team raised 
those doubts.
  I understand Mr. Shecht was welcomed by his law class back to school. 
I picked up this article in the New York Times which says that ``Barry 
Shecht, a Member of the O.J. Simpson defense team, returned to school 
this week. He received a tumultuous welcome from his students.''
  Most of the students disagreed with the verdict, but they applauded 
the player, they applauded the architect of reasonable doubt. To quote 
Mr. Shecht, ``I am sure we will engage in extended discussions about 
this case,'' he told 300 students and faculty members who crowed around 
him at a welcome home party on Thursday. ``The case taught us a lot 
about race. It taught us a lot about the police. It taught us a lot 
about science and its limitations, and maybe it taught us a lot about 
each other.'' What Mr. Shecht does not say is it taught us a lot about 
money, about the power of the dollar in the courtroom, about your 
ability to get the very best.
  I quote from the article: ``Whatever the public opinion of the not 
guilty verdicts, Mr. Shecht said he had been received graciously 
everywhere. `It is interesting, because the students here have had a 
very positive reaction to my involvement in the case, which is 
pleasing, because I know that a lot of them don't agree with the 
verdict.' '' If you do not agree with the verdict, Harvard students, 
are you going to applaud Mr. Dershowtiz returning? If you do not agree 
with the verdict, are we going to celebrate Mr. Shapiro?
  What I am saying is they are the architects of reasonable doubt, and 
they placed the doubt there, on the one hand. On the other side, you 
had gross incompetence, gross incompetence manifested by the public 
representatives, the police department; of course, not just 
incompetent, but evil, racist, to the point where great amounts of 
doubt were instilled in reasonable people after hearing the voice, the 
report on Mark Fuhrman, which the rich, well-funded legal team could 
get because it was able to hire some very good investigators. That is 
reasonable doubt created out of a public servant and a public 
institution. The police department and their sloppiness in the case, 
documented again and again, you know, certainly was an instrument in 
the generation of reasonable doubt.
  Again, the defense team, the prosecution team, why did they not 
insist on a greater representation of the peers of the defendant? Our 
system says you should be tried by a jury of your peers. Why are we 
persecuting and vilifying inner city ladies when they were really not 
the peers of Mr. Simpson? There were no football players on the jury. 
There were no millionaires on the jury. People like Rush Limbaugh, he 
did not live in California, but people like that, celebrities, 
celebrities were not on the jury. This was not a jury of Mr. Simpson's 
peers. It seems to me the prosecution should have tried harder to get a 
jury of the peers. Why does not somebody talk about that portion of the 
system?

  Why does not somebody talk about the fact that in America we still 
have a ceremonial speech by the judge which says, ``If you have a 
reasonable doubt, don't come back with a verdict of guilty''? That is 
part of the system.
  There was a lot of talk about the power of television, and we ought 
to remove television from the situation because it made people behave 
differently. The power of television we 

[[Page H 9782]]
ought to escalate. I think every felony trial in America should be 
videotaped, at least, because the people who do not have the money 
cannot employ the best legal advice. They are getting shafted day in 
and day out in the courts. There ought to be a video record of every 
case, of every felony, so judges know, everybody in that court knows, 
that ``There is a record here, transcripts,'' which are written and 
very expensive to get, and they never tell the full story because they 
are, after all, the written word. The videos would produce a greater 
degree of justice. If the judges know the video camera is watching, 
``History will record what I am doing here in this courtroom,'' let us 
have more television, not less, the power of television could bring far 
more justice than we have.
  The distorted reasoning, the mutilated logic and the dialog that is 
one-sided is becoming, you know, a major habit of the American scene. 
If we cannot talk honestly about situations, then how can we ever solve 
them? The dishonesty and the mutilated logic of the discussion by 
people who are well educated of this O.J. Simpson case is very 
disturbing. Tell me about the dollar card, talk about the dollar card. 
Stop insisting that it is a race card.
  There were interracial teams on both sides. The predominance of 
whites--the district attorney of Los Angeles was white, and most of the 
team was white, except Mr. Darden and maybe one other guy who got in 
there later, I understand. The predominance of whites on the defense 
team says that it was not a race card. The doubt was sowed by 
architects who know how to sow it. The doubt was sowed by engineers who 
know how to do it, because they were very well paid.
  Let us talk about all of that in order to have a reasonable dialog. 
Let us talk about the competence of public officials in these trials, 
of the competence factor. Let us maybe have a situation where we can 
make appeals to the best attorneys in the country to somehow do 
prosecution, sometimes. There are a lot of things to talk about, except 
the ignorance, quote, of the inner city women who made the decision. I 
think reasonable doubt was certainly there for numerous reasons.
  The salvation of the greatest democracy that ever existed is what we 
are talking about. If we cannot have an honest dialog, we cannot solve 
problems, we cannot solve budget problems here, we cannot solve 
appropriations problems. I would like to quote the Pope, applaud the 
Pope's statement that this Nation was founded by men who understood God 
very well, and I think God spoke through the pen of Thomas Jefferson 
when he said, ``All men are created equal, all have a right to life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.''
  I think in our dialog about the budget and our dialog about balancing 
the budget, we ought to take a hard look at what those Founders said, 
not get away from it. We are a Nation founded under the premise that 
all men are created equal. They all deserve health care, they all 
deserve a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If you 
do not have the benefit of modern technology, you are not being treated 
equal. You are not being treated as if you were created equal.
  The Preamble to the Constitution talks about promoting the general 
welfare. That means health care, Medicaid, for everybody. We need to 
deal with the imbalance in the tax revenues. I have recommended 
creation of a revenues commission. A revenues commission would play a 
major role in balancing the budget and providing for the general 
welfare, and guaranteeing the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit 
of happiness of all Americans.

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