[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 179 (Monday, November 13, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H12165]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              NAFTA DEBATE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Andrews] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, it appears certain that tomorrow a 
substantial portion of the Federal Government will shut down. That is a 
very serious and very negative and very real thing for hundreds of 
thousands of people who work for the Federal Government in this 
country. I regret that.
  I would urge my colleagues to work together tonight and for the rest 
of this week as long as it takes to prevent that. There is no good 
reason why these good people have to be put at risk tomorrow.
  I want to come back to something that my friend from Ohio just talked 
about a few minutes ago. That is there have been lots of other 
shutdowns in America in the last few years as well that have nothing to 
do, directly at least, with the Federal payroll but have a lot to do 
with the shutdown of economic growth and opportunity. Yes; it is true 
and it is regrettable that hundreds of thousands of Federal employees 
will not go to work and will not get paid tomorrow and will not be able 
to pay their bills.
  A lot of other Americans will not go to work tomorrow, too; the ones 
who worked in manufacturing jobs and made $10 or $12 or $15 an hour and 
saw their job go to Mexico or Malaysia. A lot of other Americans will 
go to work tomorrow in jobs that pay them 40 or 50 percent of what they 
need to make to meet their family budget. The man or the woman who was 
working in mid-management at a bank and making $40,000 or $45,000 a 
year a few years ago who now is making $20,000 or $25,000 a year.
  A lot of young Americans will go to work tomorrow at the shopping 
mall at their part-time job, even though they have a master's degree or 
a college degree in a field that ought to get them a job at a much 
higher rate of wages. A lot of senior citizens tomorrow are going to 
wake up and wonder if they are going to be able to turn their heater 
above 65 degrees because they are so worried they cannot pay their 
utility bill.
  The rest of America, Mr. Speaker, sort of shut down a while ago. A 
lot of American families have seen their budgets shut down and be 
ratcheted down. So maybe it is time that we had this confrontation here 
to talk about our Federal budget and its impact on the family budget.

                              {time}  1945

  I agree, as a Democrat, with my friends, Mr. Speaker, across the 
aisle who say that we ought to balance the budget and do it in 7 years, 
and I agree with them that it ought to be done without increasing the 
tax burden on the American people. They are already overtaxed as far as 
I am concerned. I do not agree with the exact way that our Republican 
friends have chosen to do this.
  I think that we should be getting rid of accounts that pay for 
overseas advertising by food companies, not getting rid of remedial 
reading teachers in the public schools. I think that we can go to some 
of our agribusinesses in this country that receive welfare checks not 
to grow food and cut them off instead of raising the cost of going to 
college for middle-class families. I think that a lot of the tax 
loopholes and giveaways in the Internal Revenue Code to insurance 
companies, and banks, and Fortune 500 companies could go by the wayside 
so we would not have to be raising Medicare premiums on the elderly in 
this country.
  Mr. Speaker, I think we can do it differently, but I agree we have to 
do it. We have to balance the budget, and we ought to do it in 7 years, 
and we ought to get to work instead of standing around here tonight 
just talking to each other about it.
  But we ought to do some other things as well. We ought to fix and 
change our educational system in this country so having a high school 
diploma means something again, so people are able to graduate from high 
school and get a job in a noncollege situation, so that people who 
choose to be a bricklayer, or computer technician, or a cosmetologist, 
or an electronics worker, can go to school, get a high quality 
education, get into the job market. We ought to fix our trade policy so 
that Americans can compete and sell our products in other countries as 
well as other countries can sell their products here. We should get rid 
of some of the foolish and pointless regulations that we have imposed 
on our businesses that do not clean the water, or protect our 
workplaces, or clean the air, but simply raise the cost of doing 
business.
  Mr. Speaker, it is essential, but not sufficient, to balance the 
budget in 7 years, but by all means, Mr. Speaker, it is essential for 
us to get to work, and I hope that what we do in the next couple of 
days is put aside the posturing over the 1996 election and get to the 
serious business of worrying about the real problems of real Americans 
out there tonight, Mr. Speaker, who are afraid they cannot pay their 
bills, who are watching their incomes shrink, and their taxes rise, and 
their children's hopes evaporate.
  America is in a real and deep economic crisis. For us to fiddle as 
family finances burn, for us to talk about who is going to get elected 
in 1996 rather than who is going to be able to pay their bills in the 
next 6 days or 6 months is really a disservice to this country.
  Let us get to work, Mr. Speaker, and do the job the people sent us 
here to do.

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