[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 24 (Tuesday, February 27, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H1308-H1315]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             SHORTCOMINGS OF CONVENTIONAL WASHINGTON WISDOM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Taylor of North Carolina). 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 are returning to session after several 
weeks of being able to remain in our districts and intermingle with the 
people who voted to put us here, and that is a very good phenomenon. It 
is one that I am certain that every Member has benefited from greatly. 
I have certainly benefited from it.
  I think it is very important to have the opportunity to allow the 
common sense of our constituents to irrigate the deliberative 
legislative process that takes place back here in Washington. Common 
sense is a shorthand expression for, I guess, wisdom of the people. It 
is the wisdom of the people that we absorb when we go back home, and 
the wisdom of the people is very much needed to counteract the 
Washington conventional wisdom, which is very much stuck in a rut.
  The Washington conventional wisdom, and I speak of a bipartisan 
wisdom, there is a lot of agreement here on some things that represent 
conventional wisdom that certainly needs to be challenged by ordinary 
common sense. I think that we recently have experienced a phenomenon 
with respect to the Republican primaries that has certainly placed 
common sense on the radar screen. The rise of media star Pat Buchanan, 
a candidate for the Presidency, has certainly lifted certain basic 
issues into an area of high visibility.
  On the radar screen you have a discussion of certain issues that 
Washington conventional wisdom has refused to recognize. Problems that 
just were not accepted as being problems are now being discussed. So 
the conventional wisdom has been shaken up, and that is good.

[[Page H1309]]

  God and American politics work in very mysterious ways. If some 
issues which deserve to be projected on to the center of the stage are 
projected by a conservative, rightwing Republican candidate running for 
President, then so be it; some good can come out of any set of 
circumstances.

                              {time}  1945

  The leadership here in Washington is stuck in a rut and that is very 
dangerous because when leaders, in their conventional wisdom, refuse to 
move off dead center because of the fact they are leaders and have 
great power, it is very dangerous. It is all right if my grandmother 
gets an ornery notion and refuses to budge, or my neighbor down the 
street who has certain odd ways wants to go off on his tangent, you 
know. That is an individual kind of thing that really won't hurt 
anybody. But when we get stuck in a rut and refuse to recognize certain 
problems here in Washington, it can do great harm, it can cause great 
suffering.
  The same is true, of course, across the world. When you have 
leadership in command of nations, leadership in command of armed 
forces, leadership in command of MiG fighter planes, you can have a 
great deal of harm done when that leadership is stuck in a rut in terms 
of their own thinking.
  Fidel Castro represents that kind of leadership, stuck in a rut and 
very dangerous. You had a situation that occurred which is something 
out of a bygone era. You do not expect MiG planes to be sent out to 
shoot down unarmed planes that are part of a peaceful protest. Yes, it 
was a protest. Yes, it was civil disobedience. Because they were 
probably violating the airspace of Cuba, the planes were shot down by 
Castro's MiGs. Yes, they knew what they were doing.

  It was a civil disobedience act in the air. Any civil rights veteran, 
any person who has gone through the 1960's, as I have, knows that you 
take a chance. You take a risk when you set out on a civil disobedience 
venture, but you do not assume that the very worst is going to happen. 
Yes, Bull Connor ordered the civil rights marchers in Birmingham to get 
off the streets, and maybe he was the law and the order there. He was a 
commissioner and they were disobeying him. So they were disobeying the 
law and he set dogs upon them and he set fire hoses upon them. But Bull 
Connor had machine guns, and Bull Connor had rifles, and he could have 
shot them down. He did not go that far.
  Yes, Gandhi against the British in India certainly angered a large 
number of military-minded British commanders and commissioners and so 
forth. They did put him in jail and they did all kinds of things to his 
followers, but they did not bring in the machine guns and shoot them in 
cold blood.
  Civil disobedience is a risk. You take a gamble, but you assume that 
in a civilized society, you will be punished but the punishment will 
not be death. What Castro and his MiGs have done is committed cold-
blooded murder against people who were engaging in civil disobedience. 
You do not have to agree with the civil disobedience or not. It is not 
for us to pass judgment in order--on the action and the politics of it. 
It was murder no matter how you put it, unnecessary cold-blooded murder 
that belongs to another era.
  You talk about a new world order, you hope that we really have a new 
world order. The new world order involves some new kind of thinking 
where nobody would murder in cold blood a group of people who were 
conducting a civil disobedience action and that has happened.
  So Castro and his leaders in Cuba, Castro and the pilots of the MiGs 
are stuck in a time bind. They are very dangerous. They are in another 
era. That is the storm trooper mentality. Very dangerous. There is no 
way you can justify. Yes, you commit civil disobedience, some 
punishment is going to happen. But here it was murder.
  So my point is that it may not be that the stakes are as high, and 
the immediate murder is not the problem when we commit errors here in 
Washington, but we are causing a great deal of harm and a great deal of 
suffering because we just refuse to accept certain obvious premises. We 
refuse to accept the fact that there is a tremendous income gap in 
America and it is getting wider and wider. We refuse to accept the fact 
that wages are stagnated even among those lucky enough to have jobs. 
Even among middle class people with college degrees, wages are 
stagnating. We refuse to accept the fact that there is a great deal of 
anxiety among people who have college degrees and are in middle-
management jobs, technical jobs, because they are finding that the 
layoffs and the streamlining and the downsizing affects them, too.
  It is a time of great anxiety for good reason. At the same time, we 
see the anxiety being created by the insecurity. We see the stagnation 
at the other end of the pole, at the Wall Street level. We see the 
executives making salaries that are larger and larger, you know, now 
200 times the average worker's salary is what the CEO's are making. We 
see tremendous profits being made overnight by new information 
industries that are capitalizing on technology that has been created by 
the entire society, the technology that is used by Netscape and a few 
of these other information giants who overnight went public on Wall 
Street and they become billionaires just because it is known among the 
people who know about information technology and technological 
communication, telecommunications, they know that these efforts are 
going to pay off in the near future. They are going to pay off and they 
are going to pay off big. Tremendous amounts of money being made at the 
same time others are suffering and this insecurity is being increased. 
We refuse to recognize that as a fact here, we refuse to address that. 
We have gone out and negotiated agreements on the world trade stage. 
GATT was negotiated. Then closer to home, we had NAFTA negotiated. Yes, 
it may be true, I voted against NAFTA, I voted against GATT. If I had 
to make the vote again, I would do the same thing again, but it was not 
because I am against free world trade. It is not because I do not 
recognize that we have a global economy taking place and that we cannot 
afford to build walls around ourselves and expect to survive or to be 
leaders in that global economy. I recognize all that. You cannot stand 
in the road and stop progress. I recognize that we had to move. But the 
problem is when we tried to get some kind of reasonable attachments, 
some reasonable built-in processes that would take care of the fact 
that there was going to be a great dislocation in the work force, there 
is continuing, continuing problems that must be addressed in terms of 
loss of jobs, retraining, loss of security, all kinds of things which 
could have been addressed in the preparation of the NAFTA and the GATT 
agreements. We could have had side legislation which dealt with 
problems that we knew were going to result. We were asking for some 
kind of humane approach to the debris that would be created by this 
great revolution. It is a revolution that is underway now, a revolution 
which is an economic revolution. And in revolutions, somebody is going 
to suffer.

  I was at a conference, a seminar in Canada last summer, and there 
were large numbers, a significant number of people there who were there 
to discuss trade, world trade, the impact upon the United States' 
economy and workers, and some of them were from the current 
administration, some of them had participated in the negotiation of the 
GATT and NAFTA agreements. And repeatedly you kept hearing the phrase 
there are going to be some losers. You cannot avoid having losers. And 
I recognize that. It is a fact of life.
  You are going to have some losers in a great upheaval, an economic 
revolution. But they would say there are going to be some losers, and 
they would shrug their shoulders as if so, you have to have some 
losers. There was no sympathy for the losers. There was no 
understanding that government has a duty to try to minimize the losses.
  Government has a duty to care enough about people to want to take a 
program which provides the necessary resources to get people through 
this transition with a minimum amount of dislocation and a minimum 
amount of suffering. We have that conventional wisdom which locks into 
yes, there are going to be losers and, you know, we can not do much 
about it. Yes, we have to move forward and there is going to be some 
suffering, some people have to be thrown overboard, and our answer is 

[[Page H1310]]
no. You can have GATT, you can have NAFTA and you can make it a humane 
step forward instead of a step backwards where the winners take 
everything and there are so many losers.
  I will return to that in a minute, but I think I would like to cite 
another example of being--of where the leadership in Washington is 
stuck in a rut. There is a general acceptance here that the era of big 
government is over, that government automatically is a monster and, 
therefore, if you downsize government, you have created some kind of 
new public good. I do not accept that premise. The era of big 
bureaucracy ought to be over. The era of bureaucracies fumbling and 
stumbling, and bureaucracies that have lost their purpose, their sense 
of purpose, should be over, but we should not back away from the era of 
governmental commitment.
  A government must be a guardian of the people who are in harm's way. 
The people who need government should have government there, the 
workers who are caught in the middle of the road as the steamroller of 
technological change comes down. As the steamroller of the global 
economy comes down, those workers desire to have government as a 
guardian.
  Government, the era of big government ought to be certainly treated 
across the board in some kind of uniform way. If we really were serious 
about ending the era of big government and we really downsized on a 
sincere and reasonable level and a sincere and reasonable way, then you 
will be talking about downsizing the Pentagon and downsizing the CIA, 
and if you were downsizing all those humongous, monstrous agencies that 
have lost their reason for being, then you would generate funds in that 
process of downsizing those agencies which would be available. The 
funds would be available then for the job training, for the education, 
for the transition, the necessary transition items, necessary 
transition programs and projects that would allow people to adjust to 
the new age of information and the age of technology, age of 
telecommunications. But the wisdom here is that big government is over, 
the era of big government is over, but it is a phony statement.
  The era of big government is not over. The Pentagon is as big as it 
ever was. The majority, Republican majority in the Congress, insisted 
on adding $6 billion to the Pentagon budget. I understand they are 
building new buildings and new facilities. The CIA is as big as it ever 
was. Recently, the CIA discovered that it has a slush fund, a petty 
cash fund of $2 billion that they did not know they had. So you know, 
big government is over in the area that helps people.
  Big Government may be over in AFDC, Aid to Families with Dependent 
Children. They want to cut down on that. Big Government may be over, 
they would like to see it end in the area of Medicaid and cut back on 
the health care that is available for poor people. But on the other 
hand, the Big Government goes on and on and on in areas that are 
considered highly profitable by the Members of the Republican majority. 
If they were just sincere, we could downsize across the board and 
accumulate funds that could deal with the real problems that Mr. 
Buchanan's campaign has inadvertently kicked to the top of the agenda.
  There is another Washington, piece of Washington conventional wisdom 
that is ridiculous and needs to be challenged, and that is that States 
can do it better. Block grants and State control is suddenly some kind 
of virtue in league with the 10 Commandments. I never heard States 
praised so much as the fountains of good government. This runs contrary 
to all the history that we can dig up for practically every State. The 
history of State government is littered with scandals and 
inconsistencies and incompetence. State government gave us the problem 
of young men going to the draft in World War I and World War II who 
were physically not fit to fight, you know, because of the fact that 
they had not been given free lunches, those poor people who needed 
them, had been malnourished, maltreated, no health services.
  State government gave us that. State government gives us waste year 
after year of monumental proportions. In New York State, for example, 
State government is at an all-time low. State government is being led 
by the administration, happens to be a Republican administration, a 
Republican administration that has tried to turn the State of New York 
into a giant clubhouse. The executive branch of government is acting as 
if it is running a giant clubhouse. They are going to move State 
facilities around and State functions around in ways which accommodate 
their loyal constituency. The way you hand out patronage to the 
clubhouse, they are going to seek to hand out State services and State 
agencies as if they were a giant clubhouse.

                              {time}  2000

  And they had the right to reward their workers by handing them that 
agency or handing them a hospital or handing them some set of functions 
in their particular area and taking it away from another area. The 
government of New York State has proposed to move certain facilities 
out of the State capital. Why do you have a State capital if it is not 
efficient and effective to have all of the pertinent services, 
administrative agencies grouped together. But he is going to take part 
of the State capital functions and move them to his home area of 
Poughkeepsie, NY and put them in facilities there because that is where 
his constituency is. Those are the people who voted for him and he 
wants to build up the economy of the area where he came from. And he is 
going to do this in a 4-year period, sort of throw the whole State 
government out of kilter by seeking to reward his loyal supporters 
while he punishes the people in the Albany area, the area of the 
capital, because they did not vote for him in as large numbers as 
people in Poughkeepsie voted for him.
  It is an obvious move. Everybody is talking about it. What baffles me 
most is how and why nobody has brought a court suit or threatened to 
arrest the Governor. I do not know how you can so blatantly and so 
openly misuse public resources and be allowed to remain in office or 
not be challenged. That is going on now at the level of New York State 
government.

  This Governor has gotten ahead of the Contract With America in many 
ways. He is already trying to change the standards in nursing homes, 
and he has already proposed a giant cut in Aid to Families with 
Dependent Children. He is already going after the poor with a 
vengeance. So he is ahead of the Contract With America and proving just 
how horrible the fate of the people who need government most will be 
under State governments.
  So block grants to the States and State control of certain programs 
will only mean horror stories and great suffering for large numbers of 
people. Yet, the wisdom here seems to be give it to the States, give it 
to the States. The Governors have spoken. The Governors are unified. 
The Democratic Governors are with the Republican Governors on Aid to 
Families with Dependent Children. The Democratic Governors are in 
agreement with the Republican Governors on Medicaid.
  Well, this Nation was not constructed, the Government was not 
constructed the way it is for no good reason. If they wanted Governors 
to legislate nationally, it would have been simple to have the 
Governors of all the States compose the legislature of the United 
States, but that is not the case. The Governors are now very greedy. 
They do not want to wait until the power is handed down to them. They 
have taken the initiative, become very aggressive, and now they want to 
take over the function of Congress. So the Governor of Montana, the 
Governor of Maine, the Governor of Nevada, States with very little in 
terms of population, they have very few people, so they have very 
little representation in Congress. We have New York, Texas, Florida, 
California with large numbers of Representatives in Congress, according 
to population. That is the way the Constitution constructed it. The 
Constitution may need some correction and adjustment with respect to 
the Senate, because we do not have one man vote in the other body. It 
is every State has two votes regardless of its population. That itself 
is something that ought to be on the agenda for the next decade to deal 
with. But, certainly, there is a good sense, common sense 
counterbalance in terms that the House of Representatives is 
proportioned according to population.

[[Page H1311]]

  So how can 50 States, one Governor from each State, usurp the 
Congress' right and begin to make legislation with each one of those 
Governors having an equal vote? They broadcast this all over. We agree, 
all of us agree, all of us agree. The Governor of Montana agrees with 
the Governor of Maine who agrees with the Governor of New York.
  We are here, and we are here representing constituencies and 
congressional districts. And we reserve the right to make the decisions 
ourselves and not have the Governors usurp the powers of the Congress. 
Let them wait until this process runs its course. Let us see how much 
power we are going to hand down to the States. Let us see how the 
people respond. Let us not assume that the Governors are already in 
charge.
  We have leadership stuck in a rut here in Washington. We have 
leadership stuck in a rut in Albany, in New York, and lots of other 
State capitals. We have leadership stuck in a rut in New York City. The 
mayor of New York City insists on continuing to cut education programs. 
Over and over again he goes after education, creating more and more 
problems in a city that cannot survive unless it has a more educated 
population. The city is losing jobs. The only hope is in the area of 
high, technology jobs, telecommunications. Only educated people are 
going to keep the city of New York alive. They mayor of New York City 
continues to make cuts. He is stuck in a rut in terms of how to 
approach a budget and how to set priorities.

  The police, they will not be cut. The police represent a great deal 
of inefficiency because you have a lot of police who are doing the work 
that civilians should be doing. We were moving in the direction of 
civilianization of the police department, but because of political 
considerations, the mayor cuts education while he bloats the salaries 
of the police department who ought to be out fighting crime. And you 
could replace them with lower paid civilian workers. So we have this 
phenomenon of people in responsible positions, when they are stuck in a 
rut and their conventional wisdom is all that you have to work with. 
They cause great suffering and great destruction.
  The Washington obsolete, out-of-step reasoning sets a pace for all 
the others. Washington is so off base in the last year, since this 
Congress began, until they knock everything else out of kilter. Other 
jurisdictions, States and municipalities pick up. Washington serves as 
a negative role model, and we have a great deal of incompetence, 
blundering, dishonesty, bullying oppression, waste, right down the line 
as a result of the example set here in Washington. We waste money on a 
monumental scale.
  Whitewater hearings, for example. I understand there is an effort to 
keep the Whitewater hearings going on indefinitely. Whitewater is as 
great an example as you will want to find of a complete turnover of an 
official government function to a partisan party consideration. If the 
Whitewater hearings are continued, they certainly should be paid for 
out of the Republican Party's campaign funds, because it is a political 
campaign that is being waged through an official congressional hearing. 
If Whitewater really was sincere, if Whitewater had any credibility and 
Whitewater meant anything other than a way to harass the President by 
the other party, if Whitewater was really focused on savings and loans 
scandals, then I would be the first to applaud Whitewater. Because if 
ever there was a piece of American history that has been smothered and 
kept out of the view of the public, it is the savings and loan scandal.
  Whitewater is cited by the people who are conducting the Whitewater 
hearings as being very important because I think $60,000, $60 million, 
I have forgotten, 60 million, 60,000, in a minute you will understand 
why neither one impresses, 60 million is considerably more than 60,000. 
That is a lot of money. Whitewater lost that, the bank lost it. There 
is nothing that says the President or the First Lady had anything to do 
with those losses, but it is a good idea to have savings and loans, 
banks investigated and to have the spotlight thrown on the savings and 
loan scandal.
  As I have said many times here on this floor, the savings and loan 
scandal was the biggest swindle in the history of civilization. In the 
history of mankind, never have so many gotten away with so much and 
walked off scot-free as in the savings and loan scandal.
  If you were serious about investigating the savings and loan scandal, 
if you were serious about exposing to the American people the great 
cost of the savings and loan scandal, then you would have a hierarchy 
of hearings. You would start with hearings related to the banks that 
lost the most money. If you were serious, you would start with Mr. 
Keating's bank. Mr. Keating has so much exposure and he did so many 
rotten things beyond what other savings and loans crooks did. After he 
ran out of FDIC funds, funds that were guaranteed by the Federal 
Deposit Insurance Corporation, Mr. Keating had his people go out and 
swindle senior citizens of their money, and it had no FDIC backing. So 
the State of California went after him in such an obvious way that the 
U.S. Government had to fall in line and go after him. So Keating and 
his whole savings and loan empire, they got exposed; and Keating, for a 
liability of a minimum of $2 billion--you will see why $60 million was 
so-so, did not register well in my mind--when you start talking about 
$2 billion, you can see why Whitewater's $60 million pales in 
comparison.

  Two billion dollars, what Keating's empire cost at a minimum. The 
FDIC had to cough up that much money in order to bail out the banking 
empire that Keating had thoroughly looted. So Keating got 12 years in 
jail. With good behavior he will soon be out. But at least he got some 
jail time. At least it was exposed. So Keating's S&L scandal ought to 
be investigated a little bit more, and we ought to have hearings about 
that just to let the American people know what the dimensions of it 
were, that if you steal $2 billion, you will get 12 years in jail. If 
you are the victim of a great deal of publicity, if six Senators are 
accused of helping you, then you can't, you will end up getting 12 
years in jail.
  At least the American people ought to clearly have the Whitewater 
hearings people throw Whitewater aside and focus on that, No 1. And 
then banks that lost a billion and a half would come next. Let us have 
hearings on all the savings and loans banks or all the other banks, 
because in the process of correcting the savings and loan scandal, 
there were many regular banks that were not savings and loans that also 
were involved in the same kind of chicanery, same kind of crooked 
deals, same kind of racketeering enterprises.
  So take all the banks that cost the taxpayers a million and, a 
billion and a half and have hearings on them next, and then after that, 
all the banks that cost the American taxpayer a billion, and then after 
that go down to the $900 million and then the $900 million. I think if 
you did it that way and were sincerely interested in exposing to the 
American people exactly what we lost in these savings and loans 
swindles, exactly how it worked and how we should guard against it for 
the future, and how private enterprise is not the great, efficient, 
honest capable productive sector that we make it out to be, a whole lot 
of lessons could be learned if you took those kinds of hearings and 
substituted that for the focus on Whitewater. You would get to 
Whitewater eventually.
  Probably in 10 years we will get down to the $60 million level. After 
you go through all the ones that lost more than a billion and a half, 
those that lost a billion, those that lost $900 million, then you come 
down systematically, maybe you will get to Whitewater in 10 years. Then 
we can say that we have an investigation and a set of hearings that are 
truly serving the public interest, and they are not partisan fishing 
expeditions designed to harass the President. Then we could say that, 
and it would be a great thing for America and a great thing for 
civilization, because the kind of swindle that was pulled with the 
savings and loans swindle is something that we should know as much as 
possible about in order to guarantee that never again will it happen.
  It is estimated that no less than $300 billion, $300 billion, the 
American people have lost no less than $300 billion. It may be as high 
as $500 billion. They do not account for it. What we need hearings for 
on the savings and loans is to make them sit down and tell us at one 
hearing what the summary figures 

[[Page H1312]]
are at this point in February 1996, how many banks have you sold off, 
how much money have you recovered, how much restitution has been given 
by individuals, what happened with Silverado bank in Denver, CO? 
Silverado bank comes second probably to Keating's bank. I think they 
lost close to $2 billion.
  The son of the President at that time, Neil Bush, sat on that board, 
and I read accounts of how he was indignant when they investigated and 
said to him, this board has been so irresponsible and maybe so crooked 
that you can't ever sit again on another banking board.

                              {time}  2015

  He got indignant. Then later I heard that he calmed down, and they 
fined him. What did they fine him? I think they fined him $40,000. 
Silverado Bank had lost $2 billion. I think one of the board members 
named Neil Bush was fined $40,000.
  That is the bank where there was an incident where a building was 
bought by a realtor for $26 million, and the building was appraised for 
$13 million. The bank told the purchaser we will loan you $26 million, 
and you deposit half of it in the bank because the orders are coming 
soon and we need that money to show. So they loaned them $26 million, 
$13 million more than the building was worth, in order to have the 
books show that they had a little more money in the bank. If that is 
not racketeering, you know, I do not know what it is.
  But we cannot just talk about this in a special order; we need 
hearings, we need ongoing hearings, and we need to start at the very 
top with the banks that have lost the most money, and maybe we will get 
to Whitewater in my lifetime if you use that hierarchy. I doubt it.
  The Washington conventional wisdom says let us go after Whitewater, 
which is just a pebble in the stream, and that is what is happening. 
Washington wisdom says we should balance the budget on the backs of the 
powerless, and that is passed down to the States and down to the city. 
Great harassment is taking place in New York. Anyone who applies for 
welfare has to wait several weeks, has to fill out very complicated 
forms, has to go through all kinds of bureaucratic harassment. They are 
harassing the poorest people because they have the least amount of 
power. That starts here in Washington. We go after AFDC, we go after 
Medicaid, we go after the areas where the people are the poorest at the 
same time we increase the budget of the Defense Department by $6 
billion, $6 billion. At the same time we refuse to deal with it, the 
fact that the agribusinesses are on welfare and the agribusinesses are 
spending billions of dollars, are receiving billions of dollars in cash 
payments for not growing grain, for not planting anything, for not 
doing any work, and they do not have to pass a means test to prove that 
they are poor. We turn our backs on obvious waste while the 
conventional wisdom tells us to beat up on the poor, beat up on 
children who are receiving aid to families with dependent children.
  Washington conventional wisdom promulgated by the majority, 
Republicans, say that the workers of America are a threat to the 
economy, that the workers of America are a drag on our forward 
progress, that not only do you have to keep the workers wages low, and 
they refuse to discuss an increase in the minimum wage, the majority, 
Republicans, would not even discuss it. I serve on the committee, the 
Committee on Education and labor, a name which I choose to continue to 
give to the committee, although the official name now under the 
Republican majority is Committee on Economic and Educational 
Opportunities. The word labor is such a horrendous word that they do 
not want it in there anywhere. The certainly do not want worker, term 
worker, around anywhere. For some reason, although I did not read it 
anywhere in the Contract With America, for some reason the majority of 
Republicans have chose to wage a relentless assault upon workers. 
Workers and their families are being attacked on every front. They 
refuse to raise the minimum wage, would not even discuss it. They go 
after the Fair Labor Standards Act, which deals with wages and 
overtime, et cetera. They want to radically change that. They go after 
OSHA, which provides for safety in the workplace. They are going after 
the Labor Relations Board. There is nothing, no component of American 
Government which is designed to help workers that has not been placed 
on the greater tack by the Republican majority. The assault on workers 
and their families as enemies of the American economy and the American 
people continues.

  No wonder Pat Buchanan gets a response from workers out there when he 
dares to mention some of their problems. He only dares to mention some 
of them. Pat Buchanan talks about the fact that there is a gap, but he 
does not talk about how to close the gap. He would not support an 
increase in the minimum wage. When he is asked the question, he avoids 
the question. But he recognizes there is a gap, and every worker 
applauds. At least somebody would have visibility, somebody that the 
media covers recognizes that there is a great gap between most 
Americans, the great majority of Americans and the people at the very 
top; it ought to be closed. Somebody recognizes that this gap is caused 
partially by the global economy movement, which has been greatly 
enhanced by the passage of NAFTA and the passage of GATT. Somebody 
recognizes that when you have Mexican workers making a dollar an hour 
on a job where American workers may make $10 to $15 an hour, naturally 
the factory is going to move to Mexico. Any fool could tell you that, 
and you do not have to be an economist from Harvard to know that when 
you pass NAFTA and create those conditions, you are going to make life 
difficult for American workers who had those jobs before. At least Pat 
Buchanan has raised it up on the radar screen, and the workers now have 
somebody who indicates that they exist.
  There is a lesson in this for all the Democrats at every level to pay 
attention to the fact of the assault on the workers has created a siege 
mentality among workers and a siege mentality among the middle class 
who do not like to be called workers. But the technicians and the 
professionals and the middle management people, they too are caught up 
in the siege mentality because they have concrete anxieties, definite 
causes for concern.
  Washington obsolete, out-of-step conventional wisdom says that 
education and job training programs should be cut. Nobody was more 
shocked than I was when I heard that an agreement had been made in the 
continuing resolution process. The White House had agreed that the 
continuing resolution should contain cuts for education that we had 
been fighting all along and the President had indicated he would never 
accept. You know the $1.1 billion cut of title I is there, it is still 
there. The cut on Head Start is there, it is still there.
  The agreement that every program should operate at 75 percent of its 
last year's budget means that there is a cut, at least $1.1 billion for 
Title I. The cut is there. If you accept that 75 percent of last year's 
budget will determine the continuing budget level for title I education 
funds, title I is the only program that funnels money from the Federal 
Government to elementary and secondary education. It is very important. 
It is important because the mayor of New York City is cutting education 
drastically, it is important because the Governor of New York State is 
cutting education drastically, and even though education funds that 
come from the Federal level are only 7 percent of the total, if they 
are taking heavy cuts at the city level and the State level, then the 
Federal dollars assume a new importance, and the increase--there was a 
slight increase in title I funds for most of the school districts 
across the country. That increase plus what they had before was very 
important in helping to maintain some kind of stability, and now with 
the leadership of the Federal Government the cuts at the local level, 
the State level, are larger than they would have been otherwise.

  Their philosophy comes from the Federal Government, the Congress of 
the United States. The majority, Republicans, in the Congress have 
indicated that education should not even be a Federal function, that we 
should get rid of the Department of Education. They have made a frontal 
assault on education, and it is one of the smallest agencies, smallest 
activities, in Government. Yes, they sometimes 

[[Page H1313]]
have a large budget because they have student loans and student grants, 
but when you look at the agency as a whole, it has the least number of 
employees, and it is a smallest, one of the smallest, bureaucracies. So 
why have an assault on education in an era when job training and 
education are needed more than ever?
  The assault on education following the assault on workers, it all 
leads to a situation where large numbers of people in our Nation, 
voters, think that they are under assault, they are under siege, and 
they are right. The commonsense observance is more on target than the 
Washington wisdom. The conventional wisdom here in Washington says it 
is not enough of a problem to discuss. But the commonsense reason of 
the people says we have got a real problem and we will even go with all 
the liabilities represented by a Pat Buchanan candidacy to get some 
attention.
  Education and job training cuts are outrageous at a time like this. I 
understand that the continuing resolution with respect to education and 
labor cannot clarify really whether we are going to have a summer youth 
employment program this summer. Summer youth employment program has 
already been cut over the years down to a minimum program, whereas New 
York City used to receive money enough to give 90,000 jobs to young 
people during the summer. In the last few years it has been cut all the 
way down to about 30,000 jobs, and now we are in danger of losing the 
30,000 jobs. And New York City has 8 million people, a lot of young 
people. Now we are about to lose the meager 30,000 jobs because it is 
not clear in the continuing resolution what the funding level is for 
the summer youth employment. There is some talk about being funded at 
75 percent of last year's level, but the summer youth employment was 
singled out last year to be phased out, and I think that last year's 
level is defined as the amount of money that was appropriated for 
phasing it out.

  So it is not the same amount as it was the last operational year. We 
are still trying to clarify that, but the fact that it is even in 
jeopardy and there is a question shows how far afield the Washington 
wisdom is. The fact that the White House has not rushed to clarify that 
or rushed to make clear that in its agreement of a continuing 
resolution, it certainly did not mean to jeopardize the Summer Youth 
Employment Program.
  But I have a solution. We have these cuts in education and the cuts 
in job training, summer youth employment. The solution is at hand. It 
has been supplied by the CIA. We have said that these cuts are being 
made because we must downsize government, streamline government, we 
want to end the era of big government, and I say that that is an 
acceptable goal. But if you do not do it across the board, then you are 
going to generate dislocations and suffering in the wrong places, and 
we have done that. By cutting education, by cutting job training, we 
are cutting in the wrong places, we are greatly crippling our efforts 
to move forward in the global economy and make America competitive. 
Education is key, job training is key.
  So why do not we cut the CIA? I proposed this for 2 years in a row. I 
have had legislation on the floor saying we should cut the CIA by 10 
percent per year over a 5-year period, and the legislation has gotten 
very few votes, 57 votes I think we got last time, which means that 
both parties, Democrats and Republicans, are stuck in a rut with their 
conventional wisdom. They will not vote to cut CIA. CIA existed 
primarily to spy on the Soviet Union. At least half of its resources 
were devoted to that enemy. The Soviet Union now; you know, we have 
them over here in our missile sites and the space program we are 
running jointly with them and all kinds of interactions taking place. 
Why do we need to have the same amount of money dedicated to the CIA as 
we had when the Soviet Union was the Evil Empire and we needed to keep 
tabs on them? You know, why do we need it?
  So we have not been able to win the battle of cutting the CIA. The 
budget is not known, it is still a secret, and the Russian secret 
service, its equivalent of the CIA, they have exposed a lot of things, 
they have opened up a lot of their files, but we are strictly secret 
even to the point of not telling the American people what the budget 
is. A Member of Congress cannot get to know what the budget is unless 
he goes to a little room and looks at the budget and when he comes out 
he is sworn to secrecy and he cannot discuss it. So I refuse to go into 
the room.

                              {time}  2030

  I refuse to go into the room. I accept the estimates of the New York 
Times, the estimates that the conventional, across-the-board most 
reliable sources say the budget of the CIA and the intelligence 
agencies under the CIA all come out to about $28 billion. So a $28 
billion cut, a 10-percent cut of a $28 billion agency would be a $2.8 
billion cut over a 5-year period. You could have a sizeable amount to 
put back in.
  What I am here to propose is that we lost the fight. The CIA is not 
being downsized, not being streamlined. The era of big government, as 
far as the CIA is concerned, still is intact, but the CIA recently 
found $2 billion outside of the budget. They had $2 billion that they 
had not used over several years that they lost track of. It was in a 
petty cash fund.
  The American people, try to comprehend a petty cash fund of $2 
billion. Try to comprehend how an agency of the Government can lose $2 
billion; how the Director of the agency can have $2 billion in his 
budget and not know about it. Try to comprehend that. I find it very 
difficult to comprehend, but let us not dwell on comprehending it. 
Listen to my proposal. My proposal is that you have $2 billion that you 
did not know you had. You have $2 billion outside of the attempt to 
balance the budget, outside of downsizing.
  You have $2 billion, and education needs about $2 billion; $1.1 
billion can go to maintenance of the budget at the same level for the 
title I program, $1.1 billion; $300 million can be restored to Head 
Start. We still have not used the whole $2 billion. The rest of it can 
go for the Summer Youth Employment Program, and we are even. No sweat, 
no pain. You do not have to hurt anybody. This is lost money that has 
been found, and now we can celebrate and take care of the young people 
of America in the school and in the Summer Youth Employment Program. 
That is a solution.
  Let us throw aside the Washington conventional wisdom, because I 
heard that there are plans to let the CIA reprogram the money. They are 
going to be rewarded by being allowed to reprogram the lost petty cash. 
The slush fund will be given to the people who created the slush fund. 
There is an article in the New York Times which shows that maybe that 
will not happen. Maybe it will not happen. Suddenly, somebody has 
become indignant. Suddenly, there is talk about firing the people who 
lost $2 billion in their petty cash fund.
  Mr. Speaker, I will include in the Record an article from today's New 
York Times entitled ``Spy Satellite Agency Heads Are Ousted for Lost 
Money.''
  The article referred to follows:

                [From the New York Times, Feb. 27, 1996]

          Spy Satellite Agency Heads Are Ousted for Lost Money

                            (By Tim Weiner)

       Washington.--The top two managers of the National 
     Reconnaissance Office, the secret agency that builds spy 
     satellites, were dismissed today after losing track of more 
     than $2 billion in classified money.
       The Director of Central Intelligence, John Deutch, and 
     Defense Secretary William J. Perry announced that they had 
     asked the director of the reconnaissance office, Jeffrey K. 
     Harris, and the deputy director, Jimmie D. Hall, to step 
     down.
       ``This action is dictated by our belief that N.R.O.'s 
     management practices must be improved and the credibility of 
     this excellent organization must be restored,'' Mr. Deutch 
     and Mr. Perry wrote in a statement. A Government official 
     close to Mr. Deutch said the intelligence chief had lost 
     confidence in the officials' ability to manage the 
     reconnaissance office's secret funds.
       Keith Hall, a senior intelligence official who has managed 
     satellite programs for the Pentagon, was named today as 
     deputy director and acting director of the reconnaissance 
     office.
       The office is a secret Government contracting agency that 
     spends $5 billion to $6 billion a year--the exact budget is a 
     secret--running the nation's spy satellite program. The 
     satellites take highly detailed pictures from deep space and 
     eavesdrop on telecommunications; everything about them, 
     including their cost, is classified. The secret 

[[Page H1314]]
     agency is hidden within the Air Force and is overseen jointly by Mr. 
     Deutch and Mr. Perry.
       But overseeing intelligence agencies, especially an agency 
     as secretive as the reconnaissance office, whose very 
     existence was an official secret until 1992, is no easy 
     matter. Well-run intelligence services deceive outsiders; 
     poorly run ones fool themselves. This apparently was the case 
     with the reconnaissance office.
       Its managers lost track of more than $2 billion that had 
     accrued in several separate classified accounts over the last 
     few years, according to the Senate Select Committee on 
     Intelligence. The committee had thought the sum was a mere 
     $1.2 billion until auditors called in by Mr. Deutch found at 
     least $800 million more in the reconnaissance office's secret 
     books this winter.
       The auditors told Mr. Deutch that the way the 
     reconnaissance office handled its accounts was so arcane, so 
     obscured by secrecy and complexity and so poorly managed that 
     a $2 billion surplus in its ledgers had gone unreported.
       ``Deutch did not know, Perry did not know and Congress did 
     not know'' about the surplus, an intelligence official said. 
     ``There was a lack of clarity as to how much money was there 
     and how much was needed.'' The audit is continuing and is 
     expected to be completed by April.
       The reconnaissance office also spent more than $300 million 
     on a new headquarters outside Washington in the early 1990's. 
     The Senate intelligence committee, which appropriates 
     classified money for intelligence agencies, said it was 
     unaware of the cost. In the only public hearing ever held on 
     the subject of the National Reconnaissance Office, Mr. Hall 
     testified in 1994 that the construction of the building was a 
     covert operation and the money for it had been broken into 
     separate classified accounts to conceal its existence.
       The reconnaissance office is one of 13 intelligence 
     agencies under Mr. Deutch. All will be covered in a report to 
     be issued on Friday by a Presidential commission on the 
     future of intelligence. The report will address the question 
     of whether Government spending for intelligence--an estimated 
     $26 billion to $28 billion a year--should continue to be 
     officially secret.

  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, let me just read a few items from this 
article. I will not read it all.

       The top two managers of the National Reconnaissance Office, 
     the secret agency that builds spy satellites, were dismissed 
     today after losing track of more than $2 billion in 
     classified money.
       The Director of Central Intelligence, John Deutsch, and 
     Defense Secretary William J. Perry announced that they had 
     asked the director of the reconnaissance office, Jeffrey K. 
     Harris, and the deputy director, Jimmie D. Hall, to step 
     down.
       This action is dictated by our belief that N.R.O.'s 
     management practices must be improved and the credibility of 
     this excellent organization must be restored.

  I do not know how it can be an excellent organization; if they cannot 
keep track of their money any better than that, I do not have any faith 
in anything else they are doing. I doubt there is great competence 
anywhere else if you cannot keep track of your books. If you lose $2 
billion, then how many other blunders and errors have been made, is the 
question. Any American citizen can ask that question and be on sound 
ground. Common sense should ask that question. But here we are praising 
these people. They run an excellent agency, except they lost $2 billion 
in their petty cash fund.
  A Government official close to Mr. Deutsch, who is the head of the 
CIA, said ``The intelligence chief had lost confidence in the 
officials' ability to manage the reconnaissance office's secret 
funds.'' That is the understatement of the year, that they lost 
confidence. The office is a secret Government contracting agency that 
spends $5 billion to $6 billion a year. It is a secret, so you do not 
know exactly how much. They run the Nation's spy satellite program. The 
auditors told Mr. Deutsch that the way the reconnaissance office 
handled its accounts was so arcane, so obscured by secrecy and 
complexity, and so poorly managed that a $2 billion surplus in its 
ledgers have gone unreported.
  I will not read anymore. I commend you to the New York Times of 
February 27, 1996. This is happening in your Government. This is one of 
the pieces of Government that conventional Washington wisdom has said 
should not be downsized, should not be streamlined. The era of big 
Government lives on in the CIA.
  I want the $2 billion that has been discovered to go to education, to 
job training, to the summer youth employment program. Washington 
obsolete out-of-step reasoning says the income gap is not important. 
The minimum wage is not important. The minimum wage proposal is on the 
table. We have a piece of legislation which is sponsored by the 
minority leader, the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Gephardt] and I am 
cosponsor, but at last count we did not have all of the Democrats on 
it, so I cannot really criticize the majority of Republicans for not 
supporting the minimum wage bill until we get all of the Democrats on 
it. A large number of Democrats are not supporting an increase in the 
minimum wage.
  The bill says that we shall raise the minimum wage by 45 cents per 
hour over a 2-year period, twice; a total of 90 cents an hour over a 2-
year period, so we will move from $4.25 to 90 cents more. It is a 
minimum, a meager effort to move forward in an era when the income gap 
is growing. In an era when wages are stagnant, we cannot even agree to 
move the minimum wage.
  NAFTA, GATT, all these things were quickly moved through the process, 
the legislative process. There was a minimum of public discussion of 
what it means to have Mexican workers making $1 an hour in a job in 
which other people make $10 an hour; what it means to have Mexican 
plants not have to comply with environmental standards, while American 
plants have to comply. All of that was rushed through.
  Suddenly Pat Buchanan raises the question, and it is now on the radar 
screen, and common sense says we ought to discuss it. Regardless of how 
you feel about Mr. Buchanan, you ought to discuss it. Pat Buchanan's 
bombshell has shattered the smugness and serenity of Washington 
conventional wisdom. There is an economic revolution, and it is fueled 
by rapidly escalating technology changes. A global economy is being 
created. The problem is that losers have not volunteered to be 
sacrificed.
  Everybody says there must be some losers. Now we have a revolt of the 
losers. Losers want to vote for somebody else, somebody who is willing 
to talk about their dilemma, their problem. Why should losers accept 
their fate quietly? Why do losers have to be losers when we could have 
a transition process where we have education programs and job training 
programs which help people through the period where downsizing, 
streamlining, has taken place and all these technology changes are 
taking place?
  The Buchanan media domination over the last few days has certainly 
captured attention of all sectors. People in my district who have no 
use for Mr. Buchanan and his racist, anti-Semitic opinions want to 
listen to him when he talks about the effects of NAFTA and the effects 
of GATT. The commonsense questions are being raised by the people in my 
district and many others. They wanted to say, ``Why aren't you doing 
something about the fact that so many workers are losing their jobs, 
and there is no job training for them? Why aren't you doing something 
about providing some kind of help for these people?''
  Those are the questions that are being asked, and I have answers. We 
are. We are attempting to. We do not have the high visibility of media 
star Pat Buchanan or Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, but the 
Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, we have legislation 
there. The legislation is there to call for a stimulus program that 
would have job training and get us through this transition period.
  Nobody is a genius, and nobody proposes to know all the answers as to 
where we are going to come out after this technology global economy 
revolution takes place. We cannot predict that. We can come up with 
programs that help human beings get through the process, and we have 
legislation that is proposed.
  In the Congressional Black Caucus budget, the alternative budget that 
was put on the floor of this House, the two areas that were increased 
were education and job training. The proposals are there. They have 
been offered. They are still there, but no consideration by the 
leadership. The majority Republican Party controlling this House does 
not want to make these considerations.
  Maybe the high visibility we have gained through Mr. Buchanan's 
candidacy, maybe that high visibility will at least stimulate some 
discussions of an increase in the minimum wage. 

[[Page H1315]]
Maybe it will at least stimulate some discussion of a minimum job 
training program that might move us forward a little bit.
  But we are grateful. God and the American political process work in 
mysterious ways. We are grateful for this high visibility that the 
problems have been given. Out of the mouths of racists and anti-Semites 
some common sense can be heard. This is a great secret that is not so 
secret among demagogs and demagoguery. Demagogs know that you have to 
make some sense to people. You have to show common sense. Mr. Buchanan 
shows common sense.
  Demagogs know that you have to address some practical, real, concrete 
problem. You have to do that. Demagogs know that you have to pretend to 
care about people's suffering. You have to pretend, at least. Demagogs 
know this. So this demagog is raising the high visibility, and for that 
reason we are grateful. We are not grateful enough to follow a person 
who has a whole history of anti-Semitic statements, a whole history of 
racist statements. We will not be carried away, but the issues have 
been raised. The Washington conventional wisdom has been shaken. We 
will go forward to try to be positive about filling the vacuum that we 
have refused to recognize up to date.
  We should support workers. We should make certain that there are no 
losers that suffer unnecessarily. We should have a transition program 
that we solidly back in order to carry forward our economy and all the 
people in our economy.

                          ____________________