[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6015-6021]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           THE FEDERAL BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Musgrave). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Owens) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. OWENS. Madam Speaker, we are about to begin the process of 
passing a budget. There are other matters on the agenda here in 
Washington, of course. We have just heard one, the medical malpractice 
and the capping of awards to patients. That is important. There are not 
many important things that we have considered so far this year. There 
are a few, but nothing is more important than the budget. The budget is 
part of a bigger process. The budget and appropriations process are 
inseparable. They go together. It is as if the appropriations process, 
which is the final allocation of funds for functions of government, 
begins with the budget. The budget is going to set the parameters. The 
budget is going to outline where the appropriations process can go. It 
is important that as many of our Members as possible focus now on the 
preparation of the budget. The budget is a moral statement. It is a 
moral statement of what the values of a nation are at a particular 
time. There may be some nations which cannot make such a moral 
statement with their budget. If it is Bangladesh or Haiti or a number 
of very poor countries in the world, they may have high moral values, 
they may want to educate all of their primary school children and high 
school children, they may want to send all their children to college 
for free, but they do not have the resources, they do not have the 
funding, so the moral choice is not theirs. In the United States of 
America, the richest nation that ever existed on the face of the Earth, 
we make moral choices because we have the resources. We can do whatever 
we want to do with our resources, but we choose to do in some cases 
outrageous things with our resources and neglect very important 
matters, such as education, such as health care.
  You cannot separate the budget from the discussions of war and peace 
either. We are slowly proceeding at an escalating pace toward a war 
with Iraq. The war with Iraq cannot be dealt with and discussed and 
value judgements cannot be made about that war without also considering 
the budget and appropriations process. It is the budget. How much will 
the war cost? Can we afford the war at the same time we provide for the 
needs of our own people in a reasonable manner? How much will war and 
peace affect the decisions that are made by the Members of Congress 
from here until we end the final appropriations process?
  It is very interesting that the President, who starts the budget 
process by submitting his recommended budget to the Congress, has 
chosen not to include in the budget figures any recommended budget for 
the war in Iraq. Everybody knows that we are preparing for war. We have 
nearly 200,000 troops already

[[Page 6016]]

in the area of Iraq, more specifically in Kuwait just across the border 
from Iraq. It is pretty clear that the policy of our administration 
wants to move us toward war, despite the fact that the rest of the 
civilized world, or large parts of the civilized world are raising 
their voices in protest. We are moving in that direction, but it is not 
in the budget. What kind of moral statement is it that we do not even 
bother to mention the war in the budget? Is that a statement that it 
should be a secret document, that whatever the budget for the war in 
Iraq might be it is going to be too outrageous to discuss in public? 
That will be a bit un-American. There is no way you can appropriate 
large amounts of funds without coming here to this floor through the 
Congress. So eventually we are going to have a budget for the war in 
Iraq on top of the present budget.
  The present budget already is a budget that has gone into deficit. We 
are going to expend more money, if we follow the President's 
recommendation, than we take in. So war and peace considerations will 
have to be a part of this process of deliberation about the budget. I 
do not want to spend the time today discussing the war. I want to talk 
about the budget. But I must say that an activity which will drain such 
a great amount of money from the coffers of the American people, an 
activity which will put a strain on the budget-making process for all 
other functions, must be dealt with to some degree here.
  I am against going to war with Iraq. I think that we are less secure. 
Every day we move toward a war with Iraq makes us less secure, not more 
secure. I think we are as a people more in danger every day we move 
toward the war with Iraq. I made that statement back in the fall when 
we had on the floor consideration of whether or not to give the 
President the approval to go to war, knowing that the consideration was 
war in Iraq. I made that statement. I said that North Korea and 
Pakistan are two priorities that we should look at before we consider 
war in Iraq.
  Most people do not know that there is a great danger lurking in 
Pakistan along the borders and in the whole country. There is a danger 
that a nation that already has nuclear weapons, that is our ally, that 
that government may be overthrown. That government teeters on the edge 
of disaster because there are a tremendous number of people in high 
places in the military establishment, in the intelligence apparatus, 
who are pro-al Qaeda. There are a tremendous number of people who are 
pro-the Taliban. In fact, the Taliban that we just defeated in 
Afghanistan was created in Pakistan with the help of the Pakistani 
military. There are tensions seething, there is fanaticism there with 
respect to the battle between India and Pakistan over Kashmir that 
warps the reasoning of lots of people. And it is possible that 
fanatics, assisted by professional military people and the fervor of 
the al Qaeda movement, could overthrow the government of Pakistan, our 
ally, our biggest Muslim ally in the world.
  Pakistan has always been our ally. Throughout the Cold War it was our 
ally. It is our ally now at a time when it is very dangerous for the 
Pakistani government to be our ally. But they are there. They have the 
courage, they are supporting the effort, the war against terrorism in 
Afghanistan and in that region, and it appears they may support the 
President in his quest to make war on Iraq. But this ally is in danger. 
I think that I am one of the few people who would put them first on the 
list of dangerous situations that confront America. They have nuclear 
weapons already. They have nuclear weapons. They are a Muslim nation. 
Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda organization will have nuclear weapons 
if they capture the government or take over the government of Pakistan.
  Moving beyond Pakistan, of course, everybody is aware now--they were 
not aware last fall to the extent they are now--that North Korea poses 
a threat and every day we move toward Iraq, obsessed with attacking 
Iraq, we are ignoring the danger in North Korea. North Korea is a 
mystery. The leaders there are unpredictable, unknown. This is a nation 
that defies reason in that they have the technical know-how, they have 
a very educated population, a population that is able to produce high 
technology. They have some of the most efficient rockets in the world. 
They are in the position now to create nuclear weapons. In fact, it is 
predicted soon and they may have two or three nuclear bombs already.

                              {time}  2030

  They have that kind of technology, they have that kind of capability, 
they have that kind of know-how. At the same time, they cannot feed 
themselves. The government cannot run a country which will provide food 
for the population, and the population is like captives to a government 
that cannot provide enough food for them.
  This is a situation probably unprecedented in history, and 
unpredictable; and we should pay much more attention to it. We should 
be watching it much more closely. We should have our resources poised 
to deal with the unknown, the dangerous unknown, that exists in North 
Korea.
  As far as Iraq is concerned, Saddam Hussein certainly is a person 
that should be dealt with. I think the fate of Milosevic, who is now on 
trial in the world court, indicted as a war criminal, that is the fate 
that should await Saddam Hussein; and we should push in every way 
possible to get that accomplished. But going to war with the people of 
Iraq in the manner we are proposing will not accomplish that task in a 
way which leaves us covered in dangerous spots elsewhere in the world. 
It also alienates. Because of the fact that we are about to wage a full 
scale attack on a whole nation, it alienates large numbers of allies 
that we may think we do not need; but we do need those allies.
  So war and peace considerations are as much a part of the budget 
considerations as any others, because we are already in a situation now 
where a new Department has been created, Homeland Security, and the 
Homeland Security budget is a new strain on the total nondefense 
budget.
  We will find in the President's budget a number of cuts in a number 
of proposals and propositions that move in a way which will place the 
burden of this war on the backs of the poorest people. We have 
proposals under way now which are outrageous with respect to robbing 
the poor to pay for our government. We have a recession. We have the 
impact of September 11. There are a number of forces in motion that 
keep the recession going, and it is getting worse.
  I am not in a position where I have the expertise to explain why the 
recession is moving the way it is totally, but we know some of the 
factors. I just mentioned two of them.
  We have serious problems with respect to budgeting for every State 
and every city across the country. Certainly in my home State of New 
York, we are deep in a situation where the expenditures loom high over 
the expected revenue in New York State.
  In New York City, there is still a $2 billion to $3 billion gap in 
the budget. It is very serious across the Nation, of course, as I said 
before. There are many cities and States in the same position.
  There are cities where the local education agency within the city is 
projecting cutting the number of days that children will be allowed to 
go to school. There are other cities that are projecting deep cuts in 
education and health care. There are cities where health care cuts are 
already taking place in large amounts.
  In my City of New York, the mayor was criticized by the establishment 
press for allowing the Medicaid costs to increase. The mayor has merely 
done his moral duty and allowed the agencies responsible for providing 
Medicaid to give Medicaid to those who are eligible for Medicaid.
  Our previous mayor had gone to great lengths to knock people off the 
welfare rolls who really had a right to be there. They were eligible. 
But in addition to knocking them off the rolls, our previous mayor 
would not counsel and pressured the departments responsible for 
administering Medicaid and

[[Page 6017]]

food stamps, to the point where they would not tell people who were 
knocked off the welfare rolls that they still had a right to Medicaid 
or still had a right to food stamps. So at this point, half of the 
people eligible for food stamps in New York City are not receiving food 
stamps, on the one hand. On the other hand, the food pantries and the 
soup kitchens have long lines of people who need food, many of whom are 
eligible for food stamps, and they do not know it because of the 
oppressive policies of the previous administration.
  The administration in power now says we should do the right thing. 
People who qualify for Medicaid should get Medicaid. They are under 
attack for raising the cost of city government. By raising Medicaid and 
dealing with people's health care, we are threatening the budget; and 
that is a reason the press considers it a legitimate reason to 
criticize the mayor.
  ``Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'' is not just a loose 
statement made somewhere by the Founding Fathers. Life comes first, 
before liberty, before the pursuit of happiness. Life is related to 
health care. You have to be healthy; you have to stay alive. We are 
last among the industrialized nations. I understand that has to be 
translated into the provision of the best possible health care for 
every citizen.
  If Canada can afford a plan which takes care of all the citizens of 
Canada, surely the United States can afford such a plan also. If 
Germany, France, if all the industrialized nations can afford to 
provide health care for all, surely the rich and powerful United States 
could also provide health care for all.
  In this budget process that we are about to undertake, proposals are 
being made by the White House that Medicaid will be treated the way we 
have treated welfare reform. We are going to use Medicaid dollars to 
bribe the States. We are going to use Medicaid dollars in the same way 
that welfare reform dollars were used.
  How were they used? In the Welfare Reform Act we offered every State 
funding at a certain level for their program for the poor people. At 
the same time, we gave them the leeway to keep all the funds that they 
were able to garner as a result of people who were taken off the 
welfare rolls. If you drive down the welfare rolls in whatever way, it 
was assumed it would be legitimate, that you would really check the 
eligibility of people, that the welfare rolls would go down, because we 
had programs that would help poor people, help them to get jobs, help 
them to find other means to sustain themselves. But in most States 
there was a reckless move to knock off as many as possible.
  So many people were knocked off the rolls in New York City that we 
had to go to court and get a court order to force the city under the 
previous administration of Rudy Giuliani, force him to allow people to 
have a fair hearing. At one point the requirement that before you were 
pushed off the rolls a family had a right to a fair hearing, that was 
just pushed aside; and we had to get the courts to order that the fair 
hearing would be reinstated. The city dragged its feet and did as few 
fair hearings as possible.
  Welfare rolls went way down. It benefited the State and city, and it 
was a way to fill the petty cash drawers of the city and the State on 
the backs of the poor.
  They did that most successfully in the State of Wisconsin. Wisconsin 
is the home of the present Secretary of health and welfare. Wisconsin 
was one of the worst in forcing the welfare costs down and transferring 
the funds that were supposed to be used for the poor into other 
functions.
  For that, the Governor of Wisconsin was rewarded and brought to 
Washington. So now the Governor of Wisconsin presides over a new 
proposal to take Medicaid and conduct the same kind of swindle with 
Medicaid that was conducted with welfare reform dollars. It is Robin 
Hood in reverse, robbing the poor to take care of the well-off or to 
take care of the governments of the States and the localities.
  But the amount of money involved in the Medicaid swindle is so much 
greater than the amount of money involved with the welfare reform; so 
that bribe, that carrot held out there, is quite tempting for Governors 
who are now suffering with tremendous budget problems.
  I say, in our budget, why do we not follow the Democratic stimulus 
package? The Democratic stimulus package says let us give money back to 
the States in an honest revenue sharing program. In that revenue 
sharing program, our Democratic Caucus did not do it to the degree I 
wanted, but you would target some areas.
  I would target education, I would target Medicaid, and say we are 
giving you the money back. It is your money. Really all money comes 
from localities and States. The Federal Government does not generate 
any money. It is the money that comes out of taxpayers that live in 
States and local areas.
  So we are giving back the money, a certain amount of money, to help 
with the budget problems that you have at the State and local level; 
but a certain percentage must be spent on education, and a certain 
percentage must be spent for health care also.
  But that is honest revenue sharing, with controls and monitoring; and 
it is up front. What we are saying instead is we will give you your 
Medicaid money at the level that you have now, and that is it. Once we 
give it to you at that level, it will never go up; but you can use the 
money appropriated, for the next 5 years at least, you can use that 
money that you do not need for people who are on Medicaid.
  If you drive down the Medicaid rolls, deny care to people that need 
it, all that you save can be utilized in some other way. This is called 
block grants, and there are other names for it. But that is the 
Republican majority's way of dealing with a major crisis in the country 
in terms of States and local governments and their budgets.
  There is also a proposal that section 8 housing, housing programs for 
the poor, shall also be block-granted in the same manner. So you can 
take something from the pot for the poor people by taking from welfare 
reform, you can take some from the pot that is generated by Medicaid, 
you can take some from section 8, and on and on it will go, because 
obviously the Republican majority's philosophy of States' rights is 
being distorted to mean the States' rights to Federal dollars that are 
really intended for poor people.
  So we are here considering the budget, and these are the kinds of 
overriding considerations that are taking place.
  I have been appointed by the Congressional Black Caucus to coordinate 
an alternative budget. An alternative budget is an alternative to the 
Republican majority budget that is going to be presented here. It is 
also an alternative to what the President has presented.
  Nobody knows exactly how much the Republican majority budget that 
will come to the floor of the House will look like the President's 
budget, but we assume that it will be very close to the President's 
budget.
  I am not certain that this Republican majority will allow alternative 
budgets on the floor yet. I do not know whether that decision has been 
made or not. But I hope the decision is made to allow us to present 
alternative budgets on the floor.
  Nothing is more important, as I said before, than the budget process, 
the budget process which opens up the appropriations process, the 
process that is the most important thing that government can engage in. 
And we need time to debate it; we need time to discuss it.
  We among ourselves are overwhelmed by the complexities of our 
government, even before 9-11, even before the mobilization for the war 
on Iraq. This is a complicated era. We live in complicated times of 
governments. The functions of governments as big as the United States 
of America need deliberation. We need deliberations about function, we 
need debate, we need as much consideration as possible. So we should 
not rush through the process of the approval of a budget.
  I think there are certain basic principles that we need to follow, 
and I set forth to my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus 
those principles.

[[Page 6018]]

One is we stand for and would like to do everything possible to 
facilitate a smaller, streamlined, and efficient government.

                              {time}  2045

  That should be the goal of all lawmakers. However, there must be 
enough revenue and resources to carry out the vital functions of our 
complex American society. It is absolutely necessary that we maintain 
an adequate investment in human development.
  The people who say that the policies of the Republican majority are 
fashioned in a way to squeeze, squeeze the dollars out of the Federal 
Government so that there will be no money, no funding available for 
social programs, they are correct. That is the way the Republican 
majority is proceeding, along with the help, of course, of a new 
administration. The Republicans, of course, control all of the 
apparatus of government now, and it will be more difficult than ever 
before to stop the march toward the movement of resources of the 
Federal Government out of the Federal Government and back to the 
States, to some degree, and the lessening, in the final analysis, to 
take away the safety nets, to take away the New Deal, to take away 
Lyndon Johnson's society; all of that is going to be reversed if these 
policies are allowed to endure in the name of making government more 
efficient.
  I believe in efficient government. I want every dollar saved to be 
used for some good use. Over and over I have attacked the insufficient 
farm subsidy program. The farm subsidy program is one of the most 
inefficient programs in the civilized world. Huge amounts of money are 
poured into a program that is not a safety net program, but it is still 
a handout. The American people are giving money to agricultural 
businesses. In addition to giving money to the businesses, we have a 
farm loan, all kinds of loan programs that have existed over the last 
50 years, and billions of dollars have accumulated where the farmers, 
the so-called farmers, the agribusinesses have not bothered to pay back 
the funds. So there are areas of waste which certainly should be looked 
at very closely. There are large numbers of areas of waste. I am in 
favor of an efficient, streamlined, smaller government, but not at the 
expense of meeting the needs of all of the people of the United States, 
especially those who are poorest and need safety net legislation.
  A second general principle, a general priority that I would set 
forth, I have set forth for the preparation of our alternative budget, 
the alternative budget of the Congressional Black Caucus, is that 
Federal assistance for education, for health care, housing, child care, 
transportation, worker safety and protection, and business development 
is as vital as support for homeland security and defense. Now, here I 
want to make the case that inseparable, inseparable from the budget 
process is our security. Considerations of our security are inseparable 
from the budget process. Considerations of our prosperity, continued 
vibrant economy, are inseparable from the budget process. It is the 
budget, stupid. It is the budget. The budget, which is part of the 
beginning of the appropriations process, will determine whether we use 
our tremendous resources for the benefit of all of the American people, 
whether we make a pivotal decision and turn down the dark road of more 
and more to the people who already have the most and less and less for 
the folks at the bottom who need the most. That is what is at stake in 
this budget situation, and the fact that we must mobilize and finance a 
war only aggravates the situation much more.
  A third principle is that the ability of the government to provide 
for the Nation's security can be effectively implemented and sustained 
only if all of the vital investments in human development are assigned 
priority on a continuing basis. Our security can be effectively 
implemented and sustained only if all of the vital investments in human 
development are assigned priority on a continuing basis. In other 
words, the first thing a nation of the size of the United States 
colossus, we are a colossus; nothing ever existed in the world like the 
United States of America. This colossus cannot function without a lot 
of educated human beings. In fact, the total population, as many as 
possible, must be educated; otherwise, we are going to grind to a halt. 
We cannot keep pace with all of the kinds of situations that are there 
without a tremendously educated population. We are already suffering 
greatly because of the fact that we have not sufficiently educated 
enough people to cover all of the fronts that have been exposed as a 
result of the al Qaeda attack on September 11.
  One of the problems with the al Qaeda attack, and I have said it many 
times, is that despite the fact that we are very advanced 
technologically, we have satellite systems that cover the entire world, 
they can pick up telephone conversations anywhere in the world, any 
electronic mechanism can be picked up and recorded, and they did 
exactly that before September 11, and many of the messages that were 
picked up in Arabic were not translated in time to make the difference. 
I am not saying they could have totally prevented September 11, but it 
has already been admitted that some of the messages were picked up, but 
suffered from delayed translation, because we did not have enough Arab 
translators. We did not have enough Arab translators. Somebody in our 
government in high places failed in terms of his vision and his 
education to make certain that there was a comparability between the 
people who were able to translate messages and the volume of the 
messages coming in. Several months later, 2 or 3 months ago, a person 
was fired in the FBI apparatus because she blew the whistle and said we 
still do not have enough Arab translators. We still are not addressing 
the problem.
  Now, Arab translators are just the tip of the iceberg. We had a 
problem here on Capitol Hill with that unknown person who sent out the 
anthrax, sent anthrax to one of our Senators, and that office had to be 
closed and the whole building shut down for 4 months. For 4 months we 
had to wait for the handful of people who have expertise in how to 
clean up anthrax to deal with the problem. For 4 months, for 4 months 
here on Capitol Hill, because of the fact that we did not have enough 
expertise to spread around, right here in Washington. In the Post 
Office, they did not get the same amount of attention. The absence of 
that attention led to the death of the two casualties of anthrax in 
Washington. They were two postmen. The attention was triage, focused 
here on Capitol Hill. Some of our offices had to shut down for 3 weeks. 
Even now, the impact of the anthrax scare determines how fast we get 
our mail. We do not get it very fast because of the fact that it is 
screened.
  But the absence of expertise, the absence of people who knew how to 
do it was a problem. What if the anthrax fanatic had struck at 10 or 20 
places at the same time? Where would we be at this point? We obviously 
need a lot of people who know how to clean up anthrax, just as we need 
people to know how to handle the response to chemical warfare, 
biological warfare. We are talking about that, but when we look at the 
cuts in education and the way education is treated, there seems to be 
no understanding of the obvious. It is obvious that one cannot get the 
people to do these things unless we have a pool, a pool of educated 
people to draw from, bigger than the pool we have now. Because the pool 
we have now to create lawyers and doctors and engineers and masses in 
MBAs, businessmen, that pool will be drawn upon to create the 
traditional replacements for those areas. We need more educated people 
to take on all of these other specialties and to make certain that we 
never, we never lose a war, we never lose a battle, and maybe never 
lose a life because we did not have the expertise needed. So the 
investment in human beings comes first.
  Why are we proposing these budget cuts in education? Why are we not 
maximizing the amount of money spent on education as part of our 
mobilization for a continuing war against terrorism? A war against 
terrorism is a serious war and there is a tendency to try to paint all 
of us who are against the war in Iraq as passivists, people

[[Page 6019]]

who want to lay down their lives and let the fanatics trample over us, 
as people who are not smart enough to understand the nature of the 
enemy.
  I am against the war in Iraq, as I said before. I do not think we 
should be preparing for war in Iraq because it makes the world more 
dangerous for us. I am against that war, but I assure my colleagues, 
like many of my colleagues who voted against giving the President the 
power to go to war, my colleagues voted to give the President the power 
to make war on al Qaeda and the Taliban. We applauded, we applauded the 
immediate response to go after the people who perpetrated the September 
11 attack.
  I want to say that nowadays there is a lot of talk back and forth 
among poets. I just heard, before I came to the floor, a McNeil/Lehrer 
presentation where they talked for a few minutes about how poets are 
getting involved in trying to stop the war on the one hand; on the 
other hand, how some poets are getting involved on the other side, 
criticizing the poets who want to stop the war. This poet was very much 
in favor of going to Afghanistan, of challenging the Taliban, of 
routing al Qaeda.
  I am not automatically a knee-jerk passivist; I do not run from the 
fact that there are fanatics in the world. On February 14 of last year, 
February 14, 2002, I made the following statement here on the floor in 
the form of a rap poem called ``Let's Roll, America.'' I am not going 
to read it all, but I am going to read some of it to make it known that 
when it is time to mobilize, when the enemy is real, we should go 
forward.

     LET'S ROLL AMERICA!
     Set the tracks of destiny straight,
     Don't look back
     But close the gate.
     Toast the past
     But change the cast.
     In every language of the earth
     To the country of all nations
     We have proudly given birth.
     At the Olympics of forever
     We will win all the races;
     We are Great Angels of tomorrow
     With magic mongrel faces.

     LET'S ROLL, AMERICA!
     Be generous philanthropy geeks,
     Roll up the Sierra's highest peaks.
     Be fanatic democracy freaks,
     All the Founders dared to seek.
     Sing loud the hallelujah note,
     All our races and women can vote.

     AMERICA LET'S ROLL!
     Stand navy out to sea,
     Off we go flying to stay free,
     War never leaves us thrilled
     But maniacs demand to be killed.
     Saddam Hussein Satan's tutored underboss
     Hitler minus the crooked cross
     Gleefully calculates the victim loss.
     Patrons of peace permitted no breath,
     Ayatollahs eat dinner with death,
     bin Laden is a monster of stealth.
     The spirit of Gettysburg calls
     Forward to the Normandy walls;
     Descendants of John Brown:
     Fascists under any flag
     We swear to drown.
     War never leaves us thrilled
     But maniacs demand to be killed.

  There is a time to go to war. Adolf Hitler presented us with that 
challenge. We can never sing the praises high enough of the American 
boys who died on the beaches of Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, 
fighting the Fascist enemy in Europe far away from home, but clearly, a 
clear menace to the entire world. We cannot sing the praises high 
enough of those who died on Iwo Jima, those who fought the Fascists of 
Japan who clearly had designs on the entire world and who led the fight 
by opening the conflict, by attacking us on Pearl Harbor.
  So there is a time to go to war and there is a time to mobilize all 
of our resources and understand that a country belongs to us all. It is 
everybody's country. And when we make up the budget, remember that it 
is everybody's country. The names of the people on the Vietnam Wall, 
almost 58,000, I have said it before, if you look at those names, take 
them down, study them, you will find that one-half of those names up 
there are young men who came from the big cities of America and the 
urban areas of America with very poor people, at least half came from 
families that qualified for welfare. At least half came from families 
that qualified for food stamps. At least a half came from families that 
deserved to have Section 8 housing. Those are Americans too, and many 
of the Americans in Kuwait right now are poor Americans who this 
country belongs to them, too. They are daughters, they are sons, and 
should not be denied the best education possible, should not be denied 
decent housing. Their mothers and grandmothers should not be denied 
Medicare, Medicaid by swindlers who want to save money on the backs of 
the poor.
  So we will fight, and there are Americans who have fighting spirits 
who do not necessarily think that a knee-jerk reaction to using 
military force is the answer.

                              {time}  2100

  Let me proceed with my fourth principle in terms of basic assumptions 
and principles related to the preparation of an alternative budget. The 
fourth principle that I would state here is that while the taxing of 
the middle-income and working families must be reduced and maintained 
at the lowest possible levels, the Federal Government must nevertheless 
secure the revenue it needs by upwardly adjusting the tax rate on 
corporate entities and by creatively seeking larger fees from publicly 
owned resources such as the spectrum above us which belongs to us, the 
Internet, public lands and waterways. While the taxing of middle-income 
and working families must be reduced, the idea of a tax cut should not 
come from only the Republican majority. The question is who deserves 
the tax cut in the structure of revenue acquisition. What is the most 
just way to proceed with taxation?
  This may be the defining moment in capitalism, democratic capitalism, 
how we revamp our tax structure. A tax structure which is revamped 
along the principles that have been established by the administration 
will lead us only to chaos because it makes the rich much richer, it 
widens the gap, it widens the gap between the rich and the poor in a 
way which only courts disaster for the future.
  So our tax structure must be reflective of the situation that exists 
now. Wealth is being accumulated by very small groups of people. Wealth 
is being accumulated most rapidly by corporations, corporations which 
are the beneficiaries of all of the accumulated civilization that has 
gone before, the knowledge that science and engineering has produced, 
the knowledge that has come out of our research and laboratories. The 
drug companies that provide prescription drugs are very wealthy, huge 
conglomerations. But they built their enterprise on the backs of 
research that was done in public laboratories, research that was 
accumulated over the years by scientists whose names are not known in 
some cases, and in other cases whose names are known but they worked 
for institutes that were financed by our government. The Institutes for 
Health focuses on various diseases and research has been immediately 
there.
  Bill Gates is probably the richest man in the world. Bill Gates is 
rich because there is an Internet, Internet and computers. Both 
computers and Internet were developed by the American military to the 
point where they can be transformed into the private sector in ways 
that allow people to make large amounts of money. The software of Bill 
Gates and Microsoft, the whole culture of the cybercivilization was 
created by the initiative of the American people.
  The American military financed by the American people led the way; 
and, therefore, if we have tax corporations that have benefited from 
the efforts of the American people at a greater rate, it is only just. 
Instead of taxing corporations that get rich faster and faster, the 
pattern has been that corporations now bear less of the tax burden than 
they did 50 years ago.
  There was a time when individuals and family taxes, income taxes 
comprised about 54, 55 percent of the total tax burden. Corporations 
were as high as 44 percent at one point. Corporations and their share 
of the burden dropped drastically down to the point where it reached as 
low as 4 percent at one point. And President Clinton and his 
administration began to bring it back up, I do not know, it is between 
11

[[Page 6020]]

and 15 percent now. But that is a long ways from their fair share of 
the tax burden.
  If we were to increase the percentage of taxes we collect from 
corporations, we could lower the taxes we collect from middle-income 
families and working families; and that is a proposition that I think 
our budget should go forward on now. We should reject the 
administration's proposals to cut taxes at the highest levels and 
provide cuts at the lowest levels. The payroll taxes for ordinary 
working people is the biggest tax increase we have experienced in the 
last 25 years. Percentage-wise, taxes have increased more for the 
poorest people through the payroll tax than any other form of tax. Let 
us relieve them of the great increase in payroll taxes. Let us relieve 
the middle class which bears the brunt of the burden of taxes; let us 
relieve them before we relieve the top 10 and 15 percent. Let us give 
the middle class back their money. Let us give them tax credits for the 
tuition for children. Let us give them child care tax credit. Let us do 
things without tax policy that benefit the most people instead of the 
elite few.
  I am all for tax cuts, but I think that we need to drastically 
revamp, repeal the President Bush tax policies and revamp that policy 
to benefit the people who the need cuts most. Let us give the money to 
people who will be consumers. The rich will not turn the money over and 
purchase goods and services in order to revitalize the economy. They 
will invest it. If they spend it on services, they will go abroad and 
spend it in castles and high-class restaurants and a number of places 
which will not benefit the American economy necessarily. So we should 
see a tax cut for working families and a tax cut for the middle-income 
families as being a stimulus for the economy.
  Item five, there should be an end to the tax system as we know it and 
a revamp which reduces the portion of the tax burden borne by 
individuals and families to less than 50 percent of the amount of money 
needed for taxation to cover our overall tax burden. Corporate entities 
utilizing the collective and accumulated knowledge in institutional 
support of a total society will continue to grow and prosper. Such 
recipients of public response of research and development protected by 
the legal system and the military might of the Nation and enriched by 
the greater American consumer market, such entities can and should bear 
a greater portion of the national tax burden. Corporate entities 
utilizing the collective and accumulated knowledge in institutional 
support of the total society, they will continue to grow and prosper.
  Corporations are filthy rich. We know now from some of these 
scandals, the Enron scandal, the WorldCom scandal, we know how mega-
bucks are passed among them as if they were pennies. One corporate 
executive was loaned $400 million. Another corporate executive was 
loaned millions of dollars, and they were forgiven by the corporation. 
On and on it goes. If you read what we have gotten exposed in a few 
corporations, you can see how most of them operate. Those that are 
honest have a great deal of leeway of choices to make with tremendous 
amounts of dollars. They can afford to pay for an American society that 
is generous enough to take care of all of its children and its elderly 
and people in need.
  Such recipients of publicly sponsored research and development, I 
cannot emphasize this too much, they are recipients of publicly 
sponsored research and development, they are protected by the legal 
system and the military might of the Nation.
  Those who have the most, have the most to be protected. If we go to 
war, we are going to war to protect those who do the most. Therefore, 
it is just for them to pay more in terms of taxes.
  They are enriched by the greater American consumer market. Such 
entities can and should bear a greater portion of a national tax 
burden. Tax cuts for the upper-income brackets should be repealed 
immediately. Tax cuts for all families earning less than $50,000 per 
year should be implemented immediately, commencing with a large 
reduction of payroll taxes for the poorest workers. Tax cuts for the 
upper-income brackets should be repealed immediately. Tax cuts for all 
families earnings less than $50,000 a year should be implemented 
immediately, commencing with a large reduction for payroll taxes for 
the poorest workers.
  Now, let me make it clear, I said I had been appointed as the 
coordinator for the Congressional Black Caucus alternative budget. 
These ideas here are still my ideas. They have not been all adopted by 
the Congressional Black Caucus. There is still some debate about 
whether we should have in our Congressional Black Caucus budget a 
freeze of the tax program the way it is or whether we should propose to 
have a repeal and revamping of it. And I want to note that. This is my 
proposal as an individual.
  Let me go to point seven, related to education and job training. 
Leaving taxes which are critical, taxes are critical because they set 
the parameters. They tell us how much revenue we will have for our 
expenditures, and it is important that more attention be paid to tax 
policy. I think that one of the failures of the American academic 
community and the American citizens in general is they have allowed 
taxes to be a private matter for an elite group. They have allowed 
taxes to be treated with great mystery. We do not spend as much time 
ever discussing taxes and how the revenue is gained as we do discussing 
how the revenue should be spent. We should pay attention to both 
because in the absence of rational discussion, reasonable discussions 
we are having all these proposals that end up widening the gap between 
the rich and the poor and doing our Nation a great disservice because 
the Nation does belong to everybody. When you alienate certain groups, 
you are setting up a situation which is untenable.
  Let me show you how bad it is with one set of statistics that came 
from the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve does a study every 3 
years of consumer financing. And one of the facts that they generated 
are out of their most recent study of a 3-year period, not last year, 
but the 3 years before 2002, up to 2001. One of the facts that they 
generated was that the median net worth, the median net worth in terms 
of assets, wealth, for whites rose 17 percent in that 3-year period to 
$120,900; while the median net worth for minorities fell 4.5 percent to 
$17,000 for minorities. Talk about the gap between the rich and the 
poor: $120,900, median net worth for whites; $17,000 is a median net 
worth for minorities. That is more than just African Americans and 
other folks, other minorities are included there; but the most 
important factor is it did not go up. It fell from where it was before 
by 4.5 percent while the median net worth for whites rose by 17 
percent. That was a great time of prosperity. The end of the prosperous 
1990s and into the early 2000, 2001, whites saw their median net worth 
go up about 17 percent. Minorities saw their median net worth go down 
by 4.5 percent. The gap is $120,900 versus $17,000.
  That is why the Congressional Black Caucus budget needs to address a 
special group with a special message. It needs to address black 
leaders, our budget, the Congressional Black Caucus alternative budget, 
has to address black leaders that if you think you are providing good 
leadership, if you are smug and you think we are going forward because 
you read these stories about the great movement forward of the black 
middle class and black middle-class families, how well off they are, 
then stop for a moment and consider what the hard statistics show: 
$17,000 versus $120,900.
  We have much work to do and only education is our salvation in the 
minority community. There is no other way. A few people may hit the 
lottery. Maybe some folks are discovering gold mines somewhere in the 
world. But basically, the only way to accumulate wealth is to get an 
education and get a decent job and start the slow process of wealth 
accumulation in the family.
  Let me rush now. I am running out of time. Education and job training 
then becomes the key to solving the great problem of the great gap in 
wealth. Our government must do everything possible to help solve that 
problem by making sure there is the opportunity

[[Page 6021]]

to learn for everybody who wants to learn.

                              {time}  2115

  Point 7, since the Nation's security as well as its future economic 
stability and prosperity is directly dependent on the quality of 
education of its citizens, the budget should greatly increase Federal 
assistance for education from Head Start to title I, bilingual 
education, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic 
Serving Higher Education Institutions, special education, education 
technology and on and on.
  Since school buildings are essential for the implementation of all 
school improvements, the taboo must be ended, and the Federal grants 
for school construction must be provided. The President's budget is 
proposing construction grants, not loans, but only for charter schools. 
Let me just repeat that. There is a taboo, unfortunately many Democrats 
believe in it, too, but there is a taboo against offering money for 
school construction from the Federal Treasury. Somebody somewhere 
decided that school construction must be a function of the State 
governments and the local governments.
  Now, they used to think that way about highways and roads; but we 
spent billions of dollars, Federal money, on highway roads because the 
modern national necessity required roads and highways that needed 
Federal help. We built the railroads. The railroads were financed by 
the Federal Government. The great linkup of the Pacific and the 
Atlantic, most people do not understand, it was not done by private 
money. It was the Federal Government that financed the railroads; and 
private railroads then, of course, had a way to take advantage of that 
as in the case of much government experimentation and research and 
development, benefit greatly.
  Here we are. The President's budget breaks the taboo by saying we 
will give $175 million to charter schools for construction. If it is 
okay to give construction money to charter schools, why not all 
schools? Why have a taboo on public schools in general? It just so 
happens that politically, for partisan political reasons, chartered 
schools are favored. So we are going to have $175 million. We are not 
going to give a cent to public schools for school construction.
  We have some kind of program that is sponsored by two Members of the 
House for loaning to school districts who do not want to borrow any 
more money. So even if we pass that, it will not do much good in terms 
of providing for the school construction needs we have.
  Point 8, significant Federal initiatives for education reform such as 
No Child Left Behind cannot be implemented effectively while local 
education agencies are under assault from State and local budget cuts; 
therefore, an emergency targeted revenue sharing for education programs 
must be legislated.
  Point 9, job training programs must be rescued from the downward 
spiral of budget cuts. It must be made complementary and compatible 
with our overall education efforts as well as the changing occupational 
needs generated by new challenges to homeland security and global 
competition.
  Under Health, Human Services and Safety Nets, while the recently 
released Democratic Caucus Prescription Drug Plan with a $25 premium 
should be endorsed, that is, we have a plan. The Democrats have a plan 
that makes sense. Democrats have a plan that is in keeping with what 
other modern governments are doing for their populace. So we should 
support that plan, but there are other health care needs that must be 
addressed in our current budget.
  Of greatest significance to the CDC are the President's proposals to 
have the Federal Government abandon Medicaid; and I have talked about 
that swindle, and we must stop that.
  Welfare reform must be revisited and made more humane by providing 
more in cash payments for children. They should also provide money to 
allow any head of a welfare family to go to school for at least 2 years 
of college and be able to qualify for these jobs that are available 
like nurses' jobs or experts in cleaning up of anthrax.
  Point 10, a coordination and calibration of the services provided to 
families under title XX with the goals of assisting low-income youth 
who are in the No Child Left Behind schools must be appropriately 
funded.
  There are many other points that I do not care to go into. I want to 
conclude by saying there was a time when we had Draconian cuts proposed 
for education shortly after the Republican majority took over, and I 
opposed those cuts at that time by reciting a little poem called ``The 
Nation Needs Your Lunch.'' They were proposing cuts in lunch programs 
in order to cut and save the budget. The Nation needs your lunch. Kids 
of America, there is a fiscal crunch. This regulation now needs your 
lunch. Things are becoming that absurd. We are cutting out vitally 
needed programs. Head Start is going to be cut. We are cutting vitally 
needed health programs for children, et cetera. We are a great Nation 
and we can do better than that.
  I want to end with a new poem, a new rap poem which I think is very 
relevant:

     Stop the war!
     We need the cash!
     Tank battles escalate!
     Into nuclear ash.
     Stop the war!
     We need the cash!
     Give Medicaid families
     All of Rumsfeld's stash.
     Throw the body bags
     Into the trash.
     Stop the war!
     Welfare mothers
     Rush to cry,
     Soldiers from the ranks of
     The poor will be the first to die.
     Stop the war!
     Dragging democracy to its knees
     With friendly fire
     Camouflaged by orange alert excitement
     Ashcroft decrees
     The Constitution's indictment.
     Silent objectors will be spared,
     Enemy combatants
     All demonstrators have been declared.
     Stop the war!
     We need the cash!
     Vietnam had
     Profound lessons to teach;
     Empires fall
     When they overreach.
     Stop the war!

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