[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 111 (Thursday, July 25, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H8547-H8553]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   MAKING POLITICS FOR THE RICH ONLY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Campbell). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, today the common sense of the ordinary 
American people came home here to the Chamber, and a fraudulent 
campaign reform bill was voted down by the majority of the Member of 
this House. It was a fraudulent bill. It was an insult. It was an 
insult to common sense, and I think most of the Members joined the 
American people in exercising some common sense.
  It was a bill to make politics the province of the rich in America. 
Under the guise of campaign reform, we would have had advantages all 
given to the richest Americans while disadvantages would be compounded 
for the poorest. I think that the majority of the Members did not see 
themselves going back and facing their constituents with that kind of 
fraudulent construction. So common sense came home and common sense is 
rising from the great masses out there and more and more is beginning 
to infiltrate into Washington and infiltrate into this Chamber. People 
are beginning to understand that the mass of Americans have this 
quality of understanding of what is really going on.
  They understand that they are in an economy which is booming for a 
handful of people, relatively speaking, the top 20 percent in America, 
while it is stagnating or even declining for the bottom 80 percent. 
They understand this. There is no way you can get around that with your 
statistics and your charts and your graphs. That cannot get you around 
the basic common sense understanding of the people of this Nation that 
the economy is locked into a number of contradictions.
  They understand that something different ought to be happening. They 
do not know what it is, but they understand.
  They understand that the Republican majority which came into power at 
the beginning of this session has moved in very extreme ways to make 
life more difficult for the average American out there. They understand 
this. They understand that at this point as we are nearing the end of 
the most active part of the 104th Congress, we still do not have a 
minimum wage bill. We do not have a minimum wage bill yet.
  They understand something is radically wrong if you cannot increase 
minimum wages by 90 cents over a 2-year period from $4.25 an hour to 
$5.15 in a 2-year period. if we cannot do this as leaders of this great 
Nation in a time of great prosperity where corporate profits are higher 
than ever before, something is radically wrong. Common sense tells the 
American people something is wrong here in this Chamber.
  They understand that a group of leaders who took control of Congress 
and chose to wage war, and I am using the Speaker's terminology, that 
politics is war without blood. Speaker Gingrich has said that several 
times. The way this House has proceeded in the 104th Congress, it 
certainly is evident that there is a belief that politics is war 
without blood, and war is being made on the least powerful in our 
Nation.
  The people who are the most vulnerable, the poorest, they are the 
victims of this war. They understand that the Republican majority first 
declared war on schoolchildren who needed lunches, fee lunches. 
Federally funded free lunches were attacked first, and the American 
people understand that that was the beginning of a highly visible 
exposure of where the mean-spirited Republican majority was coming 
from.

                              {time}  2045

  It was a mean-spirited act. They understood that. They understood 
later on when proposals were made to eliminate the Department of 
Education, because education is for poor people. Public education is 
for poor people, and for the majority of the people, the 80 percent. 
The preoccupation of this particular leadership in Congress is not with 
the 80 percent, it is with the 20 percent of the elite who can afford 
to to go private schools. They understand that war on the Department of 
Education hurt the vast majority of our people.
  They understand that when you cut title I, the $7 billion Federal aid 
program, the only major aid program of the Federal Government that goes 
to elementary and secondary education, a program that impacts and has 
some small part of its benefits in 90 percent of the school districts 
in America, they understand that when you attack that kind of a 
program, you do not have the best interests of the average American at 
heart. Common sense has come home to illuminate what other people have 
shrouded in very complex statistics.
  We have heard the majority of Republicans stand up with their charts 
and show how they are really not cutting school lunches. We have heard 
the majority stand up and say education will not suffer if you cut 
title I. They even went as far as to cut Head Start about $300 million. 
Ronald Reagan, that was one of his favorite programs. No other 
President since the inception of Head Start had ever proposed cuts in 
Head Start. In fact, as I said before, Ronald Reagan increased the Head

[[Page H8548]]

Start budget. But this group decided to cut Head Start. The average 
American out there understands what this says and what revelation this 
is about the heart and soul of the majority in this House.
  The majority of Republicans are elitists. The majority of Republicans 
do not represent the majority of Americans. They understand this. Of 
course, I think that the commonsense wisdom of the American people came 
home to the majority of Republicans. They retreated. They did not cut 
Head Start after all. They did not cut title I by $1.1 billion. They 
did not cut a number of education programs, including Goals 2000, in 
the first budget of this session. They finally backed down. The cuts 
are in there again for Goals 2000 and a few other programs, but there 
is no proposal now to cut Head Start. There is no proposal to cut title 
I again.
  The common sense of the American people resonated, came home, and the 
leadership of the Republican majority understood that. They are not 
tampering with education anyone. There is no more talk here in this 
House about the eradication of the Department of Education. There is no 
more talk about wiping out the Department of Education. We would be the 
only industrialized nation or one of the only nations in the world, 
really, of any substance--even the developing nations have departments 
of education. Whereas we do not have a Department of Education as big 
as Japan's or as big as Germany's or as big as France's, we do not want 
to have that kind of centralized bureaucracy running education in all 
parts of the country. We are a long ways from that, and to eliminate it 
totally would be to go to an extreme. Maybe France, Germany, Japan, 
their bureaucratic structure for centralized education departments is 
at one extreme, but to have none would be at another extreme.
  We do not spend but 7 percent of the education budget. The only 
percentage of the education budget that is really covered by the 
Federal Government at this point is 7 percent of the total amount spent 
on education. That means that the States and the localities finance 
most of the education in America. If you want to increase the Federal 
participation by some additional percentage, even get it up as high as 
25 percent, that 25 percent Federal participation in the funding of 
education would still be a small percentage. The 75 percent controlled 
by the State governments and the local governments would mean that just 
as they are putting up 75 percent of the funding, they have 75 percent 
of the control. If you had a greater participation of the Federal 
Government in the funding of education, it would not mean that 
education is controlled by the Federal Government. It still would be 
controlled by the States. It would be controlled by the localities.
  So we could afford to spend much more. Not only should we not be 
contemplating elimination of the Department of Education, we should be 
contemplating a greater participation in education. I think most 
Americans understand that.
  As the members of the Republican majority have gone home and really 
talked about their extreme proposals in education and some other areas, 
the people out there with common sense have educated them. So it goes 
on.
  We are in a period now where Medicare cuts are still on the drawing 
board. I cannot say that there has been a retreat; just as they have 
retreated from cutting Head Start, that they have retreated from 
cutting Medicare. No, Medicare cuts are still on the drawing boards, 
and most people should understand that. Medicare cuts are on the 
drawing board now. They are still proposing huge cuts for Medicare. At 
the same time, they are proposing to give back taxes to large numbers 
of rich people. A large percentage of the people who pay the highest 
taxes will get a tax cut. The tax cut and the Medicare cut are very 
close to each other in terms of it is robbing one in order to fund the 
other. That is a fact we pointed out a long time ago. It is still the 
case.
  So common sense on Medicare still has not come home. They still do 
not understand that the average American knows what they are doing when 
they talk about great cuts in Medicare. In the name of saving Medicare 
from bankruptcy, they are proposing huge cuts. At the same time, they 
are proposing that there be huge cuts in the taxes of the richest 
people. They are correlated. You do not have to be a genius to make 
that correlation. The American people have a grasp of that, but somehow 
that has not come home yet. There is a need for more people to 
communicate with their legislators what the commonsense position is, to 
let them know we understand that Medicare is being threatened, still.
  Medicare is little more than 30 years old. We had this past summer a 
birthday party for Medicare in about 10 senior citizen centers in my 
district. We made up a little card, which actually had the bill, a 
photostat of the bill, signed by Lyndon Johnson 30 years ago.
  People have Medicare very much on their minds now. I hope they still 
remember that the fight is not over. This present Republican budget, 
this present Republican-controlled Congress, in their appropriations 
bills they are still going after Medicare. Medicare is still on the 
chopping block. The commonsense wisdom has not come home to the members 
of the majority. They still do not understand that the American people 
know what they are doing. You have to talk a little louder, I guess, 
scream a bit.
  They are obfuscating the problem with medical savings accounts and 
all kinds of language about going bankrupt, and they are going to save 
us from bankruptcy. But look at it straight. I have used several times 
the example of the sophomore who came home from college, and he was 
sitting at the table, and his very ordinary working-class father was at 
the table, and the other kids, and the mother was there.
  The sophomore wanted to show off his knowledge of philosophy. He told 
his father that, really, you know, there are two chickens on this 
table. I can prove to you, Dad, there is not one chicken on this table, 
there are two chickens. I can prove that to you, Dad. It is all a 
matter of your a priori assumptions, and if you get into the right 
syllogism and we move from the hypothesis to the conclusion, et cetera, 
and he was going on.
  His father said, wait a minute, son. Hold it for a minute. If you can 
prove there are two chickens on this table, why don't we just eat this 
one, and we will leave the other one for you to eat. That is the 
simplest way to solve the problem. I think that kind of commonsense 
wisdom is out there. It is a feature of American society. There are 
senior citizens who understand, you are taking our Medicare money and 
you are moving it to give a tax cut.
  There will be another example tomorrow on the floor of the House. I 
understand that the comp time bill that was postponed today will be up 
tomorrow. Comp time means compensatory time for your overtime. A better 
way to state what is happening tomorrow is that the same Republicans 
who went after the school lunch program and the Title I program, the 
same Republican majority that tried to cut Head Start, the same 
Republican majority that went after Medicare, is still going after 
Medicare, they now want your overtime pay. The Republicans are coming 
for your overtime pay. That is what the comp time bill tomorrow is all 
about.
  Instead of paying you for your overtime, as is done in private 
industry and has been done for years, and the whole economy of working-
class people is structured on how much overtime can I make, how much 
cash can I bring home in my paycheck to pay for some shoes and to pay 
for a new refrigerator; you have to have cash to meet necessities, it 
is not a luxury, where you can afford to take it in comp time, have a 
bank of comp time.
  You work so many hours this week, so in 6 months we will give what 
you accumulated this week and what you accumulated next week, give it 
to you all in one lump sum, and you can go off in the wintertime, when 
the factory is slowed down and our inventory is high, we do not need 
you, and we will give you time off, or you can take a long vacation. 
But you do not have any money.
  The Republicans are coming for your overtime, because if they do not 
pay you cash, they may set it up so their friends, the elite that 
already earn the highest incomes--and the people who own the factories 
are not making minimum wage, the CEOs of corporations

[[Page H8549]]

who will benefit from this, they are not making minimum wage, they are 
making very high salaries--they are going to take your overtime, what 
they should have been paying you in cash, and keep it and invest it.
  They can have a whole lot of things: Stocks can be bought, bonds can 
be bought, speculation; various things can happen with the money they 
normally shell out to you in overtime. In the meantime, you are left in 
anxiety about maybe you will get your overtime in compensatory time, 
maybe you will not, because there are no safeguards in this bill that 
is coming up tomorrow against bankruptcy. If a company goes out of 
business, how do you get your overtime? You just lost. You can go to 
court and sue, but try suing a bankrupt company.
  Many corporations disappear. Small businesses, the smaller they are, 
the more likely they are to just disappear. All kinds of things happen 
with your compensatory time. There is no protection in the bill that is 
going to be on the floor tomorrow about that. It is just one more piece 
of evidence of the heartlessness of this Republican majority, the 
heartlessness which common sense can clearly understand. Nobody out 
there needs to be told that your overtime is needed to buy shoes, to 
buy the things that you need right now.
  There is another provision that says, well, this is voluntary. If you 
work in private industry and you now are paid dollars for your 
overtime, you do not have to agree to a provision that you have to take 
it in comp time; instead of you taking dollars, you can take time off 
later on. You do not have to agree to that; it is voluntary.
  Common sense will tell anybody who has ever worked in a real job that 
you do not confront your foreman or the owner of your company with an 
unpopular preference. One way to lose your job is to say, well, you 
want me to take overtime, but I choose not to, and law says I do not 
have to take compensatory time. I can take it in cash. How long will 
the employees who choose to take their overtime in cash last on the 
job, versus those who choose to cooperate with the management and take 
compensatory time?
  You do not have to be a genius, you do not have to major in 
psychology, you do not have to study Machiavelli, to understand that 
here is a policy situation. The owner of the factory, the boss, is in a 
situation where if he says, ``I suggest strongly that you take your 
overtime in comp time instead of in cash,'' 99 percent of the employees 
who need their jobs, and most people who are working, they need their 
jobs, they will agree, oh, yes, we will take it in comp time.
  There is a provision in the bill which says that the choice of when 
you take your comp time has to be mutually agreed upon by the worker 
and the person who owns the business or who is in charge. So how many 
of you think that if you choose to take your comp time in July, when 
your children are out of school and you want to go on a vacation and 
you prefer the sun instead of the snow, but the inventory is such that 
it is to the best interests of the company to keep you working, that 
you are going to work out a mutual agreement whereby the company will 
let you go at a time which is disadvantageous to them?
  When your kids are in school in January and the snow is on the ground 
and you cannot take the kind of vacation you want to take, but the 
inventory is high, the company will choose to tell you, that is the 
best time for you to take your comp time. If they have this kind of 
wisdom that they offer you, how many employees are going to argue with 
the management and say, no, I want my comp time in the summertime. I 
want to go swimming, I want to go the beach, I want to be with my kids? 
How many employees, for how long, will be able to take advantage of 
this so-called mutual agreement, this voluntary arrangement?
  If we look at the bill that is going to be on the floor tomorrow, 
which is a revision of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Fair Labor 
Standards Act, which was established by Franklin Roosevelt under the 
New Deal, there are a lot of provisions in there, but one provision is 
clear: Anybody who works more than 40 hours during the week is eligible 
for overtime, overtime pay. Overtime pay is time and a half. That is 
cash.

                              {time}  2100

  There has a lot been made about the fact that in the public sector, 
municipal government, State government, Federal Government, we have 
comp time provisions now already. Comp time provisions are there, they 
have always been there because the government is not in the business of 
earning a profit. The government does not have any extra margin. The 
government for various reasons is not in the same position as private 
industry.
  People who go into government traditionally have accepted the fact 
that you do not have the same provisions that you have in the private 
sector because the government has been traditionally a more secure 
place to work. Security was traded for the paycheck advantage that you 
have in the private industry. So having the security of a long-term 
Government job, having the pensions that Government jobs had, having 
the health care plan that a Government job had, there are a number of 
reasons people traded off and decided not to worry about being paid in 
cash.
  What is happening nowadays is that the municipal systems and the 
State governments and the Federal Government are becoming less and less 
secure. We are behaving more and more like private industry, so it is 
probably altogether fitting and proper that we change and have 
government pay overtime in cash. We are going the wrong direction. We 
are not going to give people job security. Their pensions are no safer 
because we are playing around with pensions in some government units. 
Health care we want to tamper with. If we are going to behave as the 
private sector behaves, then maybe everybody should be paid in cash 
instead of having this tradeoff where you accept the situation of comp 
time. But we are going the opposite direction. We are about to move in 
to take the overtime away from working people in an atmosphere which is 
hostile.
  I serve on the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities 
which is responsible for this particular provision of the law, the Fair 
Labor Standards Act. In fact I am the ranking Democrat on the 
Subcommittee on Workforce Protections which is directly responsible for 
this piece of legislation, and there are some adjustments that probably 
could be made. I do not think that we should ever pour concrete over 
any set of rules and regulations. I do not think we should ever be so 
inflexible that we cannot adjust anything. But in the present 
atmosphere where the Republican majority has attacked working families 
and workers consistently since January of 1995 when they came into 
power, there is no reason to believe that there is a good faith glue 
that might help make some of the onerous provisions of this bill 
better. There is no reason to take anything for granted. If you do not 
have protections for people who are working overtime and prefer to have 
cash instead of comp time, if there is no way to guarantee that they 
have an equal choice there and that the management cannot bully them, 
then why go into it? If there is no way to guarantee that they are 
going to be able to take the comp time off when they want to or reach 
some kind of reasonable settlement or agreement with the management, 
then why go into it? Why in a period where we have a party in power 
operating on behalf of an elite business community which refuses to 
give us 90-cent increase in the minimum wage over a 2-year period, 
which attacks the Occupational Safety and Health Agency, Americans 
across the country benefit from the provisions of OSHA. That was 
attacked, I forgot to mention. Very early OSHA was put under attack. 
One-third of the budget was cut in the bill that the President vetoed. 
Finally they brought the cut down. There is still less funding for OSHA 
now than there was before the attack was launched by the Republican 
majority. Davis-Bacon provisions are under attack still by this 
Republican majority. Why in an atmosphere where the National Labor 
Relations Board, they proposed to cut its budget by one-third and they 
backed away from that but there is a cut and there are less resources 
now for the National Labor Relations Board than there were before. In 
an atmosphere where every organ of government that benefits working 
people is under attack, why should we accept any proposal for a good 
faith effort on taking away your overtime?

[[Page H8550]]

The Republicans are coming for your overtime and you should be aware of 
that. Republicans are coming for your overtime. You should send a 
common-sense message to the Congress, Republicans and Democrats, that 
you understand what is going on.

  I understand that the focus groups, the polling groups and all the 
experts that politicians pay large amounts of money to, they are 
reaching the conclusion that I discussed here 6 months ago, that common 
sense says we have a party in power that cares very little about 
working people. Common sense says that we have a party in power that 
wants to help the rich to get richer. Common sense says that the gap in 
the incomes of the richest Americans which has greatly increased over 
the last 10 years is not just some piece of statistics on a paper, it 
is symbolic of the kind of anxiety that American families feel. Common 
sense says that people who brought us streamling and downsizing, common 
sense says that the same people who are tampering with our pension 
funds in corporations, common sense says that they cannot be trusted to 
give us a new deal on our overtime and it benefit the workers. It will 
not benefit the workers. The workers are under attack and the tampering 
with the Fair Labor Standards Act that is being proposed tomorrow on 
this floor is just one more example of how the Republican majority has 
not gotten the commonsense message yet fully. They have gotten it in 
education, so they modified their approach on education cuts. But they 
have not understood that the average constituent out there understands 
that these are policies which benefit an elite minority. These policies 
which support streamlining, downsizing and now want to take your 
overtime pay, that is one more piece of money, pot of money that whey 
will have to invest. Your overtime pay, instead of being given to you, 
will be invested somewhere by the people who are already earning a 
great amount of money off their investments. Common sense says no. You 
need to communicate that.
  They are getting the message slowly here in the Chamber. The vote on 
the Campaign Finance Reform Act says that it is coming home. Common 
sense is telling the legislators that you cannot swindle the American 
people. You cannot set up a system where the richest people are given 
free rein to spend as much money as they want to, to contribute to 
campaigns in greater numbers, and the poorest are confined to raising 
the money within their district. If you happen to live in a poor 
district, you are going to have to raise money just in that district. 
At least half of the funds have to come from there. There are various 
mechanisms which are thrown out there which look good on the surface, 
yet when you look behind it and you understand that the cap is being 
taken off the rich and they can spend more and more to influence the 
way our democracy works. It does not take a genius to understand that 
kind of swindle.
  Mr. Speaker, I received a fax last time, I receive lots of faxes 
after the comments I make on these special orders, but the last time, 
it was very interesting, I received a fax from some gentleman who said 
in the fax, ``You are a true believer. You are dangerous because you 
really believe in what you are saying. You are naive but you believe 
what you are saying.'' That seems to shock him that I should believe.

  That night I talked about the Families First agenda and I talked 
about the fact that the critical problem is jobs and the companion 
problem is education, the two inextricably interwoven. When I came to 
Congress, I asked to be placed on the Committee on Education and Labor 
because my district needed jobs more than anything else, and I 
understood that they would not be able to get jobs unless they got 
better education and you had to mix the two.
  So I was talking about jobs and education. I talked about that 
segment of the Families First agenda, and he said, ``You really believe 
that stuff.'' Yes, I do believe it. It is not just a construct that 
minority leader Dick Gephardt put together. It is not something that is 
out there swinging in the wind as a slogan to attract, as bait to 
attract people who would vote for Democrats. It is common sense that 
nothing is more important at this particular juncture in our society 
than jobs and education, and the two go together. Nothing is more 
relevant than jobs and education.
  I have some people in my district who talk about, you go into these 
special orders, what does it have to do with a poor person in your 
district? I have a district which is not all poor, there is some 
diversity, but two-thirds of the people in the district are poor. Those 
who are working are making minimum wage. What relevant does this speech 
have? Well, it has a great deal of relevance. I am concerned about jobs 
and the failure of our economy to create more jobs for people who are 
poor, who do not have education, who would have to take entry level 
jobs, as we call them. I am very concerned about that. I am concerned 
about the fact that those entry level jobs get more complicated all the 
time and that really if you want to help somebody to get out of 
poverty, they are going to have to have more education. It has a 
relevance to the people in my district.
  The poorest parts of my district need jobs and there are ways to 
create those jobs, and I am concerned about the fact that what goes on 
down here in Washington does not address those needs. At the same time 
that the Republican majority was proposing to eliminate the Department 
of Education which would greatly hurt the people who want education 
back in my district, at the same time they were proposing to do that, 
they cut out the Department of Tourism in the Commerce Department, a 
very small unit. Of all the industrialized nations, we had the smallest 
effort going forward in terms of promoting tourism.
  Tourism is a gold mine for a Nation like this which is admired 
throughout the world. Tourists want to come from all parts of the 
world. There are many municipal governments that understand this and 
they are working hard to attract tourists. There are many States that 
understand this and they are working hard to attract tourists, tourists 
from one part of the United States to another and tourists from 
overseas. Tourists are a very important part of New York City, probably 
the largest industry in New York City, at least the second largest. It 
changes. The finance sector may have the largest one year, tourism 
another.
  But tourism is a huge industry, an industry that does not require 
pollution. You do not have to have big factories polluting the air. It 
does not require natural resources being located nearby so you can 
haul the iron ore and the coal and mix them together and get a product. 
Tourism is a very unique kind of industry which has a great growth 
potential in a place like New York City and most of America.

  People want to see the Grand Canyon, the cities out west, small 
towns, all kinds of things are on the agenda for tourists within the 
country and tourists from outside of the country. Most people want to 
see America at one time in their lifetime. They cannot do it unless 
they belong to the middle class. The middle class groups are the only 
ones who have the leftover income, that discretionary income that can 
allow them to travel. But the middle classes across the world are 
increasing.
  I give the example to the people in my district. It is relevant to 
New York residents that the tourism trade flourish, because when people 
come to a big city like New York, they all eat in restaurants, so the 
jobs in the restaurants, whether it is washing dishes or cooking, all 
those jobs increase; waiting tables, all those jobs increase. When 
people come to New York, they go to the stores and buy retail products. 
Those jobs increase. When they come to New York, they go to places of 
entertainment, small and large. Those jobs increase.
  So the person in my district, whether they are uneducated and have to 
take an entry level dishwashing job or whether they have some skills 
and can take a job as a chef in a hospital, it is very relevant.
  In fact, there was a young man that I have known for a long time who 
recently told me about his catering business. I saw him about 4 years 
ago and he was down and out, working hard, going to work every day, but 
he was depressed. Even his physical demeanor communicated depression 
and defeat, the same kind of defeat and depression that so many black 
males feel in America. There was an article in the Washington Post 
yesterday about suicide

[[Page H8551]]

among black males which was astonishing, shocking, frightening. Suicide 
among black males has greatly increased in the last few years. I am 
black, I have been black all my life, born black, and in our folk 
culture, we swear that black folks do not commit suicide. No matter 
what happens, we adjust, we cope, we love life. We do not commit 
suicide. Well, that is just one of those pieces of folk wisdom that has 
gone by the way. The statistics are there, they are horrifying, large 
numbers of black males are committing suicide. They are depressed. 
Whatever the reasons, I will not go into this point, it is a subject 
for a later discussion.
  But here is a black male in his thirties, early thirties, two kids, a 
wife, going to work every day, not getting anywhere, he decided to go 
to school, get a food handler's license, then go further, get training. 
Now he is a chef, a chef at a hospital.

                              {time}  2115

  In addition to being a chef at a hospital, he is developing his own 
catering business. The difference in the demeanor, the sunshine that 
comes out of his face and the change in his voice, everything is a 
transformation.
  He is going places, his catering business is going places. He has to 
rent kitchens on the weekend. In New York, they have lots of people and 
people are always eating, so the catering business is a good business. 
More tourists come, of course there will be more people who have to 
eat, various kinds of functions. There is a future there, great future.
  So what I am saying is relevant to him. The more tourists we get, the 
more our economy grows, the more people there are to feed in situations 
which require caterers. It is relevant. Everything all falls in place.
  It is relevant that he had an opportunity to go to school. He had to 
pay for the courses himself. He chose to make that investment, but he 
has become a chef. Beyond being a chef, he is going to be a 
businessman.
  I say all this to say that the person who said to me, you are a true 
believer, you are dangerous, and some other people say what you say on 
the floor of this House, this empty Chamber, is not relevant, is very 
relevant. It is relevant because we are in a transition period in this 
Nation, and what we do here in the House of Representatives and what we 
do in the other body, and we are not just a few people around talking, 
we are very powerful people.
  If you look at the 100 Members of the Senate and 435 Members of the 
Congress, you are talking about 535 people who are like vice presidents 
of the world's most powerful corporation. People like to play games out 
there and talk about we spend too much money on our mail, we spend too 
much money on our phones, we rent cars for too great an expense. They 
like to play around the edges and like to trivialize the Members of 
Congress, as they do all politicians. But we are very powerful people. 
We make decisions which are life and death decisions.
  We are at a critical period in this country where we have people in 
power who are making the wrong decisions, and it is important to take 
advantage of the opportunity at least to have a discourse, and if you 
can, do nothing more than point it out and verbalize it, talk about it.

  I want to talk about the great mistakes that are being made. It was a 
mistake to talk about abolishing the Department of Education. We have 
backed away from that. We abolished the Department of Tourism and the 
tourism unit in the Department of Commerce, how small it was, has been 
abolished. That was a great mistake.
  We are making humongous errors in not going forward to fund higher 
education at a higher level, escalating level. We need to be investing 
tremendous amounts of money in all education, and certainly in 
education, in higher education, but right across the board our 
investment in education should be escalating instead of stagnating and 
actually suffering cuts in many ways. We are at a period in history 
where if we do not take the flood, as Shakespeare said, there is a time 
when you have to act.
  We are at a critical period where 80 percent of the population is 
getting more and more anxious, and some elements of the population are 
getting angry. Some elements of the population are committing suicide 
because they are bottled up in an economy and they see plenty all 
around them advertised on television, millionaires and CEO's making 
fantastic salaries.
  The anxiety and the tension is unhealthy for Americans in general. 
People who have something now still have anxiety because they see it 
slipping away.
  We are in a period where we need to take a bold step and say the 
salvation of this society is education. The salvation of this society 
is an explosive investment in education which will also be followed by 
an explosive investment in new kinds of jobs that people can qualify 
for.
  There have been two periods in American history where we have been 
fortunate enough to have visionaries on the scene and listened to those 
visionaries long enough to let them put in place a revolutionary 
concept that has transformed the nature of our society.
  People do not talk much about the Morrell Act. The Morrell Act 
created the land grant colleges in all the States. The Morrell Act 
guarantees that every State would have a college, a university which 
was committed to practical education. The Morrell Act was a 
revolutionary idea.
  Thomas Jefferson, when he founded the University of Virginia, spoke 
in terms of he would like to see every State have a university, but he 
was in no position to act upon it.

  Morrell, whose name very few people know, the act very few people 
know about it, created a situation where the Federal Government 
invested in higher education in every State of the Union. Every State 
has a land grant college or university. They went beyond that and gave 
a mission to these colleges and universities, so the universities 
spawned experiments in agriculture.
  Experiments that took place in agriculture in the theoretical 
structure of the university, and then they developed agriculture 
experimental stations, they developed the county agents who took what 
the agriculture experiment stations had learned and took it out to the 
farmers, into the fields, and showed the farmers how to apply it, and 
as a result, the one place where this Nation has been unchallenged for 
the last few decades, nobody comes close to America in terms of its 
production of food. Our agriculture industry stands alone. We have the 
cheapest food in the world. We export food. It all started with 
education, folks.
  Nobody understands it is not just that our soil is better than the 
European soil or our rain is better. There are some advantages that a 
few places in the country have, but we have suffered floods and famines 
and all the folks' problems that they suffer in other countries, but 
the wisdom which led to the application of the principles learned in 
the classroom to experimentation and then down to the actual farmer's 
field, that has made all the differences in the world, the Morrell Act, 
an act of Congress that very few people understand which transformed 
education in America.
  In addition to agriculture, engineering is what you will find in 
every land grant college. Very early they went into engineering and the 
kind of industrialized might that Adolf Hitler had to face when America 
entered the war did not happen overnight. It was built up through the 
complex of education institutions that had been developed long before a 
world war was ever contemplated by any American, the Morrell Act.
  Another great revolutionary act that is not given due credit is the 
GI bill of rights. When the large numbers of soldiers returning from 
the Second World War were given the right to go to school, not just to 
college, but also to trade schools, not just to college, but also to 
trade schools, and any soldier had a right to go to school and the 
Federal Government would pay for most of that education, that was 
another revolutionary act that you do not understand. Large numbers of 
people were interjected in our society with educations to keep building 
our industrial base in very sophisticated ways.

  The Soviet Union never knew what hit it when it began to rival the 
United States in production, in achievement, scientific engineering 
achievement. It had to face the combination of the Morrell Act and the 
GI bill of rights, a

[[Page H8552]]

massive infusion of dollars for education which produced the desired 
results, the massive number of educated people. We are at a period now 
where that kind of transition is what we need. So it is relevant.
  Democrats talk about paycheck security, helping families to get the 
paycheck they deserve. They are not just talking about tomorrow's fight 
on the floor of the House to keep the Republicans from taking away the 
overtime cash payments for people. We are not talking just about that; 
we are talking about paycheck security in terms of providing for people 
to upgrade their skills, to get more education in this complex society.
  Probably education has to be a permanent feature of the life of every 
family, of every person getting more education to stay up, to keep up. 
That is absolutely necessary. So paycheck security is relevant to 
everything else I have been talking about. It is relevant to keeping 
the Department of Education and the Department of Labor active so that 
they can stay on top: What kind of training do we need for the year 
2000? How are we funding that so that it is not just an elite minority 
that gets help, not only people who are going into academic training 
but the guy who wants to be a chef?
  There are more of them out there and they are needed. The people who 
want to go into electronics, we are going to need more and more people 
who can really fix computers, VCR's. Half the families I know who have 
computers will tell you they are not working or one part of it is not 
working, they are using only a tiny part of the capacity because part 
of it is not working or they cannot figure out how to work it. So there 
are large numbers of possible job opportunities out there for people 
who go into electronics and deal with these gadgets and keep up with 
the complications that have developed, are developing all the time.
  Auto mechanics are not what they used to be. They have to be very 
well-educated and deal with very complex systems. You think you are 
talking to a physics professor sometimes when you go into a garage. 
This is the way things are now, the way they are going to be.

  If we do not give the educational opportunities, if they are not 
there, we are going to have a society that is crippled, because we have 
great needs out there that cannot be met in terms of functions. At the 
same time, we have a need for people to earn a living.
  The welfare bill that we passed last week, when we start talking 
about welfare reform now, people's eyes glaze over. Nobody wants to 
hear all the detailed discussions.
  But the problem with the welfare bill is at the heart of the bill 
that calls for reform, to put people to work, is a big lie. The 
provisions for work are not there. The provisions for the development 
of jobs, the provision for job training, the provisions for child care 
for people who go into job training or work, they are not there.
  The Congressional Budget Office has said we need $9 to $10 billion to 
just do what you say in that bill. The Republican bill has language, 
they have rhetoric in there about work and job training, but if you do 
what you say you are going to do, you need $10 billion more over the 
next 6 years. This is not the wild-eyed liberal from New York, Major 
Owens, talking. This is the Congressional Budget Office.
  The Congressional Budget Office did not say it that way, but that 
there is fraud in the whole construct. Every time we hear people talk 
about welfare reform, they talk about putting people to work, and yet 
the provisions for guaranteeing that the people are given skills that 
they need and the competencies they need in order to match up with the 
jobs that are available, it is not there. The provisions for the 
creation of new jobs is not there.
  We need lots of things in this society. There are jobs out there, 
there is work to be done, but if you do not pay for it, it is not a 
job.
  The Federal Government needs to pay for the building of schools 
during this transition period, so a lot of people get work building 
schools. The Federal Government needs to pay for some of our 
infrastructure improvements in terms of highways and roads. More needs 
to be done that would provide jobs during this transition period. All 
of these things are necessary to make work a reality.
  There are no jobs in Brooklyn. There are no jobs in my 11th 
Congressional District. Every time somebody announces a job, long lines 
of people form, and only a handful can get the few jobs that are 
available.
  There are jobs that are being lost in my congressional district. 
Every hospital is laying off people. The largest employer in the 11th 
Congressional District in Brooklyn that I serve is a hospital. The 
biggest hospital in Brooklyn is Kings County Hospital. It has been in 
existence for more than 100 years. They are talking about closing Kings 
County Hospital. Thousands of people work there in many different 
capacities.
  Do we need fewer hospitals? Maybe we do, but there is a wholesale 
movement on to rush into privatization of health care that is going to 
destroy those jobs before we are really certain as to what is going to 
replace them.
  These are things that are happening. We need ways to train the new 
medical personnel if we are going to have personnel in a different 
setting. The people will not go away. They still have health care 
needs. You need new kinds of people to carry out those health care 
needs.

                              {time}  2130

  What I am saying is that it all holds together. What I talked about 
is practical. It applies to people in my district who are suffering 
from a lack of jobs and job opportunities. We have taken some steps in 
my district to combat some of the hysteria surrounding the move for 
privatization.
  The Republican majority here in the Congress is not alone. There are 
Republicans in city hall in New York, there are Republicans in the 
Governor's chamber in New York, and because people have come alive, 
because common sense in New York is manifesting itself and 
communicating itself, we have just gone through the passage of a State 
legislative budget where no further cuts in tuition at any of the State 
colleges will take place. The City University of New York, the State 
University of New York, a total of more than 400,000 students, they 
will not have to face another tuition increase. That is a victory, 
because the projections were they were going to have to face new 
increases.
  Certain hospitals projected to be closed by the Governor, one in my 
district, Kingsborough Psychiatric Hospital, serving 2.5 million 
people, the only one in the district, 2.5 million people need a 
psychiatric hospital. They were proposing to close it down, because the 
people have become aware, because common sense has said ``no,'' they 
backed down. They are not closing that hospital.
  So we have a check that is built into democracy. If it can operate 
fast enough, the common sense of the people communicates to the 
leaders, who are off in their own extremist dream land agenda, and the 
leaders, if they are listening to the people, they respond.
  There is a correction. There is a need for a great correction in 
course. We have been pushed off course by the philosophy that politics 
is war without blood; have been pushed off course by the philosophy 
that you need to attack and eliminate a whole segment of society. We 
need to wipe out labor unions, organized labor, workers, the power that 
workers have to make decisions.
  That is the wrong way to go. We need a correction. We need to 
recognize that we are going into a transition, and that kind of 
foolhardy approach, that kind of extremist approach, only moves us away 
from the building of a kind of Great Society that we wanted to build.
  The families first agenda addresses this by trying to bring the 
extremists back down to earth. We talk about paycheck security, about 
healthcare security. Healthcare security means you have to stop 
tampering with Medicare. The medical savings account is a way to erode 
Medicare, take away the healthiest people from the pool and 
guaranteeing that there will be a collapse in the Medicare system, if 
you only have to pay for the sickest people. Healthcare security is a 
very vital part of the families first agenda.
  Opportunity is absolutely vital. Educational opportunity, making 
college and vocational schools tax deductible and other ways for 
parents to make sure their kids get better paying jobs.

[[Page H8553]]

Educational opportunity means that you should not have as many college 
students who are going back to college in the fall now facing 
situations which are more difficult with respect to getting loans. We 
want to eliminate that.
  We want to latch on to the proposals that have been made by the 
President for tax deductibility and for tax credits related to 
education. We want to adopt the President's proposals about merit 
scholarships.
  All of this is part of the understanding that we are in a transition 
period and we need to have a different set of priorities. We cannot 
pour another $13 billion into defense while we are cutting the 
education budget.

  I want to close by saying that I am a believer. The Families First 
agenda, which emphasizes security, opportunity, responsibility, is a 
practical agenda. It is worth fighting for. It is an agenda which is 
humane. It is an agenda which develops human beings and promises a 
society which is just and fair for everybody. It is an agenda which 
will bring us prosperity and growth.
  Prosperity and growth is directly linked to the number of people 
educated. Nothing is more important to our society than an educated 
population. The educated population has to be a healthy population. We 
cannot say we care about people if we are willing to take away their 
food stamps and to deny Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
  I think most people out there do not understand that Aid to Families 
with Dependent Children, what is normally called welfare, is about 1 
percent of the total Federal budget. More important, most people do not 
understand that Aid to Families with Dependent Children is part of the 
Social Security Act. It started with the Social Security Act, as a part 
of the Social Security Act. It is all under the Social Security Act. 
That is where Medicare is also under. Medicaid is also under the 
Medicaid act.
  I get senior citizens that say to me, ``Please don't let them touch 
my Social Security.'' There is no direct assault on what you call 
Social Security, your check that comes in the mail, yet. The fact that 
welfare in the form of Aid to Families with Dependent Children is going 
to cease if this bill passes and the President signs it, there will be 
no more entitlement for Aid to Families with Dependent Children. That 
is a part of the Social Security Act that has been chopped away.
  That sets up the stage for more of the Social Security Act to be 
chopped away. We do not talk about that, but I think you ought to come 
to that realization. If they are willing to go after Medicare, if they 
are willing to transfer the dollars in Medicare to provide for a tax 
cut for the rich, then they certainly eventually will not mind chopping 
away at Social Security. Let us get ready.
  If they are willing to go after young children and declare that we 
have no responsibility for them as a Federal Government anymore, the 
entitlement is gone. They are setting up a situation where the 
governors will be able to not only play with the dollars that are given 
for Aid to Families with Dependent Children, but the governors want to 
play with Medicaid money. There is not enough money in Aid to Families 
with Dependent Children, so there is a move to get their hands on the 
dollars in Medicaid, to take the money meant for the poor and do other 
things to meet the needs at the state and local level.
  I am going to conclude with a little rap poem I wrote sometime ago in 
connection with the way we are treating children. There is a great deal 
of clamor about choice versus the right-to-life. I wish we would care 
about life for the children who are already here. This little rap poem, 
which I already have placed in the Congressional Record some time ago, 
which is called ``Message From the Newborn to the Fetus.'' The newborn 
is talking to the fetus.

                 Message From the Newborn to the Fetus

     Man stay in there
     The womb is where its at
     Until tots slide out and breathe
     The right-to-life is guaranteed
     You never had it so good
     Out here in America
     They don't treat us
     Like they promised they would
     Right away at the hospital
     They put us out
     Cause my welfare Mom
     Didn't have no clout
     Stay where you are man
     The womb is where its at
     A smart fetus can live
     Like a rich lady's cat
     No food stamps for immigrants
     But long picket lines protect
     Our pre-birth rights
     The womb they glorify
     Outside they watch us die
     The womb is where its at
     Curled up in that nice nest
     You always get the very best
     But out here only fear
     They'll take my entitlement
     Man stay in there
     Cash in on this fetus fetish
     Be a hero embryo
     Pro-life politicians
     Offer nine months of love
     But at birth's border
     Immigrants from heaven
     Receive a hellish shove
     Until tots slide out and breathe
     The right to life is guaranteed
     Long protest lines protected
     Our pre-birth rights
     We crave the medals they gave
     When we were hidden
     Intimately way out of sight
     The womb is where its at
     Safely grow soft and fat
     Immigrant school lunches are now gone
     Budget cuts down to the bone
     Newborns sound the trumpet
     This land is littered
     With ugly infant tombs
     Babies must unite in battle
     Make war to regain
     Our wonderful respected wombs
     The womb is where its at
     Until tots slide out and breathe
     The right-to-life is guaranteed
     We appeal to the United Nations
     We cry out to the Almighty Pope
     The holy right of return
     Is now our only hope
     Man stay in there
     The womb is where its at.

                          ____________________