[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 119 (Wednesday, September 4, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H9987-H9993]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            CITIZEN CONCERNS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to take the floor tonight and 
address my colleagues over the fact that over the past month, 
essentially since we adjourned on August 2 for the 3- or 4-week 
district work period, I had the opportunity to have a number of forums, 
both general forums with my constituents or specific forums or town 
meetings on the senior issues, on environmental issues, and also on 
education issues. What I heard over and over again from my constituents 
was that they were very upset and they were very much opposed to the 
Republican leadership agenda that we have seen in the Congress over 
this last session now almost 2 years.
  What my constituents were telling me over and over again was that 
they did not want to cut Medicare. They did not want to cut Medicaid. 
They did not want to see massive cuts in higher education programs, and 
they certainly did not want to turn the clock back on the last 25 years 
of environmental protection that has been implemented by this Congress 
and by presidents on a bipartisan basis.
  My constituents could not have been any louder or any clearer on this 
issue. They felt very strongly that the Republican leadership, in this 
case Speaker Gingrich and the rest of the Republican leadership, have 
the wrong priorities, that when it comes to balancing the budget and 
when it comes to the priorities that have to be implemented in order to 
balance that budget, that Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the 
environment were not the areas where cuts should be made.
  Essentially what I was getting was the impression that the Gingrich 
Congress, if you will, is out of touch with the American people and 
their concerns. I just wanted to review, because I think many times now 
we are getting very close to the election and a lot of times the public 
hears things that are very different from the actions that have been 
taken in this Congress by the Republican leadership in the last 2 
years.
  I just want to remind my colleagues about some of the initiatives 
that we have seen in this 104th Congress. We have seen an unprecedented 
Republican record of voting for extreme cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, 
education, and the environment essentially to finance tax breaks for 
the wealthy.
  Since the Speaker Newt Gingrich, first pounded the gavel in January 
1995, Medicare has essentially been under siege in this Congress. The 
Gingrich Congress again and again has tried to destroy Medicare, 
threatening to inflict major hardships on millions of senior citizens 
and their families. Also this has been the biggest anti-education 
Congress in history.

                              {time}  1830

  The Gingrich Congress has continually gone after education funding as 
a piggy bank, again for their tax breaks for the wealthy, targeting 
student loans in particular. What I was hearing from my constituents at 
the various forums that I had was that right now the cost of higher 
education is prohibitive, and whether you are going to a public school, 
public university or a private college or university, the costs 
continue to skyrocket. The only way that most Americans, that the 
average middle class American, can afford a college education today is 
if they have some combination of scholarship or grant or student loan 
or work-study program, and yet what we have seen here is the Republican 
leadership constantly go after those very student loan programs or 
those very Federal grant programs or even the work-study programs that 
make it possible for many people, most people, if you will right now, 
to go and to continue with their higher education.
  And essentially, if the Gingrich Congress gets its way, students and 
their parents would pay thousands of dollars more for a college 
education at a time when tuition is already spiraling out of reach for 
many working families. So either they are going to pay more or they are 
not going to be able to afford to go to college or to graduate school, 
and they simply forgo that because they will not be able to get the 
help that is now afforded by the Federal Government.
  On the environment, basically the Gingrich Congress rolled into town 
in January 1995 determined to roll back major environmental protections 
in order to pay back the special interest polluters who finance their 
campaigns. What we saw was that from the very beginning the polluters 
were sitting down with the Republican leadership at the table and 
writing, or rewriting if you will, environmental laws.
  I do not think that is in the best interests of America's families. 
Obviously, people feel very strongly that they should be able to 
breathe clean air, drink clean water and eat safe food, and rolling 
back the environmental protections, which we have seen put in place on 
a bipartisan basis by Congress for the last 25 years since Earth Day, 
is clearly not the way that my constituents, and I think that most 
Americans, feel that we should be going.
  Let me just give you an example. You know one of the things that we 
keep hearing is that this Congress has changed, that somehow the 
Republican leadership now understands that they cannot roll back 
environmental protection, and they are starting to do a few things here 
and there that maybe show that. But you know if you look at the budget 
that was adopted earlier this year, in the spring of 1996, you see that 
it still contains all these poison pills from the old budget, extreme 
proposals that go against America's values. It still eliminates the 
Medicaid guarantee of meaningful health benefits for millions of 
Americans, it still threatens Medicare with excessive cuts and damaging 
policies, it still cuts education, and it still takes the environmental 
cop off the beat. What I mean by that is it cuts enforcement, and I 
have said over and over again here in the well that it is very nice if 
you have good environmental laws on the books, but if you do not have 
the money to enforce those laws, to send out the investigators, to have 
the environmental cop on the beat so to speak, you might as well not 
have the laws on the books at all.
  And this is what we are seeing, a budget that basically disregards 
America's values.
  I wanted to go into some of the points on this budget, but I see that 
the gentlewoman from Connecticut, who has been so much a leader on 
making some of these points, has joined me, and if she would like to 
have some time yielded at this point?
  Ms. DeLAURO. Yes, I appreciate my colleague yielding. I just wanted 
to make two or three points.
  I think we have seen that Labor Day has come and gone, the August 
congressional work break is over, and as

[[Page H9988]]

kids across this Nation are going back to school, Members of Congress 
head back to Washington for this final push, if you will, of the 104th 
Congress. In essence there is 1 more month of legislative work before 
the November elections.
  Sometimes, and I do not know if this is a fitting analogy, but for 
some people the thought of Congress coming back to work makes working 
families across this country feel exactly what many women feel at the 
beginning of the fall football season. It is kind of a complete and 
utter dread as to what else might be wrought on them. And after what 
they have seen with this Congress over the last 20 months, I think that 
there are very few or no one wants to see Speaker Gingrich and his 
leadership back at work because, quite frankly, there is just too much 
at stake for people in their lives and the lives of working families.
  The legacy, and my colleague talked a little about this, the legacy 
of the 104th Congress, the first Congress led by a Republican majority 
and the Republican leadership, their legislative agenda over the course 
of this last 20 months can simply be summed up in three words, and that 
is ``hurting working families.''
  Sometimes we forget where we started and if the natural instincts of 
people have been followed in this body over the last 20 months. But 
today, and I am sure my colleague has read the press today, a new CNN-
USA Today-Gallup poll shows that American voters prefer Democrats in 
Congress over Republicans by a 10-point margin. This is the biggest 
lead for Democrats since Republicans captured the Congress in November 
1994, and this is what USA Today observed, and I quote:

       The polls suggest GOP control of the Congress gained in 
     1994 for the first time in 40 years could be in serious 
     danger.

  The poll also showed that 60 percent of the American public has a 
favorable opinion of the Democratic Party compared to only 50 percent 
with a favorable opinion of Republicans. It is really time to take 
stock of what has been done over the last 2 years with just 2 months 
left of this session of the Congress.
  What the Republican leadership advocated, what they voted on, what 
they pushed through the committee, the kinds of efforts that you have 
talked about that were in the budget, that are coming back at us in 
another way over and over again, what they pushed through the 
committee, what they brought to the floor of the House; it is really 
quite significant and worth recalling. Let me just mention a few 
things.
  The Republicans started off the 104th Congress by attacking kids, 
cutting Head Start. Why should we prepare kids for kindergarten? They 
wanted to cut the school lunch program. Why should we stop kids' 
stomachs from growling? They wanted to cut the student loan program. 
Why should we help our kids with a college education?
  And they did not stop there. Then they skipped a few generations and 
went on to seniors, the Medicare battle of cutting $270 billion to pay 
for $245 billion in tax breaks for the wealthy. Why should we help 
seniors to pay for their medical care? Rolling back nursing home 
regulations. Why should we protect vulnerable seniors? You know, the 
notion of shutting down rural hospitals. Why should we provide the 
underserved areas with medical care?
  Then they went after the environment, my colleague pointed out. They 
let special interest polluters rewrite environmental laws. They 
actually had lobbyists sitting on the dias, which is only reserved for 
Members of Congress.
  Why should we have clean air and clean water? They cut funding for 
Superfund clean ups. Why should we get rid of toxic waste dumps? And I 
know my colleague in New Jersey has dealt with this issue over and over 
again. I have in my own community of Stratford, CT, where despite the 
two Government shutdowns and despite the initiatives to try to cut back 
on the Superfund they were able to continue with a project that can 
bring 1,500 jobs to Stratford, CT, immediately and then be able to 
build on that. They threatened to open up the Arctic Natural Wildlife 
Reserve to drilling. Why should we conserve our national treasures?
  And then they did not stop there. They went directly to working 
families. They stopped passage of the minimum wage increase until 
medical savings accounts were added to the Kennedy-Kassebaum health 
care reform legislation.
  It was very interesting on the minimum wage debate. It took all kinds 
of legislative and all kinds of parliamentary procedures in order for 
us to even be able to get the minimum wage up on the floor and try to 
get it passed.
  The whole issue of the medical savings accounts which was brought up, 
the medical savings accounts the Consumers Union has called a time bomb 
that will make health insurance less accessible and less affordable for 
many Americans.
  But the public did not support the Republicans' leadership effort to 
hurt children, and they do not support these efforts to hurt seniors.
  What we will take a look at in the new proposal, this economic plan 
proposed by Bob Dole, is about close to $600 billion in a tax cut. If 
you had to take, if you had to look at and if they had to look at 
cutting Medicare in order to provide for a $245 billion tax break for 
the wealthiest, where do they have to go to deal with $600 billion in a 
tax break?
  I know my colleagues from New Jersey and I do support tax cuts for 
working families. Let us take a look at how we can help working 
families with education, with doing, you know, helping people who are 
going to sell their homes without having to pay a capital gains tax, 
providing families with a $10,000 tax deduction in order to get their 
kids to school or provide for education or for skills and education 
training. Those are the kinds of things. The HOPE scholarships, $1,500 
over 2 years, a 2-year period of time, where if a child maintains a B 
average and stays drug-free that they will be able to get some 
education help. These are the kinds of ways we need to point, directly 
point at working families in trying to help them, not a $600 billion, 
you know, tax break that will wind up going after seniors once again.

  Mr. PALLONE. The gentlewoman could not be more on point, believe me. 
That is exactly what I was hearing, as I said, for the 3 weeks before 
the Democratic Convention when we went to Chicago. I had forums, town 
meetings every night and a lot of times during the day, and that is 
what I kept hearing over and over again, that people want the 
Government to be involved in positive ways, to help them with 
educational programs, for example.
  I mean I had a forum in Piscataway, which is one of the towns that 
includes Rutgers University or different parts of Rutgers University in 
my district, and people would come up and say, look, we cannot afford 
higher education. We like the fact that the President has expanded now 
a national direct student loan program, we like the fact that 
AmeriCorps is in place and you can work and get a student loan and pay 
it back through working while you are in college or afterward. Expand 
the opportunities, use the Tax Code, if you will, as you suggested and 
as the President suggested and mentioned at the Democratic Convention, 
use the Tax Code to give the deduction, that we can deduct tuition or 
that we can get the tax credit for the first 2 years of college, as the 
President suggested, the HOPE scholarship for example.
  I love the term ``hope'' because it is so positive, and it is his 
hometown in Arkansas, and you know that is the kind of thing that 
appeals, not to cut back on these programs, not to cut back on student 
loans, not to say we are not going to have a direct student loan 
program any more, not to eliminate AmeriCorps, which is exactly what 
the budget that was passed in this House does.
  And if I can just say that I remember during the convention when, I 
think it was, the Vice President spoke and said, ``I was there and I 
remember,'' and I think that is exactly it. I mean we were here on the 
floor, we have seen that they have proposed, and they cannot hide 
behind it now and act as if they never proposed it. They not only 
proposed it, they still have it out there as the budget they are trying 
to work with the terms of what appropriation bills they move here.
  So the reality is that they are still trying to cut back on these 
higher education programs and other things that are so important to the 
average American.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Let me just make one more point, because I think it is 
very

[[Page H9989]]

clear this is not too long ago before we left for the August work 
period that Bill Thomas of California talked about the Medicare Program 
as a socialist program. Last week in Congress Daily, when someone asked 
the Speaker how we could pay for the Dole economic plan, the $600 
billion tax cut program, he said, well, we will have to go back and 
look at entitlement programs again maybe, and we will probably have to 
look to defense as well. So they added that on.
  But the first, the very first, thing out of his mouth was the 
entitlement programs again: Entitlement, Medicare. That is what we are 
talking about. So they are prepared to go back to trying to cut 
Medicare and education again and all of the programs that people are 
utilizing for their families, not wasting money on. Nobody is talking 
about being spendthrifts and doing that. People are talking about a 
Medicare system that has helped people, student loans which help 
people, but if they are going to try to go for $600 billion and try to 
balance the budget at the same time and not cut defense, where is the 
money coming from?

                              {time}  1845

  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue 
to yield, as I was listening earlier, we are all kind of struck I 
think, after being away from here for a month, to see how at the 
Republican convention there was this desire to reinvent, if you will, 
the Republican record.
  The most striking one is to come back at the end of that and to have 
Bob Dole come out and support this $600 billion tax cut, and then to 
suggest that somehow it is paid for; and then to see the Speaker say 
maybe they would look at defense, and to meanwhile have Bob Dole going 
around the country saying that the administration is not spending 
enough on defense, that they have to spend more.
  So the presidential candidate is saying they are going to spend more 
on defense than we are already spending today, and so we get back to 
the entitlements. Of course, when we get back to the entitlements we 
get back to Medicare and to Medicaid, and we have struggled now for 
almost 2 years to try to take their $270 billion tax cut that was 
earmarked to come out of the Medicare funds and get that pared down to, 
now they are talking about 245 or 268 or some other number.
  The question, in the middle of this, Bob Dole dumps in $600 billion 
in tax cuts and says you can afford this. We cannot get the budget 
passed, we shut down the Government because we could not get the budget 
passed, we could not afford $270 billion in tax cuts.
  When we compare that to the President who has put forth a program 
that is in fact affordable and is targeted at populations that need it, 
of course, what we are seeing is this huge skepticism, because we went 
through the 1980's, and people saw this dramatic runup. We see now Dick 
Darman has published his book which says today that simply the deficits 
in the 1980's were caused by the fact that they spent too much money, 
that the Reagan administration spent too much money. As he says, it was 
primarily defense. They fought, they fought this Congress all the time 
on that.
  The question is, Do we want to have a replay? I think what we are 
starting to see the American public say is we do not want to go 
backward, we do not want to go to the 1980's, we want to go to the year 
2000. We want to go with a budget that is balanced. We want to go with 
kids that are competitive, kids that have skills, with kids who are 
educated, and with families who can keep their standard of living, that 
is what the future is about, and a targeted set of tax credits, some 
help for businesses, some help for education, some help for families, 
for older people that are going to sell their homes. That starts to 
make a lot of sense, and it is affordable. It is affordable.
  But to watch this other thing happen, this $600 billion, and to try 
to pretend that it is not related to cutting Medicare, that it is not 
related to squeezing health care out of either Medicare or Medicaid, 
because when we are looking for $600 billion, that is where we are 
going, because so far we have not found the $245 billion without 
savaging those programs.
  So far, what we have come to is we have kept their hands off of 
Medicaid for the time being; but if we are looking to pay for the Dole 
tax break, we are going to go to Medicaid and we are going to go right 
past that to Medicare. So, effectively, he has put it all back on the 
table, because it is so big and it is so sloppy and it is so untargeted 
that all it does is add to the deficit and drive cuts in programs that 
are absolutely vital to families in this country if they are going to 
have their parents and grandparents and themselves taken care of in 
future years.

  I want to thank the gentleman for taking this time to point out this 
incredible inconsistency. It was one thing, there was sort of this one 
Congressional Record when the whole world was watching, but for 18 
months when people were rather confused about what was going on, these 
guys were hacking and hewing and slashing every program that moved, 
every benefit working families needed, that college students needed, 
that children needed, and nutrition programs and school lunch and Head 
Start Programs. They were in here slashing away. Then one day they 
found out the public was watching, the public found out about it, 
changed its mind, and now they are trying to change their clothes. They 
are trying to put some other patina on what it is they were doing.
  The fact of the matter is we want to judge people by what they are 
doing when we are not paying attention. What they were doing was 
destroying the basic fabric that is helping to hold many American 
families together in very difficult economic times with respect to wage 
increases and standards of living. I thank the gentleman for taking 
this time.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, the thing that I liked best about the 
President's speech at the convention is that he was basically talking 
about very modest proposals; progressive steps, if you will, that could 
move us forward toward helping the average American, and basically 
giving them responsibility and opportunities so people could do things 
for themselves, in a very modest way. He did not talk about any 
grandiose scheme that was going to solve all the problems of the world.
  That is the kind of thing that I get from my constituents. They come 
up with very commonsense proposals, like we talked about the education 
proposal with the tuition tax deduction or the credit, $1,500 a year, 
something like that; modest things that will move us forward.
  I was very happy when the President came out with some new 
environmental initiatives. Again, they were not anything grandiose, but 
he talked about how in the last 3 years since he has been in office, in 
the Superfund Program, we have cleaned more Superfund sites in the past 
12 years, and he says he is going to make a major initiative over the 
next 4 years to clean up, I think, two-thirds of the sites or something 
like that; you know, use the existing program to try to do the right 
thing, to clean up these sites. That is what I hear.
  I had a couple of environmental forums in towns that have several 
Superfund sites. In each one of them there has been significant 
progress on cleanup, real cleanup, permanent cleanup, not just capping 
the site with asphalt or something like that. They understood when we 
said, look, we are making progress progress, but we want to do more. We 
want to accelerate the progress. That is understood, as the President 
said.
  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I assume the gentleman is 
getting the response that I do in the district that I represent. City 
officials for the first time feel like the EPA and Superfund is there 
to help them. They have spent 10 years languishing, trying to get 
through this morass of complications, and all of a sudden here is this 
administration, Carol Browner and our regional person, Felicia Marcus, 
who are going out meeting with cities, the city dump, dealing with 
providing efforts to bring in new economic activity, cleaning up the 
Superfund sites, committing resources, committing personnel to doing 
this.
  For the first time, the mayors and city council people in my area 
that have had these problems from many years ago are talking about this 
as a positive agency. For 10 years they looked at them like all they 
were doing is hindering the city that was trying to

[[Page H9990]]

get going. For the first time we see this.

  So we do not need a grandiose plan, what we need is someone who is 
committed to carrying out the intent and purposes of the Superfund law, 
and getting our communities cleaned up so we can get on with the kind 
of economic activity that is possible in those areas. This is the first 
time I have ever heard this from local city officials about that 
program.
  Ms. DeLAURO. If the gentleman will continue to yield, it is so clear, 
because I have Stratford, CT, where since 1918 the Raybestos Co. has 
been dumping, it was just toxic soup here, and despite two shutdowns, 
we have had the Superfund Program working. There has been such a 
cooperative effort between the Federal, State, and local government, 
working together to clean up this site to put the cap down. There is a 
developer who will come in and put up a shopping mall. We will have 
construction jobs, we will have revenue to the State of Connecticut and 
an increase in jobs. It is one of the best examples of cooperation and 
of partnership.
  And as I mentioned a few minutes ago, during the shutdowns, even 
during the shutdowns the Superfund Program continued to work with the 
project, help to provide money to keep it going, to keep it going, 
because of what it means for the future of that community. If the 
Republicans had had their way over this past 20 months, EPA would be 
gone. It was over.
  That is why what we need to do is, on a whole number of issues that 
have been talked about, whether it is school lunch, college loans, the 
direction that this march was moving in in terms of what it wanted to 
do, it was halted because of the public outcry. People said no, these 
programs work. School lunch works. Medicare works. The environmental 
regulations are good for us. They said no, so we had a stopping of it.
  My colleague, the gentleman from California, is right; it was almost 
unbelievable that the group who brought you the last 20 months was 
nowhere to be seen in San Diego. They were taken off the screen. But if 
they had followed their natural instincts, so many of these efforts 
that were really products of bipartisanship in years past would have 
been gone.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to follow up also with what 
the gentlewoman was saying about this whole idea of empowering the 
local people or citizen groups to get involved. One of the things that 
the President mentioned also as an environmental initiative for the 
next 4 years was expanding right to know.
  When you talk to your local citizen groups that had been involved in 
Superfund or clean water, whatever it happens to be, they all say the 
same thing: We are playing a major role in finding out what the 
pollution problems are, in investigating, going to outfall pipes or 
looking at the Superfund sites.
  A lot of the remedy selection, if you will, for the Superfund sites 
in my districts were actually put together by local citizen groups that 
got a grant from the Federal Government or from the State, and actually 
had input to put together what the remedy should be to clean up the 
Superfund site. So when you talk about citizen rights, expanding 
citizens' ability to sue, right to know, the kinds of things the 
President was talking about, these are the kinds of tools to empower 
them that people want to use. They see Government as this partnership 
to empower them to take on more responsibility and to work locally with 
the Federal dollars and with the State government to accomplish the 
goal.
  Mr. MILLER of California. If the gentleman will yield, that is the 
point. The President talked about Mr. Dole, talking about being a 
bridge to the past and a bridge to the future. In effect, what you saw 
out here for 18 months was an attempt by the Republican Party to go 
back to the past, to a time where there was not the EPA, where we did 
not have the Clean Water Act, where we did not have the Safe Drinking 
Water Act, where we did not have nutrition programs for children, when 
we did not have a Medicare program to take care of the elderly.
  The fact is, that is being rejected. That is being rejected 
throughout the country. Each and every time, as the public learns more 
and more about what this agenda was, what the ramifications of this 
contract were on regulatory reform, on environmental laws, on the 
nutrition laws, on our education program, that has been rejected, and 
it is being rejected overwhelmingly.
  We ought not to go back to those days, because in fact our 
communities have benefited from these environmental laws, our elderly 
have benefited from programs like Medicare, and poor populations have 
benefited from the Medicaid. We just cannot go back in this country. 
That is really what the contract was about. It is about what the first 
year was about. It is what the shutdown was about.
  It was about if you do not let us, to go back to a time without 
Medicare, without Medicaid, without nutrition, we are going to shut 
down the Government. We have seen that show. We have been there, we 
have done that. That is unacceptable to the American public. I think 
what we are starting to see is people want to focus on the future, and 
about the opportunity to have better communities, safer neighborhoods, 
and more secure families as we go into the next century.
  Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentlewoman from New York.
  Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. It is a 
pleasure to be here this evening.
  Mr. Speaker, as I just came back from a few weeks in my district, 
talking to seniors, talking to parents, understanding the needs of the 
people in my district, I come back here ready to fight once more, just 
to stop this amazing, amazing move to take us backwards.
  I sit on the Committee on Appropriations, where I remember in the 
late night seeing our colleagues on the Republican side trying to cut 
student loans, cut drug-free school money, trying to cut after-school 
jobs for youth. The gentleman and I know, and it is the same in New 
Jersey and New York, that the families, the mothers and fathers with 
whom we speak, want us to be investing in education. They want to take 
our kids forward to the 21st century. They do not want to see us go 
back. In fact, many of our communities are really distressed about 
seeing school buildings that need so much work.
  I was delighted when the President suggested that we put forth a bill 
that would invest over $5 billion in rebuilding our schools.

                              {time}  1900

  We have a lot of talk about computers and bringing us forward to the 
21st century. Yet these kids go to schools where they are crumbling. We 
should be really investing in our young people, in education, so we can 
move forward.
  I also live in a district where we are bordered by the Long Island 
Sound on one side and the Hudson River on the other side. What a year 
we have had, where we have seen so many environmental regulations by 
our colleagues in the Republican Party; we have seen these regulations, 
at least attempts to destroy these regulations. The gentleman from New 
Jersey [Mr. Pallone] has been a real leader in this area.
  I know the majority of our constituents want us to, yes, try and 
reform some of these rules so that they work more effectively, but they 
do not want to see us go backward. They want us to continue to fight 
for clean water, clean air. The gentlewoman from Connecticut [Ms. 
DeLauro] and I have been working to upgrade sewage treatment plants, as 
the gentleman from New Jersey has, because we understand that there is 
a real balance between jobs, economic development and cleaning up our 
environment. So we do not want to go backward. We want to go forward, 
whether it is fighting for a clean environment or fighting for a strong 
education, just to make sure that our families and our children have a 
bright future ahead. That is what this is all about.
  Mr. Speaker, I was just in my office doing some work. I heard the 
gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] and the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut [Ms. DeLauro] talking about the important challenges ahead, 
and I am so pleased that we have leadership in the White House working 
with us to make sure that we go forward to the 21st century. We have a 
lot of work to do, and working together I know that we are going to 
accomplish our goals.

[[Page H9991]]

  As I am thinking about these various issues, I remember sitting on 
this committee and seeing my Republican colleagues trying to cut out 60 
percent of the funds for prevention in trying to make sure that our 
youngsters do not go near drugs. We need programs like DARE, other 
substance abuse prevention programs, to be sure that the kids 
understand in their gut that drugs should not be part of their lives. 
We hear a lot of talk, a lot of rhetoric about drugs are no good and we 
have to do more. Yet the bottom line is on that committee the 
Republicans cut out 60 percent of the funds for substance abuse 
prevention programs.
  I am hoping that we can continue to work together to make sure that 
our schools are strong, that our environment is clean, that we protect 
our family and our children and the future and make sure we get that 
bridge to the 21st century, not let any of our colleagues take us back. 
I thank the gentleman for all the work he his doing and the gentlewoman 
from Connecticut [Ms. DeLauro]. It is a pleasure to stop by and talk 
with them.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentlewoman's comments. I 
think she is making the point that money is the key. The gentlewoman is 
on the Committee on Appropriations. She pointed out that in many cases 
the whole emphasis in this 104th Congress was on cutting money for 
environmental programs, for example, for education programs.
  Again we started out this evening by saying that, if you do not have 
the money to hire the investigators to do the enforcement, to upgrade 
the sewage treatment plants, for example, then what is the use of 
having the environmental laws on the books? That is what we saw. We 
saw, I think, initially an effort to try to cut back on some of the 
substantive environmental programs. And then when the Republicans could 
not accomplish that, they went to the Committee on Appropriations, and 
they tried to cut back on the money for enforcement, the money for 
investigation and then also put those legislative riders.
  Remember that we had, I think there were 17 legislative riders that 
were put into the appropriations bill that my colleague and other 
Democrats on the Committee on Appropriations fought so hard to try to 
get eliminated, and eventually all the riders were eliminated. But it 
was a hard-fought battle. The public has to remember what this battle 
was all about. It continues. The budget that is out there now would 
again cut back significantly on all these environmental programs.
  Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman mentioning those 
riders again. As we know, if the President did not stand firm working 
with the Democrats in Congress and eventually some of our colleagues on 
the other side hearing from their constituents in the district came 
around, if we did not stand firm with strong Presidential leadership, 
where would we be today? Those riders would be in place.

  Mr. PALLONE. Exactly.
  Mrs. LOWEY. I think it points up how important a role all of our 
constituents have. They attended town hall meetings. They wrote to 
their Members of Congress. They wrote to the President saying, we want 
to go forward, we want to continue to work, to clean up bodies of water 
like the Long Island Sound and the Hudson River and other estuaries 
around the country. They do not want to go backward.
  They understand that, yes, you can make these laws work better, you 
can cut out a lot of the waste, and we know there is plenty all over 
the place. But they still want us to invest in cleaning up these bodies 
of water because they understand that, in order to create jobs, in 
order to create businesses, in order to keep our economy strong, our 
environmental regulations have to be in place because it is that 
balance that you, I, the gentlewoman from Connecticut [Ms. DeLauro] and 
so many of our colleagues are trying to preserve.
  Mr. PALLONE. Exactly.
  I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.
  Ms. DeLAURO. I think one of the key issues is remembering, 
remembering this last 20 months and what it has been about.
  If the natural instincts of the Republican majority and leadership 
had been followed, we would have seen the single biggest cuts in 
education that the United States has ever seen. We would have seen the 
biggest assault on the environment, as both of my colleagues here have 
talked about, that we have seen since we started to try to do something 
in a bipartisan way on cleaning up the environment.
  Mr. Speaker, we would have seen the program that has probably been 
the most responsible for helping American seniors out of poverty, the 
Medicare Program, we would have seen that transformed into something 
else and leaving people who have worked hard all of their lives, people 
who only truly want to have a decent and a secure retirement, something 
that they have earned, we would have seen that program devastated.
  What is very interesting is that that was stopped, by the public 
primarily, by the outrage of the American public, and the Democrats in 
the House and the Senate and the President. But what is very 
interesting to note is that, and you can make reference to what 
happened in this Congress to nightmare on Capitol Hill part I; and I 
think, if given another chance, we would see return of the nightmare 
part II, not by my commentary but by what has already been in print by 
Republican leadership. The Speaker, saying that to enact a Dole 
economic plan would mean cuts in entitlements.
  The third person in charge of this House in the Republican 
leadership, Tom DeLay, in a response to columnist Mort Kondracke, when 
asked if they would do things differently or do them the same, talked 
about doing the same things over again. There has been recent 
commentary about the Medicare system being a Socialist system. The 
public in no way can feel that they can put their trust in people who 
do not believe in Medicare, fundamentally do not believe in it, who 
want to cut back on the opportunity for education, make it more costly 
for them to be able to get their kids to school and to jeopardize what 
their retirement security is all about.
  Mr. Speaker, one thing we totally have not talked about at all is the 
raid on pension funds. They were going to allow corporations to raid 
employee pension funds, not to utilize for health care or some other 
reason but for anything they wanted. It was going back to the 1980's, 
to the corporate raiders who wound up taking the pension funds, 
investing in savings and loans or junk bonds, and so forth, went belly 
up and put people's pensions at risk.
  That was on the table to happen. It was stopped. But it is good to 
review and to understand where their inclination would have taken this 
country, how they truly threatened the standard of living for working 
middle-class families in this country, and given the chance again, 
would do it again.
  Mr. PALLONE. Just to fall back again on what I was saying before, I 
had, I think, 3 senior forums, at least 3 senior forums during the 
break, When I started the forums, each of them had 200 or 300 people. I 
was amazed at how may people came out because they were concerned about 
what the Republicans were doing on Medicare and Medicaid. They started 
out in each case by giving me very positive suggestions about how 
Medicare could be changed to save money but actually accomplish more, 
things like, well, we should include prescription drugs, maybe we have 
to pay something, $5 or something like that but cover everything else 
for prescription drugs because if you do that, that will prevent us 
from having to go to the hospital or having to go to the nursing home. 
Preventive.
  People started to talk about nutrition programs, better diet or 
whatever for seniors as a method of prevention. Or about home health 
care and how the Medicare was so limited in home health care and if you 
included that home health care, it would prevent institutionalization.
  Prior to this Congress, in Democratic Congresses, we were talking 
about expanding Medicare to do those things with the idea that you 
could save money. But all of a sudden that was off the table. We have 
not heard anything like that for the last 2 years. These were just 
commonsense things that I was getting from my constituents. They were 
saying, those are the ways you can change Medicare to save money but be 
more helpful to us as senior citizens in terms of our health care.

[[Page H9992]]

  I had to basically say, well, the reason the Republican leadership is 
not doing that is because they are really not trying to save or improve 
Medicare, they just want to cut it so they can give back these huge tax 
breaks for the wealthy. They want it to wither on the vine. They did 
not even want it from the beginning. You talking about positive ways to 
improve this. That is not what this Republican Congress has been all 
about.
  It is hard, though, to convince people of that because they have a 
hard time believing that elected representatives would come down here 
and actually try to dismantle something that has been so effective, but 
that is the reality.
  Mrs. LOWEY. The gentleman from New Jersey brings up a very important 
point and why this session for me was like a nightmare. It is hard to 
believe, first of all, that Members of Congress who were duly elected 
would want to shut down the Government as these Republicans did. It 
reminds me of, as the mother of three children, we have seen some kids 
that want to stand in the corner and said, ``I'm going to scream and 
scream until I get my way.'' It is kind of hard to believe that they 
would have shut down the Government.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Twice.
  Mrs. LOWEY. Twice. But it is that kind of attitude that is amazing. 
When you think about it, it really is extraordinary that elected 
representatives would do that.
  Mr. Speaker, I have been in Congress now for about 8 years. We have 
had differences of opinion among Republicans and Democrats, among 
Democrats and Democrats. But eventually you sit down, you discuss it, 
you come up with something that is common sense, that makes sense. The 
gentleman mentioned the kinds of reforms and changes that we have been 
talking about all along. We had the 30th anniversary of Medicare this 
year. We talked about various ways to improve the program, to make it 
better, ways that we can root out real fraud and abuse. We know that. 
But we have been talking all these years, not about getting rid of it. 
The American people had one revolution. They do not want another one. 
We have been talking about how we make it better, whether it is 
Medicare, Medicaid, or even Social Security.
  We know that women, for example, who are the majority of the poor 
elderly in this country have been penalized for the years that they 
took off from work to raise their children. We have been working 
together to improve these programs so that women will not be penalized 
if they stay home. In fact, the bipartisan congressional caucus on 
women's issues, and there are very few things that are bipartisan 
around here these days, has been working on a group of what we call 
economic equity bills so that we can improve the lives of seniors as 
they get older.

                              {time}  1915

  We should be there working on those kinds of changes, making it fair, 
and not trying to get rid of Medicare and Medicaid, not making deep 
cuts in the programs so they cannot function.
  Now, we know we have held off the Republicans in this session because 
there has been such an uproar in the community. But I am hoping that 
with the Democrats actively working with the President, and with those 
colleagues on the opposite side of the aisle who want to join us, we 
can continue working on changes to Medicare and Medicaid to make these 
programs more efficient, but not cut back, not have deep cuts, because 
that does not accomplish anything.
  So I am very glad that the gentleman brought up the kinds of things 
that he discussed in his town hall meetings, because I see that, too. I 
have been going to senior centers, I have been talking to my seniors. I 
have been talking to families.
  It is not just seniors that care about this, because the average 
family that it feeling squeezed because they have to pay tuition to 
send kinds to college, the average family that has a couple of kids is 
worried that if there are these deep cuts in Medicare and Medicaid that 
are proposed by our Republican colleagues, they are worried that they 
are going to be caught in the middle. They are going to have to pay 
their college tuition, they are going to have to take care of their 
seniors that they love, and they just cannot handle it all.
  So I am very glad that we were able to hold off these draconian cuts, 
and hopefully we can work together in a bipartisan and constructive way 
in the future to really continue to make changes, but not to cut back.
  Mr. PALLONE. I agree. In fact, one of the things, I did have two 
forums, I guess there were three forums where we talked about the 
family first agenda, the Democratic family first agenda which, again, 
is a very modest series of proposals, but realistic in terms of our 
ability to pay for them and I think our ability to get them enacted. 
Again, it kind of reiterated what you just said, which is that the 
families are hurting and that they need the Government to help in some 
ways to make it so they can take on more responsibility and work 
together with the Government to improve everybody's lives.
  Going back to health care again, there was a lot of support for the 
Kennedy-Kassebaum bill which the President signed while we were in our 
district work period. But people also said they would like to see some 
of the additional changes that were in the family first agenda, the 
idea of kids-only health insurance for people that cannot get health 
insurance just for their children, addressing the drive-through 
deliveries. I was so pleased to see that the President mentioned that 
at the convention, in his speech, that he would sign the bill that 
would prevent drive-through deliveries so that women would be 
guaranteed, I guess, at least 48 hours for natural delivery and 4 days, 
I guess, for a C-section.
  These are the kinds of incremental proposals on health care and 
dealing with health care issues that I think we can get passed, and 
that the President has said ``Send me this legislation and I will sign 
it.'' But, again, we have had a difficult time, an impossible time with 
this Republican leadership, in moving on this agenda.
  Ms. DeLAURO. The gentleman mentioned the families first agenda which 
I am terribly proud of. That effort was put together by Members 
traveling through their districts for the last several months and 
listening to people and what their concerns are, some of the things we 
have talked about here tonight: How are they going to afford to send 
their kids to school? How do they make sure they are meeting their 
obligation to their parents and meeting their obligation to their kids? 
And their concern about their children in schools, with violence, how 
are they going to maintain their standard of living, all of those kinds 
of things.

  I know so many Members spent a lot of hours, I know my colleagues 
here did, just really in living rooms. I did so many meetings just in 
people's living rooms, listening to what they have to say. The families 
first agenda is about that. It is saying that families are first and 
not last.
  The Contract With America was, and my gosh, they cannot run away fast 
enough from it now, they are running away from the contract, from the 
leadership, with good reason, because it in fact had nothing to do with 
how we were going to try to help people raise their standard of living 
and take care of these kind of kitchen table issues and discussions 
that people have.
  But the families first agenda is modest. It is not big government. 
They are not large bureaucracies, not grandiose ideas. It is some very 
basic, simple principles and initiatives which can be implemented, 
around which there can be a consensus to get implementation: the 
targeted tax cuts for education that we talked about; health care 
insurance for children from zero to 13.
  Let us make sure our kids have health insurance. There are so many 
young families today where they cannot afford to have insurance, and 
kids get sick. Kids get sick. That is a fact of life. Where the heck do 
you get the money to be able to take care of that insurance?
  Pension reform, making it easier for businesses to offer pensions, 
making sure that pensions are accessible, making sure that that kind of 
corporate raiding of pensions is prohibited in some way. And there are 
proposals to deal with that.
  Child care proposals for working families, a big issue. How you are 
able to work? You have both parents working today. What do you do about 
child care?
  There is also an initiative about working with State government on

[[Page H9993]]

jobs and looking at how we try to implement a program that gets money 
to the State. States put in matching funds so we can create jobs around 
school construction and airports and roads and bridges and so forth.
  So a modest set of proposals that can be implemented. I think we can 
all be proud of the families first agenda.
  Mr. PALLONE. The other thing, when you were talking about the 
pensions, I heard a lot about the portability. In the same way we were 
talking about the health insurance portability in the families first 
agenda you have the pension portability. A lot of people came and said, 
``You know, I can't take my pension with me if I change my job.'' That 
I think is part of the families first agenda too, which is a great 
idea, because so many people today have many jobs over the course of 
their time they are working.
  Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Speaker, I am glad the gentleman mentioned all of the 
factors that really working women are not just concerned about, many of 
them are frantic about. In my district in Westchester County, this 
morning Secretary Reich spoke on the teleprompter, or whatever those 
big TV screens are called, to a large group of women that were there 
for a Working Woman Conference. They got together because these women 
are so frustrated.
  It takes two to support a family today, both the husband and the wife 
are there working, and there are a whole lot of discussions about child 
care, how are they going to pay for child care, how are they going to 
send their kids to college? They are worried about everyday living. 
That is why the President's proposal for a $10,000 tax credit was 
talked about today, because it is so important.
  I am hoping that we can really work together to get some of these 
proposals in the families first agenda through this Congress, because 
they are not pie in the sky, they are practical proposals, creating 
partnerships between the public and the private sector to create more 
child care positions, to make pension reform a real part of our 
congressional agenda, to help women go out and start businesses.
  We have been involved with the glass ceiling, and you know what 
happens when a woman hits that glass ceiling in a big corporation. She 
takes all the skills she has learned in the community as a mother, as a 
boss, and goes out and starts her own business. But a lot of these 
proposals in the families first agenda are real, they are doable, and 
we can get them done, if we really focus and work together.
  So with President Clinton's leadership, working with those of us who 
have been fighting for women and families and children for a very long 
time, I think we can achieve our goals.
  Mr. PALLONE. I appreciate that. I just want to thank the two of you 
for joining in this special order tonight. We sort of started out by 
saying how the Gingrich Republican leadership agenda was really out of 
touch with America's values and what people think we should be doing 
here in Congress. But, at the same time now, as Democrats we have our 
own agenda, the families first agenda. More and more what I found 
during the August break was that people understand that, and they think 
that is the way to go, modest proposals to move forward in a 
progressive way to help the average American.

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