[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 2 (Thursday, January 24, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H62-H70]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               SAFETY NETS SHOULD BE NUMBER ONE PRIORITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Akin). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, beginning the second half of our 
congressional session, there are a lot of items on our agenda. There is 
a great deal of talk about many issues, and I worry very much about the 
possibility that the American people will be confused if we let all of 
the various discussions of the various issues become a babble with no 
focus, a babble which does not prioritize and show us what is most 
important and what are the key items that we should focus on.
  It is difficult to hold the attention of the constituents, it is 
difficult to hold the attention of the voters, and the voters need to 
know more than ever what is going on so they can make intelligent 
decisions and defend their own interests and the interests of the 
country when the election comes around in November 2002.
  We have a lot of sensational, highly-visible problems that are 
getting a lot of attention; but even that attention sometimes 
degenerates into a babble, and it becomes confusion, sometimes 
deliberately so.
  The Enron scandal is one of the big items that has a lot of media 
attention and a lot of discussion here in Congress. There are several 
committees investigating it, and I think Enron is one of those 
important things that we have to address. But as we address Enron, both 
the details of the Enron scandal, the Enron swindle, the conspiracy, 
the details are important, but we also ought to look very closely at 
the implications of what is going on with Enron. What are the 
implications for our budget. That is now a number one consideration.
  The President will give his State of the Union address next Tuesday. 
Shortly after that he will be releasing his

[[Page H63]]

budget, and what are the implications in terms of the emphasis of where 
Federal expenditures go at a time when we do not have a surplus? Some 
cuts are necessary, and some increases are necessary. And how those 
cuts and increases are made and who is taken care of and who is not 
taken care of is very important. It is very important that we 
understand that in the Enron conspiracy we have some examples of the 
worst things that can happen in our very civilized democracy.
  Mr. Speaker, we have the best-run, the best-structured government 
probably in the world; but even within that structure, we can have 
bandits make off with a lot of the public's money. We saw that in the 
savings and loan scandal of a little more than a decade ago, which is 
still with us in many ways. They are still finding culprits, and they 
are still being prosecuted. We are still paying the debt service on the 
$500 billion or more that taxpayers paid out as a result of the savings 
and loan scandal which was less of a conspiracy than Enron. The savings 
and loan scandal was widespread.
  We ought to look at Enron as a conspiracy, and the implications of 
how it operated are certainly important. There are those who say Enron 
is not critical in light of the urgency of the present situation, and 
that people are suffering from unemployment and the Nation is at war as 
a result of September 11, and therefore Enron is a minor matter. I say 
that the implications and the kind of inroads that Enron made into the 
decision-making and the impact on our overall economy, all of that is 
very important; and we have to look at those implications very closely.
  I want to talk today about the safety-net principle that was 
introduced in our government during the New Deal by Franklin Roosevelt. 
The principle of safety net certainly might have existed before, but he 
made it an institutionalized part of government operations. He said 
that in a democratic society, government ought to at least stand by and 
help people out when they begin to fall into dire circumstances. 
Government ought to help people stay alive when they are elderly.
  Now we have Social Security which is the most widespread and revered 
safety net. Social Security did not happen automatically. It was 
fashioned under the New Deal. I do not think that at that particular 
time they got any votes from the Republican Party on Social Security; 
but I am certain that no party, no individual in government would dare 
try to take Social Security away at this point. That is a safety net, 
people understand. It is a very tiny safety net when you look at what 
it costs to live even for an elderly person versus the kinds of Social 
Security payments that they get; but it is a vital part of people being 
able to stay alive with some dignity. It is a part that some people 
cling to.
  The New Deal did many other things. It said if you have a situation 
where the economy is in trouble, and it was in total collapse almost at 
the time the New Deal was created, the government should provide jobs 
for people. We had the WPA which ranged across sectors, laborers 
digging ditches to artists who needed income, painters, writers. The 
WPA provided a safety net in terms of producing income. We had 
unemployment insurance. That came out of the New Deal, and the list 
goes on.
  We established aid to families with dependent children, welfare in 
short. That safety net existed for a lot of desperate people. That 
safety net was much maligned. That safety net did not do what some 
other safety nets did. It established no political clout here in 
Washington.
  We had another safety net which is a farm subsidy program which 
reached out and helped to build our agricultural industry grow into 
what it is today. When we compare the farm subsidy safety net to the 
aid to families with dependent children safety net, one wonders about 
whether we have not corrupted totally the principle of a safety net, 
and I am here to argue that we should return to a focus on making our 
safety nets our number one priority.

                              {time}  1345

  Unemployment insurance is a safety net. It is very important for a 
whole lot of people, not just people who are low-income and laid off in 
factories. There are a lot of people who were computer programmers at 
this time last year, and they have no job this year. They might have 
been making $60,000 a year or $70,000 a year last year, but 
temporarily, and it is temporary, because the economy will come back, 
the aspects of the economy which support high-tech industries will come 
back strong. So they are temporarily without a job. Temporarily they do 
not have the money to pay the rent or mortgage. Temporarily.
  There is one case I know of where a woman was making $60,000 last 
year, and she is hysterical because she sees herself as not being able 
to pay the mortgage and maybe becoming homeless. There may be a few 
people already who were very well off last year at this time and 
already are in dire circumstances. A lot of people who were temporarily 
laid off will become homeless who are middle-income people, educated 
people; and they need a safety net.
  The one safety net that we could improve right away is unemployment 
insurance. Unemployment insurance is like Social Security: it is not 
going to give you your monthly paycheck amount, but it can give you 
enough to sustain yourself and begin to put other pieces together with 
some dignity.
  Unemployment insurance in many States has been eroded. The amount of 
the package, the amount you get, has been cut back, because we had 
quite a number of years of prosperity where unemployment was not an 
issue, and money for unemployment insurance has been diverted to other 
purposes, or governments have saved money by lowering the amount of 
money being put into unemployment insurance. We need to do something 
about that immediately. It should be one of our priorities for this 
half of the Congress.
  Why is it that we do not understand and cannot act in Congress on an 
obvious need for this safety net? At the time of the 9-11 disaster when 
the World Trade Center was wiped out by the terrorists, we rushed to 
take care of an emergency that the airline industry had. This is a 
safety net that was not there already.
  There was no authorization in law, no tradition of bailing out 
industries from these kinds of emergencies; but we rushed in, and we 
provided a safety net for the airline industry. That is unparalleled. 
We put forth large amounts of cash, put cash on the line, for the 
airlines that had suffered losses as a result of being grounded during 
the 9-11 emergency. Then we promised them $11 billion in low-cost loans 
beyond that.
  So never before have we rushed so rapidly and provided such a great 
safety net for anybody. So the airline industry stands out as the 
number-one benefactor of the principle of the safety net.
  But at the same time we passed the funding for the airline industry, 
we were told, and many of us fought, certainly on this side of the 
aisle, Democrats had a proposal in the same package that we should 
provide for the airline industry workers unemployment insurance, and 
attached to that would be health benefits, because health benefits are 
as important as the amount of money you take home in your salary 
nowadays.
  So we were told at the time, next week. Come back next week and we 
will put the package on. Well, like Shakespeare, tomorrow and tomorrow 
and tomorrow; next week and next week and next week. Next week is still 
not here.
  So on the agenda of this Congress this year, a number-one item must 
be unemployment insurance; not just for the people who suffered 
specifically on 9-11, not just the people who are the victims of the 
terrorist attack on 9-11, but also the people across the country who 
are suffering because the Nation is in a recession. The Nation was in a 
recession before 9-11. The terrorist attacks certainly exacerbated the 
situation and probably created a more rapidly escalating recession. All 
of those are facts. But whatever the facts behind the tragedy, the 
hardships faced by working people, certainly the need for the safety 
net is there.
  The safety net principle is very important. We might claim it, and it 
is an American idea. We invented it, and it is time for us to not turn 
our back on a very important moral plank that was put into the 
functioning of government, the safety net for the elderly and Social 
Security, the safety net for

[[Page H64]]

farmers and the farm subsidy, the safety net for children who lose 
their parents, who are able to get Social Security payments all the way 
to age 18. We have always had the safety net.
  We have gone further with respect to what happened after 9-11. I 
think the Victims Assistance Fund, we also passed that in the same 
legislation where we bailed out the airline industry. The Victims 
Assistance Fund is another giant leap forward by the Federal Government 
in providing a safety net. It is a dual safety net. It is a safety net 
for the insurance industry, who could be sued forever and ever as a 
result of what happened on September 11. The State of New York, where 
the incident took place, says the airline industry is responsible for 
whoever the victims are, and the insurers of the airlines certainly 
would have to be responsible for the compensation of the victims if we 
did not pass legislation already, right away, immediately, that 
provides a Victims Assistance Fund. It is unparalleled.

  I applaud that. I voted for the bill because that factor was in 
there, and I think it is important that we work it out. There are some 
difficulties involved in terms of a special master who was appointed. 
The special master said what the results are, what the formula will be 
for determining what people get. I think all of that can be worked out. 
I do not think that necessarily we should assume the special master has 
all the wisdom and not make some changes in what has been proposed.
  One obvious change is I do not see why a person who was going to be a 
possible recipient of a Victims Assistance Fund has to, before they 
know the amount they will get from the fund, give up their right to sue 
the insurance companies. Why should they have to give up their right 
before they see what is going to be produced by the Victims Assistance 
Fund? Why? I see no reason why they cannot know that ahead of time. 
Considering all they have gone through and the complications of this 
whole process, I think we ought to at least certainly yield on that 
point.
  There are many other items that are being contested by the survivors 
of the victims; and I will not go into that because I am not 
knowledgeable about it, but I think that principle is very clear. Why 
should one have to give up their right to sue before they know the 
outcome of what the process of the Victims Compensation Fund might be?
  Let us not smear, let us not downgrade or trivialize the principle of 
the safety net by acting like bullies. We have got the money. We are 
the government. You take it or leave it. I do not think that that is a 
principle that should be applied here.
  The safety net principle has been there; and the abuses of it, the 
misuses of it, is what I want to talk about today, because I am very 
troubled by the fact that as of the end of December, December 31, we 
have had the results of a new welfare law going into effect.
  A provision of that law said that anybody who has been on welfare, 
anybody who has been receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children, 
is what Roosevelt and the New Deal called it, anybody who was receiving 
Aid to Families with Dependent Children for 5 years would be cut off 
the welfare rolls and never again, regardless of their circumstances, 
would they be eligible for welfare. That means whole families are cut 
off. If you have been on it for 5 years, you are off; and whatever your 
circumstances are, you have got to go find some other way to survive.
  Now, Aid to Families with Dependent Children gives varying amounts of 
money across the country. I think that generally my State, New York 
State, has been accused as being the most generous, or too generous, 
and that the Aid to Families with Dependent Children in New York has 
been higher than almost anywhere else in the country.
  I have a chart here that says that those ``high amounts'' that were 
given, amounts that were considered high, turn out to be something like 
a family of four would be receiving between $7,000 and $8,000 a year. 
Aid to Families With Dependent Children in New York, a family of four 
would receive between $7,000 and $8,000 a year. That is considered far 
too generous. In many States, I assure you, they receive much less.
  I think New York also has one of the largest numbers of people on 
welfare, and we have been criticized for that. But as we go into an era 
starting January 1 where all the people, 30,000 people I think were 
found to have been on the welfare rolls as of December 31 who had run 
out of their 5 years of tolerance on the welfare rolls, those 30,000 
people are off now.
  Let us say many of those 30,000 people were in families that receive 
at least $7,000 or $8,000 a year. When you compare what they were 
receiving to the amount of money received by the recipients of the 
safety net in the farm subsidy program, you will find that they were 
receiving pennies.
  The farm subsidy program, which also started during the New Deal, 
pays thousands of dollars to families. There is no requirement that you 
get off of it at a certain point. There have been some efforts to phase 
it out, some efforts to sunset it. None of that has succeeded. The farm 
subsidy program is booming more than ever before. So the principle of 
the safety net is such where it goes on and on forever and gets larger 
and larger, and fewer and fewer people in the farm subsidy program are 
getting the benefits of that safety net.
  The safety net principle was a great innovation, a great civilizing 
step forward. We ought to be applauded for it. The New Deal was a great 
step forward in understanding the plight of ordinary people and 
providing for ordinary people and providing for anybody who was facing 
a problem with their survival.

  Later on Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society program added to that 
by adding Medicare and Medicaid so that the actual physical health of a 
person was also considered of concern to the government. Nobody should 
suffer and die because they cannot get adequate health care.
  So given this great step forward, and there are some people who are 
cynics, and I am not a cynic at all, some people who say, well, 
civilization has really not moved forward, we still have the same old 
wars we had before. In fact, the 20th century had more wars than any 
other century. In the 21st century now there are wars raging all over 
the world; people have less liberties in most of the world than they 
had before, et cetera.
  There are all kinds of actual disasters, governmental disasters, 
governance disasters, that can be cited to show that we have not really 
moved forward, that it is only an illusion. It is not an illusion. It 
is very much not an illusion.
  During the celebration of the Martin Luther King Federal holiday and 
the birthday of Martin Luther King, we talked to young people about 
certain kinds of things that were accomplished by Martin Luther King. 
They sit starry-eyed wondering how could that have ever been. How could 
you ever have had segregation, where you could not drink at a water 
fountain unless you were white; where blacks could not eat at certain 
restaurants, stay at certain hotels? How could you have an 
institutionalized government-supported system like that? They cannot 
comprehend it. They are too young to remember.
  But just yesterday in the history of our Nation, we had unspeakable 
injustices that no longer exist. Once upon a time we had slavery. 
Slavery was probably one of the cruelest crimes ever perpetuated on the 
face of the Earth, the American Atlantic slave trade; but that no 
longer exists. You can go on and on and cite the reasons why we have 
every reason to be optimistic about the slow, but forward, march of 
civilization.
  In the industrialized nations of the world the kinds of things I have 
just talked about, Social Security, Medicare, health care, unemployment 
compensation, all those things are features. Pensions, and Social 
Security is a form of pension, but we have private pensions as well as 
Social Security pensions.
  Getting back to the Enron case, one of the terrible things about 
Enron is it wiped out pensions for certain people, large numbers of 
people; and that ought to be a concern of government, how did we let 
that happen. But we will get back to that.
  My point now is that civilization may move forward slower than we 
want it to move forward. Some folks say it is like an inch worm: it 
crawls forward very slowly and sometimes doubles back in circles, and 
it looks like it is going backwards.

[[Page H65]]

  We have had some terrible things happen in the last 20 years. The 
slaughter of nearly 1 million people in Rwanda is cited as an example.

                              {time}  1400

  The Balkan wars, going back to ethnic cleansing and Hitler doctrines, 
all kinds of atrocities can be cited. Pol Pot killing hundreds of 
thousands of people in Cambodia, and we could cite a lot of atrocities 
and a lot of terrible things that have happened as evidence that 
civilization is really not going forward. But, on the other hand, would 
we ever have had a situation even 100 years ago where the women who are 
enslaved in Afghanistan by the Taliban, who turned out to be a few 
thousand thugs with the guns and the tanks and the weapons to enslave 
the rest of their people, and certainly women in particular moved into 
a status which can only be called slavery, would they ever have been 
set free, or would they have been in that condition for 100, 200, 300 
years if it had not been for a modern society responding to injustice, 
a modern society responding to the attack from people who had that kind 
of base.
  Barbaric people have done barbaric things and built up tremendous 
amounts of power and gone on to conquer more civilized people. The 
history of the world is not a history where people who had the best 
knowledge, the most knowledge, the most sophistication, the most 
humanity, the best governance prevailed. The Romans conquered the 
Greeks, and the Huns came in and conquered an Arab civilization that 
was very sophisticated. On and on it goes. There is no guarantee that 
the most humane, most civilized, best governed will prevail.
  Under the fabric of the industrialized nations, combined with the 
United Nations, combined with a morality that has come into being in 
most of the industrialized nations, it is less and less likely that a 
great oppressive nation could arise and be able to work its will 
anywhere in the world. No nation, including our own, should aspire to 
that, and if it were tempted, I think there is enough morality, enough 
common sense about where we have to go as a people, as a species, a 
species of Homo sapiens; human beings have to deal a certain way in 
order to survive on this planet, and it is not in our best interests to 
allow anybody to run roughshod over human life.
  So we have gone forward. The United States of America took a giant 
leap forward when it established the principle of the safety net. Now 
is the time to come forward and defend the principle of the safety net. 
We cannot defend the principle of the safety net if the Congress is 
going to stand here and refuse to pass unemployment compensation laws 
which upgrade the amount of money available for unemployment, 
unemployment compensation laws which are attached to some kind of 
health care benefit. The principle of the safety net has to go forward 
instead of backwards. We must include health care benefits as well as 
increase the amount of money for unemployment insurance in the package 
and extend the amount of time that people can be on unemployment and 
collect unemployment. A simple safety net.
  How can we defend some of the other safety nets that are being so 
abused if we do not operate and act on a clear and present crisis? We 
have a crisis in front of us.
  The farm subsidies are not a crisis, but they are a good example of 
an abuse of the safety net principle, and we cannot, on the one hand, 
allow that kind of abuse to go forward and ignore, on the other hand, 
unemployment insurance. We cannot, on the one hand, allow the farm 
subsidies to continue and insist that people have to get off welfare in 
5 years and we do not care what happens to them after that, and the 
amount of money that each welfare family takes is so much smaller than 
the amount of money being poured into farm subsidies every day.
  So I want to get back to my original proposition, which is that the 
safety net principle is very important as we look at the total agenda 
for the last half of this Congress, this year, 2002, as we go forward.

  I have a list here from the National Conference of State Legislatures 
on what their priorities are and I agree very much with their 
priorities, and we ought to address that. Election reform is a 
priority. I think that the National Conference of State Legislatures 
are rather conservative, just as the election bill that we passed here 
is very conservative, but at least we go forward a few steps.
  Election reform will take us into exposing and taking a hard look at 
the procedures by which we conduct our most important democratic 
activity. That is the point of voting and selecting people who are 
going to lead us and make decisions for us. We have been very sloppy 
over the years in allowing our procedures to become too localized and 
too much left to the States, and people who are in power have been 
given the opportunity to maintain power by the way they operate the 
election process. So we shined a bright light on that. We need to focus 
more on it and think more about the implications, including the 
Electoral College, the implication of the Electoral College. Nothing is 
written in stone, and the fact that we established an Electoral College 
at the time of the founding of the country in protection of the smaller 
States in order to compromise and have all of the States feel that they 
could be part of the Union, we ought to take a look at it and see what 
evil does the Electoral College spawn now. It denies one man, one vote, 
the one-man, one-vote principle as we saw in the last election. When we 
do not have the one-man, one-vote principle, what other evils do we set 
in motion?
  What does it have to do with Enron? What does it have to do with the 
corruption of the safety net of the farm subsidy? Can getting votes out 
of a particular State be guaranteed by maintaining unjust farm 
subsidies? Is that one of the problems that we have to look at, that 
some of the smaller States have power out of proportion to their size 
because of the fact that they are able to finance a system that does 
protect them and part of that system is the use of Federal dollars that 
come from the farm subsidy?
  The Patient's Bill of Rights. That is on the agenda of the National 
Conference of State Legislatures, a Patient's Bill of Rights, including 
a concern with the prescription drug benefits. We must get back to a 
real Patient's Bill of Rights and we must take care of the prescription 
drug benefit.
  The third item on the list of the National Conference of State 
Legislatures happens to be a reauthorization of Assistance for Needy 
Families Block Grant. They want to make sure that we are prepared to 
deal with some of the problems that are obvious from the passage of 
that law. After 5 years of experience, some of the exploitation of the 
loopholes must be dealt with.
  They want a reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities 
Education Act, which the Committee on Education and the Workforce that 
I serve on will be addressing, and we hope to be able to address the 
Federal promise of 40 percent funding for the Individuals With 
Disabilities Education Act so that that money is released at the local 
and State level to go to some other educational activities.
  They want some relief for people who are suffering from the present 
recession. They want an economic stimulus, economic recovery package 
which makes sense in terms of bringing benefits to the people on the 
bottom. The Progressive Caucus that I am a member of is repeating what 
it said 6 months ago, that we want an economic package that is big 
enough to really bring some relief to the people on the bottom.
  We have a massive drop in overall demand, which is one of the 
problems of our economy. When the consumer demand drops massively, that 
is the factor that drives the economy and the engine of the economy is 
stalled. We know that. It is a fact. Nobody disputes it. So let us keep 
the consumer demand up by making certain that the people are the real 
consumers and are the ones who get the benefit of any governmental 
action. We will not stimulate consumption. The consumers will not come 
back when we give large tax cuts to people who are already rich. I 
assure my colleagues, they are buying whatever they want to buy at the 
pace that they want to buy it, and more money will only be an 
opportunity to use it somewhere for purposes other than consumption.
  I will not get into all the economics of that. I do not know what the 
position of the Democratic Party is at this

[[Page H66]]

point, but I certainly am in favor of tax cuts. The only difference is 
I am in favor of tax cuts starting with the poor guys on the bottom who 
have been paying too much payroll taxes. We need a big tax cut for the 
people who have been paying too much payroll taxes. We should go up 
from there to the medium people who need a tax cut. The problem is not 
a tax cut, the problem is who is the target who benefits from the tax 
cut? I think tax cuts ought to be welcome, but the problem with the 
President's tax cuts as they were passed last year and signed into law 
is that they go to the wrong people. They do not stimulate the economy, 
they will not stimulate the economy.
  So the Progressive Caucus calls for a package that will go to the 
bottom and give relief to people on the bottom.
  We also again are calling for a real increase, a giant increase in 
our unemployment benefits. One item is that we proposed a $200 billion 
economic stimulus package last year and probably will fashion this year 
something similar to that economic stimulus package. High priority 
programs are unemployment insurance, as I have just mentioned. First of 
all, extend unemployment benefits to 52 weeks, from the present 26 
weeks to 52 weeks. We want to also supplement the amount of benefits 
available through unemployment by increasing them by $100 a week, 
adding $100 to the present package that they are receiving in any 
State, because those packages and their benefits, the amounts are far 
too low for the present situation.
  We are calling for expanding health care coverage, job training, 
State revenue-sharing, a close look at TANF. That is the aid to 
dependent children's program that was transformed into a punitive 
program at this point. We want to take another look at that.
  We want to take a hard look at the use of government funds for public 
works construction to generate jobs also, starting with school 
construction. We are proposing $10 billion for school construction. We 
proposed that last year, and we will be proposing it again this year. 
Another $10 billion for small business economic development programs at 
the local level. Again, as I said before, we need a tax cut for the 
people on the bottom, and that is again being proposed by the 
Progressive Caucus.
  Just to focus first on the safety net principle being abused and 
misused with respect to the Aid to Families with Dependent Children, 
TANF, TANF has become the kind of stain on the record of our Nation 
with respect to safety nets that we do not want to continue. We do not 
want to continue to tell families who are destitute, have no other 
means of survival that after 5 years the government will not have 
anything to do with them except to find them a job, help them find a 
job. If they do not find a job, they are still not eligible for 
assistance. What do they do if they do not find a job?
  In an economy which is in recession, and people, even well-educated 
people with a lot to offer, are temporarily finding it difficult to 
find jobs. How will we find jobs for welfare recipients who in many 
cases have very poor and limited education? So we must do something to 
remove the stain of TANF. We need a revision of that.
  There is no great hue and cry in Congress, I must say, because people 
who are on welfare have no power. The poorest people in our society, 
part of the reason they are that way is because they have limited 
education, they have absolutely no capital, they do not make 
contributions to anybody's campaign, and it is their fault but they are 
not organized.
  When we look at the farm subsidy, we see the fact that the farm 
population of America is less than 2 percent of the population, and yet 
the amount of money they can demand in the Federal budget is far 
exceeding anything that urban communities can command with much greater 
populations. The fact that they are a small group does not mean that 
they cannot in our American democratic system command the attention of 
Congress, but they cannot get subsidies, they cannot get a place in the 
budget.

                              {time}  1415

  On the one hand, welfare people are treated atrociously. On the other 
hand, we are bowing to the power of the farm subsidies and the people 
who manipulate those programs.
  Today in the Washington Post, for example, there is a long story 
which in my opinion we might title ``An Expose on How a Safety Net Has 
Been Grossly Abused.'' The safety net of the farm subsidy program has 
been grossly abused, and there is a discussion of that here in the 
Washington Post today, January 24.
  The article is entitled ``More Subsidy Money Going to Fewer Farms.'' 
They start off with a description of one man, David B. Griffin, ``a man 
of undeniable means, a prominent and well-respected businessman who 
lives in a million-dollar home, sits on the local bank board and serves 
as president of a tractor dealership with sales last year of $30.8 
million. He is also, by some definitions, a farmer--the principal 
landlord of a 61,000-acre spread known as Tyler Farms.'' This is near 
Elaine, Arkansas.
  ``But Griffin did not get where he is without government help. From 
1996 through 2001, records show, Tyler Farms received more than $38 
million in Federal crop subsidies for its bountiful yield of cotton, 
rice, corn, sorghum, soybeans, and wheat''; $38 million to Tyler Farms 
from the government, $38 million to a man who is already a millionaire.
  ``Griffin's story and others like it suggest that Federal crop 
programs ostensibly aimed at struggling families do not always hit 
their intended targets.'' In another paragraph they talk about numbers 
telling a story of unintended consequences.
  ``According to the Department of Agriculture, 47 percent of commodity 
payments now flow to large commercial operations with average household 
incomes of $135,000.'' We hear people with an average household income 
of $135,000 are getting subsidies from the government, with a $135,000-
a-year income. Here is a family in New York of four on welfare and they 
get $7,000, and we say, ``You are a threat to the economy of the 
Nation. You can only get this money for 5 years; no matter what 
circumstances you and your children may be in, we will take you off.''
  These farms make up 8 percent of the Nation's 2.2 million farms. 
Sixty percent of the American farms get no crop subsidies at all. We 
are allowing abuses to take place which not only hurt Americans and 
take our tax monies in the wrong direction, but we are also hurting 
farmers, the little guys out there who are probably more like the 
welfare mothers than like the millionaire farmers. Obviously, they do 
not belong to the right organizations, do not make the right 
contributions, and they are left out.
  I am reading from an article that appears in today's Washington Post, 
January 24. Members may get it if they want the full article. I want to 
continue.
  Another paragraph says: ``But new payment limits would address only 
one aspect of the `Alice-in-Wonderland' system that underpins much of 
the Nation's farm economy--a system that Congress thought it had junked 
6 years ago in favor of the free market but that has since proved 
impossible to kill.''
  We were going to phase it out starting 6 years ago, and it has only 
mushroomed and gotten bigger.
  ``Established in 1933 as a rural antidote to the Depression, crop 
payments have mushroomed into a $21 billion-a-year entitlement program 
that almost everyone agrees is broken but that no one can agree how to 
fix.'' That is $21 billion a year. At the height of the welfare 
program, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children, I think the 
program for the whole country was costing less than 2 percent of the 
total budget; and here we are talking about a $21 billion program for 2 
percent, less than 2 percent of the population that would be eligible. 
But of that 2 percent eligible, only a tiny percentage of those are 
absorbing this $21 billion a year that they are receiving.
  ``It is a system that reserves almost half of its benefits for just 
six States.'' That is important, too, when we consider the Electoral 
College and why we maintain that, because those States have power out 
of proportion to their membership, out of proportion to their size, and 
out of proportion to the number of voters that they have. But six 
States are receiving most of the farm subsidies, according to the 
United States Department of Agriculture.
  ``Notwithstanding the return of budget deficits, to say nothing of 
its stated

[[Page H67]]

commitment to free trade, the Bush administration has bowed to 
congressional demands for $73 billion in new farm spending over the 
next decade. That is almost three times the $26 billion cost of the 
landmark education package that President Bush signed into law this 
month.'' That is $26 billion from the Federal Government over a 10-year 
period that would deal with education.
  Education is for the whole Nation. Education is the foundation for 
our national security system. If we do not have more educated people, 
if we have more high-tech weapons, high-tech weapons will become a 
joke. If we do not have more educated people to become the scientists 
to conduct the missions to build the missile system, first of all we 
are going to pay extravagant amounts of money bidding for the few 
scientists in the world who are able to deal with the problem, and we 
would probably fail, and at the same time a large number of foreign 
scientists will be educated to do the same thing.
  The antidote to the defense missile system will be in development 
somewhere in the world before we even get it completed; and the 
scientists that are used to develop the opposition will probably be 
educated here in America, because we have not given enough money to 
educate all of our population that has talent to the fullest extent of 
their talent and their ability to contribute to the Nation's education 
brain power.
  To get back to the article, ``More than $40 billion would go for crop 
subsidies, with the rest reserved for conservation, nutrition and rural 
development.''
  But ``Congress has been more aggressive when it comes to addressing 
other entitlement programs.'' Congress has been more aggressive, not 
aggressive in terms of increasing the amounts of money, but cutting the 
amount of money.
  In 1996, Congress passed ``a massive revision of welfare that ended 
the 6-decade-old cash assistance program known as Aid to Families With 
Dependent Children. The new law also trimmed food stamp benefits, which 
are funded under the farm bill.''
  In other words, in 1996 we committed this horrible atrocity, and that 
is what it is, a legislative atrocity that was committed in 1996 when 
we not only cut Aid to Families with Dependent Children and laid down a 
mandate that you cannot have more than 5 years of assistance from the 
Federal Government no matter how desperate you are, but we also cut 
food stamps at the same time.
  To continue: ``With prices for some crops at their lowest level in 
more than a decade, many farmers are in genuine distress, and even the 
harshest critics of the farm programs acknowledge the need for some 
form of government safety net.''
  As an urban dweller from the heart of New York City, I say farmers 
should have a government safety net. We should help farmers the way we 
help everybody else, but we should not abuse the principle of the 
safety net for farmers because farm subsidy program advocates have 
special privileges here in our government and are able to manipulate 
certain forces and get large hunks of the taxpayers' money that they do 
not deserve.
  Continuing with the article here in today's Washington Post, 
``Congress has been trying for more than a decade to wean farmers from 
the Federal Treasury. The effort peaked with the 1996 Freedom to Farm 
Act, which provided transitional payments to farmers with the aim of 
phasing out subsidies by this year.''
  In other words, I was here when we debated the Freedom to Farm Act. 
We are all capitalists; we are all advocates of capitalism. We cannot 
live with the socialism that has taken over the farm subsidy program, 
especially since the socialism is a socialism of the rich, in many 
cases. Everybody wanted to do something, but since 1996 and the great 
speeches that were made then, we have gone backwards, not forwards.
  ``But a combination of factors--including worldwide recession and a 
global oversupply of food--pushed crop prices lower, and Congress has 
rushed in to fill the breach with a series of `emergency' supplemental 
appropriations bills.''
  Now, when the NAFTA and other trade bills and world trade agreements 
occurred, they created a situation where factory workers were laid off, 
plants were closed; and we have never rushed in with a subsidy for 
urban workers. We have never rushed in with subsidies which would 
average $135,000 for a family, or $28,000 per family. We barely have 
been willing to give money for worker retraining. A lot of that money 
has gotten bogged down in the bureaucracy.

  ``In 2000, crop subsidies reached a record high of $22 billion. That 
is nearly as much Federal assistance in one year as Amtrak has gotten 
for the last quarter century. But in some respects, the farm subsidies 
have made matters worse, encouraging farmers to grow more crops without 
regard to market demand.''
  As capitalists, we cannot tolerate a situation where we distort the 
free market, but we are funding at very high levels a program which 
distorts the free market. On the one hand, this safety net is abused 
greatly, all out of proportion to reality. On the other hand, the 
safety net set up for welfare mothers has been turned off completely.
  Can we as a civilized Nation live with what we have done to the 
welfare mothers, one? And, two, can we, as a civilized Nation and a 
group of responsible Members of Congress, sit here and continue the 
farm subsidies, which are an abuse of the principle of the safety net?
  ``The outcome of debate is especially important to Arkansas, where 
the top 10 percent of subsidy recipients--or 4,822 of the total--
received more than 73 percent of the Federal farm subsidies, with an 
average payment of more than $430,000 per recipient.''
  Let me repeat that. In Arkansas, 4,822 farm recipients of the subsidy 
program, who account for 10 percent of the subsidy, received an average 
payment of more than $430,000 per recipient, according to an analysis 
of USA Data by a group called the Environmental Working Group. That is 
$430,000 per recipient, a safety net to help people survive and get by, 
$430,000 in taxpayers' money to help people survive. The principle of 
the safety net is wiped out completely in that kind of scandal.
  The Environmental Working Group is a Washington nonprofit 
organization that wants more money to be shifted to conservation. ``The 
group has caused a stir in Congress by posting subsidy data--including 
farmers' names and how much they receive--on its Web site.''
  I invite Members of Congress to use the Web site of the Environmental 
Working Group: ewg.org, ewg.org. If Members want the exact names of 
individuals and how much they received, how much they are receiving, 
Members can go to this Web site and get the information by State, State 
by State. We can get the information on how the safety net for farmers 
is being grossly abused and the process is draining away billions of 
dollars that could be used for people who need the safety net, the 
unemployed, the uninsured, with respect to health care.
  I am not in favor of increasing the Federal budget at all. I think we 
have enough money in the overall Federal budget. But I am in favor of 
redirecting, redirecting the money in the Federal budget to those 
people who really need it, and here is a case where we can start taking 
from the abusive safety net to give to safety nets that really help 
people.
  Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record in its entirety the article 
entitled ``More Subsidy Money Going to Fewer Farms'' in the Washington 
Post on January 24, 2002.
  The material referred to is as follows:

                More Subsidy Money Going to Fewer Farms


                  skewed program draws senate scrutiny

                          (By John Lancaster)

       Elaine, Ark.--David B. Griffin is a man of undeniable 
     means, a prominent and well-respected businessman who lives 
     in a million-dollar home, sits on the local bank board and 
     serves as president of a tractor dealership with sales last 
     year of $30.8 million. He is also, by some definitions, a 
     farmer--the principal landlord of a 61,000-acre spread known 
     as Tyler Farms.
       But Griffin did not get where he is without government 
     help. From 1996 through 2001, records show, Tyler Farms 
     received more than $38 million in federal crop subsidies for 
     its bountiful yield of cotton, rice, corn, sorghum, soybeans 
     and wheat.
       Griffin's story and others like it suggest that federal 
     crop programs--ostensibly aimed at struggling family farms--
     do not always hit their intended targets.

[[Page H68]]

       For all the congressional hand-wringing about the plight of 
     the hardy souls who scrape their living from the soil, the 
     hugely expensive New Deal-era subsidies for grain and cotton 
     producers--which Congress only six years ago voted to phase 
     out altogether--are funneling more money to fewer farms than 
     ever before.
       Numbers tell a story of unintended consequences: According 
     to the Department of Agriculture, 47 percent of commodity 
     payments now flow to large commercial operations with average 
     household incomes of $135,000. These farms make up 8 percent 
     of the nation's 2.2 millions farms. Sixty percent of American 
     farms get no crop subsidies.
       ``A lot of these payments, the majority of them, are going 
     to big farms, and these big farms are wealthy farms,'' said 
     Bruce L. Gardner, an agricultural economist at the University 
     of Maryland and a former assistant secretary of agriculture 
     in the first Bush administration. ``This is not a poverty 
     program in any way.''
       The skewed distribution of farm benefits is sure to receive 
     more scrutiny when the Senate next month resumes debate on a 
     bill to chart farm programs for the next decade. Embarrassed 
     by revelations about the amount of money some farmers are 
     reaping from federal farm programs--information recently made 
     available on the World Wide Web--some lawmakers are calling 
     for much lower limits on payments to individual recipients.
       But new payment limits would address only one aspect of the 
     ``Alice in Wonderland'' system that underpins much of the 
     nation's farm economy--a system that Congress thought it had 
     junked six years ago in favor of the free market but that has 
     since proved impossible to kill.
       Established in 1933 as a rural antidote to the Depression, 
     crop payments have mushroomed into a $21 billion-a-year 
     entitlement program that almost everyone agrees is broken but 
     that no one can agree how to fix. It is a system that 
     reserves almost half of its benefits for just six states; 
     lavishes subsidies on grain and cotton farmers while 
     excluding most ranchers and growers of fruits and vegetables; 
     and--according to the USDA's own studies--worsens the very 
     problems it seeks to correct by encouraging overproduction, 
     thereby depressing crop prices while driving up the cost of 
     land.
       Yet farm subsidies endure, underscoring the daunting 
     challenge faced by those who would dismantle entitlements for 
     groups with special stature on Capitol Hill--in this case, 
     mostly middle-class white men and their families.
       Notwithstanding the return of budget deficits, to say 
     nothing of its stated commitment to free trade, the Bush 
     administration has bowed to congressional demands for $73 
     billion in new farm spending over the next decade. That is 
     almost three times the $26 billion cost of the landmark 
     education package President Bush signed into law this month. 
     More than $40 billion would go for crop subsidies, with the 
     rest reserved for conservation, nutrition and rural 
     development.
       ``We kind of hit this farm thing with a sledgehammer just 
     by throwing dollars out without really analyzing where the 
     dollars are going,'' said Dan Glickman, who was agriculture 
     secretary in the Clinton administration. ``This is an area 
     where an awful lot of members of Congress kind of view these 
     programs as out of sight, out mind.''
       Congress has been more aggressive when it comes to 
     addressing other entitlement programs. In 1996, Congress 
     passed--and President Bill Clinton signed--a massive revision 
     of welfare that ended the six-decade-old cash-assistance 
     program known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children. The 
     new law also trimmed food stamp benefits, which are funded 
     under the farm bill.
       During debate on the farm legislation in December, Sen. 
     Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) proposed to double spending on food 
     stamps by throwing out crop programs in favor of a much less 
     costly voucher system that would help farmers buy crop 
     insurance. Farm lobbyists rallied in opposition to Lugar's 
     proposal, and it failed 70 to 30.
       With prices for some crops at their lowest level in more 
     than a decade, many farmers are in genuine distress, and even 
     the harshest critics of farm programs acknowledge the need 
     for some form of government safety net.
       Farmers themselves are divided on the issue. Some, 
     especially those on smaller acreage, want a reallocation of 
     benefits. But owners of larger operations generally defend 
     the current system. They say it is natural for big farms to 
     claim the majority of subsidies, since they grow the most 
     food with the greatest efficiency. They note that many 
     foreign governments provide far more support to their 
     farmers, creating barriers to American exports.
       ``No one would disagree that the largest farms are getting 
     the bulk of the benefits,'' said Robert G. Serio, a colorful 
     country lawyer in Clarendon, Ark., who makes his living 
     setting up partnerships--including Tyler Farms--that allow 
     farmers to maximize those benefits. ``Are you going to 
     penalize Wal-Mart for being bigger than the Family Dollar 
     store? In America, everyone is rewarded, supposedly, for 
     being bigger and more efficient.''
       Congress has been trying for more than a decade to wean 
     farmers from the federal treasury. The effort peaked with the 
     1996 Freedom to Farm Act, which provided transitional 
     payments to farmers with the aim of phasing out subsidies by 
     this year.
       But a combination of factors--including worldwide recession 
     and a global oversuppy of food--pushed crop prices lower, and 
     Congress has rushed in to fill the breach with a series of 
     ``emergency'' supplemental appropriations bills.
       In 2000, crop subsidies reached a record high of $22 
     billion. That is nearly as much federal assistance in one 
     year as Amtrak has gotten in the last quarter century. But in 
     some respects, the farm subsidies have made matters worse, 
     encouraging farmers to grow more crops without regard to 
     market demand. Rice is a good example.
       Citing weak global demand for rice, Congress has sharply 
     increased direct assistance to the farmers who grow it. Rice 
     subsidies rose from $448 million in 1997 to more than $1.3 
     billion in 2000, according to USDA's Economic Research 
     Service. The normal response to soft markets would be to cut 
     production. In this case, however, farmers have no incentive 
     to do so because Congress has guaranteed a set price for 
     every bushel of rice they grow.
       As a result, the amount of American farmland devoted to 
     rice swelled from 2.5 million acres in 1997 to 3.3 million 
     acres last year--the same year rice prices hit a 15-year low.
       The Bush administration has sharply criticized farm 
     programs, and Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman last year 
     initially expressed support for Lugar's far-reaching 
     proposal. At the same time, the largest share of farm 
     subsidies flows to the same midwestern and southern states 
     that Bush won in the 2000 election. That limits the 
     administration's political maneuvering room, especially with 
     midterm elections looming in the fall.
       The administration last year ultimately threw its support 
     behind an alternative farm bill offered by Sens. Pat Roberts 
     (R-Kan.) and Thad Cochran (R-Miss.). Among other things, the 
     measure would establish 401(k)-style savings accounts for all 
     farmers--not just those who participate in commodity 
     programs--with matching government contributions of as much 
     as $10,000 a year.
       But the GOP bill is not the radical departure some had 
     hoped for. It preserves most major subsidy programs, 
     including one that pays farmers a set amount based on 
     historical production, even if they let their fields lie 
     fallow.
       Farm groups hold enormous sway on Capitol Hill; the largest 
     and most influential, the American Farm Bureau Federation, 
     spent $3.2 million on lobbying in 2000, according to a 
     federal disclosure report. Moreover, many key leadership 
     positions in Congress are occupied by farm-state lawmakers, 
     such as House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Senate 
     Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.).
       The politics of farm subsidies was much in evidence in 
     December, when a bipartisan group of senators led by Byron L. 
     Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) floated a 
     proposal to reduce the ceiling on annual crop payments to 
     individual farmers from $460,000 to $275,000. The measure has 
     considerable support among farmers of more modest means, many 
     of whom are in the upper Midwest. It is bitterly opposed by 
     owners of large cotton and rice farms in southern states such 
     as Arkansas. Both Arkansas senators--Blanche Lincoln (D) and 
     Tim Hutchinson (R)--share that opposition.
       After Daschle came under pressure from Lincoln and other 
     southern lawmakers, the majority leader prevailed upon Dorgan 
     to drop his sponsorship of the amendment, if not his support 
     for the idea. Aides from both parties say they expect it to 
     resurface next month.
       The outcome of the debate is especially important to 
     Arkansas, where the top 10 percent of subsidy recipients--or 
     4,822 of the total--received more than 73 percent of federal 
     farm subsidies, with an average payment of more than $430,000 
     per recipient, according to an analysis of USDA data by the 
     Environmental Working Group, a Washington nonprofit 
     organization that wants more money shifted to conservation. 
     The group has caused a stir in Congress by posting subsidy 
     data--including farmers' names and how much they receive--on 
     its Web site, ewg.org.
       A number of the state's largest farms can be found in the 
     fertile but economically depressed Mississippi Delta region 
     of eastern Arkansas. Tyler Farms is headquartered in Phillips 
     County, which borders the Mississippi River about 80 miles 
     east of Little Rock.
       From 1996 to 2000, the county of about 26,000 people 
     received more than $101 million in federal farm subsidies, 
     according to the environmental group's analysis. Farm groups 
     say such subsidies help sustain rural communities. But the 
     picture in Phillips County is anything but prosperous. 
     According to Arkansas state figures, 8,319 county residents--
     31.5 percent of the population--received food stamps in 
     December 2001.
       Griffin is one of the county's biggest private employers. 
     His other interests include Producers Tractors Co. (which 
     operates five John Deere dealerships), a cotton-gin company 
     and a petroleum distributorship, according to Dun & 
     Bradstreet and his attorney. Griffin lives just south of 
     Elaine, a tiny crossroads town in an ocean of flat cultivated 
     fields, in a 13,233-square-foot mansion on 15 acres with an 
     estimated market value of $964,750, according to county 
     records.
       Griffin did not respond to several requests for interviews, 
     but Serio, his lawyer, said it was wrong to assume that 
     Griffin owed his

[[Page H69]]

     success to government subsidies. He emphasized that Griffin 
     merely leases his land to Tyler Farms--a complex partnership 
     involving 39 local investors--and receives no direct 
     government payments. Serio said Griffin owns 33,500l acres of 
     the farm; his father owns 14,000; and the rest is leased from 
     other landowners.
       Griffin set up the farm in 1993 with landowners and local 
     farmers ``who were going out of business'' because they could 
     not get financing, Serio said.
       Like other large operations, Tyler Farms was structured to 
     get the most from government programs. Its 39 owners are 
     organized into 66 separate ``corporations,'' an arrangement 
     that allows the farm to maximize benefits under allowable 
     payment limits and also limits owners' liability, Serio said.
       To qualify for federal payments, which are supposed to 
     benefit family farmers, each of the owners is supposed to be 
     ``actively engaged in farming.'' Serio said 22 of the owners 
     perform management duties and therefore meet that 
     requirement. Griffin puts his assets at risk, Serio said, by 
     guaranteeing 40 percent of the farm's annual crop loan.
       With crop prices so low, the lawyer said, ``farms are 
     getting bigger for the sake of survival.''

  Mr. Speaker, the Environmental Working Group will be happy to tell us 
all we need to know State by State what the farm subsidies are. If 
Members are not interested in looking at details for an individual, on 
that database Members will find State by State, ranked according to 
those who are getting the most to those who are getting the least, 
information on this.
  Information is power, and it is power enhanced and power multiplied, 
depending on the way we use it. We have now information that can be put 
to good use in demonstrating to the American people that the principle 
of the safety net, which we all endorse, is being grossly abused on the 
one hand, and being denied to people who need it on the other hand.

                              {time}  1430

  The welfare mothers who are kicked off the rolls starting December 31 
deserve better treatment from our government.
  There are some people who are now Congresspersons, leaders in 
industry, leaders in education, large numbers of people who made it 
because their family was able to go on welfare not for 5 years, 
sometimes for many more. There are some youngsters whose family was on 
welfare until they were 18 years old. Like Social Security pays for 
survivors up to 18, why do we suddenly make a mandated, arbitrary, 
cruel rule that after 5 years you are off.
  But we do not tell the farm subsidy recipient you are off after 5 
years or you are off. We can find the money for unemployment insurance 
by cutting the money that is going to recipients who do not deserve it 
in the farm subsidy program.
  I do not have the statistics now, but we also have a farmer's home 
loan mortgage report program which, I admit, 4 or 5 years ago on one of 
my committees, the Committee on Oversight and Investigations, and that 
committee discovered that there were people receiving farmer's home 
loans that had not paid their interest or their principal in 4 or 5 
years and that the amount of money outstanding at that particular time 
had reached as high as $14 billion. I asked questions about it last 
year and I found that it had come down. Now it is less than $10 
billion, outstanding money owed because it is overdue.
  So we have allowed the farm apparatus to stage a conspiracy on 
taxpayers' money. The Department of Agriculture needs to be 
investigated because many of these farmers who got their home loans, 
these farmer loan mortgages and were not paying them back, they sat on 
the credit committees. They made the decisions about who got the loans 
and they got the loans for themselves in many cases, and nobody was 
there to confront them about paying them back.
  The situation is grave. It is urgent right now to move our money away 
from those who abused the safety net to those who need it. In New York 
unemployment has gone from 4.5 percent in December of 2000 up to 5.8 
percent now for the whole State. In New York City it is up to 6 percent 
for the city, and that is not anything unusual.
  In Alabama the State has gone from 4.5 percent of unemployment to 5.9 
percent presently. California has gone from 4.7 percent unemployment in 
December 2000 to 6 percent now, and on and on it goes. There are a few 
States that have escaped, but they are very much in the minority who do 
not have high unemployment rates at this point.
  The Bush administration came in in January, and I will not argue at 
this point whose fault it is, but since last January unemployment in 
New York has risen by 1.6 percent. A large amount of that unemployment 
took place before the terrorist attack on September 11. September 11 
has only exacerbated immediately in the New York area a great jump in 
unemployment. We lost 109,900 jobs in New York. The economic stimulus 
plan that was put forth with the tax cuts for the rich would cost us 
money. Instead of giving us more it would cost us another $710 million.
  At this point we have 134,548 more unemployed people than we had last 
January. They need help. The State unemployment benefits are, as good 
as they may be, far too small to deal with the emergency that we are 
facing.
  We also have some examples of what unions have done to fill the gap. 
One example that I would like to put on record of a union filling the 
gap, specifically around the disaster that took place on September 11. 
Local 32B-J of the SEIU represents most of the workers at the World 
Trade Center and the surrounding buildings. Fortunately many of them 
work at night and they were not there when the plane crashed into the 
World Trade Center, so they escaped with their lives. They lost about 
32 people who were on duty. Most of them escaped with their lives, but 
they lost their jobs.
  We have about 3,000 workers who were employed with health benefits, 
pension plans, et cetera, and now they have no jobs. I think Local 32B-
J is to be congratulated with what it has done to fill that gap. They 
took action immediately to provide their own safety net for their 
workers. The point that has to be understood is that no union, and they 
did this with the help of the employers, the reality board that 
employed these workers and served as a bargaining unit for management, 
they joined with the union in providing a safety net.
  I want to put on record that we have the real estate industry and the 
union working for that industry. The two bargaining contenders came 
together in an agreement which provided benefits for their workers for 
6 months. And that is the point. They can only do it for 6 months. They 
do not have the capacity to go much further than that. So the Joint 
Building Service Industry Emergency Preferential Hiring Program is 
there so each worker who lost their job is given preference in hiring.
  Mr. Speaker, the text of the agreement that was made by the union and 
the employers to give work to the members of Local 32B-J who lost their 
jobs in the World Trade Center disaster is as follows:

       The Union, the RAB and the Trustees of the Building Service 
     Benefit Funds have developed a program of job placement and 
     enhanced benefits to ease the burden on all employees working 
     under Local 32B-32J contracts at the World Trade Center and 
     other nearby buildings which have been closed as a result of 
     the destruction or damage caused by the terrorist attack. The 
     comprehensive program includes job placement without loss of 
     seniority, supplemental unemployment insurance, extended 
     health benefits, and an enhanced pension benefit for certain 
     employees who wish to retire.
       The following is an explanation of each benefit under this 
     program:


 joint building service industry emergency preferential hiring program

       Each employee who lost his or her job either permanently, 
     as in the case of those employees who worked at the World 
     Trade Center, one of the other buildings that will not reopen 
     or any employee employed at a building which has not yet 
     reopened, will be placed on a Preferential Hiring List in the 
     order of industry seniority. All cleaning contractors who 
     have agreements with the Union must report all job openings 
     to the Program, and will hire directly from the Preferential 
     Hiring List in the order of seniority. Employees who accept 
     the offered positions will retain their current hourly wage 
     rate, benefits, and industry seniority. This means that 
     employees will maintain their full industry seniority for 
     bumping and vacation purposes. If you were getting five weeks 
     vacation you will still get five weeks vacation on the new 
     job. Unfortunately, were are unable to preserve your building 
     seniority.
       Once you are offered a job, you must decide within two days 
     whether to accept the job. Whether or not you accept the job, 
     you will be removed from the Preferential Hiring

[[Page H70]]

     List, will no longer be eligible for the Extended Health 
     Benefits and the Supplemental Unemployment Benefit which are 
     described below and you will lost your bumping rights within 
     your employer's system.
       Employees remaining on the Preferential Hiring List who 
     have not been offered a job as of February 4, 2002 will be 
     offered the right to bump within their employer's system.


              2. supplemental unemployment benefit program

       This is a benefit being provided by the Building Service 
     32B-J Health Fund to all employees who meet the eligibility 
     requirements set forth below. If you were employed as a 
     security guard at the World Trade Center you will receive a 
     benefit of $93.00 per week. If you had any other full time 
     job, you will receive a benefit of $150.00 per week. If 
     you held a part time job (less than forty hours per week), 
     you will receive a benefit of $112.50 per week.
       In order to be eligible for this benefit you must;
       (a) Have been eligible for health coverage under the 
     Building Service Health Fund as of September 11, 2001, and
       (b) Be named on the Preferential Hiring List described 
     above at any time between October 2, 2001 and April 2, 2002, 
     and
       (c) Are not receiving a pension from the Building Service 
     32B-J Pension Fund, and
       (d) Have not held a full time job as of September 11, 2001 
     in addition to the one from which you were displaced on 
     September 11, 2001.
       You will continue to receive this benefit until the 
     earliest of the following occurs:
       (a) You are recalled to work by your employer.
       (b) You accept a job from the Preferential Hiring List.
       (c) You decline the offer of a job from the Preferential 
     Hiring List.
       (d) You fail to comply with rules established by the Health 
     Fund to administer this benefit.
       (e) You begin to receive a pension from the Building 
     Service 32B-J Pension Fund.
       (f) You become ineligible for New York State Unemployment 
     Insurance benefits because of any other job you may have 
     taken.
       (g) April 2, 2002, or the Health Fund has paid out a total 
     of Six Million Dollars for this benefit, whichever shall 
     first occur.


                    3. extension of health benefits

       Any employee who was terminated in connection with the 
     World Trade Center disaster and who at any time between 
     October 2, 2001 and April 2, 2002 is named on the 
     Preferential Hiring List and his or her eligible dependents, 
     shall continue to be covered for all benefits under the 
     Building Service 32B-J Health Fund through April 30, 2001 or 
     until he or she is removed from the Preferential Hiring List, 
     whichever is sooner.
       Remember, that you will be removed from the Preferential 
     Hiring List if you decline a job offer or if you begin 
     receiving a pension under the Building Service 32B-J Pension 
     Fund.
       Upon the termination of your extended health coverage, 
     assuming that you have not received a job which would 
     otherwise entitle you to benefits under the Health Fund, you 
     will be entitled to elect COBRA continuation coverage. This 
     means you can continue to receive health coverage for up to 
     eighteen months provided you pay the Health Fund for the 
     coverage. Your dependents may also be entitled to elect COBRA 
     continuation coverage.


                      4. enhanced pension benefit

       Any employee who was terminated in connection with the 
     World Trade Center disaster who was on the Preferential 
     Hiring List as of October 2, 2001 and who on or before 
     September 11, 2001, has reached his or her Fiftieth Birthday 
     with at least five years of pension service credit, or has 
     reached his or her Sixtieth Birthday, will be eligible to 
     retire and receive an Enhanced Pension Benefit.
       The Enhanced Pension Benefit will be equal to the pension 
     benefit that you would be entitled to if you were five years 
     older and had five more years of service credit. For example, 
     if you are fifty years old and have ten years of service you 
     would receive a pension benefit equal to the pension you 
     would receive if you retired at fifty five with fifteen years 
     of service, or if you were sixty years old with twenty years 
     of service, you would receive the maximum benefit of $1150.00 
     per month since you would be treated as though you were 
     sixty-five years old with twenty-five years of service.
       In order to be eligible for the Enhanced Pension Benefit 
     you must elect this benefit and retire during the window 
     period of October 4, 2001 through November 4, 2001.
       If you accept the Enhanced Pension Benefit, you will be 
     removed from the Preferential Hiring List and will no longer 
     be eligible for the Supplemental Unemployment Benefit or 
     Bumping Rights within your employer's system.
       Additionally, you will no longer be entitled to the 
     extended health coverage unless you had reached your fifty-
     seventh birthday by September 11, 2001. If you had reached 
     your fifty-seventh birthday on or before September 11, 2001 
     you will receive health coverage until you reach the age of 
     sixty-five as currently provided in the Health Plan for those 
     who retire at age sixty-two or later.

  Mr. Speaker, this agreement is a model for what other unions and what 
other private sector groups can do, taking the initiative, but it is 
not a substitute. There is no substitute for our government assuming 
its responsibility and providing a safety net for the victims and for 
the unemployed. We must do that, we can do that.
  I urge this Congress to get on with the unfinished business of 
providing the safety net for those who need it most.

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