[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 59 (Thursday, May 2, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H4414-H4419]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1215
                           ISSUES OF CONCERN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Ballenger). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from West Virginia [Mr. 
Wise]

[[Page H4415]]

is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. WISE. Mr. Speaker, there are several topics I would like to 
discuss in this allotted time that I think are important and are on the 
floor of the House.
  First is the gas tax. We have heard a lot about that recently, as 
consumer prices have skyrocketed, certainly certain things have to be 
done. I am delighted to see that the President has called for what many 
of us were urging, which is a complete investigation to see whether 
there are any antitrust violations, any evidence of collusion. Even if 
there is not, I think this type of investigation is important. The 
public needs to know what we have all seen at the tank as we have been 
filling it up in the last few weeks, about the rapid escalation of 
gasoline prices.
  Mr. Speaker, I believe I paid $1.49 last night for 89 octane for my 
car, and I know that that is running roughly about what it is across 
not only West Virginia out much of the country. So as these prices 
suddenly skyrocket, people justifiably want to know why. Yes, there are 
possible answers such as failure to negotiate a deal with the Iraqis so 
that sanctions could be lifted and that their oil could then spill into 
the market. The failure to be able to turn out enough refined product 
because of the closure or the lack of refining capability in this 
country because too much petroleum product was converted to heating oil 
during the winter, the very cold winter, and thus taking petroleum that 
otherwise would have been used for refined gasoline off the market, a 
whole list of things could be the reason. But at the same time it is 
very important to have an investigation.

  By the same token, the President has called for the strategic 
petroleum reserve to release 12 million barrels. That seems at least in 
the short term to have had a partial effect, and the futures price of 
gasoline dropped somewhat over the past couple of days. I question 
whether 12 million barrels, which is about a half day's supply in this 
country, whether 12 million barrels will have much of a market impact 
over a period of time, but we will see.
  Mr. Speaker, the Republican leadership and some Democrats are now 
talking about a rollback of the 4.3 cents a gallon that was passed as 
part of deficit reduction in 1993. I do not have problems with that 
rollback. But I do want to make sure that, if it is rolled back, any 
savings of 4.3 cents does not go into pockets of the oil companies, 
does not go into the pockets of perhaps foreign producers. I want to 
make sure it goes into the pockets of consumers.

                              {time}  1230

  So how can you guarantee in this legislation that if you roll back 
the 4.3 cents, that indeed the consumer is getting the benefit of that, 
not the foreign oil producer and not the oil company? That is going to 
be a test that I think is very, very important.
  I do find it interesting that those now calling for that, and 
particularly the Presidential candidate for the Republican Party, that 
those now calling for it previously voted for other gasoline tax 
increases, as high as a dime total. And so I just say that under the 
heading of irony.
  The other irony, I think, is this. I have also heard the charge from 
some of my Republican brethren and colleagues, and particularly the 
Republican nominee for President, that they want to keep referring to 
this 4.3 cents as President Clinton's gas tax, and they point out 
proudly that not one Republican voted for this in 1993. And they are 
correct, not one Republican did vote for that in 1993. But then they do 
not tell you what else they did not vote for in 1993. They did vote in 
that same package for the earned-income tax credit, a tax cut that went 
to every American making less than $26,000 a year, working Americans, 
not those on public assistance, those who are working, particularly 
those at minimum wage. When they voted against that deficit reduction 
package, they voted against a tax cut for 100,000 West Virginians.
  So while they were voting to supposedly spare people a 4-cent-a-
gallon tax increase, they were voting against a tax cut for 100,000 
West Virginians and millions of Americans.
  They were also voting against raising income taxes on who? The low-
income and middle-income rank-and-file American? No, they voted against 
raising income taxes on those earning over $180,000 a year as part of 
that deficit reduction package.
  How many people did that affect? Let us take my State, West Virginia. 
West Virginia had 1,600 people paying increased income taxes; that is 
1,600 out of 1.8 million; 1,600 people paid higher income taxes as a 
result of that deficit reduction package--100,000 West Virginians, 
those earning under $26,000 a year, received a tax cut. So when they 
tell you how proudly they voted against the gasoline tax increase, 
remind them that they also voted against a very significant tax cut.
  They also voted against the deficit reduction package, and I think it 
is important to bring this out as well because when they voted against 
the deficit reduction package, everyone wants to balance the budget, 
but when they voted against it they voted against the deficit reduction 
package that in 3 years has exceeded its goals and has resulted today 
in less Federal workers actually on the payroll than at any time since 
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was President. There have been roughly 180,000 
to 200,000 Federal, there are less Federal workers today then there 
were 3 years ago. The goal was 272,000.
  So when they voted against that deficit reduction package, they voted 
against deficit reduction. They proclaimed at the time, and these are 
the same folks who want to give you their balanced budget version, so I 
think it is important to look at the projections.
  We are talking, Mr. Speaker, about the deficit reduction package of 
1993 and the fact that there were dire predictions made by those on the 
other side about the impact of that. Mr. Speaker, of course what has 
been the impact has been that the deficit has dropped by one-half or 
will have dropped over the 5-year period by one-half, but actually 
today the deficit is about one-half of what it was in 1993.
  The deficit has dropped 3 years in a row, the first time that has 
happened since Harry Truman was President. The deficit has gone from 
almost $300 billion a year to somewhere around $160 billion a year, and 
the deficit, most significantly as a percentage of GDP, gross domestic 
product, which is our economy, that is what everybody puts into the 
economy: wages and sales and whatever; that the deficit, as a 
percentage of our economy, had dropped to about one-half of what is 
was, from roughly 4 to 5 percent of GDP to 2 to 2\1/2\ percent, which, 
I might add, now is one of the lowest rates of any major industrialized 
nation in the world. The United States for the first time is now being 
looked upon as a model for deficit reduction by many of our trading 
partners, including Japan, including Germany, including France and 
many, many others.
  So the folks that were telling us just 3 years about how bad this was 
going to be, they are now the ones who are putting together their own 
so-called balanced budget proposal, and meanwhile, or course, trashing 
the work that has already been done.
  So when they tell you that they voted against a gas tax increase, 
please remind them they voted against significant deficit reduction, 
they voted against asking those who made over $180,000 a year to pay a 
little higher, they are now up to 40 percent income tax. That is down 
from 70 percent in 1980. They voted against a tax cut for working 
Americans under $26,000 a year, and particularly those at the minimum 
wage and slightly higher level. That is what they voted against. And 
they voted against significant deficit reduction.
  Just one final note. They often trot out on the floor here a group 
called the Tax Foundation. I love the Tax Foundation because it was the 
Tax Foundation that 3 years ago, on the floor, every time a Democratic 
Member would stand up to speak for the deficit reduction package, 
somebody would stand up and say, ``Did you know that according to the 
Tax Foundation you will lose x amount of jobs in your district,'' in 
West Virginia, or in Texas, or California or wherever the Democratic 
Member was from.
  Well, of course, the Tax Foundation got it pretty wrong. The deficit 
reduction package did not cause the economy to sink. It caused the 
economy to continue growing. The Tax Foundation got it wrong because 
what they were calling a job killer turned out to be a job producer, 
and yet this is the same

[[Page H4416]]

Tax Foundation that now gets trotted out on the floor to justify the 
current-day Republican proposals, including the balanced budget 
proposal that will be here.
  So I just think it is important to put this in a little perspective.
  There is another perspective, too, that I hope we could agree on a 
bipartisan basis needs to be done where, once again, we are facing a 
rapid run-up of petroleum prices and gasoline prices. $1.45 at the pump 
is pretty tough, particularly when that is a 20- to 30-cent increase 
for many consumers in just the last couple of months. That means that 
that tank which took 13 or 14 dollars to fill now takes over $20 to 
fill, and if you are driving long distances, as many of us in rural 
areas do simply to get to work, you begin to feel it very, very 
quickly. If you are running obviously a small business, transporting 
goods, you begin to feel it very quickly.

  When do we learn collectively as a country, as Republicans, as 
Democrats, about the need for energy independence? How many times do we 
have to go through this? I thought that after the Persian Gulf war, 
when for the very first time Americans sent their sons and daughters to 
defend the oil lifeline, I thought that that would drive the message 
home to all of us as policy makers, as a public, all of us, and 
regrettably we are today more dependent upon foreign-produced oil than 
at any time in our country's history, including from before the Persian 
Gulf War.
  When do we learn? And when do we start seriously funding and 
assisting alternate fuel development? Gasoline is a very nice fuel, but 
I drive a car; in fact, it is parked out in the Capitol parking area 
now; I drive a car that runs on compressed natural gas. I pay about a 
dollar a gallon equivalent for that compressed natural gas.
  In the State of West Virginia, which has had the private sector 
willing to make the investment along with the public sector, willing to 
make some commitments, I can drive almost anywhere in the State on 
compressed natural gas. It is much cleaner for the environment, it is 
much cleaner for my engine, it is much better for both the environment 
and the economy, and the nice thing about natural gas is it is a 
domestic fuel, it is produced almost exclusively in the United States 
of America. You are not having to ship it across oceans to get it here. 
It is cheaper, it is cleaner, and it is, most importantly, domestic.
  There are other alternate fuels as well. I do not rule and just say 
there is one. We need to be funding the electricity battery research. 
That finally is beginning to come on. Whether it is fuel cells, whether 
it is other forms of alternate fuels, this country needs to set a goal 
of being energy independent. It does us no good to constantly be caught 
in the throes of economic and, in some cases perhaps, manipulations 
which we are very subject to when 50 percent and more of our oil comes 
from abroad.
  So my hope is that is something that the Congress can dedicate itself 
to. I think it is significant. I was delighted when Speaker Gingrich 
appointed a task force on alternate fuels, particularly compressed 
natural gas. And so my hope is that this Congress is going to be 
willing not move ahead shortly on some of those areas.
  Now let me talk for a minute about the minimum wage, hot-button item, 
and yet I think rolls into what I was talking about the budget. I think 
there is going to be a vote on the minimum wage. I believe that an 
almost solid bloc of the entire Democratic Party and a significant 
number of Republicans are going to push for that, and indeed the 
minimum wage, which has not been raised legislatively since 1989; the 
last actual increase to $4.25 an hour was in 1991. The minimum wage is 
now at an all-time buying low in 40 years. I think it is interesting to 
note that the minimum wage in the 1950's and 1960's was designed to be 
roughly one-half of the average nonagricultural wage, roughly a 
manufacturing wage, one-half. Today it is barely a third of that. It 
has sunk consistently in buying power and in relation to other wages.
  We talk about welfare reform. As President Ronald Reagan said, the 
best welfare reform is a job. It is pretty hard to ask people to go out 
and get a job if their income steadily sinks.
  Henry Ford had it right. He said, ``If I expect people to buy my 
product, I have got to pay them what it takes to buy it.'' Well, I am 
not saying that minimum wage will buy the kind of vehicles that are 
necessary, but minimum wage is necessary in order to get people up to a 
respectable level so that they can do the things that are so necessary 
for their family.

  I find it interesting that there are a couple of attacks now on the 
minimum wage. One attack has been, ``Well, listen, a minimum wage 
worker is eligible to receive aid to family with dependent children, 
eligible in some cases to receive food stamps, eligible in some cases 
even to receive a Medicaid card, health care for the low income. So 
therefore the minimum wage does not need to be raised because they are 
already getting these other benefits.''
  When was it that the taxpayer was supposed to subsidize work? I 
thought the goal was to make people independent of the Government, not 
to make workers more dependent, and so what we have is the taxpayer 
being asked to subsidize the minimum wage worker.
  I also find it interesting because these standards vary State to 
State, and so what may be a threshold level in one State is not 
necessarily the threshold level for AFDC benefits and others in another 
State.
  I think it is also interesting to note that the argument, and I do 
want to take this argument on: I have heard the argument repeatedly in 
the last couple of days about, well, why is it that President Clinton 
and the Democrats who had control of this House for 2 years prior to 
the present session of Congress, when they had the chance to do 
something about the minimum wage, they did not do it. They did not 
bring a minimum wage bill to the floor. And, yes, that is correct. 
Democrats and President Clinton did not bring a minimum wage bill to 
the floor.
  Now, why was that? Let us look at history. 1993, President Clinton 
and the Democrats passed, and, the Republican leadership proudly 
boasts, with not one Republican vote, that President Clinton and the 
Democrats passed the Earned Income Tax Credit increase. What that meant 
was that low-income working people, those making less than $26,000 a 
year, got to keep more money, and if they made below a certain level, 
they actually got money back from the Federal Government, a tax credit. 
We passed that, Democrats passed that, without any help from this side.
  So that was the minimum wage increase because what that did, in 
effect, was to bring minimum wage workers up through the tax today.
  Incidentally, President Reagan--Ronald Reagan, not exactly a wild-
eyed liberal by anybody's estimation--President Reagan once called the 
earned-income tax credit the real way to boost wages.

                              {time}  1245

  So we worked with what had been a bipartisan approach, the earned 
income tax credit, giving lower-income working people a larger tax 
credit, money back, in effect, to boost the minimum wage worker. That 
was in 1993. In 1994 came the health care debate. If Members remember, 
there was a proposal, the President's proposal, which would have asked 
all employees, I believe, to pay something like 4 percent of payroll to 
assist in providing health care.
  The thought was then if you could get health care to low-income 
workers, that was far better than giving them a quarter or a 50 cents 
or 75 cents an hour increase; that health care was the major need.
  Of course, we pushed ahead with that. Health care did not make it. It 
was defeated. But I find it interesting to note that those who helped 
defeat health care reform are now trumpeting, ``How come there was not 
a minimum wage increase?'' The answer was because that was to be, in 
effect, the minimum wage increase.
  Once they killed health care reform, now they want to kill a minimum 
wage increase, and incidentally, they are also filing proposals in the 
budget to roll back part of the earned income tax credit. So now we 
have it coming all ways: They are against minimum wage, they are 
against health care reform, particularly that which will help low-
income workers, and they are for rolling back the earned income tax 
credit. It is pretty tough, apparently, to be a low-income worker.
  Let me just say, Mr. Speaker, that I support the minimum wage 
increase. I

[[Page H4417]]

have consistently supported it. I have supported it since I was 18 
years old, or actually, let me correct the record, I believe 20 years 
old, and I was working my way through Duke University in Durham, NC, at 
$1.25 an hour in the hospital.
  The only collective bargaining agent I had, and a whole bunch of 
other young people and, incidentally, parents as well, because it was a 
mixture of students and adults working in the hospitals wards, the only 
collective bargaining agent we had was the U.S. Congress. When the 
Congress raised the minimum wage from $1.25 to $1.50, we all got a pay 
increase. That happened about once every 3 or 4 years.
  So yes, I am for the minimum wage. To the argument that, well, the 
minimum wage, I believe two-thirds of it goes to people under 30 years 
old, half of it goes to folks under 25; come again? You mean we are 
supposed to be discouraging our young people from going to work, as I 
did and millions of other Americans have done? How is it we are 
supposed to get through college? How is it we are supposed to begin 
making ourselves independent? How is it that those young people are to 
get ahead?
  I think they are entitled to an adequate minimum wage, and yet, 
indeed, an increasing number actually are now not just the student, the 
teenager, but an increasing number are people trying to raise a family, 
the sole support of their family, single parents, or those working 
another job.
  The minimum wage I think is welfare reform. Once again the ideal is, 
in every piece of welfare legislation, the Republican proposal and the 
Democratic proposals all have a significant work component in it; you 
will be required to work, as it should be. But if you are not going to 
pay an adequate minimum wage, what is the message that you are sending 
out? The message is, we are not serious about work.
  The other thing is, if you are not willing to pay an adequate minimum 
wage or if you are going to ask the Federal Government, the taxpayer, 
to subsidize that minimum wage worker through the welfare program, what 
is the message you are sending out as well? The taxpayer is supposed to 
subsidize the requirement that we all have.
  Minimum wage I think is significant, Mr. Speaker. My hope is that 
finally, after 5 years, we will be able to see a significant minimum 
wage piece of legislation get to the floor.
  Mr. Speaker, while we are talking about minimum wage, that leads into 
growth. Here I may be able to strike a more bipartisan chord that I 
have been so far, because there is a problem that both the Republican 
budget proposal has and the Democrat budget proposals have, whether it 
is the President's proposal or others. That is that there is not enough 
growth.
  Both proposals say that if you take these steps, very tough steps to 
balance the budget in a 6- or 7-year period, that what you will finish 
up with, and really what I guess the goal is at the end of the period, 
is 2.3 percent growth on the average for the 7-year period. So both 
sides say that the best they see is 2.3 percent growth after you have 
gone through all these steps.
  Mr. Speaker, I happen to think that that is a prescription for 
economic disaster, that if we are going to settle for a 2.3 percent 
growth, you might as well close the tent, fold the tents up right now, 
because that is not a growth economy. That is an stagnant economy. That 
is an economy that what we are going to be doing is fighting about 
whether or not to raise the minimum wage for the increasing number of 
lower-wage workers that are coming into the marketplace; because this 
is not the kind of economy, 2.3 percent growth will not boost 
productivity, will not boost investment, and is going to set the stage 
for an increasing severity of problems later on, particularly in Social 
Security, in Medicare, and in pensions.
  Why do I make that statement? I believe firmly that Social Security, 
much of Social Security's future depends upon what the rate of growth 
is now. I hear some who want to predict gloom and doom for Social 
Security: It will not be there when those baby boomers retire, starting 
in 2013 or whatever, is the dire prediction.
  Let us take a brief look at the history of Social Security. The fact 
is that Social Security, when it was created in the mid 1930's, the 
same kind of predictions were often made, incidentally, about it 
not being able to sustain itself, but the fact is that no one can 
predict 40 or 50 years out what the economy is going to be.

  Is there anybody here, Mr. Speaker, able to predict what the economy 
is going to be and what the inflation is going to be in 6 months or a 
year? I do not think so. If so, you people are in the wrong place, 
because a lot of investment houses could use that expertise.
  The reality is that you cannot predict. What you need to do is to 
constantly be monitoring a program just as, starting in the 1930's, 
Congress had to constantly monitor Social Security. Who could have 
predicted two world wars, seven recessions, and an equal number of 
growth spurts, all of which have led us to today?
  By the same token, when Medicare was created in 1965, who could 
predict the rapid run-up in medical costs; the fact that the elderly 
began living much longer, thanks to Medicare? All of which goes to say 
that you need to be constantly monitoring Social Security, but that you 
can make Social Security's demise a self-fulfilling prophecy if you do 
not have adequate growth built into your economic plans and your 
forecasts.
  That is my concern, is that Social Security does run into problems if 
you settle on 2.3 percent growth, which I might add is roughly two-
thirds to one-half that which was the rate of growth in this country 
during the 1950's and 1960's, and even into the early 1970's. I am not 
talking about growth through inflation, I am talking about real 
economic growth.
  So I would say to Democrats, as I say to Republicans, if you are 
going to struggle, if you are going to do this balanced budget approach 
and you are going to struggle for 7 years and make these sacrifices and 
then the best you can do is to promise me a no-growth economy, that is 
not good enough.
  What is it that we ought to be focusing on? We ought to be focusing 
on, yes, balancing the budget, and yes, continued deficit reduction, 
because carrying a high level of debt is not good for anybody. But at 
the same time, let us not lose sight of the real goal. The real goal is 
a full growth economy. You reach that only by increasing productivity. 
You reach that only by increasing productivity. You reach that only by 
setting the conditions such that real wages do increase, not decline, 
as they have for 60 percent of the American working families in this 
country today; that people begin to move ahead, that people are able to 
buy the products.
  I kind of worry as I see wages begin to shrink, real wages; I get to 
worry. Well, yes, it is good business sense, I guess, for this 
corporation to reduce wages so that you go now from $12 to $11 an hour, 
and then somebody else lays a group of people off, and now we are 
paying less over there than we were before, and it is downsizing, it is 
getting mean and lean. Yes, there is a need for some of that.
  But by the same token, at the end of the day, or actually the end of, 
say, a 5-year period, where are we nationally? If people are no longer 
able to afford to buy the homes, the cars, the refrigerators, the high 
ticket items, where are we as an economy? It is possible to get us all 
working for $7 an hour, but when we do, I am not sure who it is that is 
going to be buying what it is we are producing.
  The United States is still the largest single market in the world, 
and yet who is it that is going to be buying the more expensive items, 
the up ticket items that are produced? So that is why you need an 
approach that boosts productivity, boosts wages.
  Let me just outline a couple of items that I would include in this: 
First of all, an increase in the minimum wage, not because it is going 
to produce the kind of growth that I am talking about, but because it 
gets people up to a slightly more equitable level, boosts their buying 
power slightly, makes them a little less wards or dependents of the 
state, and it is also just the proper thing to do, and hopefully, in 
some measure, welfare reform.
  Second, and here I think we can get bipartisan agreement, education 
and training: Consolidating job training

[[Page H4418]]

programs and funding them adequately; consolidating job training 
programs, making it easier for that worker who faces downsizing or who 
wants to increase his or her skill level to get that training that is 
necessary. That is in business's interest, that is in the individual's 
interest, that is in the Government's interest. That I think is 
important.
  Here it has not been smooth sailing on a bipartisan basis, and that 
is student loans. We ought to have as a goal in this country that every 
qualified, emphasize and underline qualified, every qualified student 
will have the ability to go to college; that they will certainly have 
to work for it, that they will have to pay for it, so to pay back a 
loan for it. But the answer is not to cut student loans, as was 
initially proposed in this body many months ago, to cut student loans 
such that the average person was paying $3,000 to $4,000 more for an 
undergraduate loan. I know what that would have done to 35,000 students 
on the Stafford loan program in West Virginia.

  Student loans, or the ability to go to college and to receive a 
higher education, ought to be enhanced, and not reduced. Also, I think 
it is important to recognize the victories that were fought here on 
this House floor and finally won, on keeping the funding at the 
adequate level or semiadequate level for the title I program. That is 
what provides remedial math and reading instruction for many of our 
students across the country. In West Virginia, the cutbacks alone would 
have meant the layoff of 225 specialized title I teachers, 90 aides, 
and roughly 6,500 title I students, elementary school students not 
getting the instructional training they needed.
  Happily, after the House did pass the cuts, they were removed in the 
conference agreement, and the good news is that title I will continue 
at last year's level, meaning that you will not see those kinds of 
cutbacks take place. But we ought to vow that we are not going to have 
that fight again in the upcoming years, that title I's position is 
recognized.
  A minimum wage increase, improvement of education and training. Third 
is infrastructure development. Mr. Speaker, I think it is just crucial 
that we recognize that we are not producing our infrastructure, our 
roads, bridges, our water systems, our sewer systems, our airports our 
telecommunications structures, in some ways, we are not either 
maintaining or building what we need to be a true 21st century economic 
power.
  Indeed, if we look we will find, for instance, that as I recall, 
almost 50 percent of our roads and bridges are somehow deficient, that 
our infrastructure is way behind projected needs. We are spending far 
less percentage today, roughly half for infrastructure, of what we were 
spending just 20 years ago.
  We wonder why, during the 1980's, Japan and other nations moved ahead 
in terms of economic growth. The answer is they put their money into 
infrastructure. Japan, with half the population and half the economy, 
actually spent more in real dollars on infrastructure development than 
did the United States. Then we wonder why our productivity and growth 
was slower during that period of time.
  There are for the first time some interesting studies that show a 
direct correlation between amount invested in infrastructure and 
productivity increase. The reality is that increasing productivity and 
growth is our ticket out of the economic stagnation that we are 
presently in.
  We have to be willing to look at some innovative infrastructure 
approaches. This House voted to take the highway trust fund off-budget, 
for instance, not to make it part of the regular budget process, 
because in the regular budget process you need to be looking at how 
much you are spending on day-to-day expenses: Your salary, gasoline for 
the Federal vehicle, pencils for the courthouse, whatever it is to run 
government on a daily basis.

                              {time}  1300

  That is the operation and maintenance of government. We have got to 
balance that.
  But every family knows that they borrow money for a house, Mr. 
Speaker. I do not know too many people that pay for their house in the 
first year. I know that our mortgage certainly runs 20 years and we 
just refinanced, so I think we are on the hook for a little longer.
  That means, Mr. Speaker, that every family borrows for its house, 
borrows to buy its cars, borrows, most families, for their children's 
education, their college education. So those items that we recognize 
having greater return over a period of time than what we put into it, 
that are investments, those, Mr. Speaker, are capital investments.
  So whether we take the trust funds off budget, or whether we do as I 
have suggested and others on a bipartisan basis have suggested, that we 
devise a capital budget, that we show on one side of the ledger our 
investment and we account for those on a different basis than we 
account for our daily operating expenses, whatever it is, Mr. Speaker, 
this Federal Government needs to move toward it.
  I make an interesting observation. I have spent some time studying 
capital budgeting, one of the more boring subjects, Mr. Speaker, but 
ironically probably one of the most exciting in terms of what could be 
done for growth in this economy, and also to get the Federal budget on 
a sound system.
  I note that every family, every business, every county government, 
every city government and every State has some form of a capital 
budget. There is only one major entity that has no capital budget, the 
Federal Government of the United States of America. It seems to me it 
is time to move in that direction.
  The Federal Reserve, Mr. Speaker, the Congress does not have much 
control over that. The reality is that the continued policy of the 
Federal Reserve, to always be looking over its shoulder at inflation 
while not looking ahead toward boosting growth beyond 2.3 percent, I 
think is a stalemate position that only leads to stagnation. The irony 
to this is that the Congress, even if the Congress could agree on a 
higher growth rate and policies to implement that, if the Federal 
Reserve is still clamping down, then what we have is a governmental 
stalemate.
  The fact is that inflation, which is something that was deeply 
impeded in each of us, the fear of inflation, in the late 1970's, early 
1980's, that that was last year's war. We do not make light of it, we 
do not ignore it. But, by the same token, the international economy has 
changed so significantly, Mr. Speaker, that the competition that is 
abroad is a natural check on rising prices and rising wages in the 
United States.
  So we ought not to always be fighting tomorrow's economic battles 
with the last war's tactics, and so the Federal Reserve is another 
element. At this point I will leave it to jawboning the Federal 
Reserve, but at some point Congress may need to look at what can be 
done to influence.
  Mr. Speaker, let us talk about growth once again. I agree that if we 
could, that 2.3 percent is not the ticket that we want, is not the 
goal; that any budget proposal has to be looking toward boosting that 
significantly; that the way we get there is, through equity, basically 
is first a minimum wage increase, second is education and training 
initiatives, both in job training, recognizing that the average adult 
is going to have to be retrained 7 to 8 times during our working lives, 
by adequately funding the student loan program, by making sure that the 
special education programs funded by the Federal Government are at an 
adequate level, such as the title I program; that this country embark 
upon an infrastructure maintenance and development effort similar to 
what President Eisenhower initiated with the interstate highway system 
back in the 1950's; that this Nation recognize that growth is a 
desirable component of any budget policy, and that this Government put 
its books on the same basis that every other entity in this country, 
whether private or public, has with some sort of capital budgeting 
approach.

  All of these are very, very crucial.
  Another pitch for education, Mr. Speaker, is that I look at history, 
recent history, since World War II, and I see the single greatest 
economic accelerator in our country was the GI bill. It was when 
millions of veterans came home from World War II and they did not know 
what kind of job market they were getting into. As they returned, the 
Congress on a bipartisan basis enacted the GI bill which said, ``We're

[[Page H4419]]

going to assist you to get the education you need to boost your skills 
and your opportunities.''
  What the Congress expended in increased educational opportunities was 
repaid to the Federal Government within 10 to 12 years. But the 
economic accelerator of that has gone on for decades as we have seen 
those men and women who got the chance to upgrade their skills, to 
improve themselves, go on to much higher income levels, to being able 
to produce much more for our economy and themselves.
  So just as the GI bill produced that kind of economic growth that was 
so important following World War II, so it is that we need to take that 
lesson from history and vow to do the same for our present day workers 
and young people.
  I want to speak for a second, Mr. Speaker, on the health care 
legislation that is emerging. The House and the Senate have both passed 
reform measures. They are incremental. They deal with limited areas. 
The reality is that that is the best we are going to get this year and 
probably to the next few years is incremental, and that is fine. We 
will move on that basis, addressing particular needs and in so doing 
trying to cover more and more.
  The basic premise of this legislation is that it would make it much 
more difficult, indeed, to ban denying somebody health insurance 
because of a preexisting condition that they might have. That is very 
important. The second is that it would make it much easier for an 
individual who leaves one workplace where they are covered by health 
insurance to carry that health insurance to another workplace.
  Certainly many of us have become aware of job lock, where a family is 
afraid to leave a job they have even if they could boost their wages, 
boost their opportunities, because in so doing they may endanger the 
health insurance which covers their children. So the House and the 
Senate have passed legislation. They are now trying to work out the 
differences.
  The Senate has a piece, they did add an amendment that I consider 
very important. I am proud to have joined on a bipartisan basis with 
other Members to support parity for mental health benefits. The fact is 
that 30 million Americans at any time may be having trouble, may be 
suffering some sort of mental concerns, mental problems, emotional 
distress and only 20 percent of those will be seeking help. The fact is 
that most insurance does not encourage us to be seeking assistance for 
any kind of emotional distress, emotional disturbance, or mental 
illness.
  Every study has documented that the amount of time lost in 
productivity to this economy because of mental health problems is way 
into the hundreds of billions of dollars. At some point one out of five 
Americans is going to have a problem with mental health, and so it 
becomes important that we recognize this.

  I have heard all the arguments about how, well, mental health is 
different than physical health, and we can identify a physical illness 
and we know how many treatments to give it, but mental health, how do 
we put some kind of handle on that? How do we identify how many 
treatments are necessary to deal with a psychiatric problem or an 
emotional problem?
  I guess I look at it this way. How do we identify how many treatments 
are necessary for chronic back pain? How do we identify what it is 
going to take for many of the types of pains or migraine headaches or 
other problems that people are afflicted with?
  The fact is that physical science is not a complete science, yet and 
what we are learning is that mental health is indeed much more of a 
science than what was conceived of just 20 years ago. When I was 
working in that hospital at minimum wage, I was working in a 
psychiatric facility, and I am still struck by the incredible changes 
that have taken place in mental health during that period of time.
  Thirty years ago, not quite 30 actually but, say, 25 years ago when I 
might have been up and down the hall all night with a young person 
afflicted with a schizophrenic process, because outside of Thorazine we 
did not really know what to do except sedate them, today the National 
Institute of Mental Health, the research that former Congressman Sil 
Conte was so responsible for getting started and funded, and creating 
the decade of the brain and the amazing research that has been done 
with BET technology, with MRI's, all of that, has made great 
breakthroughs in the treatment of mental illnesses. So that today you 
would not be having to walk the floors all day and all night with that 
affected individual. You would be administering some basic medications, 
you would be taking certain steps that were unknown just a few short 
years ago.
  So that is the importance of moving ahead in research, of moving 
ahead in treatment techniques, and also moving ahead in recognizing the 
parity of mental health with physical health and, indeed, recognizing 
there is a holistic approach that needs to be taken here. Mental health 
and physical health are really one in many ways. We have not thought 
about it that way in the past. That is why this legislation that is in 
the Senate that would, in addition to safeguarding a person's right to 
gain insurance and not be denied because of preexisting conditions, the 
legislation that would protect the individual's ability to carry their 
insurance from one job to another, that is why that amendment is so 
important, and I hope the House conference will adopt it, that would 
say that mental health is to be considered the same in insurance as 
physical health and that there should be parity between the two. That 
is the humane approach. It is also the scientific approach and the 
proper one.

  And so, Mr. Speaker, I join with many other Members, Republican and 
Democrat, on both sides of the aisle and in both Chambers, the House 
and the Senate, in urging that that step be taken.
  Mr. Speaker, I might also say that health care can be part of that 
growth package I was talking about because one of the areas that so 
affects people, so makes them back up and say, ``Well, maybe I won't 
take that chance and become a small business person, maybe I won't take 
chance and become an entrepreneur, because if I leave my regular job, I 
leave my insurance and I don't want to leave my children naked without 
it,'' maybe to that welfare recipient who says, ``If I go and take this 
job, I lose my Medicaid card, which I'm prepared to give up for myself 
but I'm not prepared to sacrifice for my children,'' maybe by providing 
adequate health care and access to health care, then that too becomes a 
component of that growth package. So we add health care now to minimum 
wage increase, to education, and training, to infrastructure 
development, to capital budgeting and building a growth component into 
our Federal budget, and also now we add health care to make it a total 
package.
  Mr. Speaker, I am going to be talking a lot more about growth. My 
hope is that Members on both sides of the aisle will join in this 
discussion and recognize something that actually, I think, began to 
develop in the Republican primaries. While I have to be honest, they 
did not invite me to participate as much as they might have in that 
process, I do think that the useful debate was started by Steve Forbes 
and by some of the others about the role of growth in this whole budget 
process.
  Everybody agrees on the need for a balanced budget, but on the way to 
balancing the budget, if we run the economy into the ground, what have 
we accomplished? What we have accomplished is at the end of 7 years, we 
may have a balanced budget--I do not think so--we may have a balanced 
budget, but we will have an economy that is incapable of generating the 
jobs and opportunity that we want, and in so doing will be generating 
future and greater deficits.
  That is not a situation any of us want. We do not want to be 
generating future problems for Social Security and Medicare and many of 
these other programs. So we ought to be able to rally and come together 
around the growth initiative and say to both Republicans and Democrats 
alike, 2.3 percent growth just does not get it and we need to be 
focusing on something much more attainable, much more achievable, and 
something that truly reflects where it is we want the American economy 
to be.

                          ____________________