[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
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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
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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
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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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