[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 57 (Tuesday, April 30, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H4180-H4187]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            CUTS IN GOVERNMENT WASTE NOT MADE IN NEW BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Chrysler). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, last Thursday we passed a large 
appropriations bill which completed the process of budgeting and 
appropriations for the fiscal year which began last October 1. It is 
finally all over and I have read the boast in the papers and heard them 
on television and radio of the majority party, the Republican majority, 
that they have cut the Federal budget by $23 billion this year, $23 
billion since they came into power; $23 billion has been cut out of the 
Federal budget.
  And one would say, well, it is wonderful that all that waste has been 
trimmed, but when we examine the nature of the cuts, we find that the 
places where one knows there is a great deal of waste have not received 
any great cuts. On the other hand, when we go to look at the fine print 
of what we passed last Thursday, we find there are many, many people on 
the bottom, the folks who need the most in our society, who are going 
to be hurt. They are the victims of the $23 billion in cuts.
  It is quite interesting just to pick up today's paper, the New York 
Times, and see a contrast in articles. On one page we have an article 
which talks about the Freemen. You might say, well, I am getting off 
the subject. The Freemen are out there in Montana and surrounded by the 
FBI, there is a standoff, there is a possibility that we may have some 
kind of violent explosion there. What does it have to do with the 
budget of the United States? What does it have to do with the fact that 
the Republican majority are boasting they cut the budget by $23 
billion? Well, the article that I am referring to that appeared in 
today's New York Times is headlined as follows: It says ``Freemen 
Depended on Subsidies. Evicted Anti-Tax Rancher and Partners Got 
$676,000 in U.S. Aid.''
  These are people who are angry with the government and have been 
yelling loudly to outsiders that they want the government off their 
back. The latest sign that has been posted by the leader of this group 
calls the U.S. Government a corporate prostitute. Nevertheless, they 
are the beneficiaries. The Clark family is the beneficiary of $676,000 
in U.S. aid.
  This category certainly has not been hurt much by the $23 billion in 
cuts because the $23 billion in cuts that have taken place under the 
leadership of the Republican majority do not involve drastic cuts in 
the programs that the Freemen were beneficiaries of, agriculture 
programs of various kinds. There is a whole slew of agricultural 
beneficiary programs that have been flowing to the farmers, the 
agribusinesses, for many years and they are not being drastically cut 
in this $23 billion cut this year.

  The farmers programs are going to be phased out over a 7-year period. 
That is the public relations hype that we have been told: Do not worry, 
they are going to be phased out over a 7-year period. But they are 
still absorbing billions of dollars in waste.
  And I will read on in this article and we can see what kind of waste 
I am talking about.
  In the case of Mr. Clark, Ralph E. Clark is the leader of the 
Freemen. It is his ranchhouse that is surrounded. ``Mr. Clark, a 
Freeman in a cowboy hat, nailed to a fence post a manifesto denouncing 
the Federal Government as a corporate prostitute.'' I am quoting. 
``Corporate prostitute'' is his language. But to read on in the New 
York Times article obviously April 30, 1996, which I will enter into 
the Record, to read on, quoting from the article, ``But tarnishing this 
image of rugged individualism, a new study of Federal payments 
indicates that over the last decade Mr. Clark and his ranch partners 
received $676,082 in government checks to cushion a variety of farming 
setbacks.''
  We, the government, we the people we the taxpayers have been 
cushioning the setbacks of Mr. Clark and his family over the last 10 
years.

                              {time}  2145

  They were dependent on the helping hand of the government, just like 
everybody else up there in agriculture, said Kenneth Cook, who is the 
President of the Environmental Working

[[Page H4181]]

Group, a nonprofit group in Washington that researches farm subsidy 
programs. Quote, continuing: But even by the standards of agriculture, 
hundreds of thousands of dollars over 10 years, that is substantial, 
added Mr. Cook, who is an analyst who compiled the figures on Friday 
after studying computer files on farm subsidy checks issued by the 
Department of Agriculture from 1985 to 1994. Documents filed at the 
Garfield County courthouse also offer glimpses into the heavy reliance 
on government aid by the 65-year-old farmer who now symbolizes the 
antigovernment Freemen group.
  In the 1994 foreclosure sale of Ralph Clark's 960-acre homestead, 
court documents show that Mr. Clark signed a 10-year contract in 1990 
to receive an annual payment of $48,269 under the Conservation Reserve 
Program and was paid through 1994 under that program. Under this 
program, which is highly popular in Montana, farmers agreed to suspend 
production on steep slopes and other land highly subject to erosion, 
planted it with grass that will not be grazed or cut for hay. Critics 
of the program, which began in 1985, often call the program paying 
farmers not to farm. I would go even worse, I would go even further. 
Sounds like a racketeering enterprise. To pay farmers to select steep 
slopes in their land and plant grass instead of planting something else 
in order to keep it from eroding, to pay them large amounts of 
taxpayers' money, I consider that a racketeering enterprise with the 
government participating.
  Mr. Speaker, they found an excuse, they found an excuse to pay these 
farmers large sums of money. You would be a fool not to take it. I 
continue to quote from the article. You would be a fool not to take it. 
Nick Morner, the Garfield County attorney, said of the subsidy money, 
referring to the skill in winning subsidy payments. He added, everybody 
in the county knows that is what they have been doing with a population 
of only 1,300 people. Garfield County received $63 million in farm 
subsidy payments from 1985 to 1994. A population of only 1,300 people 
in Garfield County received $63 million of your taxpayers' money in 
farm subsidy payments from 1985 to 1994. Stop and think about what that 
means.
  Now, these are not the people being cut in the 23 billion dollars' 
worth of cuts that the Republican majority is so loudly proclaiming 
victory about. These people are not being cut. These programs are not 
being cut. Whether it is in Montana or in Kansas, in Montana or in 
Kansas, these are not the programs being cut.
  One of the programs that is receiving a big cut this year is the 23 
billion dollars' worth of cuts in public housing, housing for poor 
people, housing for the homeless. I am going to switch to another New 
York Times article that happened to appear on the same day. Today, 
Tuesday, April 30, the article reads: Dole calls Public housing one of 
the last bastions of socialism. Dole calls public housing one of the 
last bastions of socialism.
  You know, what is my theme for today? My theme is that it appears 
that, if there is a benefit available for very poor people, people that 
are on the very bottom of our economic strata, then automatically it is 
a horrible program and anything they get is too much. Anything that 
people on the bottom get is too much. Anything the average American, 
the needy American gets, that is too much.
  Mr. Speaker, on the other hand, it appears that there is a group of 
people in America which never have enough, and more and more is always 
projected and that is still not enough. We cannot give the farmers too 
much. More and more is projected and that is not enough. Nobody calls 
the agriculture program, which is rampant in Kansas, the State of 
Kansas, nobody calls that socialism. But there, the Senator from Kansas 
in this article in the New York Times today is saying that public 
housing is one of the last bastions of socialism.
  It seems that there is a group of people that I choose to call the 
overlords of America. You cannot talk about then in simple class 
warfare terms. Class warfare is an obsolete notion. It does not tell us 
anything. We talk about class warfare. You have to define people as 
being in the middle class and the upper class and the lower class. That 
does not describe what is going on in the world at all.
  There is a class of overlords in the world. Overlords are people who 
have certain privileges and seem to have access to public funds and the 
public treasury, and they have their own agents in public places, and 
we can never give them too much, the overlords. Among the overlords are 
the farm program recipients. Overloads are not always millionaires. 
There are a lot of millionaires that are taken care of by the agents of 
the overlords.

  Greenspan is an agent of the overlords. The Federal Reserve is part 
of a government banking industrial complex, and Greenspan sits on top 
of that. He guarantees that the banking overlords will always be taken 
care of, even if it means suffering for large numbers of Americans who 
are out there in the work force.
  Greenspan makes certain that as the level of unemployment drops, if 
our economy is doing very well, lots of people are unemployed. 
Greenspan puts the brakes on, tightens up on the money and the 
investment lessens and unemployment goes up because people are not 
expanding industry. They cannot hire people, and the unemployment goes 
up. The suffering of workers becomes a barometer for progress for 
Greenspan, who is the head of the Federal Reserve Bank and the agent of 
the banking overlords.
  So the overlords for agriculture, I suppose, the chief overlord is 
the Secretary of Agriculture. They got a whole lot of public complex 
boards and various entities that make judgments about who is going to 
get Farmers' Home Loan mortgage money, who is going to have money 
forgiven. I have talked before about the fact that we forgave $11 
billion in Farmers Home Loan mortgages over a 5-year period. I still 
have not found out how the rules are made for forgiving loans in the 
Farmers Home Loan mortgage program. But obviously the rules are not for 
ordinary common Congressmen to know. I am not a member of the overlord 
group.
  Agents of the overlords do not have to tell how they decide who gets 
all of this farm subsidy money, Farmers Home Loan mortgage money. But 
when it comes to my district, the 11th Congressional District in New 
York City, in Brooklyn, the 11th Congressional District has one of the 
poorest communities in America located within it. Brownsville is 
primarily made up of public housing units. There are about 20,000 
people in Brownsville who live in public housing, some of the best 
public housing in the country, by the way, well-kept.
  The New York City housing authority over the years, for the last 30 
years, certainly since public housing expanded, has been one of the 
leading public housing authorities in the country in terms of the way 
public housing is operated and kept. A lot of problems, but still there 
is a long waiting list. People want to get that public housing in New 
York City. So, public housing is good housing for poor people in 
Brownsville.

  They have to listen now to the Senator from Kansas, who happens to be 
the presidential candidate for the other party call public housing one 
of the last bastions of socialism. Agriculture, which funnels billions 
of dollars to the Ralph Clarks of the world, billions of dollars to 
agribusiness, is never seen as socialism, but now public housing is one 
of the last bastions of socialism. Well, perhaps it is, and my answer 
to that is it is good socialism. What is wrong with socialism for 
ordinary people? If you are going to have socialism for agribusiness, 
then why do we not have socialism for the homeless, socialism for the 
people who might be homeless if they did not have public housing. 
Socialism for senior citizens.
  I was at a meeting last Friday called to take a look at what is 
happening here in Washington with the committee on housing and banking. 
The people in my district have been told that the Brook amendment, 
which says that no more than 30 percent of your income, if you are in 
public housing, you do not have to pay more than 30 percent of your 
income for rent. And that has been eliminated by the Republican 
majority in the House of Representatives. The Senate has not acted on 
it yet, but it has been eliminated by the Republican majority here in 
this House. So they are concerned.

[[Page H4182]]

  Mr. Speaker, at that meeting the room was full of senior citizens. 
Yes, in the area of Brownsville, there are many young families also 
that live in public housing. But I suspect the problem with some of the 
younger families is that, unlike the senior citizens, they do not know 
of a time when they did not have the public housing. Every senior 
citizen in that room knew that when they were born, federally financed 
public housing did not exist. They know it did not exist before they 
were born. They know that it is possible to lose it, that when they die 
it may be gone. And they are ready to fight for it.
  The people who take it for granted are the ones who came on the 
scene, they found public housing, and they really do not understand 
that it came out of Democratic efforts. It came out of the New Deal. It 
came out of Franklin Roosevelt's grand design to help poor people, the 
same Franklin Roosevelt that created public housing, socialism in 
housing, if you want to call planning, appropriating public funds, 
giving people housing according to their needs, charging them only 
according to their income, if you want to call that socialism, then 
that is one brand of socialism, I guess.

  It is better than the brand of socialism that the Agriculture 
Department applies. Agriculture does not require people to be poor. 
Everybody who owns some land, by the fact that they own land, Mr. Clark 
owned thousands and thousands of acres, it did not stop him from 
getting large subsidies from the Agriculture Department. In fact, the 
more you own, the bigger you are, the more you get from the taxpayers 
of America, the more you get from the Government.
  So that is a socialism you might call big belly socialism. The belly 
of that socialism is enormous. That socialism, indiscriminately 
showering its socialism on the rich and the few poor farmers left. Of 
course, there are a few poor farmers left in America, and we certainly 
want to see they get some kind of help from the Government. In fact, 
that is what Franklin Roosevelt intended when he created the farm 
subsidy program. The same man who created the subsidy program in 
housing created the subsidy programs in agriculture, all to help poor 
people. The same man who created subsidy programs in housing and 
subsidy programs in agriculture also created the Federal Deposit 
Insurance Corporation to safeguard the money that every American puts 
in the bank.
  When Franklin Roosevelt, the Democrat, the New Dealer, the socialist, 
when he created the FDIC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, 
which is socialism in banking, you might say that the Federal 
Government stands behind your deposits, insuring that your deposits up 
to a certain point will not be lost because the Government stands 
behind it. When Franklin Roosevelt first created it, it was $10,000, a 
reasonable amount. The banking overlords took it over, and the banking 
overlords have raised the $10,000 amount up to $100,000. And the 
banking overlords can play the game so that it is $100,000 in each 
bank. If you are rich, you can go from bank to bank and you can end up 
with several million dollars in the banks insured by the FDIC so that 
the taxpayers are going to cover your millions of dollars under this 
socialized banking program.
  Mr. Speaker, so socialism for banking is all right because the 
overlords benefit. Socialism for agriculture is all right because the 
overlords benefit. But all of a sudden socialism in housing is under 
attack and will be a leading target, one of the major targets in the 
coming political campaign. Socialism in housing, giving housing to poor 
people: Well, that also fits, I suppose in some kind of bizarre 
pattern, some kind of bizarre maze.
  Mr. Speaker, we do not hear any attacks on the situation that created 
the monstrosity in Montana, the Freemen out there go home free. They 
are not being attacked. They are not being targeted. Probably the 
Democratic-Republican campaign in the coming election will completely 
ignore the economics of the situation that created the crisis in 
Montana. With a population of only 1,300 people, the taxpayers were 
being swindled out of $63 million in farm subsidy payments over a 10-
year period.

                              {time}  2200

  Let me continue to read from the article about the standoff in 
Montana and show you how the standoff in Montana relates to the $23 
billion in budget cuts that impact mostly on the poorest people of 
America and do not cut waste because these are the recipients of waste.
  In the same period that Garfield County received $63 million in farm 
subsidy payments, the section of Jordan where the Clarks live, 76 
farmers in that section, 76 farmers, received $7.3 million from 31 
different farm subsidy programs.
  I said before that there are a lot of different pieces in the farm 
racketeering setup, a lot of different pieces: The Farmers' Home Loan 
Mortgage, which is very seldom discussed. We talk about the farm 
subsidy program on the floor of the House a great deal, but we do not 
talk about all those other pieces. But there were 31 different farm 
subsidy programs that the racketeers in Ralph Clark's gang tapped into.
  Continuing to read from the article, quote: ```What stands out about 
Ralph Clark is the complexity. Ordinarily a family farm is not that 
complicated.'
  ``Over a 10-year period, Federal checks went to 11 entities with 
interest in the main Clark homestead here--first, to Mr. Clark; then, 
from 1988 to 1993, to a corporation in which Mr. Clark was a 
stockholder, and then, in 1993 and 1994, to a revocable trust in which 
he had an interest.
  ```Around 1992, they were setting up revocable trusts as a means of 
avoiding income taxes, State taxes,' Mr. Murnion, The County Attorney, 
said, referring to one of a series of strategies Mr. Clark tried over 
the last 15 years to avoid losing his farm.''
  ``Mr. Clark's financial problems date to 1978, when, following the 
trend of the time, Mr. Clark borrowed heavily to expand his holdings, 
adding 7,000 acres to his original homestead.''
  Now, if you have the image of a struggling farmer out there in the 
New Deal days, when President Roosevelt first created the farm subsidy 
program, reaching out to the Federal Government to get much-deserved 
assistance to keep family farms alive, and then using that to maintain 
a family farm to not only take care of his own family but to provide to 
the overall economy, to keep the cost of food down, we know all the 
good things that flow from an agriculture program that is working 
properly, but not Mr. Clark. He went into heavy debt in order to expand 
his farm, which was already very large, by 7,000 additional acres.
  In May of 1982, the Farmers' Home Administration, however, had to 
call in his entire outstanding debt of $825,000 because the greed, the 
greed that drove Mr. Clark to expand his farm, to buy more land, 
evidently was not based on anything sound. In fact, it was probably 
part of a racketeering plot. He knew the land he was using was not 
going to produce anything. They just wanted the money.
  Why do I say that? I am only reading from the New York Times because 
in another section here I am going to skip, remember the entire article 
will be entered into the record, if you are interested, and I am going 
to skip to another section which describes the behavior of Mr. Clark in 
case you are weeping for the man who had his farm foreclosed because he 
owed the Federal Government $825,000 in outstanding debt. Do not weep. 
Save your tears for the people who are denied the minimum wage. Save 
your tears for the homeless out there who will have fewer public 
housing units. Save your tears for the people who really need it.
  Mr. Clark, to continue reading from the article, quote, ``When Mr. 
Clark and other Freemen farmers had money, they did not always spend it 
wisely, neighbors said. After winning one stay of foreclosure from the 
Farmers Home Administration, they recalled, he bought,'' Mr. Clark 
bought, ``a Lincoln Continental. Bill Stanton, a 65-year-old neighbor 
who joined with the Freemen, was known by neighbors to have spent his 
Federal subsidy checks on things like a helicopter, a motor home and 
gambling trips to Las Vegas, Nevada, and the Bahamas.''
  Taxpayers, you want to know what you should get angry about? You want 
to know what should drive you into a rage? This is not atypical of the 
way farm subsidies, Farmers home loan mortgage money has been used.
  Two years ago, we had an article on the front page of the Washington 
Post

[[Page H4183]]

that talked about four millionaires, four or five millionaires; I do 
not remember the exact number; who were doing worse things than this. 
They had airplanes, they had airfields, they had all kinds of things 
that they were using the taxpayers' money to finance. Mr. Clark bought 
a Lincoln Continental, his neighbor bought a helicopter, a motor home, 
and he took gambling trips to Las Vegas, NV, and the Bahamas. But he is 
in the overlord group. No one is criticizing him. He will not be a 
target in the upcoming political campaign.
  Agricultural socialism is acceptable socialism obviously, and the 
candidate who has said that we got to get rid of housing socialism is 
from a State where there are large amounts of this agricultural 
socialism.
  I am sure in Kansas there are a large number of Randolph Clarks, 
probably smarter than Randolph Clark because they have not gone off 
their rocker. They have not completely lost their senses. Mr. Clark is 
such an overlord and has been an overlord for so long, he has gotten so 
much from the Government, that he really believes that he has a divine 
right. You are talking about a divine right of farmers to swindle the 
American taxpayers. That is what Mr. Clark is upset about. I have the 
right, and therefore the fact that I owe $825,000, why are you 
bothering me? You know, why come bother me after all these years of 
largess, of laying down millions of dollars? Why bother me? I am going 
to go to war.
  So they are at war. They have got rifles. They are ready to kill 
people. Do not get between them and their right to the taxpayers' 
dollars.
  Continuing to read from the article:
  ``In the 1980's, opposition to Federal aid became heresy here.'' In 
Jordan, where these people live, anybody who came along and said they 
opposed Federal aid was in trouble. There was a group that came along 
and talked about getting rid of Federal aid, and their windshield was 
smashed. A smashed windshield greeted Bob Scott, a Montana 
environmentalist, when he visited Jordan in 1987 to propose that local 
ranchers be weaned from Federal aid through the creation of a huge deer 
and bison hunting preserve.
  Let me read that again. Here is an environmentalist who comes along 
who also obviously cares about waste in Government. He wants to see 
Government streamlined and downsized. He wants to see it done honestly. 
He does not want to see streamlining and downsizing done on the backs 
of people in public housing, done on the backs of children's lunch 
programs. He does not want to see streamlining done by decreasing the 
number of jobs available in the Summer Youth Employment Program.
  You know this $23 billion that has been trimmed from the budget this 
year has come from the peasants on the bottom, the untouchables of 
America, and I use this because this is just a psychological labeling. 
It is the way things are developing. It is nothing very simple. You 
cannot put your hand on it. Persons untouchable today could be an 
overlord in a few years. In fact, that is part of why the old class 
warfare nomenclature does not apply. You cannot talk about America in 
terms of class warfare because the folks on the bottom are dreaming 
that one day they will be overlords, and therefore it governs the way 
they think, it governs the way they resist the overlords, and it 
governs the way they react to the agents of the overlord. Large numbers 
of people may think I may one day be an overlord, so let us leave the 
system in place. What they do not know is that the evidence has shown 
that there are fewer and fewer people rising from the bottom, the 
middle class, to become overlords.

  At any rate, ``Increasingly the subsidy checks became crucial for the 
survival of the Clark clan,'' quoting from the New York Times article. 
``Increasingly subsidy checks became crucial for survival of the Clark 
clan. In January 1994, the Clarks led a group of armed men to stone the 
county courthouse here. At issue was a Federal subsidy check that the 
former wife of Richard E. Clark, Ralph Clark's nephew, was seeking in a 
divorce payment.''
  They were fighting among themselves over a farm subsidy check, and 
they stormed the courthouse. It was the beginning of the great 
revolution of the Freemen in Montana.
  It all relates, my colleagues. These people who say they want to get 
Government off their back, people who say that Government does not owe 
them anything, Government should not help anybody, God helps those who 
help themselves, leave me along, I will do my own thing. Thousands and 
thousands of them exist out there, receiving farm subsidy checks in 
large amounts. They say everybody else is the recipient of socialism, 
but they receive socialism in gigantic amounts.
  The overloads, the agricultural overlords, they do not receive nearly 
as much money as the banking overlords. The oil industry overlords; we 
have higher gasoline prices right now. There are a dozen ways in which 
the Government could act to bring down the price of gasoline just by 
making it a level playing field for the consumers versus the oil 
industry. But oil prices have been kept inflated for a long time now in 
order to pay for investments and to pay certain rate of returns.
  So the socialism of the oil industrial complex is why we are having a 
great increase in gasoline prices that will go on for a while, a little 
while, while they make large amounts of money, and they will cut it off 
because the outcry will be so great until they have to bring down the 
price of gasoline probably within about 3 or 4 weeks.
  Anyway, I want to conclude this article. I did not mean to go on for 
so long. This is an article, I say for anybody who joined us late, that 
appeared in the Tuesday, April 30, today's New York Times, and it is 
labeled ``Freemen Dependent on Subsidies, Evicted Anti-tax Ranching and 
Partners got $676,000 in U.S. Aid,'' and the article concludes by 
saying ``Two weeks ago, surrounded by Federal agents, embittered by 
Federal justice and cut off from Federal aid, Mr. Clark ordered a 
follower to nail to his fence the manifesto,'' that proclaimed, quote, 
``Freemen are not a part of a de facto corporate prostitute, a.k.a. the 
United States.''
  The overlords of the agriculture industry have gone berserk, and they 
are biting the hand that has fed them for so long, and now they even 
want to get violent with the people who have fed them for so long.
  Americans in the rest of the country, Americans who are not on the 
agricultural dole, listen carefully, understand where your money goes. 
Most of this was not cut. It is still flowing to people like Randolph 
Clark and to folks who are really much better than Randolph Clark but 
still they are willing to sit there and take the socialism of the 
agricultural industry and complain that they want to get Government off 
their back, complain about Government spending too much money on the 
homeless, they complain about Government providing jobs for poor kids 
during the summer. These same people are guilty of monumental 
hypocrisy, and the Representatives that come from their States are 
guilty of monumental hypocrisy when they go on the floor or go anywhere 
and make statements about public housing being the last bastion of 
socialism. Public housing may be good socialism, but it is not the last 
bastion. It is not the worst bastion, it is not corrupted bastion.
  The corrupted bastion of socialism in America is agriculture. The 
overlords of agriculture must be examined very closely, the whole set 
of activities that are occurring in America based on the overlord 
assumptions, assumptions that certain people owe them more and more.
  Have you ever read an article in the New York Times, the Washington, 
Post, or most of the establishment newspapers which criticized the 
corporations for making more profits?

                              {time}  2215

  On the contrary, when the corporations lay off people, downsize, 
streamline, merge, for whatever reason they lay off large numbers of 
people, they lay off thousands of people, the articles that appear on 
the editorial page are usually articles that say, we are sorry, we 
mourn the fact that people have been laid off; however, in the global 
economy, American corporations cannot survive unless they are tough. 
They cannot survive unless they do what they have to do. Unless they 
downsize or merge or streamline, they cannot continue to provide the 
good things that they provide to America.
  The New York Times, the Washington Post, none of these entities are

[[Page H4184]]

blind or stupid. They know that thousands of workers are being laid 
off. Why do they not write editorials and say that people are losing 
jobs as a result of these actions being taken by these corporations? 
What they are saying in the case of the proposal to raise the minimum 
wage is, Do not do it, it is silly, it is stupid, because people will 
lose jobs if you raise the minimum wage. The same newspapers that have 
no concern about the jobs that are lost as a result of merging, 
downsizing, and streamlining are very concerned about jobs that will be 
lost because we raise the minimum wage by 1996. The theory is that if 
you raise the minimum wage by 1996, employers out there will not be 
able to afford the workers, so they will lay off some; so crocodile 
tears are being cried about the possibility that people will be laid 
off because the economics of the situation are such that to give more 
to the people on the very bottom will produce a situation where people 
lose jobs.
  If we are concerned about people losing jobs, let us start at the top 
and say, Do not have anymore streamlining, layoffs, or downsizing, 
because people will lose jobs. All of a sudden the media, the 
newspapers, have come to the aid of the overlords. They can do no harm 
by streamlining. If they want to make more profit, then they are 
applauded. That is great for America. But if you want to take care of 
the untouchables and the peasants down at the bottom all of a sudden, 
do not do it. We have an overlord versus the untouchables mentality.
  I said last week that in too many activities the overlord versus 
untouchable mentality crops up. The people with disabilities in America 
are suddenly labeled as untouchables. We have a whole series of 
policies being formulated, being pushed by the Republican Party, going 
after people with disabilities. You want to go after their Social 
Security benefits, you want to go after them through Medicaid, and have 
them defined by each State as to who has a disability or not.
  The latest attack on people with disabilities is an attack on 
children with disabilities. In my committee, the Committee on Economic 
and Educational Opportunities, a bill has just been passed by the 
subcommittee which deals with cutting back drastically on services, 
Federal assistance for children with disabilities. All of a sudden, 
they must save money here. We must trim money here for children with 
disabilities. We can no longer have a commitment by the Federal 
Government.
  There is a commitment in the authorizing legislation which says that 
the Federal Government will pay 40 percent of the excess costs. The 
difference between what it costs to educate a child who does not have a 
disability and what you pay additional to educate a child who does have 
a disability, the Federal Government is committed by the authorizing 
language of the law to pay 40 percent. We have never paid that much, 
because the appropriation process has always kept it down. The most we 
pay is, we pay 8 percent. But 8 percent is still a sizeable commitment.

  In the current legislation, it caught me by surprise, because when I 
spoke last week I did not realize that in the current legislation, 
somehow any discussion of the obligation of the Federal Government to 
that 40 percent has been omitted. Children with disabilities are on the 
bottom. They are untouchable in the eyes of the Republican majority 
here. They are not overlords. They do not deserve to be protected.
  Let me just close by specifically looking at the overlord untouchable 
mentality at work, the attitude at work in the budget cuts last week; 
the final touch, the completion of the process for the budget for the 
fiscal year that began on October 1 of 1995. That is completed now, and 
as I said at the beginning, the Republican majority are happy. They are 
parading through the streets with a banner which says, ``We cut the 
Federal programs. We cut the Federal Government by $23 billion.'' Let 
us take a look at those cuts in more detail.
  In education, where at first they wanted to cut $5 billion out, but 
on the floor of this House there was a great campaign mounted to let 
the American people know the nature of those cuts. There are people who 
say that if you are in the minority, then who needs you? If you are in 
the minority, you are of no use to the Nation. But the campaign mounted 
by the minority, the Democratic minority, against the cuts in education 
is one example of why you always need the loyal opposition, why you 
always need a minority, because the interests of the people out there 
in the final analysis, if it is properly understood, if the people, if 
the voters understand where their interests lie, they will impact on 
the decisionmaking process in a democratic government.
  It takes a lot of talking, a lot of illustrations, a lot of charts, a 
lot of repetition to do it, but it was done. So, $5 billion in proposed 
education cuts were beaten down. We did not get them because day after 
day, night after night, on the floor of this House, a campaign was 
mounted to educate the American people about what was happening and how 
harmful it would be to the children of America. From the school lunch 
cuts to the cuts in title I, the cuts in Head Start, we kept banging 
away at it.
  There are people who say you waste time when you go on the floor 
during special orders, it is a waste of public money, et cetera. We get 
very little time during the regular session, so we need special orders. 
This House, with 435 Members, meets far less than the other body, which 
has 100 Members. The time spent on the floor by the other body is far 
greater than the time spent on the floor by this House. So we get the 
time we can get in order to educate the American people about what is 
going on.
  It paid off. In the case of education, we beat back $5 billion in 
cuts to very vital programs, but we did not win totally. For $1 billion 
dollars was cut from the Pell grants. Pell grant carryover money was 
used to make up $1 billion. That was not known. That was a hidden cut. 
So you have the poorest college students, and Pell grants are for 
disadvantaged, low-income students, the poorest students contributed $1 
billion in cuts that they did not know about.
  The Perkins loan also took a substantial cut, from $176 million to 
$113 million. The money goes to disadvantaged students seeking college 
aid, again the untouchables people at the very lowest rungs, and they 
are the people who fueled this $20 billion in cuts.
  In the Health and Human Services budget, the low-income heating 
assistance program lost $14 million. Yes, we did raise our voices about 
that, and I am glad that we beat back an effort to cut it totally, but 
they lost $14 billion.

  In the housing area, which the Senator from Kansas is calling 
socialism today in the New York Times, there were 20 separate 
authorizing provisions put into the housing program. This is an 
appropriation bill, and the rule says you are not supposed to authorize 
on an appropriation bill, but rules and parliamentary procedure, 
democracy, in this Congress has all been thrown away long ago. So in 
the housing appropriations, there are 20 separate authorizing 
provisions, which move us closer and closer to the time when there will 
be no public housing as we know it.
  HUD lost $1.1 billion in grants for homeless housing; $1.1 billion 
was taken away from grants to assist homeless people, $1.1 billion from 
the untouchables, the people at the very bottom. The Legal Services 
Corporation lost 31 percent of their funding. About a third of the 
neighborhood law offices will have to be closed across the country.
  Legal services is for the poor, people on the very bottom who want to 
be able to take advantage of our great democracy and the court system. 
If you do not have a lawyer, it is usually impossible for you to do 
that. This is only for civil cases, not for criminal cases. A campaign 
was mounted by the Republican majority and it succeeded, so some of 
that $23 billion is to take away any legal assistance for poor people.
  The Department of Labor took a 7-percent cut overall. The Department 
of Labor took a 7 percent-cut. The Department's deepest cuts, where did 
they fall? You can guess. The Department's deepest cuts fell in 
employment and training programs that help disadvantaged adults and 
laid-off workers. The deepest cuts fell in employment and training 
programs that help disadvantaged adults and laid-off workers.

[[Page H4185]]

The pattern is clear. The untouchables, the people on the very bottom, 
not the overlords, have to bear the burden of the $23 billion in cuts.
  We are still going to hear more later on about tax cuts, which is 
like giving to the overlords. That $23 billion we have cut out, we are 
going to take part of that and make a gift to the overlords in terms of 
a tax cut for the rich. Some of the other programs that were cut, I 
want to be specific about education, since education is the committee 
that I serve on.
  We heard the gentleman before me talk about education and how it is 
awful that the Federal Government is involved in education to the 
extent that it is. Of all the industrialized nations, the United States 
of America is the least involved in education at the central government 
level. We give the least amount of money. Less than 7 percent of our 
education budget is supplied by the Federal Government.
  They talk about the Federal Government trying to run our schools. If 
you are giving 7 percent of the money, and most of the programs that 
you fund with the money are voluntary, how can you be running local 
schools through the Federal Government? But they cut magnet schools. 
Magnet schools made a contribution of $16.5 million to the $23 billion 
cut.
  Howard University, Howard University made a contribution of $22.3 
million to the $23 billion cut. If you have a chessboard, you can look 
at the rook, the knight, the queen, et cetera, and you can see as they 
take it away--they took magnet schools off, they got that; they got 
Howard University; health professions, $19.6 million; Healthy Start, 
$11.2 million; dislocated workers assistance, $131 million; adult 
training, $146.8 million; I said Perkins loans before; State student 
incentive grants, $32 million; aid for institutional development lost 
$34 million; graduate fellowships lost $11 million.
  Libraries, libraries get a very tiny amount of money in the total 
budget to begin with, they lost $11.7 million. The Center for Substance 
Abuse lost $118 million; substance abuse prevention lost $148 million; 
developmental disabilities, $7.6 million; the Administration on Aging, 
$46.6 million; vocational education, $22.9 million. The little people 
on the bottom lost. The overlords gained.
  Mr. Speaker, I have to end on an optimistic note, so within all the 
darkness, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. I close with a 
final appreciation of the fact that our hard work paid off in 
education, and title I was not cut, so title I education funding is now 
at the same level as it was last year.
  New York City schools will receive $395 million, an increase of $67 
million over the $328 million level in the House-passed bill. If the 
House-passed bill had gone through we would have lost tremendous 
amounts of money, but we have now regained. We are where we were last 
year. The schools in New York will get the same amount of money.
  Drug-free schools is restored at the 1995 level. Bilingual education, 
$75 million has been added to the House level for a total of $128 
million. This is an increase over what the House had cut before. New 
York City will receive $15.3 million of that bilingual education 
funding.
  Summer jobs, unfortunately, I have overstated that in the last week. 
I thought we were exactly at the same level, but we are going to lose 
some jobs because the amount of money received by New York City will 
not be $29.9 million which was received last year, it will be $21 
million, which means it will be a pretty substantial cut in the number 
of jobs that youngsters will be able to get this year. After all, they 
are on the bottom. These are poor, disadvantaged youngsters, part of 
untouchable class, not part of the overlords. So they have been cut. 
They have to make their contribution to the $23 billion in downsizing.

                              {time}  2230

  The good news is that Head Start received additional money and New 
York City will receive $97 million, an increase of $3.8 million over 
last year's figure.
  There is one place where we gained, Head Start for poor children, one 
place where the untouchables, the people at the bottom were able to 
gain. Cops on the Beat, $1.4 billion is included for Cops on the Beat, 
compared to zero that the House had cut it to at one time which means 
that New York City will likely get about 2,200 additional police 
officers.
  The good news is that when you fight and you really raise your voice 
and you carry the message to the American people, the American people 
out there in all those 435 congressional districts have a lot of common 
sense, and they will respond. Obviously they responded to the districts 
of Democrats and Republicans and they let it be known they did not want 
the cuts in education. They understood what was happening. It was not 
so complicated. And they decided that we, the ordinary people, do not 
want the cuts. ``Don't treat us the way you treat other untouchables. 
Treat us the way you treat overlords. We don't want the cuts.''
  Mr. Speaker, I will enter in its entirety in the Record the article 
that appeared in the New York Times on today, April 30, entitled ``Dole 
Calls Public Housing One Of Last Bastions of Socialism.''
  Mr. Speaker, I close with one negative note. In addition to cutting 
$23 billion, the Appropriations Committee in the overlord atmosphere, 
they acted like agents of overlords and they usurped the power of the 
authorizing committees and they got rid of a concept called Opportunity 
to Learn Standards. It is just a concept really because it was in the 
Goals 2000 legislation and it said that in addition to testing children 
to see how much they have learned, in addition to establishing 
standards across the country so that you could compare what is being 
taught from one State to another and then testing young people from one 
State to another, to compare to see how they are doing, you ought to 
also have something called Opportunity to Learn Standards so that you 
look at from one State to another what opportunities to learn are being 
provided. Are you providing decent schools, safe buildings that do not 
have lead poisoning and asbestos? Are you providing laboratories for 
science teaching and science equipment? Are you providing library books 
that are up to date so that kids are not reading books 30 years old and 
history and geography which do not have the latest countries that have 
been established over the last 15 years in them? Are you providing 
qualified teachers so that you do not have a situation like the one in 
New York City which 3 years ago a survey showed that in three-quarters 
of the city where Latino and African-American children went to school, 
all the teachers of math and science had not majored in math and 
science in college so they were not qualified to teach math and science 
in junior high school so the kids went into high school crippled 
because of the fact they did not have a good foundation in junior high 
school. Opportunity to Learn Standards would have taken care of that.
  The arrogant Appropriations Committee abused its power and it went 
into authorizations. It cut out the Opportunity to Learn Standards. We 
debated this for 6 months when the bill was reauthorized. We argued 
with the Senate in conference for 2 more months. It was a deliberative 
process which concluded with language that kept the concept in there 
and educated Americans as to what is happening overall in educational 
reform. The arrogant, abusive, over-lord-minded Appropriations 
Committee cut it out. It reduces the rest of us and all the authorizing 
committees to untouchables in the Congress. We do not have any real 
power. In the final analysis all decisions are going to be made by the 
Appropriations Committee. It bodes ill for the process.
  The overlord philosophy, the overlord ideology will destroy democracy 
in America if we do not confront it. Understand what is happening. 
There are overlords, and there are untouchables. America was built for 
everybody, made for everybody, and we have to go to war. I do not mean 
physical war but political war to make certain that the overlords do 
not dominate and destroy us. Overlords must be stopped first in the 
budget process and in the appropriations process.

[[Page H4186]]

                [From the New York Times, Apr. 30, 1996]

                     Freeman Depended on Subsidies


     evicted anti-tax rancher and partners got $676,000 in u.s. aid

                           (By James Brooke)

       Jordan, MT, April 26.--Striding to the edge of Ralph E. 
     Clark's ranch here recently, a Freeman in a cowboy hat nailed 
     to a fence post a manifesto denouncing the Federal Government 
     as a ``corporate prostitute.''
       But tarnishing this image of rugged individualism, a new 
     study of Federal payments indicates that over the last decade 
     Mr. Clark and his ranch partners received $676,082 in 
     Government checks to cushion a variety of farming setbacks: 
     droughts, hailstorms and low prices for wheat wool and 
     barley. The flow of Federal money was not enough to prevent 
     foreclosure on the ranch two years ago, but Mr. Clark refused 
     to leave, setting the stage for a siege that is now in its 
     fifth week.
       ``They were dependent on the helping hand of Government, 
     just like everybody else up there in agriculture,'' said 
     Kenneth Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, a 
     nonprofit group in Washington that researches farm subsidy 
     programs.
       ``But even by standards of agriculture, hundreds of 
     thousands of dollars over 10 years--that's substantial,'' 
     added Mr. Cook, whose analysts compiled the figures on Friday 
     after weeks of studying computer files on farm subsidy checks 
     issued by the Department of Agriculture from 1985 to 1994.
       Documents filed at the Garfield County Courthouse also 
     offer glimpses into the heavy reliance on Government aid by 
     the 65-year-old farmer who now symbolizes the anti-government 
     Freemen group. In the 1994 foreclosure sale of Ralph Clark's 
     960-acre homestead, court documents show that Mr. Clark 
     signed a 10-year contract in 1990 to receive an annual 
     payment of $48,269 under the Conservation Reserve Program. 
     Payments were made through 1994 the Environmental Working 
     Group said.
       Under this program, highly popular in Montana, farmers 
     agree to suspend production on steep slopes and other land 
     highly subject to erosion, planting it with grass that will 
     not be grazed or cut for hay. Critics of the program, which 
     began in 1985, often call it ``paying farmers not to farm.''
       ``You'd be a fool not to take it,'' Nick Murnion, the 
     Garfield County Attorney, said of the subsidy money. 
     Referring to the Clark clan's skill in winning subsidy 
     payments, he added, ``Everybody in the country knows that's 
     what they have been doing.''
       With a population of only 1,300 people, Garfield County 
     received $63 million in farm subsidy payments from 1985 to 
     1994, the Environmental Working Group said. In the same 
     period in Brusett, the section of Jordan where the Clarks 
     live, 76 farmers received $7.3 million from 31 different farm 
     subsidy programs.
       ``What stands out about Ralph Clark is the complexity,'' 
     said Clark Williams, an analyst for the Washington group. 
     ``Ordinarily, a family farm is not that complicated.''
       Over a 10-year period, Federal checks went to 11 entities 
     with interest in the main Clark homestead here--first to Mr. 
     Clark; then, from 1988 to 1993, to a corporation in which he 
     was a stockholder, and then, in 1993 and 1994, to a revocable 
     trust in which he had an interest.
       ``Around 1992, they were setting up revocable trusts as a 
     means of avoiding income taxes, state taxes,'' Mr. Murnion, 
     the County Attorney, said, referring to one of a series of 
     strategies Mr. Clark tried over the last 15 years to avoid 
     losing his farm, which had been in his family since 1913.
       Mr. Clark's financial problems date to 1978 when, following 
     the trend of the time, he borrowed heavily to expand his 
     holdings, adding 7,000 acres to his original homestead. But 
     interest rates soared to 21 percent in 1979, drought struck 
     in 1980 and hail flattened his wheat and barley crops in 
     1981. By May 1982, the Farmers Home Administration was 
     calling in his entire outstanding debt of $825,000.
       ``Someone like Ralph didn't start out hating the system,'' 
     recalled Sarah Vogel, a lawyer who helped him to postpone 
     foreclosure in 1982 and who is now North Dakota's Agriculture 
     Commissioner. ``He was a genuine, old timey rancher, who grew 
     up without a telephone, who used to deliver mail by horseback 
     because they didn't have roads.''
       In dealing with the Federal bureaucracy, Ms. Vogel recalls, 
     Mr. Clark labored under a hidden handicap: he had never 
     learned to read or write. ``He never admitted it,'' she said. 
     ``I remember driving to the hearing, and he said, `I forgot 
     my glasses at home, could you tell me what that street sign 
     says?' ''
       To handle the paperwork of modern farming, he relied on his 
     wife, Kay, or on his son, Edwin.
       Ms. Vogel's defense of Mr. Clark drew an article in Life 
     magazine and a report by Geraldo Rivera on the ABC News 
     program ``20/20.'' Following this publicity, charitable 
     donations flowed from around the nation to help the 
     beleaguered farmer. Neighbors said financial help and 
     counseling also came in the late 1980's from Farm Aid, a 
     support group now in Cambridge, Mass.
       ``Ralph flunked out of grade school, but he had an ability 
     to mesmerize people,'' said Cecil Weeding, a neighboring 
     rancher who is married to Mr. Clark's sister Ada. ``He was a 
     natural con man.''
       When Mr. Clark and other Freemen farmers had money, they 
     did not always spend it wisely, neighbors said. After winning 
     one stay of foreclosure from Farmers Home Administration, 
     they recalled, he bought a Lincoln Continental. Bill Stanton, 
     a 65-year-old neighbor, who joined the Freemen, was known by 
     neighbors to have spent his Federal subsidy checks on things 
     like a helicopter, a motor home and gambling trips to Las 
     Vegas, Nev., and the Bahamas.
       In the 1980's, opposition to Federal aid became heresy 
     here. Jordan, with only 450 people, is at the center of a 
     semi-desert expanse called the Big Open, where 3,000 people 
     are scattered over 15,000 square miles.
       A smashed windshield greeted Bob Scott, a Montana 
     environmentalist, when he visited Jordan in 1987 to propose 
     that local ranchers be weaned from Federal aid through the 
     creation of a huge deer and bison hunting preserve. ``I 
     remember the Clarks as the ones being the most xenopobic, 
     with the most bizarre ideas,'' Mr. Scott recalled in a 
     telephone interview from his home in Missoula. ``One of the 
     Clarks said we were a cult group that was going to bring AIDS 
     into the area.''
       Increasingly, subsidy checks became crucial for the 
     survival of the Clark clan. In January 1994, the Clarks led a 
     group of armed men to storm the county courthouse here. At 
     issue was a Federal subsidy check that the former wife of 
     Richard E. Clark, Ralph Clark's nephew, was seeking in a 
     divorce payment.
       But time was running out for the Clarks in the conventional 
     courts of the land. On April 14, 1994, Ralph Clark's 
     homestead farm was sold for $50,0000 to an out-of-state 
     creditor bank. In October 1995, K.L. Bliss, a local rancher, 
     paid $493,000 for the 7,000-acre spread that Mr. Clark bought 
     nearly 20 years earlier.
       But two years ago, Mr. Clark gave up on the courts and 
     stopped leaving his farm. From his homestead, renamed 
     ``Justus Township,'' he signed his name to a series of 
     pronouncements setting up a parallel ``common law'' system of 
     marshals and grand juries. According to the Federal Bureau of 
     Investigation, the Clark farm compound also began to compete 
     with the Federal Reserve, issuing its own currency in the 
     form of millions of dollars in bogus checks.
       Two weeks ago, surrounded by Federal agents, embittered by 
     Federal justice and cut off from Federal aid, Mr. Clark 
     ordered a follower to nail to his fence the manifesto that 
     proclaimed: ``Freemen are NOT a part to the de facto 
     corporate prostitute a/k/a/ the United States.''

     Dole Calls Public Housing One of `Last Bastions of Socialism'

                          (By Adam Nagourney)

       Washington, April 29.--Senator Bob Dole called today for an 
     end to Government-assisted housing programs, terming public 
     housing ``one of the last bastions of socialism in the 
     world'' and attacking the Clinton Administration for 
     regulatory excess that he likened to the ``thought police.''
       Mr. Dole called for the elimination of the Department of 
     Housing and Urban Development, and declared that Government 
     had an obligation to maintain basic services for the poor, 
     but he added: ``These programs have failed in that mission. 
     They have not alleviated poverty. They have not; in fact, 
     they've deepened it.
       ``Public housing is one of the last bastions of socialism 
     in the world. Imagine, the United States Government owns the 
     housing where an entire class of citizens permanently live. 
     We're the landlords of misery.''
       With his speech to a convention of real estate agents here 
     this morning, the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee 
     signaled his third attempt in two weeks to define differences 
     between himself and President Clinton. And again, he did so 
     by portraying the two men as occupying opposite ends of the 
     ideological spectrum. He had previously attacked Mr. 
     Clinton's record of judiciary appointments, and over the 
     weekend, he called for a rollback of the 4.3 cent gasoline 
     tax that Mr. Clinton had pushed through as part of the 1993 
     deficit-reduction package.
       Mr. Dole's remarks about public housing were at the heart 
     of a speech that included both a broad range of criticism of 
     Mr. Clinton's record as well as a defense of Mr. Dole's ties 
     to the Republican Congress. Aides to the Kansas Senator 
     believe that Mr. Dole's recent political difficulties, 
     suggested by his poor standing in public opinion polls, have 
     been caused, at least in part, by his association with House 
     Republicans and the difficulties he has encountered in trying 
     to run the Senate as majority leader while running for 
     President.
       Mr. Dole made clear today that he intended neither to step 
     down from his position in the Senate, nor to step away from 
     his colleagues in the House. ``I've read lately that all 
     those radical ideas that we had are the reasons we may be in 
     difficulty,'' said Mr. Dole. ``First of all, I don't think 
     we're in difficulty but secondly, they're not radical 
     ideas.''
       He mentioned in particular the attempts by Congress to 
     balance the budget over seven years. ``We thought it was a 
     pretty good idea,'' Mr. Dole said, ``and it wasn't radical, 
     wasn't some crackpot idea that Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole 
     thought of at midnight some--one night, and said, `Oh, let's 
     do this,' And we did it.''
       Still, Mr. Dole's speech showed the difficulties he has 
     encountered trying to find a middle ground between Mr. 
     Clinton's policies and those of conservative Republicans in 
     Congress. Even as he pointedly rejected suggestions that his 
     political difficulties were

[[Page H4187]]

     caused by this association with Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Dole made a 
     point of saying that he thought Government ``has an 
     obligation to maintain a safety net.''
       And even as he offered a broad criticism of the Department 
     of Housing and Urban Development he offered some praise for 
     the organization he was attacking. ``I think we've certainly 
     downsized it a great deal, and I've said before we could 
     abolish it,'' Mr. Dole said. ``But I think their goals are 
     commendable. They want to reduce the number of homeless; they 
     want to expand housing opportunities and open housing markets 
     to minorities.''
       Mr. Dole suggested that the public housing programs be 
     replaced with a system of vouchers, under which people 
     eligible for public housing assistance would be awarded 
     certificates that they could use to pay for rent in private 
     housing.
       To clear the way for the elimination of the housing agency, 
     Mr. Dole proposed that homeless assistance programs should be 
     transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services, 
     and enforcement efforts be turned over to the Department of 
     Justice.
       Henry G. Cisneros, the Secretary of Housing and Urban 
     Development, said that his department had tried to push the 
     voucher program through, but had encountered resistance from 
     Republicans in Congress. He rejected Mr. Dole's statement as 
     ``election-year simplistic answers. What about all those 
     units, and all those people, and what has been a 60-year 
     consensus on house policy?''
       Beyond policy, Mr. Dole singled out for criticism a senior 
     official in the Department of Housing and Urban Development--
     Roberta Achtenberg--as an example of liberal excesses. He 
     noted that she has lead an effort by HUD to investigate 
     groups that had fought the agency's efforts to build public 
     housing.
       Mr. Dole was referring to two instances in which HUD 
     investigated citizens who sought to block public housing 
     projects by writing letters of protest and gathering 
     petitions.
       Both investigations were scaled back in response to 
     criticism, on orders of Mr. Cisneros. Mr. Dole, recounting 
     the incident today, likened HUD to the thought police and 
     said that in his administration, ``There is no room for 
     discrimination, but there will also be no room for 
     intimidating and intrusive actions.''
       Ms. Achtenberg was the only HUD official Mr. Dole mentioned 
     by name. Her appointment was noteworthy because she was the 
     highest-level open lesbian appointed by the President, and 
     her appointment has been opposed by some conservative 
     Republicans, notably Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, 
     who is a longtime friend and supporter of the Kansas Senator. 
     Mr. Dole's aides said the Senator has singled her out only 
     because she was in charge of the department behind these 
     inquiries, and they were not trying to revive the controversy 
     over her appointment.

                          ____________________