Congressional Record, Volume 142 Issue 54 (Wednesday, April 24, 1996)

[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.

____________________