[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.
____________________