[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 15]
[House]
[Page 20975]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



       MISSED OPPORTUNITIES TO RESPOND TO TRUE NEEDS OF AMERICANS

  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, many years ago I was attending church 
with my father in the early 1960s; and he pointed to a gentleman 
sitting in the back of the church whom he had gone to high school with, 
and my dad said during World War II, when my dad and most people in the 
community went off to war, my dad told me this gentleman stayed home, 
feigned some injury and made a lot of money during the war. My dad 
referred to him, the first time I heard that term, as a war profiteer.
  I remember the night of September 11, 2001, when service stations 
around my district in Ohio and other States in the Midwest, when gas 
station owners raised their price on that evening to $4, $5, $6 a 
gallon, also something you might call war profiteering.
  Then I have watched this Congress respond to the events of September 
11; and while in many cases the Congress and the President have worked 
well together, bipartisanly, putting differences aside, I have seen 
that same kind of profiteering, let us call it political profiteering, 
in the way that many people in the majority party have acted in 
response to September 11.
  For instance, Congress spent $15 billion to bail out America's 
airlines. They required no shared sacrifice from the executives, no 
give-backs from executives in bonuses and salaries. They spent not a 
dollar on airport security in this $15 billion gift to the airlines, 
and they gave nothing to the 100,000 workers laid off as a result of 
September 11.
  Turn the clock up a little bit further and look at what happened last 
week when Congress considered the bill to stimulate our economy. 
Instead of taking care of workers through health insurance, instead of 
taking care of laid off workers with unemployment compensation, instead 
of taking care of workers who got no tax break, people making $20,000 
to $40,000 a year, instead of taking care of them, this Congress again, 
in the name of answering the problems of September 11, this Congress 
again gave huge tax cuts to the richest people in our society.
  Eighty-nine percent of the tax relief in the Republican stimulus 
package went to tax breaks for corporations, including a $25 billion 
gift to the largest companies in the country. IBM got $1 billion, 
General Motors got between $800 million and $900 million in checks from 
the Federal Government, all in the name of let us take care of 
September 11 and what is happening with the economy.
  Now we are seeing some leaders in this Congress, particularly 
Republican leaders in the Committee on Ways and Means and the Speaker, 
have said that in order to counter terrorism, we need to pass Fast 
Track, we need to give Trade Promotion Authority to the President, we 
need to extend NAFTA to Latin America.
  So what we are saying is we are sending our young men and women in 
harm's way in Afghanistan; then when they come back to this country 
looking for jobs, some of those jobs will have been sent abroad because 
this Congress has passed failed trade agreements for those workers laid 
off. There is not unemployment compensation; there is no help with 
their health care.
  When you talk about the events of September 11, Mr. Speaker, most of 
us talk about shared sacrifice. When this Nation has been troubled in 
World War I and World War II, there was shared sacrifice. Wealthy 
people actually paid a higher proportion of taxes, working people got 
some breaks on their taxes, working people got some benefits.
  This is all different this year; and the response to September 11, we 
have seen that kind of political profiteering from the majority party. 
When Democrats have worked with the President bipartisanly, we have 
seen instead bailouts for the airlines with nothing for the airline 
workers; we have seen tax cuts for the richest people in our society, 
but no health care for laid-off workers; no tax breaks for middle-
income and working-class workers. And now this week we are going to see 
an ideological battle where the most conservative members of this body, 
in opposition to bipartisan legislation in the Senate, with airline 
security, we are going to see Republicans in the House continuing to 
try to push forward a failed airline security bill.
  In fact, I know people who are making $6 and $7 an hour that work at 
airport security, and some of them actually have left to go work at 
McDonald's because it pays better. Instead, we should federalize 
airport workers and security workers at the airports. They should be 
paid a living wage, they should be paid health insurance, they should 
be paid other benefits, and they should be trained better so they are 
there for a long time and they will do their job.
  Why should we continue this failed system of airline security, of 
airport security, all in the name of a conservative ideology? Mr. 
Speaker, it is time we believe in shared sacrifice. It is time we 
federalize the airport security people, that we build a tax system fair 
to all people, and that we take care of workers laid off and victimized 
by the events of September 11.

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