[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 163 (Wednesday, November 17, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H12158-H12164]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    UNFINISHED BUSINESS OF CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, let me say that what I wanted to do during 
some part of this hour this afternoon was to talk about the unfinished 
business of this Congress.
  Last night, myself and several of my colleagues on the Democratic 
side took to the floor to basically point out how frustrated we are 
with the fact that a year has passed, the first year, if you will, of 
this 2-year congressional session in the House of Representatives, and 
yet the main issues that the American people seek to have us address, 
whether it be HMO reform or the need for a prescription drug benefit 
under Medicare for senior citizens, or campaign finance reform, gun 
safety, minimum wage, the issues that our constituents talk about on a 
regular basis when we are back home and when we go back home after the 
budget is concluded here in the House, we will be hearing about these 
issues again, and yet every time we try to bring these issues to the 
floor or pass legislation, we are thwarted by the Republican majority.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Pallone) yield?
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I will not yield at this point.
  I just want the gentleman to know I intend to use the hour for the 
Democratic side.
  Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I tried to get my colleagues to 
yield a few minutes ago. And typically on this floor we have that 
courtesy between one another so we can debate the issues rather than 
just to hear the rhetoric, which is what we heard for that last hour. 
They were not willing to do it. And so, as much as I would like to and 
I know my colleague would yield as a courtesy to our colleague from 
Arizona (Mr. Hayworth), maybe next time they will know that this is a 
two-way street up here, even if they only have a five-vote majority.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments by my colleague 
from Texas.
  Let me just say that before I get to this unfinished agenda, which I 
have to say is my real concern, because most of the debate that has 
occurred and most of the arguments that we have heard over the last few 
weeks about the budget, although, obviously, we need to pass a budget, 
do not deal with these other issues which are really the most important 
issues that face this Congress that have not been addressed by the 
Republican majority.
  I did want to say I was somewhat concerned by some of the statements 
made in the previous hour by Republican colleagues about the budget. 
Because I think I need to remind my colleagues and my constituents that 
the Republicans are in the majority in this House and in this Congress, 
in both the House and the Senate, and the bottom line is that the 
budget, the appropriation bills, were supposed to have been completed 
by October 1 of this year, which is the beginning of the fiscal year.
  The fact that they are not completed, in my opinion, is totally the 
fault of the Republican majority. They are going to say, well, they 
passed bills. But many of the bills they passed and sent to the 
President they knew would be vetoed. They knew that there was not 
agreement between the President and the Congress on the legislation.
  Rather than spend the time, particularly during the summer, trying to 
come up with appropriation bills and a budget that could actually get a 
consensus and could pass, they spent the summer and most of the last 6 
months prior to that trying to put in place a trillion dollar tax cut 
which primarily went to wealthy Americans and also to corporate 
interests, to special interests, and they spent the time on that.

                              {time}  1445

  They put in place and passed this trillion-dollar tax cut, primarily 
for the wealthy, knowing the President would veto it and the President 
did veto it, and the reason he did so is because he knew that if it 
passed and if it was signed into law, there would not be any money left 
from the surplus to pay for Social Security and Medicare.
  Now, after they wasted all their time on that, they put forth these 
appropriation bills, many of which they knew would never be approved by 
the President, and they started this charge a few weeks ago or a month 
ago, suggesting that the Democrats wanted to spend the Social Security 
trust fund.
  I just want to say one thing, if I could, because I know we have said 
this many times and it really is not the main reason I am here this 
afternoon, but the Republican leadership has broken so many promises on 
the budget, not only the promise not to spend the Social Security trust 
fund but the promise not to exceed the caps. If you remember 2 years 
ago, we passed the Balanced Budget Act. At that time we said that there 
were going to be certain caps in place every year on the amount

[[Page H12159]]

of spending that we would do, and we also made a commitment that we 
were not going to use the Social Security trust fund because we were 
going to have a surplus and it would not be necessary to do so. Both of 
those promises have been broken.
  I just wanted to give some information about that. First, the 
Republican appropriation bills busted the outlay caps for fiscal year 
2000 by billions of dollars. I am quoting now from the Senate majority 
leader, the Republican majority leader Lott who acknowledged on 
September 18 when he stated, ``I think you have to be honest and 
acknowledge that we're not going to meet the caps.'' That was in the 
Washington Post, September 17, 1999.
  Indeed, according to the latest CBO estimates of October 28, the 
Republican spending bills have busted the fiscal year 2000 outlay caps 
by $30.7 billion, although they declare about $18 billion of this is 
emergencies and thereby exempt from the cap.
  So when we talk about the Republican leadership, they are the ones 
that are going on the spending spree with these appropriation bills. In 
many cases the President has vetoed the bills because they spend too 
much. And, of course, they spend it on the wrong things.
  Secondly, on October 28, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, 
and my colleague from Texas knows, we have mentioned this many times to 
the point where we get tired of repeating it, but the CBO certified 
then that the GOP leadership had broken their promise not to dip into 
the Social Security trust fund. Specifically, on October 28 the CBO 
sent a letter to Congress certifying that on the basis of CBO estimates 
of the 13 completed GOP appropriation bills, the GOP bills spent $17 
billion of the Social Security surplus, even after their 1 percent 
across-the-board cut is taken into account.
  I know we heard from the other side about across-the-board cuts, how 
this is holding up the budget and all that. The bottom line is their 
own appropriation bills, their budget that they put together and sent 
to the President, spent a significant amount of money of the Social 
Security surplus. I am not looking to stress that, as my colleague from 
Texas knows. It is just that they keep bringing it up and they keep 
bringing it up, they do not pass the bills, they cannot get the budget 
passed. Now we are here and finally we think in the next day or two it 
is going to be passed, but we have all these other things that are so 
much more important that have not been addressed.
  I yield to my colleague from Texas.
  Mr. GREEN of Texas. I thank my colleague for yielding. I appreciate 
both of us being able to do this this afternoon. Typically this time of 
day we would be voting and not just talking about issues. But in 
following up our Republican colleagues for their hour that they had 
talking about both education, how important it is to them, and you and 
I will spend most of our time talking about the unfinished agenda, the 
issues that we would have liked to have dealt with that necessarily did 
not even have Federal dollars attached to it.
  For example, their talk about the 1 percent cut. They were saying how 
we can find 1 percent in every agency. I am sure we can. But I also 
know that some of the appropriations bills that they have put in, they 
have projects in there that should be cut first and not across the 
board. My argument is if you just cut 1 percent across the board, if 
you have a wasteful project in there, you still have a 99 percent 
waste. Maybe it is a carrier we do not need that was added because of 
the Senate or someone. Maybe there is a certain project in a district. 
If it is 100 percent waste, if you only cut 1 percent, they are still 
getting 99 percent of it. That is what bothers me about that. They are 
saying we could find 1 percent. Sure I could find 1 percent but I would 
not cut, for example, title I funding in public education. Sure, I 
would not mind cutting the Department of Education, some of their other 
programs, but I know title I money goes to the classroom.

  Just in the last couple of days because of the budget negotiations 
between the President and the administration and the Congress, we have 
added substantially new money to title I. That did not come out of 
their committee. In fact, their appropriations bill for education did 
not even come out of the committee from what I understand. It was the 
last issue they dealt with. So hearing someone stand up here and talk 
about they are for public education, in fact my colleague from Colorado 
who was part of that other hour, we had a quote last year saying that 
public education is the legacy of communism. One of the things I wanted 
to ask him when I asked him to yield just so we could say, is that a 
direct quote or was that said, so we could have the American people 
know where we all stand on public education and the commitment to 
public education.
  The 1 percent cut I think ideally, in theory it is not bad, but again 
if you have a wasteful project you are still having 99 percent waste. 
Let us go back in and cut that budget down and eliminate those wasteful 
projects so we do not have to cut the important things, so we do not 
have to cut health care for children or education for children.
  The other concern I have is they continually talk about dipping into 
Social Security. The gentleman mentioned that, as of October 28.
  We have some numbers that, of course, since we have so many different 
numbers that we have but this poster, I think, will show that the issue 
of Republicans and Social Security and what they did. You can tell that 
it is $21 billion like you quoted. As of October 27 or 28, it is $21 
billion. To say that the White House or as Democrats we are trying to 
spend the Social Security surplus is ludicrous. Again, I think we ought 
to be able to have this debate on the floor and have our colleagues 
say, tell me, where did this $21 billion that is going to be borrowed 
out of the Social Security trust fund, it is not being taken out of the 
fund, it is being borrowed like it has been for decades. Should we stop 
that? Of course we should. But do not stand up here on the floor or 
spend millions of dollars on ads around the country saying that 
Democrats are spending the Social Security surplus when we are not. In 
fact, I think we could come back with a budget that would meet what we 
have in the budget surplus very easily and still address the needs of 
our country, the needs of the Department of Defense. In fact, I think 
it is appropriate that their 1 percent cut that they talked about, and 
again from Houston we do not have a whole lot of defense installations 
but we do have a concern about the defense of our Nation. That 1 
percent cut, the effect of the Republican across-the-board cut on 
defense, and I am quoting the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

       Of great concern for us today is the across-the-board 
     reductions proposed by some Members. This would strip away 
     the gains that we have made or what we have just done to 
     start readiness moving back in the right direction. In other 
     words, Mr. Chairman, if applied to this program, it would be 
     devastating.

  And so that is the direct quote from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs 
of Staff. Our Republican colleagues who come up here and talk about, 
well, we can find 1 percent, sure. I could find 1 percent in the 
Department of Defense, but if we take a meat ax approach to it, we are 
going to cut about 35,000 service personnel. We cannot even staff the 
carriers in the Navy vessels we have now, much less adding a new one, 
yet they want to cut across the board. We would hope the Pentagon or 
the Department of Education or whatever agency would only cut that 
waste. But you and I know, it is our job to go in there and pinpoint 
those projects that really are not in the national interest and to do 
it instead of saying we want you to cut that 1 percent, leaving that up 
to the agencies.
  The other concern, we talk about dipping into Social Security, we 
have another pretty good quote that follows up on that. When they talk 
about cutting, at one time it was a 1.4 percent across-the-board cut in 
military spending. The response from the Republican majority leader is, 
``Instead of having two colonels hold your paper, you'll have only 
one.'' Granted I do not want two colonels up here holding somebody's 
paper, but I know when our troops are out in the field, whether they 
are in Bosnia, Kosovo or anywhere else that they go for our country, I 
want them to have the resources that they need to do the job, plus I 
want to pay them. I want to pay them a decent amount. Again on a 
bipartisan basis, this Congress passed a pay raise for our military 
personnel, so

[[Page H12160]]

hopefully some of the enlisted personnel will be able to get off public 
assistance if they have family.
  That is why I am glad to follow up my colleagues. I would like to 
debate the intensity on education particularly, but since they would 
not yield to me earlier, and again I would love to yield to them to 
talk about public education and what the Department of Education does. 
This year alone, this Congress passed a reauthorization for title I 
funding. Title I funding goes to help the schools. They have the 
poorest and the hardest to educate children. This Congress passed on a 
bipartisan basis the reauthorization.

  In 1994 when I was on the Education Committee, we passed on a 
bipartisan basis a reauthorization for title I. So instead of coming in 
and cutting and saying education funding is wasteful, let us go in and 
say, okay, let us take out what you consider wasteful but let us make 
sure we do help with smaller class sizes, that we do help children who 
English is not their first language, that that is what we do on the 
Federal level. We do not provide the education opportunity on the 
Federal level. That is for the local and the State. But we can assist 
local and State agencies, our local school boards, because they are the 
ones having to make the decisions, our State agencies are making the 
decisions. But we can do it on a national basis. If we go in and always 
attack the Department of Education and want to abolish it and they do 
not do any good, that is what we hear from the other side so often. But 
let us go in and say, cut out what you do not think is a priority in 
education.
  The problem is that sometimes what they want to cut out is our meat 
and potatoes. They do not want title I, they do not want bilingual 
education. That is what bothers me again about having an hour to listen 
without having a chance to do the debate.
  I know you and I really want to talk about the unfinished agenda, 
which in some cases will not cost one dime more of Federal tax dollars.
  I also have some of our things that are left buried for this year.
  Mr. PALLONE. If the gentleman will yield before we get into that, and 
I do want to get into our unfinished agenda, I was reading through my 
papers here. I came across this editorial in the New York Times that 
appeared soon after the Republicans started running the ads in some 
Democratic districts accusing Democrats of spending the Social Security 
trust fund. In light of the remarks you made about the across-the-board 
cuts and some of the pork-barrel spending that could be eliminated, I 
just wanted to, if I could, quote a couple of sections of this, because 
I think it really responds and sums up all the things that you were 
saying. This is entitled ``Social Security Scare-Mongering.'' This is 
not us, this is the New York Times speaking.
  It says,

       Republicans are trying to make political headway using the 
     Social Security weapon against Democrats. They are advancing 
     a ludicrous claim that deep Republican budget cuts are needed 
     to stop a Democratic ``raid'' on Social Security.
       The Republican argument rests on a fallacy that spending 
     budget money today compromises the government's ability to 
     meet its Social Security obligations in the future. Instead 
     of squabbling over dollars in this year's budget, Congress 
     can do more for Social Security by producing sound budgets 
     that make the right investments while keeping the economy 
     growing. A prosperous economy is the best guarantee that 
     workers in the future will be able to afford paying for their 
     parents' retirement.
       In January, President Clinton called for setting aside 
     nearly two-thirds of the total projected Federal surplus, 
     from Social Security and other sources, to help retire 
     Federal debt over the next 15 years. That was a sensible 
     proposal intended to increase the savings rate and lower 
     future interest rates. But the argument this year is over 
     whether a small amount of the $140 billion Social Security 
     surplus in the current year should be used to avoid spending 
     cuts in other programs. In fact, no damage would be done to 
     the economy, to Social Security or to the Federal budget 
     itself if that happened.
       Asserting that it is merely trying to save money for Social 
     Security, the Republican leadership in Congress wants to cut 
     spending by 1.4 percent across the board and block the White 
     House's initiatives for money to hire new teachers and police 
     officers. The Republican leaders' approach has been so 
     wrongheaded that yesterday it provoked a revolt in the party 
     rank and file. But it is not necessary to slash programs to 
     ``save'' Social Security. More to the point, there are better 
     places to save money, by cutting billions of dollars in pork-
     barrel projects and eliminating some of the expensive tax 
     breaks for special interests that have made big campaign 
     donations to the Republican Party in recent years.
       President Clinton is right to veto spending bills that do 
     not meet priority needs in education, the environment, law 
     enforcement and other areas. As the White House notes, the 
     Republican budget schemes approved so far have already tapped 
     the Social Security system's surplus, according to the 
     Congressional Budget Office.

  That says it all. It is just a bunch of bogus claims about Social 
Security, spending cuts across the board instead of attacking the real 
spending-bloated projects that need to be attacked. As I would point 
out, and I know you are going to get into the unfinished agenda, the 
biggest thing is that they have not addressed the need to deal with 
Social Security and Medicare long-term. We would never have been able 
to address that if the President had not vetoed their huge tax cut, 
because there would not be any money in the surplus left to deal with 
Social Security and Medicare.
  Mr. GREEN of Texas. Let me just continue a little bit before we get 
into our unfinished agenda, and talk about the proposed 1 percent 
across-the-board cut, what would be cut. For example, work study, a 1 
percent cut across the board for work study would cut $9 million out of 
it. For title I again for the educationally disadvantaged, $78 million. 
We have more children and more children, so many children who are not 
served by title I already, that it would go backwards literally.

                              {time}  1500

  The 1 percent cut would cut, for example, FAA operations, $59 
million; Coast Guard operations, $25 million; Federal aid for highways, 
$262 million.
  So there are so many things that they would cut. EPA grants for 
wastewater and drinking water treatment, $32 million. I could just go 
on and on down the list. Again, military personnel, their 1 percent cut 
would be $739 million. Again, that was quantified to say it would be 
35,000 military personnel that would not be there if we did that 
across-the-board cut.
  So again, I would say yes, 1 percent is not bad across the board, but 
let us not cut the good with the bad, let us cut the bad out, and that 
is our job as Members of Congress.
  Mr. Speaker, the unfinished legacy, so to speak, of this Congress is, 
first of all, prescription drug benefits that we were hopefully going 
to get as a Medicare drug prescription benefit. It was killed this 
year. There are actually a number of different proposals, at least on 
the House side. We have one by the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Baldacci) 
and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner) and a host of other Members, 
that would not cost a dime of Federal dollars, it would just let the 
Federal Government, through HCFA, to negotiate, just like HMOs do now, 
just like the VA does, like anyone does for bulk purchasing. And to 
save money for seniors on prescription medication. That was not even 
considered on this floor except when we brought it up as an issue.
  The Patients' Bill of Rights, which is again, near and dear to our 
hearts, because we spent so much time in talking about it; again, both 
of us serving on the Subcommittee on Health of the Committee on 
Commerce, and the gentleman chairs the Health Care Task Force of the 
Democratic caucus. The Patients' Bill of Rights was killed for this 
year, and now I am sure it is on life support maybe, because we passed 
a good, strong bill out of here. But when we saw the Speaker's 
appointments to the Republican Conference committee of 13 Members, only 
one of them voted for the bill, only one voted for the bill, and that 
is frustrating. Now we have a weak bill that the Senate passed, and we 
have a very strong bill that the House passed; and yet here in the 
House, even though we had a strong bill, only one Member of the 
conference committee, of the majority, voted for the bill.
  So I am worried that not only has it been killed for this year, but 
we may see it killed for next year.
  The other thing I think we have talked about, and we have talked 
about all year and we were hoping we could get something done with it 
was the minimum wage increase. We have had the greatest economy, 
literally, in our history, the longest running, and inflation is not a 
problem; and yet sometimes the folks in the lowest level of workers are 
the ones who are being left

[[Page H12161]]

behind. So there has been serious talk over the last 3 weeks on the 
minimum wage, and there was effort to do something, but we have been 
here since January, and that bill has been talked about and has been 
introduced.
  So a dollar for the people who are not on social services, but are 
working, a dollar increase over 2 years only seems to be beneficial not 
only for the country, because that dollar, those folks are not going to 
take that $1 an hour more and go buy stock with it, although that would 
be great, they are going to pay more on rent, buy more food, so that 
dollar will circulate within the economy. Again, a dollar increase in 
the minimum wage, I am sorry it did not pass this year. Maybe, again, 
we will do it next year. I do not think any of us would serve in the 
Congress if we were not optimists to say we could do better the next 
year.
  Campaign finance reform. Again, a very good issue that the House 
passed, a very tough bill; and now it is sitting somewhere over in the 
Senate, and there will not be any campaign finance reform bill for this 
year. Again, maybe next year. I feel like sometimes I am a football 
coach saying wait until next year; we will do better next year. But we 
are not playing football; we are dealing with people's lives here, and 
that is important.
  Smaller class sizes for our public schools. Again, 94 percent of 
public education money is spent by local and State governments; only 6 
percent on the Federal level. We are not talking about a large Federal 
commitment. But we also know that our local school districts and our 
States use Title I money; they use this Federal education money to help 
leverage what they do for the classes and the schools that need it the 
most and the children that need it the most.
  Again, my wife is a high school algebra teacher and most of the 
smaller class sizes we talk about, kindergarten through elementary 
school, kindergarten through third grade or fifth grade, but one cannot 
teach algebra to 35 students; we need a smaller class size, hopefully 
20 students where one can really deal with the complications.
  The last issue, and I know I like to talk about this too because a 
lot of people think sometimes as Democrats and Republicans, well, the 
Democrats, they do not really want tax relief. Sure, I would love to 
have tax relief. I do my own taxes and let me tell my colleague, I 
would like to simplify and make it a lot easier. But there are things 
that we could do for targeted tax relief that we had as part of our 
legislation, and again, it was not even seriously considered. The only 
thing that was considered was that $800 billion over a 10-year period 
that would literally take the heart out of Social Security and Medicare 
efforts. Not only that, but also in military spending and everything 
else that is the responsibility of our country.
  Let me just finish by saying a couple of weeks ago, and I have used 
this before, the reason the managed care issue was so important and why 
it passed this House on a very bipartisan vote is it was illustrated by 
Newsweek, ``HMO Hell,'' and the number of people who are going through 
that. And they are frustrated because they have some type of insurance, 
whether it is through their employer, whether it is maybe they pay part 
of it through their employer; and yet when they go receive that type of 
care, when they go get that care, they are somehow eliminated from it 
or delayed.
  Our bill would eliminate the gag rules where a physician or a doctor 
or a provider could talk with their patients. It would make the 
determination of medical necessity not by a bureaucrat or someone 
answering a phone, but by someone who actually knows that individual 
patient. Outside, an independent appeals process, a swift appeals 
process which will make sure that people do not have to go through HMO 
hell. Emergency room care. Instead of one having to drive by one's 
closest emergency room, if someone has an emergency, maybe one has 
heart trouble or chest pains and going to the hospital on their list, 
one can go to the closest hospital and find out if it really is an 
emergency and if one needs to be stabilized. That would help stop 
having to go through HMO hell.
  The last one is accountability. That is probably more important than 
almost any of them, because everybody ought to be accountable in their 
jobs. The gentleman and I are accountable to our voters every 2 years. 
I tell people my contract is renewed every 2 years, so we are 
accountable. Because if we make a vote up here that our constituents do 
not like, then they have the right to vote against us. Hopefully, if we 
do something they like, they vote for us, so it comes out even. But on 
accountability, the people who make the medical decisions need to be 
accountable and, ultimately, that means the courthouse.
  Now, part of accountability is a good, strong independent appeals 
process, but we found out in Texas that we have a good appeals process, 
but the reason it is successful is we have that backup. If the appeals 
process breaks down, one can go to court. During over 2 years of our 
Texas law, we have had 250, 300 maybe appeals, just hundreds of them 
filed and over half of them are being found in favor of the patient, 
but we have had less than five lawsuits. In fact, three of those five I 
understand is by one attorney in Fort Worth, Texas, for whatever 
reason. So there have not been many rushing to the courthouse.
  So if we had strong accountability, we would then keep people from 
having to go through HMO hell, and that is a bill that I know the 
gentleman and I talked about all year and last year and maybe even the 
year before. Because we have not passed it this year, after the New 
Year holiday, after we celebrate the holidays and the new millennium, 
hopefully we will come back and be able to pass a real strong HMO 
reform bill, patterned after a lot of what our States have, 
particularly in Texas.
  That is why I think the unfinished agenda is so important for us. We 
do not want to just point at the other side and say, hey, you are doing 
wrong; let us see what we can all do right. We could do right on 
managed care reform; we could do right on prescription drug medication; 
we could do right on a minimum wage increase; we could do right by 
education, for smaller class sizes; and we could do right by passing a 
strong campaign finance reform bill, again, that would eliminate the 
soft money that we hear is so bad. Although again, the gentleman and I 
do not benefit from that as individuals, because we are under the caps 
like everyone else is, but that soft money that goes to the party 
structures and whoever else, and even the independent expenditures from 
people who maybe if they do not like how the gentleman voted on a bill 
or they do not like how I voted, they can spend literally millions of 
dollars trying to defeat us without knowing who is actually spending 
it. That is why we need campaign finance reform. People should have the 
right to know who is doing it.
  There are a lot of things that we did not do this year, and I 
appreciate the gentleman setting aside this special order again, even 
though it is in the middle of the day instead of late at night to talk 
about the unfinished agenda. We did not do very good this year, but we 
will do better next year, we hope.

  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to thank the gentleman for 
what he said, and particularly for raising those tombstones. I just 
wanted to comment on some of the tombstones and some of the remarks the 
gentleman made because I think they are so appropriate. I really like 
the tombstone presentation, because I think it says it all. I mean, 
what do they say? ``Rest in peace, killed by the GOP, 1999.'' That is 
basically what we face.
  We know that in another day or so, once this budget is passed, that 
we are going to go home and the Republicans want us to go home, not 
having addressed this unfinished agenda, these major issues that the 
public cares about. When we go home, that is all we are going to hear. 
I know my colleague from Texas faces that, and when I go home nobody is 
going to tell me, thank you for passing the budget. They expect the 
budget to be passed. That is routine. But they want us to address these 
major concerns that have not been addressed.
  I just wanted to say a couple of things about them. The gentleman 
mentioned the campaign finance reform. I know that is not one that I 
hear too much about because I know most people think that is more of an 
inside situation, but it really is not. The reality is that when we 
have all of this money being spent that is unregulated, it really does 
corrupt the system. I just

[[Page H12162]]

 know from my own campaign, in my last campaign in November of 1998, I 
think I spent and my opponent spent about $1 million each that was 
regulated money, if you will. In other words, hard dollars, Federal 
dollars that people contributed and people disclosed, and it was a 
hard-fought race.
  But there was about $4 million to $5 million that was spent against 
me in independent expenditures, TV ads on New York stations, the last 2 
or 3 weeks of the campaign, by a group that never identified itself. I 
think it called itself Americans For Job Security. They do not have to 
file anything; they do not have to disclose where that money came from. 
And to this day, we are only speculating about where we think the money 
came from. It was undoubtedly millions of dollars in corporate money 
that was coming from special interests, and we have no idea where it 
came from. It really corrupts the system when we have that kind of 
phenomenon. That is why we need to pass the Shays-Meehan bill and we 
need to have real campaign finance reform.
  The other thing the gentleman mentioned, and I appreciate the fact 
that he brought it up, is the targeted tax cuts, because I started out 
this afternoon by talking about this trillion dollar Republican tax cut 
that went primarily for the wealthy and for corporate interests, and I 
am glad the gentleman came and pointed out that we as Democrats want 
tax cuts as well, but we want them targeted for middle-class families, 
for child care, for education needs, those kinds of things, not these 
huge, trillion dollar tax cuts that just go to help the wealthy.
  I brought with me some information about that Republican tax cut, and 
I will just briefly mention it. Just to show how it was skewed toward 
the wealthy and corporations. The Republican plan means $46,000 per 
year for the wealthiest taxpayers that they were going to get back, but 
only $160 per year for the average middle-class family, and $21 billion 
was lavished on special interest tax breaks for big businesses.
  The other thing about that trillion dollar Republican tax cut is that 
it basically used the entire surplus and would prevent us from paying 
down a significant chunk of the $5.6 trillion national debt.
  The President keeps pointing out that we are now actually reducing 
the debt, paying back some of the bonds, not collecting the same 
interest that we were before. If we use all of that and give it back in 
tax breaks, one cannot pay down the national debt. But most important, 
that Republican tax plan just took all the money away that could be 
used for Medicare, for prescription drugs, and also to shore up Social 
Security.
  The other thing the gentleman mentioned, one of the tombstones was 
about the small class size. I think we should mention that two of the 
reasons, and I think the gentleman mentioned it, two of the major 
reasons why we stayed here for the last 6 weeks and insisted on a 
better budget than what the Republicans were sending to the President, 
two of the major reasons was because we wanted to fund that 100,000 
teachers program where the money goes back to the municipalities so 
they do not have to pay it in local property taxes and also for the 
COPs program which was similar. The Republicans, as the gentleman 
knows, did not want to pay for that. Their budget did not include those 
programs. Now, the budget that we are going to adopt tomorrow does at 
least include those.
  So I guess we would have to say that at least in one of those cases, 
we have had success.

                              {time}  1515

  But unfortunately, we have not had success on so many other things, 
the HMO reform, the Medicare prescription drugs, and so many of the 
other things the gentleman mentioned. But we did at least, in staying 
here for the last 6 weeks and insisting that they put in the 100,000 
teachers and cops, at least we did accomplish something.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. 
Sanchez). I am so pleased she is joining us here this afternoon.
  Ms. SANCHEZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from New Jersey for 
yielding to me.
  Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to reiterate what the gentleman just 
talked about, this whole issue of why have we been here 6 extra weeks. 
Because I go home to my district and people ask me all the time, why is 
this fighting going on in Congress?
  I try to explain to them that the strategy of the other side, of the 
Republicans, was to fund what they wanted up front in the 
appropriations bills and then leave the appropriations that they do not 
like to fund to the very end, and say, we have spent too much already. 
We cannot fund these other issues.
  Of course, the one they wanted to leave for the end was the HHS and 
education bill, health care, human services, the education pieces of 
the budget. In fact, initially out of the Appropriations Committee, as 
I recall, they wanted a 40 percent cut in that.
  I tell people all the time when I am back home, the reason we are in 
Washington still is because the Democrats did not want to see education 
and health care services cut. We would stand up and we would fight for 
that.
  Of course, as we saw, we are getting the next installment, if you 
will, of the 100,000 teachers. I think that is great. It is patterned 
after the COPS program. Something that we have seen since President 
Clinton initiated that and we voted for it and we have been funding it, 
we have been seen the crime rate drop across the Nation.
  It is really interesting because, of course, then we had COPS III in 
this year's budget. The Republicans did not want to fund it anymore. I 
would go back home and even my own police officers would say, what is 
wrong with those guys? Why do they not understand that the reason that 
crime has gone down is because we have had these extra bodies to put 
out in the communities to not deal in a negative way with 
neighborhoods, but to do a positive campaign, have a presence in the 
neighborhood, and it really has brought crime down.
  And it is amazing to me that they would want to cut off that program, 
but of course that is what they had in mind, just as they did not want 
to do the second installment of the teachers.
  We know when we look at the education system, a young child, and I 
had a forum in my district, and I remember the Vice President, Mr. 
Gore, came out. One of the students stood up, and she must have been, 
gosh, I think about 12 years old. We asked her, what is the most 
important thing in the classroom? What do you think is the most 
important thing? And she said, the most important thing is the quality 
of the teacher in the classroom. This is a young student. And I believe 
that. Trained teachers, teachers that are teaching to 20 students 
versus 40 students, it makes a big difference.
  Of course, I am from California, where we have had at a State level 
an initiative to bring down the class size by hiring more teachers, et 
cetera. We have seen an incredible difference. I have first grade 
teachers, where we have implemented this in first and second and some 
of third grade, I have had the first grade teachers tell me, my 
students are learning to read. The difference is that I only have 20 to 
teach, and I can spend the quality time with them and understand the 
individual problems that they have in learning to read better than when 
I used to have 40 children in the classroom and it was more of a 
disciplinary problem, and I had to watch what was going on, and I could 
not spend individual time with students because there were so many, 39 
others running amok.
  The first grade teachers will tell us the difference is that they 
have a smaller class size and they can understand the individuals. 
Gosh, when we look at this Columbine situation and the school safety 
issue, and we look at what these students are really telling us, when 
we look at what is happening, it is a need for attention.
  When you have a smaller class size, a teacher can see, are there 
problems with this child? Might they be having problems at home? Do we 
need to get some help for them? Can I sit down and talk something 
through with them? It is much harder to do for 40 kids in the classroom 
than it is on an individual basis.
  I hope that people will understand why we have been here fighting as 
Democrats, and it has been because we care about what is happening in 
the public school system. We want to fix it.

[[Page H12163]]

 We want to help it. That is through a myriad of programs, not just 
more teachers, but the teacher training grants that we have approved, 
the technology, which is such a need in the classroom.

  I hope they will also understand that we have also been fighting to 
keep safety, to keep the crime rate down, to keep this safety issue out 
there by fighting for the COPS program.
  These have been just incredibly important issues as to why we have 
been here, in addition to the health care factor that the gentleman 
mentioned earlier, and of course, the prescription drugs, and things 
that we just have not been able to get through because the leadership 
of this House, the Republican leadership, has closed an eye to it and 
do not want to push this type of thing through.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I just want to thank the gentlewoman for 
coming down. What the gentlewoman has said is so true. I do not really 
understand, we see my colleagues on the Republican side talk about 
education, but when it comes to actually trying to provide the funding 
that is going to go back to the local towns and help with property 
taxes to pay for education, they do not want to do it.
  The gentlewoman remembers that we were here a year ago trying to 
adopt a budget, and again, one of the major sticking points was their 
unwillingness to fund this 100,000 teachers initiative. I know when I 
go back to New Jersey, and basically in all the school districts, they 
say it is great. They like it on a bipartisan basis, because frankly, 
it not only means more teachers and smaller class size, but also it 
saves them money that they do not have to hire the teachers because 
they get the Federal dollars.
  The other initiative that is part of the unfinished agenda which the 
Republican leadership has refused to deal with is the school 
construction initiative. We have been talking about that now for 
several years, as well. That was sort of the second part, to bring down 
the class size and then provide some Federal dollars to help with 
school construction. That was for renovation in urban areas for older 
schools and also in the suburban areas where we have split sessions, 
and they cannot afford to build new schools to help pay for that, too. 
Yet that is not going to be in this budget because they say that is too 
much. They do not want the Federal government involved.
  I do not know how the Federal government helping local schools pay 
for school modernization is somehow ideologically a problem, but this 
is what we hear from the Republican side of the aisle.
  Ms. SANCHEZ. If the gentleman will yield further, they do say that. 
They say that they do not think at a Federal level we should be 
involved.
  We have proposed to them programs that work wonderfully; for example, 
school construction bonds, the whole issue of at a local level an 
entire community has to decide that, yes, in fact they need new schools 
and they are willing to pay for new schools. They have to pass a bond 
issue; if they would do that, if they would do the work, and then of 
course the building of the schools and all of that is still under local 
control.
  We have a lot of propositions here in the House that would say, you 
pay the principle on the bonds and we, those people who purchased those 
school bonds, will get a tax credit on their income tax form, $1 for 
$1, where they do not have to send the money to Washington. Instead, 
they get the tax credit on their income taxes. What does that mean? It 
means that the Federal government basically picks up the interest cost 
on the bonds. That is about a 50 percent match.
  It has two of these Republican types of issues with it; one, keep it 
at a local level. They have to approve it locally, they have to work it 
locally, and the local community wants it, needs it, and decides to do 
it. And secondly, do not send your money to Washington, do not send us 
the money, keep it as a tax credit. It fits right in there their 
philosophies of less money to Washington, but still this whole issue of 
constructing schools is just something that they do not want to do, at 
a time when I look in California and we have such a need.
  One of the districts I represent, Anaheim City School District, it is 
growing at twice the rate in school enrollment of children as the five 
fastest growing States in school enrollment across the Nation, twice as 
fast. It grows by about a thousand students a year. That is a new 
elementary school every year. Yet, they have the same number of 
elementary schools they had as when I was going through the school 
system 25, 30 years ago.
  It is amazing. They go year round, four-track. They never have a 
summer anymore. They do not have a traditional school, they have 
different tracks going. They send their kid for 8 weeks, and then he is 
off for a week. Then they send him for another 8 weeks, et cetera.
  Every time that the teacher finishes that 8 weeks, she has to pack up 
her classroom, put it in storage, go away for a week, come back, unpack 
the classroom in a different school building. Imagine if you are a 
professional, imagine if we had to pack up our offices every 8 or 9 
weeks here, how much work we would really get done.

  They have gone to double sessions, so not only do they have this 
year-round school going on, but they have an a.m. and p.m. session with 
their kids, which means some kids start to eat lunch at 9 in the 
morning, and some kids do not get lunch until 2 p.m. in the afternoon. 
They have sessions at which kids, they have only so much room outside 
for kids to sit down at the picnic tables.
  Besides that, they have portables all over the green grass area, so 
the kids really cannot go out and play anymore because they now have 
portable classrooms. In fact, I have a school system that, if you took 
the number of portables they have on the school sites, on the current 
permanent school sites, and you took them off and you actually made the 
equivalent of new school sites, you would have 27 new school sites 
versus the 26 existing school sites. That is how crowded it is getting 
in California.
  Mr. PALLONE. We have the same problem in New Jersey, maybe not as 
severe. But I know that the State legislature now is struggling to pass 
some sort of school bond modernization initiative. Obviously, if we 
could get money from the Federal government, it would make such a 
difference.
  Again, we talk about the school modernization, and that is nowhere to 
be seen in this budget. We just have to press for it as part of this 
unfinished agenda when we come back.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to my colleague, the gentleman from North Dakota 
(Mr. Pomeroy), who has been down here many times talking about these 
issues.
  Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for hosting this special 
order, because we are at the end of the session. I think it is time to 
take a look back at what has been accomplished over the past year, or 
in this case, unfortunately, what has been left needing and deserving 
of action.
  Let us just go through the issues, ending with the budget issues, 
which are still being wrangled about even as we visit on the floor this 
afternoon.
  A Patients' Bill of Rights. I think if we look at issues that enjoy 
very broad support across the country, and indeed, a very significant 
bipartisan support in this Chamber, it would be the drive to give 
health insurance policyholders greater protections that their medical 
care decisions will be made between the doctor and themselves, not by 
some intervening HMO official.
  That seemed to be a very clear-cut issue. After significant 
discussion in this Chamber there was a vote, and it was a strong 
bipartisan vote to give patients meaningful protections relative to 
their HMOs. Unfortunately, we saw the Speaker turn around and do 
everything possible to sabotage that bill in the conference committee, 
refusing to appoint to the conference committee even those who had been 
supportive of the legislation; in fact, sandbagging, so this bill which 
enjoyed the strong vote out of the House was doomed to failure in 
conference committee. The result, of course: no legislation on the 
Patients' Bill of Rights.
  Mr. Speaker, we started the year with a very, or actually at the end 
of the school year we had the terrible tragedy of Littleton. It drew 
our attention to certain essential gun safety actions, very measured 
but prudent steps we could have taken: child safety locks; dealing with 
the gun show loophole, making the sale of guns at a gun show context 
somewhat similar to

[[Page H12164]]

what it would be under a licensed dealer, be it a retail vendor, a 
hardware store, or what have you.

  Again, there was broad national support for those measures, and yet, 
it was stymied within the Chamber and no further effort to bring it 
forward, even though the Speaker in this instance, unlike the Patients' 
Bill of Rights, said he did intend to have a response move forward; 
ultimately sabotaged by his own people, and nothing happening on the 
gun safety issues.
  An issue that I have seen coming on and coming on very strong is the 
need to address the soaring cost of prescription drug medications. That 
is especially true, and certainly it had been my hope that this would 
be the Congress where we could take steps forward to address this issue 
in one of two ways. I think the best way to address it would be to fold 
in some type of prescription drug coverage in the Medicare program. I 
hoped that that could be achieved.
  In the alternative, in the event that questions about the financing 
of that would prove too tough to deal with, we could address pricing 
differentials, because it is very clear that right now the drug 
companies are selling below cost to their favorite customers, like the 
HMOs or Federal agencies, and coming back and having people paying 
these prescription drugs out of pocket.
  Our seniors on fixed incomes so often need these prescription 
medications for their very health maintenance, and unfortunately, this 
is going to be a Congress leaving town without having done one thing 
relative to prescription drug needs of our seniors. I just think that 
is what has become another in a long string of failures.

                              {time}  1530

  We are heading into an election year. We had a chance to address 
campaign finance reform. No campaign finance reform coming out of this 
Congress. Another in a long litany of failures.
  In addition, one of the things that I had hoped we could really 
achieve, especially in this situation, would be to strengthen the 
Social Security Trust Fund, extend the life of its solvency. Move now 
to address the needs of baby boomers in retirement. We had the plan. We 
had the opportunity. Unfortunately, not one hour on the floor of this 
House has a measure been discussed to lengthen the life of the Social 
Security trust fund.
  We did see, I will say with Social Security, I think, some very 
clever sleight-of-hand by the majority. They tried to deflect the 
discussion from the Social Security Trust Fund and its long-term 
solvency to whether or not funds from the Social Security revenues were 
being spent on the funding of government. All of their argument did not 
have anything to do with strengthening Social Security. None of their 
arguments go to lengthen the life of the trust fund so much as one day. 
But they drove the point: The Democrats were going to raid Social 
Security for wild spending programs, and they were going to put a stop 
to it.
  Mr. Speaker, we know the score, and I have got the score revealed 
here on this chart. This is from the Congressional Budget Office. About 
$14 billion in general fund surplus to support additional spending. And 
now we know that even as the deal is being put together on the final 
spending of this Congress, we are going to be into the Social Security 
program at least $17 billion and, quite potentially, much larger than 
that. So although they did not lengthen the life of the trust fund one 
day, they spoke a lot about not spending any of the Social Security 
surplus. The Congressional Budget Office makes it very clear, Social 
Security money is being spent under their budget plan.
  I think, in total this constitutes really an abysmal year in terms of 
lack of action on the one hand coupled with action that is not helpful 
on the other hand. I would hope that next year we could put forward a 
much better record of accomplishment for the American people. Because 
in the end, I think a congressional session like this should not be 
about setting up the next election. The elections are about having us 
work together, putting aside the overheated, overblown campaign 
rhetoric and getting into the Chamber and rolling up our sleeves, 
bridging our differences and forcing solutions for the American people. 
That is what they expect out of Congress.
  So perhaps, and I would have to say there is some unlikeliness to 
this, but even though the 2000 elections are going to be looming large 
next year, it would be my hope the majority leadership would 
concentrate on the task at hand and that is doing the people's 
business. Let the 2000 elections take care of themselves. I yield back 
to the gentleman.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I just wanted to say 
with regard to the remarks that the gentleman from North Dakota made, 
there is no question that we have to put on the pressure with this 
Republican Majority when we come back to try to deal with this 
unfinished agenda.
  The one thing I wanted to mention very briefly is that we have 
already put in place a rule to bring up a discharge petition on the 
price discrimination and the prescription drug benefit. We have one 
bill that would basically deal with the price discrimination by putting 
in place a Federal remedy, and another that would provide for a 
prescription drug benefit under Medicare. We are going to make sure 
when we come back that we get the petition signed and that we force 
that issue to the floor, which we have had to do with every one of 
these issues, unfortunately. Take that extraordinary means of a 
discharge petition, which should not be the case, but unfortunately 
that is what is necessary to get the Republican leadership to move in 
the House on every one of these issues. HMO reform, campaign finance 
reform, gun safety, every one that we could mention we have had to go 
that route.
  Ms. SANCHEZ. Mr. Speaker, I would agree with the gentleman. We have 
had various petitions and, hopefully, there will be another way when we 
return in January to try to get the prescription drug issue to the 
floor.
  I just want to wrap up my comments with respect to what the gentleman 
from North Dakota said about Social Security. Let us face it. Next year 
is going to be a very difficult election year with control of the 
House, in particular, up for grabs. I think it will be very difficult 
to move legislation through. This would have been really the ideal year 
to take a look at the Social Security issue and shoring it up.
  Why? Because we have the time to do it. Because we have a surplus for 
the first time to be able to take a look at where the monies are spent. 
And because there are still inequities. Just looking at the 2013 year 
where we will have the switch over and there will be a deficit fund 
gathering for Social Security. But there are still inequities in the 
program that we have, like the notch babies. All of these issues. They 
do not affect a lot of the population, but they affect people who have 
been working very hard all of their lives and somehow along the line 
got something done, a law passed here that was against them for really 
no reason.

  We really need to take a look at this restructure of Social Security, 
make sure that it is solvent, make sure that we are putting the monies 
aside today for tomorrow when we will need them. And it is a shame that 
this Congress was unable or unwilling, that the leadership in this 
House, the Republican leadership, was unwilling to address the Social 
Security reform issue.
  Mr. Speaker, with that I yield back to the gentleman from New Jersey.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentlewoman from 
California bringing that up, because I guess we can take some solace in 
the fact that at least we stopped this tax break for the wealthy and 
for the corporate interests. Because if that had passed and the 
President had signed it, then there would not even be the money 
available in the surplus as it grows over the next few years to even 
address the Social Security and the Medicare prescription drug issue. 
So I guess we have to kind of be happy for small victories, so to 
speak. At least that did not happen. I agree completely.
  The President started out the year in his State of the Union address 
last year saying he wanted 1999 to be the year when we addressed the 
solvency of Social Security and Medicare. Basically, the Republican 
leadership made that impossible, but we just have to try and work 
harder next year. We are going to be down here on the floor every day 
in January and February making the point that these issues, this 
unfinished agenda, have to be addressed.




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