[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 23302-23308]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    WORKING-CLASS FAMILIES BETRAYED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gohmert). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk about the betrayal of 
working-class families and the people on the bottom who need the safety 
net most. In this year of disaster, in this time of disaster, the 
people who need the help the most and who are the weakest in our 
society have been betrayed by the leadership.
  Involved in this matter is the recent set of decisions made by the 
President to suspend Davis-Bacon in Louisiana where on the gulf coast 
we have a tremendous amount of construction work going on, 
opportunities for jobs to be created for those people who have been 
thrown out of work and have no income, no homes, no reasonable future. 
It is an opportunity for them to be employed. And yet interference by 
the White House has cut the wages there by suspending Davis-Bacon. And 
I will explain more about Davis-Bacon in a few minutes.
  They have also suspended any Federal regulations on affirmative 
action. And that, of course, will hit hard because evacuees, the people 
who had to leave New Orleans and who are expecting to come back, 60 
percent of them were African Americans; and their opportunities to get 
those jobs that are

[[Page 23303]]

going to be created in the process of rebuilding the reconstruction are 
lessened by the fact that the contractors are not required to follow 
Federal regulations and affirmative action.
  Those are just two of the things I would like to discuss. There is a 
broader range of issues related to leadership, competency in 
leadership, preparedness in terms of the huge amount of money we have 
invested in our armed services and our military apparatus and why we 
cannot have the dual preparation of the same body of people who are 
prepared to fight wars also be trained to take care of natural 
disasters of any kind.
  However, before I commence to discuss this betrayal of the people on 
the bottom, people from working families by our leadership, I would 
like to yield to the gentleman from Detroit, Michigan (Mr. Conyers), 
who has a set of items that he would like to discuss on his own.
  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from New York 
(Mr. Owens) for his discussion, a very important one that I am very 
pleased to associate myself with.
  I rise to use this part of the Special Order to discuss the health 
care crisis in America, the uninsured, and the need for universal 
health care. It strikes me as unacceptable that America remains the 
only country among the developed nations that still does not have a 
universal health care system. It is time for this body, the Congress, 
to pass a universal health care bill now.
  The biggest problem in this country is that our health care is run 
like a business; and the profits of private health insurance companies, 
health maintenance organizations, and pharmaceutical companies are more 
important than whether or not working families and senior citizens and 
small businesses in this country and their employees have access to 
affordable and high-quality health care.
  So I rise to discuss this serious health care crisis and the fact 
that it can no longer be ignored. It is my belief that the time has 
come now for bold and decisive leadership by the Congress to address 
the growing crisis of the uninsured, the skyrocketing costs of private 
health insurance which is hurting working families, and non-working 
families all over this country.
  How many more horror stories must we read in the newspapers across 
the country, day after day, that painfully describe the plight of the 
uninsured and the underinsured before we act to pass universal health 
care legislation that guarantees once and for all that all of us, all 
Americans, regardless of income, employment, regional demographics, or 
race have access to the highest quality health care possible.

                              {time}  1515

  Recently, in The New York Times, op-ed writers are reminding us and 
calling for national health insurance that covers everybody, everybody 
in, nobody out, as the best way to solve the crisis of the uninsured. 
In an October 17 New York time op-ed, which highlighted the plight of 
uninsured workers in America, that article pointed out that 9,000 Wal-
Mart workers needed public insurance in Wisconsin alone. And the op-ed 
concluded with the notion that the problem of uninsured cries out for a 
Federal solution and that Washington lawmakers have done nothing to 
solve the larger problem, the crying need for national health 
insurance.
  Polls reveal that the majority of the American people support the 
concept of universal health care. The majority of American people 
support universal health care, yet we have failed to pass health care 
legislation. According to a recent Kaiser Foundation poll, 64 percent 
of Americans favor expanding Medicare to all Americans. A Pew Research 
Center for the People and the Press survey was conducted by Princeton 
Survey Research Associates on July 14 through August 5 of 2003 
nationwide. And cities across the country, Boston, Pittsburgh, New 
York, and Detroit, have sponsored universal health care hearings where 
hundreds of citizens are demanding from their Members of Congress that 
they fight for passage of universal health care legislation because 
they are tired of the high cost of private health insurance, and being 
uninsured, sick, or broke due to our profit health care system is no 
longer something that they can deal with.
  So on behalf of the 49 other Members of the House of Representatives, 
the gentleman from New York included, I am proud to say, we are happy 
to propose and set forth for examination and discussion House 
Resolution 676 that supports the idea and how we get to a national 
universal health insurance that allows everyone to be covered no matter 
where they are from, no matter what their illness. We want to put an 
end to a system which really is so threadbare that we cannot fix it up 
any more. There is no more mending that we can do. There are no more 
ways we can patch it up.
  We have now come to the point in time where not only the people but a 
number of our friends in the labor movement are supporting universal 
health care. Twelve international labor unions and individual local 
unions across the country now support single-payer universal health 
insurance. This includes the United Automobile Workers, the American 
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the United 
Steelworkers of America, Service Employees International Union, SCIU, 
and the National Education Association.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I would just 
like to note that on today's front page of The New York Times, today, 
Thursday, October 20, there is an article which talks about, and the 
gentleman mentioned patching up, we should no longer try to patch up 
the system. There is an article which says that Jeb Bush, the 
President's brother, who is the Governor of Florida, has been given a 
waiver to revamp the Florida health care system, the Medicaid system.
  The essence of what Jeb Bush is proposing is that they will establish 
a certain amount of money to be spent on each Medicaid patient, and 
when that runs out, that is it. They die. By implication, they will 
spend that amount of money on the health care of that person and when 
that amount of money runs out, then they are on their own. And if it is 
some procedure, of course, which they cannot afford, they would have 
died.
  Would the gentleman care to comment on that?
  Mr. CONYERS. Well, it is this cold-blooded bottom-line economic 
business approach to health care that makes us rank number 37 among the 
nations in the world when they examine how this health care is being 
delivered. The fact of the matter is that you cannot ration health care 
if you want a strong nation.
  If you really need to go to the doctor, if you really need treatment 
now before it becomes worse or uncorrectable or fatal, as the gentleman 
suggests, we cannot send out an arbitrary amount of money because we 
are doing other things in the world or we are building new weapons of 
mass destruction or we are doing anything else. We have to have a 
health insurance system that is flexible to the needs of the people.
  And one of the first things that we would come to, I say to the 
gentleman, is that we are catching up to people who have needed ample 
health care for a long time. One of the great things about health 
insurance, at least our program, is that health insurance would be 
working in a preventive mode; that when you get sick and get well, you 
will then be treated and you will come back for annual checkups and you 
will actually reduce the cost of providing the American citizens with 
health care.
  So it is incredibly important that this debate start here and now. 
And I have been told that other Members of the Congress were talking 
about this subject today, so I will be anxiously reviewing their 
comments so that we can continue a broad discussion of this matter.
  Right now there are 45.8 million people with no insurance. They are 
not underinsured, they have none whatsoever. And then there are any 
number of million who have insurance but they are underinsured. They do 
not know that what they may go to see their doctor about is not covered 
in their plan until they find out the hard way.

[[Page 23304]]

  So I want everyone in our body to know that this is the beginning of 
a discussion that I am prepared to deal with on every issue, every 
aspect, because we want to make it clear that this is not just 
something for some group of people. This is going to benefit our 
economy. Goodness knows General Motors and Ford and Daimler Chrysler in 
Detroit all are struggling with the legacy costs that they have to 
carry because we have an employer-based system. And many of our 
automotive competitors have national health insurance systems, so they 
do not have to carry those additional costs.
  So this is the beginning of a discussion that we will welcome as many 
as would join in as we sort these issues out and move toward the time 
when America will enjoy a universal health coverage system that cares 
for everybody in this country, from shore to shore. And I want to thank 
the gentleman for participating in this discussion, and I yield back to 
him.
  Mr. OWENS. I thank the gentleman and would like to say that the 
remarks I am going to continue making are very much in concert with the 
general theme of what the gentleman has said.
  Every American, every human being, certainly every American citizen 
deserves to have the entire society involved and engaged in trying to 
guarantee that they get the best health care possible. There can be no 
second class, bargain basement health care.
  Our leaders have failed us by making us believe that it is 
impossible, and these proposals that are being made today on the front 
page of The New York Times about Jeb Bush in the State of Florida are 
just beginning, but Kentucky is in line and a couple of other States 
want to do the same thing, which is to put a price on health care. You 
get $1,000 a year for your medication, for your examination, or for 
whatever, and after that you are on your own. Now, the $1,000 is 
hypothetical. They do not quote a figure. But they are saying there 
should be a figure for each individual, and after you run out of money 
in your account you are on your own, that the State will only go so far 
and that is it.
  I think that is cruel and unnecessary. We are the richest Nation that 
ever existed in the history of the world. If Canada, Germany, Spain, 
France, and all kinds of nations can have a decent health care system 
with a volume of income much less than that of the United States, we 
certainly can afford to provide health care for every individual.
  The attitude regarding people on the bottom is what I am talking 
about. The attitude about the folks left in New Orleans to float and 
drown in the water, that attitude, and I know some people are saying we 
are beating that to death and let us get off of it, but it is so 
symbolic. It was visual. You could see it. When a set of leaders and a 
Nation decides that people are expendable, that they are not worth it 
anymore, they are not important, you can lead to that kind of cruel and 
inhuman neglect.
  Too much of that mindset of cruel and inhuman neglect permeates the 
present administration. It manifests itself in so many different ways. 
Not that it is only this administration. There are other parts of the 
world where you have cruel and inhuman treatment by leaders also. 
Pakistan now has a serious problem with an earthquake. And I am going 
to try to limit my remarks because I want to go to a meeting with the 
ambassador from Pakistan to talk about what we can do to help deal with 
the suffering that is going on there. But one of their big worries in 
Pakistan, the worries of ordinary people, is that their leaders are so 
corrupt that they will never get the money that is being donated. It 
will not be used properly. They will never buy the medicines or buy the 
cots and the equipment. Large parts of it will be drained off.
  The great fear there is corruption. And, of course, Third World 
countries, developing countries have a major problem with corruption. 
We talk about it here in the United States all the time. We talk about 
denying the World Bank resources to certain nations because of the fact 
that they have corrupt governments, corrupt leaders. But the corruption 
goes on here also. In Katrina we have a graphic example of how that 
corruption can be cruel and inhuman and get out of hand.
  Just two quick actions by the White House show the point that I am 
trying to drive home. They failed to properly provide for the people of 
New Orleans, and large numbers have suffered needlessly. Large numbers 
have died needlessly. Large numbers were trapped in a situation which 
was quite inhuman. They were in a dome, a huge dome, a sports dome with 
20,000, 30,000 people. Imagine being in a convention center, a huge 
convention center and to have the lights out for two or three nights. 
Remember, it is summertime and it is smoldering in the heat, plus the 
darkness. The fact that those people did not go mad, that more of them 
just did not go out of their minds is a miracle unto itself. They all 
deserve to be awarded medals as heroes. Anybody who could come out of 
there and just keep their sanity deserves to be saluted as a hero.
  And if you doubt that, why not experiment at the next basketball game 
we go to. Ask the managers and those in charge of the arena to turn off 
the lights for 2 or 3 minutes and have a moment of silence to meditate 
on what it would feel like if you were in the dark with people you do 
not know, in large numbers, for a whole night, say for three or four 
nights. What would it feel like? I think we ought to experiment with 
that and let Americans across the country have the lights turned off at 
the next basketball game and just sit there. Of course, they would know 
there is no flood outside, that nature is not running wild, but that 
you are just in the dark. You are in the dark with strangers for 2 or 3 
minutes. Now try to project that on spending two or three nights in the 
dark like that.
  Those people, the fact they did not lose their minds shows that they 
were quite strong and deserve to be awarded medals and not be looked 
upon as some people have chosen now already to look upon them; that 
they are now problems; that they are unworthy; that they should have 
known how to get out of the city and out of the flood on their own.

                              {time}  1530

  They are now a burden on the government because they have nowhere to 
go. They have been housed in shelters, and now we need to find trailers 
and shelter for them.
  Our leaders let them down because the flood should never have 
happened in New Orleans. The flood was not a natural disaster. The 
hurricane was over when the levees broke. The fact that those levees 
had not been taken care of is just one more example of how the 
leadership of this Nation, people on the top, are corrupted where they 
do not deal with problems as they should, and therefore they make the 
people on the bottom suffer unnecessarily.
  As I have said on several occasions, the Netherlands, the Dutch, are 
a whole nation below sea level. As a nation, they have been contending 
with the same problem New Orleans has. They know how to hold the sea 
back; they know how to manage floods. They know how to deal with water. 
They have never been called upon to revamp the levees and deal with the 
situation in New Orleans.
  It would have been easy to get that kind of expertise. If you cared 
about the people of Louisiana, they could have solved the problem. The 
technology and the know-how is there. They had scenarios in New Orleans 
which showed that terrible things would happen if the problem was not 
taken care of. Nevertheless, our leadership refused to appropriate the 
money. Our leadership refused to allow the engineers to deal with the 
problem or come up with people competent to deal with it. Or they could 
have called upon the Netherlands to provide experts. That is one 
solution. We lean on other nations when we need their technology in 
other areas, so why not call upon the people of the Netherlands to help 
New Orleans protect itself from the sea.
  But getting back to the most outrageous actions by the White House, 
once we have gone through the problem of failing to protect the people 
of New Orleans from the flood, failing to protect a large portion of 
the population

[[Page 23305]]

from unnecessary suffering and in some cases death, senior citizens 
dying in large numbers in hospitals and nursing homes, we have all 
heard the litany of personal disasters and family disasters that were 
suffered as a result of our failed leadership.
  The Congress of the United States appropriates. It stands up and 
shows it is up to the task. It does not hesitate. It appropriates $60 
billion to deal with the problem right away. We are into removing the 
rubbish, cleaning up the problem of the floods, providing the necessary 
temporary shelters, and preparing to reconstruct. All of that will 
require money and we are spending the money. It requires the money to 
be utilized to hire contractors. We have hired the contractors. The 
private sector will make some profits. That is the way it is in 
capitalism. We do not want to see anybody gouging and making 
unnecessary profits, but they probably will. That is a fact of the way 
the world operates.
  In the meantime, work that has to be done, that work should be done 
by the people who need to earn an income rebuilding the place destroyed 
because of the failure of our leadership. But they get right away a 
terrible blow from the White House. Right away the White House acts 
with great speed, and we know there was no great speed with respect to 
meeting the rescue needs of the people of New Orleans; but in the 
process of granting contracts and beginning the cleanup and the 
restoration, the White House orders that Davis-Bacon should be 
suspended. Davis-Bacon is a regulation in existence since 1933, which 
requires whenever Federal money is utilized in any project, that 
project must pay wages to the people who are carrying out that task, 
pay wages which are consistent with the wages of that area.
  If you are in New Orleans, whatever they used to pay plumbers in New 
Orleans, pay the plumber that amount. Whatever they pay the 
electricians, the bricklayers, in the process of cleaning up and 
restoring, they should pay the same wages.
  Having looked at the amounts, they were not high at all compared to 
average wages across the country. Electricians, bricklayers, plumbers, 
everybody in New Orleans is at the lower end of the scale in terms of 
prevailing wages. The average wage for most people in construction jobs 
is higher in the rest of the country than it is in the southern part of 
the country and in New Orleans.
  So why the President rushed to remove Davis-Bacon cannot be explained 
rationally because they already had a situation where wages were very 
low. But once you remove the requirement of Davis-Bacon, then 
contractors can pay less than prevailing wages. If the wages are low 
already, where are you going to find people who will work for less than 
they do in the average situation across the country.
  You find them among illegal immigrants; you find them among people 
who must have a job and cannot complain if the working and safety 
conditions are bad. You find them among people who are frightened, can 
be pushed around, not paid when they are supposed to be paid, and 
jilted out of part of their paycheck. People who will never have any 
vacation leave or fringe benefits, any health care. That is what the 
contractors will find once Davis-Bacon is removed, you do not have to 
pay prevailing wages; you can go under that scale and get the cheapest 
people and make the biggest possible profit off the misery of people 
who suffered in this natural disaster.
  President Bush and key cabinet members were all excruciatingly slow 
in responding to Hurricane Katrina and its devastating effects. The 
televised images of thousands of African Americans marooned without 
food or water in the New Orleans Convention Center and Superdome 
shocked the world, yet the President was slow to return to Washington, 
D.C. and was slow to respond to take charge in response to the 
disaster.
  The one fast action taken by President Bush was when he moved to 
suspend Davis-Bacon. In other words, the President acted as speedily as 
possible to cut workers' wages on all federally funded recovery and 
reconstruction projects throughout the gulf coast States. The President 
himself said in New Orleans that rebuilding the city of New Orleans 
alone will constitute the biggest reconstruction project in the history 
of the Nation. It will cost many billions of dollars. Congress has 
already appropriated some $60 billion towards this end.
  And in the corrupt tradition exploited by the Bush administration 
already in the Iraq war, the President then proceeded to no-bid and 
cost-plus contracts for billions of dollars, and they have been granted 
to a favorite set of contractors, which includes Vice President 
Cheney's former employer, Halliburton, and its branch subsidiaries such 
as Kellogg, Brown & Root. Halliburton has not been told to watch its 
spending carefully or restrain its profiteering because in a cost-plus 
contract, it is designed to give the contractor every leeway and 
maximizes opportunities for making extraordinary profits.
  But the Bush administration, hiding behind a fig leaf, asserts they 
had to suspend Davis-Bacon, which provides a modicum of protection for 
workers on these Federal projects. They said they had to suspend it 
because it requires paperwork and that will cost the contractor money 
and waste time. But the people on the bottom, the people cleaning up 
the rubbish and the hard carriers and the bricklayers and those folks, 
their income and protection for them, the provision of decent wages for 
them was of no concern.
  Now the prevailing wages in the Hurricane Katrina-affected regions 
are lower than ever before. They were never that high by national 
standards. Under Davis-Bacon, a pipe layer in Mississippi would earn 
$7.45 an hour. I cannot imagine, given what a pipe layer earns in New 
York City, how you could find anybody to do that job for $7.45. A pipe 
layer in Alabama would earn $8.21 an hour. A pipe layer in Louisiana 
would earn $9.84. All of those are very low wages for those jobs if you 
know anything about plumbing and the high cost of it across the Nation.
  Such wage rates are hardly earth-shattering by anyone's standards; 
but under the Bush plan, skilled workers, many of whom lost their homes 
and all their belongings in Hurricane Katrina, will only be paid the 
Federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. We hope that they will be paid 
the Federal minimum wage, because as I said before, the only workers 
that you are going to get to work for such low salaries are usually 
illegal immigrants, people who cannot fight back, who cannot report you 
when you fail to live up to the requirements of the wage and hour act, 
and who are at your mercy. That is the pattern where we are finding 
large numbers of illegal immigrants are being used.
  The question of illegal immigrants is certainly one that I do not 
want to be recorded as being backwards and not sympathetic on. I favor 
what was proposed by the AFL-CIO last year. Let us look at all of the 
immigrants who are in the country now who are undocumented and who have 
been here for a while, who pay their taxes and are working, and through 
an amnesty create a situation where they may begin the process of 
becoming citizens. They can then begin the process to become citizens. 
They can join unions or associations. Or if they want to stand as an 
individual, they know they have rights and cannot be intimidated or 
cowed by an employer. They will help to raise the standards by working 
for decent wages, wages consistent with the cost of living in this 
country.
  I do not like the exploitation of illegal immigrants. I do not blame 
the illegal immigrants for being exploited, and we can get out of this 
situation and allow them the opportunity to work without being 
exploited if we will act on amnesty as soon as possible.
  As we have discussed at length on this side of the aisle, certainly 
with Democrats' policies, the Federal minimum wage also at present will 
not allow anyone to climb out of poverty. That $5.15 an hour, assuming 
that the contractors will at least pay that and that they will not go 
below the national minimum wage, that Federal wage will not allow 
anyone to climb out of poverty.

[[Page 23306]]

  A person working full time year-round at the rate of $5.15 an hour 
will merely earn $10,400 a year. If that is a parent with two children, 
he or she will earn $4,500 below the poverty line designated for a 
family of four. This suspension of Davis-Bacon protections, especially 
for those who have lost everything in the wake of Katrina, is an utter 
disgrace.
  The White House is not through with the people on the bottom. They 
are not through with working families. They decided to go further; and 
through the Department of Labor, they also suspended the affirmative 
action guidelines. The affirmative action requirements are quite 
simple. They do not have much enforcement mechanism in terms of making 
employers or contractors hire a diverse group of workers. They do 
require that they report what efforts they make toward diversity.
  There are a few pieces of papers that say in the process of hiring 
people, you should take certain steps. But even that, the Bush 
administration decided that should be thrown overboard. And as I 
mentioned earlier, in the process of doing that, large numbers of 
people who lived in New Orleans, 60 percent of whom were African 
American, were denied priority in seeking the jobs that would allow 
them to return and start rebuilding their lives since they, as 
minorities, would have had to have some consideration made by the 
contractors; they would have a greater possibility of getting a job if 
they returned to New Orleans and tried to work there.

                              {time}  1545

  The message that was sent by that affirmative action suspension was 
do not come home. Go somewhere else and look for a job because you do 
not even have the protection of the simple weak affirmative action laws 
of the Federal Government that we had before. It was a message that 
sets up a situation which I hope is not true. Many of us, a lot of 
people, fear that we may have what was called in the 1960s Negro 
removal on a massive scale and that New Orleans will never be the same. 
The black population, the African American population, will never be 
allowed to return to New Orleans. They are spread throughout the whole 
Nation now in shelters. Most soon will be out of shelters, but they 
will not be in one place anywhere. There are 2,500 in New York City. I 
think another 2,500 are coming in to be put up in hotels and various 
places. There are some in Utah, some in Idaho, lots in Texas. All over 
they are spread. They have been removed.
  During the 1960s, there were accusations that the big developers, the 
people who wanted to make a lot of money in the middle of the cities 
would come in with plans to redevelop the city, and the oldest parts of 
the city, although they were centrally located, would be the poorest 
parts in terms of buildings, so they would have tenants in them who 
were very poor tenants. In many cases in many cities, these people were 
people who were minorities, and the process of removing them made great 
profits for the developers. If they got them out, the new buildings 
that they built would not be for them. It would be for people with high 
incomes who could afford the kind of higher priced housing that was 
being built.
  Here we have a situation where an act of nature is the beginning of 
the process. I said the flood in New Orleans was not caused by nature, 
by the hurricane. It was caused by poor leadership which had not 
maintained the levees and the dikes and the pumping stations, and that 
is the problem there. But, anyway, by that act we have had massive 
removal of people and now with the policies of this administration 
suspending Davis-Bacon, suspending affirmative action, making it clear 
that people are not welcome back, we will have permanent removal of a 
whole population.
  Unprecedented in the history of the Nation. Of about 400,000 people, 
at least 200,000 of those people lived in the section that was heavily 
flooded. They will be there no more. It will change the politics of New 
Orleans. It will change the culture of New Orleans. Some people say, 
well, Disney can move in and they do not want to rebuild houses in the 
places that were flooded before because there may be another flood, but 
if they built an amusement park and they built it high up off the 
ground, it would not matter if it was flooded or not. And some folks 
said that is probably what is going to happen, that Disney will come in 
and try to take over.
  Well, Disney did not come in and try to take over. The Mayor of New 
Orleans announced that we have got to move our casinos off the river 
and move them inland. Where are they going to put the casinos? I guess 
they were going put them in the same places where the poor people lived 
before. It would not be Disney, but it would be ``casinoland.''
  So it is not exaggerating to talk about massive Negro removal, black 
removal, African American removal, massive removal of a population that 
was considered undesirable in order to give the marketplace the 
opportunity to really make tremendous profits.
  One can imagine how the ancient Israelites felt when the Romans 
decided to do one of the most brutal and cruel things ever done. That 
is, they took the whole nation and moved them out, spread them out over 
the world, and there were 12 tribes. They broke it up into 12 tribes 
and moved them off their homeland, massive removal. We have something 
similar to that taking place in New Orleans. A whole mass of people is 
now in a situation spread out over the entire United States and not 
ever likely to be back in their home unless we have different policies 
by a different kind of leadership.
  I want to yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Watson) for 
her comments.
  I want to point out, while she is taking the mike, that we had a 
massive earthquake in California during the Clinton administration. 
Nine billion dollars was appropriated by the Federal Government to 
rebuild the bridges and the highways that were destroyed by that 
earthquake. The President did not suspend Davis-Bacon. He did not 
suspend affirmative action, and the contractors completed that job 3 
months ahead of time. We do not need to do those cruel things that have 
been done by this administration in order to guarantee that we are 
going to have the most effective production.
  I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Watson).
  Ms. WATSON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Owens) for yielding to me.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to address the health care crisis in 
America that relates to the presentation that the gentleman from New 
York (Mr. Owens) is giving now.
  The United States Census Bureau reports that in 2004, 45.8 million 
people were without health insurance coverage and several estimates 
double that amount to include the underinsured. Moreover, the 
percentage of people covered by employer-based insurance declined to 
59.8 percent of the workforce. Shamefully, there are over 8 million 
uninsured children in this country who do not even have the opportunity 
for employer-based coverage.
  On the other hand, health insurance premiums have increased 
astronomically since the beginning of the Bush administration. 
According to Families USA, workers' costs for health insurance have 
risen by 36 percent since the year 2000, far surpassing the miniscule 
12.4 percent increase in earnings since the President took office. In 
2005 it is unbelievable that over 50 percent of insured Americans spent 
more than 10 percent of their income on health care. Over 10 million 
insured Americans spent more than 25 percent of their income on health 
care. And embarrassingly, over 6 million Americans spent more than 33 
percent of their income on health care.
  According to the World Health Organization, the United States ranks 
37th in the world in overall health care quality. Thirty-seventh. This 
administration and this Congress must pay attention to the health of 
our Nation in order to improve on the wealth of our Nation. And when we 
talk about homeland security, we are not talking about the land alone. 
We are talking about the people who live in this land. Rising health 
care costs are forcing American

[[Page 23307]]

businesses to lose their competitive edge and to consider relocating 
overseas. It is time for Congress to pass universal health care 
legislation now.
  American humanitarian outreach dictates that we consider health care 
programs around the world. According to the Institute of Medicine, 
18,000 Americans die each year because of being uninsured. America is 
the only country among developed nations that still does not have 
universal health care.
  In a related matter, minority groups often encounter major obstacles 
in obtaining health care. Minority groups are less likely to have 
health insurance and are less likely to receive appropriate health care 
services. In the year 2004, the uninsured rate was 19.7 percent for 
African Americans, 32.7 percent for Hispanics, and 11.3 percent for 
non-Hispanic whites.
  The ``Healthcare Equality and Accountability Act of 2005'' would go 
far in lifting the shadow of health disparities that fall not only on 
minority communities but on all Americans. H.R. 3561, sponsored by the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Honda), would make quality health care 
more affordable, providing coverage for parents and young adults who 
are currently uninsured.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to act 
in a responsible way, to look seriously at health care reform, and we 
must, for our own prosperity, insure all Americans and ensure quality 
health care for all of us.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentlewoman 
from California for her comments.
  The broad, overarching message today is the betrayal. We are 
protesting the betrayal of working families and poor people on the 
bottom by our leadership, and the health care crisis that was cited by 
the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) and the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Watson) is part of that whole process. I want to thank 
the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) for sharing this Special 
Order that he had reserved for a discussion of health care with me in 
making the broader case that working families, people on the bottom, 
are being betrayed.
  At this very moment, as I said before, there is a meeting of the 
Pakistani Caucus of the House of Representatives to discuss the 
disaster in Pakistan, the earthquake there which killed more than 
40,000 people already and millions have been left homeless, and they 
are homeless in the mountainous region where the snow and the ice is 
now beginning; so millions will die as a result of not having the 
equipment and the materials that they need as fast as possible.
  One of the big fears there is that their leadership has let them down 
and they are not prepared for this. Another big problem, of course, is 
the rest of the world, nations like the United States of America, 
should rally to their defense and provide faster and more aid.
  But disasters, natural disasters, are not quite as frequent in most 
years as they are this year. We have another hurricane on the Florida 
coast right now. They seem to have gotten suddenly stronger, the 
hurricanes and storms, earthquakes, tsunamis. This has been a very 
disastrous year. As I said previously on this floor, these disasters 
are not so great that we do not have the capacity to deal with them as 
the world. Certainly this Nation could do so much more to help. If they 
really care about the people who are suffering, if our leadership 
really cared, these disasters can be handled rapidly with minimum loss 
of life. We have $500 billion we spend on our military apparatus. That 
is without adding the extra money to fight the war in Iraq. A military 
of that size should be capable of dealing with disasters of any kind as 
well as fighting wars. The same is true of the army in Pakistan.
  One of the things that some Pakistani citizens were complaining about 
was that army people arrived and were standing around doing nothing 
and, when they were questioned about why do they not help more, they 
said, We are waiting for our orders. They need specific orders how to 
help out in a disaster. They have been trained to aim, ready, fire, 
shoot and kill. Why can all the armies in the world not be trained to 
take care of these natural disasters as well as to provide defense for 
nations? Why can we not have leadership which ahead of time assumes 
that it is going to be our responsibility? It is the duty of a 
government, the duty of leadership, to take care of people in times of 
natural disasters. And our government apparatus in its entirety, 
including the military, should be available to do that.
  Certainly, that did not happen in New Orleans, and we are very much 
aware of what the consequences can be when we have this huge rich 
nation with all of these possibilities and all the material and 
personnel available but we have no leadership at the top that can do 
the job. Our leadership let us down.
  The gentlewoman from California, I said before she spoke, is from a 
State which suffered a huge earthquake a little more than 10 years ago, 
in 1994. The Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles caused a tremendous 
amount of damage. Congress appropriated money, and as I said before, 
there are some lessons to be learned from what happened in that 
disaster.

                              {time}  1600

  I am talking about a government in power, a regime in power, a White 
House leadership that seems to persecute those at the bottom at a time 
like this. Or, as this particular paper which is called: Lessons for 
Post Katrina Reconstruction, A high-road versus a low-road recovery, 
this paper talks about what happened in California at the time of the 
Northridge earthquake. It is written by Peter Philips and was published 
by the Economic Policy Institute.
  Foremost among those lessons is that competitive bidding and 
enforcement of labor standards such as the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage 
law can help ensure that work is done expeditiously, safely, cost 
effectively, and with maximum benefit to the local population. That is 
one of the lessons that this study points out that we learned at the 
time of that huge earthquake in California.
  President Bill Clinton refused to suspend the Davis-Bacon Act in 
1994, yet the Los Angeles highways were rebuilt at lightning speed. In 
particular, the Santa Monica Freeway was rebuilt in only 66 days, less 
than half the time that had been stipulated by the State of California.
  The need to rebuild quickly is no excuse for suspending the Davis-
Bacon Act or affirmative action requirements as President Bush has 
done. The lessons we have already learned are not being applied by this 
White House regime, because this White House regime governs for a few 
and cares very little about those on the very bottom. The few at the 
top are the preoccupation of the present administration, and that leads 
to great cruel and inhuman treatment to the people at the bottom.
  We had a resolution that we proposed in the House Education and 
Workforce Committee this morning. It was a resolution requesting that 
the President transmit to the House of Representatives information in 
his possession relating to contracts for services or construction 
relating to Hurricane Katrina recovery that relate to wages and 
benefits to be paid to workers. We want the President to explain why he 
suspended Davis-Bacon. One of the explanations that was given by people 
in the committee who supported the President was that it had been 
suspended before by other Presidents. President Roosevelt once 
suspended, I think it was for about 30 days that President Roosevelt 
suspended it on the conditions which are very different.
  We are requesting that the President transmit to the House this 
information. And of course we had a lengthy discussion in the 
committee, and then the majority Republicans took a vote that they 
would report it to the House only with a recommendation that the House 
consider it unfavorably, and they voted to do that. So the report comes 
to the House with a recommendation that the majority, the Republican 
majority, the President's

[[Page 23308]]

party considers the request that he provide information to Congress 
about why he suspended Davis-Bacon, they consider that report, that 
request to be a nuisance request.
  It is most unfortunate that we cannot have information, simple 
information provided to the Members of Congress. After all, we are all 
elected under the same conditions and we come here. We want to do a job 
for our constituency. Why can we not at least have information?
  We gather information from other sources. Immigrant workers exploited 
in the gulf coast are talking to newspapers. I have a report here which 
says that Gulfport, Mississippi you had a report from several immigrant 
workers that, first, of all, you have 32 immigrants housed in three 
mobile homes and they were being paid $8 an hour to tear sheet rock for 
10 hours a day. They were among hundreds of illegal immigrants who 
entered the United States hoping to find work in the aftermath of the 
hurricane. One of the big complaints that they have is that they were 
promised $8 an hour, but they were not paid. They were not paid on 
time. And they were not paid in some cases at all, and other conditions 
in terms of they were told that they would get food and shelter but the 
food is quite sparse and, as I said before, shelter means they are 
putting 32 immigrants in three mobile homes in one case. And on and on 
it goes with respect to the kinds of conditions that contractors are 
taking advantage of in the gulf coast reconstruction.
  Many of the same contractors in the gulf coast reconstruction are 
also the American contractors who operate in Iraq. In Iraq, they found 
that they could make high profits on the no-bid contracts, billions of 
dollars have been spent that we cannot even tell where it went. There 
is a $9 billion question around money that was appropriated to 
reconstruct, and nobody is even asking questions in this administration 
about where the money went. We know it is missing, but nobody wants to 
deal with a hearing or an investigation to tell us exactly where that 
money went. So they certainly have made a lot of money in Iraq, but 
even with the tremendous profits they were making the security question 
is such that they made less than they perhaps wanted to, less than they 
agreed, told them they should be making. So the same contractors have 
come back, and in the domestic situation of the gulf coast, of course, 
they do not have to pay for security. They do not have to worry about 
contractors being shot, bombs blowing up. So now they are poised to 
make all the money they could not make in Iraq in the gulf coast area 
by taking the contracts, hiring illegal immigrants at the lowest 
possible rates, and making off with the taxpayers' money.
  One of the side products of this process is that experience has shown 
and several studies have shown that when you do not use Davis-Bacon you 
get workers who are less skilled, you get workers who care less about 
what they are doing, and you get an inferior product. Buildings have 
collapsed that have been built by workers who were not workers who were 
Davis-Bacon workers because they were not the usual workers that did 
that kind of construction in that locale. Buildings have collapsed and 
all kinds of projects have suffered as a result of shoddy work done by 
people who were being exploited by the contractors.
  We would like to see not only Davis-Bacon, the President should 
restore Davis-Bacon requirements so that we have prevailing wages 
throughout the gulf coast region. We would also like to see that the 
President say that: Look, even when you have Davis-Bacon, you have low 
wages which are very difficult for people to live on, and beyond that 
you have a minimum wage which is the Federal Government's minimum wage 
which is also almost impossible for people to live on.
  So along with restoring Davis-Bacon, along with restoring affirmative 
action regulations, we would like to see the President allow us and 
encourage his party to let us bring to the floor of the House the 
proposal that we have to increase the minimum wage. We want to increase 
the minimum wage as a way of demonstrating to the people who are on the 
bottom, to the working families of America that they have a leadership 
that cares about them. This leadership does not hesitate to demand that 
the sons and daughters of working families leave their last full 
measure of devotion on the battlefields in Afghanistan, in Iraq, or 
wherever else they may be needed.
  Next, we demand that they do that, and they are doing that, and yet 
we do not want to give them a piece of our prosperity in our economy, 
not even $5.15 an hour worth.
  Despite huge improvements in the average educational level of our 
workforce, most American workers today still do not have jobs that pay 
decent wages and provide health care as we were talking about before 
and a pension. Only 25.2 percent of American workers have a job that 
pays at least $16 per hour and provides health insurance and a pension, 
according to a new study done by the Center for Economic and Policy 
Research. That is the level. $16 an hour is the level you need in order 
to have a decent wage, and you must have that accompanied by a health 
insurance benefits program and a pension if you want to be called a 
person of sharing in the American economy as would be appropriate.
  So I close with my opening statement: We need leadership at the top, 
in the White House, in this Congress that cares about working families, 
leadership that cares about the people at the bottom. Disasters come as 
a result of a plan by God that none of us may understand, and we should 
not trying to spend time trying to figure out what God is doing. What 
we should do is do what man does best, and that is have the most 
competent and most caring and compassionate people that we can in the 
leadership to take care of the needs of the people who are suffering on 
the bottom.

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