[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 129 (Thursday, September 24, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H8619-H8625]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     ISSUES FACING AMERICA AT THE END OF THIS CONGRESSIONAL SESSION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) is recognized 
for 60 minutes.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to note that we are 
less than 5 weeks away from the end of this session. We will probably 
adjourn no later than October 15. The date is still basically October 
9, but the rumor is that it will be some time after that. It is 
certainly going to be no later than October 15 or 16. The necessities 
of this election year dictate that we will have to adjourn.
  I think that there is a full plate of unfinished business, and it is 
most unfortunate that most of that business is not being addressed. We 
did a few bills today that are significant, I guess, in terms of 
conference reports. We also did a bill that I think is very harmful 
relating to education, and I will come back to that.
  The rumor is also that a continuing resolution which will carry our 
budget into next year will be substituted for the passage of individual 
appropriations bills. The debate and the discussion of critical issues 
that will take place on appropriations bills will probably not be there 
unless we have a rule which allows us to have a number of hours of 
debate on the continuing resolution, the long one. There is a short 
continuing resolution that is going to take us into October, but a 
longer continuing resolution is being prepared.
  This means that we will not have a chance in the context of 
appropriations and budget making systematically, we will not have a 
chance to discuss certain vital issues. They are vital issues that are 
not getting the kind of exposure that they need.

                              {time}  2045

  The American people have common sense that we welcome, we ought to 
welcome into this process, and we need to let them know what is going 
on.
  I want to commend my colleagues, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Pallone) and the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott), for the 
very thorough discussion of Social Security, what the Social Security 
trust fund means, how it works, what it is all about. Out of this 
present conflict between the majority party and the minority party, 
perhaps we will have a better understanding developed by the lay people 
in this country, by the voters, by the ordinary common people of what 
Social Security is all about, how it works.
  We may have an honest bookkeeping process developed, because right 
now they do smoke and mirrors with Social Security funds. They use the 
funds in various ways that cover deficits in the regular budget. They 
talk about being off budget at certain times, and they place it in 
budget at other times. Maybe we can have a separate accounting system 
for Social Security grow out of this conflict between the two parties 
as to how Social Security should be administered.
  It is a vital issue for all Americans. There are very few families 
that are not in one way or another touched by what happens with Social 
Security. Certainly, in the African American community, for some time 
now there have been studies showing that African Americans in smaller 
percentages live to be 65. The mainstream community, the white 
community, the greater proportion of them live to be 65 and over and 
enjoy their Social Security benefits.
  Right now a much smaller percentage of African Americans are living 
to be 65 and being able to enjoy the Social Security benefits. 
Therefore, the African American community will be very hard hit by the 
movement of the retirement age from 65 to 67. That is going to take 
place within two or three years. You are going to have to wait until 
you are 67 before you can receive your Social Security benefits. 
Already the people who need the help the most are going to be penalized 
by this Band-Aid approach to saving Social Security.
  A commission, several years ago, came up with that answer, one thing 
we should do is move the retirement age from 65 to 67. Now they are 
proposing to move it to 70 after that. It will keep moving and there 
will be certain groups of people who will never catch up with it, if we 
do not find some other way to save and protect Social Security.
  I think we ought to declare off limits now and forever more any 
movement of the age of retirement as a way to protect Social Security. 
What my colleagues were saying earlier makes much more sense. Let us 
use the money that has accumulated in these prosperous times to deal 
with the problem that we project for Social Security down the road.
  I am not going to go back and repeat their arguments. I want to 
congratulate the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) in 
particular, Dr. McDermott, who was the author of the single payer 
health plan here in Congress. He is still the author of it; he 
originated it, the single payer health plan.
  Dr. McDermott gave a brilliant analysis of how the Social Security 
fund works and how the money is accumulated. And I want to congratulate 
him for that statement, that presentation.
  Saving and protecting Social Security is something we have got to 
talk about more in the next few days in the context of the proposal of 
the Republicans that we have a tax cut. There is a surplus. Most people 
do not realize that that surplus is primarily money in the Social 
Security fund. The surplus is in the Social Security fund. Anyone who 
wants to take part of the present surplus and move it somewhere else 
will be taking it from the Social Security fund.
  Our position is that we must protect the Social Security fund first, 
protect Social Security and guarantee that the difficulties projected 
will be taken care of before you begin to take money out of this 
surplus which is mostly Social Security funds.
  I previously stated that I think that if there is a surplus, some 
part of it ought to be dedicated to education and the necessary steps 
to improve education. A greater investment in education is a worthwhile 
use of any surplus funds. But not until we are sure that we have the 
adequate protection for Social Security, that the money stream, the 
revenue stream, the projections for the future are all in place and we 
can see where the money is going to be left over after you make the 
necessary adjustments to secure Social Security.
  That is on our plate. We need to really deal with it. We need to 
broaden and

[[Page H8620]]

maximize the discussion over the next few weeks, and everybody should 
be in on it. It affects us all. It is a very important program. It 
takes the cash straight to the recipient, to the person. It has a 
minimum amount of bureaucracy and layers of infrastructure. It is a 
check to a person who has earned it in terms of his Social Security 
rights.
  Another thing that we must discuss more in the next few weeks is the 
Federal assistance to education. I regret that a continuing resolution 
is going to cover this whole question of what are the appropriations 
for education for this year. Somehow we need to infuse into the 
discussion of the continuing resolution a discussion of what are you 
going to do about education this year. The despair that is felt by 
parents across this Nation must find some relief from the Federal 
Government.
  The Federal Government is responsible for only a small portion of the 
funding of education. We have gone over that before. Seven percent of 
the total funding for education is Federal funding. The rest of it is 
State and local funding. But that 7 percent that comes from the Federal 
Government is a stimulant. It makes the local government and the State 
government do certain kinds of things that they normally do not do.
  The Federal Government has been accused of interfering, creating a 
bloated bureaucracy, making red tape, unbearable for teachers. This 
cannot be true when only a small percentage of the funds for education 
are Federal funds. If the Federal Government has only a 7 percent 
funding involvement, then our influence is only 7 percent, and we 
cannot, we cannot have an authority beyond the funding. We are the 
scapegoats, the Federal Government is the scapegoat, but it is limited, 
too limited.
  I have always said that 7 percent is not enough. The Federal 
Government should at least rise to the level of 25 percent of funding 
for education in America. If we have 25 percent of the funding, if we 
provided 25 percent of the money responsibility on our schools, we 
still will only have 25 percent of the authority and influence. The 
other 75 percent of the authority and influence would still be at the 
State and local level. So our schools would still be State and locally 
run.
  Federal assistance to education, unfortunately, if we have a 
continuing resolution, may be held hostage. It is a great excuse to do 
nothing.
  The majority party would like to do nothing. They are aware of the 
fact that poll after poll and focus group after focus group demonstrate 
that the American people, the voters place a very high priority on 
matters related to education. And they think the Federal Government 
should be more involved in education in a very basic way.

  But instead of engaging that involvement or desire to be rescued in 
an honest way, the majority party chooses to play trickery and pretend 
it is concerned about education, while it does things like the bill 
that was on the floor last Friday.
  The bill on the floor last Friday was called Dollars to the 
Classroom. If you look at it very closely, it is not Dollars to the 
Classroom, it is dollars to the governors of the States, dollars to the 
governors. And the governors were given great freedom as to how they 
were going to spend those dollars, so fewer dollars would probably end 
up in the classrooms where they were needed most. The Dollars to the 
Classroom is just one more gimmick, part of a smoke screen that the 
majority Republicans have pursued to make people think that they are 
concerned with education when they are not.
  Dollars to the Classroom would have pulled all of the authority and 
all of the infrastructure out of the Department of Education, which 
would be another way to destroy the Department of Education. They do 
not say that anymore, but that is still the goal.
  We must make certain that in the process of developing this 
continuing resolution, there be a broader discussion of the things that 
ought to be in there that are not likely to be in there, if you leave 
it to the majority Republicans. We ought to not go another year without 
dealing with school construction, class size reduction or technology.
  I will come back to a larger discussion of this. But saving and 
protecting Social Security, Federal assistance to education. Minimum 
wage increase, it has been defeated in the Senate. It has not even been 
put on the floor here, but I think that they owe it to the majority, 
again, of Americans who would like to see a minimum wage increase, they 
owe it to put it on the floor and let us vote on it. But that is not 
likely to happen.
  HMO reform, greater health care coverage, HMO reform to bring the 
HMOs back into control. They got off to a bad start, and no one has 
said we ought to abolish HMOs. You do not hear any discussion of that. 
I think HMOs were at the center of the plan proposed by Mrs. Clinton. 
Most people do not realize it, that health maintenance organizations 
were a critical part of that plan that was ridiculed and withdrawn for 
no good reason, really, because it was superior to what has been 
allowed to mushroom and grow spontaneously, sort of. The HMOs are here 
to stay, so reform of HMOs is a vital discussion that has to take 
place. And we are in the process of doing that. The problem is we have 
to have a full discussion of that between both houses.
  Coupled with HMO reform there must be the effort to get greater 
health care coverage. We need to deal with the fact that 10 million, at 
least 10 million Americans are not covered that ought to be covered by 
some health care plan. Again, Dr. McDermott, who was explaining the 
Social Security plan, is the author of a single payer health plan which 
would result in the coverage of all Americans. Single payer is not 
popular these days. Those kinds of things are not even discussed that 
much, but we should keep it in the back of our minds, that Canada has a 
single payer system. And Canada is able to cover its citizens without 
going bankrupt. Canada is alive and well. Its economy has not been 
plunged into any kind of crisis. For years Canada has had a single 
payer health plan which covers everybody. Whatever we do, regardless of 
what form it takes, HMO reform or any other adjustments, we ought to 
move to cover everybody with a health care plan. That ought to be still 
on our agenda.
  There are some larger issues that also may not be legislative issues, 
but in this time of focus on the personal life and the intimate life of 
the President, we ought to be reminded that this great Nation cannot 
take its eye off major problems throughout the world. This great Nation 
has a duty to keep watching the kinds of developments that are taking 
place all over the world which may have an impact upon us.
  We ought to be concerned about the stall of the peace process in the 
Middle East. It is a process and a set of combatants there that we have 
great involvement with, both the Arabs and the Jews of Israel. We have 
allies and enemies on both sides. And that process can blow up in our 
face in a short period of time. We need to not focus so on the 
trivialities of a Ken Starr report and focus back on some of the 
pressing foreign policy issues like the Middle East peace stalemate.
  Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, those are items that also may 
blow up in our face. But even if they do not get worse and blow up, we 
have to be concerned about the fact that they are a drain on the 
American taxpayers now. The Yugoslavian conflict that we reluctantly 
entered and provided leadership for meaningful intervention, that 
conflict now has gone on for quite some time and America, the taxpayers 
of this country, have gotten bogged down in a process which is draining 
the Treasury. The amount of money available for these kinds of 
interventions is all going toward Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Serbia. Now 
they say we need greater involvement in Kosovo. We are talking about $6 
or $7 billion now directed at one part of the world.
  I am all in favor of this country exercising its role as the 
indispensable Nation, providing leadership when nobody else is there to 
provide the leadership. It is important. But when you go into a 
conflict like the Yugoslavian conflict and you stay there and expend 
billions of dollars, then what you are doing is creating a precedent, 
which I am certain the American people, anybody with common sense would 
not want followed.

                              {time}  2100

  We are ready to intervene, ready to become a part of rescuing people 
in

[[Page H8621]]

emergency situations, but emergencies should not continue forever. We 
are nation-building in Yugoslavia. We are doing what we said we would 
not do in Somalia; what we said we would not do in Haiti. We are going 
to the extreme of staying much too long, and the patience of the 
taxpayers in terms of the next necessary intervention will be worn 
thin. I think we should find a way to extricate ourselves from 
Yugoslavia after an expenditure of $7 billion. It is a lot.
  On the one hand, we expend that much money in Yugoslavia, and we 
totally abandon Haiti. We had promised an aid package to Haiti, and 
that aid package only consisted of $200 million of United States funds, 
funds from this country. But it was part of an international package 
where the French and the Canadians and a number of countries were going 
to also contribute to the reconstruction of the economy in Haiti. Well, 
none of these other countries are willing to ante up and pay their 
portion or give their portion of the aid until the United States moves 
part of its $200 million to Haiti. So we are stuck. And Haiti is in a 
crisis now because theirs is an infrastructure that is continually 
crumbling.
  We cannot keep ignoring Haiti. Haiti is a part of the Western 
Hemisphere. Haiti is a part of a collection of islands and places in 
this hemisphere where things happen that we cannot ignore, and 
important developments there impact upon our quality of life here.
  For example, as the economies of Haiti or any other of the Caribbean 
islands crumbles, the drug lords move in. We have some small island 
countries that are now controlled by drug lords. We may be surrounded 
if we do not move to look at the problems of this hemisphere in a new 
way and deal with the problems of Haiti and the problems of the 
crumbling economies of certain island groups that have been hit very 
hard with a new set of rules that make it more difficult for them to 
sell their bananas in the European market.
  The economies that were hit hard by the hurricane just yesterday and 
today, economies that never were that strong and have never had any 
significant assistance from the United States, those economies now are 
sitting there as bait and targets for drug lords to prey upon.
  We are very concerned about drugs and the continuing in-flow of drugs 
and the impact that drugs have on our economy. We are going to spend 
millions of dollars to provide aid for police and military operations 
in certain countries in order to combat the drug trade. Most of that 
money is going to go into the hands of the very people who are part of 
the whole problem. Large amounts of corruption have been discovered in 
all of the countries that we will be giving this aid to: Mexico, 
Colombia. Every country.
  In the final analysis, when we get down to the bottom line, the law 
enforcement officials are involved in the drug trade, and that is a 
consequence of allowing the economies to decline and the standards of 
government to be corrupted. And we are not going to solve the problem 
by addressing whatever aid systems we have only to the military and to 
the police agencies.
  Much further across the world there is another problem that we ignore 
at our peril: The India and Pakistan nuclear testing duels. India and 
Pakistan both have exploded nuclear weapons. We are so busy watching 
Monica Lewinsky and following Ken Starr, the fact that these two 
nations both, in a period of less than a month, exploded nuclear 
weapons does not seem to bother us.
  We have forgotten, I think, that nuclear debris blows in the air, and 
nuclear debris gets into the water, the oceans, and it moves around the 
whole world. Every time we have nuclear explosions of any kind, we 
increase the amount of debris out there in the atmosphere.
  I was not a star pupil in physics, but in college biology we did 
learn about the half-life of radioactive material, how long it stays 
there, and the fact that radioactive material bombards our genes and 
our genes suffer from mutations. Some of the new kinds of diseases and 
microbes and viruses that we have are probably the result of 
radioactive bombardment and, thus, these mutations.
  I remember in the biology class the professor citing some experiment 
that had been done with fruit flies. Fruit flies breed rapidly, so they 
can tell from one generation to another what the changes were. And the 
radioactive bombardment of fruit flies had led to some astounding 
mutations and changes in those fruit flies.
  That was a long time ago, when I was in college biology. The rules 
are still the same. The principles are still the same. If there are 
bombs being exploded in India and Pakistan, then we have a problem that 
we ought to all be looking at.
  The Indians and the Pakistanis danced in the street. The ordinary 
people went out and danced in the street when India exploded their 
nuclear bomb. They thought it was a great thing. It was like a great 
celebration that we are now a great power. The party in power, the 
Hindu party, is now said to have a firm grip on the populace, and that 
they will probably stay in power for a long time, because they have 
demonstrated that they are a modern nation and can stand toe-to-toe 
with the other nuclear powers.
  So the people who danced in the street in India and the people who 
later came behind them and said we need one, too, they applauded their 
government for matching the government in Pakistan. They are the ones 
who are most vulnerable in terms of radioactive fallout. They do not 
know it, but there will be increasing cancer cases and all kinds of 
strange things happening to them. It is quite sad to see humanity 
dancing with glee, joyfully celebrating a phenomenon that is likely to 
have a very cruel and immediate physical impact on them in the next 
decade.
  India and Pakistan represent a very explosive situation. Something is 
going to have to give there. And instead of waiting until it progresses 
to the point of Yugoslavia, where we have mayhem and murder and, for 
humanitarian reasons, all the nations of the world decide they want to 
do something about it, we ought to try to solve the Pakistan India 
problem now.
  At the heart of it is the Kashmir crisis, the Kashmir situation, 
which is a long-standing crisis. When I was in high school I remember 
India received its independence and Pakistan was a breakaway area that, 
at the last moment, broke away and formed its own independent nation. 
Kashmir was supposed to become part of Pakistan but a deal was made 
with the rajah of Kashmir. And although the people who lived there 
primarily were Muslim, he was Hindu, they decided to go with India. He 
decided, as an individual.
  That may be collapsing too much history too rapidly, but, basically, 
Kashmir is a place where the greater percentage of the people are 
Muslims. If they are given a chance to vote, they would vote to become 
a part of Pakistan. If they became independent, because they are 
Muslims, they would have a close alliance with Pakistan. India knows 
this. And instead of acquiescing to the will of the people, allowing a 
vote to take place and having Kashmir become either independent or 
quasi-independent, or having Kashmir make the decision to join 
Pakistan, India refuses to allow a vote. There is armed conflict there. 
Soldiers are arrayed on different borders and real difficulties may 
erupt at any time.

  The United States has played a major role in several conflicts that 
have taken place over the years because the United States has basically 
been an ally of Pakistan. Pakistan deserves a little more help from the 
whole world, and certainly from the United States, because Pakistan 
will probably be the loser in any armed conflict with India if nobody 
else came to their aid. Instead of waiting for some armed conflict to 
develop, we ought to try to go to the aid of the situation by 
insisting, having the United Nations use its moral force, appeal to 
that element in India which still believes in Mahatma Gandhi, and 
appeal to India's sense of leadership in the world to go ahead and let 
Kashmir and the people of Kashmir vote. Let them determine where they 
are going to go in the standoff between armies in Kashmir and move on 
to a different set of arrangements.
  Now, this particular crisis and this particular problem did not just 
pop into my head. It is one that has been brought to my attention 
because in my Congressional District, the 11th Congressional District 
in Brooklyn, there is a large Pakistani community, either

[[Page H8622]]

the first or second largest Pakistani community in the country. And 
like everybody else, they have brought their problems to my attention. 
And I am appalled at the length of time that the Kashmir-India-Pakistan 
crisis has gone on.
  It is one of the things that we should be concerned with. It is one 
of the things that we are neglecting, as the indispensable Nation. If 
there is a real bloody conflict, they are going to call on us. If there 
is a threat to the stability of the world, or the fishing lanes, there 
are all kinds of reasons why we will respond, and that is good. Just 
for humanitarian reasons, we should respond, and I have no problem with 
that, but we will not unless we are able to take our eyes off the 
trivial, the endless flow of trivial details about what is happening in 
the President's private life and what is happening with the Ken Starr 
Monica Lewinsky case, et cetera.
  We need to come back and, before this session of Congress ends, try 
to get serious about the fact that we are the indispensable Nation, 
involved in all kinds of activities that are important to the world as 
well as important to our own economy and our own quality of life.
  So I have talked about saving Social Security, the Federal assistance 
to education, minimum wage increase, HMO reform and greater health care 
coverage, the stalled peace process in the Mideast, Yugoslavia, Bosnia, 
Serbia, Kosovo, and those kinds of eruptions in that part of the world, 
Pakistan, India and Kashmir. These are just some of the kinds of 
pressing problems and issues that we ought to be addressing.
  Finally, I would also like to conclude my little list here by talking 
about something much closer to home, which arouses a lot of emotions, 
and that is the President's Commission on Race. Recently, the 
President's Commission on Race made a report, and 99 percent of the 
people of this country do not even know they have concluded their 
activities and made a report. I think that some aspect of the Lewinsky-
Starr pornographic drama was unveiled on the same day they made their 
report. Certainly in the days that followed, the headlines, the media, 
everything was dominated by the Lewinsky-Starr Peyton Place drama or 
soap opera.
  So the Commission issued a report, and I have not had a chance to 
read the report yet, but I have read some of the highlights in the 
press conference or the interviews with members of the Commission. The 
Commission made a great point of saying that it did not think that we 
should apologize for slavery. It did not think that the American 
government should apologize for slavery.
  Now, I wonder why, if they were not going to make a positive 
statement, that we should apologize for slavery, why did they bother to 
deal with that issue at all? I think the Commission sort of defined 
itself by rushing to make a statement that was a negative one. Instead 
of emphasizing that what it did stand for, what it did want, it made a 
statement which everybody picked up as wonderful. It is wonderful that 
the Commission on Race, appointed by the President, says that there 
should be no apology for slavery.
  Now, that is something that needs to be discussed and it, of course, 
is completely off the radar screen. Very little discussion will take 
place. But the President is to be applauded, still, for appointing that 
Commission. The existence of that Commission was a very important step 
forward. However small its budget might have been, or its staff, or 
however circumscribed its charge was, it was a constructive step 
forward by a President who did not have to do it. There was no crisis 
in terms of rioting in the street, there was no crisis of bombing of 
schools, there was no crisis of a governor standing in the schoolhouse 
door.

                              {time}  2115

  All of these kinds of things were not happening. So the President had 
no political reason for appointing a commission to review race 
relations. It was a brilliant stroke to just get people to discuss it. 
Discussing the issue will not resolve the very serious problems that we 
face with respect to race relations in the United States, but not 
discussing it certainly will not get us anywhere and when a President 
uses his prestige to spark a discussion and move it forward, that is a 
very positive achievement and the President should be given full credit 
for that.
  The problem is in my opinion that the people on the commission did 
not take full advantage of the opportunity. I think the commission had 
some of the best minds in the field. All the people there were quite 
impressive in terms of their academic credentials, in terms of their 
experience, et cetera. I think they had very good minds. I regret that 
the commission, the giant intellect and the giant minds were 
accompanied by very tiny spirits. I think it is a tiny spirit that 
makes a point that we will not recommend that there be an apology for 
slavery and that is the most important thing that they have to lead 
with. We do not recommend that there be an apology for slavery. They 
are tiny spirits because they seem to be afraid, intimidated by certain 
forces that have insisted that apologizing for slavery is ridiculous or 
it is absurd, it is unfair to ask this generation to apologize for 
slavery because they cannot do it, they were not here, there were good 
people in both North and South, et cetera, et cetera. There are a lot 
of reasons that are given. However, all of these reasons, and everybody 
who backs away from endorsing an apology for slavery, including the 
majority of the members in the Black Caucus think it should not be done 
because it is too little and we do not want to have people have their 
consciences salved by taking a little step like apologizing for 
slavery. I disagree. I think it is symbolism and we live by symbolism. 
Symbolism is very important. There is a galloping symbolism that other 
nations are adopting. We have an apology every week just about. If you 
follow the papers, something is there every week apologizing for some 
atrocities that have been committed in the past, some injustices, et 
cetera.
  This week, today, Thursday, September 24, we have an apology with 
money. I am going to read from the New York Times International, 
Thursday, September 24, today. This is on page A-12. Siemens Creates a 
Fund for Nazi Slave Workers.

       ``Following the lead of Volkswagen,'' Volkswagen was in the 
     paper last week. Volkswagen apologized for the enslavement of 
     large numbers of people during the war, having them work in 
     their plant and not only apologized, they offered $12 
     million. I think Siemens is following the lead of Volkswagen.
       ``Following the lead of Volkswagen, the German electronics 
     giant Siemens announced plans today for a $12 million fund to 
     compensate former slave laborers forced to work for the 
     company by the Nazis during World War II.
       ``Siemens is one of several German businesses under 
     pressure from lawsuits in the United States and threats of 
     more at home from Nazi-era victims.
       ``Volkswagen last week became the first of these companies 
     to agree to such payments when it announced its own $12 
     million fund--a change of heart after arguing for years that 
     it had no legal duty to pay back wages for labor forced on it 
     by the Nazi war machine.
       ``Siemens had a similar change of heart. Almost a year ago, 
     the company insisted that it could do no more for its former 
     slave laborers than express ``deepest regrets.''
  Siemens has gone from apologizing, they did express deep regrets, 
they apologized. And we are saying large numbers of people are saying 
that this nation, America, the great nation of America should not even 
do that. Do not apologize for slavery. Do not have the government 
apologize for the horror, probably the greatest crime committed against 
humanity when you add it all up and look at its in its totality. But 
Siemens is doing that for the laborers who were forced to work as 
slaves during the war. Volkswagen is doing it. Siemens today, 
Volkswagen last week. And last week, week before last, quite some time, 
the Swiss, the Swiss banks and the Swiss government have been 
apologizing to the Jews who were swindled out of their money in various 
ways when they deposited it in Swiss banks during World War II. The 
Swiss are also on the spot in terms of their being the agents of the 
Nazi government, and they are very apologetic about that. So to have 
our Commission on Race portray themselves as heroes because they are 
against apologizing for slavery is most unfortunate.
  I think that some good can come out of the commission report. I will 
certainly look at the report closely and I hope that we move to act on 
some of

[[Page H8623]]

the recommendations that are made by the commission. But the commission 
in total certainly has left a legacy of spinelessness. The tiny spirits 
stick out there despite the gigantic minds. An apology for slavery 
would be very much in order. It is very much consistent with what is 
being done all over the world. The Japanese apologizing to the Koreans 
that they forced into prostitution, the Catholics apologizing in France 
to the Jews for what they did to them, on and on it goes. There are 
apologies in civilized nations, in civilized cultures, apologies all 
over. So are we not able to at least take that step of apologizing for 
slavery, having our government apologize for the fact that slavery was 
legal, slavery was protected by the government. For 232 years it took 
place here on our continent under the supervision of legal bodies that 
protected it. We are not asking for $12 million for a group of slaves 
that might have worked one place and $10 million for another group. New 
York City was the third largest slave port in the country. Most people 
do not know that. They associate slavery with the South. But New York 
City was the third largest slave port in the country. There are many 
streets named after the great slave owners, slave holders, in Brooklyn, 
my own home borough. If you were to have some way to compute the amount 
of money that is owed in back wages to all the slaves who labored for 
years and years without any pay, certainly New York would have a big 
payout. You would have a large number of families that would be 
eligible for very big payouts. But we are not going to go that far. We 
are not going to try to do the impossible. But an apology is a good 
beginning. A recognition of the horrors that were perpetrated with the 
aid of government is a good beginning. We should have had that 
beginning.
  Now, I have covered a lot of territory, all the way from slavery and 
protecting Social Security to apologies for slavery. My point tonight 
is, these are very important items that must be kept on our agenda. 
These are very important items that we cannot ignore.
  A recent book came out about this whole matter of the slave labor in 
Germany. Each of the factories that were involved, Volkswagen and 
Siemens, they say the Nazis forced them to use slave labor. But there 
is a book out which is called ``The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law 
and Genocide in the Twentieth Century'' by Christopher Simpson. In that 
book the thesis is the companies pursued the cheap slave labor. They 
wanted it, they went after it, they bid on it. It was not just the 
government insisting that they utilize the slave labor of prisoners of 
war and Jews and other people that the Nazis had enslaved. ``The 
Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law and Genocide in the Twentieth 
Century'' by Christopher Simpson. That book has come out recently. 
There are discussions of it. That is why I think it should be related 
to the apology for slavery and the commission report. All of these 
things relate very much to each other. All of them are important.

  We are a Nation now that has a leadership role in the world. We are 
the indispensable nation. The President calls us the indispensable 
nation. I agree with that term. But we are absorbed with trivialities. 
One way to smother this Nation and to destroy it is to get so consumed 
with trivialities that we cannot deal with the major basic issues that 
confront our economy, our Nation and the world. We are obsessed with 
ephemeral kinds of things that do not mean very much one way or the 
other. We are consumed. We are manipulated to be consumed by 
trivialities. The lives of the movie stars and the lives of the elected 
officials when they are treated like the lives of the movie stars 
become far more important than the critical issues of our day. We need 
to do something about the issues that I have just outlined. We need to 
do something now. We are at a pivotal period where we do not have 
certain kinds of pressures on us. We do not have a recession. We have a 
surplus that we are looking at. We need to have a real, thorough 
examination of what it means to have a surplus and deal with that. We 
also need to take a look at the context with which these trivialities 
keep being pushed to the forefront.
  The newspapers and the television stations are obsessed with forcing 
us to examine the trivialities related to the President's private life, 
for example. First you have an organ of government, the special 
prosecutor's office, publishing great details, exploiting trivialities 
in a way which will guarantee that the report gets a maximum 
distribution. You have an organ of government paid $40 million, the 
whole Special Prosecutor's office, which is putting out something which 
you could call a form of nonfiction pornography. In fact I think it was 
a statement made by Ken Starr himself that is very interesting where he 
said that anybody who does that kind of thing certainly deserves to be 
condemned. Ken Starr on 60 Minutes in an interview with Diane Sawyer in 
1987 made the following statement. Quote, from Ken Starr:

       Public media should not contain explicit or implied 
     descriptions of sex acts. Our society should be purged of the 
     perverts who provide the media with pornographic material 
     while pretending it has some redeeming social value under the 
     public's ``right to know.'' End of Ken Starr's quote.
  Kenneth Starr, 1987, 60 Minutes, CBS Television interviewed by Diane 
Sawyer. Let me just read the quote once more. Quote from Ken Starr:

       Public media should not contain explicit or implied 
     descriptions of sex acts. Our society should be purged of the 
     perverts who provide the media with pornographic material 
     while pretending it has some redeeming social value under the 
     public's right to know.

  End of quote from Ken Starr.
  I agree, Mr. Starr. But you are the one who is guilty. We have your 
report which has been basically rejected by the majority of the 
American people. They do not like it. You overreached. Whoever acts in 
concert with you or that you act in concert with, they have 
overreached. And we have a situation where all of these publications 
and exposures of salacious material have not impressed the American 
people in a positive way. We have the common sense of the American 
people rising up to challenge and attempt to manipulate their minds. 
The salacious material, the pornography was all put there in order to 
distract you with trivialities and not focus on the case that is not 
there against the President. The President has done nothing which is an 
impeachable offense. One way to make you forget that is to introduce 
Peyton Place and soap opera instead and let you get all caught up in 
discussions of the details of the soap opera, Tobacco Road, Peyton 
Place and a whole lot of details about intimate activities that should 
not be published under a government imprimatur, certainly not by a 
special prosecutor.

                              {time}  2130

  So the American people have rejected it. It has not worked. There has 
been no automatic response which says throw him out; you know, we do 
not have that. The polls have not done any gyrations spinning downward, 
and I want to read from an article that appeared in today's New York 
Times. Frank Newport, the editor and chief of the Gallup poll writes 
the following:

       Republicans these days do not seem to think much of public 
     opinion polls. With a strong majority of Americans still 
     opposed to the impeachment of President Clinton, some 
     prominent Republicans are arguing that Congress should do 
     what it thinks is right, not what the polls say.

  It is very strange to hear politicians, Republicans or Democrats, 
saying we should ignore the polls. We live by the polls, and, you know, 
when we should be ignoring the polls and providing leadership and 
guidance, that is seldom happens. But suddenly the Republicans have 
said the polls are not important. I wonder how long that is going to be 
in effect.
  Going back to the article by Mr. Newport, quote:

       Poll taking in an art, not a science, Henry Hyde, chairman 
     of the House Judiciary Committee said on Tuesday. 
     Representative Tom DeLay of Texas was more direct: I think 
     frankly the polls are a joke. Dan Quayle, the former Vice 
     President, sees a subtext. I think that the people are far 
     more turned off with Bill Clinton and all of his shenanigans 
     than all of these public opinion polls are expressing, he 
     said in August.

  So, Dan Quayle, Tom DeLay and Henry Hyde all think polls are 
ridiculous, they are superfluous, they do not mean much.
  Going back to Mr. Newport's article:

       But Republicans should not shoot the messenger. After all 
     polls do nothing more than summarize the opinions of the 
     people. In a democratic society ignoring the polls 
     demonstrates a considerable arrogance. Why

[[Page H8624]]

     should we assume that pundits and elected officials know more 
     than the average American or that careful scientific polls do 
     not accurately measure public sentiment?
       There is no doubt that Americans want Congress to listen to 
     them. In a Gallup survey conducted this month 63 percent of 
     those surveyed said that on the question of a possible 
     impeachment of President Clinton Members of Congress should 
     stick closer to public opinion rather than doing what they 
     themselves think is best. And to date Americans do not want 
     the President to leave office. Even after the release of the 
     Starr Report and of Mr. Clinton's testimony on videotape the 
     number of Americans who approve of the job Mr. Clinton is 
     doing is 66 percent according to a Gallup poll taken on 
     Monday. Only 32 percent of respondents favored impeaching and 
     removing Mr. Clinton from office. Thirty-nine percent said 
     that he should resign.
       The results were similar in other polls. In a NBC news 
     poll, also taken on Monday night, only 26 percent of the 
     respondents believe the President was telling the truth, but 
     60 percent did not believe the President should resign.
       It is certainly possible that the public can still be 
     convinced that impeachment is a correct course. That is what 
     happened during Watergate. In November 1973, just 30 percent 
     of Americans favored impeaching and forcing Richard Nixon 
     from office. By August 1974, just before Nixon resigned, more 
     than 60 percent favored such action.
       The job for those who feel Mr. Clinton should leave office 
     is to take these convictions to the public to continue to 
     make that case. Ultimately, however, Congress should listen 
     to the public's response, much of it measured through 
     polling.

  That is the end of the quote of Mr. Frank Newport in the New York 
Times. I think that is today, today's New York Times, September 24 on 
the op-ed page.
  I cite that because, and I read from Ken Starr's statement before 60 
Minutes to make the point that we are off into trivialities, and we are 
being deliberately in many cases led into trivialities, into matters of 
little consequence, in order to ignore the big issues. And, as a 
Nation, we are probably going to be subjected to this kind of activity 
again and again.
  The spin is a part of American political life now, the spin. The spin 
often will spin you into outer space where there is nothing but dust 
and there is nothing of any consequence.
  So I am arguing that we should exercise the common sense out there 
that they do not appear to have here in the Congress.
  Continue to focus on the issues, continue to understand that saving 
Social Security is an issue that ought to be discussed widely, you 
ought to have a role in that, you ought to go visit your Congressperson 
and talk to them about it. You ought to understand that an $80 million 
tax cut jeopardizes the effort to systematically begin the process of 
guaranteeing that Social Security will survive and be there fully when 
it is needed in the future. You ought to not allow yourself to be 
pulled away from the focus on that very real issue.
  Federal assistance to education is a very real issue. Let me just 
expand for one moment on what happened today. We had on the floor of 
the Congress today a bill which would increase the immigration quota 
for professional workers. That immigration quota increase is designed 
primarily to bring in more information technology workers into this 
country. Information technology workers are people who work in various 
ways with computers and the Internet programing and various things 
related to the computer culture, and there is a great demand for 
workers. We already have 65,000 of those workers in America. That quota 
was overrun back in the spring, and now they want to bring in this year 
another 25,000, and then every year between now and the year 2000 
increase the number.
  What does that have to do with education in America? It says that we 
are going to be giving away. We have already given away 65,000 jobs to 
foreigners. We want to give away another 25,000 to foreigners this 
year, and we are going to give up to 1,000 in the year 2001; 107,000, I 
forget. The big problem here is that those figures do not tell the full 
story. If this is the way the problem is going to be solved when you 
have vacancies and a need for workers in the high tech area like 
information technology, if you are going to allow the companies to 
bring in people from the outside, then they are never going to be 
willing to fund and develop an adequate education system in America.
  You know, first of all there is an advantage in bringing in 
foreigners from the outside. They always pay them less. They do not pay 
them as much as they pay information technology workers who are based 
and trained here. So that is one advantage they are always going to be 
seeking.
  We must insist that the piece of legislation which passed on the 
floor today is the wrong way to go, that we ought to revamp our 
education system in order to be able to have a pool, a large pool of 
people who are in the early grades exposed to computer literacy 
training, and they go up to high school, and they get more training, 
and some kids could actually graduate from high school and not go to 
college and get certified; Microsoft I think certification, A-1 
certification; and make between 30 and $40,000 a year. If they want to 
continue at a junior college or college, you know all of those 
opportunities are almost guaranteed to be there in the future. That is 
the way we are going with our economy and the technology. The jobs will 
be there. The Department of Labor estimates that there will be 1.5 
million vacancies in 5 years in the information technology area.

  So, we cannot wait until this session is over. We need to do 
something about federal assistance to education now.
  Last Saturday I had a luncheon as part of the Congressional Black 
Caucus legislative weekend. I had a luncheon and invited 50 school 
superintendents to come and help us to develop a strategy or let us get 
together in solidarity in order to make certain that for the remainder 
of this session of Congress we are not ignored that the education 
agenda is not pushed on the back burner and left there. Thirty-five 
school superintendents came; I was surprised at the large number who 
responded. These are superintendents from what we call America's most 
challenged districts, the districts that have the largest percentages 
of poor students, students who receive free school lunches.
  So, you know, at that time we addressed the basic issues that they 
are confronted with. They want the school construction program that is 
proposed by the President. They want that to pass: $22 billion over a 
5-year period to help with school construction. They want class size 
reduction. They want wiring of the schools for technology. If we do all 
these things, we will not have to call upon foreign nations to provide 
us with a work force in the next five to ten years.
  We want to deal with HMO reform. You know, we talk a lot about 
Medicare and the problems that Medicare has. The problems that 
Medicaid, the poorest people have, are far worse than the problems 
being experienced by the people who have Medicare. And there are too 
many problems with HMOs and Medicare already.
  The big problem with Medicaid is that the Governors, the States, are 
squeezing the capitation fees so hard, they are lowering the capitation 
fees for families and individuals to the point where it is hard for the 
HMOs to provide the kind of service they should provide. It is the 
Governors, it is the State apparatus that insists on squeezing more and 
more, saving more and more, and it has become a situation where the 
government has endorsed second class health care. Second class health 
care is deadly health care. You either have first class health care or 
you have dangerous and deadly health care. And when you cut corners on 
health care, it means that the health care is likely to do more harm 
than good. We are being forced into that by States that are greedy and 
want more and more money.
  So that is an important issue.
  Save and protect Social Security, provide federal assistance to 
education now, let us not wait this session. We need to act on the 
President's proposals. More and more people in the black community, I 
must confess, parents, are looking to vouchers, 56 percent according to 
several polls. Fifty-six percent of the parents said they are ready to 
try vouchers. I know why that phenomenon is taking place. They are 
desperate. They have given up on the public schools. The way to reverse 
that desperation is to show there is some reason to have hope, take 
some action to do meaningful things about the situation in our public 
schools, take dramatic, highly visible action like school construction, 
class size reduction and the wiring of schools in order to have a

[[Page H8625]]

maximum use of technology. That brings hope for the public schools. It 
renews all that is there.
  We must continue despite the fact that a continuing resolution sort 
of blocks out a clear discussion of the issues. We must continue the 
discussion and try to force onto the agenda of the continuing 
resolution debate all of these priority programs like the saving and 
protection of Social Security, and the federal assistance to education, 
HMO reform. They cannot be smothered away by the fact that there will 
be no individual appropriations bills on each one of these areas.
  So I hope that the common sense of the American people will invade 
these halls in the next few weeks, we will get away from the 
trivialities and the pornography and return to issues that matter most 
in this indispensable Nation. We need to continue to make decisions 
that are going to carry us into the 21st century as a leader of the 
free world.

                          ____________________