[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 90 (Tuesday, June 24, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H4328-H4334]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      TAX RELIEF FOR AMERICANS AND SPENDING PRIORITIES FOR AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Pease). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I suppose I would really be continuing the 
dialog that was began more than an hour ago by my colleagues in the 
Democratic Party and was just continued by two of my colleagues in the 
Republican majority. Nothing is more important than a discussion of the 
reconciliation package that will be voted on tomorrow, we hope, and the 
tax package that will be voted on. The budget and appropriations and 
taxes are the meat of government. Nothing is more important than what 
we do with the money of the taxpayers, and we cannot discuss it too 
much. I hate to be redundant, but I think we have to give due attention 
to that which is most important and hope that the American people 
understand that the final decision is in their hands.
  It is a matter of common sense as to what we want to do with our 
money. It is the American taxpayers' money. The taxes do belong to 
them, my colleagues in the Republican majority are correct, and they 
ought to have more of their money to spend. The taxpayers should have 
their money.
  It is very interesting, though, that my colleagues that were talking 
a few minutes ago from the Republican majority about guaranteeing that 
future generations will not be saddled with debt, guaranteeing that we 
will reduce the large size of government and the size of the budget, 
they voted for the continued funding of the B-2 bomber.
  We just had an historic vote yesterday on the floor of this House 
where the B-2 bomber, which at a minimum will absorb about $27 billion 
away from domestic programs in future years, and force us to keep the 
budget at a higher level than it really should be, force us to give 
less money back to the American public, the B-2 bomber was discussed, 
debated on this floor for several hours. It was pointed out that the 
President says we should not spend our money on the B-2 bomber. The 
Joint Chiefs of Staff said we should not spend our money on the B-2 
bomber. The Air Force says we should not spend our money on the B-2 
bomber. The goals, the objectives that would be met by the B-2 bomber 
program can be met in cheaper ways. We have B-1 bombers, we have other 
ways to accomplish the same purposes.
  All of it was stated quite clearly. But nevertheless, a majority 
voted to continue spending money on the B-2 bomber, the same people who 
said they want to save our children from having to live in a world 
where the Federal debt burdens them unduly.
  We have contradictions here. Everything that is said here relates to 
everything. We cannot separate the statements about protecting children 
from future debts from the almost phenomenal intent to continue funding 
the defense budget at levels which are almost as high as they were in 
the cold war. We are spending more than all of the other nations put 
together for defense, and that certainly is driving a situation which 
denies a greater amount of tax relief for the American taxpayer.
  On the matter of tax relief, we saw a clear statement here when my 
Democratic colleagues were on the floor.

[[Page H4329]]

 They had charts here which were really compelling in their simplicity.

                              {time}  2130

  They say one picture can say more than a thousand words. Well, those 
two charts said more than 1 million words. They had two charts here, 
one which showed the nature of the Republican tax cut package, and the 
other the nature of the proposed Democratic tax cut package. You would 
think you were looking at some piece of modern art by Andy Warhol or 
some other experimental artist, and that some kind of trick was being 
played when you looked at those two charts. The two charts were mirror 
images, mirror images of each other.
  The figures 91 and 19 stick out, 91 million and 19 million. If you 
look at the Democratic chart you can see a large chart on one side 
which says that most of the Democratic tax cut, as opposed to the tax 
cut package, most of the money goes to the 91 million Americans who are 
in the middle class. The 91 million who are in the middle class will 
receive most of the tax cut proposed by the Democrats. Only 19 million 
of the richest Americans would benefit greatly by the Democratic 
proposed tax cut package.
  When you look at the Republican tax package, it is just the opposite. 
Nineteen million of the richest Americans would receive two-thirds of 
the tax cut, and 91 million in the middle class will receive only one-
third; one-third, two-thirds, mirror images. For the Democrats two-
thirds of the tax cut goes to the middle class, one-third to the 
richest Americans. The Republicans, two-thirds goes to the richest 
Americans, one-third to the middle class.
  We could not get a more dramatic contrast than that. We could not get 
a simpler contrast than that. The contrast is obvious. The difference 
between the two parties, if you want it in summary form, you can see it 
in summary form right there without going into the details. But of 
course, there are more details to go into in terms of how do we spend 
that.
  That is how we get the revenue. The tax package talks about revenue 
that will be no longer be collected. On the other hand, we have a 
reconciliation package which includes the expenditure side: How should 
we spend the money that will be spent in this year's budget. Again, we 
get a display of the difference between the two parties.
  But I am not going to be redundant and repeat all of the things that 
have been said by the previous speakers in the previous 2 hours, but I 
do want to make it clear that what I have to say is related. It is 
related very much to it.
  I have a hodge-podge of concerns tonight. One is the fact that today, 
in the New York Times, there were photographs of two very important 
African-American women, photographs of two very important African-
American women. Both are related to very sad occasions.
  We are saddened by the death of Betty Shabazz, whose photograph was 
on the front page of the New York Times today. Betty Shabazz was the 
wife of Malcolm X, and her life in the last 10 years or perhaps her 
life since the death of her husband has been like a Greek tragedy. She 
saw her husband gunned down in front of her eyes while her daughters 
were sitting there with her, in the great assassination that took place 
in Harlem when Malcolm X was killed. She has seen a lot of adversity 
since then.
  Finally, the adversity reached its climax when she had received third 
degree burns over 80 percent of her body. She fought for her life for 
the past few weeks, and finally she gave up. It is most unfortunate. It 
is like, as I said before, a Greek tragedy. You would not believe it if 
you did not see it unfold before your very eyes, the incidents that led 
up to Betty Shabazz' final death related to her grandson and her 
daughter.
  I will not go into all the details there, but she was a great lady. 
We will hear a lot about her in the coming next few days and weeks. The 
things that will be said about her by other people are not quite the 
same as the things that I have said.
  She was a great lady because I saw her in a lot of places where there 
were no cameras, places where she got no credit, no glamor. There was 
no glamor there. I saw her in places where very few people bothered to 
go, for good cause. If there was a good cause there and she could do 
something to help, she showed up. Little people relied on her to do 
certain kinds of things, and she was always there.
  You can praise people for their intelligence, for their education. 
She had a Ph.D. She educated herself after her husband's assassination. 
She raised her daughters, a model mother and all that. You can praise 
people for many reasons: intellect, education, integrity. There are a 
number of things you can praise people for.
  I am impressed by all of those, but most of all I am impressed when 
people are good, basically good at heart. She was the kind of person 
who was basically good at heart. Deep in her fiber she wanted to do the 
right thing. You do not meet many people like that. Her motivation was 
to do good. She was a good person. Say all else that you want to say 
about her to glorify her, and there are many good things you can say, 
but underneath it what I appreciated most about Betty Shabazz is she 
was a good person.
  There was another photograph of a black woman in the New York Times 
today. Nobody knows her name across America or in New York City or in 
the neighborhoods. I had just heard of her for the first time. Her name 
is Marsha Motipersad. Marsha Motipersad was a workfare worker. She was 
a workfare worker who died on the job at 50, a 50-year-old workfare 
participant who had a heart condition. Everybody knew it.
  She had formerly been a secretary at the Children's Aid Society, and 
she had to leave her secretarial job in 1994 because she had had two 
heart attacks, two heart attacks. Here is a middle-class lady with 
skills in the work force who, for health reasons, was driven out of the 
work force, and I do not know what complications took place that led 
her to the point where all she could get was welfare. She ended up on 
welfare. The workfare programs come along, and despite her condition 
they said she had to go out and go to work in the parks department. 
With her heart condition and all the stress, et cetera, she dropped 
dead.
  I want to talk more about her later, but it is interesting that on 
this day the New York Times has photographs of two African-American 
women. I thought that was worth noting.
  I would also like to note some good news. On this day there was an 
announcement that Bill Gates, the millionaire, billionaire, multi-
billionaire owner of Microsoft, announced a plan to give $200 million 
to libraries. He has already given money to libraries. In fact, one in 
my district in the Flatbush area is the recipient of one of Bill Gates' 
early grants, the Microsoft early grant.
  Bill Gates clearly wants to build on the example set by Andrew 
Carnegie. Everybody knows that Andrew Carnegie built libraries all over 
America. More than 2,000 libraries were built by Andrew Carnegie and 
the Carnegie Corporation. Many are still standing. The legacy of Andrew 
Carnegie goes on.
  Bill Gates wants to take one more step and bring those libraries into 
the age of cyberspace, and put computers and software in libraries. I 
can think of no more daring and productive innovation than that, to 
really put them in public libraries where everybody will have access to 
them.

  I am particularly proud of that because I am a librarian by 
profession, and I worked in a public library. I spent my first 8 years 
in the work force in the Brooklyn Public Library. The Brooklyn Public 
Library is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.
  It all comes together. We go off into cyberspace training, and the 
complexities of trying to get low-income people in areas like my 
district the kind of training that they need in the area of computer 
literacy and computer utilization, nothing is more important than that, 
than that they are going to be able to be in a position to improve 
themselves. We need computer literacy in order to be employed, to gain 
promotions, and to go up in the work force today. What Bill Gates has 
done is a very practical thing, so it is good news.
  I want to tie them all together, Mr. Speaker, the death of Marsha 
Motipersad, the good news that Bill Gates has, tie it all together in 
my discussion of the plan outlined by Speaker Gingrich on June 18.
  The Speaker responded to the President, who was taking a new 
initiative

[[Page H4330]]

on race relations in America. The President's initiative has been 
criticized as being hollow and of little meaning because it is all 
talk. But as I said last week, in the beginning was the word.
  Words are very important. Words set in motion a chain reaction. They 
do not necessarily lead to productive action always, but no productive 
action takes place without words. There is nothing more practical than 
a good theory, nothing more practical than an idea. Ideas often take 
shape and they do not get any fulfillment, they never get realized, but 
you do not get anything realized unless it starts first as an idea, so 
words and ideas are very important.
  I applaud the President's initiative in launching a discussion of 
race relations. By discussing, we may solve some problems. By 
discussing, we may get some new perspectives on the race relations 
problem in America. Discussion may stimulate some new visions, and 
certainly the President is to be applauded, because look at the 
results. Right away you get a reaction and a response from probably the 
second most powerful politician in America. There is the President 
first, and then we have Speaker Gingrich. He responded. So you have the 
President launching the discussion and now Speaker Gingrich responding, 
so we have a focus and a discussion on race relations that could not 
have been achieved in such a short period of time in any way, any other 
way.
  So I congratulate the President. He is off and running, and I suppose 
if he has started the discussion and Speaker Gingrich has responded, no 
other significant elected official and national leader can afford not 
to talk about this now. They cannot afford not to be part of the 
discussion.
  Not only did the Speaker choose to respond, but the Speaker set forth 
a 10-point program, a very fascinating program. I agree with more than 
50 percent of it, at least, at least 50 percent of it. The Speaker's 
10-point program is worthy of discussion, and it relates directly to 
our vote tomorrow on the tax package, on the reconciliation package, on 
the expenditure part of the reconciliation package. It has a direct 
relationship.
  There is a direct relationship to our vote yesterday, the vote on the 
B-2 bomber, the vote which failed. I voted against the continuing 
funding of the B-2 bomber. The B-2 bomber drains money out of a budget 
that now we are trying to balance by the year 2002.
  If the B-2 bomber stays in the budget, it is going to offset and push 
out expenditures for education. It will push out expenditures for 
health care. It will force the party in power to play tricks with the 
budget the way the majority is playing tricks now with expenditures.
  They say that we have a $16 billion program to provide health care 
for 5 million children. That was the agreement of the White House. But 
the way they are playing with those dollars, we have been told now on 
good authority that only 500,000 children would be covered, and we are 
not sure of that. Because of the way they choose to pass out the money 
to the States and the Governors, we cannot be sure that even 500,000 
children will be covered by the program.
  So those kinds of tricks and that kind of preoccupation with 
distributing money for political gain, or to reward your friends in 
your class, in your class, your category, they talk about class 
warfare, we are passing out money to certain classes of people all the 
time.
  Who are the people benefiting from the B-2 bomber? Why did we have a 
majority of people on this floor vote to keep funding a B-2 bomber that 
nobody wants in Government? The President does not want it, as I said 
before, and the military people do not want it. It all relates.
  The Speaker's 10-point program cannot be divorced from what is 
happening here on the floor.

                              {time}  2145

  He is the leader. He has command of the majority of the votes. Very 
interesting that the New York Times' account of the Speaker's 10-point 
program states that he gave the program at a meeting related to a 
foundation to help orphans. I will read from the article.
  It appears in the Thursday, June 19, New York Times, if anybody is 
interested in the entire article. I will begin at the very beginning. 
It is an article by Stephen Holmes, and I quote:

       In the Republicans' first major response to President 
     Clinton's recent speech on race relations, Speaker Newt 
     Gingrich tonight sketched out a 10-point program to promote 
     racial healing and black achievement that he said relied more 
     on specific steps and less on theory, talk, and affirmative 
     action.

  The Speaker has taken a very ambitious step. He is going to promote 
racial healing and black achievement. I applaud that. That is a 
positive step forward. Let us join the Speaker in his attempt to 
promote racial healing and black achievement. I do not debate or doubt 
his sincerity.
  How are we going to get there, is what I would like to see in his 10-
point program. He lays out how he wants to promote racial healing and 
black achievement. Let us talk about that in detail in a few minutes.
  Let me read more of the introduction. In his remarks, Mr. Gingrich 
sought to outline an upbeat, can-do approach to solving the country's 
problems of race and poverty by focusing on individual achievement and 
not necessarily the advancement of any particular group. Mr. Gingrich's 
speech came 4 days after President Clinton used a commencement address 
at the University of California at San Diego to call on the country to 
engage in an honest conversation about racial issues.
  By announcing his 10-point program, the Republican leader sought to 
paint a contrasting portrait between his remarks and the President's 
speech, which was largely devoid of specifics, aside from a defense of 
affirmative action and the announcement of a blue ribbon Commission to 
study race relations and make recommendations.
  I am reading from the New York Times article of June 19. I continue. 
We thank the President for wishing to continue the dialog on race last 
weekend, Mr. Gingrich said; but frankly, there has been much talk on 
this issue and very little action of the sort which will dramatically 
change people's lives.
  Later in an interview, Mr. Gingrich said he hoped to meet with the 
President's Commission soon and that he would urge its members to focus 
their attention on what he termed barriers to minority advancement.
  I think that is also a very ambitious goal, a very ambitious 
statement by the Speaker. I applaud that. I certainly would like to do 
everything to help him accomplish that. He wants to meet with the 
Commission, just as I would like to meet with the Commission, a lot of 
other people. And I hope we will have the opportunity and pour out our 
recommendations to the Commission, but the Speaker is there first. I 
applaud his timeliness.
  To continue quoting from the New York Times article, this is a quote 
from Speaker Gingrich himself, what they really should design over the 
next year is, let us look at the specific pragmatic real changes and 
real barriers to participation. He said, if we could then knock down 
the barriers, as people participate, concerns about race will 
dramatically decline.
  I am reading from the New York Times article. That was the Speaker's 
statement. To continue to quote the Speaker from the article: What I 
said last year was that we have to put in the context of a broader 
solution of affirmative outreach to individuals any effort to eliminate 
quotas and set-asides, he said. And I spent the past year, frankly, 
working to develop a program that was comprehensive.
  In other words, Mr. Gingrich's 10-point program is his alternative to 
affirmative action, his alternative to affirmative action and his 
proposal to do things, I am sure, beyond affirmative action. So the 
Speaker is to be applauded. He is on board. The President is to be 
applauded for initiating this activity. Let us all run to catch up with 
the Speaker.
  Welfare reform is on the Speaker's list of 10 points. He proposes, in 
his 10-point program, that we should take the next step in welfare 
reform by fostering and promoting innovative local job training, 
welfare-to-work and entry-level employment programs to move welfare 
recipients into the work force. We have talked about welfare reform 
for, this is our third year of discussion.
  Unfortunately, we passed, the Congress passed, I voted against it, 
but

[[Page H4331]]

Congress passed welfare reform legislation and the President 
unfortunately signed it. We are off and running. We are off and running 
now. And I do not find anywhere any details of any innovative local job 
training program. The assumption was there are jobs out there. You move 
people from welfare to work. If you are moving them to work, then work 
is there.
  We have a great debate now here in the House and in the Capitol about 
whether these people who are moved from welfare to work are really 
employees. Can you imagine? We have talked for years about they should 
go to work. Once they go to work, we say, well, they are not really 
employees. Are we moving them from welfare to work, or are we moving 
them from welfare to some other category, something in between work and 
welfare? We did not know there was anything that existed. If they are 
going to work, they are employees.
  Why are certain people insisting that they not be considered 
employees? Because if they are employees in the United States of 
America, there is a law called the Fair Labor Standards Act. Fair Labor 
Standards Act says if you are an employee, you have to be paid the 
minimum wage. If you are an employee, there are certain working 
conditions that you are entitled to. You fall under the OSHA 
provisions, Occupation, Safety and Health Administration. If you are an 
employee, you have certain rights with respect to discrimination in the 
workplace. You have certain rights with respect to sexual harassment. 
Employees in America have certain rights.
  Part of the definition of being an employee in America is that all 
that is there to help protect you. The workplace is a place of 
privilege. The workplace is a place, as a result of the New Deal and 
all of the legislation that we formulated over the years, the workplace 
is not just a plantation. The workplace is something we try to make a 
place of fairness, a place where workers have a chance to earn a living 
without being oppressed and without being in any danger or harm and 
also being paid some kind of reasonable wage.
  So welfare reform is off and running. Large numbers of people in New 
York City are on workfare. They are being moved out of welfare. They 
are already working. People who are adults without children have been 
forced into a program called WEP, the Work Experience Program. The Work 
Experience Program refuses to pay minimum wage.
  This is a program that Marsha Motipersad was in before she died, 
Marsha Motipersad, a secretary of the Children's Aid Society until she 
had two heart attacks. She had to leave her job in 1994, and eventually 
she had no resource except to go on welfare.

  So she died, working in the Work Experience Program, 22 hours a week. 
The requirement was that she work 22 hours a week to cover her cash and 
food stamps benefits. The cash and food stamps benefits that she 
received are equivalent to $250 a month, according to the New York 
Times article of Tuesday, June 24. I have not calculated this myself. I 
find it hard to believe, I find it hard to believe that we would 
require a person to work 22 hours a week for $250 a month; 22 hours a 
week means, that is 88 hours for the month, 88 hours for the month to 
earn to be eligible for $250.
  So Marsha Motipersad, who dropped dead on her job, was being required 
to work 22 hours a week for food stamps and her cash benefits, which 
totaled $250 a month, according to the New York Times. This is the 
welfare reform that we have at present. The Speaker proposes in his 10-
point program that we have a real program, innovative job training, 
entry-level employment programs. Where are they, Mr. Speaker?
  How fast can we move? How rapidly can we put them in place? How many 
more Marsha Motipersads are out there? How many people have died 
already? Is there something wrong, Mr. Speaker, with requiring a person 
who has had two heart attacks to go to work for her food stamps? In the 
richest country that ever existed on the face of the earth, can we not 
have some provision to avoid having a woman who has had two heart 
attacks go to work for her food stamps?
  Let me read to you from this article of June 24 in the New York 
Times. Quote: A 50-year-old workfare participant with heart problems 
died on the job, prompting questions about the city's ability to 
determine whether some of its workfare laborers might be too sick to 
work. The worker, Marsha Motipersad, whose heart disease had forced her 
to leave her job in 1994 as a secretary with the Children's Aid Society 
after 17 years, died of a heart attack on June 17. Ms. Motipersad, who 
had first been categorized as not employable, she had first been called 
nonemployable by the Human Resources Administration because of her 
health problems, but she was recently recharacterized as employable and 
ordered into the city's Work Experience Program.
  Mr. Speaker, here is one reason we need to hurry and get a real 
system in place so we are not brutalizing people and making these kinds 
of mistakes. What we have is makeshift things happening out there. We 
rushed the welfare reform program into place so rapidly, it could have 
been made effective a year after the date of enactment. It could have 
been all kinds of things to phase it in. But we cared so little about 
the people on the very bottom, poorest people in America, that we 
rushed into a program that was bound to generate blunders and hardships 
of this kind.
  Henry Stern, the City Parks Commissioner, reading from the article 
that appeared in the New York Times, Henry Stern, the City Parks 
Commissioner, said that Ms. Motipersad has been assigned to light duty 
and had worked as a timekeeper in the office, but that he had ordered 
an investigation into what work she had actually been doing.
  In a blundering makeshift system, maybe somebody did do the right 
bureaucratic thing and note that she should not be given the hard work, 
but it is a blundering new system. People are thrown into the parks 
department where workers who are there, paid civil servants, are 
resentful of the fact that workfare people are being brought in to 
replace their colleagues.
  The parks department has been downsized from 7,000 jobs to 4,000 
jobs; 3,000 people who were full-time civil servants at one time are no 
longer there. And they have these thousands of people coming in as 
workfare participants, welfare recipients, working for almost nothing. 
So some of the people who are there, they resent these people. So she 
probably was deliberately not assigned a light job because there was 
resentment there that she was even there.
  He ordered an investigation, the commissioner, into what work she had 
actually been doing. Others, including the woman's son and some of the 
workers that she worked with, said Ms. Motipersad had talked of having 
to occasionally pick up garbage on the beach and the boardwalk, and she 
said she told them she feared for her health as a result. She had to go 
out and work like the other workers in terms of picking up trash on the 
beach and the boardwalk, even though there was a notation in her file 
that said she should be assigned light duty.
  Her son said, I told her not to do it, that I would help pick up the 
slack with the money; and she said she could not stay at home because 
she had to pay her rent. Evelyn Selby, a neighbor and WEP worker with 
Ms. Motipersad in Coney Island, said that they both had to rise at 4:30 
each morning and they used to take three buses to get to their 
assignment.
  Quote: I would have to wait for her as she climbed the steps and 
such. She was always behind.
  This is what her friend and companion says about Ms. Motipersad, who 
had had two heart attacks. She had to get up at 4:30 in the morning. By 
the time she gets to work catching three buses, she is already so 
stressed out until it is amazing that she did not die in the first few 
days with this kind of forced activity.
  Officials with H.R.A. said that Ms. Motipersad had within the last 
several months been reevaluated by a doctor with Health Services 
Systems, a privatized agency that had a contract from the city agency 
to evaluate these people to see if they were really sick when they said 
they were sick.
  The official said that Ms. Motipersad had been denied Federal 
disability benefits, known as Supplemental Security Income, SSI, 
because she was not deemed disabled. Now, what is our Supplemental 
Security Income for? If a

[[Page H4332]]

person who is 50 years old, has had two heart attacks is not eligible 
for disability, then who is?

                              {time}  2200

  A person who is a secretary and was forced to give up her job as a 
secretary because of a heart condition, if she is not deemed disabled, 
then who is?
  So the Federal bureaucracy has a role in failing Ms. Motipersad also. 
``She had some health problems but was deemed stable,'' says Renelda 
Higgins, a spokeswoman for the Human Resources Administration. ``Life 
and Health Issues are not static.'' I am quoting the bureaucrat, Ms. 
Higgins. ``Life and health issues are not static. Individuals are 
reevaluated. She was on medication and she was taking her medication.'' 
She had two heart attacks and she was taking her medication. And they 
sent her out on the beach to pick up trash.
  I had heart bypass surgery, and I do not want to go out on the beach 
and pick up anybody's trash. I know what would happen to me. I never 
had a heart attack, but I had a situation where I had heart bypass 
surgery. And I would not risk my life on a beach on a hot day picking 
up trash.
  But she was evaluated by this bureaucrat who said she is taking her 
medication, let her go to work. Others, including her family and 
lawyers representing workfare participants and Acorn, a nonprofit group 
that is working with unionized workfare laborers, called into question 
both the adequacy of the health evaluation done by the city's 
contractor, the private contractor, as well as the wisdom of forcing 
Mrs. Motipersad to work for her benefits.
  Mrs. Motipersad, according to Mr. Stern, worked 22 hours a week for 
her cash and food stamp benefits and they total about $250 a month. The 
city requires welfare recipients up to age 60 to work for their 
benefits. It says medical evaluations are done of all recipients in 
workfare who have a history of health problems. Part of the rationale 
for making such people work for benefits, city officials have said, is 
to obtain a straightforward return for their expenditure.
  The city, in fact, has created a subcategory of welfare worker. It is 
called employable with limitations. Such recipients are supposed to be 
assigned office work. What recipients of workfare have said from its 
inception, they have complained that the city has hired doctors who did 
not seriously investigate real and formidable health problems.
  People with asthma have been told of being put to work in office 
basements. And others talk of 3-minute examinations by this city-
employed health evaluation agency without any acknowledgment of their 
own doctors' evaluations. The Legal Aid Society has filed suit on 
behalf of recipients who were categorized as ``employable with 
limitations,'' but nonetheless, they were sent to sanitation garages 
and the like.
  Mrs. Motipersad was forced to give up her job at the Children's Aid 
Society, as I said before, in 1994, after two heart attacks. She 
briefly collected disability benefits, and her son yesterday produced 
notes from doctors recommending that she not work because she had 
coronary artery disease.
  Here is an individual whose photo would never have appeared in the 
New York Times, otherwise a plain and simple person, a member of the 
middle class, worked 17 years as a secretary in a reputable agency and, 
because of circumstances related to her health, wound up in the 
workfare program. She was kicked off. She was told she would be kicked 
off of welfare, she would not get her $250 a month if she did not go 
out and work for the Parks Department.
  So point No. 1, Mr. Speaker, welfare reform. Take the next step in 
welfare reform by fostering and promoting innovative local job 
training, welfare to work and entry-level employment programs to move 
welfare recipients into the work force, a systematic well-structured 
program to deal with trying to help poor people move from welfare to 
work.
  We are all in favor of that. But the job has not even begun, Mr. 
Speaker. I urge you to use your power to implement your recommendation. 
It is here. It is part of your 10-point program. This is based on a 
list of the 10 points in the New York Times as excerpts of the prepared 
text of a speech by the Speaker.
  Point No. 2: Civil rights. The Speaker says, ``We should clear the 
existing backlog of discrimination cases at the Equal Employment 
Opportunities Commission by enforcing existing civil rights laws, 
rather than trying to create new ones by regulatory decree.''
  Mr. Speaker, I wholeheartedly agree with you. We should clear the 
existing backlog of discrimination cases at the Equal Employment 
Opportunities Commission. You have the power. You have the power over 
the appropriations process. The fact that they have a backlog is due to 
the fact that they have been downsizing, the number of employees have 
been cut. A proposal from this House could help to solve this problem 
right away.
  I agree with the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Gingrich], we do not 
need to talk about race relations. Let us go ahead and do something 
practical to promote race relations. Clear up the backlog at the Equal 
Employment Opportunities Commission. It is a statement of the second 
most powerful person here in Washington, DC, the gentleman from 
Georgia, Speaker Newt Gingrich. Get on with the business. We will 
support the Speaker 100 percent.
  The Speaker says we should have more home ownership, ease the path 
toward home ownership by giving local communities and housing 
authorities the flexibility and authority to more effectively 
efficiently house low-income Americans. We must also expand faith-based 
charities, such as Habitat for Humanity, which grow families as well as 
build homes.
  I agree with the Speaker a hundred percent. We would like to ease the 
path toward home ownership by giving local communities and housing 
authorities the flexibility that they need. They also have to have 
increased funding to take care of the repairs, renovations of existing 
public housing. And we also have a shortage of housing in many cities.
  The fact that large numbers of people are homeless can be related to 
the fact that we have built very little public housing over the last 10 
years. As the rate of construction of public housing and the 
availability of opportunities and publicly subsidized housing went 
down, the number of homeless people increased. It is also more 
expensive in many areas to obtain a home either by rental or home 
ownership.
  So this is on target, Mr. Speaker. Let us get on with it. You have 
the power. Recently we passed a bill here on the floor of this House 
related to public housing which went in the opposite direction. They 
reduced the funds available for public housing. And it gave a lot of 
power away to local housing authorities, but it gave them no new tools 
to work with, no new appropriations to help with the appropriation. You 
proposed to dump the problem on localities that are already burdened 
and could not provide any funding to deal with plugging the gaps in 
housing in their localities.
  Another point, the fourth point made by the Speaker: Violent crime. 
Make our cities safe and secure places to live and work through 
community policing, through tougher sentences for violent criminals, 
and innovative anticrime programs. Dramatically expand the community-
based antidrug coalition efforts and create a victory plan for the war 
on drugs.

  We are a thousand percent behind you, Mr. Speaker. Innovative anti-
crime programs. Many Members of the Republican majority have ridiculed 
any discussion of crime prevention programs. We call them crime 
prevention programs. You call them innovative anticrime programs.
  I think that, in the final analysis, those people that have expertise 
in this area would tell you they come pretty close to each other. If 
you are talking about innovative anticrime programs, you are going to 
end up with programs that focus on young people, because that is where 
the greatest volume of crime is.
  The crime prevention programs that we proposed focused on young 
people. Let us have a meeting of the minds right away. If you want to 
move forward, you have the power, Mr. Speaker, to deal with violent 
crime in the way you stated should be handled here, you have our full 
support.
  A fourth point made by the Speaker: Economic growth. Expand economic 
opportunities for all Americans by promoting continued economic growth

[[Page H4333]]

with low inflation and rising take-home pay through tax cuts, tax 
simplifications, litigation reform, less regulation, overhaul burden of 
Government and small businesses.
  All in all, for welfare to work to be successful, work needs to be 
available. That is the point we made on this floor over and over again; 
work needs to be available. Expand economic opportunities for all 
America by promoting continued economic growth with low inflation, 
rising tax, take-home pay, et cetera. We are all in favor of that. Let 
us go forward.
  Urban renewal is another point. The Speaker says create 100 renewal 
communities in impoverished areas through targeted program tax 
benefits. Regulatory relief, low-income scholarships, savings accounts, 
brownfields cleanup, and home ownership opportunities.
  That sounds very similar to a program that the President talked about 
a few days ago when he talked about helping to revitalize our cities. 
The Speaker and the President seem to be using the same language. I 
hope they are on the same wavelength. They as the two most powerful 
people in Washington ought to be able to make things happen in the area 
of urban renewal. I certainly hope that in this area of 100 renewal 
communities in impoverished communities we can move off dead center and 
get an economic empowerment zone for central Brooklyn. We are busily at 
work trying to focus on putting together all the necessities to make an 
application for a new urban economic empowerment zone. But the economic 
empowerment zone has been left out of the budget agreement at the White 
House. We were brokenhearted, disappointed, to find out when that 
agreement was completed, there was no discussion of any additional 
economic empowerment zones.
  Economic empowerment zones experiments that were proposed by my 
colleague from New York, Mr. Rangel, many years ago, after he and Jack 
Kemp had worked on it for years and some other people had worked on it, 
it finally got down to a package that was passed finally which had nine 
empowerment zones only, six in urban areas and three in rural areas.
  So we have right now in America nine empowerment zones, six on urban 
areas and three on rural areas. Most of them are deemed to be 
successful. I know of no great failure. If there is a failure, it is 
not being discussed. So if the economic empowerment zones have been 
successful, then why do we hesitate? Let us go forward.
  The President now, in his speech a few days ago, proposed an 
additional 15 economic empowerment zones. I heard legislation that was 
proposed and many more was being drafted by certain people on the 
Committee on Ways and Means, but all of it has been put on hold, 
nothing is happening at this point.
  An idea that combines government grants with private sector 
involvement seems to be the ideal that both Republicans and Democrats 
can agree on. If Republicans and Democrats agree that economic 
empowerment zones are good for the Nation, then why can we not have 
more of them? Why can we not in Brooklyn, have one in central Brooklyn, 
which encompasses my district, have an economic empowerment zone?
  We have 2 million people. At least half are poor. We have the space. 
We have need to revitalize commercial areas, industrial areas. All of 
the conditions that are necessary, that are required for economic 
empowerment zones are there. But there is no legislation here. The nine 
that were created are all given away. We want to compete for whatever 
new number there is. I hope it is more than 15. But if there are 15, 
then no neighborhood, no community needs an economic empowerment zone 
more than central Brooklyn.
  It is one of the Speaker's points. He has the power. Let us make 
certain that the President's 15 economic empowerment zones are combined 
with the Speaker's 100 renewal communities. And together we ought to, 
all who live in big cities, be able to get something out of the two 
packages that are proposed.
  What I am talking about is the 10-point proposal of the Speaker 
designed to deal with race relations. He made the speech on June 18, 
and I am quoting from an article in the New York Times which talked 
about his speech. The Speaker proposes to move ahead of the President. 
He just does not want to talk about these things. He has a program. The 
President has appointed a commission, what he calls an advisory board. 
An advisory board will come back within a year with recommendations. 
The Speaker says you do not need to move so slowly. He sketched out a 
10-point program to promote racial healing and black achievements. And 
he says he relies more on specific steps and less theory. He relies 
less on talk and less on affirmative action and his 10 points.
  I have talked about welfare reform that he proposed. Innovative job 
training is part of his welfare reform. It is not happening. But he 
proposed he can make it happen. He has the power. The economic growth, 
attacking violent crime. Promoting home ownership, promoting civil 
rights, promoting urban renewal. And he has learning here as one of his 
10 points. Learning.
  And I will read that part of his speech: ``Create better opportunity 
for all children to learn by breaking stranglehold of teachers' unions 
and giving urban parents the financial opportunity to choose the 
public, private, or parochial school that is best for their children.''

                              {time}  2215

  I am quoting the Speaker's speech. I want to do justice to what he 
had to say. Whereas I have agreed with all the points I mentioned 
before, basically I have agreed with him, I do not agree with his 
proposal as to how we should promote learning. I applaud the fact that 
he has put learning on the list, creation of better opportunities for 
all children to learn. The way he proposes to do it is, of course, what 
the Republican majority keeps insisting has to be done, that you have 
to have vouchers and private school choice. I am not going to even 
discuss that at this point. Let me just challenge the Speaker if he 
wants to create better opportunities for all children to learn, why not 
go in the direction where both Democrats and Republicans agree? Why not 
promote charter schools? Both the President, the Democrats in the 
House, the Democrats in the Senate, the Republicans in the House and 
Republicans in the Senate all agree that charter schools are a good 
idea. So while the great debate about vouchers goes on, why do you not 
accentuate the positive, Mr. Speaker? Why do you not come forward with 
an innovative, meaningful program to promote charter schools? The idea 
is out there, but we only have a handful of charter schools in the 
country. Only half the States have laws which allow charter schools and 
in those States that have charter schools, we have very few actual 
charter schools. It is a very embryonic kind of experiment that is 
going on. It will take another 20 years to evaluate whether it has any 
significance or not. There are a lot of innovations that need to take 
place. I have been on the Committee on Education and the Workforce now 
for 15 years. The institutional history of what we have tried, what is 
proposed, what the researchers say is all very much ingrained in my 
mind. There are a lot of innovative approaches to education which make 
sense. A lot should be going on right now. I say across the board we 
should have a comprehensive, overwhelming attack on the problems 
related to education. Reform and efforts to improve our schools ought 
to go forward on a massive basis. Maybe in 5 years we can look and sort 
out what really works best and begin to institutionalize what really 
works best to develop a first-class system, not a national system but 
systems which have similar components across the country of things that 
work. But if we are going to take an idea like charter schools, where 
everybody agrees that we should have charter schools and then we are 
going to have only minuscule testing of it, only a few here and a few 
there, in many States which allow charter schools, there are so many 
restrictions placed on them until we will not have many developed at 
all over the next 10 years. There is a need for somebody, and the 
Federal Government probably is the only entity that could do it, to 
break it loose and try to give incentives for experimentation on a 
scale large enough to be significant. We need a critical mass. Charter 
schools cannot be evaluated as to what impact they can have on the 
overall

[[Page H4334]]

education situation unless we have a critical mass. We need enough. One 
of the versions of charter schools is supposed to be that they will 
give competition to the traditional public schools.
  What is the difference between charter schools and traditional public 
schools? It is not the funding base, because they both are supposed to 
be funded by taxpayers' money, fully funded. Charter schools are to 
receive a per capita amount, which is the same as the local education 
agency pays for their children. The only difference between charter 
schools and the local education agency's traditional schools would be 
in the governance and management. They would have to abide by all the 
rules and terms of any State requirements, requirements for 
integration, requirements for curriculum, everything would still be 
there for the charter schools. It is a matter of how they are governed 
and who is in charge of the management and what kind of things can you 
do if you are out from under the local bureaucracy and how much freedom 
for innovation will lead to real improvements, real change, and how 
much your freedom to govern as you see fit and manage as you see fit 
can allow you to do the things that have to be done to improve the 
schools without the burden of having to get approvals from people in 
the hierarchy on top of you. The great challenge is governance and 
management. Let us go on at the Federal level to create some 
incentives. Let us have a piece of legislation which provides 
incentives for charter schools. If the Speaker wants to do something 
about creating better opportunities for all children to learn, there is 
one area which there is agreement, charter schools, why do we not do 
something about it.
  Opportunities to learn also involve, of course, children having a 
decent place to study. It is most unfortunate that the Speaker is 
concerned about creating better opportunities to learn for children and 
yet in the budget agreement that was made with the President at the 
White House, the initiative for construction of new schools and 
renovation of unsafe schools was taken out. $5 billion over a 5-year 
period. That is all they proposed. $5 billion over a 5-year period to 
help to renovate and repair and actually construct new schools. It 
would make a big difference in terms of opportunity to learn for all 
children. Because across America, according to the General Accounting 
Office, the GAO, $120 billion is needed for school construction in the 
next 10 years, to rebuild the infrastructure of public schools. We are 
not talking about colleges and universities. Just elementary and 
secondary schools.
  Why can we not have in a situation where we are adding billions to 
the defense budget, and yesterday we voted to continue the B-2 bomber, 
while we refused to reduce the budget for the CIA even though the cold 
war is over, why can we not have $5 billion over a 5-year period for 
school repair, renovation and construction? If the Speaker agrees and 
if he has on his list of 10 things that need to be done to promote race 
relations, to provide opportunities for individuals, then why can we 
not have an agreement to put back into the budget the $5 billion 
initiative for school construction?
  Another point, and I want to finish the Speaker's points and do 
justice to his points. Small business. Set a goal for tripling the 
number of minority-owned small businesses. I agree, Mr. Speaker, let us 
triple the number of minority-owned small businesses. He wants to bring 
successful small business leaders together to identify and then 
eliminate the government imposed barriers to entrepreneurship. That is 
what he says is the cause of the paucity of small businesses in the 
minority community. I agree with the goal. We need to triple the number 
of minority-owned small businesses. I do not agree with his concern 
about government-imposed barriers. I live in a community where small 
businessmen struggle all the time. I do not get any complaints about 
government barriers. The government does more to help than anything 
else. The complaint is against the private sector capital. They cannot 
get capital. Or they have to pass scrutiny that other businesses do not 
have to pass. All kinds of problems I hear about, I do not hear that 
the government has imposed barriers. That is an ideological blind spot 
that the Speaker is off into. It is not a minority business problem 
that we have too much regulation or government barriers. I have heard 
the speeches a thousand times about what is wrong with America. That 
has nothing to do with what is really impeding small business 
development in the minority community.

  In summary, I think I have covered all the Speaker's points. His 10 
proposals to improve race relations are to create better opportunities 
for all children to learn, to develop more minority businesses, to 
create 100 renewal communities, to clear the existing backlog of 
discrimination cases at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He 
wants to make America a country, and I missed this one, he wants to 
make America a country with equal opportunity for all and special 
privileges for none by taking away all preferences, set-asides, and 
government contracts. We disagree on that one. That is clearly one we 
disagree on. I do not have time to explain why. The background of the 
history of the descendants of African-American slaves has to be 
considered when we talk about set-asides and special government 
programs for minorities. Racial classification is another he added here 
which I find very strange in this set of proposals. Racial 
classification. A first step should be taken to add a multiracial 
category to the census. He thinks that is very important to improve 
race relations in America. I have no problem adding a multiracial 
category to the census. I do not know how it is going to improve race 
relations, because in the history of America, they have always insisted 
that anybody who had one drop of black blood was African-American. If 
you had one drop of black blood, you were deemed African-American. So 
these race classifications seem to me to be no solution.
  In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I applaud Speaker Gingrich for his rapid 
response to the President's challenge. We need more discussion on race 
relations. We certainly need powerful people like Speaker Gingrich to 
make proposals as to what it is we should do, what we should do 
concretely. There are people out there who are dying because we are not 
acting fast enough. The death of Marsha Motipersad is just one example 
of how there is needless suffering because we have rushed into public 
policies and programs that are harmful to people. It is more than race 
relations. It is human relations, it is human rights, it is concern for 
human welfare. All this goes together.
  I want to end on a positive note. Overall, I applaud the Speaker. I 
hope he will continue the dialogue and he will go and meet with the 
Commission the President has set up and I will come right behind him. I 
think that there are many areas that we agree on and that the 
President's initiative has shown that it has paid off already. The 
dialogue has begun.

                          ____________________