H 4534 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD—HOUSE May 3, 1995

to compete with the least common denominator in slave labor countries

around the world and get back to the

idea that we can pay our people a good

decent living wage so they could provide for their families, send their kids

to school and improve their standard of

living.

Mr. SANDERS. The gentleman

makes an extremely important point.

When you hear somebody get up, and

give a speech, and say that we have got

to be competitive in the global economy, hang on to your wallets and start

worrying very much because what the

gentleman from New York [Mr.

HINCHEY] is saying is that in south

China the wages are approximately 20

cents an hour. Well, American workers,

are you ready to compete? Do you

think maybe we can get down to 18

cents an hour? We can get those jobs

back. What about 15 cents an hour? To

a large degree much of the discussion

of the global economy is just that.

b 1315

It is asking American workers to

lower their wages, give up their benefits, sacrifice our environmental standards in order to compete with desperate Third World countries where

people are working for starvation

wages. I think, as Mr. HINCHEY indicates, that should not be the paradigm

under which we operate. Rather, we

should be asking the question, why, in

this great country, do we not develop

policies which create decent paying

jobs for all of our workers, a national

health care system guaranteeing

health care to all of our people, a fair

tax system which takes the burden of

taxes off the middle class and asks the

wealthy to start paying their fair share

of taxes, educational opportunity for

all. Is that Utopia? I do not think so.

I want to ask Mr. OWENS a question:

Recently, all over America, in my district, you have middle class people,

husbands and wives, working 40, 50, 60

hours a week to afford to send their

kids to college, because they understand that without a college education

the kids are not going to make it to

the middle class. That is simply the

truth. Without a college education you

cannot make it to the middle class.

Mr. OWENS, the Republicans recently

have brought forth a proposal which

would cut back on college loans, college financial grants. What impact

does that have on the aspirations and

dreams of the people in your district?

Mr. OWENS. What the Republicans

are trying to do in their attempt to fulfill their contract against America, we

call it against America, they say with

America, in an attempt to do the

undoable and bring the budget down to

a level of balance by the year 2002, they

are going to try to take $12 billion out

of the student loan program.

Already we have year after year reduced the number of grants available.

The poorest young people going to college, we used to provide more grants.

But we have steadily reduced the number of grants, so it is very hard to qualify for a grant. You have to be very

poor, because the amount of Pell

grants available, the amount of money

available for Pell grants is very low.

We have deliberately emphasized student loan programs. Because after all,

you have time to pay for it after you

get out of college and get a decent job.

Most of our aid now is in the form of

student loans.

Now the Republicans are saying the

student loan program should not be

subsidized at all. What we do now is

while a young person is in college, the

interest on the loan is paid for by the

Government. That is our contribution

as taxpayers towards the student loan

program. The students get out, pick up

the loan, and they start paying the interest and principal until it is paid off.

But the interest during the time they

are in college is paid for by the Government, and if you take that away, that

raises the amount the students owe.

They are expecting to save $12 billion

out of the hides of the students when

we want to encourage more people to

go to college. That is the one answer to

our economy, to become more and

more sophisticated and educated.

Mr. SANDERS. If we could perhaps

wrap it up, I think, in conclusion, the

point that we are trying to make, we

as three or four members of the Progressive caucus, and there are 36 other

members, is that we think to a large

degree the Congress of the United

States is out of touch with the needs of

working people, middle income people,

and is here to a large degree to represent the interests of the wealthy and

the powerful. We think that much of

what is in the Contract With America

benefits the people who go to the $1,000

a plate fund-raising dinners. We think

there are sensible public policies we

can develop—we brought forth some of

them this afternoon—that in fact we

can raise the standard of living for

American people, give people hope for

the future, where today there is no

hope.

I want to thank both the gentleman

from New York, Mr. OWENS and Mr.

HINCHEY, for joining me. We will do

this again.

MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

A message in writing from the Presifdent of the United States was communicated to the House by Mr. Edwin

Thomas, one of his secretaries.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under

BARBARIANS AT THE GATE

fthe Speaker’s announced policy of January 4, 1995, the gentleman from New

York [Mr. OWENS] is recognized for 60

minutes as the designee of the minority leader.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, we just returned from recess this week, and it is

a fairly slow week here in the Congress. But next week we will move into

the process of finalizing the budget for

the coming budget year, which begins

October 1. It is a situation which I am

quite concerned about.

There is a kind of calm around here

before the storm. As far as I am concerned, I feel a sense of dread before a

massacre takes place, because that is

what I feel is in store; a massacre of

very useful programs is about to occur

in this budget finalization process that

is going to start next week.

We already have a $17 billion rescission package. The majority party, the

Republicans in this House, have already reached into this year’s budget

and pulled back $17 billion, mostly

from very good programs. So $17 billion

is being cut out of the budget that is

now in process, now going on.

The budget year that will end on September 30, they are trying to take out

$17 billion. The Senate has passed their

version of the rescission package, and a

conference is about to occur. There is

nothing to feel optimistic about there.

They put back a few vital items. I

heard the Senate is going to restore

the Summer Youth Employment Program. The Summer Youth Employment

Program employs millions of young

people across the country every summer. That had been wiped out by the

Republican-controlled House rescission

budget. Now the Senate says they will

put it back, and I hope that they do restore that.

But I hope the President vetoes the

whole bill. I hope that he understands

there are numerous other cuts in that

same $17 billion package, for instance,

the cutting of the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the tune

of $7 billion. You cut $7 billion out of

the Department of Housing and Urban

Development, and most of the money

that is cut is for low income housing. I

hope that the President will veto the

whole package. But I dread what is

going to happen with that package,

that rescission package.

But beyond that, I dread the budget

finalization process, because what has

happened with the rescissions package

is a preview of coming attractions, a

preview of where this majority in this

House is going.

It is not exaggerating to say that we

are about to behold something similar

to a group of barbarians burning down

a city. It is not exaggerating, because

we are going to destroy, and maybe

this is a serious flaw, a serious weakness in the Constitution of the United

States, that a party in power for 2

years can wreck havoc. It can destroy

a great deal.

You can destroy the Department of

Education by just denying funding.

You can vote the funding out. It is difficult to vote down the authority for

the agency, but if you don’t fund it,

you can destroy it, or so cripple it,

until to matter who comes into power

the next year, they will have to try to

rebuild a crippled agency.

That has been the history of the Department of Education. It has always

been a crippled agency. It came into
May 3, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD—HOUSE H 4535

being with great controversy. Thank

God Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education finally. But during

the years of Ronald Reagan they tried

to destroy the Department of Education, and it has never been able to

function fully. But finally it has begun

to function and do the kinds of things

it needs to do in terms of leadership.

The threat now is in the process of

cutting the budget, one of the items

that is being targeted by the Republican majority is the Department of

Education. We are going to eliminate

the Department of Education, in an age

when high technology is so important,

in an age when we say that every worker, every student, should strive to go to

college, and in order to do that they

have to come out of high school with

the best possible education in order to

get a decent job and function in a very

complex society. At this time we are

hearing leaders in this House talk

about eliminating the Department of

Education.

An invaluable piece of our civilization is about to be assaulted in this

budget making process. A way of life

created for Americans by Americans is

about to be wrecked. That is how serious this year is.

Why is this year so different from

any other? Because the majority party

in the House, which is the same as the

majority party in the Senate, have

made it clear that they want to assault

many of the programs that have been

created over the last 60 years. They

want to get rid of what has been painstakingly developed since Franklin Roosevelt’s days. They want to get rid of

the kinds of programs that make our

society as great as it is. They want to

get rid of the kinds of programs that

reach out and say to every American

that our great wealth, the fact that we

are the wealthiest Nation that ever existed in the history of the world, is to

be shared not equally, and we are not

communists, we are not proposing that

everybody should have an equal share,

but we are proposing that everybody

should have some share of it and some

kind of decent living as a result of a

prosperous America.

Now there is a barbaric philosophy.

And I want to just pause for a minute

and say I would like to see us lower our

voices and use less extremist language.

So I do not want to call my colleagues

who propose these doctrines barbarians. I think that is a little extreme. I

just want to focus on each act. A decent person can be guilty of a barbaric

act. So you have some decent people

who, I will not question their decency

in general, but they are subscribing to

barbaric policies, barbaric actions.

Let me give you one or two examples,

and I will come back in more detail

later on. It is a barbaric action to propose that we fund a Seawolf submarine

for about $2.1 billion, and at the same

time propose to cut the school lunch

programs by about $2 billion. There is

controversy about whether the school

lunch programs have been cut or not. I

think the conservative Congressional

Budget Office has put that to rest. The

conservative estimate of the conservative Congressional Budget Office is at

least $2 billion will be cut from the program. It will lose that much over the 5-

year period it is being proposed. So at

least $2 billion. I think it will be more

like $6 billion, but we will take the

more conservative estimate.

You are going to cut school lunches

by $2 billion, hungry kids will have less

food, and at the same time propose to

build a Seawolf submarine. What is a

Seawolf submarine and what does it

contribute to anything? Nothing. A

Seawolf submarine would have been

useful in a way with the Soviet Union.

But the Soviet Union doesn’t exist anymore. No other nation has these submarines.

What I am trying to do is bring this

down to a level where it can be clearly

understood. When I say a barbaric act

has taken place when you propose to

fund an obsolete weapon like a Seawolf

submarine at the cost of $2.1 billion,

while at the same time cutting school

lunches by a like amount, that is a barbarian’s reasoning at work. There is no

sense, no compassion.

What will the Seawolf submarine do

for America? It can do nothing now. It

could have been very useful in a war

with the Soviet Union. They have very

sophisticated submarines; therefore, we

had to prepare a more sophisticated

submarine. We already have Seawolf

submarines. Why build one more? The

cold war has been over for several

years. The Soviet Union is not building

any more submarines.

This submarine cannot be used for

peaceful purposes. If you do not use it

for warfare, you can take the kids on a

ride under the sea, you could put it in

New York harbor and use it as a tourist

attraction. But that is too dangerous.

They will not use submarines for tourist attractions, because even the best

submarine is risky to the point where

you wouldn’t take kids for joy rides

underneath the sea. So it has no peaceful purpose. yet we are going to build

another Seawolf submarine.

We are going to continue funding the

Central Intelligence Agency to the

tune of at least $28 billion, at least $28

billion. We do not know, because it is

still secret. The Soviet Union has revealed secrets about their secret intelligence agency, but we haven’t divulged the budget to the American people, so we just guess at $28 billion. It is

a barbaric act to say we should continue the funding of the CIA at that

level, while at the same time you cut

the Summer Youth Employment Program, a program that provides jobs for

youth during the summer and costs so

much less. It is a barbaric act.

b 1330

I will come back with more examples

later on. But this is what we are up

against.

I said that we have high-technology

barbarians in charge in the House. I

would like to retract that and say that

the people are not barbarians because

they certainly love their families; they

do a lot of things that are decent every

day. It is not that they are barbarians,

but they are committing barbaric acts.

We need to pinpoint each act one by

one.

In New York City, we have some barbaric philosophy that has been proposed recently. We have this epidemic

of barbarity in public service breaking

out all over in New York State government, New York City government. We

are proposing to give huge tax cuts to

the rich while we are cutting programs

for Medicare and Medicaid already.

The mayor of New York, I think, has

expressed it openly. He has said what

most of the leaders in the House of

Representatives have not been willing

to say. The mayor of New York has

come right out and said it:

Poor people, if they would please get out of

town, get out of town and we will not have

to be bothered with them. We would like to

have policies which do not encourage poor

people to stay around.

The mayor of New York City actually came out and said that. In the

process of saying he did not say it, he

kept saying things which were just as

horrible, that as you cut programs and

you squeeze neighborhoods and you

refuse to build more housing and you

cut the hospitals and you make life unbearable for poor people, let them get

out of town, let them go. That is the

kind of economic cleansing, it is a new

statement by a public official of what

many others are thinking but they are

not stating.

We had a gentleman named Roger

Star who was prominent in city civic

circles and once served on the editorial

board of the New York Times even who

years ago said we should pursue a policy of ethnic, of planned shrinkage,

that New York City should pursue a

policy of planned shrinkage. That is, do

not build any housing for the poor, do

not bother to create infrastructures in

a poor neighborhood for new sewer systems and new water systems, et cetera,

do not do those things and do not build

and, therefore, you plan, as a result of

pursuing those policies, there will be a

shrinkage of the city. As you shrink

the city and the number of people in it,

certainly the number of poor people,

the responsibilities of the city go down

and you can give tax cuts to the rich

and take care of them as a result.

That was a private citizen making

that statement. It was horrible enough

then, but now we have the mayor of the

city, the mayor who was elected by the

people to govern all of the people. As

you know, we know as elected officials

here in the Congress, once we are elected, we are no longer elected to serve

the people who elected us or the members of our party, we are elected to

serve everybody. This mayor is openly

saying that he really does not want to

take care of a large part of the population of New York City.
H 4536 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD—HOUSE May 3, 1995

Economic cleansing has been openly

admitted, the philosophy. That is a

barbaric philosphy. The thinking is

barbaric; the policy is barbaric. I will

come back to that later on.

What I am trying to say here is that

I want to emphasize that the budgetmaking process that we are about to

undertake is the most important thing

that this Congress does. It is the most

important event that happens in Washington. The budget-making process in

any government is very important. I

have used the example before of the

British Government; the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation takes

several days, used to take several days

to just discuss the national budget.

Nothing is more important than the

budget-making process, whether you

are making budgets at the Federal

level or you are making the budget,

going through the budget making-process at the State level or the city level.

Citizens should pay close attention

because how we spend our money shows

what our priorities are, how we spend

our money shows what our values are.

And how we spend our money determines whether our side is going to

function properly or not. So in the

budget-making process, all things that

are most important to government and

society are in motion at that time. Everything of value will be impacted by

the budget process. And the budget

process takes place first, but the appropriations process follows that and the

two are inseparable.

The budget process sets general

guidelines, the appropriations process

spells out the details and they cannot

be separated. The budget and appropriations process are the most important functions of our Government or

any other government.

How and why is this budget and appropriations process different from all

others? I have said it is different from

all others because in power now we

have a majority that insists that

America is facing a crisis. They have

created a crisis atmosphere. They have

created a goal that is very difficult to

attain, the goal of a balanced budget

by the year 2002. If you insist that we

have to balance the budget by the year

2002, then you have to take some drastic measures to do that. You cannot accomplish that unless you take drastic

measures to cut the existing budget,

unless you bring an axe to chop down

programs that were created carefully

over a 50- or 60-year period.

We had the New Deal. We had the

Great Society. And there is a tendency

to take all of this for granted. The

Great Society was sort of an offshoot

of the New Deal. Lyndon Johnson was

a disciple of Franklin Roosevelt, and

although we might criticize President

Johnson for making many connections

with foreign policy and with the Vietnam war, we recognize his devotion to

the principles of Franklin Roosevelt as

expressed through the Great Society

programs: The Community Action program, the Medicaid program, the Medicare program; these things did not

come from God directly. They did not

fall out of heaven. They were created

by Democratic administrations, and

they represent an expression of the

very best that is in America.

America, we have some things in our

past and our tradition which we are not

proud of, but we certainly can be proud

of the tradition that is reflected in the

New Deal and in the Great Society because it reflects a reaching out and a

caring for all of the people of America

and it was all done without a revolution. We have done more for human

beings and for the citizens of our Nation without a revolution than other

countries have done that had revolutions which professed to have this purpose.

But now we are engaged in a situation where in 2 years, in 2 years the

people who have come to power are

going to take advantage of a weakness

in the Constitution. There are no safeguards in the Constitution against having a 2-year period be a period where

you can destroy what was created in 60

years.

There is something wrong with our

Constitution. I do not propose to talk

about it now. I do not know what the

remedy is, but it has just occurred to

me as a result of the kind of protestations and the kind of declarations that

have been made by the majority Republicans in the House this year, it

just dawned on a lot of us that in 2

years you really can have a structure

of the policies of the country totally

turned around, totally altered. That is

a great deal of change to take place in

2 years. It is revolutionary.

I have a suspicion of revolutions. We

should always be suspicious of revolutions. Revolutions at best are necessary evils when there is no other alternative. Revolutions always cause almost as much harm as they do good because of the very nature of the upheaval of revolutions means that a lot

of people are going to be trampled on,

a lot of suffering is going to take place

that would not take place if you follow

an evolutionary process.

We have in America always followed

an evolutionary process, even at the

time of greatest crisis during the Depression, the transfer from Herbert

Hoover to Franklin Roosevelt was not

a revolution. It was an evolution. It

was a use of the legislative process at

its very best. Franklin Roosevelt did

not go into the basement of the White

House as Oliver North did and come up

with secret plans about how to make

the American Government operate in a

way which was not approved by the

Congress. Franklin Roosevelt came to

the Congress, the New Deal legislation

was passed in concert with the Congress.

Step by step we worked our way

through a very difficult period. We entered World War II, and the same process was followed as we moved through

the necessary processes to win World

War II under the leadership of Franklin

Roosevelt and Harry Truman. So we

have always moved in an evolutionary

way. Sometimes you have to speed up

the evolutionary process, and sometimes the approach to the evolutionary

process has to be comprehensive,

across the board you have to move and

move fast, but to move in a way that is

being proposed now, where an artificial

crisis is created, an umbrella of emergency has been created. So we have a

situation where extreme changes, extreme radical changes can be justified

because we have created a crisis.

Who is it who said that we have to

have a balanced budget by the year

2002? What economist has said that

that is absolutely necessary to keep

our economy healthy? Our deficit is

coming down already. Our deficit has

never been as great as certain European countries who are not in a panic

and not making their people suffer in

order to get a balanced budget within a

7-year period. Where did this come

from? Olympia? Did some oracle predict that we had to have a balanced

budget by the year 2002?

That is an artificial goal. A crisis

that is created by setting that, the rationale for it, we still do not know. It

is forcing us into a revolutionary

mode. You are going to have to make

$700 billion in savings. You have to pull

out of the process, out of the present

budget over a 7-year period, you have

to get $700 billion.

My colleagues previously were discussing the Medicare cuts, because one

of the places where you have the largest Government expenditures is in

health care costs, Medicare being probably one of the highest expenditures.

Medicare is on the chopping block

now because if you have to save $700

billion over the next 5 to 7 years, where

are you going to get it? It is like slick

Willie Sutton who when he was asked,

why do you rob banks, said that is

where the money is. They are going to

take it from Medicare because that is

where the money is.

They are going to take it from Medicaid, too. Medicaid is a health care

program for the poorest people in the

country. And they are going to rob

Medicaid, too. But nobody is discussing

that because Medicaid does not have

any defenders in this capital, in the

city of Washington you do not hear

from the White House any discussion of

drastic cuts that are being proposed for

Medicaid. You do not hear them on the

Hill, here in Congress, but they are

going to cut Medicaid for poor people

drastically also.

Cuts are already under way in the

States and in cities across America to

cut health care for poor people. What is

the problem when you start cutting

health care for poor people? When the

Medicaid program was first developed a

statement was made which is still true.

The statement is that there is no such

thing as bargain basement, secondclass health care. Health care is either

adequate or it is not adequate. You
May 3, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD—HOUSE H 4537

cannot have second-class, bargain basement health care, health care where

you use old needles to save money because if you use old needles to give injections, you are likely to create more

disease than you are to create health.

You cannot have health care where

the hospitals do not wash the linen except once a week. You cannot have

health care where a doctor makes a diagnosis that a patient needs a certain

medication that exists and we know it

exists and the doctor decides that that

is too expensive for that person. That

is not health care. That is making

judgments about human beings that

nobody should have the right to make.

So health care costs cannot be

trimmed and cannot be cut without

damaging the health care process. It is

either adequate health care or it is not.

So when Medicare cuts are made, what

we are saying is we are going to give

bargain basement health care to poor

people and that is going to be inadequate health care. And those of us

who are here, those who propose it and

those who are against it, we all know

that what we are doing is unethical

and dangerous, but there are going to

be cuts for Medicaid and there are

going to be cuts for Medicare if they

continue to insist, if they insist that

we have to balance our budget in

America by the year 2002.

Now, why does it make sense to balance the budget? They offer this homespun logic that says every family balances its budget. You know they have

to balance your budget.

b 1345

That seems like a great truth, something that Einstein might endorse, except any mother, any father, anybody

in any family knows that you do not

balance your budget, you do not balance your budget year by year. Your

mortgage is not paid for in 1 year. Your

mortgage is spread out over a long period of time. Otherwise you could not

afford, you cannot pay for a house—

there are some rich and famous Americans who can, but most of us cannot

pay for a house in 1 year. You cannot

pay for your car in the same year, either. Most of us cannot pay for a car,

so you do not balance your budget.

Balanced budgets are not something

that heaven smiles upon because they

work in the economy. They are something invented by the Republican majority here as a great good that we

should all strive for which does not

exist. They say cities and States have

balanced budgets. Most cities and

States do not have balanced budgets,

they have operating budgets that are

balanced and then they have capital

budgets. They take all the items, like

your car and your house and things

that have to be paid for over a long period of time, because they are so tremendously expensive, and they put

that in a capital budget.

What this Government needs to do, if

you want to have an intelligent approach to the budget, is we should have

a capital budget for items that cost a

lot of money over a long period of time,

and an operating budget for the items

that you pay for on a yearly basis.

I would be the first to support a balanced budget operating budget if you

want to propose it that way, as long as

you take the capital items like the

building of airports and highways, and

if we need new weapon systems in the

future, weapon systems are a large expenditure that come out, and you can

look at it in a more intelligent way.

However, the people who are in

charge now, they have the votes. They

say we are going to have a balanced

budget. It is dogmatic, it is not scientific, it is not logical, but they have

the votes, so they have created a crisis.

I serve as the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus Alternative

Committee on the Budget. We hope

that we are going to be able to offer an

alternative budget on the floor, and

show our vision of where America

should be going and how you can deal

with the budget versus the vision of

the majority that is in control right

now. We are going to do that, despite

the fact that we have been told that no

budget will be allowed on the floor for

discussion unless it meets the requirement that has been set forth to move

toward balance.

You have to have a balanced budget,

a budget which is going toward balance, by the year 2002. That means that

since our budgets are really projected

on a 5-year period, not a 7-year period,

we have to show in our fifth year in our

budget that the deficit is down to $59

billion, which means that in 2 more

years it will be eliminated completely.

We are going to accept their challenge.

I am not sure what the Democratic

minority is going to do as a whole, but

the Congressional Black Caucus, we

will accept that challenge. We will

show how, even if you accept the illogical, unscientific approach of the Republican majority, you can produce a

budget that will be in balance by the

year 2002, and you can still do that

without making large numbers of

Americans suffer. You can do it without cutting Medicaid drastically; you

can do it without cutting Medicare

drastically. What you have to do, however, is stop the fantasy, stop the fantasy of increasing the defense budget

because you identify with that in some

kind of romantic way.

The defense budget cannot be increased while you are making all of

these cuts. We do not need to increase

the defense budget. We need to cut, instead, the $100 billion for overseas

bases. We are still supplying bases in

Germany and Japan. These are prosperous nations. They can take care of

their own needs if they want to man

those bases, or even if they do not need

the bases, they are there for the security of Europe as a whole, or the bases

are there for the security of Asia as a

whole, then Japan should pay their

share of maintaining security in the

world.

It is about time. They are rich nations, Germany and Japan. Let them

pay for the security of Europe instead

of an egotistical America. Our ego is

costing us billions of dollars, an egotistical sense that we, we should make

sure that Europe is secure by paying

for the bases in Europe. We should

make certain that Asia is secure by

paying for the bases in Europe. Ego.

That is how Tom Sawyer whitewashed

the fence.

Japan and Germany stand back and

they chuckle while their economies go

forward, while their workers earn higher pay, they have longer vacations,

their society is much more secure than

ours. They chuckle at our egotism that

says we must maintain bases across

the world in order to guarantee security and freedom, we must have a huge

Navy that guarantees the freedom of

the sea lanes of the world.

Why do we have to have a huge Navy

to guarantee the freedom of the sea

lanes of the world? If we want the freedom and security of the sea lanes to be

guaranteed, let us give more support to

the United Nations and let us have all

nations join together to guarantee the

security and the freedom of the sea

lanes of the world.

It is our ego that costs us billions of

dollars in defense, while other nations

sit back and let us do it and chuckle at

us while they pour their resources into

their economy. They pour their resources into the creation of jobs.

In our budget, if you want to insist

on balancing the budget, we say to the

Republican majority, then let us balance the budget by cutting those

things which are not necessary, like

$100 billion in overseas bases.

We have, unfortunately, an attitude,

a philosophy, that comes first. The attitude has to be confronted. We have to

confront the fact that we are dealing

with an elitist attitude, an attitude

which says that we want an America

which gets rid of all of the people who

are a nuisance to those rich and famous who want to have an opportunity

to make more and more money faster

and faster.

We already have the largest corporations in the world. The Fortune 500 corporations are bigger than most of the

countries in the world, their budgets.

They have more money, more assets

than most of the countries in the

world. We already have more billionaires than any other country in the

world. We do not have maybe the richest person in the world, maybe Japan

or Germany might have him, but we

have more people in the category of

billionaires than any other nation in

the world, yet we want to set conditions which will guarantee that they

get rich faster, instead of setting conditions and making policies that guarantee that the pie is shared.

All of us participated in the building

of America. Every soldier that died in

every war made a contribution. Every

person that worked in the factories

during the war made a contribution.
H 4538 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD—HOUSE May 3, 1995

Every engineer that took the work of a

genius and translated it into some

practical application, you know, everybody participated in the building of

this civilization and this society.

Everybody deserves some rewards.

Not everybody deserves to be rich, but

everybody deserves to have a decent

opportunity to pursue happiness, the

right to the pursuit of happiness. We

have forgotten that it is our duty as a

government to supply the right to pursue happiness.

Let us just take a moment to look at

the study that was reported in the New

York Times on Monday, April 17. The

study was reported, and I also have an

editorial, and I am not sure if it was on

the same day, but it was either on the

following day or the same day. On

Monday, April 17, the article said ‘‘The

gap in wealth in the U.S. is called the

widest in the West.’’

In the previous special order with my

colleagues, I mentioned this, and they

talked about it, too, we have a situation where the United States has replaced Great Britain as being the nation where the gap between the rich

and poor is the widest. There is a chart

which shows that over the years, since

1925, in Great Britain, the gap between

the wealthiest people and the poorest

people has come down steadily, while

the gap in America has risen steadily,

and we are way above the British at

this point. The gap between the average income of the richest and the poor

is wider in America than it is in Germany, in Japan, or anywhere else in

the world.

Mr. Speaker, I will include this article which appeared in the New York

Times on April 17 for the RECORD:

[From the New York Times, Apr. 17, 1995]

GAP IN WEALTH IN THE UNITED STATES

CALLED WIDEST IN WEST

(By Keith Bradsher)

WASHINGTON, April 12.—New studies on the

growing concentration of American wealth

and income challenge a cherished part of the

country’s self-image: They show that rather

than being an egalitarian society, the United

States has become the most economically

stratified of industrial nations.

Even class societies like Britain, which inherited large differences in income and

wealth over centuries going back to their

feudal pasts, now have greater economic

equality than the United States, according

to the latest economic and statistical research, much of which is to be published

soon.

Economic inequality has been on the rise

in the United States since the 1970’s. Since

1992, when Bill Clinton charged that Republican tax cuts in the 1980’s had broadened the

gap between the rich and the middle class, it

has become more sharply focused as a political issue.

Many of the new studies are based on the

data available then, but provide new analyses that coincide with a vigorous debate in

Congress over provisions in the Republican

Contract With America.

Indeed, the drive by Republicans to reduce

Federal welfare programs and cut taxes is

expected, at least in the short term, to widen

disparities between rich and poor.

Federal Reserve figures from 1989, the most

recent available, show that the wealthiest 1

percent of American households—with net

worth of at least $2.3 million each—owns

nearly 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. By

contrast, the wealthiest 1 percent of the

British population owns about 18 percent of

the wealth there—down from 59 percent in

the early 1920’s.

Further down the scale, the top 20 percent

of Americans—households worth $180,000 or

more—have more than 80 percent of the

country’s wealth, a figure higher than in

other industrial nations.

Income statistics are similarly skewed. At

the bottom end of the scale, the lowest-earning 20 percent of Americans earn only 5.7

percent of all the after-tax income paid to

individuals in the United States each year.

In Finland, a nation with an exceptionally

even distribution of income, the lowest-earning 20 percent receive 10.8 percent of such income.

The top 20 percent of American households

in terms of income—$55,000 or more—have 55

percent of all after-tax income.

‘‘We are the most unequal industrialized

country in terms of income and wealth, and

we’re growing more unequal faster than the

other industrialized countries,’’ said Edward

N. Wolff, an economics professor at New

York University. He will publish two papers

in coming months that compare wealth patterns in Western countries.

Liberal social scientists worry about poor

people’s shrinking share of the nation’s resources, and the consequences in terms of

economic performance and social tension.

Margaret Weir, a senior fellow in government studies at the Brookings Institution,

called the higher concentration of incomes

and wealth ‘‘quite divisive,’’ especially in a

country where the political system requires

so much campaign money.

‘‘It tilts the political system toward those

who have more resources,’’ she said, adding

that financial extremes also undermined the

‘‘sense of community and commonality of

purpose.’’

Robert Greenstein, executive director of

the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,

a Washington research group, observed,

‘‘When you have a child poverty rate that is

four times the average of Western European

countries that are our principal industrial

competitors, and when those children are a

significant part of our future work force, you

have to worry about the competitive effects

as well as the social-fabric effects.’’

Conservatives have tended to pay less attention to rising inequality, and some express skepticism about the statistics of their

significance. Marvin H. Kosters, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute

here, said he thought the gap, as measured,

was being used as a false villain. ‘‘I think we

have important sociological problems,’’ he

said, ‘‘but I don’t think this gets at it all

that well.’’

Murray L. Weidenbaum, professor of economics at Washington University in St.

Louis and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ronald

Reagan in 1981–1982, said he thought the

measures tended to overstate the gap by

overlooking Government programs like food

stamps or Medicaid.

Still, he said he was uncomfortable with

greater concentration of wealth ‘‘unless

there’s a rapid turnover’’ in which ‘‘this

year’s losers will be next year’s winners.’’

He noted that many wealthy people have

bad years and that a lot of middle-class people, like graduate students, briefly look statistically as if they are starving. The United

States does have ‘‘very substantial mobility,’’ he added.

Mr. Weidenbaum said he doubted that the

Republican agenda, if it became law, would

have any substantial effect on the gap. He

added that the ‘‘static’’ impact might be

somewhat more concentration, but that the

‘‘dynamic’’ impact would produce a bigger

economic pie for all to share.

There is no agreement as to why inequality is rising faster in the United States than

elsewhere. Explanations include falling

wages for unskilled workers as automation

spreads, low tax rates on the rich during the

1980’s, relatively low minimum wages, the

decline of trade unions and the rapid rise in

the 1980’s of the stock and bond markets, in

which rich people are heavily invested.

The most common view seems to be that

the United States has witnessed the more extreme effects of several international trends

toward greater economic inequality. ‘‘While

many of the countries experienced many

pieces of inequality, the United States is the

one country that seems to have experienced

all the pieces,’’ said Peter T. Gottschalk, an

economics professor at Boston College.

Mr. Wolff’s papers are based on data that

run through 1989. But Census Bureau figures

show that the trend toward greater income

inequality continued during the first year of

the Clinton Administration. While incomes

rose for the most affluent two-fifths of the

nation’s households as the economy expanded in 1993, the rest of the country suffered from falling incomes, after adjusting

for inflation.

‘‘U.S. wage distribution is more unequal

than other countries and we do less in terms

of tax and transfer policy’’ to cushion the

disparities, said Timothy M. Smeeding, an

American who is director of the Luxembourg

Income Study Project. Mr. Smeeding is writing two papers drawing international comparisons of income.

The project, based in Walferdange, Luxembourg, is supported by the national science

foundations of nearly two dozen countries including the United States, and has gathered

Government data from the member nations

showing that the United States has the

greatest inequalities in income distribution.

Most economists believe that wealth and

income are more concentrated in the United

States than in Japan. But while data show

that wealth is more equitably distributed in

Japan, the Government there has not released enough detailed information to make

statistical comparisons possible.

Anecdotal information strongly suggests

that Japan has a more equal distribution of

income. The chief executives of Japanese

manufacturing companies, for example,

make an average of 10 times the pay of their

workers. American chief executives in manufacturing are paid 25 times more, according

to a 1994 study by Towers Perrin, a management consulting company.

Professor Gottschalk said Canada and the

Netherlands seemed to have avoided the

trend toward relatively higher wages for

high-skilled workers because they had sharply increased the number of college graduates. But other trends toward inequality,

like a widening wage gap between experienced and inexperienced workers, have affected these two countries, as well.

The time American inequality began to increase is also debated, with various economists putting it anywhere from the mid–

1970’s to the early 1980’s. The double-digit inflation and stock market slumps that followed the quadrupling of oil prices in 1973

temporarily produced greater equality, as

the stocks and bonds of the rich lost value.

But that effect gradually disappeared, with

Mr. Wolff’s data showing that the concentration of wealth among the richest has consistently exceeded Britain’s level since 1978.

British records are especially complete,

making such comparisons easier.

The comparison with Britain is all the

more striking because President Reagan and
May 3, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD—HOUSE H 4539

former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

pursued broadly similar economic policies in

the 1980’s.

Rising housing prices have helped the British middle class and limited the growth in

inequality there. Still, Mr. Gottschalk said

most evidence indicated that income inequality rose much faster in the United

States and Britian than elsewhere.

Richard V. Burkhauser, an economics professor at Syracuse University, said that in

studying thousands of people in Germany

and the United States over seven-year periods in the 1980’s, he found that the two countries had roughly the same level of social

mobility.

As part of the Contract With America’s tax

provisions, the House on April 5 approved an

increase in individuals’ exemptions from the

estate tax, which is the main Federal tax on

wealth. By the Treasury’s estimate, this

could cut in half the number of people subject to the tax, to one-half of 1 percent of the

estates of those dying each year.

Republicans have argued that the overall

tax-cut provisions would reduce annual tax

bills by roughly equal percentages for rich

and poor. Democrats say that because the

annual tax bills of rich Americans are much

larger, reducing them by about the same percentage means that most of the money goes

to the rich rather than the poor or the middle class, further concentrating wealth and

income.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I will read

from the editorial a few excerpts that I

did not have a chance to cover before.

The New York Times is not a radical

publication. The New York Times editorial says the following: ‘‘After years

of little change, inequality exploded in

America starting in the 1970’s. According to Prof. Edward Wolff of New York

University, three-quarters of the income gains during the 1980’s and 100

percent of the increased wealth went to

the top 20 percent of the families.’’ In

America, the top 20 percent got threequarters of all the income gains. The 80

percent on the bottom, 8 out of 10,

shared the rest.

I continue the quote from the New

York Times: ‘‘The richest 1 percent of

households control about 40 percent of

the nation’s wealth.’’ One percent versus 99 percent. The other 99 percent

take the rest. ‘‘. . . 1 percent control 40

percent of the nation’s wealth—twice

as much as the figure in Britain, which

has the greatest inequality in Western

Europe.’’

In Britain, which used to have the

greatest inequality between the rich

and the poor, now we have twice as

much inequality in the New World, in

America. We fought the British, we got

rid of that system, that privilege and

wealth. Now we have twice as much inequality as Britain.

‘‘In Germany,’’ and I am quoting

from the New York Times editorial,

‘‘High-wage families earn about 2.5

times as much as low-wage workers,’’

2.5 times. The number in Germany has

been falling. In America the figure is

that the high-wage families in America

earn four times as much as low-wage

families, and the high-wage families’

percentage of income is rising.

The difference between the high-wage

families and the low-wage families,

people who work every day for wages,

we are not talking about wealthy people who have stocks and bonds and

they get their income from their investments, we are talking about wage

earners, people who work every day,

the highest wages in America have

been going up for the top and down for

the bottom, so you have the top wage

earners, the difference is four times as

great.

I continue to read from the editorial

in the New York Times: ‘‘The best

guess about the factor behind the burgeoning inequality is technology; the

wage gap between high- and low-skilled

workers in America doubled during the

1980’s. College graduates used to earn

about 30 percent more than high school

graduates, but now they earn 60 percent more.’’ College graduates used to

earn 30 percent more than just mere

high school graduates, and now they

earn 60 percent more.

Why is it barbaric that the Republican budget proposals are going to cut

the student loan program by $12 billion

over 5 years? Why is it a barbaric act,

an act that has no vision, no logic, no

science? Because you limit, when you

make those kinds of cuts and make it

more difficult for people to go to college, you limit the number of people

who can enter the high-technology job

market, and you cut off the possibilities of their earning livings at that

level.

I go back to the New York Times article: ‘‘Prof. Sheldon Danziger of the

University of Michigan estimates that

trends in private pay rates explain

about 85 percent of recent increases in

inequality; Reagan-Bush tax cuts for

the rich and spending cuts for the poor

explain much of the other 15 percent.’’

However, even if government is not

the main factor, and this is the New

York Times, not me, I think government policies are certainly not what

makes the economy, but government

policies are the main factor in the way

a society operates, including the economy. To quote the New York Times,

‘‘Even if government is not the main

factor, it could be a part of the solution. Changes in the Canadian economy

during the 1980’s also hit hard at lowwage workers,’’ changes in the Canadian economy.

In Canada, there the government

stepped in to keep poverty rates on a

downward path. In the United States,

poverty rose, but in Canada, poverty

dropped, because the government policies were used to intervene in their

economy in ways to help the poor.

‘‘House Republicans are now,’’ and I

am still quoting the New York Times,

‘‘House Republicans are now pushing

the Federal budget in the wrong direction. At a time when employers are

crying out for well-educated workers,

the GOP proposes to cut back money

for training and educational assistance. America needs better Head Start,

primary and secondary education. It

needs to train high school dropouts and

welfare mothers. The GOP policy would

leave the untrained stranded. That

would harm the Nation’s long-term

productivity—and further distort an

increasingly tilted economy.’’

b 1400

Mr. Speaker, I imclude the New York

Times editorial in its entirety at this

point in the RECORD:

THE RICH GET RICHER FASTER

The gap between rich and poor is vast in

the United States—and recent studies show

it growing faster here than anywhere else in

the West. The trend is largely the result of

technological forces at work around the

world. But the United States Government

has done little to ameliorate the problem.

Indeed, if the Republicans get their way on

the budget, the Government will make a

troubling trend measurably worse.

Some inequality is necessary if society

wants to reward investors for taking risks

and individuals for working hard and well.

But excessive inequality can break the spirit

of those trapped in society’s cellar—and exacerbate social tensions.

After years of little change, inequality exploded in America starting in the 1970’s. According to Prof. Edward Wolff of New York

University, three-quarters of the income

gains during the 1980’s and 100 percent of the

increased wealth went to the top 20 percent

of families.

The richest 1 percent of households control

about 40 percent of the nation’s wealth—

twice as much as the figure in Britain, which

has the greatest inequality in Western Europe. In Germany, high-wage families earn

about 2.5 times as much as low-wage workers; the number has been falling. In America

the figure is above 4 times, and rising.

Interpreting these trends requires caution.

Inequality rose here in the 1980’s in part because the United States created far more

jobs—many low-paid—than did Western Europe. Low-paying jobs are better than no

jobs. Rising inequality in the United States

has also been caused in substantial part by

middle-class families that moved up the income ladder, opening a gap with those below

them.

About half of Americans move a substantial distance up or down the income ladder

over a typical five-year period. In a mobile

society, where workers rotate among highand low-earning jobs, earning gaps are less

frightening because any given job would be

less entrapping.

But mobility has offset none of the increased inequality of income. Studies at the

Maxwell School at Syracuse University show

that mobility in America is not higher than

in Germany. Nor does mobility here appear

to be higher today than it was in the early

1970’s.

The best guess about the factor behind burgeoning inequality is technology; the wage

gap between high- and low-skilled workers in

America doubled during the 1980’s. College

graduates used to earn about 30 percent more

than high school graduates, but now earn 60

percent more. Prof. Sheldon Danziger of the

University of Michigan estimates that trends

in private pay rates explain about 85 percent

of recent increases in inequality; ReaganBush tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts

for the poor explain much of the other 15 percent.

But even if government is not the main

actor, it could be part of the solution.

Changes in the Canadian economy during the

1980’s also hit hard at low-wage workers. But

there the Government stepped in to keep

poverty rates on a downward path. I the

United States, poverty rose.

House Republicans are now pushing the

Federal budget in the wrong direction. At a
H 4540 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD—HOUSE May 3, 1995

time when employers are crying out for welleducated workers, the G.O.P. proposes to cut

back money for training and educational assistance. America needs better Head Start,

primary and secondary education. It needs to

train high school dropouts and welfare mothers. The G.O.P. policy would leave the untrained stranded. That would harm the nation’s long-term productivity—and further

distort an increasingly tilted economy.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I just want

to reemphasize something I read from

the editorial earlier:

Some inequality is necessary if society

wants to reward investors for taking risks

and individuals for working hard and well.

But excessive inequality can break the spirit

of those trapped in society’s cellar—and exacerbate social tensions.

We are not proposing a change in

capitalism. We are not proposing an attack on capitalism. Capitalism is the

way of the world. It is the best economy that mankind has been able to

fashion. But capitalism should be tempered by democratic government.

Democratic government should extol

the necessity to make sure that there

are safety nets, that the wealth is

shared. When people go to work for

Xerox or IBM or Microsoft, they do not

take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. They do not

have to be true to the doctrine expressed in the Declaration of Independence. The pursuit of happiness is not a

concern of a corporation, per se. The

pursuit of happiness of the American

people is not their concern. The pursuit

of profit is their business. But government must make certain that in the

process of pursuing profits, corporations are part of a total society and

that policies are promulgated where

everybody is properly taken care of,

not everybody shares equally but we

have public policies which guarantee

that everybody will have decent housing, public policies which guarantee

that the opportunity to get an education will be provided.

We cannot afford to have a budget

like the budget that is about to be proposed by the Republican majority that

is going to slash job training programs

tremendously, they are going to slash

education programs, and, of course,

there is a notion existing that they

may completely eradicate the Department of Education.

What does it say to the world, to the

civilized world, to the other industrialized nations that the United States

of America is going to eliminate the

Department of Education? What does it

say to the other competitors that we

have in the world about our future

competitiveness? I think they will

chuckle and say we are going to have

less of a problem with a competitive

America in the future if they are going

to eliminate a Department of Education at the Federal level which gives

a sense of direction for education in

the country as a whole.

It is not responsible, we do not have

a system like France or Great Britain

or most of the European countries, we

do not have a centralized system of

education. The education budget in

this country, most of it is paid for by

State and local governments. The proportion of the budget of the Federal

Government’s share of the budget is

about 8 percent now, fluctuating between 8 and 6 percent. Under Ronald

Reagan it went down to about 6 percent. But at most it is 8 percent of the

total budget. Of the more than $360 billion spent on education from kindergarten to higher education last year,

the Federal Government only paid for

about 8 percent of that. So it is not our

contribution financially that is so important. It is the leadership that the

Federal Government offers in terms of

giving a sense of direction to where we

have to go in the global economy in

order to be competitive. It is the leadership of the Federal Government that

brought forth a document called ‘‘A

Nation At Risk’’ where we said this Nation cannot survive unless we pay more

attention to how our children are educated in order to be able to compete in

the modern world. It is the leadership

that led George Bush to put out America 2000, his own program for improving

education.

Behind George Bush came President

Clinton with Goals 2000. Goals 2000 is

not so different from America 2000.

They were both at the same conference

where the Governors came up with the

same six ways to improve education.

We were moving forward, we are

moving forward in terms of Federal

participation without Federal domination of education. The Federal Government offers leadership. But now I dread

the budget that is coming because that

budget proposes to eliminate the Department of Education. That is a barbaric act. It would be a barbaric act, an

unreasonable act, an unscientific act to

eliminate the Department of Education

at this time.

I say the barbaric philosophy, people

who are committing barbaric acts are a

real danger. They are not barbarians

themselves but each act should be examined by itself. I think I mentioned

before a philosophy of economic cleansing that has been proposed by the

mayor of New York City. The mayor of

New York City is a nice guy when you

get to know him. He is a decent fellow,

he has a family, he has kids. I cannot

call him a barbarian, but I can think of

no more barbaric thinking than to believe that poor people should get out of

town, they should leave, in order to

make the city’s economic situation

better. That is barbaric in the extreme.

It is a philosophy of ethnic cleansing

that has been expressed by an elected

official. Those who think it, I consider

that bad enough, but this has been expressed and it must be challenged.

The mayor of New York City cannot

say to the poor people of New York

City, ‘‘You don’t belong here.’’ He cannot say to the African-Americans in

New York City, ‘‘You don’t belong

here.’’ New York City was a major

slave port. Millions of slaves were

poured into New York City in its early

days. As New York City was built

starting at the waterfront and moved

back up to Central Park, even when

Central Park was cleared, there are

photographs of slaves working to clear

the ground. That city was built in its

infancy by slave labor. There is a

Negro burial ground that was unearthed as they were building a new

Federal building in a downtown section

of Manhattan, and the Negro burial

ground revealed massive numbers of

graves, there must have been epidemic

sickness, large numbers of people died,

large numbers of children died. In order

for there to be so many graves and so

many people dying, there had to be

many slaves there and they were the

ones who cut down the trees, made the

lumber, did the construction. Long before the white immigrants came, the

slaves who were kidnapped and who

were the hostages and not immigrants,

they helped to build New York City.

And now to say to the descendants of

those slaves who built New York City,

‘‘Get out of town, you’re not wanted.’’

Where will they go? Where will the

poor people of New York City go? Who

else wants them if New York City does

not want them? Will they go to Marietta, GA, where they are building the

F–22 fighter plane? The F–22 fighter

plane is one of those obsolete weapon

systems that we do not need. We do not

need a fighter plane more sophisticated

than the one we already have because

the Soviet Union is not building another one. We have the best already, so

why build another one? It is going to

cost us $12 billion over the next 5 years

to continue creating, building the F–22.

Can you give us some jobs in the F–

22 plant in Marietta, GA, which happens to be the Speaker’s district? Can

you give us jobs for the poor of New

York City? Can we send them to Marietta, GA?

Where will they go? Can we send

them to Groton, CT, where they are

building another Seawolf submarine?

Can you give the poor people of New

York jobs at Groton, CT, where they

are building another Seawolf submarine?

Can they go to Texas where they

made a killing? Texas is responsible for

the savings and loan debacle. Half of

the savings and loans that collapsed,

half the swindles took place in Texas.

But they benefited even from the collapse because, since they have most of

the problem in their State, the Resolution Trust Corporation and all of the

effort to straighten out the debacle

created by the savings and loan swindle, half of it is in Texas. So workers

are hired by the Resolution Trust Corporation, by those people who are trying to straighten out the savings and

loan mess. They are Texas workers, so

Texas benefits twice.

Can we get some jobs for New Yorkers in Texas so that they can benefit

from the savings and loan swindle, jobs

that are created as we try to straighten

it out? Where can the New York City

poor people go?
May 3, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD—HOUSE H 4541

Can they go to Kansas? In Kansas

you have families who are farm families, and they have been averaging

$30,000 to $40,000 in government checks

over the last decade. According to an

article in the New York Times, they

get $30,000 to $40,000 for doing nothing,

except what they do raises the price of

food, and we pay more for food in New

York because we are keeping the price

of farm products high by subsidizing

them with taxpayers’ money.

There is something barbaric about

paying people not to grow food and

driving up the price so the poorest people have to pay more money. The farm

price program was created by the New

Deal, by Franklin Roosevelt, when

farmers were poor, to save poor farmers, when large numbers of people lived

on the land. But now we have less than

2 percent of the population of the United States living on farms, and we are

spending billions of dollars to take

care of those pretty well-to-do farmers

and the agribusinesses.

I want to read one more editorial

from the New York Times about the

farm program. This is a program which

we all accept nobody wants to cut. Recently the President made a trip to

Iowa, and he pledged that he would defend Federal farm subsidies to the end.

The New York Times editorial says

that farmers, quoting the New York

Times, farmers are the Nation’s richest

welfare recipients.

Farmers are the Nation’s richest welfare

recipients. Full-time farmers typically earn

four times as much as nonfarm families.

The Federal Government pays farmers and

huge agribusinesses not to grow crops or

send food abroad. Mr. Clinton says that is a

nifty way to boost exports, but taxpayers

who foot the bill might take exception.

The Federal program stifles food production, which jacks up prices and hurts both

consumers and the economy. The farm program costs taxpayers about $10 billion a year

and adds an equal amount to food bills, driving up the price of milk, fruit, sugar and

many other necessities by about 10 percent.

That quote was from the New York

Times editorial, which is entitled ‘‘Mr.

Clinton Bows to Farmers.’’

Many of those farmers live in Kansas,

the State of Kansas. Can we send New

York City’s poor to Kansas to share in

the welfare checks that the farmers

get? Our welfare checks average no

more than $600 for a family of three a

month, so surely the welfare recipients

in New York would greatly benefit if

they could get welfare checks at the

level of the checks that are being received by the farmers in Kansas.

Mr. Giuliano should know that there

is nowhere else for the poor to go. They

will not take them in Kansas; in Texas;

in Groton, CT; in Marietta, GA. They

have a right to stay in New York City.

The inhabitants have a right, the citizens have rights.

If a government cannot take care of

the needs of their citizens, they cannot

provide decent services, they cannot

provide educational opportunities, then

that government should resign. The

public officials who cannot do that

should resign. Do not exhort the people

to leave. That is barbaric. That is not

ethnic cleansing, it is economic cleansing, since you want all the poor to go.

First we had the tax on the illegal

immigrants. Then we had a tax on the

legal immigrants. Now we want all

poor people to go. That is barbaric. We

must resist that kind of barbarism.

In closing, what I am saying is that

the budget process is taking place at

every level in the country. In New

York State, the budget was supposed to

be completed and submitted on April 1.

Now it is more than a month later and

it is not completed because there is a

struggle under way in New York State

between the elite oppressive minority—

you have the same elite oppressive minority with the philosophy that the

poor are expendable, that you can

throw overboard certain people. You

have the high-technology barbarians in

control in New York State, and in New

York City, in city hall you have the

same philosophy in the mayor.

Yes, there are budget cuts that have

to be made. Yes, there is a need to balance the budget, and Democrats should

not get off the hook. We should come

forward with proposals about how the

budget should be balanced. We should

not hesitate to talk about revenue.

In New York City, the State has always robbed the city blind in terms of

revenue, doing very little for the city.

They have taken far too much from the

city. In New York City, you have a

Port of New York City, a Port Authority of New York-New Jersey which

owns all the most valuable land where

the airport is and the ships dock. Revenue that ought to be going to the city

is going to the Port Authority. That

ought to be corrected.

In New York City, you have two- and

three-family homeowners who pay

taxes which are far lower, about onefourth the taxes that are being paid by

the people who live in the suburbs surrounding New York. You have a number of ways that revenue could be increased.

Yes, we do need to decrease expenditures. Yes, we do need to adjust programs. There is not a program that has

ever been invented that could not be

trimmed, could not be adjusted, could

not be refined. All that should take

place in an atmosphere of an evolutionary process, and not a revolutionary

process which says that ‘‘We are going

to destroy, we are going to slash and

burn, we are going to have a blitzkrieg

attack on all the social programs that

were invented, that were developed

over the last 60 years.’’

We do not need to go into the budget

process next week with so much dread,

so much fear, so much foreboding. We

do not have to look forward to a process that is going to tear down and

wreck the best that America has ever

built.

b 1415

It could be very different. We could

go forward with a philosophy of FDR

ringing in our ears. There is nothing

radical or new. The ‘‘FDR’s Economic

Bill of Rights,’’ I ran across it in a

magazine the other day, and I will just

close with this. Franklin Delano Roosevelt said many years ago:

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights

under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of

station, or race or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job

in the industries, or shops or farms or mines

of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of farmers to raise and sell their

products at a return which will give them

and their families a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and

small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom

from unfair competition and domination by

monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent

home;

The right of adequate medical care and the

opportunity to achieve and enjoy good

health;

The right of adequate protection from the

economic fears of old age, and sickness, and

accident and unemployment;

And finally, the right to a good education.

All of these ideas were espoused by

Franklin Roosevelt many years ago.

You have heard the Speaker of this

House quote Roosevelt and speak of

him admirably as a person who created

new order in our society. Why does he

want to tear down an order that was

created by Franklin Roosevelt as we go

forward in the budget process and appropriations process? This Nation is

great because carefully, painstakingly

we built a system that demonstrated

we care about everybody in America.

Let us not let the oppressive elite minority destroy what has been put there

by and for a caring majority.

APPOINTMENT AS MEMBERS OF

UNITED STATES DELEGATION OF

fMEXICO-UNITED STATES INTERPARLIAMENTARY GROUP

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr.

REGULA). Without objection, and pursuant to the provisions of 22 U.S.C. 276h,

the Chair announces the Speaker’s appointment of the following Members of

the House as members of the United

States delegation of the Mexico-United

States Interparliamentary Group for

the first session of the 104th Congress:

Mr. BALLENGER of North Carolina, vice

chairman; Mr. GILMAN of New York;

Mr. DREIER of California; Mr. SALMON

of Arizona; Mr. HAYWORTH of Arizona;

Mr. BROWNBACK of Kansas; Mr. DE LA

GARZA of Texas; Mr. GEJDENSON of Connecticut; Mr. COLEMAN of Texas; Mr.

MILLER of California; and Mr. RANGEL

of New York.

There was no objection.