[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 69 (Thursday, May 16, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H5268-H5275]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PROGRAMS THAT HELP PEOPLE MOST GET BIGGEST BUDGET CUTS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. 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, we have just completed phase I of the most
important process that takes place here in the Congress, and that is
the budget of the United States of America for a 1-year period that
deals with the fiscal 1997 budget, which will run from October 1, 1996
to September 30, 1997.
It is important that the public understand that the budget that we
have discussed today in the budget process is only the beginning. It
sets the upper limits in terms of expenditures in broad categories,
that the real spending process which gets into great detail is the
appropriations process.
Now, the Committee on Appropriations oversees the appropriation
process, and the way the budget appropriations process was handled in
the first half of the 104th Congress, it may be that the Committee on
Appropriations could just send the rest of us home and take over and
run the rest of the session because the other committees have very
little power in the decision making, and this particular Congress,
controlled by the Republican majority, we have less power than ever.
You know, if Congress really were to be truthful about the way it is
organized, about who has real power, then it is the Committee on
Appropriations, it is the Committee on Ways and Means, the two or three
committees that the way they have stacked the deck and the way they
guarantee control from the top have all the power. The Committee on
Appropriations has far too much power.
You could organize Congress another way. Each one of the committees
that
[[Page H5269]]
has jurisdiction and authorization could also have the power to
appropriate because they have the knowledge, they deal with the
particular functions in an ongoing fashion, they have the oversight
responsibility. They know more about each one of the functions than the
Committee on Appropriations knows.
For example, in education you have a Committee on Economic and
Educational Opportunity, which has existed for years under another name
called Education and Labor Committee, and members of that committee
know a great deal about education legislation, they know a lot about
how the schools operate, they know a great deal about policies and
experiments and research and the knowledge that has accumulated on that
committee. But when it comes to making the vital decisions about how
money is going to be appropriated, it is the Committee on
Appropriations which will make the decisions about how money is
appropriated for education.
Now, most corporations would go out of business if they were
organized that way, where the greatest amount of knowledge and know-how
is concentrated in one place and the decision making, which is vital,
is concentrated another place. But that is the way it operates.
So the budget starts the process, education is function 500, and this
budget sets the parameters in terms of we cannot go over the figures
that are set in the budget process for education. Of course, the
figures are set not just by this House of Representatives, but the
Senate also will have to deliberate and pass their own budget bill.
There will be a reconciliation, and then the Senate and the House
together will have the final say on this particular budget process
because it does not go to the President.
The President started the budget process when he sent a budget to us,
and these are reactions and responses to his budget. So when the budget
process is finished, he does not get it back; he will not have a chance
to veto the budget. Each one of the appropriation bills that then comes
out of the budget process will go to the President in each one of these
functions: Labor, education, health care, et cetera.
I think it is important to take note of this at this critical point.
We are often to the process which matters most to the American people.
How will the Federal dollars be allocated? How will the dollars that
flow into the Federal Government from all over America--they are not
Federal dollars; that is the wrong term--all dollars come from
neighborhoods, they come from families, they come in individuals. The
dollars that make up the Federal Budget are our dollars, and how will
they be allocated to meet our needs, to meet the needs of the majority
of the people? That is a critical question.
There has been a lot of talk about States rights and States rights to
do various things, and in many cases States are assuming rights to
spend money that comes back to them from the Federal Government, great
amounts of money that did not flow out of their particular State. There
are a large number of States that get far more money from the Federal
Government than they pay into the Federal Government from their
population.
That is the way the American system is structured. We are one Nation,
and the money does not flow to the States on the basis of their
contribution, it flows based on many different factors. Some States are
more fortunate than others at landing defense contracts. Some States
are more fortunate than others in having big power projects. The TVA is
not located in New York because we did not have the kind of situation
where the water and the necessary conditions to create a Tennessee
Valley Authority was there. So Tennessee Valley Authority was a Federal
project that poured large amounts of Federal money into Tennessee. For
various reasons, NASA is located in Florida, and part of it is located
in Texas, and on and on it goes.
The Speaker's district has the largest contract to manufacture
fighter planes. F-22 fighter planes are manufactured in Marietta, GA,
which is part of the Speaker's district.
So you have large amounts of money flowing to the States from the
Federal Government, and the States now said they want the right to do
everything themselves. I would be willing to listen to that argument
and say that in this budget-making process let us give States the right
to spend money that they generate; the amount that they receive from
the Federal Government, which is above the amount that came out of the
State in terms of taxpayers, let us cut that off and give it back to
the States which are generating the money.
I have made this argument many times because I really am very
concerned about the fact that traditionally New York State has always
been on the giving side and the giving has been very great, you know.
It rose as high as $23 billion in 1993, and in 1994 it is $18 billion.
We are sending to the Federal Government more than $18 billion more
than we are getting back from the Federal Government. Before that, in
1993, we were sending $23 billion, and I am very concerned about this,
and I keep speaking about it and bringing it up as often as I can
because I think that New Yorkers ought to know this, people in New York
ought to know this, and I think the people in the other States on the
other end who are receiving the money ought to know this, that if we
have States' rights, the people in New York would be far better off if
they kept their $18 billion at home, and the States that are receiving
the extra money, let them fend for themselves.
You know, that is an argument in States' rights that nobody has
offered, but we ought to take a close look at that.
So as we go into the budget-making process, the appropriations
process will follow that. It is important to understand some of these
basic contradictions and facts. But understand also that for the 104th
Congress under the leadership of the Republican majority, this is now
phase II, phase II of the drive to remake America.
You know, Speaker Gingrich always says that politics is war without
blood and that we are in a war to remake America. Those analogies and
the comparisons with war are the Speaker's comparisons, and we have to
live with them, I guess, and certainly they have prosecuted the effort
so far as it was war. We have had a situation where the Republican
majority has moved in a way that you move in war, you know, with a
rapid movement. You know, it is revolution, it is extremism, it is not
letting up, pushing to try to accomplish a great deal over a short
period of time. There is a sense of desperation introduced into
legislative process. They want to remake America, and they see
themselves as having 2 years to remake America.
Automatically you have a process by which mistakes are bound to be
made, dislocations in great amounts are going to take place. Maybe a
great amount of people are going to suffer. The Speaker says that it is
war without blood, but maybe some people are gong to bleed as a result
of the rapid movement of our Government to remake itself.
So far in phase I, I would say that the Republican majority has been
very successful. I apologize to my Democratic colleagues who like to
say that we have succeeded, but if you look at the situation in terms
of the budget process, the Republican majority, the juggernaut, the
great Wehrmacht of the Republican's war machine that has moved forward
and established beachheads and gone for the jugular in so many cases
laid out a plan where they were going to cut the budget by huge amounts
of money and moved in very radical ways, very extreme ways, to
accomplish that. As we all know, at one point they even shut down the
Government, we shut down the Government more than once, as a result of
the extremist agenda that they were trying to accomplish.
Well, it was all over, and we finally got all of the appropriations
bills passed. Too many Democrats have said that we won a major victory.
We did not win a major victor. The Republicans achieved $23 billion in
cuts. There were $23 billion in cuts, and you might say, well, we
wanted to downsize and streamline the Government, so why not call it a
victory for everybody? Problem is that all the cuts are concentrated in
nondefense areas. It is the programs that help people most that receive
the biggest cuts.
Yes, we won some victories in terms of phase I in this war to remake
America, we made them back away from $5
[[Page H5270]]
billion in education cuts. Thanks to the common sense of the American
people and their understanding of what was going on in education, they
rallied, they let their Representatives know that they understood the
nature of the education cuts, and they put enough people on the spot to
make the majority retreat on $5 billion worth of education cuts.
But there were $23 billion in other cuts that were made. Some of them
might have been legitimate. There is always waste in a government as
big as ours, and nobody is going to argue that you cannot cut a lot of
waste out. But we wonder if they really zeroed into places where the
waste is. Pentagon is not downsizing. The Pentagon military
establishment, as we know it, is not streamlining. In fact, in this
budget, phase II of the new budget that was passed today, there is $13
billion in increases for military expenditures. So they are not
downsized.
In this budget there is no mention made of the CIA bringing it under
control and guaranteeing that you never have a situation again where
the CIA will accumulate $2 billion in a petty cash fund. I talked about
that before. Our auditors discovered that $2 billion was accumulated in
the CIA petty cash fund.
What steps are we taking to see that does not happen again? We have
the Federal Reserve, that had $3.7 billion accumulated in what they
call the rainy day slush fund, the rainy day fund for the Federal
Reserve Bank, and in 79 years they never had a rainy day. The General
Accounting Office said they never had losses in 79 years. So that is a
place where waste is taking place on a large scale; $3.7 billion in the
Federal Reserve.
There is nothing in this budget that talks about efforts to collect
money that is lying around in various agencies like that.
So we have phase II now beginning, and the budget that has been
introduced by the Republican majority for phase II in their war to
remake America, this budget is as extreme as the first one was. There
are a few trimmings here and there, but basically there is no change in
direction. So anybody that thinks that we have stopped the juggernaut,
that we have contained the war to remake America, the extreme war to
remake America, you are dreaming. It is not happening. In this cut
there are extreme--in this budget there are extreme cuts.
I am glad to see that again we made a breakthrough on education.
There are no proposals to totally eliminate the Department of Education
anymore, so that is a plus because we were in a situation where we were
about to eliminate the Department of Education and become the only
industrialized nation in the world not to have a central department of
education.
{time} 1800
Our public education is very weak as it is, and we do not necessarily
want the kind of bureaucracy that some of the other nations have, and
we do not want to give the kind of power to our Department of Education
that they may have in Germany or in Japan, but we definitely need to
keep the Department of Education.
Mr. Speaker, I applaud the Republican majority for backing away from
the threat to eradicate the Department of Education. But it still has
many education cuts. The budget eliminates many education programs.
What is particularly troublesome is the deep cuts in training
programs; for instance, the funding for programs in the careers bill.
The careers bill is where they lumped all the training programs
together in one bill, and they have cut that by 42 percent, 42 percent.
That is going toward one-half. These are job training programs.
Mr. Speaker, how do we expect to go forward into the 21st century and
to readjust our economy to meet all the challenges of a high-technology
economy if we are not going to give people training? How do we expect
to have a work force that is being dislocated, downsized, and shuffled
around? The legitimate term for it is ``churning''; there is churning
going on in the work place, there is churning going on in the big
corporations, and the workers in the process are being churned around,
spewed out, and they can always find a job somewhere else, although
they have lost their regular job that they might have been on 10 or 15
years.
So the churning process, if it is going to be humane and going to
help people pick up and go on, it needs to have training programs, but
the training programs have been cut by 42 percent in this Republican
phase II budget.
As I said before, the phase II budget is really a continuation of
what we had before. It is not very different in every respect. It is
still extreme. The retreat on education is only there because of the
fact that we have gotten the American people alerted. They are watching
to see what happens with education. They are on the job, they are
letting their Representatives know, Republicans and Democrats, and they
will not tolerate any drastic cuts in Head Start programs, they will
not tolerate drastic cuts in title I programs. So we have that much
accomplished, but everything else is still moving forward.
The contract to remake America and the budget, the budget-balancing
effort, is really an assault on the New Deal programs that were
developed by Franklin Roosevelt. It is an assault on the programs that
were developed in the Great Society, programs by Lyndon Johnson. It is
a frontal assault of trying to wipe those programs out.
Saving money is only secondary, if it is important at all, because
they are proposing to put large amounts of money into star wars, which,
of course, has accomplished very little. Billions have been spent there
already and it has accomplished very little.
There is no great hurry to invest large amounts of money in building
a star wars system or a system to intercept missiles, when the
technology probably will be far better if we wait a little later to do
the building. So the President's proposal that we do research and we
prepare is more than adequate. But they are going to waste money in
that area, so money is really not the problem. Money is not the
greatest concern.
Destruction of the New Deal programs, destruction of the Great
Society programs: They want to destroy Medicaid, they want to destroy
Medicare, they want to wipe out programs that have benefited people for
years, and they want to do this in the interest of a small, elite group
that will make a great deal of money off the destruction of these
programs and the replacement of these programs with other programs.
So it is important to see the new budget as phase 2 of the war. The
new budget is a blueprint for invasion, for destruction. The new budget
is more of the scorched earth policy that started with the majority
takeover in 1994. It is extreme, it is revolutionary, it is harmful.
People will literally die as a result of what is being done in this
area.
In education and training, for example, the details can become
important, depending on where you sit. Goals 2000, which they proposed
to eliminate last time, is again eliminated in this budget. Innovative
education programs, strategies, grants, eliminated. Bilingual and
immigrant education programs are eliminated. New funding for Perkins
loans, student-centered grants are eliminated. Howard University
funding is eliminated.
Libraries are cut 20 percent; libraries, which have a tiny amount of
money, I think $110 million, a very tiny amount of money when you
consider all the libraries across the country that exist and that need
help as we go toward meeting the educational needs of the 21st century,
they are cut 30 percent.
Twenty-four other education programs are eliminated. Aid to
education, institutional development, is cut $46 million. National and
community service programs again are eliminated, AmeriCorps.
That is a bargaining chip. They eliminate a program that they know
has a high priority at the White House, and they are going to bargain
later on to get the White House to accept some of these other cuts as a
result of restoring that.
The Davis-Bacon Act and the Service Contract Act are eliminated. The
Davis-Bacon and Service Contract Act require prevailing wages to be
paid on Federal construction jobs and in Federal facilities across the
Nation, and that is eliminated; although what has happened is that the
prevailing wages are very close, in most cases, to minimum wages in
many parts of the country at this point.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting will be eliminated,
privatized
[[Page H5271]]
by the year 2002. The National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities,
eliminated.
So what is new? The battle plan remains the same, the invasion plan
remains the same. The scorched earth policy remains the same. There is
not very much that is new here.
In energy, in a time of skyrocketing increases in energy prices, this
budget proposes real cuts in energy funding by 47.05 percent. It wipes
out all funding for research on fossil fuels, solar, and renewable
energy and energy conservation, at a time when we are recognizing more
and more that our environment and the dangers that the environment
faces from pollution are not fantasies of environmentalists, they are
very real.
People have died of certain diseases. Asthma is increasing in our big
cities in large amounts. The percentage increases are quite large of
people suffering from asthma and other respiratory diseases. The
handwriting is on the wall that the environment is not something to be
left to a handful of people who have a vision, but the environment
ought to concern everybody. Then we are going to wipe out all funding
for research in the areas that will deal with the pollution factors
that related to that increase.
Transportation. It phases out funding that supports mass transit
operations. Again, pollution will be increased, because in big cities
people will drive cars more and more and use other vehicles above the
surface because they cannot get money to keep supporting our subway
systems. Even our bus systems above ground that do cause a problem with
pollution, it is better to have more buses carrying more people than to
have more cars carrying more people, because you get less of a
pollution factor when you have buses instead of cars. But we are
cutting the capital assistance to mass transit. We are eliminating any
new starts, support for any new starts in the mass transit system.
At a time when we are trying to get people off of welfare and get
them to work, we are going to make it more difficult for them to get to
work, because it is going to cost more to get to work. We also at the
same time are going to continue polluting the air.
In the area of crime and law enforcement, this budget defunds, wipes
out the COPS Program, and abandons efforts to put 100,000 new police
officers on the street by the year 2000. We thought we had settled that
one, it is such a popular program across the country. We thought that
the extremists would certainly yield to common sense and yield to the
fact that the American people had made it clear that they want the COPS
Program, they want the cops on the streets. But in this budget, no, we
continue the same practice that was started in the first budget of this
session. The extremist blueprint calls for an elimination totally of
the COPS Program.
The earned income tax credit, which is a way to give tax relief for
low-income working people, we got a $20 billion cut in this budget for
the earned income tax credit, which really provides great relief to
people at the lowest levels. They say they want a tax cut, but the one
tax cut that is already in effect, they take it away, in effect, for
people at the lowest levels, they take it away.
They still want a tax cut, however. It is being proposed for the rich
in large amounts. Twenty billion dollars has been taken away from the
earned income tax credit. This cut reduces the after-tax increase of
almost 8 million households in America; 6.8 million children will be
hurt by this cut. This change is particularly offensive in light of the
Republican rhetoric about moving people from welfare to work. We ought
to make work pay. We ought to reward people when they go to work, but
the earned income tax credit, which was doing that, is being
drastically cut.
There is nothing in this budget about minimum wage. Minimum wage is
not a function of government. The taxpayers do not have to pay for
minimum wage, so it is not in the budget. It will not be in the
appropriations bill. A minimum wage increase is a situation where
employees pay additional wages.
The proposal that was put forth by the gentleman from Missouri [Mr.
Gephardt], the Democratic minority leader, and the proposal that was
endorsed, sanctioned by President Clinton, is a proposal for a 45 cent
increase over the present minimum wage; 45 cents one year and 45 in
another year, 90 cents that will not be in the budget, 90 cents that
the taxpayers do not have to shell out. So the minimum wage increase is
not going to cost us anything. Seventy-four percent of the people in
America say that a minimum wage increase is a fair approach to
guaranteeing that people have the opportunity to earn a decent living.
Nevertheless, the extremist blueprint, the invasion plan, refuses to
entertain any increase in the minimum wage. I said before that this is
about more than saving money, and the fact that the Republican majority
has dug in and is adamantly opposed to a minimum wage increase is just
one more indication that saving money and balancing the budget are not
the only agenda.
The agenda is designed to wipe out the New Deal programs, to wipe out
the Great Society programs, and the agenda is designed secretly to wipe
out the gains made by working people, to destroy the effectiveness of
unions. A tax on working people, a tax on unions, are not part of the
Contract With America. You will not find anything in there that says
they want to destroy Davis-Bacon, that they want to change the Fair
Labor Standards Act so that people cannot get their overtime.
Nowhere in the Contract With America does the Republican majority say
we want your overtime. But they do want your overtime. Not only are
they moving in ways which deny a minimum wage increase to all workers,
but the workers who have been working for years, the workers who have
enjoyed overtime when they had the necessity to be employed overtime,
they would get overtime pay, we are not being told that they should not
get overtime pay, that they should get comp time.
So the blueprint for the second half of the Republican war to remake
America, it wants your overtime. One of the targets, one of the
objectives is to take your overtime; nor to give you a minimum wage
increase, but also to take your overtime. It is not in the budget. I am
digressing from discussion of the budget, but it is part of the design
to remake America.
It is part of a situation where, to please contributors, to please
certain elite groups, the workers must be sacrificed, the workers must
be given the status of serfs, peons, or sharecroppers. The workers must
be put in a position where they have to beg. They must be put in a
position where they have no power.
There are other moves to change labor law which we will discuss next
week, but certainly the minimum wage, denial of the minimum wage
increase, it should be noted, is not a budgetary item. It does not cost
the taxpayers anything, but that is part of this great blueprint.
First I want to comment for the tax package. The EITC is one place
where taxes are being added, and a tax increase is being forced on the
low-income people by removing $20 billion in funding for the EITC. The
tax package in this budget, on the other hand, does still provide for
people who are rich to have a decrease in their taxes, and part of the
drive to cut Medicare and to cut Medicaid and many other worthwhile
programs is to generate still the funds to fund the tax increase.
Probably the most devastating part of this effort to remake America
is the part that focuses its guns on Medicare and Medicaid. That is a
life and death matter. You are dealing with people's health and you are
dealing with lives. We have large expenditures for Medicare, we have
large expenditures for Medicaid, yes.
{time} 1815
I can think of no more noble expenditure of public funds than to
expend those funds to promote the health of people or to save lives. In
New York State, we have large expenditures of funds for Medicare and
Medicaid. In fact, our State has been criticized for spending more on
Medicaid than any other State in the Union.
Yes, we do have those large expenditures. It costs the people of the
State a great deal because they are matching, New York State matches
the funds 50 percent, unlike other States that have a better match
where the Federal Government pays a larger percentage than
[[Page H5272]]
the State. The percentage paid for Medicaid in New York State is 50
percent. So we are spending large amounts of money like anywhere else
in the country.
We probably could trim the budget by eliminating waste, we could
probably trim the budget by eliminating some corruption. Waste and
corruption always exist in any program where human beings are involved.
The minute you invent the program, the hustlers and the swindlers will
move in and find a way to unjustly squeeze large amounts of money out
of the program.
Therefore, you have to have inspectors general and you have to have
strict law enforcement, you have to have accountability. We just always
assume that any program, and it does not matter whether it is health
care or housing, in the private sector they have devices going all the
time to protect the interests of the employers and the owners from
their own employees. Stealing is one of the ongoing universal traits
through the world of human beings.
So Medicaid can be cut for corruption and for waste. Nobody wants
Medicaid to operate more effectively and more efficiently than the
constituents in my district. Since the beginning of Medicare and
Medicaid, we have watched abuses and complained about abuses and sought
to have the money directed as much as possible in providing health care
and less in making doctors rich or in making health care facilities
rich. It has been an ongoing struggle.
There was a time when people worked strictly on charitable
contributions. That was a painful situation where most people who
needed health care had to go to an emergency room. Then we did move
into a period where Medicaid was in operation and poor people who
qualified through the means test for Medicaid could for the first time
have the luxury of preventive health care. They could have a doctor,
they could have a situation where they did not have to wait until they
were half dead to go to the emergency room.
But we saw the Medicaid mills develop. Medicaid mills were obvious
facilities that were taking large amounts of money and giving poor
service, and we complained about those for years, and we saw the waste
and wondered if the system was not designed to guarantee that certain
people would get rich. So there have been improvements in that. There
are still further improvements that can be made.
Now we have the HMO's, the health maintenance organizations. In many
ways health maintenance organizations are a big improvement over
Medicaid mills. Health maintenance organizations when they are
operating properly and when they respect the patients and the community
that they operate in are a great improvement over Medicaid mills, but
if health maintenance organizations are to move in ways which try to
give less service and make more money, then they become worse than the
Medicaid mills and must be stopped.
So we have a situation here where there is still a drive on to remake
Medicare and to remake Medicaid. This second phase of the Republican
majority's war to remake America does let up a little on Medicare, but
it becomes worse for Medicaid than it was before. The Republican
proposal for Medicare cuts funding $168 billion over the next 6 years.
It continues to rely on the untested and potentially dangerous medical
savings account, known as MSA. Medical savings accounts are the
centerpiece of the Republican proposals for Medicare.
The proposal would set up a system whereby the healthiest and the
wealthiest seniors would leave the Medicare system and many of the
doctors who treat them would refuse to continue treating other seniors
who depend on Medicare. The proposal could truly end universal health
care coverage for the elderly.
In other words, Medicare is only about 30 years old and Medicare
could be brought to its knees if you introduce medical savings
accounts, because medical savings accounts would cover from 85 to 90
percent of the people who are healthy and who need very little health
care. The insurance companies would move in and pick off those people,
and the number of people in the Medicare system would drop so
drastically and to such a low point until the funding of the Medicare
system would fall apart.
So the MSA is a direct threat, it is a gun aimed at the heart of the
Medicare system. But that is being proposed again with great gusto. As
you know, it is already in legislation that is moving through the
House. The Senate and House have agreed and will soon send a bill to
the President which might contain the MSA proposal. The MSA proposal
has received few public hearings, very few people know about it. I am
taking the time to talk about it here now because most people just know
it as a set of initials. The MSA, as one respected columnist Robert J.
Samuelson recently said in the Washington Post, quote, ``we should not
unleash a health care upheaval simply as an afterthought. Clearly this
proposal would cause serious harm to America's senior citizen
population and it goes far beyond any change that the electorate
wants.''
The people, the voters, the patients do not want MSA's. It will be a
radical change in their health care and wipe out a system that they
have come to depend on.
Of course, finally, the Republican plan for Medicaid is even more
extreme and it has a potential to cause as much or more harm than the
Medicare package. Medicare is a basic program whereby the Federal
Government helps States provide health care for the poorest and most
vulnerable people in our Nation. This budget proposes to cut Federal
Medicaid funding by $72 billion.
To make matters worse, the Republican proposal allows the States to
drain large amounts of money out of the system by significantly
reducing the requirement that the States have a maintenance of effort.
At the same time it allows a return to the State financing gimmicks of
the past that were banned in 1992 at the urging of the Bush
administration.
The majority's plan will send a loosely defined block grant back to
the States without the current guarantees of care for low-income
children, pregnant women, disabled people or senior citizens. By
relying heavily on the Republican Governors for the design of their new
Medicaid package, the Republican Congress has proposed a program that
allows States to reduce their financial commitment to the program
without any guarantee that poor people and seniors will have the
necessary care.
The Republican plan abolishes the current entitlement for
individuals. Entitlement. Remember the word ``entitlement.'' There is
probably no more noble concept in government than entitlement.
Sometimes it is abused but when you have entitlements for means-tested
cases, means-tested entitlements, means-tested entitlements, it means
that you have to prove and show that you are poor, that you are in need
in order to be able to qualify for the entitlement.
We have some entitlements that are not means-tested. The agricultural
entitlements are not means-tested. You can be a millionaire and still
get agricultural subsidies. The biggest socialist program in America,
the most socialist program that continues to exist and over the next 7
years will still be with us, is the agricultural subsidy program.
It has many different facets. Agricultural subsidies for various
reasons, there are Farmers Home Loan Mortgages, there are many, many
different ways in which socialism and agriculture takes care of people
who have a great deal of money.
In fact, in Montana I point out, in Montana, the Freemen out there,
the siege that is going on now, those people are people who receive
large amounts of money. They are led by a person who received up to
$800,000 in Federal loans and subsidies, and he does not want to pay it
back. They reached the point where they felt they had the right to keep
it and the right to not be held accountable for paying it back. Their
property was taken, so they are in a revolutionary mode now. They have
guns and are ready to fight because the subsidy, the socialism in
agriculture has thoroughly corrupted them to the point where they have
lost their perspective completely.
So the loss of the entitlement, benefits defined by the State, when
you lose the entitlement, the Federal Government no longer stands
behind the guarantee of health care to everybody who
[[Page H5273]]
needs it and if you meet the means test, you lose the entitlement, the
block grant goes to the State, the State has a finite, set amount of
money in their budget, when they spend that amount of money, then the
people who are in need after that will not get any help.
The States will also define the benefits that continue to go to some
groups that are covered by Medicaid. States will not have to provide
health care to certain people that are covered right now. Children in
poverty will not be fully covered because the Republican proposal, the
scorched earth proposal goes after the health care of children between
the ages of 13 and 18.
Children ages 13 to 18 living in poverty would lose their Medicaid
coverage because they are not on the list of people that the Federal
legislation would require the States to serve. So a State could cut
that out if it wants to. Disabled persons, people with disabilities.
The States would be in a position to define who has a disability and
who does not have a disability. It is unlikely they would cover all of
the 6 million disabled persons who now are receiving Medicaid. Six
million disabled people in this country, people with disabilities, are
receiving Medicaid now. The likelihood is that if the States are able
to define who has a disability and who does not have a disability, most
of these people would lose their coverage. Again there is the low-
income Medicare beneficiary, people who do not qualify for welfare who
are covered in some States, and they will lose their coverage also if
you give the Medicaid total over to the States.
That is the worst feature, the Medicaid assault. The assault on
Medicaid is probably the single worst feature of the Republican
majority budget. The assault on Medicaid is a life and death issue. The
assault on Medicaid is worthy of a long discussion. The assault on
Medicaid is worthy of a mobilization of people all across the Nation.
We have a great deal to lose. Medicaid is as close as we have gotten
to universal health care. Medicaid, which provides health care to
everybody who needs it, who is poor and can pass the means test,
Medicaid is as close to universal health care as we have gotten in this
country. We are the only industrialized country other than South Africa
that does not have universal health care in one form or another.
So we are about to lose that. I am particularly concerned about it
because in New York City, it seems that the extremist forces are out
ahead of the Republican majority here in Congress. The Republican
majority here in Congress have been thwarted in their efforts to end
the Medicaid entitlement. They have been thwarted in their efforts to
take steps that would reverse the quality of care in nursing homes. But
we have a Republican Governor who has moved on nursing homes and tried
to suspend the regulations, a Republican Governor who is threatening to
change the way hospitals are funded for indigent persons, to take away
that funding altogether if they do not agree to some new proposals that
he had made. We have a Republican Governor who has proposed to close
down one of the hospitals in my district, Kings Borough Psychiatric
Center. Kings Borough Psychiatric Center is the only psychiatric center
in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is a borough which has 2.5 million people; 2.5
million people is enough to need a psychiatric center with 500 beds. It
has been there for 100 years. But now they are proposing to close down
Kings Borough Center.
The juggernaut in New York, the Wehrmacht in New York, the scorched
earth policy in New York is moving faster than the policies here at the
Federal level. The mayor is proposing to sell certain hospitals. The
mayor is proposing to lease certain hospitals. A notice was just issued
day before yesterday that 1,600 hospital workers will be laid off
immediately between now and the middle of June and between now and
January 1, 8,000 hospital workers will be laid off in New York City.
This is radical, this is extreme, this is a life and death matter.
Not only will patients die as a result of the extreme changes within
the hospitals, but there some people employed in these hospitals who
are earning basic pay as janitors, as cleaners, as maids, some people
who are technicians. There are large numbers of people who will be out
of work as a result of this reduction in the service for health care.
Health care is a service, first of all, and that is its most important
function. But health care is also an industry. It is one of the most
noble industries mankind has ever created, and it does provide jobs.
So we have a situation where we are moving in an extreme manner and
in a year's period 8,000 people will be thrown out of work and the work
that they do in the hospitals will be dislocated and confused, and
people will literally die as a result.
{time} 1830
War has been declared on the health care system of the people of New
York city. War has been declared by the Governor. War has been declared
by the mayor. The war in New York State and the war in New York City is
very much interrelated with the war that has been declared here in
Washington.
In fact, the war began here. The move is here, once the proposals by
the Clinton administration in the 103d Congress went down the drain.
Those proposals were good proposals, idealistic proposals, and
proposals which were complicated because of the fact that they reached
out toward the goal of universal health care.
We can come with legislation that is much simpler an we can, in
incremental steps, probably improve the health care system. But if we
want to reach the goal of universal care, universal health care for
everybody, it requires a complicated system. It requires something
which is very unusual and calls on our present system to be
restructured.
That is what the Clinton administration program required. It was the
proper approach in terms of setting the goal and seeking the goal of
universal health care. The fact that the complications led to a
political problem does not diminish the validity of the Clinton health
care proposals.
Now we are without that national goal and without that national
guidance, and we are in a situation now where we have a stampede on to
restructure and to reengineer the health care system. In a place like
New York, we are talking about nearly 8 million people, health care for
nearly 8 million people, so it is a very tempting target.
The stampede on now is a stampede toward privatization. It is a
stampede that begins with the ideas that there is a lot of money to be
made if they create a health care-industrial complex. A government
health care-industrial complex means that the private sector will own
it, the private sector will run it, but the funding for it will still
come out of the taxpayers' pockets.
Just as the funding for the military-industrial complex comes out of
the taxpayers' pockets but is run by private enterprise, and great
amounts of money are made out of it, now we have a foolproof system
that will go on forever. The health care-industrial complex is not like
the military-industrial complex. It will be here forever, and we then
do not have to worry about never having a justification for it.
The military-industrial complex has done well long after it is needed
at the level it is needed. it is still here. We needed a military-
industrial complex to win World War II, and we needed a military-
industrial complex at a certain level to fight the cold war and to
maintain the security of the free world. All that was necessary, but we
have not needed the extremes in spending that we have, and we certainly
do not need to justify adding $13 billion more to the existing defense
budget.
That is a victory of the military-industrial complex. Its power
exceeds its usefulness, but that is one of those complexes and we are
governed by many different complexes in this country. Complexes have a
great impact on our policies.
We have a banking-industrial complex that really is the biggest
swindle of all. The banking-industrial complex pulled off the savings
and loan swindle and that may cost the American people, before it is
over, about a half trillion dollars to bail out the savings and loans
and the other banks. There were other banks also, not savings and
loans, but banks that went bankrupt. We are going to be out a half a
trillion dollars by the time the Resolution Trust Corporation and all
the mechanisms that were set up and designed to do this are finished.
So we have a health care complex now, health care-industrial complex.
[[Page H5274]]
Large insurance companies, large pharmaceutical companies buy HMO's.
HMO's are health maintenance organizations. They are not evil
automatically. They are not inherently evil. In fact, the Health
Insurance Program of New York, called HIP, has been in existence for
half a century. It was a great step forward in health care.
HIP still exists, but HIP was a non-profit-making enterprise. It is
not designed to make a profit. Although they make surpluses and they
have probably been taken care of very well, it was not designed to make
profits, and it has worked very well.
We can have profitmaking HMO's also, and that has been proven in some
places. They make profits and they also give good service. There are
communities which insist that they are going to get good service or
else they are going to get rid of the HMO's, so they have good service.
But in big cities and communities like the majority of the
communities that my district covers, there is an attempt being made to
come in and stampede the situation and restructure, reengineer the
health care system for the benefit of the big HMO's, and the insurance
companies and pharmaceutical companies are going to stand behind them.
They are not listening to doctors. They are not listening to hospital
administrations. They are definitely not listening to community
leaders. They are very seldom listening to elected officials. We need
to reestablish the dialog, and the only way we can get that dialog is
by confronting them with a situation which brings to a halt the grand
design to redesign our health care system.
So we have the mayor proposing to sell one of the hospitals in my
district; the Governor proposing to close down another one; the layoffs
of thousands of people taking place; and all this is happening very
rapidly, and in the meantime the shadow of the Medicaid entitlement
being taken away looms over our head.
The Medicaid entitlement will be converted to a block grant
automatically. Right away there is a reduction in the amount of funds
available for Medicaid because the proposal is not just to give the
State what it now gets but to cut the amount of money. The State will
have the power then to cut the benefits. So we will have several rapid
shocks to the health care system all at once.
For this reason, this Sunday, we are mobilizing all over the city.
Not just in my district but all over the city there are demonstrations
at hospitals called Hospital Support Sunday. Churches are leading their
congregations to hospitals that are threatened and they are having
rallies to send a message to the mayor and to the Governor that we are
the people, the health care system is for us, those of us who are
patients and those of us who are alive and will someday probably become
patients. We want a voice in the restructuring. We do not want the
insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies and the HMO's to
restructure our health care for their benefit. We could like to have a
voice in the restructuring of the system for the benefit of all the
people.
We have three demands. One is that they freeze the situation as it is
now. Do not have any more sales of hospitals. Do not try to lease
hospitals. Stop downsizing and streamlining, cutting the budget so that
the hospitals are not able to function properly. If they cannot
function properly, people stop coming, and then they use the fact that
their number of patients is declining as a justification for cutting
the staff.
It is a vicious game that is being played with our health care system
and we want it to come to an end. We want the assault on our health
care system as part of the war we make in America to come to a halt.
Maybe we can make a deal. In every war, no matter how vicious the war
may be or how ambitious the maniacs are who drive the war, they do make
some arrangements. As bad as the Third Reich was under Hitler, they did
not attack Switzerland. For various reasons they never attacked
Switzerland. As bad as they were, they did not go on to attack Sweden.
They did grab little Norway because it was in the way in terms of their
own strategies. They did terrible things but there were some places
where even the vicious Nazis did not cross the line.
Maybe we can have a deal with the people who are trying to remake
America and a Speaker who declares that politics is war without blood.
Perhaps we can have a safe haven out there in health care, put it off
the invasion map, take it away as a target and let us not do terrible
things that our grandchildren might spit on our graves as a result of
hearing about.
Let us not destroy the health care system for the elderly, which may
throw people out on the streets. Because in Medicaid two-thirds of the
money from Medicaid goes to nursing homes. One-third goes to poor
families, and they are important, too, but two-thirds goes to nursing
homes.
Many people in those nursing homes are people who were middle-class
people, who had some means before they got ill and lost their jobs and
lost their faculties and for various reasons became impoverished. Once
they become impoverished then Medicaid is all there is left to take
care of them. Take away Medicaid and they are literally in the streets.
So we do not want to hastily, in the process of remaking America, do
things that would end up being counted as atrocities sometime in the
future as people look back. We do not want to do thing that in the
process of trying to justify them we would take ourselves into some
kind of immoral era similar to the Nazi era.
People with disabilities in Nazi Germany became people who ought to
be destroyed, and it is to the credit of the German people that they
would not consent to euthanasia as long as they knew about it. But when
they singled out a particular ethnic group, they did go on and try to
destroy a whole ethnic group. The seeds were sewn.
Human beings or nations should never begin to think in certain
directions. Human beings and nations ought to automatically want to
structure systems that provide for the preservation of life. To be pro-
life in the most profound sense is to try to preserve the health care
system; to try to see to it that at least every person has an
opportunity to maintain good health and to benefit from the modern
life-saving devices, and to in some way know that we care about them
that far.
We cannot guarantee them an income, we cannot guarantee them a lot of
things, but let us put the health care system into a safe haven status
and say we are going to try to guarantee that decent health care is
provided for everybody. We are going to try to guarantee that systems
are maintained. We want to streamline them, make them more efficient,
eliminate the waste and corruption, but we are going to maintain
systems that are adequate.
We cannot maintain adequate systems if overnight we are going to make
a decision to close hospitals in a big city like New York. The closing
of the hospitals has not been discussed by the doctors and the
administrators, it has only been discussed behind closed doors by
politicians who want to make a score and save money over a short period
of time. So that kind of restructuring is going to be a scorched earth
kind of restructuring where people's lives will not matter.
We will not stand by idly and watch this kind of restructuring of our
health care system in New York City. I hope that the rest of Americans
understand that we are at a critical point and they too must get out
take a look at what is happening, who is making what plans about their
health care system, who is making what plans about how many hospitals
we are going to have in a given area, and about the nature of those
hospitals.
A burn unit cannot be maintained by an HMO. A burn unit needs a large
population to support. A burn unit needs to exist within the structure
of a hospital. MRI's are very expensive and cannot be maintained in
some doctor's office or some clinic cannot maintain an MRI. If the
hospital goes, then we have a situation where the justification and the
rationale for a number of other services that are based on a density of
population will no longer be there.
So we must fight to keep hospitals, or at least to have people sit
down at the table and give us the blueprint; show us how they will
maintain the quality of services, if they are going to restructure and
eliminate certain hospitals or certain aspects of the current health
care.
[[Page H5275]]
Now, we have the analogy of politics as war without blood. In every
war monumental mistakes are made. The nature of war is such that it is
going to grind down and eat up, chew up, and abuse large numbers of
people because it is an emergency and we cannot set our own scenarios.
We have to react to the enemy. There are a number of things in the
nature of war. That is why the analogy that politics is war without
blood is a bad analogy.
We should not have to move in an atmosphere of war. We should not
have to rally to meet a crisis that does not need to be created. Health
care could be kept at some kind of rationale level. Health care should
be kept off the table.
Yes, eventually, HMO's, profit making HMO's, may make money in health
care. Eventually Wall Street may have stocks in the health care
industry do very well. But let us try to do that and make capitalism
and the profit motive work for the benefit of the people. Let us not
allow the situation to get totally out of hand and a scorched earth
policy to leave us with ruins in our health care system.
Once we close a hospital, reopening it is almost impossible. Once we
close down certain kinds of facilities, we cannot bring them back. And
we must force those who are in place of decision-making and power to
stop, listen, and negotiate.
Our demands in New York City are three basic demands. Freeze the
situation. Do not go any further. Disclose your plans. Let us see what
is happening. And they negotiate. And this is a pattern that I offer to
the rest of the country.
{time} 1845
It is your health care. This invasion plan will roll right over you
unless you rally and guarantee that you are respecting and that your
health care does not become cannon fodder in this so-called war to
remake America.
____________________