[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 148 (Tuesday, October 21, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H9795-H9800]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             THE INCREASING ECONOMIC DIVIDE AMONG AMERICANS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, the corporate media does not talk about it 
too much, and we do not discuss it terribly much here in the Congress, 
but the United States of America is rapidly on its way to becoming 
three separate nations: An increasingly wealthy elite, a small number 
of people who have incredible wealth and incredible power; a middle 
class, the vast majority of our people, which is shrinking, where the 
average person is working longer hours for lower wages; and, at the 
bottom we

[[Page H9796]]

have a growing number of Americans who are living in abject poverty, 
barely keeping their heads above water.
  Mr. Speaker, there has always been a wealthy elite in this country, 
that is not new, and there has always been a gap between the rich and 
the poor. But the disparities in wealth and income that currently exist 
in this country have not been seen since the 1920s.
  In other words, instead of becoming a more egalitarian country, with 
a stronger middle-class, we are becoming a Nation in which the rich 
have more wealth and power, the middle-class is shrinking, and poverty 
is growing.
  Mr. Speaker, today the wealthiest 1 percent own more wealth than the 
bottom 95 percent. One percent own more wealth than the bottom 95 
percent. The CEOs of large corporations today earn more than 500 times 
what their employees are making. While workers are being squeezed, 
being forced to pay more for health insurance, while their pensions are 
being cut back, the CEOs of large corporations make out like bandits.
  Mr. Speaker, the Nation's 13,000 wealthiest families, which 
constitute one one-hundredth of one percent of the population, receive 
almost as much income as the bottom 20 million families in the United 
States. One one-hundredth of one percent, more income than the bottom 
20 million families. That, to my mind, is not what America is supposed 
to be.
  New data from the Congressional Budget Office shows that the gap 
between the rich and the poor in terms of income more than doubled from 
1979 to 2000. In other words, we are moving in exactly the wrong 
direction. The gap is such that the wealthiest 1 percent had more money 
to spend after taxes than the bottom 40 percent. The richest 2.8 
million Americans had $950 billion after taxes, or 15.5 percent of the 
economic pie, while the poorest 110 million had less, 14.4 percent of 
all after-tax income. Once again, that is not what America is supposed 
to be. While the rich get richer and receive huge tax breaks from the 
White House, the middle-class is struggling desperately, in my State of 
Vermont and all over this country.
  It is increasingly common to see people work at not one job, but two 
jobs, and occasionally three jobs. When I was growing up, the 
expectation for the middle-class was that one worker in a family could 
work 40 hours a week and earn enough income to pay the bills. Well, in 
the State of Vermont, and all over this country, it is becoming 
increasingly uncommon when that happens. Much more often than not, 
wives are forced to work alongside husbands in order to bring in the 
necessary income, and kids, in many instances, do not get the care that 
they need.
  Unemployment in our country is now at a 9-year high. We are over 6 
percent, and there are now over 9 million people who are unemployed. 
But in truth the real number is higher than that, because there are a 
lot of people who are working part-time because they cannot find full-
time jobs, and there are a lot of people who are not part of the 
statistics because they have given up and are not actively seeking 
employment.
  Mr. Speaker, of the 3.3 million private sector jobs that have been 
lost over the last 3 years, 2.7 million were in the manufacturing 
sector. This is an issue I want to spend a moment on, because what is 
happening in manufacturing today is a disaster for this country and 
bodes very poorly for the future of our Nation.
  Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is, and this Congress must finally 
recognize it, our trade policies are failing. Permanent, normal trade 
relations with China has been a disaster. NAFTA has been a disaster. 
Our membership in the World Trade Organization has not worked for the 
middle-class and working families, for this country, and the time is 
long overdue for the United States Congress to stand up to corporate 
America, to stand up to the President of the United States, to stand up 
to all of the editorial pages all over America who have told us year 
after year after year how great unfettered free trade would be.
  They were wrong. Their policies have led to enormous economic 
problems for the middle-class in this country. The decline of 
manufacturing is one of the reasons why our middle-class is shrinking 
and why wages for middle-class workers are in decline.

  Many people understand the pain involved when we have lost 3 million 
jobs in the last few years. But we also have got to point out that our 
trade policies and our overall economic policies have been a disaster 
for the wages that American workers receive.
  Today, American workers in the private sector are earning 8 percent 
less than they were in 1973. Now, just think for a moment. Think for a 
moment. In the last 30 years, there has been a revolution in 
technology. We all know that. We all know what computers have done, 
what e-mail has done, what faxes have done. We know what robotics in 
factories have done. In other words, we are a much more productive 
Nation than we used to be. Every worker is producing more.
  Given that reality, why is it that the average worker in the private 
sector today is earning 8 percent less? That is an issue we have to put 
right up there on the radar screen, and we need to debate.
  Mr. Speaker, manufacturing in this country is currently in a state of 
collapse. Let us be honest about it. In the last 3 years, we have lost 
2.7 million manufacturing jobs, which comprise 16 percent of the total. 
That is right. You heard that right. In the last 3 years, we have lost 
16 percent of our manufacturing jobs. At 14.7 million, we are at the 
lowest number of factory jobs since 1958.
  In my own State of Vermont, my small State of Vermont, we have lost 
some 8,700 manufacturing jobs between January 2001 and August 2003, and 
the pity of that is that in Vermont, manufacturing jobs pay workers 
middle-class wages. In Vermont, on average, a worker working in 
manufacturing makes over $42,000 a year. That is a decent wage. We are 
losing those jobs, and the new jobs that we are creating are paying 
only a fraction of what manufacturing jobs are paying, and almost 
always provide much, much weaker benefits.
  Mr. Speaker, in 2002 the United States had a $435 billion trade 
deficit, a $435 billion trade deficit. This year, the trade deficit 
with China alone, one country, China, is expected to be $120 billion, 
and that number is projected to increase in future years. It has gone 
up and up and up. The National Association of Manufacturers estimates 
that if present trends continue, our trade deficit with China will grow 
to $330 billion in 5 years.

                              {time}  1700

  But our disastrous trade policy is not only costing us millions of 
decent paying jobs; it is squeezing wages. It is squeezing wages. 
Because many employers are saying if you do not take the cuts in health 
care, if you do not take the cuts in wages, we are going to move to 
China, we are going to move to Mexico.
  One of the areas where people are being most severely hurt is among 
young workers without a college education. For entry-level workers 
without a college level education, the real wages that they have 
received, that they are now receiving, have dropped by over 20 percent 
in the last 25 years. And the answer and the reason for that is quite 
obvious. 25 years ago, 30 years ago if somebody did not go to college, 
as most people did not, what they would be able to do is go out and get 
a job in manufacturing. And millions and millions of workers did that. 
And with those wages and those benefits they were able to lead a 
middle-class existence and raise their kids with a decent standard of 
living. But the reality now is that the new jobs that are being 
created, the jobs at McDonald's and the jobs in Wal-Mart are not paying 
people a living wage.
  What is happening to our economy today is best illustrated by the 
fact that some 20 years ago our largest employer was General Motors. 
And workers in General Motors earned, and still earn today, a living 
wage. Today, Mr. Speaker, our largest private employer is Wal-Mart. And 
that is what has happened to the American economy. We have gone from a 
General Motors economy where workers earned decent wages and decent 
benefits to a Wal-Mart economy where people earn low wages and poor 
benefits. Today Wal-Mart employees earn $8.23 per hour or $13,861 
annually. And that, Mr. Speaker, is an income which is below the 
poverty level.
  And that is what the transformation of the American economy is about, 
an

[[Page H9797]]

economy where workers used to work, produced real products, made 
middle-class wages, had good benefits, to a Wal-Mart economy where our 
largest employer now pays workers poverty wages, minimal benefits, huge 
turn-over.
  Frankly, Mr. Speaker, in hindsight it did not take a genius to 
predict that unfettered free trade with China would be a disaster, 
which is why I and many other Members in the House have opposed it from 
the beginning. With educated, hardworking Chinese workers available at 
40 or 50 cents an hour, and with corporations having the capability of 
bringing their Chinese-made products back into this country tariff-
free, why would American multinational corporations not shut down their 
plants in this country and move to China? It did not take a genius, 
frankly, to think that that would happen.
  Should anyone be surprised that Motorola eliminated 42,900 American 
jobs in 2001 and invested $3.4 billion in China or that IBM has signed 
deals to train 100,000 software specialists in China over 3 years? Who 
is shocked that General Electric has thrown tens of thousands of 
American workers out on the streets while investing $1.5 billion in 
China. Honeywell is a sophisticated corporation. Should anybody be 
really surprised that they have built 13 factories in China or that 
Ethan Allen furniture has cut jobs at three sawmills and 17 U.S. 
manufacturing plants, including some in my State of Vermont, as they 
import more medium-priced furniture from China into the United States? 
Nobody should be surprised at these developments.
  China, for American multinational corporations, is a great place to 
do business, if by ``doing business'' we mean making products for 
export to the United States that companies previously made here. Not 
only are wages extremely low in China, but if workers attempt to stand 
up for their rights in China and form unions, those workers go to jail. 
Now, what a great place to do business where when workers try to 
organize, they go to jail. What more could a company ask for?
  In China today environmental regulations are almost nonexistent. And 
while China becomes one of the most polluted countries on Earth, 
companies that invest in China, they do not have to ``waste money on 
environmental safeguards.'' In our country we said many years ago to 
companies you just cannot willy-nilly throw your garbage into our lakes 
and into our streams. You cannot pollute the air any way you want. You 
have got to have some environmental safeguards. Those safeguards are 
expensive. But in China, no problem, you can do whatever you want. 
Great place to do business.
  Mr. Speaker, over the years advocates of unfettered free trade have 
tried to gloss over the bad news about the decline in factory 
employment by promising that a new economy was in the making. A new 
economy was in the making, one in which Americans would be working at 
good wages in the high-tech field. We have all heard it. Hey, you do 
not have to worry about them factory jobs anymore. We are the United 
States of America. We all have new clean, high-tech computer jobs. All 
of our young people will go out there, make $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 a 
year. That is the future for the United States. That is what they told 
us.
  Unfortunately, the advocates of unfettered free trade are wrong 
again. We now know that blue collar manufacturing jobs are not the only 
casualty of unfettered free trade. Estimates are that some 50 to 60,000 
high-tech white collar jobs have been lost in this country in the last 
2 years, and that many of them have ended up in India. If any of the 
listeners sometimes want to argue with the phone company that your 
phone bill was wrong, you get on the phone and you are calling up and 
arguing, well you may end up going not to Chicago or New York or Los 
Angeles, you may be talking to somebody in India. And that is happening 
more and more.
  According to Forest Research, a major consultant on this issue, they 
say, and I quote, ``Over the next 15 years 3.3 million U.S. service 
industry jobs and $136 billion in wages will move offshore. The 
information technology industry will lead the initial overseas 
exodus.'' That is from Forest Research. According to Booz Allen 
Hamilton, companies can lower their costs by as much as 80 percent by 
shifting tasks such as computer programming, accounting, and 
procurement to China.
  Among many other companies moving high-tech jobs abroad is Microsoft, 
which is spending $750 million over the next 3 years on research and 
development and outsourcing in China. Just the other day, just last 
week, Intel Corporation chairman Andy Grove warned that the U.S. could 
lose the bulk of its information technology jobs to overseas 
competitors in the next decade, largely to India and China.

  In other words, Mr. Speaker, not only has unfettered free trade cost 
us our textile industry, cost us our shoe industry, our steel industry, 
our tool and die industry, our electronic industry, much of our 
furniture industry, as well as many, many other industries, it is now 
going to cost us, unless we change it, millions of high-tech jobs as 
well.
  Now, let me be very clear. The United States needs to have a strong 
and positive relationship with China. I am not anti-Chinese. I am an 
internationalist. China is the largest country on Earth, and this 
country must have a good and positive relationship with China; and 
there are a number of ways that we can do that. But doing that, having 
a positive relationship with China, does not mean allowing corporate 
America and their supporters in the White House, in Congress, to 
destroy the American middle class by making jobs America's number 1 
export.
  We want our exports to be products manufactured by American workers, 
not the jobs that American workers have. If we continue to force 
American workers to, quote unquote, compete against desperate people 
from China and other developing countries, both in manufacturing and 
high tech, the United States will be the loser.
  By definition a sensible and fair trade agreement works well for both 
parties, not just for one. Trade is a good thing. Trade is a good thing 
when both sides benefit. The New York Yankees do not engage in free 
trade by exchanging their top ball player for a third string minor 
leaguer.
  The United States is the most lucrative market in the world. We need 
to leverage the value of that market to achieve trade agreements that 
result in fairness for the American worker. And we can do that. Trade 
is a good thing. But our current trade policies are not working for 
American workers.
  When we talk about trade with China, Mr. Speaker, we should also 
understand that today 60 percent, 60 percent of Dell Computer parts are 
made in China. Boeing recently said that it expected to purchase $1 
billion worth of aviation equipment annually in China by 2009 and $1.3 
billion by 2010, up from $500 million this year.
  North Carolina's Pillowcase Corporation filed for bankruptcy on July 
20, 2003, laying off 6,450 of its 7,650 workers and made plans to sell 
its textile-producing machinery to several nations, including China. 
Over the past year, Intel has added 1,000 software engineers in China 
and India. And on and on it goes. The bottom line is that American 
workers cannot and must not be forced to compete against workers in 
China who are paid extremely low wages.
  Two-thirds of China's 1.3 billion citizens live on less than a dollar 
a day. The average factory wage in China is 40 cents an hour, \1/40\th 
of what U.S. factory workers are paid. The average annual salary for an 
information technology programmer in the U.S. is $75,000; in China it 
is $8,952.
  Mr. Speaker, for all of these reasons and more, I have introduced 
H.R. 3228, which would repeal permanent normal trade relations with 
China. My legislation, once again, would repeal permanent normal trade 
relations with China. It will acknowledge that our current trade 
policies with that country are a failure. And we have got to begin 
negotiating trade policies not only with China but with other countries 
that work well for the American worker and the American middle class.
  I am happy to say that in just over 3 weeks, this tripartisan 
legislation has garnered 52 cosponsors, including 14 Republicans. So we 
are moving forward in that area, Mr. Speaker, in a tripartisan way.
  Mr. Speaker, when we talk about the decline of the middle class, we 
are talking about high unemployment; we are talking about the 
conversion of the United States from a manufacturing

[[Page H9798]]

economy to a service economy whereby wages and benefits are much lower.

                              {time}  1715

  We are also talking about the fact that in the United States, workers 
today are now working the longest hours of the workers in any major 
country on earth. There should be little wonder why the average 
American family is so stressed out. And one of the reasons that they 
are so stressed out is that people are working incredibly long hours in 
order to make enough money to pay the bills. Today, the average 
American employee works by far the longest hours of any worker in the 
industrialized world, and the situation is getting worse.
  According to statistics from the International Labor Organization, 
the average American last year worked 1,978 hours, up from 1,942 hours 
in 1990. That is an increase of almost one week of work. Since 1990, 
the average American is now working an additional week a year of work. 
We are now, as Americans, putting more hours into our work than at any 
time since the 1920s. Just think about that. Huge increases in 
productivity and an explosion of technology, logically, would lead one 
to believe that people would be working fewer hours for higher wages, 
but the converse is true. People are working longer hours for lower 
wages.
  Americans are now putting in more hours at our work than at any time 
since the 1920s, 65 years after the formal establishment of the 40-hour 
workweek under the Fair Labor Standards Act, almost 40 percent of 
Americans now work more than 50 hours a week; and we should do a lot of 
thinking about that. An explosion of productivity and technology, 
people working longer and longer hours; and in almost every instance in 
the middle class, two bread winners are needed to pay the bills. Real 
wages for workers in the private sector have declined since 1973. The 
rich get richer. The middle class shrinks and poverty increases.
  Mr. Speaker, I have talked a moment about what is going on with the 
middle class. I have talked a little bit about the conversion from a 
manufacturing society, a General Motors society, to a service industry 
economy, a Wal-Mart economy, but let us look for a moment at the people 
who are not even in the middle class. People who have not made it into 
the middle class. People who are at the lower end of the socioeconomic 
ladder in our country, the 34.8 million people in America who live in 
poverty. Sadly, Mr. Speaker, while the rich get richer, 1.3 million 
more Americans became poor and entered poverty, the group of poor 
people in America.
  In the midst of those people, Mr. Speaker, we have got to ask about 
the 11 million Americans who are trying to survive on the pathetic 
minimum wage of $5.15 an hour which exists here, and I think it is 
morally repugnant that this Congress voted to provide huge tax breaks 
for millionaires and billionaires, but somehow the President of the 
United States and the Republican leadership, not for one moment have 
thought about raising the minimum wage, which today is at a pathetic 
$5.15 cents an hour.
  How do people earning those wages survive? And I will tell you how 
some of them do it. After working 40 hours a week, they live in their 
automobiles because they cannot afford housing units in order to 
survive. They just cannot afford the housing because their wages cannot 
pay the rent. And what, Mr. Speaker, about the 43.6 million Americans 
who lack any health insurance? That is 15.2 percent of our population. 
What about the 3.5 million people who will experience homelessness in 
this year, 1.3 million of them children? What about our elderly 
citizens who cannot afford the outrageously high cost of prescription 
drugs? And the many of them who cut their pills in half or do not even 
bother trying to fill the prescriptions that their doctors write for 
them? What about those people? What about the veterans who have put 
their lives on the line defending this country and then try to get into 
a VA hospital but find out that they are on a waiting list?
  Mr. Speaker, one of the clear crises being faced by the American 
middle class is the crisis in health care and the cost of prescription 
drugs. In the last several years, we have seen huge increases in health 
insurance and with the increase of unemployment, we have seen more and 
more working people lose their health insurance. In terms of losing 
health insurance, people then are open to bankruptcy, because if they 
end up with an accident or a serious illness, they go to the hospital, 
but they are unable to pay those bills. And the highest amount of 
people who are bankrupt are the people who cannot pay their health 
expenses that have been generated as a result of an accident or 
illness.
  Mr. Speaker, our health care system today is in a state of collapse. 
More and more people are uninsured and more and more people are 
underinsured. That is, people have higher and higher copayments, higher 
and higher deductibles, higher and higher premiums. To my mind, the 
only solution, the only serious solution to our health care crisis is 
for this country to do what every other major industrialized nation on 
Earth has done and that is to move toward a national health care 
system which guarantees health care to every man, woman and child.

  A hundred years ago, the United States of America said that every 
young person, regardless of income, could get a quality public 
education. Well, the rest of the world has said that every person in 
their country, regardless of income, is entitled to health care. But we 
lag behind what countries throughout Europe, Scandinavia and Canada are 
doing. To my mind, health care is a right, not a privilege. It is wrong 
that more and more Americans delay and hesitate going to the doctors 
because they do not have health insurance or because they cannot pay 
the deductible or the copayments.
  When people in America get sick, they have a right to go to the 
doctor, to go to the hospital and get the health care that they need. 
The irony with regard to our collapsing health care system is that it 
is an extremely costly and wasteful system. The fact of the matter is 
that we spend more than twice as much per capita on health care as any 
other nation, and yet we end up with 43 million people with no 
insurance and many more who are underinsured. For the sake of our 
children, for the sake of our parents, for the sake of the middle class 
of this country, we have got to adopt a national health care system 
which finally says with no ifs, ands, or buts about it that in America, 
all of our people will receive the care that they need as a right of 
citizenship.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, given the very, very serious problems facing the 
American people and especially our middle class, it is appropriate, I 
believe, to ask what President Bush and his administration have done to 
begin addressing some of these problems. What are their priorities? 
What are they doing to reach out to the middle class and say we are 
going to expand the middle class; we are going to lower poverty; we are 
going to improve health care? What are they doing in that direction?
  Well, let me tell you a little bit about what they have done. They 
have given hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the very 
richest people in our country while cutting back on the basic needs of 
working families. Now, at a time when the middle class is shrinking, 
when poverty is increasing, when the number of people without health 
insurance is going up, when unemployment is far too high, who are the 
people that the Bush administration are reaching out to? Well, needless 
to say, it is their campaign contributors and the very wealthiest 
people in this country who have received hundreds and hundreds of 
billions of dollars in tax breaks.
  Through legislative and administration efforts, the Bush 
administration is making it more and more difficult for workers to form 
unions and to protect their jobs and incomes. When a worker is a member 
of a union, by and large that worker will earn 30 percent more than a 
worker doing a similar job who is nonunion. That is why many workers 
want to join unions, and yet it is getting harder and harder for 
workers to do that because the law very clearly sides with the employer 
and the large corporation and not with the worker.
  The Bush administration, if you can believe it, is now attacking 
overtime for American workers and trying to undo laws that have been on 
the books for decades which say that if you

[[Page H9799]]

worked over 40 hours a week, you will get time and a half. And I am 
proud that a number of Republicans join many of us on this floor of the 
House to say that when the middle class is shrinking, when real wages 
are declining, we are not going to cut back on the overtime pay that 
workers need.
  Now, when we talk about the achievements of the Bush administration, 
and we understand that our deficit is now at an all-time high, that our 
national debt is going higher, that in the midst of all of this, our 
conservative friends who year after year told us how terrible deficits 
were and what kind of terrible obligations we were leaving to our kids 
and our grandchildren, well, these are the folks that are driving up 
the deficit, and they are driving up the national debt. Now, why are 
they doing that? Why are conservatives doing that?
  Well, I think there are two reasons. Number one, obviously, the tax 
breaks for the rich are not hard to understand. Here in Washington, 
D.C. there are fund-raising dinners in which individuals have 
contributed $25,000 a plate, large corporations and their executives 
make huge contributions and that is payback time. Nothing new. The rich 
make contributions. They get paid back in tax breaks. They get paid 
back in corporate welfare. They get paid back with their trade policy 
which makes it easier for them to throw American workers out on the 
street and move out to China. That we can understand. That is obscene, 
but easily understood.
  But, Mr. Speaker, let me suggest to you that there is another even 
more cynical reason for driving up this deficit and driving up the 
national debt. And I believe that that reason is that as the debt and 
the deficit become higher and higher, this President, or any other 
President, may be forced to come before the American people and say our 
deficit and our debt is so very high that we have no choice but to 
privatize Social Security, privatize Medicare, privatize Medicaid, 
privatize public education.

                              {time}  1730

  We have got to do it. We have a huge deficit. Oh, yeah, we did give 
hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the rich; but 
nonetheless, the deficit is so high that we are going to have to do 
away with all of the benefits, all of the guarantees that the American 
people have fought for over the last 100 years; and it is my belief 
that this administration really does want to take us back to the 19th 
century, where working people and the middle class had no protections 
whatsoever, where workers and poor people were dependent upon the 
largess of the wealthy for charity, but there were no guarantees.
  Social Security has its problems; and in my view, Social Security 
must be strengthened. Seniors must be receiving larger COLAs, but the 
solution to the problems that we may have are not to privatize Social 
Security and bring us back to the 1920s when elderly people were the 
poorest segment of our society; but that is the direction that these 
folks are moving us towards, and they are moving us toward the 
privatization of Medicare.
  Think about how many private insurance companies are really going to 
provide insurance for elderly, low-income sick people. The function of 
an insurance company is to make money, not to provide health care; and 
if a person is old and sick and poor, who is going to insure them? They 
are on their own.
  In terms of prescription drugs, an issue that I have worked very hard 
on for a number of years, the Bush administration is working hand-in-
glove with the pharmaceutical industry, the most powerful lobby here on 
Capitol Hill. While Americans pay by far the highest prices in the 
world for their prescription drugs, the pharmaceutical industry year 
after year after year is the most profitable industry in this country.
  In order to maintain their status as the most profitable industry, 
they have hired over 600, 600 paid lobbyists right here in Washington, 
D.C., to descend on the Congress, on the House and the Senate, to make 
sure that we do not pass any legislation which will lower the cost of 
prescription drugs. Nonetheless, despite all of the hundreds of 
millions of dollars that they have spent on all of their lobbying 
efforts, all of their campaign contributions, I am happy to tell my 
colleagues, Mr. Speaker, that 6 weeks ago, longer than that, the House 
of Representatives, in a bipartisan way, had the courage to stand up to 
the pharmaceutical industry and pass legislation that would allow our 
pharmacists, prescription drug distributors, and individuals to buy 
FDA-approved medicine in 26 countries including Canada; and if we can 
get that bill through the Senate, we will be able to lower prescription 
drug costs in this country by between 30 to 50 percent. Unfortunately, 
on this issue, we are fighting not only the pharmaceutical industry but 
the Bush administration and the Bush campaign, which has received 
substantial support from the drug companies.
  Mr. Speaker, on another area that is of enormous importance to the 
American people and more and more Americans are getting involved in it, 
the Bush administration is moving in precisely the wrong direction in 
terms of media consolidation. In my view, one of the crises that we 
face in our country today is fewer and fewer large media conglomerates 
own and control what we see, what we hear, and what we read. I know the 
average person says, well, man, I have got 100 channels on my cable. 
Check out who owns those 100 channels. Check out who owns NBC, which is 
General Electric; who owns CBS, which is Viacomm; who owns ABC, which 
is Disney; who owns Fox Television, which is Rupert Murdoch, an extreme 
right-wing billionaire. What we are seeing in terms of media is fewer 
and fewer large corporations controlling the flow of information in 
America. Clear Channel Radio now owns 1,200 radio stations all over 
this country.
  In America, what our freedom is about is debating different points of 
view. No one has all the right answers, but we cannot flourish as a 
democracy unless we hear different points of view; and that is becoming 
harder and harder to achieve, as fewer and fewer companies own what we 
see, hear, and read.
  Instead of acknowledging that problem and moving us to a more 
diversified media, where we will have local media reporting on local 
issues, where it will be different points of view being heard, where 
there will be more diversity in our media, the Bush administration is 
moving in exactly the wrong direction.
  Michael Powell, who is chairman of the FCC, with the strong backing 
of the Bush administration, passed with a three to two vote on June 2 
more media deregulation, which will allow for even fewer companies to 
own what we see, hear, and read; and one of the manifestations of that 
decision, if it is allowed to stand, is there will be cities in America 
where one company will own the local newspaper, will own the largest 
television station, will own many of the radio stations, and will own 
the local cable TV system.
  Mr. Speaker, that is not what America is supposed to be; and I am 
happy to tell my colleagues that all over this country, in a grassroots 
fashion, millions of Americans have written and communicated to the 
FCC, some of them conservatives, the National Rifle Association, some 
right-wing organizations, some of them progressives, some left-wing 
organizations, some in the middle, different points of view 
philosophically on almost every issue, but they have come together to 
say that in America we need to have a diverse ownership of media and 
different points of view to be heard.

  The Senate, listening to the demands of the American people, had the 
courage in a bipartisan way, Senator Byron Dorgan, Senator Trent Lott 
helping to lead the effort, had the courage to pass a resolution of 
disapproval with regard to what the FCC did. In other words, they said 
we want to junk it. That bill is now here in the House of 
Representatives; and working with some of my colleagues again in a 
tripartisan way, we have now garnered 190 signatures on a letter to the 
Speaker of the House, because the bill is now on the Speaker's desk, 
and we have said, Mr. Speaker, let the American people have the debate 
and a vote about whether or not we want more media consolidation. I 
sincerely hope that the Speaker will allow that debate because if that 
debate takes place, I believe that the American people will win and 
that Republicans, Democrats, and Independent on the floor of this House 
will vote to junk what the FCC has done.

[[Page H9800]]

  Mr. Speaker, when we talk about America, we often pride ourselves 
upon being a free country, a free country; and it is easier to stand in 
front of the American flag and give great speeches about freedom than 
it is to really fight for freedom, because one of the elements of 
freedom is to understand, among other things, that not everything, not 
everything that somebody says or does is something that we agree with, 
but what freedom is about is tolerating and respecting other points of 
view, of understanding that people have the right to read whatever they 
want to read, have the right to an attorney when they need an attorney.
  I was one of the relatively few people in the House who voted 6 weeks 
after the horror of 9/11 against the USA PATRIOT Act, and I voted 
against the USA PATRIOT Act not because I am not concerned about 
terrorism. I happen to believe that terrorism is a very serious issue 
and that the United States Government must do everything that it can to 
protect the American people and fight terrorism, but I voted against 
the USA PATRIOT Act because I believe we can fight terrorism without 
undermining basic constitutional rights, which is what the USA PATRIOT 
Act is doing.
  Again, on this issue, we have seen some very interesting 
nonideological coming-together. We have seen some really very 
conservative people who are honest conservatives who say because they 
do not believe in Big Government they do not want the United States 
Government monitoring the reading habits of the American people in 
their libraries or their bookstores. Unfortunately, again, on this 
issue, the Bush administration and Attorney General John Ashcroft are 
on the wrong side. They are, in many respects, working to undermine the 
basic constitutional rights that are given, that have made this country 
a free country.
  So, Mr. Speaker, let me conclude by stating that it is high time that 
the Congress of the United States begin to focus on the needs of the 
middle class, the vast majority of our people, the middle class of 
which is shrinking, the middle class in which the average person is 
working longer hours and for lower wages. America will grow when the 
middle class grows; and to do that, we need some fundamental changes in 
our policies.
  We need a national health care system which guarantees health care to 
all Americans. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. We 
need to fundamentally change our trade policies so that we do not 
continue to see the collapse of manufacturing. We need to make sure 
that every American, regardless of income, has a right to go to 
college. We need to rescind the tax breaks that have been given to the 
wealthiest people and the largest corporations and create a tax 
structure which works for the middle class and not just for the wealthy 
and the powerful.
  There is a lot of work that must be done, and I look forward to 
participating in that effort.

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