[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11988-11994]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



     WORKING FAMILIES OF AMERICA BEING MISTREATED BY 106TH CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fletcher). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, the working families of this Nation are still 
being trampled on by this 106th Congress. They are being grossly 
mistreated in two basic ways: One is indifference and neglect on 
certain key issues, and the other is active oppression in certain ways.
  Indifference and neglect is reflected in the fact that we are not 
concerned about a minimum wage increase. There is a rumor that the 
leadership of the majority party has decided that it will agree to a 
minimum wage vote and that it will take place sometime later rather 
than sooner, and they are delaying because they want to make sure we 
get close to the election and be able to say, well, we voted for a 
minimum wage, or we allowed it on the floor and let the Democrats vote 
for it, so we did our job.
  And, of course, there is a rumor also that the minimum wage being 
proposed by the majority is 25 cents a year for the next 4 years. An 
increase of 25 cents per year for the next 4 years means in 4 years the 
American worker would have a dollar increase instead of the two-step 
increase being proposed by the Democrats.
  But there is no hurry. We have an unprecedented prosperity in the 
Nation. We have a situation where the value of the stock market in 10 
years has grown by $10 trillion. We had the assets and the value of the 
stock market in 1989 at $3 trillion. Now it is $13 trillion. With a $10 
trillion increase in the value of the stock market, we can see that 
there is a great increase in the wealth and prosperity in America at 
certain levels. Why not share that with the working families? Why not 
in the most basic way make certain that the wealth of the Nation in 
some small way benefits the entire Nation?
  A minimum wage is just one tiny part of that effort. Being willing to 
finance or support more generous health care is another. The President 
is proposing soon a new benefit in Medicare, should be in Medicaid 
also, a new benefit which would cover prescription drugs. In this time 
of great prosperity, the least we could do is to make the miracles of 
science available at a cheaper cost to all the people who need them in 
terms of health care. Prescription drugs ought to be covered by 
Medicare and Medicaid.
  We talk a lot about Medicare and we forget that Medicaid is designed 
to serve the very poorest and they deserve to have the same kind of 
increase. We should not have two tiers of health care in America. 
Second class health care is inadequate health care. There should only 
be one class of health care. But we are refusing to deal with that in a 
forthright manner on a timetable that is meaningful because we just do 
not seem to care.

                              {time}  2045

  There is an indifference, an indifference to the poor, an 
indifference to the plight of the working families who are not sharing 
the great boost in our wealth. That great jump from $3 trillion in 1989 
to $13 trillion in 1999 is not felt by a lot of people who are still 
out there struggling to make it. So jobs, health care, investment in 
education are all obvious kinds of actions that should be taken by the 
government. This Congress, acting in concert with the President, should 
make certain that we take advantage of this boom in prosperity to take 
care of some of our problems.
  But there exists in this Congress an attitude which goes in the 
opposite direction. It is stubborn, it is unyielding, it is 
wrongheaded, but it keeps going on. Take, for example, what happened in 
the vote on the supplemental budget, or the development of a long-
awaited supplemental budget, which included the President's request for 
$6 billion for the Kosovo war, a war which I think is very necessary, a 
war which I think we could not afford to have not conducted or been a 
part of. I do not think we could have walked away from the genocide 
being committed by the Yugoslavia regime and held up our heads. We have 
seen it happen too many times already in this century.
  What Hitler did was on a grander, more massive scale. They had gas 
chambers and ovens and millions died, but the numbers are not as 
important as the action and the kind of thing happening in Kosovo. 
Certainly if it only means thousands dying, it is still significant and 
it is happening over and over again. We have seen it happen in 
Cambodia, we have seen it happen in Rwanda. It is about time that we 
did something to send a message to the dictators and the sovereign 
predators that exist throughout the world that somewhere the civilized 
nations of the world are willing to take a stand against this kind of 
murderous activity against human beings.
  We have done that in Kosovo. So we needed our participation in that 
effort. The $6 billion was requested by the President. But instead of 
that bill moving ahead with $6 billion plus the emergency aid requested 
for South America, for Central America as a result of the floods and 
the extra aid that was needed for the weather disasters that took place 
in the Midwest, we had a whole lot of other things piled on top of it 
and a $6 billion request became a $15 billion request, a $15 billion 
request most of which came out of the surplus. It was deemed emergency 
funding and the surplus which is around $100 billion, I think, about 
the same, a little more maybe in the coming fiscal year, it is going to 
be about the same amount; the surplus was used for most of it. They 
could have used the surplus to cover it all, but to make a point the 
majority decided to offset $2 billion, take away from other programs $2 
billion worth of money to cover part of the spending.
  Now, the emergency in Central America, the emergency in the Midwest 
with the tornadoes and storms, et cetera, those were emergencies. They 
clearly rank as emergencies. Why did we have to make the point that 
they have to be offset? The point that I want to make is that in the 
process of the offset, who did they go after? The poorest people in 
America. The bulk of the cuts for the offset came from domestic 
accounts, including $1.25 billion from the food stamp program, and $350 
million from Section 8 low-income housing programs as well as $22.4 
million from the Labor Department contingency fund related to 
unemployment insurance.
  They reached into the programs that serve the poorest people, 
programs that may benefit the working families on

[[Page 11989]]

the very lowest levels, and they took out the money to offset and make 
the point that they want to make cuts in social programs.
  There is a coming need, according to the budget that has been 
promulgated by the majority, a coming need to cut further, maybe $20 
billion out of the domestic budget. Some of it could come from defense 
if they wanted to, but it will probably come out of the domestic 
budget; $20 billion will be cut and the preview of coming attractions 
we have seen already. The way the supplemental budget was handled tells 
you they are going to get it from the people who are the weakest, the 
people who have no power, working families, poor families, poor people 
who are not even working, the elderly, those who need Medicaid as well 
as Medicare; they will suffer as a result of the coming $20 billion 
cuts or more that may be proposed.
  Certainly they are not proposing investing any more money in 
education. Education, most of which would go into our public school 
system, is the place that you benefit working families most. Working 
families' children need an education. There is no way to survive, there 
is no way for them to take advantage of the prosperity that keeps 
growing and growing as a result of high technology. The jobs that are 
available are jobs that require education. You are not going to be in 
on it, it gets worse all the time, the demands are greater and greater.
  I was at a job training consortium in New York City yesterday and 
they were telling me about the fact that we just need mechanics. In 
addition to the known need for information technology people, 300,000 
vacancies in information technology, they need mechanics. They could 
hire 30,000 mechanics in the metropolitan area if they could find them. 
Why do they not have mechanics who would work on trucks and tractors 
and some of the machinery that industry needs? Why do they not have 
them? Because the demands have gone up educationally. There are 
computers and various devices being employed now in trucks and cars and 
various vehicles that require a little more education than a mechanic 
had to have 10 years ago or 5 years ago.
  So we have a problem, a creeping problem of people in basic areas, as 
basic as mechanics, auto mechanics, that cannot survive because they do 
not have the personnel to do the job because the education system is 
failing to produce that pool of people which is educated. A broad pool 
of people educated, you can reach in and pull out all kinds of people. 
The range of people with various kinds of skills and know-how would be 
great. You would get the technicians, the mechanics, the theoreticians, 
the scientists, the geniuses. That certain percentage of people would 
come out if you have a broad range of people in the pool because we are 
educating the masses. Mass education is needed more now than ever 
before.
  But working families who need to have free education in the public 
school system, free but first rate, it cannot be education in 
facilities that are falling down, it cannot be education in situations 
where kids are afraid to go to school because of threats to their 
health and safety. It has to be the kind of education that everybody 
wants for their child here in this Congress.
  I know large numbers of Members of Congress send their children to 
private school. It is most unfortunate that they have given up on the 
public education system, but as public officials, whatever choice they 
choose to make privately, it is disloyal and dangerous to have public 
officials give up on our education system.
  So when you consider what happened in our $15 billion supplemental 
appropriation, you can see how trampling on working families is a 
problem. And there is going to be more trampling on working families. 
It is not just neglect. It is also active oppression to take the money 
out of the programs that benefit the poor the most. It is even worse 
than that. The active attack, the oppression which is very aggressive, 
continues to go on in the Committee on Education and the Workforce. I 
serve as the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Workforce 
Protections. As the ranking Democrat on Workforce Protections, I will 
be the first to tell you that the name of the committee under this 
majority Republican administration ought to be changed. It is not 
workforce protection that they are concerned about. It is workforce 
persecution. It is workforce oppression. Because every bill that is 
introduced by the majority on that committee is an attempt to make life 
more difficult for working families.
  We have three coming up very soon we have just passed recently in the 
Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, and now it is going to go to the 
full committee, and they are a continuation of what was started in the 
104th Congress and continued in the 105th Congress, and now it is done 
on a sort of a guerrilla warfare basis. It is not talked about as much 
but it is still the same agenda. They are attempting to take away 
rights that workers have won over the last 50 years.
  There is a bill, H.R. 987. It is an attempt to block the 
implementation of any ergonomic standards, standards which relate to 
the fact that there are jobs which require repetitive motions that end 
up in injuries and debilitation of people's muscular faculties; they 
cannot function. Carpal tunnel syndrome is one of them. Back injuries 
are a large part of it, people who have repetitive kinds of activities 
that strain certain parts of their bodies. That is the broad topic of 
ergonomics the majority on the committee do not even want to have 
discussed. They do not want to allow the Department of Labor, the 
Occupational Safety and Health Administration under the Department of 
Labor to do what they have been doing for years, establish a set of 
standards to relate to these workplace injuries, workplace dangers.
  So they have H.R. 987 which ironically the Republican majority on the 
committee calls the Workplace Preservation Act. It is an attempt to 
make the workplace more dangerous by blocking an effort to deal with a 
clear and present form of injuries that we have been discussing for the 
last 15 years. So H.R. 987 is one of those examples of an attack on 
working families through a reduction in the safety provisions in the 
workplace. There are more than 6,000 people who die every year in our 
workplace situation, and then many, many others who are injured. This 
attack on the workers continues by the Republican majority.
  They have another one, H.R. 1381. It is an attempt to sabotage 
overtime payment rates by excluding bonus income. H.R. 1381 is 
ironically called Rewarding Performance in Compensation Act. But they 
have a way of reaching in to take out the income that is figured in the 
bonus in order to reduce the rate of hourly pay so that that is not 
included when you pay a person overtime. It is a little guerrilla 
trick, it is almost something you would not see or not respond to if 
you were not very alert. But it is an attempt to sabotage overtime 
payment rates by excluding bonus income. H.R. 1381, another attempt to 
reduce the benefits of working families.
  H.R. 1439 is another one. That attempts to undermine the OSHA, 
Occupational Safety and Health Administration's enforcement by misusing 
the self-audit process. We have a self-auditing process that we 
encourage. We want to make a partnership between government and 
industry. But they want to allow industries to audit themselves and 
then not allow the result of the audit, which determines whether or not 
they have certain hazardous conditions in the workplace, in the plant, 
in the garage, whatever unit of employment this is. After they complete 
the audit, if they identify things that are wrong, they are allowed to 
keep it secret and we are saying, ``No, you have to reveal what is 
there.'' The self-audit process would be misused if you made your 
survey and audited yourself, identified hazards, and then refused to 
correct them because, of course, it might cost a great deal, but you 
keep them secret, nobody else knows about it. Of course you would fire 
any employee who also knows about it and then would report it. So we 
have H.R. 1439 which again, an ironical title, is described as the 
Safety and Health Audit

[[Page 11990]]

Promotion and Whistleblower Improvement Act of 1999. The Safety and 
Health Audit Promotion and Whistleblower Improvement Act of 1999 is an 
attempt to do just the opposite. It is going to make the workplace less 
safe.
  We have another bill, an alternative which we will offer at the final 
markup of the full committee which is entitled ``The Whistleblower 
Protection Act.'' That is H.R. 1851 which I introduced as a 
countervailing force against the phony H.R. 1439.
  But I give you examples of concrete bills, the business that is going 
on here in this place. We are moving at a very slow pace. Things that 
ought to be done and ought to be on the agenda are not on the agenda. 
But the guerrilla warfare against working families, against workers in 
the workplace, the guerrilla warfare goes on. We ought to come to grips 
with the fact that this is wrongheaded, stubborn, unyielding, and at a 
time like this very dangerous in America. We should be investing in our 
workers in every way instead of oppressing them and neglecting them.

                              {time}  2100

  In another area, education, which I talk about often, education 
reform is still rhetoric. We are talking, always when we talk about 
education about nickels and dimes and lots of words.
  Everybody has adopted some kind of education platform, everybody is 
in favor of improving and reforming education, but nobody wants to 
spend significant amounts of dollars. Words instead of dollars is the 
order of the day with respect to education. Education reform is 
rhetoric, too much rhetoric in the area of the majority; and in many 
cases, in the minority, too, there is too much rhetoric and too little 
commitment to real dollars for education.
  School construction is one of the tests of whether or not we are only 
concerned with rhetoric and only going to play word games with the 
voters. Or are we really going to do something significant about 
education?
  The voters have given us a mandate. As my colleagues know, it is one 
of the few times in history where we have the focus groups and polls, 
everything keeps repeating the message over and over again. The voters 
of America want the Congress of the United States, and the President 
and the entire government to significantly take steps to improve 
education, to give Federal aid to education in the process of trying to 
improve education.
  Now, because the voters are saying that we will get plenty of 
rhetoric from both sides, but there is contempt for the whole public 
education process that is expressed in many ways. They express it in 
ways which relate to neglect and abandonment and indifference, but also 
it is sometimes expressed in a very active way. As I said before, there 
are actions taken which are aggressively against working families and 
things that working families need. Education and investment in 
education by the government is one of the things that working families 
would benefit from greatly, and they need it.
  We saw on the floor of the House today a vote which demonstrates 
great contempt for education, a great contempt for the whole research 
process. It happens to be an agricultural appropriations bill, and the 
agriculture appropriations bill, in the hassling back and forth for 
reasons that I do not clearly understand, the majority knows what it is 
doing; but for reasons that certainly are not noble and reasons that 
are not reasonable and were not laid out and described to the Members 
of Congress in any respectful details, a huge across-the-board cut in 
agricultural research, something like $100 million cut in agricultural 
research.
  Now, agricultural research is at the heart of America's great food 
production system. As my colleagues know, agricultural research, the 
research, the educational part of it, the egghead part of it, that 
draws great contempt obviously from the majority party members. Instead 
of them dealing with subsidies which may be wasteful or the Farmers 
Home Loan Mortgage Program, and there are a lot of wasteful programs in 
agriculture just as there are in some other places in the government, 
but because they have constituencies and because the ol' boys network 
demands that they be protected, they are protected. But academia and 
research, the people who are on the cutting edge of improving 
agriculture and responsible for the fact that Americans enjoyed the 
best food production system in the world, we get the best food at the 
lowest prices, and everything happened by accident.
  There is a long history involving education and research starting 
with the Morrill Act which created the land grant colleges. The model 
for land grant colleges was Thomas Jefferson, and the University of 
Virginia was the first State university. It was a very wise move by 
Thomas Jefferson who made, of course, numerous wise moves and set 
certain standards for our entire country that we still should be very 
grateful for and set us on a course that has proven to be very 
positive.
  Jefferson was not in favor of a national university. He did not want 
one big, huge university in Washington similar to the Sorbonne, to the 
Oxford chain in London. He wanted each State to have its own 
university, and Virginia, of course, was the first example, and later 
the Morrill Act established land grants for every State. The Federal 
land grant colleges were established, colleges and universities were 
established; and going beyond just the establishment of land grant 
colleges, they were given a mandate for practical education, practical 
education starting with an assumption that agriculture could be 
improved greatly if it benefited from science and education.
  So applied science in the area of agriculture became the driving 
force that took our farmers, long before farmers anywhere else in the 
world, into a whole new realm of production, greatly improving the 
yield of the land, greatly increasing the kind of production that 
resulted in our having a tremendous amount of surplus products, as we 
still do in many areas.
  This agriculture research, as my colleagues know, the experimental 
station, the theoretical base in the universities, the county agents to 
take it out to the farmers and show them how to apply it, it is one of 
the great things we should be very proud of, dissemination system for 
knowledge. As the knowledge was generated in the universities and the 
experimental stations, it was taken out to the farmers; the farmers 
applied it, and you got a result.
  That is all based on agricultural research. It begins with the 
research.
  So we just walked onto the floor today and found an amendment to wipe 
out $100 million worth of agriculture research. Is that responsible 
legislation? Are working families going to benefit from a crippling of 
our agriculture production system? There are always problems, as my 
colleagues know, in terms of new kinds of bugs and viruses and various 
kinds of things that go on and on that can wipe out gains that are made 
over the years if they are not researched, if they do not keep up with 
them.
  So even in the area of agriculture where we have such a sterling 
record of performance, today we found the reckless attitude towards the 
things that matter most to ordinary Americans take hold and in one fell 
swoop we wiped out some basic parts of our agriculture research system.
  Then, as my colleagues know, I think that a lot of this preoccupation 
with the reduction of programs that benefit working families, that 
benefit people who are in greatest need in our Nation, a lot of this 
preoccupation and obsession is based on the fact that eventually we are 
going to have a proposal on the floor for a huge tax cut, a huge tax 
cut for the people who are benefiting most from the prosperity that we 
have generated already.
  I said before that the stock market value has gone from $3 trillion 
in 1989 to $13 trillion in 1999. So do the rich need a tax cut? Do they 
need some help? As my colleagues know, why are we preoccupied with 
making the budget safe for a tax cut? Why are we willing to cut food 
stamps and willing to cut low-income housing in order to make the 
budget safe for a tax cut? But that is what is coming. The Republican

[[Page 11991]]

tax cut crouches in the bush like a wounded lion. It is there, it is 
not going to go away.
  One of the problems we have is that the people who represent and care 
about working families, the great majority of our Nation, of course, 
made up of working families, those people do not have a tax program for 
working families. Working families have suffered the biggest tax 
increase of any group in the last 20 years, the payroll tax, Social 
Security and Medicare. Those payroll taxes have jumped more percentage-
wise than any other taxes. They hit the people on the very bottom. 
Nobody is proposing to relieve them. I have a few proposals that I 
would like to offer, and I will offer them in a few minutes.
  As my colleagues know, my point is, you need a whole platform, I 
guess, for working families, and we do not have it. My friends in 
organized labor, as my colleagues know, they have things that they care 
about that they are always telling us about, and those are the right 
kinds of things that working people need; but it all comes in bits and 
pieces.
  We need a whole platform which lays out the need for working families 
being given their fair share of the great American prosperity in many 
ways. The Republican tax cut should be answered by a proposal for a tax 
cut for working families as well.
  Between now and Election Day in November 2000 we must lift up a 
meaningful platform for working families. The showdown will come 
sometime in the fall of the year 2000. The pattern has been the same 
for the last, and it will probably be the same as it has been for the 
last 4 years in the conflict between a Republican-controlled Congress, 
a Democratically-controlled White House.
  The really important measures are going to come down to a negotiation 
session at the White House between the majority in the Congress and the 
White House, the President. The really big decisions are going to be 
made then. What we do with this surplus is really going to really be 
determined then. Whether we are going to allow working families to have 
a share of the wealth of America through programs that benefit them 
will be determined then.
  So we have a scenario. We have time, but we have to start now 
visiting a platform for working families which has all of these 
components; and you know we have to come to grips with the fact that 
there is a mind-set in this Nation maybe among powerful people that 
they do not have to be concerned with the poor. The poor are poor 
because they did not make it, they are poor because they deserve to be 
poor. They are not wealthy, they are not able to take care of 
themselves without some help because that is the way it is, and that is 
the way it deserves to be, and why should the Nation care?
  As my colleagues know, we have whipped the welfare mothers to death, 
and they are becoming a nonentity in the political discussion. They 
have been whipped so often and so much, until they almost just 
disappeared. They may be still aching out there, there may be 
situations where we are causing more harm than good because we are 
putting families in a bind, and the children are suffering, and those 
suffering children are going to create great problems in the future for 
our health care system, our education system, our corrections system, 
prison system. As my colleagues know, we may be generating a lot of 
problems.
  Right now, they are invisible. We beat them to death, and now we are 
going after working families in the workplace, take their overtime, 
take away safety provisions, et cetera, because there is no ethic which 
says we have a responsibility to these people.
  Let me just take the conversation in a new direction. Because of the 
war in Kosovo, I think we ought to stop and think, as my colleagues 
know, and it certainly brings to mind it is one more situation where we 
are at war, there is no threat to the United States, and there are a 
lot of elements there that do not fit the description of the war 
against Hitler.
  As my colleagues know, World War II was a war where there was a real 
threat to the whole Western world, and it was just a matter of if we 
stood in line, if we did nothing, our time would come. So between, as 
my colleagues know, Tojo and Hitler we had to act, and it was a war 
which definitely was a war to save our own way of life. There may be 
doubts about other wars, but we had the same rationale in the Korean 
war and in the Vietnam war, and we always made the assumption that, you 
know, you had to do this, the domino theory of fighting the Communists; 
if you do not stop them there, they will keep going.
  I do not want to get into all of the various arguments, pro and con. 
Let us just accept war as a fact of life. Let us accept the fact also 
that the most any citizen can do for their country is place their lives 
at risk in a war. I mean, I do not know of anything greater that any 
citizen can do for his Nation, whether they are drafted and forced to 
go or whether they volunteer, that they are in a situation where they 
are on the firing line, their lives are at risk, than they are offering 
this supreme price. And of course, if they are injured and become 
casualties, they pay a great price, and of course, if they are killed 
in combat, they die. That is the supreme price, as my colleagues know, 
to have to give your life. So I do not think there will be any 
disagreement.
  Let me just point out the fact that, mind you, and I got these 
figures on casualties from the Pentagon, from the Archives, which got 
them, of course, from Pentagon research, so they are sound figures.

                              {time}  2115

  Who dies in the wars? Who dies? There is a lot of contempt always 
directed at our big cities, our inner-cities, where the poor live 
mostly. One of the things that is coming out over and over again, and 
some Democrats are as guilty as Republicans, is they do not want to do 
anything about the public school system, because if you had legislation 
which appropriated large amounts of money for school construction and 
you did it on the basis of need, where the oldest schools are and the 
needs are and they do not have libraries and laboratories, buildings 
are more than 75 years old, if you did it on that basis, most of the 
money would go to the big cities. They have the greatest need in that 
area.
  Just like we have an insane argument now that is being promulgated by 
the Committee on Transportation, I think in the Senate, in the other 
body, that need relates to the fact they say Los Angeles and New York 
are getting too much transit money, too much mass transit money.
  Los Angeles and New York are the places where you have most of the 
mass transit. New York has more than 30 percent of all the mass transit 
in the country, of the riders, and yet we do not get 30 percent of the 
funding. The amount we get, however, has aroused the ire of certain 
people and they want to cut down the amount New York gets or Los 
Angeles gets in transit money. That is where the people are.
  Why do we have large amounts of casualties come out of the big cities 
in every war. World War I, World War II, the Korean conflict, the 
Vietnam conflict, where did most of the casualties come from? The big 
states with the big cities.
  New York has always led in casualties, even back to the Gettysburg 
battle. The largest numbers of casualties at Gettysburg were soldiers 
from New York State. They did not break it down by city, but I assure 
you most of them were poor immigrants out of the cities.
  But I will not go back to that. I am not interested in discussing the 
fact that valor and willingness to fight and all kinds of conditions 
are in motion to generate casualties. But the fact is that the 
casualties come out of the places where people live, where the 
population is. That is where you are going to have the people to put 
their lives at risk, the people who died, who paid the supreme price. 
They will be the people that come from the areas where the most people 
are. It is simple arithmetic.
  New York in World War I, there were total casualties of 35,100 
official casualties. Out of those there were 7,307 combat deaths, those 
causalities, larger than any other state. For some reason

[[Page 11992]]

California in World War I was very low. I think maybe because it was 
not as highly urbanized and the poor were not as concentrated then as 
they are now. Whatever the reason, New York.
  Pennsylvania had 29,576 casualties, 5,996 deaths in World War I. By 
the way, Pennsylvania has Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, the big cities. 
Illinois has Chicago, Springfield, big cities: 15,000 casualties, 3,000 
combat deaths. Ohio, Cleveland and Cincinnati, big cities, 14,487 
casualties, 3,073 deaths. Massachusetts, with Boston and a couple other 
big cities, 11,455 total casualties, 2,253 deaths. Michigan, with 
Detroit, 9,000. New Jersey, a small highly urbanized state, 8,776 
casualties. There is a pattern.
  The pattern is the same in World War II. The casualties went up a 
great deal. New York, 89,656 total casualties, 27,659 deaths in combat 
from New York State. Why? Because they were braver than anybody else? 
Maybe. I do not know. The important thing is that is because that is 
where the people are. Larger numbers came from New York, because that 
is where the people are, first of all, and probably that is where the 
poorest people are who were drafted in larger numbers, and they went 
off and fought and died for their country.
  Why do we treat that class of people with great contempt now? 
Pennsylvania, 81,000 casualties, 24,000 died in combat. Illinois, where 
Chicago is located, 54,000 casualties, 17,000 died in combat. Ohio, 
49,000 casualties, 15,000 died in combat. They came out of the big 
cities where the people lived. California in World War II, more 
urbanized, 47,000 total casualties, 17,000 died in combat.
  Korea, New York had 8,780 casualties, 2,249 combat deaths. 
Pennsylvania, again, second, Illinois, third, Ohio, same pattern.
  Vietnam, the same pattern: New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, 
Massachusetts, Ohio, Michigan, California. Simple arithmetic.
  The point is, the people who die, who pay the supreme price for their 
country, come out of the big states and the big cities. Therefore, we 
have every right to treat them with great respect. We should honor the 
dead from these areas by making certain that the living always are 
given the fullest possible benefits the government can offer.
  Why are we abandoning the big city school systems when so many 
ancestors of the present children in those systems paid such a high 
price to create and maintain the America that we have now? Think about 
it. Think about it.
  The people who died, who paid the highest price to keep our Nation 
going, deserve to be respected at all times, not the present attitude, 
the wrong-headedness, the unyielding stubbornness toward poor people 
and working families that has taken hold among decisionmakers, not 
among the voters.
  The voters say we want education to be the number one priority of the 
government. The decisionmakers in Washington say all right, we will 
play games with you and pretend it is number one, but if you look at 
the appropriations process, we are not appropriating that kind of money 
for education.
  We had a bill last year which authorized $218 billion for highways 
and transportation, $218 billion. There was money for mass transit in 
there. That is part of what is being appropriated this year. They are 
having a big debate about taking away some of the mass transit funds 
from New York where the riders live. Where the people are, for some 
reason, our hearts and our appropriations do not go.
  There is some flaw maybe in our whole system. The grand compromise 
that our forefathers made when they established the Nation, that they 
had to make because the states existed before the Nation, the grand 
compromise of giving two representatives to every state created a 
powerful body which represents a minority, and that body has over the 
last 20 to 25 years essentially been anti-urban, anti the population 
centers of the Nation, anti-policies that would benefit the great 
masses. So we have a reversion kind of thing going here in our great 
democracy, and our great democracy, one-man, one-vote, is being diluted 
and distorted in a way which results in policies and power which hurts 
the great majority. The places where the people live are getting the 
worst attention or the least attention in terms of their needs.
  Education is a clear area of great need. In Kosovo we have had zero 
casualties, so far have zero casualties, but if ground troops had been 
needed they would have come from the same places that they always come 
from, in large quantities they would come out of the big cities.
  Go and look at the Vietnam Wall. I love the Vietnam Wall as a 
monument because it broke the pattern. No more ever will we have tombs 
of unknown soldiers. Tombs of unknown soldiers mask the great tragedy 
of war. The fact that the Vietnam memorial lists the names one by one, 
they are all written there, they are all honored for what they have 
done in terms of paying the supreme price for their country, they stand 
out as individuals. I have seen many people cry at that wall because it 
comes home personally. That is the way war ought to be depicted. It is 
a very personal kind of set of tragedies.
  ``Saving Private Ryan'', Spielberg's great movie, starts out and is 
based on the premise that a whole family has contributed a certain 
number of sons and the last son ought to be saved. I think that in the 
beginning of the movie when they drive out to the house to meet the 
mother, it is a very poor family, relatively speaking, a poor family 
that has given those sons. That is a pattern of World War I, of World 
War II. Why do we have contempt in our policies for the people that we 
expect to die for America?
  Madam Speaker, I will submit a little summary that I made called Big 
State, Big City Casualties, which lists some of the things that I have 
just said about where the casualties are, in which states, and the 
statistics are by state, and also indicates the cities located in those 
states.
  I have, of course, a bigger record that is more complicated. It lists 
all the states. In the case of the war in Vietnam they even list the 
casualties by race. You find that the black casualties there are 
greater than the proportion of blacks in the population. In Vietnam 
certainly, when they kept statistics by race, some of the same people 
were treated with great contempt as we abandon our school systems and 
abandon our safety net, health care services, welfare. Those same 
people paid the supreme price for our country in large numbers. Let us 
stop and think about the pattern of exploitation, negative, abandonment 
of working families in America.
  We need a tax plan which addresses itself to the needs of working 
families. Not only are we in a situation where the only targets for 
cuts, for taking away benefits that have existed for years, are 
programs that benefit working families and poor families, the poor who 
do not work, the elderly, the disabled, a lot of people who are not 
working who benefit from these programs, we are not only targeting the 
cuts for them, we are targeting the benefits of government policy to 
the rich.
  We have got tax proposals that are going to be brought out and put on 
the table between now and the end of this appropriations process, and, 
of course, they will be pursued again next year in the final showdown 
that takes place in this Congress, this two year span. There are going 
to be tax cuts on the table and a bargaining process, and we are 
probably going to end up with some kind of tax cut.
  All those people who are benefiting from the great increase in 
wealth, the jump from $3 trillion to $13 trillion, a large amount of 
that is what you call unearned income. Unearned income is a term I did 
not invent, but it is all the money you make that does not come from 
wages directly.
  Wage earners provide the principal support for the Federal 
Government. Almost two-thirds of Federal revenue comes from income and 
Social Security taxes that are paid by workers, people who earn wages. 
They are the ones that provide the taxes. It is taxes on earned income.
  By contrast, income taxes on unearned income, stocks and bonds and 
that kind of thing, produce only about

[[Page 11993]]

12 percent of the total Federal revenue. I propose, and I think that 
the working families platform that ought to be adopted by working 
families and organizations that are supposed to represent them, I 
propose a massive shift in the burden of the taxes from the earned 
income of working people to the unearned income of those who are 
getting the greatest increases in wealth.
  Ten years ago, the early 1989, as I said, the value of all U.S. 
stocks was about $3 trillion. Now it is about $13 trillion, a $10 
trillion increase. That is the opportunity. You can get new revenue 
from that increase and the people who are continuing to earn without 
any pain being caused.
  The great political position that we need a tax cut is not related to 
pain and the reduction of pain; it is related to a wrong-headed, 
unyielding, stubborn policy which defines ``them'' and ``us'' and 
disregards the fact that there is a place, there ought to be a place, 
for working families to share the great wealth of America.
  I introduced on March 11 of this year H.R. 1090, which I call the 
Social Security Protection and Tax Relief Act of 1999. It cuts the 
Social Security tax rate from 7.65 percent to 6.4 percent.

                              {time}  2130

  This will give a tax cut of $15 for every $10,000 of earned income to 
all working families and to the rich as well as the poor, if the rich 
are working and earning wages, and whether or not they pay income tax, 
of course, they will benefit through the various devices in place in 
the Tax Code.
  So cuts of the social security tax, payroll taxes, where the biggest 
increases have taken place over the last 20 years, and where the people 
on the bottom are taxed at the same rate as the people on the top, 
those cuts would be a great benefit for working families.
  My H.R. 1099 imposes a new 12 percent social security tax on all 
taxable unearned income to offset what you would lose from reducing the 
taxes on people at the lowest levels. We propose social security taxes 
on all taxable unearned income.
  I also on April 12 introduced another bill, H.R. 1390, the Income Tax 
Fairness Act of 1999. That cuts all income tax brackets by 3 percentage 
points, all income tax brackets, from the highest to the lowest. The 
present rates in the 5 brackets are 15 percent, 28 percent, 31 percent, 
36 percent, and 39.6 percent. The new rates would be 12 percent, 25 
percent, 28 percent, 33 percent, and 36.6 percent.
  I am not on the Committee on Ways and Means, and I know most people 
would consider it inappropriate that I should be here talking about 
taxes and changes in the tax policy.
  The Committee on Ways and Means is an exclusive committee. For the 
benefit of people who are not close to Washington, we have a caste 
system in the Congress. There are exclusive committees and there are 
other committees for the peasants. I am not on an exclusive committee. 
The Committee on Appropriations is exclusive, the Committee on Ways and 
Means is exclusive, the Committee on Commerce and the Committee on 
Energy are exclusive.
  Some of the wrongheadedness and anti-democratic attitudes that are 
generated come out of the structure itself. It is all wrong to say that 
education is a lesser committee. The Committee on Education and the 
Work Force is not an exclusive committee. However, what is more 
important to the Nation at this point than the education system which 
brought us to where we are and will take us into the future?
  At any rate, I am not on the Committee on Ways and Means, but I think 
every Member of Congress has a right to speak out and offer the best 
wisdom that they can offer to stimulate the discussion. Hopefully we 
will develop a platform which all the people who consider themselves 
advocates for the average American, the average taxpayer out there, the 
working families, will also get involved in the debate.
  Steve Forbes and the various other conservatives should not be the 
only ones who are concerned about tax reform. There ought to be a tax 
reform program that comes from working families and their advocates.
  H.R. 1390 cuts deductible depreciation on nonresidential buildings 
from 2.6 percent per year, and it is based on an estimated useful life 
of 39 years, et cetera, et cetera, some other details that I think we 
need not go into.
  The estimate is that this tax program that I offer will be either 
revenue-neutral or a revenue-plus. Total Federal revenue, income and 
social security taxes, will be reduced by between $190 to $200 billion 
per year and increased by the same amount or more, $200 to $250 billion 
a year by the mechanisms in these bills.
  I am also convinced that the great social security problem we all 
talk about, and we have good reason to worry about, the great social 
security problem could be dealt with if we were to place a social 
security tax on all unearned income. In addition to the tax on earned 
income, let us put it on all unearned income. That is the area of 
greatest growth. That is the area where the ratio of people in the 
workplace does not determine what goes into the social security 
coffers.
  Let us have a social security tax on unearned income for the first 
time, and that will save the social security system for at least two 
generations, and I suspect will go even beyond that and solve the 
problem once and for all.
  In other words, I think working families deserve a platform, a 
program of their own. I hope the candidates, certainly the candidates 
in the Democratic Party for president, will break out of the mold, will 
break out of the conventional wisdom, and move forward and talk in more 
direct and affirmative terms about programs which benefit the great 
masses in America.
  Finally, I want to conclude on the program that I think benefits the 
most people, and all of us, but certainly working families in dire need 
of the public education system that is able to deliver the kind of 
education that is needed as we go into the new millennium.
  As we go into the 21st century, we need the best schools in the 
world. We are not going to be able to maintain our lead economically if 
we do not have the best educated populace in the world. We are not 
going to be able to maintain our strong military if we don't have the 
best educated populace in the world.
  Already we have great shortages in the Navy. I understand the last 
great super aircraft carrier that was launched was short of personnel 
by 300 people. They could not find 300 people to staff it. There are 
other shortages throughout the Navy and other services, shortages of 
appropriate personnel.
  Are there shortages of bodies in a Nation with more than 250 million 
residents? There is never a shortage of bodies. They are talking about 
a shortage of people who have the capacity and the prerequisite 
training to be able to deal with a high-tech military. The Navy needs 
people who have some kind of education which prepares them to learn how 
to operate high-tech weapons. The Air Force needs the same kind of 
people. The Army needs the same kind of people.
  Even in the military, we need the best security effort that we can 
launch, which would be a better educated population through a revamped 
public education system, everywhere we go, economics, foreign policy, 
globalization, military, and even social security.
  If we are worried about social security, what is the great worry 
about social security? The number of people who are going to be on 
social security as we progress into the 21st century, the ratio of 
people who are earning or drawing money from social security will be 
far greater than the number of people who are in the work force paying 
into social security. That is a simple understanding that is correct. 
We are going to have fewer people paying into social security than are 
getting benefits from social security. Then we have a situation where 
if we do not find new sources of revenue, it is going to run out of 
money.
  I have just indicated part of the solution may be to look for other 
revenue sources for social security. But even if we stay with the 
primary revenue source of wage-earners paying into the

[[Page 11994]]

social security fund, if we have an education system which guarantees 
that the jobs that are created in this Nation will be there and the 
people who are in the Nation can qualify for them and earn wages and 
pay into the social security system, we are helping social security.
  So education helps to keep us strong militarily, it helps to keep us 
strong economically. Education is the best investment we can make in 
social security.
  The problem now is that because already we have not been able to fill 
many of the jobs in the high-tech industries, corporations are 
contracting out to other nations. Bangalore, India, is called the 
computer capital of the world because in Bangalore, India, they have 
numerous contractors from this Nation who are contracting with firms in 
Bangalore to provide computing services. And because of our high-tech 
communications facilities, we can do that kind of thing.
  In addition to large numbers of corporations contracting to firms 
located in Bangalore, and the people in Bangalore, of course, pay their 
social security into the Indian system, not the American system, we 
have also large numbers who come to this country as foreign workers and 
improve their skills because they are hired in the jobs that cannot be 
filled by our corporations. They go back and make the computer and 
other high-tech industries of their Nation even more efficient and 
effective as competitors. So wherever we look, we find the need for 
greater investment in education.
  There are many ways we can invest in education. We have talked about 
a lot of them. I do not think that I would rank reducing the classroom 
size over construction or construction over reducing the size of the 
elementary classes, but I would like to say that a school construction 
initiative which is meaningful would send a message to the whole Nation 
and the whole public education system.
  If we believe in a religion, then the first visible commitment of 
that religion is manifested in the kind of church they build or temple 
they have or synagogue they have. The physical facility is not at the 
heart of what the religion is all about, but the physical facility is a 
visible manifestation of a commitment.
  If we abandon the public schools of this Nation, and we have a 
situation similar to the one we have now, where we are spending only 23 
cents per child on physical infrastructure in the elementary and 
secondary schools, the Federal commitment, the Federal portion of the 
commitment to the physical infrastructure right now is about 23 cents 
per child. We have 53 million children in school. When we look at the 
amount of money the Federal Government is spending, it is about 23 
cents per child.
  I propose a bill, H.R. 1820, which I have already introduced and am 
seeking cosponsors, where we would spend $417 per year per child 
instead of 23 cents per year per child. For $417 per year per child, we 
could deal with the crumbling, dilapidated schools, schools that 
endanger the health of youngsters because they have coal-burning 
furnaces, lead pipes, some have serious problems in terms of the roof. 
No matter how many times you repair it, the water seeps into the walls 
at the top and it keeps coming down. Lead paint, lead is in the paint. 
There are all kinds of dangers.
  Many buildings are just so old. We have a lot of buildings in New 
York City that are 75 years or older, many that are 50 years old. This 
is not unique to New York City. All of the big cities have the same 
problem. Many rural areas, of course, have even worse problems. They 
never had sound buildings. We need a construction effort.
  I conclude by saying that investment in the public education system 
is one of many of the steps we need to take to end the oppression of 
working families and provide benefits, and have them share in the 
wealth, instead of being objects of our contempt.
  Madam Speaker, I include for the Record the following information on 
World War II:

                     BIG STATE, BIG CITY CASUALTIES
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                  Total        Combat       Three big
            State               casualties     deaths         cities
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                               World War I
New York.....................       35,100        7,307  New York,
                                                          Buffalo,
                                                          Albany
Pennsylvania.................       29,576        5,996  Philadelphia,
                                                          Pittsburgh,
                                                          Harrisburg
Illinois.....................       15,984        3,016  Chicago,
                                                          Springfield,
                                                          Peoria
Ohio.........................       14,487        3,073  Cleveland,
                                                          Cincinnati,
                                                          Dayton
Massachusetts................       11,455        2,153  Boston,
                                                          Amherst,
                                                          Burlington
Michigan.....................        9,702        2,213  Detroit, Ann
                                                          Arbor, Lansing
New Jersey...................        8,766        1,761  Newark, Jersey
                                                          City, Hoboken
California...................        6,153        1,352  San Francisco,
                                                          Oakland, Los
                                                          Angeles
                              World War II
New York.....................       89,656       27,659  New York,
                                                          Buffalo,
                                                          Albany
Pennsylvania.................       81,917       24,302  Philadelphia,
                                                          Pittsburgh,
                                                          Harrisburg
Illinois.....................       54,686       17,338  Chicago,
                                                          Springfield,
                                                          Peoria
Ohio.........................       49,989       15,636  Cleveland,
                                                          Cincinnati,
                                                          Dayton
Massachusetts................       31,910        9,991  Boston,
                                                          Amherst,
                                                          Burlington
New Jersey...................       31,544        9,742  Newark, Jersey
                                                          City, Hoboken
California...................       47,073       17,048  San Francisco,
                                                          Oakland, Los
                                                          Angeles
                             Korean Conflict
New York.....................        8,780        2,249  New York,
                                                          Buffalo,
                                                          Albany
Pennsylvania.................        8,251        2,327  Philadelphia,
                                                          Pittsburgh,
                                                          Harrisburg
Illinois.....................        6,435        1,744  Chicago,
                                                          Springfield,
                                                          Peoria
Ohio.........................        6,614        1,777  Cleveland,
                                                          Cincinnati,
                                                          Dayton
Michigan.....................        5,181        1,447  Detroit, Ann
                                                          Arbor, Lansing
                                 Vietnam
New York.....................          N/A        4,108  New York,
                                                          Buffalo,
                                                          Albany
Pennsylvania.................          N/A        3,133  Philadelphia,
                                                          Pittsburgh,
                                                          Harrisburg
Illinois.....................          N/A        2,926  Chicago,
                                                          Springfield,
                                                          Peoria
Ohio.........................          N/A        3,082  Cleveland,
                                                          Cincinnati,
                                                          Dayton
Massachusetts................          N/A        1,317  Boston,
                                                          Amherst,
                                                          Burlington
Michigan.....................          N/A        2,641  Detroit, Ann
                                                          Arbor, Lansing
California...................          N/A        5,563  San Francisco,
                                                          Oakland, Los
                                                          Angeles
------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                                          

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