[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 22556-22563]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      SOCIALIST VERSUS PROGRESSIVE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I very much appreciate you recognizing me to 
address the House of Representatives and you today. As we near the 
close of this week and I listened to the emphatic presentation of the 
gentleman from New York and the more low-key, but I think equal 
conviction, presentation of the gentleman from Minnesota, it caught my 
ear that the gentleman from New York gave us a definition of socialism. 
He said, Socialism is when the government controls the means of 
production. I'm going to tell you that I believe that is a closer 
definition to communism than it is socialism.
  Yet, I think the people who are the self-professed socialists in this 
country know who they are, and I think we should know who they are. 
They are the members of the Democratic Socialists of America. The Web 
site dsausa.org is the central source, the most important and 
influential source of socialist thinking in America.
  They write in there--and I have a whole series of documents since the 
gentleman made the statement about what socialists are. I have spent a 
little time probing around in this Web site location. And I find out 
some things in there that I think the public should know, Mr. Speaker.
  It tells about the organization. It says that, We are socialists 
because we reject an international economic order sustained by private 
profit. Socialists reject private profit. Now that didn't seem to be 
what I heard the gentleman from New York say.
  They also reject alienated labor, race and gender discrimination, 
which certainly I also reject, environmental destruction and brutality 
and violence in defense of the status quo. We are socialists because we 
share a vision of a humane international social order based both on 
democratic planning and market mechanisms to achieve equitable 
distribution of resources, meaningful work, and a healthy environment, 
sustainable growth, gender and racial equality and non-oppressive 
relationships, like having to work ``for the man.''
  These socialists have a difference. On the Web site dsausa.org, there 
is a link that opens up and it says--first, it leads with, We are not 
Communists. Now I have always been very suspicious of any group that 
would start out with: I'm not a Communist. But the Democratic 
Socialists of America, that's how they start it.
  They say, We're not Communists. Communists want to control 
everything. They want to nationalize everything. They want to 
nationalize not only the major corporations, the industry refining 
industry, the automobile manufacturers, the banks, the insurance 
companies, the lending companies. The Communists want to do all that 
and they want to nationalize small business: the butcher, the baker, 
and the candlestick maker, to keep it simple, Mr. Speaker. That's 
communist by the definition of the socialists on dsausa.org Web site 
for the Democratic Socialists of America.
  They also contend on those Web site links that they are a political 
party and they do support candidates, but they just don't actively ask 
them to carry around with them the socialist label. You'll find at the 
Web site dsausa.org that the people who are their candidates are 
labeled themselves and by the socialist Web site as progressives. That 
would be the blue posters we saw within the last hour. The Progressive 
Caucus. And we wonder what progressives are.
  Well, they are socialists. They have a far bigger influence on this 
Congress than the public is aware. There are 75 members of the 
Progressive Caucus that are listed on their Web site.
  Now, there was a time that you could have gone to the socialist Web 
site and opened up the link and read down through the list of the 
members of the Progressive Caucus who are, every one of them a Democrat 
in this Congress, and every one is claimed by the socialists as being 
the legislative party and arm of their political activism.
  You cannot disconnect progressive and socialist. You can't give them 
a different definition. And if you wonder about the heritage and the 
genesis of progressives, their Web site was hosted by the socialists up 
until a few years ago. And when it became known publicly that the 
socialist Web site was actually managing the progressives' Web

[[Page 22557]]

site--and you can go down the list: Marxist, Leninist, Trotskyite, 
Maoist, Stalinist, Communist, Socialist, Progressive. You see where 
I've gone. It's less egregious to be a progressive than a socialist. So 
they took another step away.
  Socialists took a step away from communism because communism had a 
bad name. And they stepped away from it and they defined themselves 
differently and put it on their Web site. They said, Well, we're not 
communists because we don't want to do all these things. But they also 
say progressives are socialists. They're our people. And they used to 
host their Web site. Now the Progressive Caucus does their own Web 
site. But they advocate directly from the legislative agenda of the 
social Web site. Facts easy to find at dsausa.org.
  Now what does a socialist do that's different than a communist? 
That's the question. Communists want to nationalize everything. They 
want to control the means of all production. They want to nationalize 
the corporations because the corporations aren't running consistent 
with their belief. And they want to also nationalize the butcher, the 
baker, and the candlestick maker. Small business. That's communists.
  Socialists, right on their Web site, speaking presumably for the 
progressives as well, that they're anticorporate. They don't want to go 
nationalized to small business because they believe that small business 
can actually function okay without being repressive of the worker and 
can produce hair cuts and set up beer upon the bar and maybe hand you a 
sandwich out through the deli without them having to be involved as 
government in any means except to oppressively tax the profits that 
come. And then if you set up a sandwich store and it turns out to be a 
sandwich chain and it gets big enough, then they're going to want to 
nationalize it.
  That's what socialists do. They want to nationalize corporations, 
large corporations. And it's all in the Web site. It's not a mystery. 
We have to do our reading. Dsausa.org. That's the socialist Web site.
  When the gentleman from New York says, There's a difference; they're 
not socialists because they're not calling for controlling the means of 
production, well, I have to say, gentlemen, your names are on the list. 
I read it in the Web site. It's there. It exists. It's a matter of 
fact.
  When you're anti-free enterprise, that puts you in the camp of the 
people who are on the hard core left. It's a philosophy that's been 
rejected by Americans.
  By the way, you can also go to this Web site and read in here, 
dsausa.org, the people who advocate and support the progressives in 
this Congress and have not been repudiated by any progressive that I 
know of. You can also go to that Web site and you can see the agenda 
they have about nationalizing the major corporations in America. The 
nationalization of the Fortune 500 companies, for example, is written 
about on the Web site. They say, though, that they don't have to do it 
all at once, not in one fell swoop, that it can happen incrementally.
  So you have an active political party with 75 Members in the House of 
Representatives and one Member in the United States Senate, a self-
professed socialist, Senator Bernie Sanders, who are part of a movement 
to nationalize major corporations in America. And now we've elected the 
most liberal President in the history of the United States. And what 
has he done?
  He has in the term that he has had so far, and this is only 
September, he has nationalized three large investment banks: AIG, the 
largest insurance company in America; Fannie Mae; Freddie Mac; General 
Motors and Chrysler. Eight huge entities nationalized and now under the 
control of the White House.

                              {time}  1415

  And how did he do that, and how was it brought about, the economic 
crisis, the crisis that Rahm Emanuel said we should never let go to 
waste? The President and others utilized the crisis to nationalize the 
largest entities they could get their hands on.
  I recall looking at a picture of President Obama standing next to 
Hugo Chavez, and they asked what I thought. I said, well, my reflection 
is that there are two huge nationalizers here. Hugo Chavez has been 
nationalizing right and left in Venezuela, but in the previous 30 days, 
he had only nationalized a Cargill rice plant, a Minnesota proud, 
privately held company, and nationalized that rice plant down in 
Venezuela. He simply said, I don't like the way you are running your 
rice plant; I will run it. And they will decide what the production is 
and what the people get paid that work there, and what they are going 
to pay for the product, and they will take their margin out that goes 
in to run the Government of Venezuela.
  Well, what is going on with General Motors and Chrysler and Fannie 
Mae and Freddie Mac and AIG and the three large investment banks, what 
is different about that? You are paying back TARP funding. That is one 
thing. But you have the President of the United States involved in, or 
at least his direct appointees, involved in the day-to-day management, 
for example, of General Motors. The President fired the CEO of General 
Motors, don't forget. He hired his CEO of General Motors. He put in 
place all but two of the board members of General Motors. And then he 
appointed a car czar who didn't hold up to the standard, apparently, 
because he never made a car or sold a car. I suspect he had driven and 
ridden in them. But the car czar didn't quite meet the standard and so 
he appointed a new car czar.
  And the CEO of General Motors admitted he was on the phone with the 
car czar sometimes multiple times a day. That is not what you would 
call disinterested. I wish the President took as much interest in ACORN 
as he did in General Motors. If that would happen, maybe we could get 
the President to the position where he would have a public comment on 
ACORN, after we have watched this saga unfold from across the country.
  The films on ACORN have emerged in Baltimore; here in Washington, DC; 
Brooklyn, New York; San Bernardino, California; and then San Diego, 
California. The pattern that we have seen, people posing as a 
prostitute and as pimp walking into ACORN's headquarters in each of 
those five cities and proposing that ACORN help them set up a house of 
ill repute so they could funnel teenage girls, young girls into child 
prostitution. And what did the ACORN people do in each of those five 
cities? They helped facilitate this. They helped facilitate child 
prostitution, setting up a house of ill repute. It was a promotion of 
prostitution of children.
  The first film I saw that was in Baltimore, there were two women that 
were telling the young girl who was posing as a prostitute and the 
fella who was posing as a pimp how they could best circumvent the law 
in order to get it done, how they could best circumvent the tax laws, 
and how they could game the taxpayers, all under this process, telling 
them how they could qualify for the earned income tax credit. If you 
make $96,000 a year, just report $9,600 a year, then you will get the 
earned income tax credit, which is a check from the Federal Government 
out of the pocket of the working people in America into the pockets of 
somebody running a prostitution ring advocated by ACORN.
  And they told them, If you are going to have 13 prostitutes, you 
really should just claim three of them as dependents. And if you do 
that, then you can qualify for the child tax credit, which is a 
thousand dollars a year.
  So that counseling at ACORN that came about spontaneously after they 
rummaged around through their records to come up with the right kind of 
label for these young girl prostitutes and to call them performing 
artists, and that would fit, and you could game the Federal Government, 
circumvent, defy the law, break the law, and not only turn your house 
of prostitution into a profit center, but also be able to draw down 
funds from the Federal Government.
  These are some very effective people at taking our tax dollars, Mr. 
Speaker,

[[Page 22558]]

when it comes from them as a matter of instinct how you game the 
system, how you avoid taxes and cheat the government, and how you reach 
into the Federal coffers, the people's money, and draw that down for 
your own.
  What a corrupt demonstration was taking place in Baltimore and in the 
other cities. But in Baltimore, the women who were working in there, 
the two women that were working at ACORN that were telling the young 
girl posing as a prostitute how to bring in young girls, 14-year-old 
girls plus or minus a year, how to bring them in, how to get this done 
and how to game the system, these women, I don't know if they were 
mothers, the ones working for ACORN, but I could hear children playing 
in the background in the tape as if they were right behind the wall. 
The door was open behind them into presumably another office, and you 
could hear children playing in there.
  Could it be in the middle of raising children we have people who are 
advocating for child prostitution? Could it be that the children who 
were making the noise that we could overhear on the tape, could they 
have been the actual children of the women who were advocating child 
prostitution as representatives of ACORN? I suspect that is the most 
likely scenario, although I haven't confirmed it.
  That is the part that bothers me perhaps as much as anything else, 
that a worker for ACORN that could be a mother that had children within 
earshot could be advocating for child prostitution. And what would be 
the difference between bringing a girl in from El Salvador, bringing in 
a baker's dozen of girls from El Salvador illegally, put them up in a 
house of ill repute with money borrowed by the advocacy and the 
brokership of ACORN housing, we presume, to help fund and set up the 
capital base and loan that would be a business enterprise? And what 
happens when those kids that we could hear playing, what happens when 
they get to 13 or maybe 12 or 14? Do the ACORN workers just turn around 
and funnel them right into that house and put them to work?
  The lack of outrage on the part of my colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle, the people who have for years railed against child labor and 
have pushed so hard for child labor laws, 75 of them voted to continue 
funding to ACORN. Seventy-five Members of the House of Representatives 
voted to continue funding for ACORN even though the tapes in five 
cities confirm absolutely that there is a culture of that type of 
corruption, child prostitution, within the doors of ACORN.
  Who could imagine that out of 120 cities where ACORN has a presence, 
that they were able to do the sting operation on all of them that were 
helping to facilitate child prostitution or susceptible to doing that. 
I can't imagine that they went to 115 other locations and the people at 
ACORN said, Get out. I don't want to have anything to do with illegal 
behavior; and, by the way, I am going to call the police. We don't have 
any evidence that happened anywhere except Bertha Lewis told us that, 
who has consistently given us misinformation over the media airwaves. 
Mr. Speaker, I think America needs to know that she is the CEO, in 
effect, of ACORN, known formally as ACORN's chief organizer.
  We have a great big problem in this country, and the biggest part of 
this problem, in my view, that undermines our country the most is not 
the child prostitution component. That is the most repulsive, but the 
biggest problem is ACORN's involvement in corrupting our election 
process. They have, for election cycle after election cycle, been 
complicit in false or fraudulent voter registrations. They bragged that 
they had produced 1.3 million voter registrations in the last cycle. 
That is on a document that they are using to raise money to go down and 
protest Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County.
  The document that they are using as a fund-raiser says we registered 
1.3 million voters, and we need you to write us a check so we can 
continue to go in here and try to intimidate people who are standing up 
for the rule of law. That is how I would interpret it. They didn't 
produce 1.3 million registrations. On closer analysis, the number comes 
down to be less than half a million. But they did produce, by their own 
admission, over 400,000 fraudulent voter registration forms, false or 
fraudulent. To be more precise, voter registrations turned in.
  Now imagine, the integrity of our vote. The franchise that every 
voter has is predicated upon the integrity of the voter registration 
rolls. That's why we register voters. If we didn't care how many times 
people voted, we wouldn't register them. We would just say, Go ahead 
and go vote. If you think you are an adult, walk in there and do so as 
many times as you like. But we do care. One person, one vote, and that 
is all that can be allowed, and we can't allow the process to be 
corrupted and we can't allow people to vote in multiple jurisdictions. 
One person, one vote per election. That's why you have to declare your 
residence. That is why you have to register, and that is why we have to 
go through the voter registration rolls and verify that they are 
legitimate registrations.
  By the way, if you don't care about that, if you don't care about the 
integrity of the election process, you might be, Mr. Speaker, among 
those kind of people that would advocate for things like motor voter 
registration. Or if you go in and get a driver license's, they will say 
to you, Do you want to register to vote? That person might answer, No 
comprende. It happens thousands of times in America. People get a 
driver's license, whether or not that is legitimate, and they sign 
here, now you are registered to vote. That happens thousands of times 
in America. All they have to do is assent to that. Yes, there is a 
check box that asks if you are a citizen. But if they can't understand 
the language, how could they possibly know that they are checking the 
right box and that they are guilty of perjury if they put down the 
wrong information? We know this happens tens of thousands of times in 
America. I suspect the number is a lot larger.
  Why would an organization promote fraudulent voter registrations--I'm 
talking about ACORN--and why would they brag about it?
  I can only come to this conclusion: If you can corrupt the voter 
registration rolls so badly that they didn't have any value any more, 
then anybody could vote and the election process would be who can herd 
the most people through the most polls the most times, and that is kind 
of the logical progression of it.
  Who can imagine that with over 400,000 fraudulent registrations that 
we didn't have a fraudulent vote take place in America? ACORN would 
tell you that. Well, we may have gotten a little overzealous in our 
voter registrations, but we didn't have any fraudulent votes.
  Please. With 400,000, why did you spend millions of dollars to 
register voters if there was no advantage, if you didn't think that you 
could game the system?
  I will submit they benefit from confusion, especially in close 
elections, and I believe they benefit also from fraudulent votes. And 
when you have a fluid registration system, then you can have people on 
buses that go back and forth across State lines, jurisdictional lines, 
county lines, and vote multiple times. Once the ballot is cast, there 
isn't a means by which you can go back and prove it unless you have a 
video camera sitting in the polling place and you can show the full act 
of someone walking into the polling place and acknowledging their name 
and address, going in and voting, and seeing the same thing take place 
with the same face in another place. This is almost a perfect crime. In 
the means of trying to actually catch them, you really need 
confessions.
  As we went through the election process in the year 2000 when there 
were all kinds of allegations that were made, Mr. Speaker, I sat for 37 
days and drilled down into this and chased every rabbit trail I could 
find on the Internet. I was on the phone and I had a network of 
communications on my e-mail, and I found example after example of 
stealing elections. That happens to be the title of John Fund's book, 
who will be speaking in this Capitol shortly.

[[Page 22559]]

  I found example after example, 400,000 fraudulent voter registrations 
turned in by ACORN, and still we can't pass a law that requires the 
person that hands those registrations over to the voter registrar, and 
in my State it will be the county auditor, we can't require them to 
identify themselves so that at least when it turns out to be fraudulent 
you can go back and say, Well, that was Sally Smith or Joe Jones that 
did that, and here's their address and here's their identification 
document when they turned this in.

                              {time}  1430

  And it's because there has been a concerted effort to undermine the 
integrity of the ballot box. And it isn't every Democrat, but that's 
where the chorus comes from, that's where the arguments come from, 
that's where the push comes from.
  Now, that's not just Motor Voter that took place under Bill Clinton 
back in the nineties; we've got same-day registration taking place all 
across America in many, many States, including mine, same-day 
registration.
  My Governor, Governor Culver, was Secretary of State; and in the 
middle of an election when he was Secretary of State, he advised 
people, If you don't know what precinct you live in, if you didn't get 
around to voting or changing your registration if you moved, or if you 
just moved in, don't worry about that, go to a polling place wherever 
you can, find one and go in there and vote. And we'll just call it a 
provisional ballot if anybody calls you on it, and we'll sort those 
ballots out later.
  Can you imagine? We have 3 million Iowans, and I don't know the total 
of votes, perhaps 1.5 million, thousands of them went anywhere that was 
convenient and asked for a provisional ballot and cast it. And the 
ability to sort that all out and argue over the integrity of them, it 
overloaded our system.
  Now, I come from a State that is the first-in-the-nation caucus. We 
have the great privilege to have the first bite of the apple to make a 
recommendation to the rest of America on whom we would like to see 
nominated for each political party, Democrats and Republicans, first-
in-the-nation caucus. It's a high responsibility to maintain a high 
level of integrity. We were first-in-the-nation caucus, last in the 
Nation to certify the vote because our then-Secretary of State, now 
Governor, gave information to the voters all across the State that they 
could just go anywhere, further corrupting and confusing the system.
  Now, add this up; Motor Voter registers anybody that will agree when 
they're asked, Do you want to be registered to vote. Who's going to say 
no? Especially if you think you're in the country illegally, you don't 
want to say no--you might think it's a responsibility to assent to 
registration.
  So we've got Motor Voter registration, we've got same-day 
registration where somebody can just drive across the board into, name 
your State--Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin all come to mind--drive across 
the border, walk in, register to vote and vote on the spot. You don't 
have to prove residence to speak of. You maybe have to have somebody 
attest to who you are. There's a limit to the number of people that the 
bus driver can bring in and attest for, but it corrupts the process, 
Mr. Speaker.
  And so I'm watching this country, this country that I love, this 
country that I was raised from the standpoint of, Eat your cold mashed 
potatoes, there are people starving in China. You've been born in the 
greatest Nation in the world and you hit the jackpot because God chose 
to have you born here in the United States--and I'll say especially in 
Iowa, from my perspective--a Nation that had never lost a war, that 
stood proud, that stood for freedom, that had the blessing and the gift 
of the Founding Fathers and the Declaration and the Constitution and 
the rule of law and all the pillars of American exceptionalism.
  This great Nation that went through manifest destiny from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, settled a continent in the blink of a 
historical eye. And we did it founded upon the values that are in our 
Declaration and our Constitution and our values of faith and our work 
ethic, with these unlimited natural resources, low or no taxation, no 
regulation when Americans settled this continent.
  We built a culture and a civilization built on--I'll use the Superman 
term, ``Truth, justice and the American way,'' and now I am watching it 
corrupted in the electoral process by an organization like ACORN. Four 
hundred thousand fraudulent voter registrations turned in, and still 
they count them when they brag about how many they registered, they 
count the fraudulent ones too. It's like saying I made $2 million last 
year, but not bothering to mention that you stole $1 million from the 
bank. That's the equivalent of their brag.
  Now, we saw what ACORN did in five cities when confronted with child 
prostitution rings and illegal immigration. They promoted it, and they 
said, Game the system and you can get a check from Uncle Sam in the 
process. We've seen what they've done to corrupt the voter registration 
process and the election process. We've seen them get involved 
politically as a partisan organization over and over again. Nobody in 
this country believes that ACORN is out here to get out the vote for 
Republicans. They are a partisan organization that gets out the vote 
for Democrats. They are the machine. They are the foundational machine 
across the country that gets out the vote for Democrats. We all know 
that, but it can't really be challenged.
  And so as I look at their activities, and I understand that they 
say--well, I guess they changed their definition a little bit, 
501(c)(3), that's what it says on a press release I just picked up, Mr. 
Speaker. There is apparently some intention that the IRS is going to 
take a look into ACORN. The first thing the IRS needs to do, Mr. 
Speaker, is take a look at ACORN's corporate filings and verify that 
they are a 501(c)(3). 501(c)(3) is a not-for-profit status, and if you 
violate that not-for-profit status, then your income becomes taxable.
  And so I'm suggesting--no, I'm stating flat out--ACORN is a partisan 
organization, a get-out-the-vote organization for Democrats. They take 
millions of dollars and use them for partisan purposes. They were 
hired--an affiliate was hired by President Obama to get out the vote 
for him at the cost of--if I remember the number exactly, it was close 
to $832,000. There is strong evidence that the President's fundraising 
list, once people maxed out to him, it was handed over to ACORN so they 
could use it to raise money.
  We know that they've drawn down at least $53 million in Federal tax 
money that will be posted on the 990 form as grants from government; 
$53 million since 1994. I suspect the number is a lot larger. But if 
anybody would like to come down and defend ACORN, I would welcome you 
to come down and do that. If anybody thinks anything I've said here is 
even marginally factual, let's fine-tune it just a little bit. But I'm 
standing on the solid ground of fact. And the facts are this; 501(c)(3) 
organization, self-professed--it's in the press release, it has to do 
with the IRS now talking about investigating similar organizations, not 
specifically ACORN.
  But if you're not for profit, it also means you're a nonpartisan, and 
you are barred by law from participating in partisan activities. 
Partisan activities would be, Mr. Speaker, advocating for a particular 
candidate or political party. So, working on a campaign, putting up 
yard signs, door hangers, running ads that advocate for candidates--
especially by name--would all constitute violations of the not-for-
profit status and make their income taxable.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, I have here an interesting little picture. And the 
good part of this picture is that I don't have to wonder about the 
source; this is a picture that I took. This picture was taken in early 
July, before the Fourth of July. This is a picture of ACORN's national 
headquarters. They're at 2609 Canal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana. I 
walked up to the door. The door looks like a jail cell. It's got a 
glass business door entry behind it, but it's black bars and welded 
steel with an outdoor lock on the outside. This is the most fortified 
building in the neighborhood.

[[Page 22560]]

This is the second or third story where you see the bars here yet in 
the second or third story.
  Mr. Speaker, right behind the glass at the national headquarters of 
ACORN is a poster here and it says, ``Obama '08,'' a campaign poster 
for President Obama proudly displayed in the front window of ACORN's 
national headquarters. I don't know how you could get any more 
definitive evidence that it's a violation of the 501(c)(3) not-for-
profit, no partisan activity if you're going to hang a partisan 
campaign sign in your window and leave it there, let's see--6, 7, 8 
months after the election, it's still there. Does anybody imagine that 
it wasn't there before the election? And by the way, if anybody wonders 
if this is real, they can see over on the right-hand side, this hangs 
outside the glass, this is the ACORN banner, the ACORN logo, it's their 
logo on there. They fly that flag like we fly Old Glory.
  So here's the flag, the glory of ACORN, the ignominy of it all, and 
here's the Obama poster. There are other posters behind there; I can't 
verify that they are Obama posters; it doesn't matter. This one is in 
the window. They're advertising for a political candidate. It's clearly 
a violation of the law. And it's blatant and it's open--and curiously, 
it's unnecessary. How sloppy can they be?
  And so I think I've tied together the corrupt election process, the 
corrupt promotion of child prostitution rings, and also illegal 
immigration, which, out of the San Diego office especially, when the 
ACORN worker said, you've got to trust us; we have to work with 
Mexicans, I can bring people in through Tijuana, we'll help set this up 
for you. Child prostitution, violations, and then clear violations of 
voter laws.
  In fact, there have been as many as 70 convictions for voter 
registration violations of ACORN employees. ACORN, as an entity, is 
under indictment in the State of Nevada. In the last couple of weeks 
they have put out, in the State of Florida, 11 warrants for arrests to 
pick up ACORN employees for voter registration violations. They did 
pick up 6 of the 11; the last I saw the news there were five still on 
the loose. And that was before the prostitution emerged from the film 
that was taken by the two intrepid reporters--whom I'm quite pleased 
and proud that they have done what they've done.
  And that's not all, Mr. Speaker. If we continue on with ACORN, I 
would say here's another major concern of ACORN's involvement, and that 
is the practice of shaking down lenders, especially within the inner 
cities. Back in the seventies--it was either '77 or '78--Congress 
passed an act called the Community Reinvestment Act. It was an act that 
recognized a practice that I reject. It was the practice of red lining, 
as they called it--taking an ink pen and drawing a red line around a 
neighborhood in a city or several neighborhoods in the city. Banks that 
were loaning money for real estate, home mortgages, and commercial 
property identified that property that had its value going down, and 
they defined it. And it happened to also be inner city property.
  Often one could index race with that declining value of property and 
the red lining. If it turned out it was a racial conclusion, it was 
utterly wrong. If it was a business conclusion purely, then it could be 
justified. But Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act that set 
the stage so that banks were then given an incentive to make loans into 
those communities where they had previously not been making loans. That 
was a direction of Congress to try to fix an ill that I believe at 
least was, in significant part, a wrong that needed to be corrected.
  But ACORN exploited this. They were founded in 1977 or '78, as I 
said, and they began seeing the opportunities with the Community 
Reinvestment Act. And I don't know their involvement in getting the 
legislation passed. I suspect they were there at the table when it 
happened, but I don't know that. But I do know that they went in and 
shook down lenders and demonstrated outside the banks and intimidated 
the banks into giving money to ACORN. Not just in the first round of 
this. This wasn't, Give loans to the people in the inner city, it was, 
Write a check to ACORN, and we'll go away. Sometimes they would go into 
the lender's office, push his desk over to the wall, surround that 
lender and intimidate him, yell at him, shout at him and make demands, 
and eventually the intimidation tactics worked because banks wanted 
them to go away. So sometimes they wrote the check and sometimes they 
went away. Oftentimes they came back after a passage of time and began 
the process all over again.
  Now, one demand was the shakedown that compelled--well, gave a strong 
incentive for--lenders to write the check to ACORN. That helped fund 
ACORN. You've also heard of this taking place from other 
organizations--Rainbow/PUSH comes to mind. They wrote the check to get 
ACORN off their back and then ACORN went away. And then they came back. 
And they did that over and over again. At a certain point, ACORN then 
demanded that the banks loan money into the neighborhoods that ACORN 
specified. They did their own red lining. They drew their red line 
around and said, You loan money into these neighborhoods or we'll come 
back and we'll protest so your customers can't get through the door. 
And so banks began loaning money into those neighborhoods and showing 
their records to the ACORN representatives, and now they're influencing 
a business practice. That's stage two.
  Stage three is the lenders. In order to get ACORN off their back 
after they came back over and over again and escalated this, demanded 
money, demanded that loans be made into ACORN's red line district, then 
the next one was to grant ACORN a block of funds to be brokered into 
the communities of their choice, giving them more and more power.

                              {time}  1445

  This kind of shakedown undermines the free enterprise system, and it 
gives power to people through intimidation rather than market 
principles or moral principles. In fact, it is utterly corrupting in a 
society, and I can't draw a moral distinction between an ACORN 
shakedown, a Mafia shakedown, or a shakedown that might come from Hugo 
Chavez or some strongman in some other country. ``You will pay the 
protection or you will not be in business.''
  I wonder if Cargill refused to pay protection in Venezuela and that 
was why Hugo Chavez nationalized the rice company down there, the rice 
plant in Venezuela earlier this spring, in about April.
  So this is some of the pattern of ACORN's activity, Mr. Speaker, and 
it isn't, by any means, all of it. In fact, Wade Rathke, who was the 
founder of ACORN and was their CEO up until about a year ago, has a 
brother named Dale Rathke. Dale Rathke embezzled $948,000 and change 
from ACORN. It is a matter of public record. They found out about it 
within ACORN and covered it up for 8 years. They covered up a crime, a 
felony, for 8 years. And in order to solve the bookkeeping problem, 
they took money from donors and money from pension plans and backfilled 
the hole in the accounting which was created by the embezzlement of the 
brother of the CEO who helped cover up this crime. Then it erupted and 
finally blew up to the point where Wade Rathke was pushed out of 
ACORN--or I should say, off to the side of ACORN. They're still players 
today. He and his brother are both engaged in, let me say, community 
organizing. Activist community organizers, people who read the book by 
Saul Alinsky, people who read Cloward-Piven and now people who are 
writing their own book, the Rathke brothers.
  Mr. Speaker, we need to clean up this mess that is ACORN. This 
Congress has a responsibility. We know it now. I offered an amendment 
to unfund ACORN back in 2007. It did not have a lot of support at the 
time. Today we have seen this Congress vote to unfund ACORN, and we've 
seen 75 Members--every one a Democrat--vote against unfunding ACORN. We 
know what our duty is. Our duty is oversight. It's our constitutional 
responsibility, Mr. Speaker. And we need to use all of the tools in 
this Congress to drill into

[[Page 22561]]

ACORN, to get to the bottom of it, to bring the truth and the facts 
out. That will require, with all of these resources we have, in the 
House alone--and I call upon the Senate as well to engage in this. But 
in the House alone, we must have a full committee investigation and 
hearings by the Judiciary Committee, taking a look at the voter 
registration fraud that we know exists and look at it on a national 
scale. And from this, we need to drill into ACORN and pull out all of 
the rotten apples that are in there and shut down everything that is 
questionable. If there is anything left that has any integrity, I don't 
know what to do in that situation because I don't know how there would 
be any entity within ACORN that is not stained by this. But the 
Judiciary Committee has an obligation to investigate where there are 
violations of the law and where there are violations of voter 
registration and election fraud. That's our responsibility in the 
Judiciary Committee.
  Government Reform--and this has been headed up very well in 
Government Reform by Congressman Issa of California--needs to look into 
this from the standpoint of: how is government tied into this; what 
does it do to corrupt our government; what about all the tentacles of 
ACORN that would reach into government; how many places are they 
working in cooperation with government? And let's sever all of those 
relationships. That's the Government Reform component of this. To the 
extent that we can overlap and cooperate, we should do so committee by 
committee.
  We need to go into the Financial Services Committee. Chairman Frank 
needs to come all the way around to cleaning up ACORN. He was not here 
for the vote that would have unfunded ACORN. He had a couple of 
different announcements. But the most recent announcement of his 
intentions was that he would have voted to shut off funding to ACORN. 
Well, we can speculate if we like. But, Mr. Speaker, to verify the 
position of the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, we'll 
have to see what he does with ACORN. Will Chairman Frank investigate? 
Will he use the powers of the gavel and the staff that he has in 
Financial Services? Will he work with the ranking member of the 
Republicans to drill into ACORN and go back and pull out those pieces 
that he put in himself over the years in this Congress that set up the 
scenario by which ACORN still today--let me say it this way: still 
today, ACORN is looking at categories of as many as $8.5 billion that 
they could tap into of Federal tax dollars. Our tax dollars, Mr. 
Speaker. Altogether, $8.5 billion in categories. That is money that's 
within the Community Development Block Grant, a low-income housing 
grant, and the stimulus package. Those three add up to $8.5 billion. 
ACORN, as far as anything that has been signed into law today, would 
still qualify to go into those funds.
  The chairman of Financial Services, Mr. Frank, has been involved in 
setting up the language, setting the stage. And it's not a practice of 
just this year. It's a practice of each year that I have been aware 
since I have been in this United States Congress, Mr. Speaker. So let's 
see if the chairman of the Financial Services Committee uses his gavel 
to investigate and provide proper oversight, with all the resources 
that he has at his disposal, working in full cooperation with 
Republicans on our side of the aisle and staffs working together. Let's 
see if that happens.
  The Judiciary Committee needs to do a full investigation and 
hearings. Financial Services needs to do a full investigation of ACORN 
and hearings. By the way, when I say ACORN, that's a general term for 
ACORN and all of their affiliates, 361 of which have been identified by 
the Government Reform Committee in the report that was put out July 23 
by the Government Reform Committee and Ranking Member Darrell Issa. The 
Judiciary Committee and the Government Reform Committee need to 
investigate ACORN and all of their 361 affiliates.
  We also need to ask the Ways and Means Committee and Chairman 
Rangel--who I recognize has his own problems in this Congress, but this 
is an opportunity for Mr. Rangel to redeem himself as chairman. The 
chairman of the Ways and Means Committee needs to commence a full, all-
out, full-court investigation of ACORN and all of their affiliates and 
use the tools at his disposal, the power of the gavel and the subpoena 
ability that that committee has to bring in ACORN and examine their 
taxes and also to turn the pressure up and direct the IRS to do a 
complete audit of ACORN and all of their affiliates. The only way to 
get a clean bill of health is to put them all through, let me say, the 
fiscal physical, that is, a complete analysis of all of the funds that 
come into ACORN and all of their affiliates. Chairman Rangel can bring 
that about, and certainly he needs to work in cooperation with the 
ranking member on the Ways and Means Committee. I'm pushing very hard 
that we get this done.
  I have named three committees. We have Judiciary, Ways and Means, 
Government Reform, all of them need to commence their investigations. 
We need the House Admin, who works in cooperation with the voter 
election laws. They're the ones that brought about the HAVA act, the 
Help America Vote Act. They need to be involved in this working in 
cooperation with the Judiciary Committee. We need to bring the 
Appropriations Committee into this. We need to examine every dollar 
that's been appropriated that may have gone into the coffers of ACORN 
and their affiliates. How did that money get used? Was it matching 
funds? And how does it go down into the States?
  All of this needs to happen out of this Congress, Mr. Speaker, and we 
need the IRS doing a complete forensic audit of ACORN and all of their 
affiliates. And we need the Department of Justice doing more than just 
an Inspector General's investigation to determine if Justice has 
written checks to ACORN or their affiliates and whether there's justice 
in Justice paying ACORN and their affiliates. If the limit of Justice's 
scope of justice is, did they actually pay somebody that was violating 
the not-for-profit laws, and did they use it for partisan purposes, 
that's pretty narrow.
  ACORN wants to examine themselves and audit themselves. That's 
laughable that we should accept the idea that ACORN has appointed 
someone to audit themselves. It's a joke. But we do have the Justice 
Department who has said, We want to audit ourselves too with respect to 
what money we might have sent to ACORN, so that they find it before 
someone else finds it. Then they can make their press release and say 
they've cleaned it up and sworn off and washed their hands of ACORN--
like the Census Bureau finally did? For the second time, by the way. 
They put out a press release 3 months ago. After we turned up the 
pressure, they said, Well, we won't be hiring ACORN to do our Census. 
We turned up some more pressure, and when they saw the prostitution 
film, they put out another release that said, We have now finally--for 
the second and perhaps final time--severed our relationship with ACORN. 
Well, if you have to do something twice, who would believe you did it 
the first time? And then if you do something once, who is going to 
believe that that actually got done the first time? They will do it 
over and over again. Justice wants to look at it and wash their hands 
of ACORN, but I don't see them moving towards a complete investigation 
at the Department of Justice, which we must have, Mr. Speaker. The 
scrubbing that's taking place on the Census and now the U.S. Treasury. 
The Treasury has said that they no longer want to work with ACORN. 
ACORN was helping out with tax forms. So maybe they're going to rely on 
TurboTax instead. But they no longer want to have the relationship with 
ACORN because they're too hot a political potato.
  These aren't things that these departments didn't know before. I have 
known this for months and, much of it, years. Yet we couldn't penetrate 
the minds of the Census Bureau until we beat on them through the media. 
We couldn't penetrate into the Department of the U.S. Treasury until 
the prostitution films came out. And the Department of Justice only 
wants to

[[Page 22562]]

examine far enough to determine if they have written checks to ACORN 
and then what those checks were for, if they were legitimate or not.
  It doesn't look to me, Mr. Speaker, like this administration is 
determined to do this forensic analysis. In fact, if you would draw a 
line down through the middle of the piece of paper--you could draw it 
figuratively right down this aisle, Democrats on this side, Republicans 
on this side--Democrats, as a party, beneficiaries of ACORN; 
Republicans on this side, a lot of them who are not here, are victims 
of ACORN's partisan activities. They've already lost their elections. 
They aren't here now, and many of them are not coming back. But that 
same line can be this: who has consistently called for the cleanup of 
the corrupt ACORN, the criminal enterprise ACORN and all of their 
affiliates? It's been people on the Republican side of the aisle who 
have done that, the survivors. Who has finally made some little mouse 
noises about cleanup of ACORN? Well, it's been Democrats. And it's been 
people who have redirected--it would be Chairmen Frank and Conyers who 
have called for the Congressional Research Service (CRS) to take a look 
at ACORN and write a report. Well, CRS doesn't have the authority to go 
in and actually do a criminal investigation or a tax audit. They don't 
have the authority that these chairmen have themselves. If they want to 
get to the bottom of it, they don't have to ask anybody. They call for 
hearings and an investigation, and they levy their subpoena power, and 
they do that. But instead, they would like to redirect the American 
people into believing that calling for a CRS report is somehow a 
substitute of a congressional investigation. It's not. The Justice 
Department should be doing a complete, thorough criminal investigation, 
working hand in glove with the IRS. Instead, it simply announces that 
they're going to take a look to see if they've written checks to ACORN 
and then react accordingly. The U.S. Treasury finally takes a position 
that they don't want to have ACORN cooperating with them in helping out 
with taxes.
  These are all of the weak things on this side. These are 
redirections. These are straw men. They are red herrings. They don't 
have substance to accomplish what we need to get accomplished, which is 
clean up ACORN. On this side, we've called for substance for a long 
time, and we haven't cracked through because the people on this side 
hold the gavel, and they were determined to protect and defend ACORN 
until the political heat got so hot that all but 75 of them voted to 
stop Federal funds from coming into ACORN.
  That's what's taken place, Mr. Speaker. Those are the facts. They 
cannot be denied. By the way, we need to ask some questions about why 
the chief organizer of America has not had a statement to say about 
ACORN, except for his statement on the Sunday talk show circuit; when 
asked about this, he said, Well, it's really not on my radar screen. 
It's not the most important thing before America. So I'm not really 
paying attention to ACORN.
  Really, Mr. President? This is the star of ACORN. He is the lead 
chief organizer. He is the person who told the people at ACORN, I will 
invite you in, and we will be setting the agenda for America, even 
before he is inaugurated as President of the United States. This is the 
man who worked for ACORN. He is the man who was an attorney for ACORN. 
He is the man who trained ACORN's workers. Remember what he said before 
the election to his people: ``Get in their face. Get out, and get in 
their face.'' Does that sound like what was happening around the 
lenders' desks when they were capitulating to ACORN's intimidation of 
the shakedown? ACORN's activists got in the lenders' faces. The 
President said, Get in their face.

                              {time}  1500

  He worked for ACORN, trained ACORN's workers, headed up Project Vote. 
And Project Vote is integral to ACORN. You can't separate the two, and 
there are people who are labeled Project Vote and ACORN who concur with 
that.
  Then on top of that, the President of the United States, as a 
candidate, hired ACORN to get out the vote. And then the evidence 
exists that his donor list was transferred over to ACORN. Once it was 
maxed out and they couldn't write another check in the Presidential 
campaign, the list went over so ACORN could raise money on that.
  This man's not interested in ACORN? He's ambivalent about it? That's 
what he told us just last Sunday. Curious. He could inject himself into 
police operations of a professor of Harvard, Officer Crowley and 
Professor Gates. He can inject himself into that and have a beer 
summit, but he can't pay attention to what's going on when things are 
melting down around him?
  This man stands at the top of ACORN. He's the man that directed that 
the Census be pulled out of the Department of Commerce and put into the 
White House. This is a man that hired ACORN to help hire individuals to 
work for the Census. And he's not paying attention? Do we think Rahm 
Emanuel is running this country or President Obama, or is it just 
Chicago politics? I think it's all of those things, actually, Mr. 
Speaker. But the President cannot deny knowledge of what's going on.
  The United States Senate voted 83-7 to shut off funding to ACORN 
housing, Senator Johanns from Nebraska's amendment. That sent a 
resounding message. It shook through all the media. I'll bet you even 
Charlie Gibson knows about that one. And shortly after that, the House 
acted; and we had a motion to recommit that, if it functions the way 
we'd like to have it function, would shut off funding to ACORN. 345 
Members of the House of Representatives voted to shut off funding to 
ACORN; 75 voted to defend ACORN, but there were a couple of them that 
wanted to change their intentions after the fact.
  Chairman Frank wanted to change it. He wasn't here. He had a good 
excuse. He got to redefine his vote after he saw the politics of it. No 
allegations. Those are just the facts. Chairman Conyers said even 
though, let's see, whatever side he was on when he voted, he meant to 
vote the other way. I don't remember very many Members having to 
explain any votes in that fashion. I don't get to use that excuse. 
Maybe once in a career, not multiple times on a single issue by 
multiple Members of Congress.
  But this man, Mr. Speaker, has a deep abiding involvement in ACORN. 
His history goes back to it. At the genesis of President Obama's 
political life, there he stands with ACORN, and he walks with them all 
the way through. It isn't my supposition; it's his own assertion, that 
ACORN was with him from the beginning. He's been with ACORN all of the 
way through, and one of the affiliates that he headed up was Project 
Vote.
  There still are 360 other affiliates out there. We need to audit 
Project Vote. We need to audit the other 360 affiliates. We need all of 
the tools of the IRS and the Department of Justice. We don't need a 
lame little announcement that Justice is going to go look and see if 
they maybe wrote a check to some bad people and they'll correct that. 
We need to have them drilling into everything. And we also need every 
committee that has jurisdiction in the House of Representatives doing 
the examination of ACORN.
  I yield to the gentlewoman from Minnesota.
  Mrs. BACHMANN. I'm so grateful for the gentleman from Iowa and the 
comments that he's been making regarding ACORN and the situation that 
they find themselves in.
  One thing that we have seen from the American people in a recent 
Gallup survey is that today, at the highest level ever in the history 
of our country, more people believe that government is wasting money 
than at any other time in modern times. Today the American people 
believe that the government wastes about 50 cents of every dollar. And 
as if these activities were bad enough that the gentleman from Iowa was 
speaking about, the stunning Steve King of Iowa, I think, Mr. Speaker, 
one thing we recognize is that the American taxpayer should not be 
paying for these activities.

[[Page 22563]]

  Now, this is stunning. This truly is a stunning feature, that you 
have an organization that's been the recipient of about $53 million 
since 1994. And you have a photo, I noticed, a poster, of the President 
with an ACORN emblem on his shirt. Since President Obama, who formerly 
was the attorney for Project Vote, yet one of the many affiliates of 
ACORN, since that time, he has made available to his patron, to ACORN, 
he has made available to them $8.5 billion.
  And if a bill that went through this House actually passes, that 
would be $10 billion that is available to this organization, who we 
have seen has been furthering the trafficking of illegal aliens, minor 
girls into childhood prostitution and child abuse. This is 
unconscionable. And this same organization has been educating 
individuals that they should take their money and bury it in a tin can 
in the backyard rather than paying taxes.
  And we're giving this organization $10 billion in tax money? How 
could this be? No wonder that the American people are saying, at the 
highest time ever, that they believe 50 cents of every dollar is 
wasted.
  We need an investigation, I believe, Mr. Speaker, into that fact. Do 
we know how much of our tax money is being wasted? The American people 
think it's 50 percent of every dollar. Perhaps it is if you have $10 
billion going to an organization like this.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentlewoman from 
Minnesota. And I'm looking forward to some future comments with regard 
to this as well.
  The waste that's there is a significant part of all of this. But 
another one is just the lack of conscience and using Federal funds to 
do something of a partisan nature and do so with impunity in a 
completely cynical approach that we've known for years were designed to 
produce this result.
  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your indulgence. I will introduce the 
DSAUSA documents into the Record.

                            The Organization

       The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the largest 
     socialist organization in the United States, and the 
     principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International. 
     DSA's members are building progressive movements for social 
     change while establishing an openly socialist presence in 
     American communities and politics.
       At the root of our socialism is a profound commitment to 
     democracy, as means and end. We are activists committed not 
     only to extending political democracy but to demanding 
     democratic empowerment in the economy, in gender relations, 
     and in culture. Democracy is not simply one of our political 
     values but our means of restructuring society. Our vision is 
     of a society in which people have a real voice in the choices 
     and relationships that affect the entirety of our lives. We 
     call this vision democratic socialism--a vision of a more 
     free, democratic and humane society.
       In this web site you can find out about DSA, its politics, 
     structure and program. DSA's political perspective is called 
     Where We Stand. It says, in part:
       We are socialists because we reject an international 
     economic order sustained by private profit, alienated labor, 
     race and gender discrimination, environmental destruction, 
     and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo.
       We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane 
     international social order based both on democratic planning 
     and market mechanisms to achieve equitable distribution of 
     resources, meaningful work, a healthy environment, 
     sustainable growth, gender and racial equality, and non-
     oppressive relationships.
       DSA has a youth section, Young Democratic Socialists (YDS). 
     Made up of students from colleges and high schools and young 
     people in the work force, the Youth Section works on economic 
     justice and democracy and prison justice projects. It is a 
     member of the International Union of Socialist Youth, an 
     affiliate of the Socialist International. The Youth Section 
     meets several times during the year. More information is 
     available from YDS staff.
       This web site also includes an extensive set of resources, 
     including bibliographies, pamphlets and links to information 
     on socialism and U.S. politics in general.
       Please join DSA as we work to help build a better and more 
     just world for all.
                                  ____


Where We Stand: The Political Perspective of the Democratic Socialists 
                               of America


                                Preamble

       At the beginning of the 20th century, a young and vibrant 
     socialist movement anticipated decades of great advances on 
     the road to a world free from capitalist exploitation--a 
     socialist society built on the enduring principles of 
     equality, justice and solidarity among peoples.
       At the end of the 20th century, such hope and vision seem 
     all but lost. The unbridled power of transnational 
     corporations, underwritten by the major capitalist nations, 
     has created a world economy where the wealth and power of a 
     few is coupled with insecurity and downward mobility for the 
     vast majority of working people in both the Northern and 
     Southern hemispheres. Traditional left prescriptions have 
     failed on both sides of the Communist/socialist divide. 
     Global economic integration has rendered obsolete both the 
     social democratic solution of independent national economies 
     sustaining a strong social welfare state and the Communist 
     solution of state-owned national economies fostering social 
     development.
       The globalization of capital requires a renewed vision and 
     tactics. But the essence of the socialist vision--that people 
     can freely and democratically control their community and 
     society--remains central to the movement for radical 
     democracy. Those who the collapse of communist regimes, for 
     which the rhetoric of socialism became a cover for 
     authoritarian rule, as proof that capitalism is the 
     foundation of democracy, commit fraud on history. The 
     struggle for mass democracy has always been led by the 
     excluded--workers, minorities, and women. The wealthy almost 
     never join in unless their own economic freedom appears at 
     stake. The equation of capitalism with democracy cannot 
     survive scrutiny in a world where untrammeled capitalism 
     means unrelenting poverty, disease, and unemployment.
       Today powerful corporate and political elites tell us that 
     environmental standards are too high, unemployment is too 
     low, and workers earn too much for America to prosper in the 
     next century. Their vision is too close for comfort: 
     inequality of wealth and income has grown worse in the last 
     15 years: one percent of America now owns 60 percent of our 
     wealth, up from 50 percent before Ronald Reagan became 
     president. Nearly three decades after the ``War on Poverty'' 
     was declared and then quickly abandoned, one-fifth of our 
     society subsists in poverty, living in substandard housing, 
     attending underfunded, overcrowded schools, and receiving 
     inadequate health care.
                                  ____


       Towards Freedom: Democratic Socialist Theory and Practice

                [By Joseph Schwartz and Jason Schulman ]


                    The Democratic Socialist Vision

       Democratic socialists believe that the individuality of 
     each human being can only be developed in a society embodying 
     the values of liberty, equality, and solidarity. These 
     beliefs do not entail a crude conception of equality that 
     conceives of human beings as equal in all respects. Rather, 
     if human beings are to develop their distinct capacities they 
     must be accorded equal respect and opportunities denied them 
     by the inequalities of capitalist society, in which the life 
     opportunities of a child born in the inner city are starkly 
     less than that of a child born in an affluent suburb. A 
     democratic community committed to the equal moral worth of 
     each citizen will socially provide the cultural and economic 
     necessities--food, housing, quality education, healthcare, 
     childcare--for the development of human individuality.
       Achieving this diversity and opportunity necessitates a 
     fundamental restructuring of our socio-economic order. While 
     the freedoms that exist under democratic capitalism are gains 
     of popular struggle to be cherished, democratic socialists 
     argue that the values of liberal democracy can only be 
     fulfilled when the economy as well as the government is 
     democratically controlled.
       We cannot accept capitalism's conception of economic 
     relations as ``free and private,'' because contracts are not 
     made among economic equals and because they give rise to 
     social structures which undemocratically confer power upon 
     some over others. Such relationships are undemocratic in that 
     the citizens involved have not freely deliberated upon the 
     structure of those institutions and how social roles should 
     be distributed within them (e.g., the relationship between 
     capital and labor in the workplace or men and women in child 
     rearing). We do not imagine that all institutional relations 
     would wither away under socialism, but we do believe that the 
     basic contours of society must be democratically constructed 
     by the free deliberation of its members.
       The democratic socialist vision does not rest upon one sole 
     tradition; it draws upon Marxism, religious and ethical 
     socialism, feminism, and other theories that critique human 
     domination. Nor does it contend that any laws of history 
     preordain the achievement of socialism. The choice for 
     socialism is both moral and political, and the fullness of 
     its vision will never be permanently secured.

                          ____________________