Congressional Record, Volume 142 Issue 59 (Thursday, May 2, 1996)

[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.

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