[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 132 (Monday, September 28, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H9089-H9090]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           SEEKING A NEW STRATEGY IN AMERICA'S WAR ON POVERTY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 21, 1997, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Scarborough) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Mr. Speaker, in listening to those who have 
discussed the matters before Congress regarding the President, I agree 
these are very pressing constitutional issues before us. Regrettably, 
the Presidential crisis has magnified the extremes in our political 
culture.
  I have received troubling phone calls from both sides of the 
political spectrum. Those supporting the President suggest that 
Congress drop this matter immediately. And on the other side, 
detractors of the President demand that we force him immediately from 
office without receiving due process.
  Like so many others across American, I believe there is a more 
reasonable approach that emphasizes the importance of following the 
Constitution. We must do our job, and at the end of the process, we 
must prove two things:
  First, for the sake of all Americans, we must show that no man is 
above the law. Secondly, we must show for the sake of the President and 
the public servants that work in Washington, D.C., no public servant 
will be held ``below the law.'' We must not hold the President or any 
official to a legally higher standard than any of us would face. Those 
are our challenges.
  I wanted to come to this chamber today, though, to speak briefly 
about another Democrat, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall) who today is 
holding meetings and going throughout the city of Washington, D.C., to 
address a crisis that is still press 35 years after the advent of the 
great society. That crisis is poverty, and that crisis of poverty still 
exists in Washington, D.C., and still exists across this country.
  Sadly, it still is shocking to some people that poverty still exists. 
Reports suggests that poverty is eradicated, that it has been 
miraculously wiped away from the face of American civilization. 
Regrettably, this is not true.
  Two forms of poverty still exist today. One is the poverty that we 
are familiar with, the poverty that we have grown up hearing about, 
about children living in squalor, experiencing hunger. But a second 
poverty exists that is a far more dangerous poverty. That is the 
poverty of indifference.
  The situation in Washington, D.C., remains dire. The first time I 
came to this city I was shocked to see people living in the shadow of 
the United States Capitol living in poverty, crime-riddled 
neighborhoods. We were warned not to stray too far from the Capitol or 
the Mall after dusk. How did we get to such a place in the United 
States of America, within the shadow of our Nation's Capitol? Such a 
situation is not acceptable.
  Washington has repeated its mistakes over the past 35 years by 
refusing to dare to make a difference. If inner cities faced a social 
ill, Washington tried to micromanage each such problem by creating 
huge, hulking bureaucracies. By taking money from Americans from Maine 
over to Hawaii, and by bringing that money to Washington, D.C., 
Congress has long suggested that it knows better than communities how 
to end the scourge of poverty. The war on poverty has almost 
exclusively been waged from inside the walls of federal bureaucracies.
  Sadly, the centralized, bureaucratic approach has not worked for the 
past 40 years. It will not work for the next 40 years. Therefore, we 
have no other choice but to dare to create a new approach for the war 
on poverty.
  ``Insanity'' is defined as doing the same thing over and over again 
and expecting a different result. That is what we have been doing in 
Washington, D.C. We continue to take money from across America, funnel 
it to bureaucracies, allow bureaucracies to singularly wage the war on 
poverty, and ignore the failings we have fostered.
  Drive through the South Bronx and decide for yourself whether we are 
better off today than we were 40 years ago. Drive through South Central 
Los Angeles or Gary, Indiana, and ask that same question. Or drive 5 
minutes from the Nation's Capitol and go through Anacostia, and then 
decide whether Anacostia is better off today than when we started our 
bureaucratic war on poverty 35 years ago. I would suggest to my 
colleagues things are not better today.
  Bobby Kennedy once said, ``This is the violence of institutions: 
indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that 
afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their 
skins have different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by 
hunger, and schools without books

[[Page H9090]]

and homes without heat in the winter.'' And yet, 30 years after Senator 
Kennedy's death the poverty of indifference still afflicts our 
institutions.
  Last week a small, incremental approach was suggested in a tax bill 
that passed our House of Representatives. It was a tax incentive-based 
approach that provided tax incentives for twenty defined renewal 
communities. While the family development accounts, the commercial 
revitalization credit and the work opportunity tax credits suggest a 
hopeful beginning, these tax incentives by themselves are far too 
incremental to make a difference.
  Still, it is a beginning. Congress must be willing to begin the 
unbridling of the free enterprise system in our center cities, and 
provide businesses incentives to beat back the effects of poverty.
  Waging and winning such a war is good for all Americans, save drug 
dealers and demagogues. It is good for our soul and good for our 
economy. Imagine moving through the next century with our center cities 
emerging as economic engines instead of economic drains. It is a 
possibility we must consider. Repeating the mistakes of the past 35 
years is not an option.
  We must seek a new strategy in our war against poverty.

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