[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 33 (Tuesday, March 12, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H2114-H2121]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    SUMMER YOUTH EMPLOYMENT PROGRAM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Metcalf). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, the hour is late, and I will try to compress 
my remarks into about 30 minutes.
  Mr. Speaker, I think it is very important that we realize also that 
the hour is late for the funding of the Summer Youth Employment 
Program, and that is the subject which I feel compelled to talk about 
tonight. We are going to be talking about it more this week. The 
members of the Congressional Black Caucus at a meeting on Friday 
decided we would make this item a priority item this week and try to 
rally our colleagues, both Democrat and Republican, to come to the aid 
of the young people in our country.
  Most of those young people reside in big cities, and that is where 
most of the money for the Summer Youth Employment Program has 
traditionally gone, to big cities. That is where the population is, in 
big cities. It has gone to big cities because that is where the poor 
young people are.
  There are requirements for the program. It is a means-tested program. 
You have to be poor. You have to meet certain standards in terms of 
poverty before you can participate in the program.
  So it has gone to the big cities, where the poor youth are. It has 
gone to a large number of minority youth, Hispanic and African-
American. It has gone to a large number of young people who come from 
poor neighborhoods that do not have people voting as they should vote, 
so they do not have much political power.
  For all these reasons, the program seems to have become very 
unpopular, certainly become a cast-off by the leadership perhaps in 
both parties. But certainly the Republican majority in this Congress 
seems to delight in going after the Summer Youth Employment Program.
  The Republican majority in the rescission process more than a year 
ago zeroed out the program. It was zeroed out for 1995, the past 
summer, and zeroed out for 1996 and forevermore.
  Why does this Summer Youth Employment Program merit being targeted 
for the hostility of the Republican majority in this Congress? I do not 
know. I cannot understand. There are protestations from both sides of 
the aisle about being concerned about young people, about being 
concerned about youth. We have heard some eloquent speeches tonight 
about being concerned about pregnant teenagers.
  Well, I think one of the speakers said if you are concerned about 
pregnant teenagers, that means you have to be concerned about programs 
that impact on both males and females. So we are talking about male and 
female youth and being concerned about them.
  Here is a program that is targeted to young people in a very direct 
way. Here is a program that does not have a lot of red tape. Here is a 
program that does not have a great deal of bureaucracy. The money goes 
to young people to pay them to do jobs in the summer. The money goes to 
young people to pay them for about 2 months, I think it is an 8-week 
program. They work at minimum wage. They work for a limited number, 6 
hours a day for 4 or 5 days a week. It is a very short program, about 
30 hours, I think, a week.
  For a small amount of money, it reaps a great dividend. There are 
many young people who have never been employed before who are employed 
for the first time. They learn good work habits. They get a sense of 
worth, self-worth.
  I was surprised the other night as we were talking about the dilemma 
of the Summer Youth Employment Program that one of my assistants who is 
a college graduate already, she does a lot of my case work and who 
voluntarily works with young people, was talking

[[Page H2115]]

about how upset the young people are about the fact that the summer 
youth program appears to be lost. Normally at this time of the year, 
there is notification that there is a program and there are dates 
already offered as to when you can file your application and the 
process has already started. But they were told it is a hazy situation 
at best, and, at worse, we have to recognize the fact that there is 
zero in the budget for the Summer Youth Employment Program.

  Yes, the President did ask, I think, for $900 million for this year's 
program. I think the budget for the previous was $1 billion. He asked 
for $900 million-some in his budget. But the Republican majority zeroed 
that out. They asked for zero. The Senate, the other body, has not made 
any effort to put the Summer Youth Employment Program back in either.
  The Republican majority zeroed it out for 1995, but it was saved by 
the Senate before. The other body put it back in in the conference 
process. We regained a program that was of a smaller size, but it was 
nevertheless a program. I think you had more than 600,000, about 
700,000 young people serviced in the 1995 program.
  I might add that is a long way from the original Summer Youth 
Employment Program. They used to serve in New York City, for example, 
90,000 young people in the summer. New York City is a big place, with 8 
million people and a lot of young people. Our school system has 1 
million young people in school. Of that number, teenagers are about 
400,000. So of that 400,000, 90,000 received jobs at the height of the 
program in the late 1960's and the early 1970's. I know, because I was 
the commissioner of the Community Development Agency, which was the 
agency responsible for community action programs. Those community 
action programs were primarily the employers of the summer youth 
program youngsters.
  Community action programs operate all year round. They did various 
things for the community in the area of housing, education, and 
cleaning streets and doing all kinds of things. They employed those 
90,000 young people. In 1995, the number had dropped from 90,000 to 
32,000. So, all we could do is give 32,000 young people jobs.

                              {time}  2245

  They are upset. They have good reason to be upset. So my assistant, 
Necole Brown, was explaining to me about how upset the young people are 
about the fact, the prospect that there will be absolutely no jobs this 
summer, and she said, you know, the first job I ever had was in the 
Summer Youth Employment Program, the very first job I ever had. The 
first job my brother ever had was in the Summer Youth Employment 
Program. The first job my sister ever had was in the Summer Youth 
Employment Program. For the first time, I felt like I was somebody, 
that I belonged to the mainstream as a result of having that job during 
the summer.
  The story can be told by numerous others. The numbers are very large. 
I meet lots of young people, because I started my career in the 
community action program in a local community action agency in 
Brownsville, which was a front-line employer. So I saw the faces of the 
young people who were employed by the hundreds summer after summer, and 
I still meet them on the street 20 years later. I meet them and they 
remind me that they were employed. They think it was my Summer Youth 
Employment Program, and they tell me about what they are doing. Not all 
of them have made good in life, and I have not done a case study to 
tell you exactly what the longitudinal effect of it has been, but most 
of them have been greatly helped by that program. And if you do a 
longitudinal study, careful study of youth who went through the Summer 
Youth Employment Program, I am sure you will find a great positive 
benefit between the difference of among poor youths who when through 
the program and those poor youths who never had the opportunity.
  We have had longitudinal studies done of Head Start. Head Start is a 
program for poor youngsters starting in preschool, and they followed 
youngsters who went into the program 20 and 25 years ago, and those 
longitudinal studies always show great benefits when you compare the 
youngsters in the Head Start Program with a control group that they 
used of youngsters who did not go into the Head Start Program who came 
from the same kind of backgrounds.
  These programs do benefit young people. We do not know a lot about 
how to handle our present crisis with youth, but we do know that some 
things work, some things work and they work very well. We cannot solve 
all the problems. Nobody is going to stand here, I am certainly not 
going to stand here and pretend I can tell you what the prescription is 
for handling teenagers in 1996.
  There are some teenagers, I just wrote a letter for one recently, who 
have all the benefits in the world, came from a very good family, you 
know, good income in the family, they took good care of him and put him 
through the best schools, and still he is in trouble with the law, 
facing 3 or 4 years in jail because of drugs. Not only did he have 
drugs, but when the police approached the car, he tried to drive off, 
so the situation is worse. Here is a good youngster from a good family, 
and I am writing a letter to try to get some kind of leniency and get 
the judge to look at the situation in total. He has a good opportunity 
to be rehabilitated because he has the support of a family.
  I do not know why he went wrong, though. I cannot explain the 
phenomenon of young people who have all the advantages in the world 
going wrong, but there are many of them. They come from all 
neighborhoods, and Members of Congress certainly know some of them. 
They have relatives and they have friends who are confronted with this 
situation. But there are situations where youngsters in poverty, when 
you apply some kind of assistance, you get a result. There are some 
things that we know do work, that large numbers, the greatest, 
overwhelming majority will rise to the occasion if they get some help.

  One of the things that Necole Brown told me about the young people 
she is working with. My office is not equipped to work with young 
people. I do not have a grant for that.
  I have what you call a youth advisory committee where I wanted to get 
involved a little bit, have youngsters tell me what is going on, but we 
get more and more involved, because once you show them attention, 
teenagers want more attention, and they respond in such a way that it 
inspires you to get more involved, you want to do more for them. So we 
found ourselves trying to do more and more all the time. But right now 
the rock bottom thing is to get them access to summer youth employment, 
those minimum wage jobs, about 30 hours a week can mean all the 
difference in the world.
  We say we care. We say we care as a nation. We say we care as a 
Congress. But we do things which are quite the opposite. In fact, it is 
kind of an evil situation that we confront when we have people who are 
knowledgeable about exactly what is going on and they stand here and 
tell us that we do not have the money to fund a Summer Youth Employment 
Program where youngsters all across the country can get same jobs this 
summer. It will bust the budget. We do not have the money in the 
budget. What are we talking about? We are talking about probably $600 
or $700 million out of a trillion-dollar budget, $600 or $700 million. 
The same people who stand here and tell us that we do not have the 
money to fund a program for youth, which will employ more than 600,000 
young in the cities, give them hope and help us to deal with some of 
these problems that cost so much more money. It costs $20,000 to keep a 
young person in jail for a year, and yet here is a Summer Youth 
Employment Program, we are going to pay minimum wage for 2 months, 10 
weeks, 8 weeks, I am sorry. That tiny amount of money we cannot invest. 
It is some kind of distorted, evil kind of thinking that comes out with 
a conclusion that we cannot afford it.
  The same people who say we cannot afford it will do nothing about the 
fact that the CIA just discovered the fact that it has $2 billion in 
its petty cash fund that it did not know it had. Two billion dollars, 
the auditors have discovered $2 billion. That is what has been made 
public. When the CIA makes something public, we always have to sort of 
look at it and add something to

[[Page H2116]]

it because we know they do not tell the truth. They are in the business 
of not telling the truth, so it is probably more than $2 billion, $2 
billion.
  So we have written a letter to the President saying that, you know, 
you can solve the problem of the Summer Youth Employment Program. It is 
the same letter we intend to distribute to the whole Congress and 
certainly the Republican leadership of this House, which started the 
problem. The Republican majority instituted this attack on the Summer 
Youth Employment Program, this irrational attack, this evil attack, 
this attack which runs counter to the purposes of any sane group of 
people who want to help young people. We hope that they will also read 
the letter and respond.
  We wrote to Bill Clinton, the members of the House Committee on 
Economic and Educational Opportunities. The gentleman from Michigan 
[Mr. Kildee] and I initiated the letter. We will be asking other people 
to join us:

       Dear Mr. President: We respectfully and urgently request 
     that the $2 billion in unspent funds recently discovered by 
     auditors of the CIA be reprogrammed to eliminate the cuts in 
     title I Head Start and the Summer Youth Employment 
     Program. We have noted with great shock and indignation 
     the revelation that the CIA has $2 billion in unspent 
     funds that no one in the government was aware of, $2 
     billion that no one in the government was aware of. It is 
     our understanding that these funds are not on any budget 
     schedule and therefore are available to be utilized for 
     more positive purposes. More specifically, Mr. President, 
     we propose that the following budget actions be initiated 
     by your administration:
       Transfer $1.1 billion to title I, the education programs 
     that go to the elementary and secondary schools, title one. 
     Transfer $300 million to Head Start; $300 million is that 
     amount that Head Start has been cut in the budget initiated 
     by the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. 
     And transfer $600 million to summer youth employment 
     programs, $600 million.
       It all adds up to $2 billion; $2 billion is a lot of money 
     but look at the great good you can do if you put it to 
     positive purposes. We are certain the Democratic Members of 
     both the House and the Senate would enthusiastically support 
     these actions. We are also certain that the Republican 
     opposition would find it very difficult to show cause why 
     these recently discovered funds that are free and available 
     cannot be used to guarantee the same level of funding for 
     these vital education programs.
       Mr. President, we look forward to working closely with you 
     and to achieve this very practical goals.

  I would like for the Republican majority of this House to show cause, 
tell us why you have attacked the Summer Youth Employment Program and, 
if your reason is that there is no money in the budget and it is 
impossible to make room for the program now, then tell us why you 
cannot join with us in reprogramming $2 million that the Central 
Intelligence Agency has that it did not know it had, that nobody knew 
it had. So it certainly is not on anybody's budget schedule. Tell us.
  This is a challenge and this is a moral challenge. If you care about 
morality, if you care about family values, if you care about pregnant 
teenagers, we have heard some eloquent speeches about pregnant 
teenagers and people who want to take steps to deal with the problem of 
pregnant teenagers in any way possible, and I applaud every suggestion 
that was made. I applaud those speeches on both sides of the aisle. We 
need to come to grips with the problem. But you certainly do not care 
about the problem of pregnant teenagers if you are going to wipe out a 
program like the Summer Youth Employment Program which is quite simply, 
a direct way of giving hope to young people. It gives hope.
  I heard the people who talked before me about teenage pregnancy use 
the phrase over and over again about hope, hope for young people. I 
heard the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Shays] on the other side of 
the aisle talk about dreams and the fact that as a young person his 
parents guaranteed he had the opportunity to dream and how you wreck 
the dreams of young people when their dysfunctional lives lead to 
pregnancy and you throw them into a quagmire that they can never get 
out of. I heard this with great sympathy.
  I hope that we as intelligent people, we as intelligent people also 
act as honest people, because we are not honest, it is not honest to 
look at the situation and see the $600 million will solve the problem, 
$600 million will take us a long way toward giving some of those 
teenagers hope, the males and the females because they are both part of 
the problem; $600 million will save us a great deal of money by keeping 
young people out of trouble, out of jail.

  Jail always costs $20,000 or more per year for young people. All of 
these are so obvious, so self-evident until only some kinds of evil 
force can be at work to not make decisionmakers in Washington see it 
and act on it. What is going on? I really do not know what is going on.
  Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman from New Jersey wants to join me 
here. And before I go any further, I want to give him an opportunity to 
join us. I think we will take our entire hour at this point. The 
gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Payne] is welcome to join this 
discussion. Mr. Payne is the chairman of the Congressional Black 
Caucus, which had a retreat last week on Friday. On Friday, we looked 
at all the priorities and all the problems. We concluded that the 
problem facing us more right now, the problem that has a deadline on 
it, the problem that has a time clock, a time bomb ticking away is the 
problem of summer youth employment. Summer youth employment, the 
program, decisions need to be made now. They need to be made soon. The 
process needs to be engaged.
  We have a lot of talk about AmeriCorps, and we are all for 
AmeriCorps. Both of us serve on the committee, the Committee on 
Economic and Educational Opportunities, which is responsible for 
AmeriCorps. It used to be called the Education and Labor Committee when 
we passed the bill that created AmeriCorps. Nobody ever said to us, 
when you create AmeriCorps you have to get rid of the Summer Youth 
Employment Program.
  I want everybody to hear me carefully. If you bring AmeriCorps into 
our neighborhoods this summer and there is no Summer Youth Employment 
Program, I fear for the safety of the AmeriCorps youth. It would not be 
just to wipe out the Summer Youth Employment Program and then send in 
middle-class youngsters from the AmeriCorps program and expect there 
not to be a reaction. It is wrong. It is unjust. And I hope you 
understand how explosive that could be.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Payne].
  Mr. PAYNE of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, let me first of all commend my 
friend and colleague, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens], for 
calling this special order tonight. I appreciate having the opportunity 
to participate in this with him. Through our service together on the 
House Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities, we have 
worked together many years on issues and projects, on educational 
issues, on issues of jobs, and I have always admired the gentleman's 
strong stand and his conviction and his willingness to stand up for 
what he believes in.
  So it is with that pleasure that I participate in this special order 
tonight and also to reiterate, as he said, that the Congressional Black 
Caucus held a retreat where we talked about the state of black America 
where we discussed issues that confront us as a people and this Nation 
as a country. One of the issues that continually came up and the issue 
that we overridingly talk about was the fact that the summer youth 
employment is an extremely important, critical and key issue to us in 
our communities.
  Tonight I am proud to join with him in standing up for young people 
in our communities.

                              {time}  2300

  There is one concept now which all Members of Congress from both 
sides of the aisle can agree. It is the importance of instilling in our 
young people a strong work ethic. That is what made this country great; 
that is what made America what it is today. And a sense of personal 
responsibility. We hear so much about personal responsibility in the 
new majority's rhetoric. Personal responsibility also includes the 
opportunity to feel that personal responsibility by virtue of being 
able to have concrete, tangible goals that people can see and do, and 
that is where employment comes in.
  That is what the summer youth employment program is all about.
  More of us can remember what it was like when we got our first summer 
job. We can all remember that; my colleague mentioned that, too. Many

[[Page H2117]]

times it was during elementary school or high school, and no matter how 
menial the job was, how unimportant it seemed to other people, we felt 
a sense of accomplishment, we felt a sense of pride, and we worked to 
live up to our employer's expectation as we collected our first 
paycheck. Many of us began saving for college. Some of us dreamed of 
one day owning our own businesses. My brother was very successful in 
having a business for 20 years that he ran, where he was involved with 
high technology in manufacturing computer forms. And so it was a dream 
that started when we had an opportunity to have a summer job.
  Today in too many of our economically deprived communities there is a 
serious shortage of summer jobs, despite the eagerness of thousands and 
thousands and thousands of young people who want to become gainfully 
employed. In the past, the summer job program has enjoyed strong 
bipartisan support for all the years. There has been a wide recognition 
of the value of providing low-income youngsters with valuable work 
experience at a critical time in their life were they learn these work 
ethics, work experience, the whole value of work.
  Young people need an alternative to hanging out on the streets, for 
drifting out in the community, and they will see this opportunity to be 
productive, to hold a job, if we will extend it to them, if we would 
reach out and say there is a job, because many times as I walked down 
my boulevards and my streets in my districts, sometimes late a night 
just to encounter the young people, they say, ``Mr. Congressman, won't 
you come on over here,'' and I will go over, and we will talk, and they 
will say, ``I'll stop hanging on this corner doing things that I'm 
doing that is not right if I could find a job..'' And they challenge: 
``Mr. Congressman, can I come down to your office tomorrow and get a 
job?''
  And it is a very shallow feeling when you say, ``Well, come down, and 
we'll work at it,'' but knowing that there are very few jobs available.
  I have been working with young people most of my adult life as a 
school teacher, as president of the YMCA of the USA before coming to 
Congress, and I have seen how positively young men and women respond 
when they are given an opportunity to hold a job, to earn a paycheck, 
that pride.
  I believe the new majority in Congress have made a big mistake in 
targeting summer youth employment programs for elimination, a big 
mistake. It would be abundantly unfair to pull the rug out from under 
so many deserving young men and woman.
  There is much emphasis today on dealing with the crime problem in our 
Nation, especially in our urban centers where crime is rampant. 
Congress sees to have no problem with spending billions of taxpayer 
dollars on new prisons to warehouse offenders. The majority of Congress 
voted to increase the expenditures for prisons from $7.9 billion to 
$10.5 billion, an increase, money taken away from prevention and put 
into more prison construction. When they talk about the costs per 
inmate, the costs of construction is not even built in. Any other kind 
of business, you build in the cost of construction, and it is $20,000 
plus just for correction officers, food, health, and all of the things 
that go along with having 24-hour, 7 days a week, 360 days a year 
custodial care over a person. And so it certainly would be a much 
better investment in an employment program if we took the money and put 
young people back on the right track.
  So I hope my colleagues will join with us in restoring the $635 
million for this summer program. In keeping with our efforts to 
compromise on the budget, it actually will bring down the figure from 
last year. It is only 75 percent of the 800 million that was 
appropriated last year, and so it is in keeping with gradual decrease.
  Let me just say once again that years ago, when I was employed in the 
downtown business community, there were jobs available at the utilities 
firm, at the insurance companies, at the transit company, and young 
people would come and get summer jobs, and so the necessity for 
government to be the employer of last resort was not even necessary at 
that time.

  Today in my community those companies no longer have summer jobs 
available. Those companies no longer have the work force they had in my 
city of northern New Jersey. At one time 500,000 people lived there, 
just about 1 million people were there during the day. Today we have a 
city of 275,000 where during the day the numbers do not swell much 
because the employment opportunities are not there. So if the full-time 
employment opportunities are not there, then the summer job 
opportunities are not there.
  And so I just appeal to the President, when he sends back his veto 
message, and I personally mentioned this to him on yesterday when he 
was in New Jersey, that young people must not, must not, be sacrificed, 
that when this CR comes back, it must have in it the money to restore 
summer youth employment, which was not in either bill, and it must be 
in the bill when it comes back.
  I had the opportunity to work as a waiter, a truck driver, a lumber 
handler, a warehouse man. I worked as a longshoreman. I did just 
about--postal employee. I was a teacher. I did it all, and it gave me 
the whole sense of feeling empowered because of earning my way.
  As a matter of fact, as I conclude, I was a newspaper boy. I remember 
at the young age of 9 starting my job. I think you were supposed to be 
12, but I just told them I was old enough. But I started a job, and at 
that time it was just delivering of 3-cent newspapers. This was back in 
the forties, and I made three-eighths of a cent a paper, and I only had 
30 customers, so I had to build my route up. I built it up to over 125 
customers because then in order to make a dime, I had to deliver 30 
papers. And so that was slow. And so it just gave me the opportunity to 
have my own business, to move, to earn, and actually made about maybe 
$3 a week, and had 50 cents taken out on a payroll deduction at that 
time to put down when I decided that I was going to go to Seton Hall 
and that it was not enough of a scholarship money in order for me to 
go.
  And so I can remember very clearly those days, and it instilled a 
pride.
  We do a disservice to young people today when we take away the 
opportunity for them to achieve. It is unfair that they do not have the 
opportunity to be successful. It is just like in some school districts 
that the young people do not have the opportunity to learn, and then 
they fail standardized tests. It is unfair. We have to stop being 
unfair to young people. We have to start treating them with dignity, 
self-respect, the total person, the mind, the body and the spirit, the 
triangle which makes the full person.
  This Nation is taking away from our future a major ingredient and the 
opportunity to earn a living, an opportunity to learn, and we need to 
talk about that at some other time. But the gentleman was kind enough 
to yield, and so I will conclude by urging my colleagues on both sides 
of the aisle to join with us in restoring these very, very crucial and 
important funds.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from New Jersey. He is 
from the great city of Newark, and he mentioned the fact that Newark 
used to have a bustling downtown area filled with people, you know, not 
too many years ago, and that has declined greatly now.
  I am going to talk a little bit about that. That is part of the 
problem. And we have had a situation develop where our cities have been 
drained of resources. Money has flowed from our cities to the rest of 
the country, and we have lost a great deal of the resources that we 
need to keep our own cities going. And it is not through mismanagement, 
it is not that our cities are not still, our cities and our States, are 
not still very wealthy States.
  New York State is a State in the Nation which provides the greatest 
amount of surplus over in terms of the Treasury, and when you compare 
what New York State receives from the Federal Government, what it 
receives from the Federal Government in terms of aid is much less than 
it pays in, and that has been true for the last 20 years. In 1994, the 
last year that they have figures available, New York State paid into 
the Federal Treasury $18.9 billion more than it got back from the 
Federal Treasury in terms, in Federal aid. New York State was the, you 
know, most generous of the States, but New Jersey also paid far more 
into the Treasury than it got back from the Federal Government.

[[Page H2118]]

  And this has been a pattern. Michigan, many of the Northeastern 
States, have consistently paid more into the Treasury. The States with 
the large cities like Chicago and Detroit, Philadelphia, those States 
are being discriminated against in many ways by the Federal Government 
policies.

  One way we would get our money back in terms of Federal aid would be 
through programs like the summer youth employment program. New York 
City, for example, over the last 20 years has lost $10 billion in 
Federal aid, and we hear on this floor a lot of criticism about New 
York State and New York City spending too much money on Medicare and 
Medicaid. Medicare and Medicaid, we have the highest expenditures in 
the country. But even with the highest expenditures in the country in 
Medicare and Medicaid, New York State is still putting in, paying out 
to the Federal Government, $18.9 billion more than it is getting back. 
We do not have any big defense plants, we do not have any disasters 
like hurricanes or earthquakes or floods. There are a number of ways 
that we do not receive money back from the Federal Government that 
other areas do. Highway funding; we have a great need for mass transit 
funds, and they are being cut.
  Now I want to focus on the summer youth employment program. But you 
cannot tell the whole story and you cannot show how vicious, how 
vicious the process is here in Washington, unless you look at the total 
picture.
  And at this point I want to pause and make certain that everybody 
understands that for the next few days we are going to be talking about 
this problem. The summer youth employment program will be on our 
agenda, and a lot of people say, well, the situation is not so bad 
because the continuing resolution says that all programs will be funded 
at 75 percent of their last year's funding level. Well, you know that 
is not true of the summer youth employment program. The last year was 
zeroed out. There is no authorization, there is no--the rescission 
process killed the program. So it would be 75 percent of zero that you 
are talking about.
  Let me read from the latest statement on it that appeared just a few 
days ago in the House action reports. The Congressional Quarterly's 
House action report reads that the bill that the House has put forth, 
H.R. 1944, has no funds for the summer youth employment program. Yes, 
the President had requested $958 million for this program, but since 
the fiscal year 1995 rescissions and disaster supplement appropriations 
bill--I am sorry that was H.R. 1944. The bill that we are talking about 
is the appropriations bill for the Labor, Education and Health. That is 
the bill we are talking about, H.R. 2127. H.R. 2127 for this year is 
the bill that has this language in it--I mean that has no funds for the 
summer youth employment program.
  Since the fiscal year 1995 rescissions and disaster supplemental 
appropriations bill, which was H.R. 1944, rescinds all funds that were 
appropriated in advance for the summer of 1996, the summer of 1995 will 
be the last year for the operation of this program. The last year, 
gone; 1995 is the last year that there are funds available.
  So they have been clear that let every member of Congress understand 
when you talk to your constituency, understand that there is no amount 
in the budget for which we can take 75 percent of. It is zero at this 
point.
  Now the Senate, I do not know why the Senate has abandoned the 
program also, because it did take the initiative last year, and in the 
conference process put back the money for the 1995 summer youth 
employment program. This year the Senate majority has done nothing, and 
the Senate Democrats have an amendment that they are using to try to 
get back the funds for the summer youth employment program. They have 
an amendment which includes a number of things, Senate Democratic 
education--this is as of March 12. I am reading from the day's national 
journal, Congress Daily. Senate democratic education amendment would 
provide $1.28 billion for the title I compensatory education program, 
$208 million for school improvement programs, $91 million for school-
to-work programs, and $60 million for the Goals 2000 program.

                              {time}  2315

  In addition, the Democratic amendment would provide $136 million for 
Head Start, as well as $635 million for the Labor Department's Summer 
Jobs Program and $333 million for aid to dislocated workers. The 
Democratic amendment is being proposed but there is no guarantee that 
that is going to be passed. We are in a situation where the summer 
youth employment program has zero in the budget for it at this point, 
and a lot of work has to be done to save the situation.
  Why the hostility toward the summer youth employment program? Why are 
we in a situation in a Congress where family values are touted by 
everybody on both sides of the aisle, in a Congress where young people 
are said to be of great concern by both sides of the aisle, and I have 
heard the Republican majority speak again and again about being 
concerned about the future. Children are the future, should not be made 
to pay for the debts that we make today. They are very concerned about 
drastic budget cuts, draconian cuts in order to guarantee that our 
children will not have to pay for the debts we make today.
  I am glad they are so concerned about children. I am, also. There is 
a lot of concern about unborn children, children in the womb. I am 
concerned about them, too. I think every mother who has a child has to 
think twice about it, because of this cruel backward world we live in 
where we will propose to pay $20,000 to keep a juvenile delinquent in 
jail but we are not willing to pay 2 months' salary to a youngster who 
wants a job during the summer. There is something radically wrong with 
our thinking.
  We have a lot of arrogant sophomores who think they are philosopher 
kings, and they spout off about saving money and the need to downsize 
the Federal Government while they are completely blind to the fact that 
the CIA has a $2 billion slush fund.
  They are blind to the fact that today's New York Times talks about a 
new set of jet fighters we are going to build that eventually will cost 
$1 trillion, a whole system of jet fighters that we are going to be 
building, all the manufacturing companies are gearing up, and that cost 
is going to be $1 trillion. do you want to saddle your children with $1 
trillion in costs for a new jet fighter plane when we have the most 
modern sophisticated jet fighter planes already?
  One is being manufactured at Marietta, GA, in Speaker Gingrich's 
district. That one, the F-22, is already the most sophisticated thing 
you can imagine. Why do we need another set?
  We say we are going to downsize Government, the era of big Government 
is over, but the defense spending continues to go on at the same pace. 
The CIA is the same size that it was 10 years ago. Yet we say we are 
downsizing Government.
  We also insist that places like New York State and New York City get 
their house in order in order to qualify for the largesse that the 
Federal Government confers upon them. I have just told you, the Federal 
Government does not do New York State any favors.
  If New York State stood alone, it would be in receipt of $18.9 
billion that it does not have now. If you gave us back the $18.9 
billion in 1994 that we paid into the Federal Government, which was 
greater than the amount we got back in terms of aid, we could solve our 
budget problems.
  In fact, just give us back half that amount. If we had $9 billion, 
the New York State budget could be balanced, we could increase the 
budget for education, we could take care of our own youth this summer. 
We could have a New York State summer youth employment program, if you 
give us back the great amount of money we pay in that we do not get 
back in terms of aid.

  I mention this because last Thursday, March 7, the Washington Post, 
and I think it is very significant that the Washington Post did this 
and not the New York Times. I would like to know where is the New York 
Times on this issue. I have never seen them do an article of this 
magnitude. The Washington Post, last Thursday, had a front page article 
which talked about this very situation.
  It is entitled, ``U.S. to New York: It's Still Dutch Treat. Balance 
of Taxes to Services Favors Washington--So Does the Rhetoric.'' It was 
written by a reporter, a Washington Post staff writer,

[[Page H2119]]

named Malcolm Gladwell. Mr. Gladwell makes some very interesting 
statements here, and I commend him on his research here but I marvel at 
his naivete. I am going to read some of this. We have a little time 
left.
  Quoting from Mr. Gladwell's article on the front page of the 
Washington Post:

       In a memorable outburst late last year, Representative Newt 
     Gingrich declared that New York City was saddled with ``a 
     culture of waste for which they want us to send a check.'' 
     The rest of the country, the House Speaker said, in a blunt 
     summation of Federal urban policy, `` is not going to bail 
     out the habits that have made New York so extraordinarily 
     expensive.''

  I guess one of those programs that have made us extraordinarily 
expensive is the summer youth employment program. We get more than 
anybody else in terms of young people because we have more poor young 
people in our city than anybody else.
  To repeat the quote, Newt Gingrich says, ``We will not be saddled 
with a culture of waste for which they want us to send a check. The 
Federal Government is not going to bail out the habits that have made 
New York so extraordinarily expensive.''
  Continuing to read Mr. Gladwell's article:

       As Republicans campaign in the New York primary, no one is 
     talking about aid to the cities, mass transit and urban 
     renewal. And the prevailing assumption in Washington, as 
     Gingrich put it, is that places like New York City are 
     financial sinkholes, inefficient, wasteful, and a drain on 
     the public purse. It is a powerful new idea, central to the 
     fate of American urban life. But it has one problem, 
     economists say: It isn't true.
       According to statistics complied by economists at Harvard 
     University, Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio, New Jersey and 
     Michigan--in other words, those States powered by the 
     metropolitan economies of older cities such as Chicago, 
     Boston, Cincinnati and Detroit--all send billions of dollars 
     more to Washington each year in Federal taxes than they get 
     back in social programs, defense spending or public works 
     projects. And the biggest contributor of all to the Federal 
     budget--the cash cow of the United States Treasury--is the 
     place Gingrich derided as a dead weight on the rest of the 
     country: New York City.

  New York State in 1994 contributed $18.9 billion more to the Federal 
Government than it received in return. It ran a surplus of that amount 
in 1994.

       The Speaker's home State of Georgia, meanwhile, is one of a 
     large number of southern, largely Republican States that 
     receive far more from the Federal Government than they send 
     out in taxes.

  Quoting Mr. Moynihan:

       I told Mr. Gingrich, what are you talking about, my friend? 
     In Atlanta, 59 percent of the children are on AFDC, Aid to 
     Families with Dependent Children, in a single year. Where do 
     you think that money from from?

  By the way, Atlanta is in Georgia, in case somebody does not have 
their geography straight. Atlanta is in Georgia. Georgia is the 
Speaker's home State.

       The idea that cities like New York run huge surpluses with 
     Washington is, according to urban experts and economists, one 
     of the best-kept secrets in American politics, an idea that--
     if it ever gained currency--could force a fundamental 
     transformation in the relationship between the Federal 
     Government and the States.

  Here is where I applaud Mr. Gladwell's naivete. It is a beautiful 
purity. He thinks that if we really understood the facts, if we really 
had the information, it would change our behavior. But, of course, most 
of the people on the Budget Committee here, Republicans and Democrats, 
understand this fact very well. Most of the people on the 
Appropriations Committee understand this fact. They are not dumb. The 
idea that Congressmen are dumb and do not understand statistics and do 
not understand the complexities of the modern world is a ridiculous 
idea. Congressmen are some of the smartest people in the world. They 
understand. They have the knowledge. But where is the morality? Where 
is the integrity which says that this is not just? I am going to read 
Mr. Gladwell's statement again.

       The idea that cities like New York run huge surpluses with 
     Washington is, according to urban experts and economists, one 
     of the best-kept secrets in American politics, an idea that--
     if it ever gained currency--could force a fundamental 
     transformation in the relationship between the Federal 
     Government and the States.

  I hope that by ``currency'' he means that the American people, 
ordinary people with common sense out there, are going to learn more 
and more about this injustice and begin to pressure to have something 
done about it. I hope that that is what he means, because it is 
understood by the people who are making policy here. They are bullying 
the situation. Power, the power to harass the cities, the power to 
neglect the cities, the power to swindle the cities.
  We had a big swindle in the private sector. Money flowed from the 
depositors in New York City, Detroit, Philadelphia. The big cities of 
the Northeast poured money into their banks and the banks would not 
invest in the big cities, very little investment in the infrastructure, 
very little investment in shopping malls, in stores there. They said 
that the cities were a bad risk, so the money flowed out to the 
Midwest, the South, the West, into the savings and loan associations, 
into the banks, and they used the money to invest in shopping malls and 
condominiums and all kinds of programs which were supposed to be not 
risks but good buys, good investments.
  Then came the savings and loan scandal, which up to $300 billion was 
found to be bad investments or crooked investments, stupid investments, 
and the taxpayers of the whole country were saddled with a bill which 
they do not even know about yet because nobody talks honestly about it 
in the Government here, of about $300 billion it has amounted to, the 
savings and loan swindle, money we have to pay back to depositors, plus 
the administration of the process of getting all this straightened out. 
It is still going on. They put out reports that are not very clear, but 
at least $300 billion of public money has gone down the drain.
  That is the private sector taking the money out of the cities, 
refusing to invest in the cities, and putting it into so-called better 
investments in the South, the West, the Midwest, and losing the money. 
Now we have the Federal Government, and this has been going on for some 
time. It was started really by the New Deal, and I am going to read on 
quickly because he talks about that.

  The New Deal was an altruistic action, where Franklin Roosevelt and 
the people who conceived the New Deal were not dumb, either. They 
understood that the wealth was in the Northeast. They understood that 
the States in the Northeast had more money, and they wanted to help the 
rest of the country by having programs which spread the money across 
the rest of the country. They wanted to.
  They did not talk about States rights. If New York had talked about 
States rights 50 years ago, then you would have never had the money to 
have the agricultural subsidy program across the rural areas of the 
country. You would not have the money to rebuild the infrastructure in 
the cities. The WPA would have been limited to those States that could 
pay for it.
  But they did not have States rights and block grants and all this 
nonsense about States being able to administer programs better. 
Fortunately, that was not around, and the beneficiaries of that are 
mainly the southern States. Southern States get more than anybody else. 
When you add up all the figures in this same Harvard report, $65 
billion more go into the southern States than they pay out to the 
Federal Government; $65 billion.
  One of the biggest recipients is Mississippi. It gets $6 billion more 
from the Government than it pays in. But Virginia, Georgia, a number of 
others, Georgia gets $2 billion more from the Federal Government than 
it pays in. The county where the Speaker resides is the county that 
gets the most money from the Federal Government per capita than any 
other county in the country, in the whole country. Speaker Gingrich's 
district gets more money from the Federal Government per capita, per 
person, than any other.
  Let me read on from the Washington Post article of Tuesday, March 7, 
by Mr. Malcolm Gladwell:

       It strongly suggests, for example, that the decline of many 
     northeastern American cities may be due not just to 
     mismanagement--as is now popularly imagined--but to the 
     emptying of their coffers by the Federal Government.

                              {time}  2330

       It also suggests that keeping cities healthy should not be 
     seen by Congress as an act of charity so much as a prudent 
     step to protect one of the Treasury's real moneymakers.

  Let me repeat that.


[[Page H2120]]


       The cities should not be treated as an act of charity,

  Aid to cities:

       So much as a prudent step to protect one of the Treasury's 
     greatest moneymakers. Money has been drained steadily from 
     the cities. The policies of the Federal Government the last 
     20 years have been draining money away from the cities, but 
     the cities are the moneymakers.

  Cities are still, despite this great drain and despite the stress on 
their infrastructures, they are still producing more tax money than any 
other part of the country:

       Manhattan sends an awful lot of money to Washington, says 
     Sigurd Grava who teaches urban planning at Columbia 
     University. But Manhattan is beginning to suffer from 
     problems that require very heavy capital investment, and that 
     is where we should expect the money to be coming back. And if 
     the money does not come back from the Federal Government, 
     then we have a serious dislocation. The cow is being milked 
     in the city, and that is fine because that is what cows are 
     for. But you have to feed the cow, too.
       There are two reasons why States in the Northeast tend to 
     pay much more to Washington than they get back. The first is 
     that the northeast is still, as it has been since colonial 
     days, the seat of much of the country's wealth. As a result, 
     the region pays the lion's share of the country's taxes.

  I heard somebody here before talking about the terrible amount of 
taxes the pay, and I think the American people really deserve as 
individuals and families to be relieved of some of the tax burden. We 
should have corporations paying a greater share of the taxes, because 
corporations are making great amounts of money. We should do something 
about the great tax burden on the families. But let us understand where 
the taxes are coming from. They are still coming from the Northeast in 
great amounts.
  In New York State, for example, the per capita income in 1994 was 
$25,999, which means, according to the Harvard study, on average every 
New Yorker paid just about $5,000 in Federal taxes. In Connecticut, the 
same statistics are $29,402, and $6,281 for every individual family.
  But in a much poorer State, such as South Carolina, for example, 
where the per capita income is $17,695 the average Federal tax bill was 
just $3,816. The other side of the equation is that what States get 
back from Washington, and here the Northeast is an exception as well, 
New York State, New Jersey, and Connecticut each have over the years 
gotten a big chunk of Federal funds for Medicaid programs. We have been 
criticized for spending money on Medicaid and Medicare. I say if you 
are going to spend money, and I can think of no more noble way to spend 
it than to help people, if they are spending it for the health of 
people, to take care of people, the elderly, the sick, the injured, 
children, their health, then that is a great way to spend money.
  Let us get rid of the corruption in health care programs. Let us get 
rid of the waste, but if you are spending it on health care instead of 
on weapons systems that are not needed, then you are certainly a few 
steps higher on the moral plane than those people who are spending it 
for weapons systems.
  They go on to say:

       By national standards, our Medicaid programs tend to be 
     quite lavish. But if all the payments the Federal government 
     makes to the States are totaled, the Northeast's share of 
     money for welfare, salaries of military personnel, public 
     works projects, social security checks, highway 
     construction, and other federally funded programs lags 
     well behind the rest of the country. New York State got 
     $3,948 per capita from Washington in 1994, while New 
     Jersey received less, $3,648. Both were well below the 
     national average of $4,732 and far behind North Dakota at 
     $6,001, or New Mexico at $6,734, both of which received 
     large Federal agricultural and land management subsidies.

  You want to know where the money is going in this country? You want 
to know where the great injustice is, where those people who are really 
on corporate welfare because many of these agricultural subsidies are 
not going to individuals and families, they are going to agricultural 
businesses, and it is going to States that receive Federal agricultural 
and land management subsidies. The biggest winner of all in terms, and 
economists say there is nothing wrong with this kind of income 
redistribution. In an open economy such as ours, it is not necessary, 
even desirable, that Federal expenditures of taxes always be in balance 
in every State.
  Harvard economists Monica Friar and Herman Leonard wrote in a 1995 
balance of payments report, an annual study initiated 20 years ago by 
Senator Moynihan, indeed one of the main purposes of a progressive 
income tax is that the more well-to-do, wherever they may reside, pay a 
higher share for the services provided by the government.
  They go on to talk about the New Deal and how the people who 
concocted the New Deal knew that they were spreading the wealth 
throughout the entire country, what would they say if they heard people 
talk about block grants now and the States having the right to do what 
they want to do.
  New Yorkers ought to wake up. Maybe they ought to get on board block 
grants, States' rights, and have New Yorkers have the right to take the 
money back. If New York had control of the $18.9 billion, the State, 
half of that is the city, $9 billion, we could have a summer youth 
program without begging anyone. We have been begging, begging; we 
begged last year. I have a set of letters here written by the 
Congressional Black Caucus, where we begged the Honorable Mark 
Hatfield, Senate Committee on Appropriations, we begged Honorable Bob 
Livingston, chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, we begged 
David Obey to help us, we begged Robert Byrd, the ranking member on the 
Senate Committee on Appropriations, we begged for a summer youth 
employment program in 1995.

  Now we are on our knees again begging. We are begging to help young 
people, begging to do something which makes a great deal of sense. We 
are begging to do something which anybody with common sense knows is 
right and is productive. We are begging.
  Let me just conclude by saying that I appreciate the eloquent 
statements made by the persons who were concerned about teenage 
pregnancy. But I am very sorry that the hypocrisy is so thick in this 
Chamber. I am very sorry there is so much hypocrisy that we can talk in 
``hifalutin'' terms about helping teenagers with the problem of teenage 
pregnancy, helping teenagers with their lives, sense of self-worth, and 
then we turn down a program which is directly aimed to help teenagers.
  Let me tell you about the teenage problem where it first originated 
in America. Let me tell you about the teenage pregnancy, where it 
happened, overwhelming in moral terms. America's greatest teenage 
pregnancy problem existed for 232 years, when Africans were enslaved in 
this country. For 232 years, African girls who were enslaved were 
required in this country to become pregnant in order to be able to keep 
eating.
  Let me read you just in closing from ``Bull Whip Days: The Slaves 
Remembered,'' an oral history, where the slaves during the Federal 
rightist project told their stories, and they were recorded and here is 
a slave named Hilliard Yellerday, who says, and this is teenage 
pregnancy on a massive scale, when a girl became a woman, she was 
required to go to a man and become a mother. There was generally a form 
of marriage. The master read a paper to them telling them they were man 
and wife. Some were married by the master laying down a broom and the 
two slaves, man and woman, would jump over it. The master would then 
tell them they were man and wife, and they could go to bed together.
  Master would sometimes go and get a large hale, hearty Negro man from 
some other plantation to go to his Negro woman. He would ask the other 
master to let this man come over to his place to go to his slave girls. 
A slave girl was expected to have children as soon as she became a 
woman. Some of them had children at the age of 12 and 13 years old. 
Negro men 6 feet tall went to some of these children.
  This is a testimony by Hilliard Yellerday, an ex-slave woman.
  Here is a system that oppressed teenagers, and we have a system that 
neglects teenagers, plays games with teenagers, and refuses to offer 
the simplest form of health at the lowest cost, the summer youth 
employment program. We are in a moral dilemma as great as those slave 
masters who made their slave girls become pregnant as soon as they were 
old enough to become pregnant.

[[Page H2121]]



                            LEAVE OF ABSENCE

  By unanimous consent, leave of absence was granted to:
  Mrs. Collins of Illinois (at the request of Mr. Gephardt) for today 
and the balance of the week, on account of medical reasons.
  Mrs. Chenoweth (at the request of Mr. Armey) for today and March 13, 
on account of medical reasons.
  Mr. Christensen (at the request of Mr. Armey) for today, on account 
of a death in the family.

                          ____________________