[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 54 (Wednesday, April 24, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H3798-H3804]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      CONGRESS SHOULD LINK WELFARE REFORM TO MINIMUM WAGE INCREASE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Riggs] is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. RIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate you recognizing me, and I 
appreciate this opportunity to address what is now a pretty empty and 
still Chamber, but hopefully some of my colleagues are still following 
our discussion on the floor this evening.
  I intend to talk about a number of very timely issues and concerns, 
but I want to begin my special order by addressing my colleagues who 
this evening, most recently just a couple of moments ago the 
gentlewoman from California, who brought up the minimum wage issue, but 
prior to her the gentleman from West Virginia [Mr. Wise] and the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Miller] who brought up the minimum wage 
issue.
  I want to also preface my remarks by inviting any of my colleagues 
who want to discuss any of the issues that I raise tonight to join in 
this special order. I will be happy to yield time, both to my 
Republican colleagues on the majority side of the aisle as well as my 
Democratic colleagues on the minority side of the aisle.

  First of all, let me say with respect to the minimum wage issue, I am 
a little unclear why this has suddenly become--except for the 
possibility that it is being used now as a political football by the 
National Democratic Party--why this has become such a pressing issue 
here in Washington.
  Now, do not get me wrong. Back in 1994, while campaigning for 
Congress, I committed to voting for a modest increase in the minimum 
wage. It was my feeling back then and it is my feeling today that the 
minimum wage needs to be increased to keep pace with inflation, and 
that without an increase in the minimum wage, we will be witnessing a 
further erosion of the purchasing power of the minimum wage, which is 
going to put very low-income workers further and further behind the 
economic curve and exacerbate this growing income gap and I guess you 
could say this potential economic chasm that is dividing American 
society.
  Just a few weeks ago I was one of seven Republicans who on this floor 
voted for a procedural motion that would have allowed the House to, at 
that time and in a timely fashion, consider legislation increasing the 
minimum wage roughly $1 over the course of the next year. I am one of 
20 or 21 Republicans who supported, who are cosponsoring our own 
separate freestanding bill, a competing measure to the Democratic bill 
that would actually raise the minimum wage slightly higher than the 
legislation proposed by the President and congressional Democrats.
  But here is the part about the minimum wage debate I do not get. If 
this is such an enormous issue and pressing concern to the National 
Democratic Party, why did they not raise the minimum wage when they had 
the chance? That is to say, why did they not raise the minimum wage 
during the last 2 years or prior to last January, when they controlled 
both houses of the Congress and of course the White House? That is the 
part I do not get. There is a certain disconnect there because they did 
not act on legislation raising the minimum wage when they controlled 
both the legislative and executive branches of government.
  Second, I have been maintaining all along and I have attempted to 
make this case to our leadership, the Republican leadership of the 
House of Representatives, that a modest increase in the minimum wage 
needs to be linked to real reform of the welfare system.
  It seems to me that we have many perverse incentives in American life 
today that are the result of misguided Federal policy. For example, we 
have an economic policy or a tax policy, tax code, that seems to 
encourage consumption and spending over savings and investment, and 
that in turn has put a tremendous strain on the so-called old-age 
retirement programs, social security and Medicare.
  But we also have in our welfare system today, especially in my home 
State of California, which has a fairly lucrative welfare benefit 
structure, a perverse incentive in that welfare in the aggregate 
oftentimes pays someone more than what they can make in a minimum wage 
job. It seems to me to be rather basic, that if we want to reform 
welfare by moving people from welfare to work, helping them make what 
is a very difficult transition, especially for single mothers who many 
times struggle against heroic odds, that we have to raise the minimum 
wage so that at least the minimum wage pays more than welfare benefits.
  The gentlewoman from California was absolutely right in the 
statistics that she quoted. Unfortunately, she walked off the floor 
because I do not think she wants to engage in a debate about this 
issue. She is right, though, when she says that a full-time minimum-
wage worker today would earn only $8,840 a year, which is far less than 
many States pay in welfare cash benefits and well below the Nation's 
poverty level.
  It is my belief that we need to correct this inequity, an inequity 
that the Democrat majority in the last Congress was unwilling to 
address, so that people who want to work are not forced to choose 
between work and welfare because welfare actually pays better than 
work. So again, it seems to me we have to reverse that equation, 
address this perverse incentive, which is one of many that riddle 
American life today.
  The other point I wanted to make on the minimum wage issue, watching, 
I believe it was, a CNN program over the weekend, their Inside Edition 
on late Sunday afternoon, early Sunday evening, they were profiling the 
Republican revolution after 15, 16 months of this Congress and sort of 
begging the question, is that revolution alive or dead?

                              {time}  1915

  They focused specifically on the subject of welfare reform, and they 
actually interviewed several current welfare recipients who, looking 
right into the camera, said ``I don't feel that I can support myself, 
much less my family''; that is, meet the needs of my dependents and 
loved ones in an entry level minimum wage job; that is to say, a job 
probably in the service sector of

[[Page H3799]]

the economy, the kind of job that they would be most likely to find if 
they were to move from the welfare rolls to work now.
  So there you have it. You have living, firsthand testimony, from 
several people right on that show Sunday evening, basically saying what 
I think many of us believe, and that is that we have to again address 
this perverse incentive, and we have, if we want to reform welfare by 
moving people from welfare to work, make a minimum wage job pay more 
than welfare benefits in the aggregate.
  But that is the other party with a little bit of the grandstanding 
going on on the other side of the aisle with this particular issue. 
Again, I am trying to make a linkage to real reform of the welfare 
system. That is my rationale or justification for supporting an 
increase in the minimum wage, yet I think anyone who has followed the 
debate in this Chamber and the developments in this Congress, the 104th 
session of Congress in our Nation's history over the last 16 months, 
knows that while we promised in our Contract With America to reform the 
welfare system, to emphasize work, families and personal 
responsibility, we have gotten virtually no assistance from our 
Democratic colleagues in that effort in either the House or the Senate. 
In fact, we have already in these past 16 months, this session of 
Congress, sent the President two welfare reform bills which he has 
vetoed.
  So here you have a certain irony in a Republican majority in this 
Congress trying to help this Democratic President, who back in 1992 as 
Candidate Clinton promised to end welfare as we know it, make good on 
that campaign promise. Yet he has refused to consider welfare reform 
legislation. I believe personally the President would have a political 
problem with the far left wing of his party, and this political 
constituency of dependency that we have built up in America over the 
last several decades, if he were to entertain signing welfare reform 
legislation, again, despite the promise he made back in the 1992 
campaign for President, which was just one of several major promises 
that he has broken to date in his last 3-plus years as President of 
these United States.
  We all remember, of course, back in the 1992 campaign when he 
promised to submit to the Congress a budget that balances in 5 years. 
Many of us recall he made a middle class tax cut the centerpiece of his 
economic plan, which he called putting people first. Of course, as I 
said a couple of months ago, he also campaigned on a promise of ending 
welfare as we know it, which made him look the centrist, new Democrat 
that he wanted to be during the 1992 election. But, of course, as the 
record now shows, he has tended to govern more as a traditional left 
wing, big government, tax and spend President.
  So I find some of the rhetoric coming from my Democratic colleagues 
just a little disingenuous on this issue, because again I do not see 
how you divorce or separate an increase in the minimum wage from real 
reform of the welfare system, particularly if it is a bipartisan goal 
of both the Congress and the Presidency to try and help people make 
that transition from welfare to work.
  We know that those experiments in workfare are succeeding around the 
country. Many States, including Virginia, just across the Potomac 
River, where I reside part-time while serving back here in Washington 
representing the 1st Congressional District of California, Virginia has 
launched a workfare program, welfare reform, over the last year or so, 
which to date has been a tremendous success. In fact, there was just a 
story in today's newspapers back here documenting again the success 
stories of those people who with the proper assistance from the 
Government in the form of education, skills training or job training, 
adequate child care and transportation, are making that transition from 
welfare to work. But, again, I submit to you that if we wanted to have 
large scale welfare reform, if we really do want to pursue this dream 
or this vision of ending welfare as we know it, we certainly have to 
make an entry level minimum wage job pay more than welfare benefits in 
the aggregate.

  So again, I find just a little tad of hypocrisy in what some of my 
Democratic colleagues have had to say on the floor this evening, and on 
certainly prior occasions, with respect to the minimum wage issue, and 
I look forward to the coming debate on the minimum wage issue, so that 
we can hopefully constructively discuss the minimum wage, how we can 
move that legislation through the House. Again, I would like to see it 
move in the context of welfare reform.
  There is one other thing I want to mention about welfare reform, and 
that is earlier this year, I think it was back in January or February 
of this year, we saw in this town a truly remarkable event. Now, I know 
that people tend to get, particularly the longer they stay back here in 
Washington, they tend to succumb to sort of the beltway culture. They 
become just a tad cynical, maybe just a little jaded. But we saw 
something earlier this year that even the most jaded Washingtonian, 
even the most skeptical pundit, I think would have to admit was truly a 
remarkable development, and that is when the Nation's Governors, 
meeting back herein Washington at their semiannual meeting, unanimously 
agreed on welfare reform proposals.
  Unanimously. I did not say this was a consensus agreement, where a 
majority prevailed obviously over a minority in supporting and 
advancing welfare reform proposals. No, this was a unanimous agreement. 
We had 43 of the Nation's Governors, big State, little State, Democrat 
and Republican, meeting back here, all endorsing the welfare reform 
proposals.
  Since that time, the other seven Governors have also endorsed those 
proposals, so we have the remarkable, the absolutely remarkable 
development of unanimity in the ranks of the Nation's Governors, all 
50, again, big State, little State, Republican and Democrat, supporting 
welfare reform proposals.
  I wonder just for a moment, in a perfect world, what would happen if 
we were to attach the minimum wage increase that, again, 20 or 21 of us 
Republicans and a solid majority of the Democrats in the House, to 
those unanimous welfare reform proposals of the Nation's Governors? 
Would that not give us the opportunity to do something on a truly 
bipartisan basis that we could be really genuinely proud of and which 
might stand as one of the shining accomplishments of this congress, the 
104th in our Nation's history?


                       tribute to gilbert murray

  Mr. Speaker, I want to change subjects for just a moment and explain 
why I am wearing this green ribbon on my lapel, which is a question I 
have been asked many times today by many of my colleagues. I also want 
to acknowledge that hearing the comments of my colleagues earlier this 
evening, both sides of the aisle, talking about the reflecting upon the 
genocide in Eastern Europe that dates back a considerable amount of 
time, that on these kind of occasions, when Members stand in tribute, I 
think the Chamber takes on really its most formal and solemn 
atmosphere.
  I want to follow that by mentioning that this green ribbon on my 
lapel is in memory of a man by the name of Gilbert Murray, Gil Murray, 
who 1 year ago today, on April 24, 1995, was killed in his office of 
the California Forestry Association in Sacramento, CA, by a seemingly 
innocuous mail package. We now know 1 year later that Gil was 
tragically the last victim of the so-called Unabomber.
  I did not know him well, but as I knew him, he was a fine man, a 
family man, a dedicated professional, someone who was advancing the 
principles of responsible and sustainable forestry on both our public 
and private forest lands. I can tell you that Gil, 1 year later, is 
very much missed by his friends and his family certainly, and those of 
us who had the privilege of knowing him.
  Now, I suspect that his death is something his family can never truly 
recover from, but I hope and I pray that they continue to heal from 
this tragic event, and that we all remember April 24, 1995, as a day 
that will forever change the way each of us look at our own lives and 
the world in which we live.
  We can, of course, now today, April 24, 1996, take some solace 
knowing that with the apprehension of an individual who is strongly 
suspected of being the infamous Unabomber, no other families will 
suffer the tragedy of losing a friend and loved one like the way we 
lost Gil.

[[Page H3800]]

  One year after his tragic death, the memory of Gil still touches 
those of us who work on forestry and resource issues on a daily basis. 
His death touches us deeply, and our love and affection go out again to 
his family, his friends, his extended family, if you will, which would 
certainly include the other fine folks at the California Forestry 
Association.
  I hope we never forget his tragic death, because it was a senseless 
and evil act. Again, I personally asked a number of my colleagues today 
to show their solidarity and their respect for Gil by wearing a green 
ribbon on their lapel, such as I am doing now, and I am very pleased 
that so many of my colleagues would join me in this effort. Really, in 
their own way, or by extension, they honor all the victims of the 
Unabomber and their survivors.
  I want to do one other thing that is related to Gil Murray's passing, 
and that is I want to address some of this, because I think Gil would 
approve of this, I want to address some of this environmental fear 
mongering and hysteria that we have been hearing in the halls of 
Congress in recent days and weeks. It sort of came to a head I guess on 
Monday of this week, Monday, April 22, the so-called National Earth 
Day, when we heard all kind of exaggerated and wild-eyed claims being 
made down here on this floor that, again, I think can only be described 
as environmental fear mongering or hysteria.
  I think most of us, particularly those of us who live in the western 
United States and who represent resource-dependent congressional 
districts, that is to say, represent communities where the economy is 
based on resource use and development, most of us know that you have to 
find a balance between the need to protect the environment on the one 
hand, and the need to protect jobs on the other. We strive to find that 
balance in our congressional districts and certainly here on the floor 
of Congress when we, in our everyday professional lives, as we make 
policy decisions.

  So I tend I guess over time to just sort of tune out this 
environmental fear mongering and hysteria. But when I hear Members, 
especially from the other side of the aisle, coming down to the floor, 
and let us be honest about it, most of them, and I am not going to name 
names, particularly since they do not have the opportunity to be here 
and debate the issues, but most of them come from metropolitan areas, 
they represent urban congressional districts where the thinking on 
environmental issues is about 180 degrees different than the more rural 
areas of America, like the district that I represent.
  But I heard several of these Members come to the floor the other day 
and refer to our timber salvage legislation, the legislation 
authorizing the Forest Service to sell more of the dead, dying, and 
diseased trees on Federal forest lands, and referring to that 
legislation as so-called logging without logs.
  Now, I want to be very clear about one thing. We are talking about 
logging, selective harvesting, of dead, dying, and diseased trees on 
Federal forest lands. Not in our national parks, not in our wilderness 
areas, not in an area that has a wild and scenic designation, but in 
our Federal forest lands, these vast forest preserves that were set 
aside in the 1940's in part to provide a growing Nation with a very 
valuable commodity and a steady supply of timber.
  It just seemed prudent to those of us in the Committee on 
Appropriations who wrote this legislation that we ought to allow 
greater harvesting of the dead, dying, and diseased trees, if for no 
other reason than to deal with the tremendous fuel load, the buildup of 
combustible materials, the underbrush and downed trees, on Federal 
forest lands, particularly when just a couple of summers ago we saw 
wild fires raging out of control in our drought-stricken forests of the 
western United States, wild fires that I might add cost the taxpayer 
$1.1 billion and took the lives of 33 U.S. firefighters attempting to 
extinguish those fires.

                              {time}  1930

  So, Mr. Speaker, we thought we had a good bill, yet it has been 
called logging without logs, and we saw Members stand here on the floor 
and the other side of the aisle demagoging this issue, handing out fig 
leaves and saying, and this is an actual quote, ``Let's not be 
conned'', yet today a three-judge court of appeals upheld the timber 
salvage law. They said it was perfectly legal. It is not logging 
without logs. And at least one of the three judges is an appointee of 
President Clinton.
  They specifically upheld the so-called 318 green sales provisions of 
this particular bill. This is the section of the timber salvage 
legislation that directed the Forest Service or the Federal Government 
to honor contractual sales commitments that had been made to private 
parties who had successfully bid for the rights to harvest trees on 
Federal forestlands in the Pacific Northwest, in Oregon and Washington. 
And the three-judge court of appeals today simply said that the Federal 
Government, in fact, will honor its longstanding legal obligations and 
proceed with those sales.
  So there is no logging without logs. We know that, sadly, that right 
now, today, April 24, we are operating a portion of the Federal 
Government on a 24-hour so-called continuing resolution. This is a 
short-term funding measure for 5 of the 13 annual spending bills, which 
we call appropriations, that have not yet been enacted into law. And we 
are down to resolving, those of us who have been a party to these 
negotiations, as I have, as an individual member of the House Committee 
on Appropriations, we are down to just a few issues really now dividing 
us in this House, Republican Majority, Democrat Minority, and between 
the Congress and the White House. But those few issues have to do with 
the so-called environmental riders to the Interior appropriations bill, 
which is one of the five bills, again, not yet enacted into law.
  And these were provisions that, again, Members were talking about 
here on this floor just a couple of days ago, on Earth Day, Monday. 
What are they? They are the idea of allowing expanded oil drilling in 
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and expanded timber harvesting in 
the Tongass National Forest of Florida.
  We have Members running down here constantly claiming that by 
expanding oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and bear 
in mind this is a very small portion of the Arctic National Wildlife 
Refuge, it is presently set aside for oil leasing and drilling, all the 
remainder staying as wilderness, and by expanding harvesting in the 
Tongass Forest, which is again surrounded by vast tracts, huge amounts 
of land, I mean hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness, and by 
the way these are areas that maybe a handful of Members of Congress 
have ever visited; I must confess I have never visited them. But we 
want slightly increased resource use in Alaska, for one reason and one 
reason only, and that is the duly elected representatives of the State 
of Alaska, Congressman Don Young, Congressman for all of Alaska, and 
the two United States Senators representing Alaska are strongly 
supporting these provisions. And one would presume since they have been 
duly elected by the people of Alaska that they have a support of the 
majority of Alaskans; yet by trying to pursue these provisions, we are 
then accused by the other side of attempting to gut environmental 
regulations.
  Then they mention the Endangered Species Act. And, yes, it is true in 
the annual appropriations bill, one of the appropriation bills last 
year, we imposed a moratorium on the listing of any new endangered 
or threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Now why would 
we do that? We have been accused of being radical by doing that. But 
what the other side never points out is that the Endangered Species Act 
is no longer authorized. The congressional authorization of the 
Endangered Species Act expired over 2 years ago. Rather than this law 
simply sunsetting, going off the books, it has remained in effect only 
because the Congress, the House specifically, would appropriate money 
on an annual basis to the Federal agencies which enforce that law; 
again, even though the original law itself, the statute, is no longer 
authorized. The authorization expired, again, over 2 years ago.

  That sort of begs the question: Why didn't the last Congress, which 
was controlled by the Democratic Party, bring a reauthorization bill of 
the Endangered Species Act to this floor? And the answer is simple. Had 
they done it, there would be a bipartisan majority of Members, 
Republicans and Democrats,

[[Page H3801]]

who would have wanted to amend the Endangered Species Act to include 
greater protection for jobs and greater consideration of the economic 
consequences of listing decisions. Again, trying to find that elusive 
balance between the need to protect species on the one hand and the 
need to consider and, hopefully, mitigate economic consequences and 
potential job losses on the other hand.
  I do not think that is so radical. So, again, we have demagogueing 
going on in this House without the American people really being told 
both sides of the issue, not getting the full picture.
  Lastly, one of the things that I wanted to mention on the environment 
is that earlier in this session of Congress, in fact during the first 
100 days in this session of Congress, we passed by an overwhelming 
bipartisan majority in this House one of the provisions of the Contract 
With America that was signed into law by the President. We have this 
impression a lot of our Democratic colleagues would like to leave with 
the American people that the Contract With America is very radical. The 
reality is that 9 out of 10 provisions passed this House, 9 out of 10 
provisions in the Contract With America passed this House and they 
passed this House, in many, many instances, with very strong support 
from the Democratic Members of the House. And one of those provisions, 
the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, became law with the President's 
signature.
  How could that be? That is one provision in the Contract With 
America, passed the House, passed the Senate, and was signed into law 
by the President. And that is radical?
  That Unfunded Mandates Reform Act created a new commission, actually 
there was an existing commission within the Federal Government, but it 
gave them a new charge and that was to examine existing Federal laws to 
determine whether those existing laws constitute an unfunded, or 
perhaps a better word would be underfunded mandate, imposed on States 
and local communities by the Federal Government. In my view, it is sort 
of a heavy-handed, top-down, one-size-fits-all fashion, and of course 
we continue to write laws back here with the arrogance that, you know, 
the law is going to work as good in Portland, OR, as it does in 
Portland, ME. And sometimes I think we are sadly mistaken in that 
belief.
  But we passed this Unfunded Mandates Reform Act. It became law. And 
the Unfunded Mandates Commission then began looking at existing Federal 
laws. And do you know what they found? They found that Federal 
environmental regulations, and they were very specific, they named the 
Endangered Species Act, they named the Clean Water Act, they named the 
Clean Air Act, they named the Superfund law and several others, that 
those existing Federal environmental regulations constitute, surprise, 
an unfunded mandate imposed on State and local communities by the 
Federal Government.

  Furthermore, the unfunded mandates panel called on the Congress to 
rewrite these laws, to give greater consideration to the concerns of 
and the impacts upon States and local communities and to give States 
and local communities more of a say in the writing of these laws and in 
the administration of these laws. Since, again, we pass that 
responsibility for administering these laws on down to the States and 
to local communities.
  And that is the flexibility that the State and local communities have 
been screaming for for years. That is why we passed the Clean Water Act 
Amendments in this House. And so many of our Democratic colleagues 
would have the American people believe that we passed the Clean Water 
Act Amendments because we are beholding to big business and corporate 
special interest. Well, to the contrary. The real impetus for amending 
the Clean Water Act came from the National League of Cities and the 
U.S. Conference of Mayors, both bipartisan organizations representing 
locally elected officials.
  So I get a little tired when I hear this environmental fearmongering, 
this hysteria. I recognize it for what it is. It is a good political 
issue in a Presidential election year, but I think we are, by giving 
this hysteria any credence, we are really deceiving, misserving, or 
doing a disservice to the American people.
  I want to read you very quickly a letter that appeared in a 
publication called Green Speak, that is put out by the National 
Hardwood Lumber Association. It is a letter from a mutual friend of 
mine and Gil Murray, again, the last victim of the Unabomber, for whom 
I wear a green lapel ribbon this evening. A mutual friend of ours by 
the name of Nadine Bailey, who was very involved just a couple of years 
ago, she lives just outside my congressional district, actually in 
Congressman Herger's congressional district in northeast California, in 
a little mill town called Hayfork, and her letter is dated March 11, 
1996 and it is an open letter to the President.
  It says, ``Dear President Clinton, you made a promise to my daughter 
on a national television program.''
  This actually was the televised proceedings of the so-called forestry 
conference or timber summit held out in Portland, OR. I guess this 
would have been early 1993, soon after the President was elected, and 
both the President and the Vice President attended that particular 
timber summit or forestry conference, and Nadine starts her letter by 
making reference to it.
  She then goes on to say ``When Elizabeth'', her daughter, ``showed 
you her class yearbook, with the names of the children whose parents 
would lose their jobs because of the spotted owl'', and of course those 
of us who hail from northwest California and the Pacific Northwest, we 
know very well about the spotted owl because it is listed as an 
endangered species and has had a tremendous impact on the economic 
well-being of our communities in northwest California, the Pacific 
Northwest.
  ``You made a promise to her and to all the children who live in 
timber-dependent communities. Do you remember what you said? Your 
promise was that you would solve the problems in the northwest and 
California, that you would bring everyone together and come up with a 
solution that would allow logging and protect the spotted owl. Do you 
remember? Do you care where Elizabeth is today? Do you care where her 
father is? Do you know how hard her family worked to bring about 
solutions that would save the community and ensure the health of the 
forest?

  ``I hope this brief summary of the last 3 years,'' the first 3 years 
of the Clinton administration, ``will make you understand and regret 
your broken promise.''
  So this would be a broken promise that follows on the heel of the 
broken promise to balance the Federal budget, to end welfare as we know 
it, and to give the middle class a tax cut.
  ``1993. After the summit, I worked with the environmental community 
to develop a plan that would add jobs while protecting habitat and 
wildlife. I received a call from Vice President Gore asking for my 
support for the Option 9 forest plan.
  ``1993 to 1994.'' Two-year period. ``The Option 9 plan is approved 
and the region gets an adaptive management area. These areas were 
specifically designated to have adaptive management techniques used to 
produce products that would enable local communities to survive the 
transition brought about by changes in forest management. Hopes are 
high in the region that some relief from the timber supply crisis will 
be felt.
  ``Spring 1994. Jobs become hard to find. Grants from Option 9 do not 
make their way to unemployed loggers. In fact, in public forums,'' your 
forestry policy adviser, ``Tom Tuchman admits much of the money will go 
to infrastructure. In other words, the people most affected by the 
change in national forest policy will be the least likely to receive 
help. We no longer have our business. Years of work to build a business 
are gone, and my husband, Walley, works for five different employers, 
some as far away as 8 hours. Families are starting to leave the Trinity 
area. Some Trinity County School districts now have 96 percent of their 
children on free and reduced lunches, which means they now live below 
the poverty level.
  ``Fall 1994. The last large logger in Hayfork prepares to move 
operation because of lack of work.'' What she really meant to say was 
the lack of harvestable trees, or timber. The adaptive management area 
fails to produce any more timber than other areas under Option 9. In 
fact, there seems to be more study in the adaptive management area than 
other areas affected by the Option 9 plan.

[[Page H3802]]

  ``Spring 1995. We move our family from our home in Hayfork to 
Redding. At this point I contacted the many agencies that have been 
given money to help displaced workers for help with the move. We were 
told that we that we didn't qualify because my husband already has 
found work. We are forced to borrow money from a family member to move. 
We had been homeowners, now we are faced with renting and finding 
$2,000 needed for deposits. We cannot sell our home, partly because of 
the market and partly because the house was built by my mother and 
father and I cannot face losing my home.''

                              {time}  1945

       Wally, my husband, becomes even more bitter about being 
     betrayed by your administration. Despite my job at the 
     California Forestry Association, we fall deeper in debt. My 
     kids are not happy. City life in Sacramento or in Redding is 
     much different. To leave a high school with 125 kids and 
     start again in a high school with 1,000 is almost too much 
     for country kids. I am very concerned about Elizabeth. She 
     misses her friends so much. Wally finds work 6 hours from 
     home. He moves out to live on the job site and I become a 
     single mother again.
       April 24, 1995, the date that I observe this evening, a 
     bomb goes off at my office, killing my boss and friend, Gil 
     Murray. I seem to have lost the heart to fight for our 
     community. Nothing I have done in these last 4 years seems to 
     have made a difference. My trust in Government and society as 
     a whole is weakened. You use the Oklahoma bombings to attack 
     right wing political groups. You never mentioned the 
     Unabomber. Vice President Gore doesn't call this time.
       Let me just parenthetically ask if anyone sees anything 
     wrong with the fact that of course the President and some of 
     his political allies have no hesitation or reservations about 
     insinuating that somehow, some way the National Rifle 
     Association and Rush Limbaugh might have been responsible for 
     the very tragic, horrific Oklahoma City bombing, but yet they 
     see no possible connection between the rantings of the 
     Unabomber and the environmental hysteria that goes on in this 
     Chamber with regularity or for that matter no connection 
     between some of the things that Vice President Gore has 
     written and some of the writings of the Unabomber himself.
       Summer 1995, where did I go wrong? Was it in believing in 
     your promises? Could I have done more? Everything is 
     beginning to unravel. With the exception of some local groups 
     that came together to seek solutions through consensus, like 
     the Quincy Library Group in Quincy, California, everyone 
     seems to be going back to war.

  By that she means the timber wars which have polarized our 
communities and divided the environmental camp from folks who make 
their living in the forest products industry, either directly or 
indirectly:

       I wonder if you realize what an opportunity you had to heal 
     old wounds. Instead all hope is fading for the future of 
     towns like Hayfork. I still get calls late at night from 
     people not knowing how they will make it through the winter, 
     wanting to know if they should stick it out, if there is any 
     hope that things will change. For the first time in my life, 
     I have no hope.

  That is what Nadine, she goes on and wrote a few other personal 
comments about her family. She actually ended up moving to Wisconsin 
where she now works at the timber producers office of Wisconsin.
  But it is a very, very sad commentary about our inability to find 
that balance, the balance really that was promised, I believe, by the 
President and Vice President when they convened this timber summit in 
Portland, the balance that was promised to communities like Hayfork and 
to families like Nadine Bailey's.
  I wonder where all this is going to lead, because in today's paper, 
in the San Francisco Chronicle, on page 1 is a headline that says, 
Victory for Sierra Club Dissidents. I think most people know that the 
Sierra Club, with roughly 600,000 members, is probably the largest 
environmental organization in the country. It has become a major 
environmental organization, no question about it. They have a full-time 
professional lobby here in Washington and in State capitals around the 
country. And they have an energetic grass-roots membership.
  The point I am getting at is that they also enjoy this image of being 
moderates on the environment, reasonable people, people that you can 
sit down and talk with and maybe hopefully reason with as we grapple 
with these very, very complex and difficult and seemingly intractable 
issues. But the headline says, Victory for Sierra Club Dissidents and 
then it goes on, the subhead is, Vote to ban logging in national 
forests, Vote to ban logging in national forests.
  Now, I know some of my constituents do not like it when I say this, 
but I ask repeatedly, as someone who is very proud of my role in 
helping to make the timber salvage legislation law, what is more 
extreme? Harvesting dead, dying and diseased trees in our national 
forests, which the foresters, like the late Gil Murray tell us is good 
for forest health and for fire suppression purposes and, I might add, 
it makes, to me, certain economic sense to use those dead, dying and 
diseased trees to produce a much-needed resource, while those dead, 
dying and diseased trees still have some economic and monetary value. I 
have yet to encounter too many Americans who do not live in wood framed 
structures. And I would also point out that if we followed the lead of 
the Sierra Club, this moderate, reasonable, middle-of-the-road 
environmental organization and we banned all logging in national 
forests, not national parks, not wilderness areas, national forests, 
that that will only increase the pressure to harvest trees on privately 
owned lands and that we need to find that equilibrium, that balance 
between a sustainable timber harvest on public lands and a sustainable 
timber harvest on private lands.

  If we follow their lead and we ban all logging on our national 
forests, in essence turning our Federal forest into additional national 
parks, then we will, in my view, not only increase the pressure to 
harvest on private land but we will be creating a tremendous fire 
hazard in those Federal forest lands, particularly in our drought-
stricken areas of the western United States.
  So what is more extreme? Harvesting dead, dying and diseased trees to 
produce a resource, or those who are so opposed to timber harvesting 
that they do not want to harvest even a dead tree? I wonder. Because 
leading the pack in this whole debate back here, of course, is the Vice 
President, Al Gore and the Secretary of the Interior, Secretary 
Babbitt.
  So I believe it is a very, very alarming and sad day, and I wonder 
about the terrible irony of the Sierra Club taking this particular 
position on the same day that we commemorate the tragic death of Gil 
Murray.
  In fact, I should mention, the article goes on to say, Members of the 
Sierra Club have handed a dissident faction, it is no longer a 
dissident faction because they prevailed, they are now the majority 
within the club, handed a dissident faction an important victory by 
voting that the club for the first time in its 104 year history will 
support an end to commercial logging in national forests. The club's 
membership approved the measure 2 to 1, the San Francisco based 
conservation organization announced yesterday. Although the club has 
fought vigorously against logging in many situations, it has never 
formally opposed an outright ban on the common practice of commercial 
logging in national forests.
  So the Sierra Club is now coming out and taking a position that we 
will not even thin these forests to selectively harvest the dead, dying 
and diseased trees. We will have no timber harvest in our Federal 
forest lands at all, even though that was largely the reason that those 
Federal forest lands were created to begin with.
  So I mentioned the Vice President because I think a lot of this is, 
particularly the current impasse over the budget, the so-called omnibus 
appropriations bill, the conference report which we would like to bring 
to this floor tomorrow, a lot of this impasse right now is again over 
environmental issues.
  I think my colleague, Mrs. Seastrand, would admit that. I will yield 
to her in just a moment. But to me it continues a very disturbing 
pattern back here in Washington of demagoging on issues. I take very 
strong exception to the demagoging that I see going on. I know it is a 
sad fact of political life. I know that we are going to see more, not 
less, as we approach the November election. But there are some issues 
that in my view are too important for this sort of common, everyday 
petty politics and this demagoging back and forth.
  Let me give you one other example. That is Medicare, because a lot of 
the demagoging that we hear coming from the other side of the aisle in 
the 

[[Page H3803]]

Congress and from the Clinton administration has to do with the 
environment, Medicare, education. I think those are the three big ones 
that they like to hit all the time. So I want to mention Medicare.
  I want to first of all just point out for my colleagues just how out 
of hand this demagoging is. This is an April 19, so this is a Congress 
Daily from last week, that reports on a press conference over on the 
other side of the Capitol outside the Senate Chamber where the Vice 
President was quoted as blasting Senator Dole and Senate Republicans 
for attempting to push on, this is a quote, Push on the U.S. Senate a 
provision that would have led to serious and grave damage to the 
Medicare system.
  There were just two problems: One, the amendment that the Vice 
President was referring to, having to do with medical savings accounts, 
had nothing to do with Medicare; it was in the context of health 
insurance reform. No. 2, Senator Dole himself was standing behind the 
Vice President when the Vice President made these particular remarks. 
It is almost as if, again, certain figures in the administration cannot 
wait to demagogue an issue. And it is sort of the old mindset that my 
mind is made up, do not confuse me with the facts.
  It had nothing to do with Medicare. It had to do with the health 
insurance reform legislation that we would like to move through 
Congress on a bipartisan basis and get to the President so he can sign.
  But here, Mr. Vice President and other concerned colleagues, here is 
the real issue pertaining to Medicare, and that is the very stark 
headlines just out of yesterday's newspaper. I do not understand why, 
if we are going to have these Chicken Little folks running all over the 
Capitol saying the sky is falling, the sky is falling let us shift our 
focus from the environment and start talking about something that is 
really of crucial concern to this Nation and future generations; that 
is, Medicare.
  It is going broke. It is going broke faster than expected. And we 
need to do something in this session of Congress about the problem. We 
have already sent the President a plan that would increase Medicare 
spending per recipient from $4,800 today to $7,300 per Medicare 
recipient in 7 years, increase spending, increase choices, and save the 
program from bankruptcy. But President Clinton vetoed that legislation, 
as we all know now.
  But here is what is so alarming, because the facts and figures 
indicate the truth and we can see a trend developing. Back on February 
5 of this year, February 5, 1996, the New York Times reported on page 
A1 with a Washington dateline, Washington, New government data shows 
Medicare's hospital insurance trust fund lost money last year for the 
first time since 1972, suggesting that the financial condition of the 
Medicare Program was worse than assumed by either Congress or the 
Clinton administration.
  Then, as I mentioned, again, the New York Times yesterday, April 23, 
1996, again on page A1, the New York Times is not exactly a 
conservative publication.
  Mrs. SEASTRAND. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. RIGGS. I yield to the gentlewoman from California.
  Mrs. SEASTRAND. It was most interesting to see that New York Times 
article appears in the Santa Barbara News Press. The Santa Barbara News 
Press is owned by the New York Times, and to see the headline stating 
that Medicare is going broke faster than we here in the Congress think 
that it will go broke, $4.2 billion, it was interesting because the 
subheadline on the front page of that newspaper said that the Clinton 
administration was very much trying to cover up the calculations.
  Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman from northern California would 
agree with me that through all of this discussion, on trying to save 
Medicare for our moms and dads and for future generations, we have 
taken quite a bit of heat, not from necessarily the folks in the 
district but from those outside forces that come from Washington, DC. I 
know the gentleman is, like I am, one who has been besieged by 
television, radio ads, coming from Washington, DC, and trying to tell 
constituents in our district that the gentleman from California [Mr. 
Riggs] and the gentlewoman from California [Mrs. Seastrand] were trying 
to cut and destroy Medicare, and so it is a little sad to see those 
headlines.
  Mr. Speaker, when you take the stand, you argue your positions and 
you do battle. It is sad to, while I enjoy seeing the headline saying, 
yes, I was right, Mr. Riggs of California was right, we support our 
bill to save Medicare. But when you do realize how much the people, our 
senior citizens presently, our children and our grandchildren are going 
to suffer just because of the fact that politics is played, demagoguery 
was taking place, and we did not get about to saving Medicare as of 
yet.
  So, I agree with the gentleman from California [Mr. Riggs]. It is a 
pretty sad day, but it is interesting to see that it has to be true. I 
mean that headline appeared in all of our newspapers across this land. 
I just say, if it is in the New York Times, I just guess it has to be 
true.
  I think Mr. Riggs would agree with me that we are being besieged. The 
gentleman was talking earlier about fear mongering, and it is 
interesting because the same ads have appeared in my district that have 
appeared in the gentleman's district, with the same 800 number. Whether 
it was some of the more extreme groups trying to scare our constituents 
that we are trying to poison the water, we have lead in the water and 
arsenic in the water, and we are going to pollute our oceans, I would 
just stand here, saying as a mom and one who hopes one day very soon to 
be a grandmother, I am definitely concerned about our environment and 
where we are going as we turn into the 21st century.
  Mr. Speaker, so it is a bit bizarre. But to see the fear mongering 
not only from different organizations but amazingly the AFL-CIO, I 
think they played the same ad that we re definitely cutting into 
Medicare, destroying Medicare, cutting education.

                              {time}  2000

  They were destroying the environment, and we voted for a bad budget, 
and it is just interesting to note that again this fear is coming from 
the heart of this city, Washington, DC.
  We know, it is those big labor bosses that are very, very disturbed 
that they lost power, and they do not seem to wield it here in this 
capital city as much as they used to for 40 years.
  But, you know, when you were talking about not having the opportunity 
to do some timber salvaging in our national forest, I was thinking 
about how many working families, by that position that the Sierra Club 
took, how many working families it is going to affect in your district, 
and I often think, too, about the AFL-CIO, how many people because of 
their positions where I am trying to fight for a balanced budget to 
help my children and grandchildren and yours and taking the position of 
tax relief, of $500 tax credit for children, seeing that we cut through 
capital gains so we could help those small businesses in the northern 
end of California and on my central coast; all these things that are so 
important for our working families throughout our two districts, and 
because of the rhetoric, the yelling of radical extremists, how many, 
because of that, how is it going to affect our district and affect 
those very working families that belong to the very so-called AFL-CIO 
union.
  And when you think just recently they had an annual convention here 
in Washington, DC, and they raised the dues of those working families 
in my district, in your district, and they are going to have to pay for 
those dues to fund a continuation of the fearmongering advertising that 
is taking place in our districts.
  I have a quote here. At the convention, we had vice president Linda 
Chavez Thompson say, ``We stopped the Contract with America dead in its 
tracks. Now we have to spend 7 times as much to bury it 6 feet under.''
  I tried to talk to my working families in my district and say the 
Contract with America; what is that? That is balancing the beget so 
that we can lower those interest rates so you can buy that home that 
you want to buy or buy that truck that you need, or to send your 
children to college so maybe they are going to be the first to graduate 
out of your family. Or it means

[[Page H3804]]

tax relief, that $500 tax credit, or a tax credit for adoption of our 
children. Or it might mean welfare reform or saving, just cutting away 
at the big bureaucracy here in Washington, and I think the gentleman 
would agree with me that we are trying our very best to bring some 
sanity, and yet the rhetoric is very strong, especially on two 
freshmen.
  And I just might say in this week we are commemorating Earth Day and 
talking about the environment. I will just say to the gentleman from 
northern California, you have been recycled as a Member of this 
Congress, and very gladly, because you served in this Congress for 2 
years, and you were out for 2 years, and now you are back, and I am 
just glad to recognize you as one of the members of the freshman class.
  But what we have been trying to do in this 104th Congress to make 
this place accountable to those working families that are way back on 
the West Coast of California and make some sense to the men and women, 
the moms and dads, that are trying to make it in this very hard 
economy.
  So I just thank the gentleman for bringing up all the issues that you 
previously did, and I would just say that I guess we are going to have 
to tighten our seat belt because we are going to continue to see 
radical groups, big labor, especially the ones based here in 
Washington, such as the AFL-CIO, continuing to launch an assault on our 
efforts to bring about meaningful change in a way the Federal 
Government operates and undermine our efforts to secure a brighter 
future for the folks in California.

  I think it is very obvious that at AFL-CIO they are not looking out 
for their union members and their families in our two districts. No; 
those Washington bosses, as far as I am concerned, are using those 
membership forced dues to fight against that balanced budget that would 
give them and the families such benefits as more take-home pay, and 
lower interest rates and the ability to decide how they are going to 
spend their dollars, and not a bureaucrat here in Washington, DC.
  You know, I believe that the union members and the families in my 
district and yours, Mr. Riggs, if they were given a choice, it is 
likely they would prefer their balanced budget bonus to a deceptive, 
dishonest, propaganda campaign against our voting record. And you know 
it is just amazing to see it transpire, and I would just say I guess we 
were going to see this until November.
  Mr. RIGGS. I think so, and I thank the gentlewoman for her comments.
  Again, she is so right. She is basically describing the so-called 
mediscare campaign that has been launched by big labor, the major 
Washington-based labor unions back here which have become the core 
constituency of the national Democratic Party, yet they are ignoring 
all the warning signs that we are heading towards bankruptcy, for one 
reason and one reason only: They want to use this as the political 
issue to regain control of the Congress.
  Independent analysis indicates that you know Medicare is going broke. 
The gentlewoman from California [Mrs. Seastrand] mentioned that we both 
been targeted by radio and television ads in our congressional 
districts, giving us an F for our votes on preserving Medicare from 
bankruptcy. That is actually out of the union press release. Yet if you 
look at the independent analysis that has been done of some of these 
advertisements by Brooks Jackson of CNN, he talks about the ads being a 
big hoax on the American people, grossly misleading.
  One of the ads running now says the Democrats want to protect 
Medicare the Republicans want to gut it. But then Jackson goes on to 
admit Republicans currently propose to cut the growth of Medicare by 
$168 billion over 7 years. President Clinton's budget calls for $124 
billion in cuts, which he calls savings.
  He also analyzes another allegation in these ads. Republicans cut 
school lunches, cut Head Start, cut health care. Then Jackson, Brooks 
Jackson of CNN, calls this Democrat National Committee ad false 
advertising.
  Mr. Speaker, the Republican Congress appropriated more money for 
school lunches this year, just what President Clinton asked, in fact, 
and the Agriculture Department says it has increased the number of 
children served. Money from the Head Start preschool program has been 
cut 4 percent this year temporarily, but Republicans have agreed to a 1 
percent increase once a permanent appropriations bill is passed. 
Meanwhile not a single child has been affected. In fact, Head Start 
enrollment is up this year.
  On child health care, Republicans did pass a $164 billion cut in 
Medicaid growth, which Clinton vetoed. Now differences have narrowed. 
Republicans last proposed to cut only $85 billion over 7 years, again 
to save that program, which has been growing in an unsustainable rate, 
and President Clinton's own budget proposal cuts of $59 billion.
  As we saw in this ad, the Democrats' strategy is to, exact quote, 
Brooks Jackson on CNN, ``not let the facts get in the way of a pro-
Clinton political spin.''
  So again I thank the speaker for the time this evening. I will have 
more to say about these ads in the future. I would simply try to 
admonish her to advise the American people, you know, do not believe 
the lies and the scare tactics. Research the issues for yourself. Be 
informed, and I think you will see that we are trying to do the right 
thing, the responsible thing here in Congress, and we are trying to 
remember the old admonition of Mark Twain, which is, always do right, 
you will make some people happy and astonish the rest.

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