[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 34 (Wednesday, March 13, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H2209-H2214]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUES FACING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Rogers). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, as the only Independent in the Congress, 
what I would like to do is touch on a few thoughts that my Republican 
and Democratic colleagues often choose not to address. There are a lot 
of very, very important issues which Congress discusses every week, but 
somehow or other we seem not to talk about some of the most important 
issues facing the American people.
  The first issue that I would like to talk about is heightened by an 
article which appeared in the February 5 Washington Post National 
Weekly edition. The article touches on an issue which I think all of us 
in this country should be very concerned about. That is the quality of 
American democracy, and to what degree we in America remain a vibrant 
democracy.
  Mr. Speaker, all of us should be deeply concerned, no matter what our 
political persuasion is, that in November, 1994, when the so-called 
Republican revolution took place, and the gentleman from Georgia, [Mr. 
Gingrich] became Speaker of the House, all of 38 percent of the 
American people voted in that election. Sixty-two percent of the 
American people did not vote. The vast majority of low-income Americans 
did not vote. Young people in large numbers did not vote. Working 
people did not vote.
  What does it mean, Mr. Speaker, when in Europe and in Scandinavia and 
in Canada and in other industrialized democracies, 60 percent, 70 
percent, 80 percent of the people come out to participate in the 
political process, but in the United States of America, we have a major 
national election of great consequence and 38 percent of the American 
people participate? What does that mean?
  I think it suggests, Mr. Speaker, that the vast majority of American 
people are giving up on the political process. They are hurting. They 
are in trouble. But they look to the Government, and they do not see a 
government which responds to their needs. I think what they 
instinctively understand is that by and large, what happens here in 
Congress and the decisions that we make here in Congress reflect to a 
very large degree the interests of the wealthy and the powerful, the 
people who can contribute $10,000 a plate to a Newt Gingrich-sponsored 
fundraising dinner; the people who contribute $16 million in one night 
to a Republican Party fundraising dinner.
  Meanwhile, the folks back home are working longer hours for lower 
wages. They are concerned that they cannot afford to send their kids to 
college. They cannot afford health care. They are worried about the 
health care bills for their parents. They are deeply worried, and they 
look to Congress, and essentially what they see is a Congress which 
represents the interests of the wealthy and the powerful, and forgets 
about the needs of the middle class and the working people of this 
country.
  Mr. Speaker, in the article in the Washington Post on February 5, 
their National Weekly edition, there is some information that they 
received from a national poll which should be of major concern to all 
Americans, regardless of their political persuasions. Let me quote a 
little bit from that article.
  I quote: ``To measure how much Americans know about politics and the 
political system, the Washington Post, the Kaiser Foundation, and 
Harvard interviewed 1,524 randomly selected adults in November and 
December. These Americans were asked 18 general knowledge questions 
about how their government works and who their leaders are. An 
additional 21 political knowledge questions were asked in 4 other 
national Washington Post polls. The surveys revealed a knowledge gap 
that is deep and wide.'' I would hope that people listen to the 
following paragraph.

                              {time}  2000

  This is based on polling by the Washington Post working with other 
institutions. Two-thirds of those interviewed could not name the person 
who serves in the U.S. House of Representatives from their 
congressional district. In other words, two-thirds of those polled did 
not know who was representing them in the House of Representatives. 
Half did not know whether their Representative was a Republican or a 
Democrat.
  Then they go on, ``Who is the Vice President of the United States?'' 
Who is the Vice President of the United States? Four in ten, 40 percent 
of Americans surveyed, did not know or got it wrong. Forty percent of 
the American people did not know the name of the Vice President of the 
United States.
  It goes on, two out of three could not name the majority leader of 
the U.S. Senate, Robert Dole, who will be likely a candidate for 
President. Nearly half, 46 percent, did not know the name of the 
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, and on and 
on it goes.
  It seems to me when 62 percent of the people do not participate in an 
election, when 40 percent of the people do not know the name of the 
Vice President of the U.S., when two-thirds of the people do not know 
the name of their Representative to the U.S. Congress, when many 
people, a majority of the people cannot name their two United States 
Senators, it seems to me that we have a serious problem regarding 
democracy in America. If we do not change the circumstances in a 
variety of ways, I fear very much that in the years to come we are 
going to lose the democracy that we have today.
  Why is it that so many people do not have faith in Government, and 
why is it that so many people do not participate in the political 
process? As I said earlier, I think that has a lot to do with the 
belief that most people have that despite all of their problems and all 
of their needs, that the elections do not mean much because the people 
who are elected end up not representing ordinary people, but end up 
representing the wealthy and the powerful.
  Unless we can create a political revolution in this country by which 
Government begins to stand up not just for those people who have huge 
amounts of money but for ordinary Americans, unless we can reaffirm the 
faith of the American people in the political process and in their 
Government because they see the Government responding to their needs, I 
fear very much that we are not going to increase voter turnout or get 
young people to understand what democracy is all about.
  I think one of the problems that we have in this whole area is that 
there has been a tremendous misstatement of reality that has been going 
on for the last number of years by the corporately controlled media, I 
believe, and also by our two-party system. What has been going on is 
that when people turn on the television and they watch CBS or NBC, or 
they pick up their local newspapers, what they are hearing is the 
economy is booming, the economy is growing, the economy is doing very, 
very well.
  Then the television people will tell them, well, gee, the stock 
market is at an all-time high. Then they will tell them corporate 
profits are doing very, very well this year for the major American 
corporations. Then they will say inflation is down and that is very 
good for the economy. The economy is growing and millions of new jobs 
are being created, all of which may be true, but it does not bear on 
the most important economic reality, and that is what is happening to 
the average American.
  It is not a question of whether the stock market is soaring for the 
wealthy people who own most of the stocks. It is not a question of 
whether corporate profits are at an all-time high. The question is what 
is happening economically to the average American? The corporate 
controlled media, and I think to a large degree--there are exceptions--
the two political parties represented here have not addressed that 
issue.

  That reality is that for the average American, for the middle-class 
American, the economy of the United States is in a depression-like 
situation, and I use that word advisedly.
  The reality is that since 1973, 80 percent of all American families 
have either seen a decline in their incomes,

[[Page H2210]]

decline in their standard of living, or at best their incomes have 
remained stagnant. Now, if 80 percent of American families are seeing a 
decline in their standard of living, or at best economic stagnation, 
how can anybody with any sense of integrity talk about a growing or 
dynamic economy? For the middle class of America, we are in the midst 
of a major depression.
  When I go back to Vermont, and I go back to Vermont almost every 
weekend, and I talk to the people throughout my State, we hold many 
town hearings on what is going on here in Washington. We talk to 
people. What do we find? I do not think Vermont, by the way, is 
terribly different from the rest of the country. What we find from our 
dairy farmers in the State of Vermont, our small farmers, they are 
working 60, 70, 80 hours a week. Their income is declining, and many of 
them are being forced off the land.
  What we find is for many of our working people, they no longer work 
one job at 40 hours a week. Forget about that. That is ancient history. 
Nobody works one job at 40 hours a week. What they have to do now is 
work two jobs, on occasion three jobs, in order to bring home the 
income that their family needs to survive.
  Mr. Speaker, 20 years ago American workers were the best compensated 
in the world, and when people would say America is No. 1, what they 
were talking about it that for the middle class of this country, their 
wages, their benefits, their pension plans, their health care, we were 
No. 1.
  But something has happened over the last 20 years. CBS does not talk 
about it too much. The Speaker of the House does not talk about it too 
much. Most of the people in Congress do not talk about it too much. But 
in that 20-year period, Mr. Speaker, we went from first in the world to 
13th in the world, and now our standard of living is far behind many of 
the countries in Europe and in Scandinavia.
  One of the very interesting things that is happening, and it is a sad 
statement to make, is that increasingly we see European companies 
coming to the United States and starting factories here. There is 
nothing wrong with that. That is a good thing.
  But why are European companies coming to the United States of 
America? The answer, and it really would have shocked our parents or 
any of us 20 or 30 years ago, they are coming to the United States 
today for cheap labor. They are coming to America for the same reason 
that American companies are going to Mexico.
  In my State of Vermont we have skilled workers, hard-working people, 
who earn $7 an hour, who earn $8 an hour and less without benefits, who 
are skilled and hard-working people. You cannot get the type of labor 
in Europe, you cannot get that type of labor in Scandinavia, because 
the wages paid in those countries are much higher. So all over America, 
what we are seeing is companies coming to America to hire our people at 
low wages, minimal benefits, and I would say that that is a real 
tragedy that this Congress has got to address.

  Mr. Speaker, adjusted for inflation, the average pay for four-fifths 
of American workers plummeted, declined by 16 percent, in the 20 years 
between 1973 and 1993. In 1973 the average American worker earned $445 
a week. Twenty years later, accounting for inflation, that worker was 
making $373 a week.
  Today the reality for the middle class of America is that they are 
working longer hours for lower wages. So despite what CBS or NBC or the 
New York Times may tell us, the reality is that for ordinary Americans, 
we are in the midst of a severe depression.
  How many women all over this country, we hear a whole lot of 
discussion about family values here, and many of us believe that if a 
woman wants to stay home--and many women do not, and that is fine--but 
if a woman wants to stay home with her kids, she has the right to do 
that. But what we are seeing in this country now are millions of women 
forced to join the work force because their family cannot make it with 
one breadwinner, and I think that that is pretty unfortunate.
  Just the other day, just last week in Burlington, VT, my hometown, I 
talked to a woman who said that between her and her husband they are 
receiving eight separate sources of income. Both of them are working 
different part-time jobs. They have one kid. They very rarely have a 
chance to have the whole family together.
  That is happening all over America. Husbands do not see wives. Wives 
do not see husbands. Parents do not see their kids together. This is a 
tragedy, and it is a tragedy that the U.S. Congress must address.
  Mr. Speaker, as bad as the situation is for middle-aged, middle-class 
workers, there is another phenomenon going around and going on that 
deserves a whole lot of discussion. As bad as it is for middle-aged 
folks, it is far, far worse for young workers, and this is pretty scary 
stuff.
  When we ask why the average American is angry or why the average 
American is nervous or anxious, it is not just that he or she is 
working longer hours for lower wages. That is pretty bad. But they are 
terribly worried about what is going to happen to their kids, and I 
speak as somebody who has four kids.
  What is happening is in the last 15 years, the wages for entry-level 
jobs for young men who are high school graduates has declined by 30 
percent, three-zero percent. For young women it has declined by 18 
percent. Wages for entry-level jobs for college graduates have also 
declined for men.
  What about young families? Families headed by persons younger than 30 
saw their inflation-adjusted median income collapse by 32 percent from 
1973 to 1990. What the result of that is, is many young people are not 
getting married. They cannot afford to get married. Young families are 
not buying their own homes. They cannot afford to buy their own homes.
  Most of the new jobs that are out there are not paying working people 
a decent wage. Very often they are in the service industry. They are 
flipping hamburgers at McDonald's. They are working in a ski resort. 
They are not jobs that are allowing people to come into the middle 
class.
  Mr. Speaker, the dream of America, what the American dream is about, 
it is a dream that my parents had. My father came to this country from 
Poland without a nickel in his pocket and our family never had much 
money. But the dream of what America is about is that as parents you 
work hard, you are prepared to sacrifice so that your kids can do 
better than you did, so that your kids will have the opportunity to 
have the education that you never had.

  I think one of the areas of anxiety and panic that so many middle-
class families are feeling now is not only what is happening to them, 
it is the great, great worry as to what is going to happen to their 
kids. It is not just the kids who do not go to college. It is even the 
college graduates, as well.
  Mr. Speaker, we are creating so many low-paying jobs that right now, 
Americans at the lower end of the wage scale are now the lowest paid 
workers in the entire industrialized world. That means if you look at 
what goes on in Europe, what goes on in Scandinavia, many other 
countries, what you are seeing now is that American workers at the low 
end are now, if you can believe it, the lowest paid workers in the 
entire industrialized world, and I think that is quite unfortunate.
  Mr. Speaker, the majority of new jobs in this country today pay only 
$6 or $7 an hour. They offer no health care benefits. They offer no 
retirement benefits, and they offer no time off for vacations or sick 
leave. In fact, more and more of the new jobs being created are part-
time jobs or temporary jobs.
  In the State of Vermont, I hear from people who say, well, I have to 
go out and have two 20-hour jobs because the local grocery store is not 
hiring anybody at 40 hours anymore. They hire two people at 20 hours so 
that they do not have to pay benefits or provide health care or any 
other type of benefits that a full-time employee might receive. Many 
employers now consider 27 hours a week full-time jobs.
  In 1993, if we can believe this, one-third of the U.S. work force was 
comprised of, quote-unquote, contingent labor.

                              {time}  2015

  The largest employer in the private sector today is not General 
Electric, it is not General Motors, it is Manpower Inc. So more and 
more of our workers are having to go out and find a job for 2 months, 
they are finding a job for 3 months, but they are not having any

[[Page H2211]]

security on the job. They are not moving up the ladder. They are 
working for a couple of months, then they are gone, no benefits no 
security. Then they have to go out, and they have to hustle a new job. 
That causes, to say the least, a great deal of stress for the American 
work force.
  Mr. Speaker, when we talk about why wages are in decline in the 
United States and why the new jobs that are being created are primarily 
low wage, part time temporary jobs, one of the reasons for that is the 
major decline in manufacturing jobs in America and the major decline in 
middle-level white-collar management, middle-level white collar 
management jobs as well.
  In the past 10 years, the United States lost 3 million white-collar 
jobs; 1.8 million jobs in manufacturing were lost in the last 5 years 
alone. There is a wonderful word that is out there now in the American 
vocabulary, and that word is downsizing. Corporate America does not 
even have the guts to use the word firing any more. But they are using 
the word downsizing.
  All over this country, in virtually every major American corporation, 
we are seeing massive layoffs at a time, I should mention, when 
corporate profits are at an all-time high.
  Mr. Speaker, five companies alone, Ford, AT&T, General Electric, ITT, 
and Union Carbide, laid off over 800,000 American workers in the last 
15 years. While decent-paying jobs continue to disappear, the number of 
involuntary part-time workers tripled between 1970 and 1993.
  Mr. Speaker, there have been studies that have been done which have 
shown, if you can believe it, a correlation between the compensation 
that the CEO's for the largest corporations in America receive and the 
downsizing that they do. It appears that it is a wonderful thing to be 
rewarded, that the heads of AT&T and the large corporations are 
throwing thousands of American workers out on the street and in return 
what they get are very large bonus increases and salaries and very 
positive and beneficial stock options for them.
  The more workers you can throw out into the street, the more money 
you make. And I think this is a very sad statement about the culture of 
corporate America at the present time.
  Mr. Speaker, when we talk about industries, clearly one of the reason 
is a very simple fact: The average American today is working far harder 
and far more hours than was the case just 20 years ago.
  Mr. Speaker, according to recent studies, the average American is now 
working 160 hours a year more than he or she worked in 1969, 160 hours. 
That is 1 month extra. That means people are now forced to work, not to 
bring in income, to work overtime, they are working two jobs, working 
three jobs, women are now forced to go out into the work force. The 
number of Americans working at more than one job has almost doubled 
over the last 15 years.
  Now, it is important again to reiterate the kind of jobs that are 
being created. President Clinton, and President Bush before him and 
Reagan before him, they touted the growth of millions and millions of 
new jobs. Well, they are right. Millions of new jobs are being created. 
But what kind of jobs are they? Are they jobs that people can work at 
and become members of the middle class, or are they jobs that people 
work at and after 40 hours of work they are further behind the 8-ball 
than when they started?
  Mr. Speaker, between 1979 and 1987, there were over 4.4 million jobs 
created. That is pretty good, 4.4 million jobs. And that is the 
information that we see in the newspapers, that we hear on television, 
millions of new jobs being created. That is the good news.
  But what is the other side of that equation? Of that 4.4 million new 
jobs being created between 1979 and 1987, 3.6 million of them were at 
poverty-level wages. So what you are having is new jobs being created, 
but, unfortunately, the vast majority of them are at poverty level 
wages.
  Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned earlier, we now have the dubious 
distinction of being the country in which our low-wage workers are now 
poorer than in any other country in the industrialized world.
  Mr. Speaker, in addition to that, if parents and working people 
cannot earn a decent living, how are they going to take care of their 
children? And the answer is they are not.
  One of the areas we should be terribly ashamed of, and I fear 
Republican policies are only going to make a disaster even worse, is 
that 22 percent of our children today live in poverty. We have by far 
the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world. We 
have some 5 million children who go hungry every single day.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, I have talked for a moment, actually for more than 
a moment, about what is going on for the middle class and the working 
people of this country.
  But there is another reality out there. And that is, while the middle 
class is shrinking, while more and more workers are receiving poverty 
level jobs, there is another reality that is taking place, and it is a 
reality that we do not talk about enough on the floor of the House, and 
it is a reality that we do not hear about on television, virtually at 
all, and that is that today, at the same time as the United States has 
by far the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized 
world, we also by far have the most unequal distribution of wealth in 
the industrialized world.
  I know we are not supposed to talk about that. That is something that 
is kind of a little bit dirty, and we are not supposed to talk about 
that here in the Congress. But the reality is the wealthiest 1 percent 
of the population in America own over 40 percent of the wealth of 
America. They own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.
  Further, in terms of income distribution, that means what people are 
earning every year, the highest earning 4 percent make more money than 
do the bottom 51 percent. Prof. Edward N. Wolf, who is a professor at 
New York University, concluded the most recent study of America's 
concentration of wealth by saying, and I quote--

       We are the most unequal industrialized country in terms of 
     income and wealth, and we are growing more unequal faster 
     than the other industrialized countries.

  You know, I think it is appropriate every now and then that we talk 
about things like justice, like decency, terms we do not hear too much 
on the floor of the House. We have got to ask ourselves some basic 
questions: Is it just, is it right, that the wealthiest 1 percent of 
the population in America owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent? 
Is it appropriate to be seeing in our economy today a significant 
increase in millionaires and people on top, while at the same time more 
and more people are forced to work for poverty level jobs?

  Mr. Speaker, during the 1980's, the wealthiest 1 percent of families 
saw their incomes rise by 80 percent. So, for the people on the top, 
the economy is doing fantastically. In the same decade, the 1980's, the 
bottom 90 percent of families saw their income rise only 3 percent. 
Most people saw a decline in their standard of living. No wonder that 
the richest 1 million families today own more than 84 million middle-
class working and poor families put together.
  Mr. Speaker, when we talk about economic growth, all of us are in 
favor of economic growth. But there is something wrong when the vast 
majority of that income growth goes to the people on the top, the 
people who make $200,000, $300,000, $400,000 a year; meanwhile the 
middle class is shrinking, people work longer hours for lower wages, 
and the jobs available to millions of working Americans pay $5 an hour 
or $6 an hour.
  Mr. Speaker, there is another issue that really needs to be addressed 
because I think it really smacks of obscenity, and that is that in 1980 
the average CEO in America, the corporate, the chief executive officer 
of a major corporation, that CEO earned 42 times what the average 
factory worker earned.
  Today, according to recent reports, the CEO's of the major 
corporations are now earning 200 times what their average worker is 
earning.
  Just this last year, a report that I saw indicated that the 
compensation, that is, salaries, bonuses, stock options for the major 
CEO's went up by over 23 percent. Meanwhile, workers were getting 2 or 
3 percent increases in their income.
  I think ultimately we have to ask ourselves whether the CEO's of the 
largest corporations need to eat 200 times more than their workers, 
need to spend 200 times more for education for

[[Page H2212]]

their kids than the average middle-class person, should have 200 times 
more income, to take care of their health care needs of their parents 
than the average middle-class person.
  I think we have got to bring the issue of justice back home again and 
say to the CEO's of the major American corporations, the people who are 
downsizing all over this country despite recordbreaking profit, the 
people who are taking our jobs to Mexico and to China, it is wrong, it 
is wrong for you to be earning 200 times what your workers are earning. 
It is your workers who have created wealth in your company, and you 
have got to have a little bit of decency, and you have got to share it, 
and you cannot gobble it up all for yourselves and your families. There 
is a limit to the number of automobiles you can have, a limit to the 
number of cars you can have, the working people of this country, the 
middle class of this country, they also have a right to have health 
care for their kids and their parents, they also have a right maybe to 
go on a vacation every once in a while, they have a right to send their 
kids to college also.

  The fact that we have such a grotesquely unfair distribution of 
wealth and incomes is an issue that this Congress must address, and it 
has to address.
  Mr. Speaker, one of the areas that has been discussed a great deal 
lately is taxation. Taxation, everybody wants tax reform. I would just 
simply point out that, according to a study conducted by the House 
Committee on Ways and Means, the top 1 percent of taxpayers saved an 
average of $41,000 in 1992 over what their taxes would have been at 
1977 rates. In other words, one of the scandals that we have seen is 
the result of the tax reforms of 1977, 1981, and 1986 is a major 
cutback in the tax rates of the largest, the wealthiest people in 
America, and the largest corporations.
  In fact, in 1977, if Federal 1977 individual tax rates had still been 
in effect in 1992, the Nation's wealthiest top 1 percent would have 
paid $83.7 billion more in taxes which is about one-half of the Federal 
deficit today.
  So, maybe Mr. Gingrich and his friends would not have had to propose 
slashing Medicare, Medicaid, education, environmental protection, 
veterans' programs, the needs of our littlest kids, maybe they would 
not have had to propose that the wealthiest 1 percent of our people, 
whose incomes are soaring, had paid, were able to pay, had paid their 
fair share of taxes.
  Mr. Speaker, let me chat for a moment about some suggestions that I 
and other Members of Congress are making. I am the chairman of the 
House Progressive Caucus, which now has 51 members, and the Progressive 
Caucus has been attempting to lead the effort, with success, against 
the disastrous policies of the Contract With America and Mr. Gingrich's 
Republican Party.
  But more than that, we are attempting to come up with sensible 
solutions that would allow the middle class of this country to expand, 
to grow, rather than to see it shrink. So let me, if I might, just 
suggest six or seven areas that I think this country and this Congress 
should been moving forward in.

                              {time}  2030

  Mr. Speaker, given the fact that most of the new jobs that are being 
created are low wage jobs, many of them are part-time jobs, many of 
them are temporary jobs, this Congress must raise the minimum wage. In 
my view it should be raised to at least $5.50 an hour.
  Mr. Speaker, the current minimum wage of $4.25 an hour is in terms of 
purchasing power 26 percent less than it was 20 years ago. In other 
words, our minimum wage workers today are far poorer than was the case 
20 years ago.
  Mr. Speaker, we hear a whole lot of discussion about welfare reform 
and the need for people to go out and work. I believe that. But I 
believe that, if somebody works 40 hours a week, they are entitled to 
live above poverty. I do not think that people are making it at $4.25, 
$4.50, or $5 an hour without benefits. You cannot raise kids on those 
wages.
  So I think that, given the fact that the minimum wage in terms of 
purchasing power has declined by 26 percent over the last 20 years, we 
have got to have the courage to raise the minimum wage. In my view it 
should be raised to at least $5.50 an hour.
  What is happening around this country because of the failure of 
Congress to act, a number of States, including the State of Vermont, 
are themselves trying unilaterally to raise the minimum wage. I applaud 
that matter. But the truth of the matter is the best way for it to be 
done, it should be done in 50 States in America, not in 5, not in 10. 
Let us do that. Let us raise the minimum wage here in Congress to at 
least $5.50 an hour.
  Mr. Speaker, the second area that I think we need to take a hard look 
at is creating jobs right here in America rather than continuing to 
defend Europe and Asia against a nonexistent enemy. Many taxpayers may 
not know this, but our Government continues to spend about $100 billion 
a year defending Europe and Asia against whom we are not quite sure. It 
seems to me we should take that $100 billion, being it back home to 
rebuild both the physical and human infrastructure of the United States 
of America.
  Mr. Speaker, we can put a heck of a lot of people back to work doing 
meaningful work, rebuilding our roads, our mass transportation, our 
bridges, our schools, our libraries. In terms of human needs, we can 
save a whole lot of misery by hiring qualified people in terms of 
disease prevention, getting people out, working against smoking, 
against teenage pregnancy, against AIDS.
  We can save a lot of lives by having people going out into our 
communities. We should be putting more money into Head Start, not less 
money; hiring more people for child care, not cutting back on those 
important areas.
  So it seems to me that, rather than spending $100 billion a year 
defending Europe and Asia, bring the money back home, put our people to 
work, making the country a richer country, improving our physical and 
human infrastructure.
  Mr. Speaker, there is another area that needs to be discussed which 
gets relatively little discussion on this floor, and that is our 
current trade policy. In my view, our current trade policy is a 
disaster. I think that, sadly, tragically, all of us in the House who 
stood up and said ``NAFTA was not going to work,'' unfortunately, we 
were proven right.
  What we have seen is many tens of thousands of American jobs lost to 
NAFTA. We have seen a trade deficit grow with Mexico. We have learned 
that the Mexican Government lied to us about the state of their 
economy. They devalued their peso which necessitated President Clinton 
to propose a $50 billion bailout loan guarantee for Mexico, which many 
of us opposed. I brought forth legislation on the floor of this House 
which would have forced the President to come to Congress before 
lending Mexico any more money as part of the bailout. Unfortunately, 
that did not get through the Senate.

  But it is not just NAFTA and it is not just GATT, it is our entire 
trade policy. This year the United States will have a trade deficit of 
about $160 billion. People say, so what? What does it mean to me? I 
don't care.
  Let me tell you what it means to you. The economists estimate that, 
if a company were to develop a plant in the United States that produced 
$1 billion of export, exported $1 billion on product, on average, that 
company would be hiring 20,000 American workers at decent wages. What 
that means is when you have a $160 billion trade deficit, when you are 
importing $160 billion more in goods and services than you are 
exporting, that equates to the loss of 3 million decent jobs.
  Mr. Speaker, just this last weekend I was at a mall in Vermont. I was 
just looking around at the goods that were available and went into one 
of the stores where they were selling televisions and VCR's, went into 
another store selling clothing. I would urge Americans to do that and 
take a look at the labels as to where these products are made. 
Increasingly what you see is: Made in China, made in Malaysia, made in 
Mexico, made in El Salvador.
  What is going on is that major American corporations have basically 
deserted the United States of America, taken their factories to very 
desperate Third World countries where people have to work for horrible 
wages.
  I remember several years ago going to Mexico as part of the NAFTA 
debate, and going into a factory there

[[Page H2213]]

where it was a very state-of-the-art factory, a very sophisticated 
modern factory. Most of the people there were women who were hard-
working, good people. They were earning $1 an hour. We left the plant 
and walked a quarter of a mile down the road to see where the folks 
were living. Where they were living was in shacks, often without 
running water, often without electricity.
  Even worse, as bad as the economic situation is in Mexico, it is, of 
course, worse in China. When our friends at the Nike sneaker company or 
the other major sneaker companies leave the United States and go to set 
up their plants in China, what they are doing there is hiring workers 
at 20 cents an hour; 20 cents an hour.
  So what you are doing, it is a worthy exercise. Take a walk through 
the mall and see where products are manufactured. Increasingly where 
you are going to see these products manufactured is in desperate Third 
World countries.
  Mr. Speaker, whenever we have a war, our multinational corporations 
become very patriotic and tell us how much they love America and how 
much they support the young men and women who are prepared to put their 
lives on the line defending America. They have big parades and are just 
ever so patriotic.
  I hope very much that the CEO's of the major American corporations 
would begin to show us their love of this country and patriotism by 
maybe not running to China and Mexico, but reinvesting back home here 
in the United States of America.
  I think this is an issue I know that the Progressive Caucus and other 
Members of Congress are prepared to address. It makes zero sense to me, 
Mr. Speaker, that we continue to give huge tax breaks to large 
corporations who are downsizing their work force, despite record 
breaking profits, who are taking our jobs to Mexico and China. It seems 
to me those are not the companies that should be receiving major tax 
breaks.

  Frankly, Mr. Speaker, it seems wrong to me that, given the fact that 
the U.S. Government is the largest purchaser of goods and services in 
the entire world, not just military, but many, many products, that we 
should begin to think about preferential treatment for those companies, 
and there are many of these companies who are reinvesting in their 
communities, who are hiring American workers at decent wages.
  We have got to take a hard look at this issue. We have got to give 
support to those American companies that are doing the right thing. And 
they are out there. They are treating their workers with respect and 
with dignity. They are showing us their patriotism, because they are 
not running to Mexico or China, but they are supporting their 
communities, the communities that made them money in the first place.
  So I think, Mr. Speaker, we have got to take a fundamental look at 
our entire trade policy. Do we build a wall around America? No. Do we 
think that trade is a bad thing? No. Trade is a very good thing. But we 
want to develop a trade policy which allows us to export roughly as 
much as we import.
  We want to have the option of purchasing foreign products. There is 
nothing wrong with that. But we need a trade policy which puts 
Americans to work building the goods that we can build so well. Our 
workers are second to none in the world, if they are given the chance. 
But the truth of the matter is, we do not talk about it too often, but 
corporate America is selling out the middle class and working class of 
this country when they run to China and they run to Mexico. We need a 
series of policies to get those companies to reinvest here in the 
United States of America.
  Mr. Speaker, there is another issue which I am working on, which some 
other Members of Congress are working on, that needs to be addressed, 
and that is that when we try to understand why the standard of living 
of working people has declined, when we try to understand why the 
middle class is shrinking, it is important to understand the 
correlation between the decline of the standard of living of working 
people and the decline in the trade union movement in America.
  It seems to me that if working people are going to get justice, if 
working people are going to earn decent wages at the place that they 
work at, if working people are going to get decent representation here 
in Washington or in their State capitals, it is important for the U.S. 
Congress to develop policies which allow working people to join unions, 
if that is what they want to do.
  Mr. Speaker, there are a whole lot of workers who do not want to join 
a union, and that is their right. No question about it. But in my view, 
and I think the studies indicate this, there are millions of working 
people who want to join unions, who understand that workers who are in 
unions earn significantly more than nonunion workers.
  The problem right now is that the deck is very much stacked against 
workers who want to join unions. Despite the law, which is routinely 
ignored by company after company, those workers who are trying to form 
a union are fired, they are laid off, they are disciplined. Workers are 
terrified they are going to lose their jobs. Companies threaten workers 
that they are going to go to Mexico or shut down the whole place if a 
union comes.
  It seems to me if we are interested in raising income for the working 
and middle class, we need major labor law reform. The essence of that 
labor law reform must be that if 50 percent of the workers in a shop 
vote to join a union, plus one, they have a union. We need legislation 
that compels the company to sit down and negotiate in a serious way 
with those workers.
  Too often in America, after workers go through all the blood, sweat, 
and tears of forming a union, they sit down to negotiate their first 
contract, and the owners refuse to negotiate in good faith and they 
drag it on and on and the union gets lost. It seems to me that should 
be illegal. An owner should negotiate in good faith with a union, and 
if the company does not do that, disciplinary action is taken against 
that company.
  Mr. Speaker, another issue that I think needs to be addressed that is 
an issue that we hear very, very little discussion about on the floor 
of this House now, which is the crisis in health care. Many of us right 
now are, of course, preoccupied fighting against Gingrich's massive 
cuts to Medicare and Medicaid and other health care programs.
  What we are trying to do is see that these cuts do not take place, to 
see that elderly people do not have to pay double the premiums that 
they are paying today in 7 years, that we do not see massive cutbacks 
to hospital, general rural hospitals in particular, which might close 
down hospitals.
  In terms of the cuts in Medicaid, we do not know what will happen to 
the elderly people who need nursing homes, who will not be guaranteed 
nursing home care. We do not know what will happen to the middle-class 
families who today can see their parents taken care of well in a 
nursing home through Medicaid, but will no longer have that guarantee 
that that will take place. So while we are fighting those terrible 
cuts, we must not lose track of the real need for fundamental health 
care reform in America.
  When we talk about health care, we have got to understand several 
basic facts. No. 1, the health care crisis today is worse than it was 3 
years ago when we had this big debate on health care. It is not better, 
it is worse. Today, over 40 million Americans have zero health 
insurance. More than that have inadequate health insurance. These are 
the people with very high deductibles. They do not go to the doctor 
because they cannot afford the deductible, they cannot afford the 
copayment.
  Furthermore, what we have got to understand is that despite the fact 
that 40 million Americans have no health insurance and so many people 
are under insured, that the United States today continues to spend far 
more per capita on health care than does any other major industrialized 
nation on Earth.

                              {time}  2045

  We are spending more for a terribly bureaucratic and wasteful system 
that rewards the insurance companies with huge profits, that pays the 
CEO's of the major insurance companies huge salaries, that rewards 
certain doctors with huge incomes, that allows our pharmaceutical 
companies to charge our people in America far more for the same product 
that they sell in Europe, or in Canada, or in Mexico. So I think we

[[Page H2214]]

have got to move toward a simple, nonbureaucratic health care system 
which guarantees health care to every American. That is what our vision 
must be when we talk about family values. What we must be saying is 
that every family in America knows that they will be able to go to the 
doctor of their choice without worrying that they are going to go 
bankrupt.
  So, Mr. Speaker, while we continue the fight against these disastrous 
cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, we must hold out the vision for a 
single-payer, State-administered health care system which guarantees 
health care to all people, and in fact we can guarantee health care to 
people, to every man, woman, and child in America, and we can spend 
less than we are right now with our wasteful, and bureaucratic, and 
inadequate system.
  Mr. Speaker, I think the last point that I want to touch on has to do 
with campaign finance and election reform, and that is, as I think many 
Americans understand, it is not a level playing field in terms of what 
goes on here. We have our freshman Republican class who are 
revolutionaries, and they certainly are. Mr. Speaker, as I understand 
it, they have broken all of the records from any other class in the 
history of Congress in raising corporate PAC money. The biggest 
corporations; that is pretty revolutionary, I suppose, getting far more 
than any other class has received.
  Mr. Speaker, 29 percent of the members of the United States are 
millionaires. My understanding is 25 percent of the freshman Republican 
class are millionaires, millionaires, and it seems to me, Mr. Speaker, 
that if we do not want to convert the House of Representatives, the 
people's body, into a House of Lords, we need some pretty fundamental 
campaign finance reform which takes away the ability of big money 
interests to continue to dominate what goes on here in the Congress.
  Let me just briefly touch upon some of the issues that I think must 
be addressed in any serious campaign finance reform legislation.
  No. 1, we have got to revisit the issue of very, very wealthy people 
being able to buy elections. I have nothing personally against Steve 
Forbes, or Ross Perot, or anybody else, so it is not a personal 
criticism of them. But I really think it is unfair that people who are 
just born or perhaps made hundreds and hundreds and millions of 
dollars, that they have the freedom to get up and say, well, you know, 
getting boring, you know, middle age, tired of my business career. I 
think that I am going to run for the President of the United States. 
Why not? Let us take out $25 million, $50 million out of the old 
checking account. No problem. We are worth a billion dollars, we are 
worth a half a billion dollars, and guess what? We will break the 
monotony. We will run for the President of the United States. Gee, that 
must be a lot of fun.
  So I have nothing against Steve Forbes or Ross Perot; they are fine 
people. But I think that we have got to create a situation in which 
every American has the ability, should be able to run for President of 
the United States, should be able to run for the Senate, should be able 
to run for the House, should be able to run for Governor, and not just 
millionaires. And what we are seeing is not just on the presidential 
level. Do not kid yourself. More and more people who are running for 
the United States Senate or running for the United States House of 
Representatives are millionaires. The leadership of both parties is 
soliciting those people. It is pretty easy. You do not have to worry 
about raising funds for these guys. They are millionaires; they will 
pay for it themselves.

  And we are seeing this also not only here in Washington, you are 
seeing it in State capitals as well. Millionaires, you know, became 
Governor of Louisiana not so long ago, and that is the pattern.
  Is that what we want for America? Is that what people fought and died 
for, to defend democracy for, that we end up having people with huge 
amounts of money running the government? I do not think so. I do not 
think that is right.
  So I think we want to revisit Butler versus Valeo, the very wrong-
headed Supreme Court decision which basically said, gee, millionaires 
and billionaires have a constitutional right, a freedom of expression, 
to buy elections. I think that is wrong, and I think through a 
constitutional amendment or perhaps rethinking on the part of the 
Supreme Court we have got to revisit that issue. Wealthy people should 
not be able to buy elections.
  Second of all, if we are talking about fairness and elections, the 
most important issue is to limit the amount of money that can be spent 
in an election, and we can argue whether for a House race that should 
be $400,000, $500,000, or $600,000, but that is the most important 
thing. If somebody has $2 million, somebody has a hundred thousand 
dollars, the guy with the $2 million is going to win the vast majority 
of the time, no matter how good or bad that person may be. So we want 
to limit the amount of money that can be spent.
  And third, we want to make sure that the money itself is not coming 
from wealthy, powerful interests, but from ordinary people, and I think 
what we probably want to do is have a combination of small 
contributions balanced off against public funding of elections so we do 
not have to have spectacles of the Republican National Committee, I 
guess it was, holding a fundraiser in Washington, DC, and on one night 
raising $16 million, and Mr. Gingrich going around the country at 
$10,000 a plate fundraisers, and in fairness it is Republicans who do 
this; the Democrats do it as well. And I think we want to end that type 
of politics.

  Mr. Speaker, I would simply conclude my remarks by suggesting that 
this country faces some serious problems; there is no question about 
that. But I think those problems are solvable. I do not think there is 
anything that I have discussed today, the lack of a national health 
care system, decent wages for our middle class growing out between the 
rich and the poor. I think those problems are solvable. But I want to 
say this. Those problems are not going to be solved if tens of millions 
of American people continue to turn off to the political system. People 
fought and died to continue this country as a democracy, and we are 
insulting those people when we say, oh, politics, hey that is all crap, 
they are all crooks, I am not going to get involved. Wrong.
  And I want to say this also; that there are people in Congress and in 
government who really do not want ordinary Americans to vote and to 
participate in the political process because, if you only have a small 
number of people who are voting, as in the last election where we had 
38 percent of the people, then big money can dominate what goes on if 
ordinary people in the middle class do not participate.
  So let me simply conclude by saying this country has serious 
problems, but they are solvable problems. We can create policies by 
which the middle class will expand rather than shrink. We can create 
policies by which we do not have $160 billion a year trade deficit. We 
can create policies which move us toward a balanced budget in a fair 
way, by dealing with corporate welfare and defense spending rather than 
slashing Medicare and Medicaid. We can improve education in this 
country and make college affordable for every middle-class and working-
class young person. We do not have to continue to have, by far, the 
highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world. We can 
address those issues. But we will not address those issues unless 
ordinary people begin to stand up, and fight back, and make the effort 
to reclaim this government which belongs to them. It does not simply 
belong to the millionaires and billionaires who have used this 
government for their own interests. It belongs to ordinary Americans, 
middle class and the working people of this country.
  So I hope, Mr. Speaker, that we can see a reinvigoration of democracy 
in this country, serious political debate about how we can improve life 
for the vast majority of our people. That is my hope, and I think if 
people do that, we are going to see some really good changes in this 
country.

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