[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 83 (Monday, June 16, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H3800-H3803]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SPECIAL ORDERS
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POLITICS AS USUAL BAD POLICY FOR FLOOD VICTIMS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Scarborough] is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Mr. Speaker, this past weekend and over the past 3
or 4 weeks we have been hearing a lot on television about flood relief
and the politization of that process, and we have been hearing about
how flood victims got caught in the middle of a political gambit and
they have actually been upset and injured by politics as usual in
Washington, DC.
Mr. Speaker, I wanted to come to the floor today because I have been
looking through some newspapers across the country to see what they
were doing outside the beltway and I wanted to check into some of the
charges that actually what happened on this flood relief bill actually
did affect flood victims, because we get in Washington and one hears
different things.
In fact, I heard the Vice President last week go before a press
conference and say the following, and this is from the Philadelphia
Inquirer dated last week: Vice President Gore accused the Republicans
of issuing an ultimatum. Quote: ``They are saying to the American
people, we want to make it clear that we will hurt you unless these
provisions are accepted.''
The charge is almost frantic, that actually there were people in this
Chamber that wanted to hurt Americans if they did not go along with
their own political agenda. It reminded me of some of the things that I
heard in the past when the President and Vice President would come out
to the press conference when we were trying to balance the budget and
try to hide behind Medicare and try to scare senior citizens and talk
about how we wanted to slash Medicare, when in fact we were trying to
save Medicare and were putting out a proposal very similar to what the
President was putting out.
There is this tactic that they always seem to use. Every time you
start to nail them down and try to force them to be physically
responsible, they would say, oh, you are trying to hurt old people, you
are trying to hurt senior citizens, you are trying to hurt young
children, you are trying to hurt flood victims. So it was sort of these
scare tactics to try to stop us from doing what needed to be done.
During the flood relief bill, what some Members wanted to do was
actually put in a provision that would prevent the Federal Government
from ever shutting down again. But when this was attempted, the
President, the Vice President, and many Members in this Chamber got out
there saying, oh, you are hurting the flood victims, you are hurting
the flood victims. I have to tell my colleagues as an American sitting
out there on the couch watching TV, one would look at it and say, gee,
how could anybody want to hurt the flood victims like that.
Then, as is the case usually in Washington, DC, you peel away a layer
of rhetoric, you peel away another layer of demagoguery and one gets
down to the facts, and the facts look quite different from what
politicians inside Washington, DC, are telling us.
This is what the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote on Thursday, June 12.
They quoted a political scientist from Carleton College in Minnesota,
one of the affected areas, and his name is Steven Scheer and he is a
political scientist. He said the following: ``Federal money is already
flowing into the flood-damaged areas, so this is not going to affect
things for a while,'' said this Minnesota political scientist. Yet, the
Democrats indicate that people are drowning and starving as a result of
this. It is not true.
Let me say that again. It is not true. A political scientist who
lives in Minnesota who studies politics and, more important,
understands the pain and the suffering and the misery that the men and
the women of the Midwest have been putting up with for so long says
firsthand, ``the Federal money is already here.''
If anybody said what happened in Washington over the past week or two
did anything to directly hurt people in the Midwest, then according to
this political scientist quoted by the Philadelphia Inquirer, it is not
true. Federal money is already flowing, so this is not going to affect
things for a while. Yet the Democrats indicate that people are drowning
and starving as a result of this. It is not true.
So one sits there and one asks oneself, if it is not true, according
to this political scientist in Minnesota and others who understand the
process, why would the Vice President of the United States come out and
say that it was true that somehow what happened in Washington last week
was going to hurt people in the Midwest, or why would the President
make the same inferences, why would people on this floor storm up to
the microphone day after day after day after day and say something that
clearly did not reflect reality?
Well, I guess unfortunately for too many in this Chamber it is
politics as usual. If one cannot win by using the facts, then try to
win by kind of shifting the facts around. Try to scare people. If one
does not want people to sit down and know the real story, then kind of
shuffle the deck a little bit and deal from the bottom of the deck once
in a while and maybe one can confuse people enough. I mean maybe that
is what they think. It is very unfortunate. But the reality is that
flood money was sent to the Midwest and in fact has been fully funded
for some time and will be fully funded for some time. But again,
Democrats used this as a political attack last week for purely
political purposes, and it is unfortunate.
So when the Vice President says ``We want to make it clear that we
will hurt you unless these provisions are accepted,'' it does not match
up with reality. I can say as a Member from the State of Florida, which
seems, unfortunately, seems to have a hurricane about two or three
times a year, in my district especially--2 years ago we had two
hurricanes in 1 month's time period--I understand firsthand about
devastation. I understand about how in one day's time, a family's
existence, a family's home, their property, their life, can be blown
away with the wind, blown away by a flood.
So the last thing that I am going to want to do, the last thing that
anybody here is going to want to do is to do anything to hurt flood
victims. Again, we did not do that, but we have people coming up here
and demagoguing on the issue to try to scare them. I think it is really
unfortunate.
Again, that is what happened last year when we were talking about
Medicare, when we were trying to save Medicare for senior citizens and
keep it solvent. We had so many people coming down here and saying, oh,
they are trying to cut Medicare, trying to do this, trying to do that,
again, all for political points.
I can tell my colleagues, as somebody who is relatively new to this
Chamber, it gets awfully frustrating that we find that too many times
debate in this great Chamber, which is really the center of freedom
around the world, is resolved to name-calling and
[[Page H3801]]
demagoguing and fingerpointing, when it would be so much better for the
American people if we just debated on the facts.
Now, if we wanted to debate on the facts and if we wanted to find a
situation that would hurt flood victims, I can give my colleagues one.
I can tell my colleagues what will cause flood victims possibly the
gravest risk in trying to put their lives back together as they seek
assistance from Washington, DC. What will hurt flood victims in the
Midwest the most, what will hurt victims of hurricanes in my part of
the world, what will hurt earthquake victims on the west coast the most
would be if this Federal Government ever shut down again and funding
from Federal agencies were totally cut off. Because as I said before,
those flood victims in the Midwest right now are fully funded for the
next month or so, even without this emergency supplemental that we
passed this last week. But if for some reason the White House and
Congress got into a debate, got into a budget battle like we did a few
years ago and the President, once again, vetoed every bill that
Congress sent down over and over and over again, then the President's
veto would have the effect of shutting down the Federal Government.
{time} 1215
What do we do? I think we learned our lesson from last time. We
wanted to purchase for the American people an insurance policy to make
sure that the Federal Government never shuts down again, and to make
sure that the flood victims in the Midwest and the victims of
hurricanes in my region and earthquake victims in California do not get
cut off from the Federal assistance that they say they need. So we put
in a provision that is an insurance policy against the Federal
Government ever shutting down.
Mr. Speaker, again, in Washington, DC, things are not ever as they
seem. I have to tell the Members, for the President of the United
States to say time and time again, for the Vice President, for many
Members in this Chamber to say, let us never shut down the Federal
Government again, I would think that anybody giving them an insurance
policy that would stop the Federal Government from ever shutting down
again would be a pretty good thing.
If we wanted to go a step further to make sure that the funding was
at 100 percent, that they get every single cent that they would have
gotten if we kept funding it at last year's level, we would make sure
that this insurance policy paid these people at 100 percent. That is
what we tried to do. I say, we tried to do. Actually, I did not vote
for the CR bill that got down there, but we will get to the reason why
in a second.
But the Republican majority put a bill together that would have in it
an insurance policy to keep the Federal Government open and going at
100 percent funding so the flood victims would not be hurt. Yet, the
President vetoed that. The Vice President came out, and boy, he was
mad. He said, how could they dare hurt the American people, and all we
were trying to do was actually trying to help by keeping the Federal
Government funded at 100 percent, to make sure that the Federal
Government would never shut down.
Mr. Speaker, I cannot tell the Members over the past 2 or 3 years how
many times I have seen people come to that podium and say, Mr. Speaker,
we must never shut down the Federal Government again. We would almost
think if they had sackcloths they would tear them off and they would
throw ashes all over their faces. These people were worked up. A couple
of times I thought they were going to dab their eyes with the ties that
they had, with all their little children on there, to show how much
they love children.
Of course, those of us that happen to have children and love children
but do not wear those ties, I guess, do not love children as much. But
they would come down here and cry and whine, saying, how could we ever
shut down the Federal Government again? You are going to hurt too many
Americans. The children will be hurt. The grandparents will be hurt.
Locusts will descend from the heavens. It will be the end of Western
civilization as we know it or, as R.E.M. says, it is the end of the
world as we know it.
So we put in this bill a continuing resolution to make sure that the
Federal Government is fully funded. Guess what the President does? He
vetoes it. So we are sitting there trying to figure out, why would the
President veto a bill that we sent to him when he has been saying for 3
years that is what he wanted?
Me not being a really bright guy, I get most of my news from
newspapers. So I get this editorial. I read this editorial from the
Wall Street Journal. All of a sudden, it starts to make a little bit of
sense to me. Now I understand why the President vetoed this insurance
policy against shutting down the Federal Government.
The Wall Street Journal had it in their editorial on Tuesday last
week, June 10. This is what the editorial says. They start out with a
quote from President Clinton. He says this:
`` `Shutting down the Government again would be unbelievably
irresponsible.' So said President Clinton on January 20, 1996, when he
was pinning blame for shutting down parts of the Federal Government on
the Republican Congress. Yesterday he vetoed a GOP `disaster relief'
spending bill that contained a provision to prevent precisely that sort
of shutdown.
``What gives?,'' asks the Wall Street Journal. ``Won't a shutdown
`cause disruption in the lives of millions of Americans,' as he said on
November 14, 1995? What we have here is a moment of political
revelation about the Clinton method: He wants to be able to threaten a
shutdown, because he knows it'll help him preserve the still-outsized
government we have. And as always, he wants an issue, in this case
`disaster relief,' with which to demagogue his opponents.''
This is the part I was talking about, about the flood relief bill
getting shut down, vetoed this fall:
If any of those 13 spending bills that Congress passes are not signed
by the start of the new fiscal year in October, the agencies they fund
can't legally open. Democratic Congresses missed this deadline all the
time, instead passing continuing resolutions until the final bills were
signed around Christmas. This is what the GOP Congress wants to do for
fiscal year 1998, proposing to fund the Government at 100 percent of
the 1997 levels until they can work out a compromise with the
President.
Again, this is that insurance policy that I was talking about.
Democratic Congresses, when they ran the Government for 40 years, did
these sorts of things all the time. You sign what is called a
continuing resolution that funds the Government at 100 percent, to make
sure it keeps going. But this is what the President used to try to veto
the bill.
``This would keep the Government running, denying Mr. Clinton the
chance to dump blame on the GOP. The President's political leverage
would thus be reduced and he'd have to fight over each spending bill on
the merits. Not that he is helpless: Unlike GOP Presidents, Mr. Clinton
can now wield a line item veto, if he has the nerve. But this is trench
warfare, where Congress can fight on more equal terms than the evening
news.
``Mr. Clinton can't afford to admit to any of this political
calculation, of course. That's why he's trying to change the subject
entirely and make this a debate about `disaster relief,' which no one
opposes. If Mr. Clinton really wants disaster relief, he can sign the
bill.''
Again, what you do, I guess, in Washington, when they have got you,
when the President says for 3 years, give me a continuing resolution,
give me an insurance policy to make sure the Federal Government never
shuts down, and we give it to him, he changes the subject. He says, how
can you hurt these poor flood victims?
Of course, we were not hurting the poor flood victims. As the
Philadelphia Inquirer again quoted the political scientist from
Minnesota, Federal money is already flowing into the region, yet the
Democrats are indicating people are drowning and starving as a result
of this, but it is not true. The flood victims have been taken care of.
They will continue to be taken care of.
So unfortunately, all of these statements that have been made,
according to this political scientist, just are not true. It is a
political battle, it is a political battle that a lot of Americans
[[Page H3802]]
have not been following, but it is a political battle that is
important, because as we go throughout the fall trying to balance the
budget for the first time in a generation, trying to give tax relief
back to working class Americans, and trying to save the next generation
from the crushing debt that this generation is passing on to them, we
have got to be able to negotiate with the President in good faith and
make sure, and make sure, that he will do the type of things that
Americans sent us to Washington to do: to balance the budget, to cut
taxes, to send money, power, and influence back to the American people,
and yes, to save the American dream for the 21st century.
My son is visiting me this week up in Washington, DC. In fact, he is
in the gallery right now. When I see him and his friends running around
and playing, like any parent, you start saying, what is their life
going to be like 10, 15, 20 years from now? What type of country are
they going to live in?
I want to make sure they live in an America where they can pursue the
American dream, just like my parents made sure I was able to pursue the
American dream, instead of having a country where they are paying 89
percent in taxes to the Federal Government because of the huge Federal
debt that Congress and Presidents have thrown on the American people
over the past 40 years.
We have to do something to make a difference, so that is why this
insurance policy against shutting down the Federal Government was so
important, and why it was so regrettable, first of all, that the
President vetoed the bill, because he knew what was doing; and
secondly, it was doubly regrettable that he would actually, and I want
to be careful here, it is regrettable that he would use flood victims
in an attempt to change the subject.
Because the President knows, just like the political science
professor in Minnesota knows, just like the Philadelphia Inquirer
knows, just like the Wall Street Journal knows, just like everybody
that has studied this issue knows, flood relief was pouring into the
Midwest. This political battle in Washington, DC was not affecting
them. In the end, the only real damage that was done was done on a
public relations front to the Republican party.
I am sure that we will all be big enough to dust ourselves off and
get past that. That is really not my concern. It is not any member of
the Republican party's concern, or at least it should not be. Our
concern is making sure those people in the Midwest are taken care of,
and they are. We wanted to make sure that the Federal Government was
not going to be shut down this fall, and that Federal funding would
truly not be cut off.
Reviewing, Mr. Speaker, the President and Vice President say that
this budget debate hurt people in the Midwest. It did not. It did not.
The funding was already up there. As the Philadelphia Inquirer says, it
was used for political purposes.
Secondly, the President and the Democrats have been coming up here
for years and have said that they want to make sure that the Federal
Government never shuts down again. I guess they really do not care, in
the end, do they? They had an opportunity. We gave them an insurance
policy to make sure the Federal Government never shut down again, and
they were all against it. So they can never say that again, right?
I do not know. In Washington, DC, I think anything is possible. Maybe
they will have the audacity to come up here in the next couple of
weeks, months, years, and talk about how they want to make sure the
Federal Government never shuts down again, but they had an opportunity
last week to take care of that, and they decided that they would rather
play political games than pass an insurance policy to make sure the
Federal Government never shuts down again.
The third thing I want to talk about and conclude on, Mr. Speaker,
the third point is, there is a lot of disingenuousness that was going
on in the Chamber last week when I heard so many Democrats come up and
say, we want a clean bill. Mr. Speaker, send us a clean bill. This is
about disaster relief. This is about flood victims. Send us a clean
bill, they said.
Did they want a clean bill? No, not really. Not really. Do Members
want to know what a clean bill would have been? It would have been
about a $750 million bill to take care of flood relief in the Midwest.
Do Members know how much that $750 million bill ended up being? It was
$8.4 billion. There was enough pork in that bill to feed everybody in
Washington, DC for the next 6 months.
There is a parking garage in Cleveland, OH, that somehow found its
way into this emergency flood relief bill. In fact, when we tried to
take it out Democrats on that side of the aisle said it was a deal
killer. They needed that garage. Was it an emergency? No, it was not an
emergency. Did it have anything to do with the flood? No, it did not
have anything to do with the flood. Was keeping it in making it a clean
flood bill? No, it certainly was not. That is pork, plain and simple.
It had nothing to do with disaster relief.
There are so many other issues. There was another provision that I
read about in the New York Times where the New York Times wrote about
how there was a movie theater that needed some repairs, needed some
renovations, so it got shoved into this emergency flood bill.
The New York Times went and talked to the manager of the theater, and
said, is your theater in really dire need of repair? He said, well, no,
not really. A couple of pipes have leaked, but other than that it is
doing OK. It had nothing to do with the flood, was not even in the
region, and yet another politician in Washington, DC saw that as a
reason to shove some more pork into supposedly this emergency relief
bill that the Democrats said they wanted to be clean.
{time} 1230
And of course, there is also funding for apple orchardists; and I
have had trouble tying that one to the flood. I guess the closest I
could get was that maybe there were some apple orchard farmers in
Washington State that might have seen the flood on TV, and maybe it
traumatized them so much they could not go out and work in their
orchards. I do not know. I could not figure it out.
But once again, this funding had nothing to do with the flood relief.
And yet it got shoved into that bill, and yet we had Democrats that
actually had the audacity to come on this floor last week complaining
about how they wanted a clean bill. Well, let me tell my colleagues,
unfortunately, as I am finding in Washington, DC, there are not a whole
heck of a lot of bills that end up being clean. There are not a whole
heck of a lot of businesses where pork is not being shoved in left and
right.
For some reason, that is the way this place works. I do not like it,
but it seems like that is the reality. But it is a reality that the
Democrats mastered for 40 years while they were in the majority, while
the deficit and the debt went up to $5 trillion. They are the ones that
were shoving in parking garages into this flood bill and then coming
back and talking in self-righteous indignation about how they wanted a
clean flood bill and because the flood bill was not clean, they were
going to veto it.
And you know, by the end of it, I have got to admit, I was a little
bit disillusioned. Like I said, I came here in 1994 and have been here
for about 2 or 3 years. I just never knew it worked like this, that we
could have people come on this floor and purposely make statements that
they knew were false saying that somebody was trying to hurt flood
victims by cutting off relief; and they knew that was false but they
said it anyway to gain political points. I did not know that we could
have the President of the United States and the Vice President and
Democrats and some Republicans come on the floor and bang a podium as
hard as they did saying, we must never shut down the Federal Government
again; and then when we give them an insurance policy to make sure that
the Federal Government never shuts down again, they veto it. I just
never knew that people did that, that they could get away with that.
I guess the third thing I did not know was that we can have the same
people who were saying do not put pork into this bill, give us a cheap
emergency relief bill; those same people, while they were saying that,
were the very ones
[[Page H3803]]
that were shoving pork into the bill. Of course, both sides do that, we
find out now. But only one side is the one that is preaching about how
they are holier than thou and about how they are self-righteous. And it
is just upsetting, it is disappointing. Because I think what it comes
down to is there are a lot of people in this Chamber and down in the
White House who think that the American people are stupid. That does
not sound nice. It really does not sound nice. But I think they really
believe the pollsters, and I think they believe the pundits that they
can somehow fool all the people all the time. It just is not the case.
I remember last year when we went through the Medicare crisis that we
went through, the President of the United States had the Medicare
trustees put a report together, and these Medicare trustees came back
saying that, unless Medicare was reformed quickly, we would go bankrupt
in 3 or 4 years. Well, that is serious.
I think of my grandparents. I think of my mother and father, my
mother in a week, I should not say in the House, but my mother in a
week will turn 65 years old. This deeply affects all of us. And I think
I am going to have to apologize to my mother for that for revealing her
age. But it deeply affects all Americans. It deeply affects middle-
class Americans who are struggling to put up with the bills and the
debts and the crises that they have to deal with day in and day out
without having to worry about Medicare going bankrupt and having to
take care of their parents, which they want to do but economically
cannot do it.
So when the President's Medicare task force comes out and says
Medicare is going bankrupt, something has to be done, then doggone it,
something has to be done. And so, we walked right into that. We, as the
Republican Party, tried to do something about saving Medicare. And we
know, most of the newspapers, most of the magazines said that what we
did was laudable, that what we did was correct, that we could extend
the life of Medicare for another 10 years.
And so, we passed the bill and then the President vetoed the bill,
shut down the Government by vetoing every appropriation bill we sent
his way and said that we were slashing Medicare, that we were cutting
Medicare, that we were hurting Medicare, that we were hurting senior
citizens. Well, I guess, is it the chickens that come home to roost? I
guess the chickens came home to roost last week, because a nearly
identical bill came before Congress this year, and the same President
and the same Democrats that last year were talking about how we were
slashing Medicare voted almost unanimously to pass the bill. And they
did so because they had to because now, instead of Medicare going
bankrupt in 3 or 4 years, we find out that Medicare is going bankrupt
in 2 or 3 years because, as usual, we choose politics over good
practice and we choose demagoguery over common sense when it is time to
gain political points in Washington, DC.
It is sad. It is regrettable. It is unfortunate. But it is the way
that this White House does business, and it is the way they have done
business. And I think things not only need to change, I think things
will change, because I do not believe that Americans are stupid. I do
not believe that Americans think the worst of other people. I think
Americans are a generous people. I think we are a proud people. And I
think we are gifted. I think we can recognize what is right and what is
wrong.
If we have to save future generations from a staggering $5 trillion
debt, we are going to do that. If we have to cut taxes for working-
class Americans because they are spending half of their year paying off
the Federal Government, I think we will do that. If we have to save
Medicare, if we have to save Social Security, I think in the end we
will do that.
We have done great things, great things over the past 20 years.
Throughout the 1980's, we had the longest expansion of the economy ever
in this history during peacetime, and we won the cold war. In the
1990's, we have had a strong, strong economic expansion. Our economy is
growing and we are doing some great things, but we have to continue and
we have to fight. I think we have to look for the best in people. I
think we have to give American people credit, that we just cannot trot
out and say, oh, my opponents hate children, my opponents hate senior
citizens, my opponents hate flood victims; because I think we are
underestimating the brilliance of the American people.
I think what has happened in the past couple weeks is regrettable,
and I hope other Members will come to the floor and will set the record
straight and will not run away from criticism like scalded dogs but
instead will come to the floor and say three very simple things. The
first thing is say, the liberals say we are trying to hurt flood
victims. We are not trying to hurt flood victims. The money is still
going up there, and we have proof and show the proof.
The second thing they need to come out and say is, the Democrats and
the liberals attack the conservatives, saying that they were not going
to give the President a clean flood bill. What we need to say is, look
at all the garbage that is shoved in that bill. If it is not a clean
bill, the parking garage that was put in there and subsidies for apple
orchardists that was put in and all the other things that were put in
there did not make it any cleaner. We need to work together to make
sure this type of bill never passes again.
And the third thing we need to say is, OK, Mr. President, you have
been saying for 3 years you do not want to shut down the Federal
Government. OK, Mr. Vice President, you have been saying for 3 years
you do not want to ever shut down the Federal Government. OK, Mr.
Minority Leader, minority whip, you have been saying for 3 years you
never want to shut down the Federal Government again. OK, fine, let us
give the American people the insurance policy to make sure that the
Federal Government never shuts down again, that flood relief is never
cut off, that housing assistance to the poor is never cut off again,
that all these other things that the Federal Government has been doing
never gets cut off again by passing the insurance policy to keep the
Federal Government running that this Congress passed a few weeks ago
and that the President vetoed.
I do not think we can afford those types of vetoes. We cannot afford
the zigzagging. We cannot afford the mixed messages that we have been
having for too long. And in conclusion, we cannot afford to have a
silent majority in this House who will not stand up and speak out and
tell the American people the truth.
The American people are grown up. They are intelligent. They are
brilliant. They have created the greatest governmental experiment, the
greatest country in the history of civilization. They can take the
truth. It is time for this silent majority to once again reassert
itself, become a vocal majority, go out and tell the American people
the truth, and prepare this country for the 21st century so my children
and their children and the American people's future generations can
prepare for the 21st century and chase the American dream into the next
century like I was able to do.
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