[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 78 (Friday, May 31, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H5755-H5756]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 WHO'S FOR KIDS AND WHO'S JUST KIDDING?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Speaker, I came to talk about what the gentleman 
from California, Mr. George Miller, and I did yesterday. Mr. Miller and 
I were both Chairs of the Select Committee on Children, Youth, and 
Families. That select committee is now gone. It has been put away. But 
when the Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families was alive, 
it was a vigorous watchdog for children and for family votes.
  Yesterday the gentleman from California [Mr. Miller] and I decided 
that in the spirit of what is happening this weekend in Washington, 
with tens of thousands of people coming to Washington tomorrow for the 
Stand for Children Rally, that we would look at the votes of the 104th 
Congress and rank the top 10 that would help children. Yesterday we 
released our report. We called it, ``Who's for Kids and Who's Just 
Kidding?''
  The reason that we emphasized that is no Member of Congress has ever 
gotten elected saying they hate kids, and yet when you look at the 
votes, it comes out very differently. That is partly because we do not 
have a watchdog here anymore on these different

[[Page H5756]]

votes pointing out the difference, and so people can kind of plaster 
over their votes with wonderful photo ops, with warm, fuzzy children 
and puppy dogs, and they can also give great speeches and rhetoric on 
family values, and then vote the other way when no one is looking.
  We put everybody on notice that we are going to continue monitoring 
this through the election, because what has really happened is that 
America's parents and teachers and aunts and uncles and people like 
myself, who really feel we should be voting based on our children's 
future, want these voting records, but we are also busy. We feel like 
hamsters in the wheel, where we run at 100 miles an hour. We run faster 
and faster every year, and at the end of the year our tongues are 
hanging out and we are really tired, and we never got out of the bottom 
of the wheel, and the last thing we have time to do is comb the 
Congressional Record for an entire 2 years looking for votes on kids.
  We are going to keep doing this. We were shocked when we looked at 
what has happened in this 104th Congress. It is no wonder so many tens 
of thousands of people are coming. These issues had traditionally had a 
very strong bipartisan coalition working on them. Yet, this year we see 
all sorts of programs that have never been controversial before put on 
the chopping block because they say, oh, well, we need money for the 
debt.
  Let me tell the Members, 5-year-olds did not cause the debt; 3-year-
olds did not cause the debt. Why in the world are we balancing the 
budget on their backs, when we turn around and put $13 billion more in 
defense than even the Joint Chiefs asked for? That does not seem fair 
to me.
  Mr. Speaker, the other reason they have been cutting kids is they say 
they need the money for tax cuts. Who do the tax cuts go to? They go to 
the richest people in this country. I think that is unfair, too. Why 
should kids have to give to those who already have so much?
  I was a little horrified yesterday when the Republican conference 
came out to our press conference and handed out this report saying that 
they are fighting the welfare state to save our children from poverty. 
They had that in a box. There is the issue: ``Our Children.'' They mean 
their children and their family.

  My question is, What do you do about the American child that is in 
poverty? Is that not one of our children, too? I would hope legislators 
think of our children and America's children. They are certainly 
America's future. The fact that we would be cutting that out and just 
saying, oh, no, no, you should have picked better parents, too bad, it 
is not our problem; I think that is wrong.
  Basically, because kids cannot vote, they are a very easy target. 
Some of the things that have been done is we absolutely zeroed out all 
after-school and summer programs for kids. I find that shocking. We 
slashed away at the lunch program. They will tell you, ``Yes, we 
increased it,'' but we did not increase it enough to have the same 
allocation for the number of children there. We have more children 
coming in and they did not increase it nearly enough, so I guess 
something gets removed from the plate. Maybe they do not get potatoes, 
maybe they do not get meat. I do not know. We cut basic education, Head 
Start. We cut out all sorts of other things.
  I know my time is up, but we are going to stay on this, because we 
think this is the most important thing we can do. If we do not care 
about our kids, this country is not going to survive. So who is for 
kids and who is just kidding? We are going to tell you.

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