[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.
____________________