[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 147 (Thursday, October 15, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H10991-H10992]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      HOW HISPANIC AMERICANS FARED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Becerra) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, we are very close to the end of this 
session, and perhaps it is fitting that we have an opportunity to try 
to assess what has gone on this year. It happens that as the individual 
who has been given the privilege to serve this Congress as the chairman 
of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, a caucus which is composed of all 
those Members of Congress of Hispanic heritage, that this year we have 
an opportunity to talk a little bit about how Hispanic Americans have 
fared in this Congress and through this White House in legislation and 
in proposals administered by the executive branch of government.
  And to help us in that we are fortunate. About 8 years ago many of 
the national Hispanic organizations came together and formed an 
umbrella organization, the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda. Back in 
1991, when they formed, they decided to have a policy to try to come 
together and see if with all the voices of these national 
organizations, they could try to project a voice for Americans of 
Hispanic descent.
  This organization is nonpartisan and it is, as I said, a coalition of 
all the major national Hispanic organizations. It includes communities 
from all the different streams of Hispanic America. It includes those 
individuals of Mexican American ancestry, Puerto Rican ancestry, Cuban 
Americans and all those who are from the Caribbean, Central and South 
American areas.
  Let me give you a list of some of the organizations, national 
organizations that are part of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda. 
We have the Hispanic National Bar Association. We have the Hispanic 
Association of Corporate Responsibility. We have the U.S. Hispanic 
Chamber of Commerce, Cuban American National Council, the League of 
United Latin American Citizens, the National Hispanic Corporate 
Council. We have the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, the 
Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Hispanic Association 
of Colleges and Universities, the Mexican American Legal Defense and 
Educational Fund, the American GI Forum, Alianza Dominicana, the 
National Puerto Rican Coalition, MANA, a National Latina Organization, 
the National Hispanic Council on Aging, the National Association of 
Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, the National Council of La 
Raza, and the U.S.-Mexico Chamber of Commerce, to name some of the many 
organizations that are part of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda. 
Overall they represent millions of Americans and try as best possible 
to come together in one voice.
  Let me show you a little bit of what they came up with. This is their 
scorecard that they just recently issued. It is called the National 
Hispanic Leadership Agenda congressional scorecard, 105th Congress. 
What the various organizations do within the NHLA is to take a number 
of very important votes that this Congress took this year and in 1997, 
during the 105th Congress, and assess where we stood as a Congress with 
respect to issues important to Americans of Hispanic descent.
  They took many votes, about 24 of the most important votes that were 
taken here in the House and about 11 of the most important votes taken 
in the Senate, and they came up with a scorecard. And I went ahead and 
summarized some of that so we would at least have a sense of where we 
are this year at the end of the year.
  Let me, if I may then, refer to this chart. If you break it down, you 
will see that votes taken by the House and the Senate, there were more 
votes taken in the House than in the Senate

[[Page H10992]]

and, therefore, more votes that the NHLA was able to use to try to rate 
the Members of Congress, grade the Members of Congress. But what we 
find is overall scores of the various votes taken in the House of 
Representatives, for example, of the 24 votes that were scored, 19 
percent of the time the Republicans in the House of Representatives 
supported Hispanic American issues and concerns. Democrats supported, 
on those same 24 votes, supported Hispanic American concerns 85 percent 
of the time.
  In the Senate, the support by Members of the Senate who were 
Republican was 20 percent, 20 percent of the time Republican Senators 
voted in support of measures that the NHLA identified as extremely 
important for Hispanics throughout this country. In the Senate, 
Democrats voted 89 percent of the time in support of issues that were 
important to Hispanic Americans.
  I further broke this down to give a better sense, since it would be 
difficult to list the votes of the 435 Members of Congress along with 
the 100 Members of the Senate the way the NHLA did, but if we took the 
leadership, and I decided to take the leadership votes out. We find 
that in the Senate, the Republican leadership under Mr. Lott, Trent 
Lott, Mr. Lott's score, of the 11 votes, was zero percent, 
unfortunately, which means that on no occasion did he support Hispanic 
American issues. Ninety-one percent for Senator Daschle. On the House 
side it was zero for Speaker Gingrich, and it was 7 percent for the 
gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt).
  That will give us a sense and hopefully we can go from there to see 
how Congress supports issues important to Hispanic Americans.

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