[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 192 (Tuesday, December 5, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H13986-H13992]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        NATIONAL HEALTH CARE: WE SHOULD NOT SURRENDER THE DREAM

  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, we have 10 days left on our countdown until 
the budget deal is made. Ten days left, and it appears certain that 
there will be some great disappointments among a majority of the 
American people. The majority will be swindled by this budget deal, but 
I am here tonight to send a message that we should not be discouraged.
  The budget deal that is going to be made is not a surrender, it is a 
retreat. It is temporary. The dream and the vision of the American 
people to have a better society, a society which makes use of all of 
the resources of our tremendously rich industrialized economy should 
not be surrendered. It still can be realized.
  Last year we drove for a while, for the first two years of the 
Clinton administration, toward a national health care plan. The 
national health care plan's dream was to realize universal health 
coverage for the first time in the United States of America. Most of 
the industrialized nations of the world do have universal health care 
coverage, or something close to it.
  Because of the fact that the legislation which is before us now, the 
legislation which is likely to be agreed upon, the negotiations dealing 
with the legislation and the appropriation when it is all finished, we 
will be a long ways away from that universal health care dream.
  We should not surrender the dream though. We should only understand 
that it is a temporary stalemate. It is a retreat which we continue to 
insist that this country is rich enough, this country has the 
resources, and the people of this country deserve a national health 
care plan which guarantees health care for all who need it.

                              {time}  1945

  That is a next step in our civilization that we should not ever turn 
our backs on. The fact that the deal is going to be made and we are 
going to be far short of that should not deter us. The deal will be 
made and no matter what it is, 

[[Page H 13987]]
it certainly will leave us without universal health care coverage.
  I only hope that we are not so far away that it may take us another 
10 years to regain the territory that we lose. I only hope that we do 
not lose the Medicaid entitlement. The Medicaid entitlement is the 
first step that was taken 30 years ago toward health care coverage for 
all who need it. If we lose the Medicaid entitlement, if we no longer 
are willing to say to every poor American that if you are in need of 
health care and you are poor, you qualify by a means test, which tests 
whether or not you really are eligible, if you qualify, you get the 
health care coverage, you get taken care of. You are not left to die. 
You are not left without a nursing home, if you cannot afford it. 
Medicaid pays for health care for poor families, but Medicare also pays 
for most, two-thirds of Medicare goes for nursing homes and the care of 
the people with disabilities. So people with disabilities and the 
elderly who need nursing homes are as much beneficiaries as poor 
families of Medicaid. So we should not forget that. The Medicaid brings 
us closer to the realization of universal health care than any other 
Government program in health care. If Medicaid entitlements are lost, 
we will experience a great setback. So step one is to hope that in the 
negotiations which grow more questionable each day, there is less to 
negotiate with as the days go by. We had the defense appropriation as 
part of the negotiation at one time and as long as the President did 
not sign the bill, we were waiting for him to veto the bill, then you 
had the possibility of a $7 billion process there, $7 billion that the 
President clearly felt was not needed. It was not in his budget, $7 
billion which represented things like the B-2 bomber that everybody 
agreed we did not need.

  We had the flexibility of at least starting negotiations with $7 
billion on the table that could be transferred from wasteful defense 
expenditures to expenditures that were more meaningful in education or 
health care, et cetera. That is gone. The defense bill has become a 
part of law. The defense appropriation now has been, sort of by 
default, since the President did not veto it, the time period lapsed 
and now that is off the table. So without a doubt, we are in a little 
weaker position than we were before the defense bill was allowed to 
pass through.
  That is why I say that as we move toward the deadline of December 15, 
every day of the countdown brings us a little closer to a situation 
where we are weaker than we should be. And, therefore, the outcome is 
inevitably going to be a dissatisfactory one. It is going to be a 
disappointing one. It is only a matter of how much are we going to give 
up, how much are we going to hold on to.
  Whatever the outcome is, we should insist that it is only a temporary 
setback. It is only a retreat. It is not a total defeat. We will not 
surrender. We will insist that we come back and, when the Democrats 
regain the House of Representatives in 1996, health care will be back 
on the table. We will move again toward universal health care coverage. 
It cannot be surrendered. We cannot envisage an America which does not 
care about the sick, an America which does not care about the elderly 
and what kind of nursing homes they have. We have to insist on 
maintaining that standard for our civilization. We have to get back to 
the fight, and we have to get back to it with gusto.
  The majority have made it clear that they do not want to retreat on 
health care. The majority have made it clear that they do not want the 
Medicare and the Medicaid cuts. More than 70 percent of the people have 
said that they do not want the health care cuts in Medicare and 
Medicaid. The majority have said they do not want cuts in education. 
The majority have said they want the President to veto many of the 
bills that he has already signed, but certainly those that are left, 
basically the health, education, and human services budget, certainly 
the one they most of all want him to veto.
  The majority has made it pretty clear that they think that the 
movement of the Republican majority to dismantle the programs that were 
created by Franklin Roosevelt in the New Deal and by Lyndon Johnson in 
the Great Society, the rapid movement of the Republican majority to 
dismantle and to wreck these programs, the majority has indicated they 
do not agree with. They do not think that this kind of extremism is 
necessary. They do not accept the artificial crisis that has been 
created.
  The majority have made it clear that they are not on board and they 
are very much against this. Yet it sort of creeps forward because that 
is the way our Republic works. The people who have been elected can 
ignore the majority for a while. They can get away with it.

  So I want to just reaffirm the fact that we need health care for 
every American. We can have health care for every American. The country 
can afford it, and we should not accept whatever happens when the deal 
is finally completed as being final.
  Health care in many cities and many areas of the country right now is 
already undergoing some drastic changes for the worse. Even while the 
debate is taking place and no final decision has been made about what 
funds will be available and what new rules will be in place, health 
care systems are being dismantled in rural areas. Health care systems 
are being drastically changed in urban areas. And in New York City, 
there is a great dramatic change taking place now. Health care 
administrators in large numbers are leaving. Restructuring of hospitals 
is taking place. Super HMO's are being developed to swallow up small 
HMO's.
  All of it represents a great deal of energy, a great deal of change, 
which has very little to do with the improvement of health care. The 
restructuring is all about how the funding will take place. The 
restructuring is about who will make profits. The restructuring is 
about how will you save money by giving the patients minimum service 
and maximizing the profits for the providers.
  It is a very unfortunate situation. There was an article that 
appeared in the New York Times on Friday, November 3, which I think 
sort of sums it up, ``Can Someone Save My Hospital,'' is the op-ed 
article's title. The dismantling of New York City's health care system 
has already begun.
  The mayor has a plan to privatize and drastically change the 
hospitals. They are going to be closing city hospitals. Many of the 
city hospitals are getting ready to sell themselves or to be sold. 
HMO's are being developed that will compete with each other for patient 
dollars.
  I will just quote from this article, ``Can Someone Save My 
Hospital,'' by Gary Calcutt who is a physician. He is medical director 
of a special care AIDS clinic at North Central Bronx Hospital. And one 
paragraph in his article reads as follows:

       This plan will no doubt take some time to carry out, but in 
     fact the dismantling of the city hospital system is now 
     underway. Because of State Medicaid cuts and a reduction in 
     city subsidies, the Health and Hospitals Corp. has had a 
     budget shortfall of $950 million over the last 2 years, 
     forcing it to slash services and to cut personnel. Twice in 
     the past year nearly all the agency's employees have been 
     offered a severance package. The second buyout offer in May 
     was accompanied by a letter from Dr. Bruce Segal, who was 
     then president of the Health and Hospitals Corp., strongly 
     urging employees to take the severance package in order to 
     avoid layoffs. The agency's managers must approve each layoff 
     but in North Central Bronx Hospital, I don't know of any 
     employee who has been denied a severance buyout. This has led 
     to devastating losses in some crucial departments.

  He goes on and on. I have had my constituents come to me and say, 
look, you must come and visit Kings County Hospital. I go there quite 
often, but they wanted me to make a special visit and walk around in 
various departments and look around carefully. They said, you can 
visit, you can see the chaos, you can see why patients are bound to be 
suffering because the chaos is so great; the overworked personnel are 
so obviously tired. There is so much, the morale is so low until it is 
visible. And they were right. You could feel it in the hospital. You 
could feel that this hospital is no longer the way it once was.

  I have been there many times. Kings County Hospital has a history of 
being one of the finest hospitals in the Nation; 40 years ago people 
came from all over the country to be treated at Kings County Hospital, 
a public hospital. But now it is in chaos, and it may be in better 
shape than many of the city's hospitals.
  So the process has begun. The suffering has begun. But I am saying we 


[[Page H 13988]]
should not surrender. I am saying that this too must pass. When the 
budget deal is made, we should not surrender. We should not give up on 
health care.
  We should not give up on education. We know already that the Federal 
Government only pays a small percentage of the total educational bill. 
The total funding for education, over $360 billion the last year, is 
borne by State governments and local governments. The Federal 
Government is responsible for only about 7 percent of the bill. So when 
you look at the cuts in education and you say that there is $4 billion 
cut in 1 year, it is a large amount to cut from the Federal budget. I 
think it is a 16-percent cut. But it does not represent a 16-percent 
cut across the Nation in education expenditures by itself.
  But what has happened is the Federal Government's cut, its statement 
that education is of less importance, the Republican majority's 
indication that education is of less importance, that we pay lip 
service to the fact that education is an investment in the future of 
the country, education guarantees that young people will be able to 
survive in a very complex society, they will be able to qualify for the 
high technology jobs created, we have all of the rhetoric on both 
sides, Republicans, Democrats say the same thing. But the Republican 
majority has indicated they really do not believe it.
  If you can make cuts of that magnitude at the Federal level, you send 
a message down to the State levels and the local levels. So they have 
begun to cut, too. In New York City, the school system has been cut by 
almost $2 billion over the last 2 years. New York City has almost a 
million students, and the budget at one time was up to $8 billion for 
the million students. But those drastic cuts have taken place so you 
have obvious hardships.
  When the school term started last September, 8,000 youngsters in the 
New York City high schools had no place to sit. Right now there are 
classes of 40 and 45 students. And there are still problems with just 
getting places for children to sit. An editorial recently in the New 
York Times talked about the fact that every time it rains, the New York 
City schools literally wash away. You have the rains going through the 
crevices of the old buildings and the sand and the cement is drained 
away. The bricks start to fall. So after every rain you have large 
numbers of bricks falling from these old buildings. So the New York 
City schools are literally falling down. There is no hope in sight in 
terms of new construction because the budget cuts in construction 
preceded the other cuts.
  All of this is taking place in education. But I say, we should not 
surrender. We should not accept the fact that the Federal Government is 
retreating in this one budget. Which is under the control of the 
Republican majority. We should hold onto the dream that the Federal 
Government, although it never will play a major role in funding of 
education, it has a role to play. It never will play the predominant 
role but it has a major role to play.

  The Federal Government still is the only place where you are going to 
have any long-term research and development to improve schools. The 
Federal Government is still the only place where you are going to have 
the kinds of financing for higher education that you need, 
infrastructure of colleges and universities are in deep trouble, 
updating of equipment of colleges and universities. There are a number 
of things that need to be done on a scale that will require help from 
the Federal Government. Otherwise, the help will not be coming. Private 
industry and private donations will not be able to do it, and certainly 
States and localities will not be able to do it.
  We should not surrender and say that it is never going to be done by 
the Federal Government. We should not say that we are forever going to 
have B-2 bombers that are not wanted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the 
Secretary of Defense does not want it. The President does not want it. 
We are going to forever continue to fund B-2 bombers and neglect 
education.
  We should not surrender and believe that that is going to happen. I 
do not think it is going to happen. The majority want education to be 
made a priority in the expenditure of Federal funds and Government 
funds at every level. The majority will ultimately prevail.

                              {time}  2000

  We must hold on and understand that the fight has just begun, the 
public opinion has just begun to manifest itself. They are just waking 
up here in Washington to the fact that the American public means it 
when they said that education is a top priority for Government 
expenditure, they mean it when they say that health care is a top 
priority. It is not just an idle piece of energy thrown away when 
people reply to polls. They are replying to polls and telling them the 
truth, we mean it. Education ought to be a top priority. Right now it 
is No. 1 in the polls; health care, No. 2. From week to week they 
rotate, they alternate. Health care and education clearly are No. 1 
priorities. If the decisionmakers here in Washington, if the Republican 
majority, respected the majority of American people, then certainly we 
would not be in this dilemma.
  So the majority should not sit, but the majority should not give up. 
They should wait, and in the process of waiting we should assert 
ourselves. The majority should continue to make certain that the public 
opinion polls register what you believe.
  In the process of continuing the fight I think I cannot stress too 
often that there is a bedrock basic piece of information that we should 
always fall back on. We should not accept the theory that America is in 
a state of fiscal crisis. We should not accept the notion that the 
country is about to go bankrupt, that Medicare and Medicaid cannot be 
funded. We should not accept the notion that the Federal Government 
will go bankrupt because it helps poor people. All of this is just not 
true.
  We should understand that there is a problem, there is a problem in 
terms of taxes being too high for individuals with families, and we 
should deal with that problem. There is a problem of waste in 
Government, and we should deal with waste wherever waste is. The waste 
is in the B-2 bombers that nobody wants. The waste is in the CIA that 
continues to spend at the same level it was at during the cold war 
while it does more and more harm.
  Mr. Speaker, the CIA is one example of an agency that ought to be 
streamlined and downsized before it does more harm. The CIA's latest 
revelation about the incompetence and the evil of the CIA has been 
manifest in a ``60 Minutes'' expose of a fact that the CIA had on its 
payroll the head of the organization in Haiti called FRAPH.
  FRAPH is an organization that demonstrated, and brought guns and 
terrorized the pier in Haiti when the first ships were sent to Haiti 
with Canadian and New York City personnel, New York State--I mean 
United States personnel, some police from Canada and police from the 
United States, and engineers from the United States Army were supposed 
to be the first peaceful contingent landing in Haiti, and that was part 
of a peaceful plan that had been agreed to at Governors Island. But 
they were greeted on the docks by this demonstration of men with guns 
who roughed up the Embassy officials from the United States Embassy in 
Haiti, and they made all kinds of threats, and the Harlan County ship 
decided to turn around and not dock at the port there in Port-au-
Prince, Haiti. They did not dock because the intelligence that we 
received was that that group that was demonstrating on the dock was a 
very dangerous group. The intelligence that come from the CIA was that 
great harm would come to American personnel and Canadian personnel if 
they had landed that day. That was what the CIA said.
  Mr. Penizullo, who was then the President's envoy for the Haitian 
problem, he was dealing with the Haitian problem. He insisted that it 
was just theater, that this group had no depth, that there was no 
danger from this group, and that the Harlan County should go ahead and 
dock, we should proceed with the implementation of the Governors Island 
agreement as we agreed upon it. But the CIA insisted that, no, this 
group represents a real threat, great harm could come to America 
forces, and since this incident was following the Somalia debacle where 
18 Americans have lost their lives in Somalia, the President accepted 
the advice of the CIA and ordered the Harlan County to turn around. So 
you had a great American ship being turned around by handful of thugs 
in the Port-au-Prince harbor because the CIA had said that those thugs 
represent a large armed threat.
  The CIA insisted on this, and it turns out that all along the CIA 
knew better. The CIA knew because the leader of the group that met the 
Harlan County ship in the port was on the payroll of the CIA. They knew 
who Emmanuel Constant was because Emmanuel Constant had been recruited 
by the CIA, and the CIA had its own policies separate from the White 
House's policies and programs, and the CIA thwarted the first peaceful 
attempt to restore the legiti- 

[[Page H 13989]]

mate Government of Haiti to power. That peaceful attempt, if it had 
been allowed to go forward, would have saved the United States at least 
a billion-and-a-half, maybe $2 billion, because a year later almost 
exactly a year later, the liberating forces of the United States went 
into Haiti, 20,000 strong, armed with equipment, et cetera, because of 
the fact that the first plan, a peaceful plan which would have cost 
much less, would not have involved large amounts of troops, and 
equipment, and et cetera. That plan had been thwarted by a group that 
the CIA knew was a very small group because they had recruited it and 
they had the head of the group on the payroll.

  Emmanuel Constant is now in prison here in the United States. 
Emmanuel Constant has confessed and told all as to how he was 
recruited, how he was urged to run for President of Haiti, and I 
believe the story 100 percent. The CIA of course has not denied it; 
they just have no comment. They do admit that they sometimes hire 
people in foreign countries to get information from them. The 
implication is that Emmanuel Constant might have been on the payroll of 
the CIA, but all they wanted from him was information. There was no 
further plot to undermine the legitimate Government of Haiti.
  I cite this one example as just one more of several examples I have 
cited over the past of blunders of the CIA which are costly and also 
dangerous. I need not go back and tell the story of Aldrich--and 
recount the story of Aldrich Ames. Mr. Ames is in prison now.
  Mr. Ames even recently, with all of his arrogance, wrote a book 
review on a spy novel, and the book review was in, I think, the 
Washington Post, a book review of a spy novel where he chastises the 
author of the novel as being an amateur, et cetera. I found it 
sickening that a man who was in prison as a result of serving for 10 
years as a Russian spy; you know, he was in charge of CIA spying on the 
Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, and he was in the employ of the soviet 
Union in Eastern Europe. They admit that at least 10 agents lost their 
lives as a result of Mr. Ames' betrayal of his country. There is 
nothing lower than a traitor, you know, and I cannot see how this 
traitor is now being allowed in prison to write book reviews and to 
parade his ego over the pages of the media showing what a smart guy he 
is.
  But Aldrich Ames was there for 10 years. Aldrich Ames was not 
detected despite the fact that he was an alcoholic, he used the CIA 
safe houses for his trysts, his rendezvous with his women. He did all 
the things wrong that you are not supposed to do, even failed a lie 
detector test, and still the CIA did not detect that he was spying for 
the Soviet Union. He had a bank account which allowed him to own very 
lavish homes and cars, something he could never afford on the CIA 
salary, the CIA on his salary of course, but who knows what the CIA has 
paid. All things which affect CIA are secret, so you really do not know 
what was paid, but it was agreed that Aldrich Ames really did not earn 
enough money to have the kind of luxurious lifestyle that he had.
  Despite all that, alcoholic, betrayal of CIA codes with respect to 
sex and safe houses, lavish living, he was only accidentally sort of 
discovered, and of course there are still revelations about the harm 
that was done by Aldrich Ames. Not only did at least 10 agents die as a 
result of his betrayal and his activities, but we now know that he 
passed on information from some of the agents that were in question 
that was not correct information, and he led the United States 
Government to expend large sums of money on various activities, 
probably like star wars, and counter warfare, submarine warfare, and a 
number of things that were based on information deliberately fed to our 
Government to make our Government spend money on activities to 
counteract Russian achievements in military hardware which did not 
exist.

  So in every way Aldrich Ames is an example of a blundering CIA that 
not only is costly, but is also dangerous.
  The other example I have given of the CIA blundering is the fact that 
they discovered that the CIA had a slush fund, a petty cash fund, of at 
least $1.5 billion. Everything is secret again, but we know they 
confessed, and the press has pretty much established that it was at 
least $1.5 billion in petty cash or in an account that was treated like 
a petty cash account that nobody knew about in high places. The 
Director of the CIA did not know about the petty cash account, and the 
President did not know about the petty cash account. How can you have a 
fund of $1.5 billion and it not be known in the circles above you, the 
supervising circles that are there? Who had it and where are they? Who 
was put in jail as a result of harboring this $1.5 billion slush fund? 
And if they had a $1.5 billion slush fund that nobody knew about, the 
likelihood that they were also at the same time had more money and were 
misusing funds is great, but of course, everything is secret, and we 
still do not know exactly what happened.
  I am only giving this example as an example of a place where there is 
obvious waste, there is dangerous waste, and, if you want to save 
money, then downsize the CIA, streamline the CIA, cut the budget of the 
CIA. It is just one example of many where you can cut the budget 
appropriately.
  So we should not surrender, we should not admit, that it is 
impossible. We should not accept the big lie that it is impossible for 
America to ever provide health care for everybody, you cannot have 
universal health care in America. You can have it in Germany, you can 
have it in Japan, you can have it in Italy, you can have it in France, 
but you cannot have it in America. You can never have education paid 
for all the way through 4 years in college as they have in France or a 
few other nations. You cannot have that in America. We are too poor. Do 
not accept that big lie no matter what happens in the budget 
negotiations and where we end up on December 15.
  I am saying the majority of the American people, the great majority 
out there, people who I call the caring majority, should never accept 
this. The dream should not be surrendered. We should just understand it 
is a temporary setback and we will continue. We will continue the quest 
for Federal involvement in education at every level, we will continue 
the quest to guarantee that our society provides maximum opportunity 
for all and that we also meet the threat of a changing economy which 
requires job training and readjustment for large numbers of people.
  I wanted to talk about continuing the process of forging ahead and 
not accepting the temporary setback without having to use my chart 
tonight. I think you probably have grown weary of seeing the chart 
which reflects a large part of the answer to the problem of both the 
deficit and the excessive taxation of Americans. I hope you have not 
grown weary because it needs to be branded into the memory of every 
policymaker in America. It needs to also be clearly branded into the 
memory of every American voter. There is a basic story told by this 
chart, and whereas I wanted to sort of take a recess and not bring it 
tonight; today I read an article in the New York Times. I was a little 
late in reading the Sunday Times, and I read an article which really 
upset me greatly, and I in the process of reading that article 
determined I have to go back one more time before this session is over 
and explain this chart.
  I have to explain the chart because the writer of the article in the 
New York Times; it was Sunday, December 3, and the name of the author 
is Keith Bradsher; it is not a op-ed page article, so I assume he is a 
journalist, a reporter, or an analyst for the New York Times. He chose 
to write an article about Democrats and Republicans and how we have 
created the deficit together over the last three decades.

                              {time}  2015

  The title of the article is ``Deficit Partnership,'' and the subtitle 
is ``The Republicans and the Democrats Dug the Budget Hole Over Three 
Decades.''

[[Page H 13990]]

  As I read the article, I could not help but boil with fury because of 
the fact that here is a very long-winded analysis. They use a large 
chart here showing over a period from 1965 to 1995, a 30-year period, 
what happened. A lot of thought has obviously gone into the article. 
Why a journalist, an analyst of this caliber, maybe he has some 
economic training, why or how he can discuss this problem of the 
deficit over a 30-year period and not deal with the whole problem of 
revenues and the problem with the fact that the American people were 
swindled in the methods used to collect revenues. He talks only about 
expenditures.
  The Republicans and the Democrats dug the budget hole over decades. 
He talks about how Republicans and Democrats together have increased 
the expenditures. He does not talk about what happened with the 
revenues and how, while expenditures were increasing for various 
reasons, some of them good, a great drop took place in the revenues; 
and the revenues did not drop in the area of personal or individual and 
family income taxes, the revenue went up in the area of individual and 
family income taxes.
  The revenue dropped drastically in the area of corporate income 
taxes. The story of the great drop in corporate income taxes as a 
percentage of the revenue collected by the Federal Government is a 
story that nobody wants to tell. The New York Times reporter, analyst, 
journalist, whatever he is, does not want to talk about it. You will 
not find the commentators on television, the talk show hosts, nobody 
wants to talk about the fact that taxes in 1943, and I did not go back 
as far as he went and this article went back, actually this article 
went back to 1965, 30 years; 1943 goes all the way back, World War II 
was still underway in 1943. The income taxes being paid by corporations 
were up to 39.8 percent, almost 40 percent, while the income tax being 
paid by individuals and families was 27.1 percent. I have gone over 
this many times, but you just have to get the red bar and the blue bar 
clearly focused in your mind in order to understand the nature of the 
great swindle that took place.
  In 1943 corporations were paying 40 percent of the burden, the income 
tax burden, but in 1983, 40 years later, the corporations are paying 
only 6.2 percent of the tax burden. Only 6.2 percent of the income tax 
burden is being borne by corporations, and the individual's share of 
the taxes has shot up from 27.1 percent to 48.1 percent. That was the 
highest point of taxes on families and individuals. This was when 
Ronald Reagan was in his heyday on his trickle-down economics, the 
rising tide will lift all boats, and if you will cut the taxes for 
corporations they will create jobs, and those jobs will fuel an 
economic revolution, a miracle, and everybody will benefit.
  Mr. Speaker, individuals and families did not benefit. They ended up 
paying more taxes. They paid 48.1 percent of the taxes in 1983, while 
corporations dropped to an all-time low of 6.2 percent. Now 
corporations are up, up from 6.2 percent to 11.2 percent, which is, 
thank God, a slight increase, but individuals are still up at 43.7 
percent.
  We have Mr. Bradsher discussing the deficit partnership and how the 
deficit took place, and at no time does he talk about this dramatic 
change that took place in the tax structure, in the burden, the 
percentage of the tax burden that shifted from corporations to 
individuals. How can a learned journalist, analyst, economist make such 
a discussion without discussing the obvious? If the physical sciences, 
physics and chemistry, proceeded in the same way, we would probably be 
30 or 40 years behind in our technology. If you take a major factor in 
a discussion and ignore it completely, then you certainly cannot be 
said to be participating in any scientific reasoning process. You 
certainly be said to be proceeding in a logical manner when you just 
leave out a great portion of the argument.
  Mr. Bradsher is intent on blaming both Democrats and Republicans. I 
would concede that from the beginning. Whatever has happened in America 
over the last 30 years, 40 years, it certainly has been both Democrats 
and Republicans. Yes, in 1983 Ronald Reagan was President and that is 
why you have corporations' share of the income taxes go down to an all-
time low of 6.2 percent, but Democrats were in control of the House 
Committee on Ways and Means, where all tax policies originated, so if 
we had a scandalous situation where the income taxes for individuals 
and families went up to 48.1 percent while the taxes for corporations 
dropped to 6.2 percent, then both the hands of the Democrats who 
controlled the Committee on Ways and Means and the Democrats in the 
House who voted for it are dirty in this situation where the American 
people as a whole, the great majority, were swindled. This is something 
that I would concede.

  Mr. Bradsher, from the very beginning, I would say yes, the Democrats 
and Republicans were both guilty. My problem is not with that 
assertion. The problem is why do you go on and on and you do not even 
mention the fact that there was a great revolution taking place in 
terms of the shifting of the tax burden.
  I am going to read a few paragraphs, excerpts from Mr. Bradsher's 
article:

       Democrats in Congress have repeated for years the mantra 
     that President Reagan pushed the deficit out of control by 
     cutting taxes while raising military spending.

  Democrats have said that. That is true.
  To continue with Mr. Bradsher, though;

       Republicans have recited just as regularly the view that 
     Democrats voted for ever-larger deficits during their 40 
     years of control in the House.

  The deficits did get larger, but when Jimmy Carter left office, it 
was less than--it was around $70 billion per year versus when Ronald 
Reagan left office, it was almost at $400 billion per year, the 
deficit. But he is right, the deficits did get larger:

       Among experts who have studied the history of American 
     budget deficits, there is fairly broad agreement that both 
     sides are partly right. Neither party has clean hands, and 
     the slower economic growth over the last 20 years has made 
     the situation worse. The current budget negotiations between 
     the Republican Congress and a Democratic President, stalled 
     in large measure over handling the deficit, are a reminder 
     that the budget policy of the United States is made by 
     compromise.

  Yes, that is true. Some of the biggest decisions that continue to 
feed the budget deficit were made by Republican Presidents with 
Democratic Congresses, notably during the Richard Nixon and Ronald 
Reagan administrations. He goes on to point out what I have just 
already conceded, that both Democrats and Republicans were guilty. But 
all Mr. Bradsher discusses in terms of the creation of the problem is 
expenditures.
  He talks about the fact that--

       There was a competition between the Republicans and 
     Democrats at one time on expenditures for the elderly, a 
     rivalry between Richard Nixon and Wilbur Mills. Wilbur Mills 
     was the Democratic chairman of the Committee on Ways and 
     Means who made a brief bid for the Presidency in 1972. That 
     rivalry between Nixon and Mills contributed to the decision 
     to increase payments to Social Security recipients by 15 
     percent in 1969, by 10 percent in 1970, and by 20 percent in 
     1972. In each case the administration advocated a generous 
     increase, and the Congress added a little more.

  I am not going to criticize the Congress or Nixon for the increase in 
Social Security payments. They were far too low. I think that is an 
example of expenditures going up that was very badly needed. The 
expenditures were far too low for Social Security recipients who were 
in very dire straits, and that increase was certainly a noble increase, 
a reasonable increase, a justifiable increase.
  As Medicare and Social Security costs have grown they have squeezed 
out Federal spending on other programs like transportation and 
education. Medicare and Medicaid expenditures, however, were raised 
when the Congress and the Presidents competed in terms of increasing 
expenditures in the area of expanding Medicaid to include pregnant 
women, pregnant women who were not necessarily on AFDC, the elderly in 
nursing homes, and all those expenditures were added to Medicare after 
it had first been created.
  I would not quarrel with the Democrats or the Republicans for adding 
those uncovered people who were very important to the Medicare Program. 
Those expenditures I think were justifiable. All of the expenditures 
that are cited in terms of domestic discretionary expenditures in this 
article are not necessarily justifiable, but 90 percent of them are. He 
is talking about 

[[Page H 13991]]
expenditures for people, expenditures as an investment in education, an 
investment in health care, an investment in programs for the elderly.
  If he were talking about expenditures for Sea Wolf submarines or for 
F-22 fighter planes and for star wars, then he would be talking about 
expenditures that we could have done without. If he was talking about 
expenditures for the CIA and the intelligence operation on a large 
scale after the cold war was over, then I would say he was talking 
about expenditures that we could certainly do without.
  The point is that Mr. Bradsher goes on and on about expenditures and 
never does he once cite the fact that a revolutionary change in revenue 
collection took place, that we fell in our revenue collection from 39.8 
percent for corporations and went up to 48 percent for individuals in 
1983. Even now, in 1995, after some adjustment was made by the Clinton 
administration, corporations are paying only 11.2 percent of the total 
tax burden and individuals are paying 43.7 percent.

  Why is this important? Because this is the bedrock of the dilemma 
that we face. This is where you end as you go backwards in the 
discussion to its foundation. The agreement that is going to finally be 
made by the Democratic President and the Republican-controlled Congress 
is going to have to do something about the question of tax cuts. Who 
will get the tax cuts is the question, or should anybody get tax cuts? 
That is the question that emerges from the editorial pages of more and 
more newspapers. We are down to a situation now where if you are going 
to have a balanced budget in 7 years, then you have to surrender the 
tax cut.
  I am a Democrat. I am described as an old-fashioned liberal, but I 
think the American people ought to get a tax cut. I think you ought to 
have a tax cut for families and individuals. I think the tax cuts 
proposed by President Clinton that were related to education are very 
much appropriate. I think the tax cuts proposed which relate to 
children are very appropriate, if you were to rewrite them in a way 
which allows families that do not owe taxes to also benefit.
  To rewrite the Republican tax bill would be almost impossible. I 
think you could build a compromise on President Clinton's tax cut 
proposals. Those tax cut proposals would give some relief to the 
American families and individuals who have financed the cold war and 
gone through quite a bit, and saw their taxes rise from 27 percent in 
1943 to 48 percent in 1983, and to 43 percent, almost 44 percent, 
today. They deserve some relief. Individuals and families should get a 
tax cut. When all is said and done and the deal is made, individuals 
and families need some tax cut. It ought to be the individuals and 
families who are at the lowest levels in the economic strata, the 
middle-income and lower-income people, who get the tax cut.
  At the same time, you cannot balance the budget unless you deal with 
the fact that everybody insists on ignoring, and that is that 
corporations have gotten away with a big swindle. If you follow the 
Congressional Black Caucus alternative budget, you can raise this 11.2 
percent be first ending all subsidies to corporations by the taxpayers. 
We have a situation where taxpayers' moneys are used to subsidize 
corporations in certain activities. You can raise this amount by 
getting rid of those subsidies. You can raise the amount again if you 
close tax loopholes, starting with the loopholes that deal with foreign 
corporations.

                              {time}  2030

  Foreign corporations have advantages that our own home-based American 
corporations do not have.
  There are a number of loopholes that can be closed which have been 
developed over the years, with the help of the Committee on Ways and 
Means and Ronald Reagan, primarily, while he was in office. Those 
loopholes can be closed now. If we merely raise the corporate share of 
the revenues from 11.2 percent up to 16 percent, we could lower this 
43.7 percent, at the same time we raise the corporate up to just about 
16 percent, and thereby give a tax cut.
  When we do this, according to the calculations that were accepted 
using CBO figures, the Congressional Black Caucus alternative budget 
shows, we do not have to cut Medicare and we do not have to cut 
Medicaid. We do not have to cut Medicare and we do not have to cut 
Medicaid, and we can increase education.
  The dream does not have to be surrendered on universal health care. 
We can keep the entitlement for Medicaid, and we can go further in 
terms of an additional amount of involvement of the Federal Government 
in education.
  The Congressional Black Caucus alternative budget increased education 
by 25 percent. The President says that he wants to increase education 
by even more. Over a 7-year period, he talks about an increase of more 
than $40 billion in education. I have not figured the percentage on 
that, but the President is on course. The President is following the 
rhetoric of both the Republicans and the Democrats.
  We all say that education is an investment in the Nation's security. 
Education is also an absolute necessity if our economy is to be able to 
compete, and what the President is doing is following the rhetoric and 
the philosophy and the ideology instead of ignoring it, although both 
parties have expounded along the same lines.
  Education was deemed a priority by Ronald Reagan. He was the first 
one who sounded the trumpet and said, we are a nation at risk if we do 
not act to revamp our entire education system. Ronald Reagan was the 
one who led the way. George Bush followed by saying he wanted to be the 
education president. He called a conference and set forth six goals. 
Bill Clinton was at that same conference. He continued what George Bush 
started.
  So why are we on the verge of a $4 billion cut in education for the 
next budget year? Why are we on the verge of a tremendous 20 percent or 
more cut in education over a 7-year period?
  We can give that up. We do not have to have those cuts. If we were to 
take a look at the hard facts of what has happened in America from 1943 
to 1995, we would see that we have allowed ourselves to be swindled.
  The share of the taxes paid by corporations could go up and nobody 
would suffer. Wall Street is booming. Everybody has indicated that we 
are in an unprecedented growth period. The Dow Jones average is above 
5,000. A record-setting pace has been established.
  So who is making the money? The corporations. The red bar is where 
the action is. The red bar is where the money is. Why did Slick Willie 
rob banks? Because that is where the money is. If we want to revitalize 
the American economy, then the revenue should come from the bustling 
sector of the corporate world where the money is. That is where we can 
solve the problem of the deficit: We can give a tax cut, and at the 
same time we can avoid the draconian cuts in programs.
  Mr. Speaker, we are going to destabilize the whole society. We are 
refusing to recognize that poor people need health care, poor people 
need education.

  We have a problem with the minimum wage, that I talked about last 
time, which does not contribute to the deficit at all, has very little 
to do with this chart, except if we were to increase the minimum wage, 
the profits of corporations would go down a little bit. However, at the 
same time, we would benefit greatly by having to expend far less on 
unemployment compensation and various other benefits that are provided 
to poor people, food stamps, et cetera.
  Mr. Speaker, in short, I want to conclude by saying, we are 10 days 
from a final budget deal, and the outcome of that deal is going to be 
disappointing. We expect our Democratic President to make certain that 
we do not have a total debacle. We will not have a Dunkirk; we do not 
expect to surrender the Philippines. There are a lot of terrible things 
that will not happen, but it is going to be disappointing, it is going 
to be a temporary setback.
  The important thing to remember is that the majority of the American 
people have already made it clear in the public opinion polls. They do 
not think that we have a crisis that merits the draconian cuts that are 
taking place. They do not think that we need to move against the 
elderly and cut Medicare. They do not think we need to move against the 
poor who are sick and cut Medicaid so drastically. They do not think we 
need to throw away our 

[[Page H 13992]]
education policies of the last two decades and desert public education 
or desert higher education.
  All of these draconian moves are being made by people who have a 
vision of America which is an incorrect vision, a vision that is not 
the vision of the majority of the people. The caring majority knows 
that their welfare and their best interests lie in rejecting these 
cuts.
  That is why the polls clearly show that at least 60 percent of the 
American people want the cuts to be vetoed and rejected. At least 70 
percent of the American people do not want Medicare and Medicaid cut.
  If we were to follow the common sense of the American people, they 
would make the budget cuts in the areas where there is real waste 
instead of insisting that the defense budget be increased by $7 billion 
while we are cutting the education budget by $4 billion. They would 
insist that we cut the CIA and obviously wasteful agencies instead of 
making the cuts in the area of Head Start, summer youth employment 
programs, and Medicaid.
  The current majority knows that the Medicaid entitlement means 
exactly what it says. People are entitled to health care if they are 
poor; if they pass a means test and they qualify for the service, they 
are entitled to health care, the legislation that is before the 
President now. The appropriations bill before the President will take 
away that entitlement.
  We have already almost lost the entitlement for Aid to Families with 
Dependent Children, and now on the chopping block we have the 
entitlement for Medicare. We should not surrender that entitlement. 
Everything possible should be done. Everybody should make certain that 
they register their opinions and that they communicate with their 
Congressmen and the President and the White House, everybody, to let it 
be known that one clear indication of a giant step backwards that 
cannot be accepted by the American people is a surrender of the 
entitlement for Medicaid. We will not surrender that entitlement.
  However, even if there should be a catastrophe happening and we have 
a loss of that entitlement, I am here to say that it is only a setback, 
it is only a retreat. The majority will win in the end. We should get 
our forces and begin to reassemble and march on toward the dream.

  America can have universal health care; America can have a budget 
which is a budget which seeks to take care of the interests of all of 
the people. This is the richest nation that ever existed in the history 
of the world. There is no reason why every American cannot have 
opportunity and decent health care, and we dedicate ourselves to that 
purpose, no matter what happens on December 15.

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