Date: 1995-12-12
Speaker: GENE GREEN (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

Mr. now costing them the support of onethird of their natural base of voters. Speaker. I would like to recommend to Rather than signaling the rise of a new Reall members an article that appeared in publican era. Phillips predicted. last years the Washington Post business section Republican takeover of Congress will go last week. which I will insert in the down as the last gasp of a Republican era RECORD. that began with the election of Richard The article reported on a bipartisan Nixon in 1968. but has now -been taken over roundtable discussion on the rising by a -coalition of rightwing ideologues and gap between rich and poor. and the Wall Street interests. He noted that two earlier Republican eras. the Gilded Age of the shrinking middle class in our country. 1880s and 1890s and the Roaring Twenties. This trend is no secret. Ask any ended when progressives were able to ride working American. We .have been into office on the Inequality issue. downsized. laidoff. cut pay. cut jobs to Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin the point that even the Business sec- opened the session by declaring that rising tion reports it. inequality has so torn the social fabric that I was pleased to read that some of fixing. It amounts to not only a moral or pothe speakers--notably Jack Kempem- litical imperative. but also an economic one. phasized economic growth and If no solution is found. Rubin said. angry voters will soon turn to radical measures nomic development as the way to nar- such as restoring trade barriers or reregurow the income gap in our country. not lating entire industries--moves that he prejust balancing the budget. diets would slow economic growth and ultiMr. Kemp continues to be one of the mately be selfdefeating. few Republicans willing to address the And former representative Jack F. Kemp. issue of income inequality and the poor who now heads a Republican tax reform comcondition of our cities instead of treat- mission. warned that the plight of the urban ing them as inconvenient facts that poor had become morally "unconscionable" should be ignored or denied. and politically unacceptable. For that reason. Kemp said Republicans should make Beyond balancing the budget. we boosting economic growth rates. not balneed to emphasize education and train- ancing the budget. their top political prioring for our children and make the nec- ity. essary public investments to help cre- Nobody at yesterdays session took issue ate economic growth. with a raft of recent reports showing that It is a shame that programs such as the household incomes of those in the hotthe SchooltoWork programwhich tom 40 percent of the economy have slipped over the last 20 years. when adjusted for inconnects high school students to the flation. while all the income growth has been world of work--could be eliminated by concentrated in the households in the top 20 this Congress. percent. I invite those from the other side of But there was a spirited and. in the end. the aisle who believe that the income unresolved debate over what to do about it. Decenber 12. 1995 CO Steven Rattner. a managing partner at the Wall Street investment firm of Lazard Freres & Co.. argued that they key to narrowing the income gap was more and better training programs to get a better match between the jobs demanded by the new economy and the skills of workers at the bottom of the income scale. But Louis Jacobson. a researcher at Westat Inc. in Rockville. said his studies found that such programs inevitably reach only a small portion of the work force that could benefit from them. And Cornell University economist Robert Frank argued that many labor markets now exhibit a "winner take all" quality to them that gives disproportionate salaries to whoever is at the top. no matter how much education and training the people below them have. Kemp. along with Rattner. argued that it would be folly to address the problem of rising inequality by expanding government efforts to transfer income from the rich to the poor. "I dont think poor people are poor because rich people are rich." said Kemp in arguing against welfare and other "redistributionist" programs. But not everyone agreed. "Redistribution is not a naughty word." said Gary Burtless. an economist at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Burltess noted that the longterm shift in the governments income support programs from the poor to the elderly middle class was a major contributor to growing inequality in recent years. And he noted that countries such as Germany and Japan had been able to finance much more generous social programs than the United States while still turning in as good or better economic performance over the past 20 years. Burltesss comment was seconded by Timothy Smeeding. an economist at Syracuse University whose recent study found that although the United States is the richest nation. its poor have a lower standard of living than the poor of all other industrial countries. "I think we have no choice now but to take greater account of the losers." said Smeeding.