Cass Ballenger

Mr. BALLENGER

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California [Mr. Dreier]. (Mr. DREIER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to note that the State of Massachusetts will face a loss of 4,000 jobs if the minimum wage is increased. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Graham], a member of the committee.

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to note for the record, Pennsylvania will lose 27,400 jobs. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas [Mr. Hutchinson], a member of the committee.

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to note for the record that Pennsylvania will face a loss of 27,400 jobs if the minimum wage is increased. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Petri].

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I would like to note for the record that New York will face the loss of 29,900 jobs if the minimum wage is increased. Up to 500,000 jobs will be eliminated nationwide. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Delay].

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, sound public policy frequently takes a back seat to election year politics--and there is no clearer example of this than the current debate on raising the minimum wage. We have all heard the rhetoric from the other side, where day after day my colleagues have taken to the floor to argue that we need to help working families by increasing the minimum wage. They have painted a picture that the average minimum wage worker is a head of a household who is trying to support a family earning the minimum wage, just $8,840 a year. Well-- that picture is phoney--just as phoney as the arguments of those who would vote to increase the minimum wage. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, only 11 percent of all workers earning $5.15 an hour or less are the sole supporters of their families. More than 35 percent of minimum wage earners are teenagers or other workers living with their parents and only 2.8 percent are single parents supporting a family. Raising the minimum wage is not an effective way to help the working poor. President Clinton said so himself just last year. In fact, minimum wage jobs are often the first rung on the ladder of upward mobility. Increasing the wage to $5.15 or higher just moves that rung beyond reach, making it harder for those with few skills and training or limited education to get a first job. Research shows that 63 percent of minimum wage workers earn higher wages within 12 months, and some 40 percent will receive their first raise within 4 months. Not too long ago, an article appeared in the Wall Street Journal that clearly illustrated this point. It was written by a manager of the Angus Barn in Raleigh, NC. She was a single mother with two children, barely surviving on welfare. Today, she manages one of the largest and most popular restaurants in North Carolina. The key to her success was a minimum wage job. This starting job taught her the skills she needed to keep moving up the career ladder and opened the door for her to advance to better and higher paying positions. By raising the starting wage--we will be denying opportunities like this to thousands of workers. And consider that at this same time, we're trying to move unskilled people off welfare and into the workforce--we're eliminating the jobs they will need. It's well known by economists and lawmakers that higher minimum wages lead to job losses. Dozens of studies show that raising the minimum wage costs entry-level job opportunities, and does not help the poor. Even the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office report indicates that an increase in the starting wage could cause employment losses in the range of 100,000 to 500,000 jobs. Other economic studies point to even higher job losses. If the wage rate is hiked up to a new level, my home state of North Carolina will lose an estimated 19,100 jobs. A 90-cent increase in the wage rate is meaningless for the person who no longer has a job. A minimum wage increase is the modern day ``magic potion'' of election politics. It makes the political establishment feel good-- ``see, we've taken care of the problem of low wages'' and it pretends to help people who need help. But, in reality it does more harm than good, costing some low-wage workers their jobs and raising the cost of essential goods which make up the biggest part of these families' budgets. But increasing, the minimum wage, the Congress is hurting job creation and opting for politics over sound policy. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. BALLENGER

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, I am speaking on portal to portal, and today I rise in strong support of the Employee Commuting Flexibility Act, which will allow employees to continue to use company vehicles for commuting. This has been a common practice throughout many service industries, where employees can use company vehicles to commute between their homes and the job site. In August of 1994, the Department of Labor took a position which penalized employers and employees who had worked out arrangements concerning the use of company vehicles. While the Department later backed away from that position, many employers are legitimately concerned about continuing to allow their employees to use company- provided vehicles for commuting. Given that the Department has had two varying positions on this issue within a relatively short period of time, the Employee Commuting Flexibility Act provides much-needed clarification on the intention of the law concerning employee use of such vehicles. If employees must be paid for the time that they spend commuting to and from work each day, employers will be forced to eliminate these programs. Employees will then have to commute to work in their own personal vehicles. Not only will this be inconvenient for both parties, but for many employees it may mean the added financial burden of having to fuel, insure, and maintain their own vehicle for commuting. The Employee Commuting Flexibility Act will allow employers and employees to continue with such mutually beneficial arrangements, so long as the arrangement meets certain conditions. First, the use of the vehicle would be subject to an agreement between the employee and the employer. Second, the vehicle must be used for travel within the normal commuting area for the employer's business or establishment. The clarification provided by this legislation will enable employers and employees to continue with arrangements which meet these conditions. The employee receives the benefit of transportation and the company receives the benefit of the employee being able to go directly to the job site. Employees will not be exploited and the company will not be unduly burdened with expense. This is commonsense legislation and I urge my colleagues to support the bill.

Mr. BALLENGER

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, if we needed another example of how this President changes characters faster than Rich Little, here it is: A year ago President Clinton put on his regulatory reform-er costume. He said that he wanted to give small businesses a break against agencies like OSHA, which were more interested in collecting penalties than in getting things fixed. In fact these are his words exactly, when he dressed up like someone sympathetic to small business: Enforcers will be given authority to waive up to 100 percent of punitive fines for small businesses so that a business person who acts in good faith can put his energy into fixing the problem, not fighting with the regulator. In other words, if they want to spend the fine money fixing the problem, better they should keep it and fix the problem than give it to the Government. But now the President is wearing another costume. It's his reelection costume, and it's paid for by people who don't want regulatory reform and who could care less bout small business. And now the President has not only forgotten what he said when he was wearing that regulatory reform-er costume, he's actually opposing what he said. Take a look at what the Clinton administration is saying on the small business OSHA reform bill. We put his regulatory reforms for small business into a bill, House Report 3234, and now the administration is getting ready to oppose the very proposals it made when the President was wearing the small business costume. Mr. Speaker, costume changers are great entertainment. But we don't need any more of a costume President.

Mr. BALLENGER

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, it was 1 year ago that President Clinton announced his plans to reinvent OSHA. The new OSHA, according to the President's speech, would rely less on enforcement, more on partnerships. It would use common sense in regulations, so that the most benefits could be achieved with the least burden. And the new OSHA would focus on results, not redtape by focusing on hazards not paperwork and evaluating personnel on improvements in safety rather than penalties. Mr. President, that was a good speech. But not much has happened since then. Why not? The head of OSHA answered that question a few days ago: ``There are a lot of people who doubt this direction, including people inside the organization [OSHA].'' Mr. President, you have an opportunity to say to your opponents on OSHA reinvention that you actually meant what you said. I've introduced H.R. 3234. All it does is take your ideas on reinventing OSHA, even your words, and put them in law. So what will it be, Mr. President? Did you mean what you said 1 year ago?

Mr. BALLENGER

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, Bill Clinton is fooling the American people by saying that he is reforming the Government and cutting down on big Government spending. By Clinton's own numbers, he would increase discretionary spending next year by $8 billion. Bill Clinton is increasing the size of the Government, increasing its power over your life, and he's paying for it with the taxpayer's own money. Bill Clinton has vetoed tax cuts for working families and vetoed welfare reform twice. He claims to be for working families and for tax relief. He vetoed both of these when he vetoed the balanced budget. Mr. Speaker, the next time you hear Bill Clinton talking about balancing the budget and cutting taxes, he is not doing this. His 1997 budget is proof that he is increasing Federal spending and raising taxes. He increases Washington bureaucracy and creates 14 new Federal programs. Bill Clinton is protecting big Government and the status quo. Whose promises has he kept?

Mr. BALLENGER

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, now the President wants to ``make work pay'' by raising the minimum wage. Yet just 2 years ago he said that raising the minimum wage is ``the wrong way to raise the income of low- wage earners.'' President Clinton knows that upgrading worker skills results in an increase in wages. He has said that ``what you earn depends on what you learn; the most effective way to help is to make workers more productive because wages reflect the value of what people produce.'' ``After all, most minimum wage workers are not poor.'' That is Secretary Reich to President Clinton. ``An increased minimum wage often takes from the poor to help the middle class.'' That is economist Robert Shapiro, friend of Bill Clinton's.

Mr. BALLENGER

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, the President is pushing the minimum wage. As a business person who runs a business, I know that business has been eating raw material cost increases for years. Unable to increase prices, business has been needing a reason to raise those prices. Along comes the minimum wage. Watch prices. Inflation can eat the value of a wage increase in nothing flat. Who are we kidding? The minimum wage increase is straight politics.

Mr. BALLENGER

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this resolution to investigate the United States role in the Iranian arms transfer to Croatia and Bosnia. The Bosnian arms embargo was established in 1991 by the United Nations in an effort to prevent the Bosnian conflict from erupting into widespread civil war. By placing an embargo on the region, it was thought that none of the warring factions could gain a decisive advantage over the others. However, the embargo had little effect. The already well-armed Serbians were able to easily roll over the militarily weaker Bosnians, claiming much territory and causing horrific casualties. While still opposed to direct United States intervention, the Republican-led Congress called for a lifting of the embargo so that the Bosnians could, at least, acquire the arms they needed to defend themselves. On eight separate occasions, the President rejected congressional attempts to lift this embargo. While publicly supporting the arms embargo, President Clinton had secretly approved a shipment of Iranian arms to Bosnia in 1994. This is a classic Clinton flip-flop. Last year, he blocked our efforts to lift the arms embargo, and he has allowed Iran--a known sponsor of terrorism--to ship arms directly to Bosnia. There are 20,000 Americans risking their lives in Bosnia because President Clinton sent them there. By allowing Iran to establish a foothold in the region, the President has significantly increased that risk.

Mr. BALLENGER

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, during the American Revolution, the American people waged a war against one of the greatest empires in history. One of the main motivations for the revolution was the issue of taxation. In fact, one of their slogans was ``No Taxation Without Representation.'' If you look at the historical record, though, you will find that the taxes the English Crown imposed on the colonists were light by today's standards. Today is tax freedom day. It is the day that the American people stop working for the Government and start working for their families. Think about it, Mr. Speaker, 17 weeks of the year, almost a third of a year, is spent working for the Government. If our Founding Fathers knew this, they would roll over in their graves. This may not be 1776, but it is 1996 and its time to cut taxes, reduce government, and restore the American dream for our children and grandchildren.

Mr. BALLENGER

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, on May 1, 1996, I was detained and did not cast a vote on S. 641, the Ryan White CARE Act conference report. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall vote No. 145.

Mr. BALLENGER

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, President Clinton is just pretending to be President, He is just pretending to propose solutions to our Nation's problems. Let me illustrate what I mean. Take the issue of helping the working poor. The President, by proposing an increase in the minimum wage, has a pretend solution to a real problem. Raising minimum wage will cause job loss and won't help the working poor. Even President Clinton agrees. He said so in Time magazine in 1995. If President Clinton thought raising the minimum wage was a good idea, he should have raised it when the Democrats had control of the Congress during the first 2 years of his term. He didn't I can only conclude that the President doesn't want to help the working poor, only wants to pretend to help. Another recent example of pretending is the announcement that he will sell 12 million barrels of oil from the strategic petroleum reserve in an effort to reduce rising gasoline prices. Twelve million barrels sounds like a lot of oil, but it is less than a day's supply for the Nation. The sale of oil will have a negligible effect on prices. If he wanted a real solution to a real problem, he would support repeal of his 4.3 cents a gallon gasoline tax of 1993. However, President Clinton would rather make a bold announcement and pretend to do something about rising gas prices. We need a President that has real solutions for real problems. Not a President who is playing ``let's pretend.''

Mr. BALLENGER

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, this week marks the 25th anniversary of the Federal Occupational Safety and Health Act [OSH Act] and the agency it helped to create, OSHA. Throughout the week events will commemorate not only the anniversary of OSHA, but highlight the importance of workplace safety. It is certainly appropriate and important for employers, employees, and public officials to be reminded of the importance of workplace safety--and of the cost to lives, families, and businesses when safety is not emphasized and accidents occur. The 25th anniversary of the OSH Act is being used by some people for something else as well: to criticize Republicans who have been critical of OSHA. Indeed, many of us in Congress have been critical of OSHA. We've claimed that it has too often been overreaching and lacking in common sense in its regulations, and adversarial and punitive in its enforcement. And we've said that it has not been cost effective in promoting worker safety and health. The Clinton administration has agreed with many of our criticisms of OSHA. For example, just 1 year ago, President Clinton, speaking at a small business in Washington, DC, called for creation of ``a new OSHA,'' an OSHA that puts emphasis on ``prevention, not punishment'' and uses ``commonsense and market incentives to save lives.'' Vice President Gore was even more direct when he spoke to the White House Conference on Small Business last year: ``I know that OSHA has been the subject of more small business complaints than any other agency. And I know that it is not because you don't care about keeping your workers safe. It is because the rules are too rigid and the inspections are often adversarial.'' And in criticizing OSHA we've said nothing more than OSHA's record surely shows. Stories abound of OSHA's enforcement of rules that have little or nothing to do with workers' safety. We've sometimes been accused of fabricating stories about OSHA, but in each case not only has the example been true, but OSHA has then tried to quietly undo the fabricated regulation. Last year the owner of a small bakery near Chicago told the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections about her OSHA inspection, in which she was fined for not having the required documents on the health hazards associated with laundry detergent used to clean hands and aprons in the bakery. The head of OSHA publicly denied that there was any such requirement, and then quietly sent out new instructions to OSHA inspectors to ``go easy'' on issuing citations for such common household items. Similarly, Labor Secretary Reich assured at least two congressional committees that OSHA had no regulation banning gum chewing by workers doing roofing work: ``pure fiction'' he said. Then a few weeks later his own Department of Labor issued a report highlighting the same gum-chewing regulation as one that should be deleted from OSHA's books. I'll assume that when he testified before Congress the Secretary just did not know OSHA's 3,000 pages of rules in sufficient detail. But if he were a roofing contractor, rather than the Secretary of Labor, his ignorance of OSHA's rules would be no excuse, and he could be cited and fined if one of his employees violated the gum chewing ban. Are such examples of silly and unproductive regulations and enforcement just aberrations? Hardly. Despite spending over $5 billion in taxpayer money over the past 25 years, there is little evidence that OSHA has made a significant difference to workers' health and safety. Example after example and study after study show that OSHA's focus on finding violations, no matter how minor and insignificant, has actually made OSHA ineffective in improving safety and health in the workplace. Why is that? One important reason appears to be that when the focus is on issuing penalties rather than fixing problems, there is much less attention paid to fixing problems. One study showed that the time required of OSHA to document citations increased an average inspection by at least 30 hours, thus greatly decreasing the number of workplaces OSHA could inspect. Penalties are sometimes necessary to compel irresponsible employers to address health and safety for their workers. But as the Clinton administration itself has said, inspections and penalties have not produced safety. OSHA must find new ways of operating. The apparent agreement between the Clinton administration and those of us in Congress who support reform of OSHA marked a significant convergence of views. The 25 year history of OSHA has been marked by sharp partisan and philosophical differences over the value and direction of OSHA. So the unusual agreement in analysis and prescription for improving OSHA between the Clinton administration and Congress presented an unusual opportunity to use the 25th anniversary of OSHA to make meaningful changes. Now the Clinton administration seems to be walking away from its own analysis and initiatives. Recently, with bipartisan cosponsorship, I introduced the Small Business OSHA Relief Act, which would enact several of the specific changes already proposed or endorsed by the Clinton administration for OSHA. We even borrowed the Clinton administration's language, so that there would be no dispute that these are initiatives to which they have already agreed. Organized labor, which has opposed the Clinton administration's ``reinvention'' of OSHA all along, is also opposing the legislation, and their influence on the Clinton administration has never been stronger than it is in this election year. So the President must choose: did he really mean what he said about ``a new OSHA,'' or will be stop meaningful change to OSHA, change which he has already said is needed, to appease his union supporters? The 25th anniversary of OSHA is a timely opportunity to look back but also to look ahead. The President and Congress have an opportunity to enact needed reforms that will make OSHA more fair and more effective. Last May, speaking about OSHA, the President said, ``Let's change this thing. Let's make it work. Let's lift unnecessary burdens and keep making sure we're committed to the health and welfare of the American workers so that we can do right and do well.'' If the President stands by his own words, we can in fact begin to create a ``new OSHA'' for the next 25 years.

Mr. BALLENGER

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, last week my office received a copy of a letter which the AFL-CIO is circulating to Members of Congress opposing the Small Business OSHA Relief Act, H.R. 3234. Not surprisingly, the letter never mentions the fact that every single item in the Small Business OSHA Relief Act has been taken directly from policy pronouncements of the Clinton administration. The AFL-CIO has shown how extreme its own agenda is when it opposes this very modest legislation, which is limited in scope and represents areas of agreement between the Clinton administration's initiatives and our desire to make OSHA less adversarial and more commonsensical. The Clinton administration has repeatedly said that OSHA needs to be reinvented. But will the Clinton administration have the backbone to stand by its own words and initiatives when the AFL-CIO comes calling?

Mr. BALLENGER

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, for nearly 4 years now Bill Clinton has promised a middle-class tax cut. He promised a tax cut in the presidential campaign and he throws the words ``tax cut'' around at opportune times. But his actions speak louder than his words. By a single vote, Bill Clinton rammed through the last Congress the largest tax increase in history. Then, earlier this week, 88 percent of his party opposed requiring a two-thirds supermajority to raise taxes. Increasing taxes on hardworking Americans should be as difficult as completing the tax forms. What really gets me about Bill Clinton's veto of tax relief is that taxes not only hit Americans in the wallet, but also in the home and family. The current tax system makes Americans work harder, take second jobs, and put in longer hours just to meet their tax burden. Not only is the Government taking Americans' money, it is essentially taking the precious time they would normally spend playing with their children, going to PTA or church functions, or volunteering in their communities. Higher taxes have become a tax on free time too.

Mr. BALLENGER

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, today I and several of my colleagues are introducing the Small Business OSHA Relief Act of 1996. Mr. Speaker, nearly 1 year ago, President Bill Clinton traveled to a small sheet metal plant in northwest Washington, DC, and declared that it was time to create a ``new OSHA.'' I certainly agree with the President on the need to change OSHA. OSHA, said President Clinton, needs to change so that its emphasis is on ``prevention, not punishment,'' and so that the agency uses ``common sense and market incentives to save lives.'' Throughout the past year, no doubt largely in response to initiatives here in Congress to reform OSHA, the Clinton administration struggled to convince us and the American public that OSHA was being reinvented. Assistant Secretary Joe Dear, for example, said in congressional testimony last year: ``If there is one single message you take away from this hearing today, I hope it is this: that OSHA is changing the way it does business.'' The marks of the new OSHA, according to the Assistant Secretary, would be the elimination of inspection and penalty quotas; a less confrontation approach to enforcement, including reductions in penalties for employers who promptly correct violations; and commonsense regulations. Whatever the genesis for this recognition of the need to change OSHA by the Clinton administration, I, and I know many of my colleagues as well, have applauded it. The direction of these changes is the same as we have pushed for in H.R. 1834, the Safety and Health Improvement and Regulatory Reform Act. Obviously what the Clinton administration has proposed does not go as far as H.R. 1834, and in my view does not go far enough. But they at least move OSHA in the same direction. President Clinton announced that he would veto H.R. 1834 even before that bill was marked up in subcommittee. It was clear from the circumstances of that veto message that it had much to do with Presidential election politics and little to do with the legislation itself, but the promise of a veto effectively stopped realistic prospects for enacting comprehensive OSHA reform this year. Nonetheless, I believe it is important to solidify the progress that has been made in changing OSHA in the direction that Republicans and many of my Democratic colleagues have called for for years, and which President Clinton called for 1 year ago. For that reason, I am introducing the Small Business OSHA Relief Act of 1996. The Small Business OSHA Relief Act of 1996 is comprised of five provisions, each of which comes directly from policy pronouncements by the Clinton administration. The first provision comes from statements made by Labor Secretary Reich in support of measuring and balancing the costs and benefits of OSHA standards, consistent with the administration's goal for OSHA of more ``commonsense regulations.'' The second provision adopts President Clinton's directive of April 21, 1995, granting a waiver of penalties for small businesses which correct violations within a reasonable period of time. As President Clinton said in announcing that directive, ``We will stop playing `gotcha' with decent, honest business people who want to be good citizens. Compliance, not punishment, should be our objective.'' The third provision adopts and follows an OSHA compliance directive issued in November 1995 regarding citations for paperwork violations. In recent years, a majority of the most commonly cited OSHA standards are paperwork requirements. OSHA's compliance directive recognizes that these paperwork violations have often been technical and nitpicking, and don't address real health or safety problems. Including this change in the statute will give employers and employees assurance that this common sense change will be more permanent than is the case with a compliance directive. The fourth provision codifies OSHA's State consultation grants program. The consultation grants program was created by OSHA to assist small businesses in improving safety and health in their workplaces. Historically, these grants, which are given to State agencies or colleges in each State to provide consultation services, have been underfunded, requiring employers who seek assistance to wait up to 2 years for assistance. The Clinton administration has endorsed the codification of the consultation grants program. The fifth and last provision of the bill would codify another mark of the new OSHA--elimination of the use of inspections, citations, and penalties as performance measures for inspectors and their supervisors. The Small Business OSHA Relief Act codifies the positive changes to OSHA on which the Clinton administration and we agree, so that we can build on those and continue to work constructively to create a truly new OSHA. I welcome my colleagues' support and cosponsorship of the Small Business OSHA Relief Act of 1996.

Mr. BALLENGER

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, in the current issue of Time magazine, we have a very interesting quote from George Stephanopoulos, one of Bill Clinton's top aides. He says, ``For this President, words are actions.'' Well, let's examine the record. Here are some interesting words from one of Bill Clinton's campaign commercials: ``I've offered a plan to get the economy moving again, starting with a middle-class tax cut.'' Or, how about these words: ``I would present a 5-year plan to balance the budget.'' And let's not forget these words, again, from the President: ``I have a plan * * * to end welfare as we know it.'' Mr. Speaker, considering the fact that Bill Clinton has vetoed all of these promises, I'm left wondering, What is George Stephanopoulos talking about? The record is clear. There is no similarity between what Bill Clinton says and what he does. Obviously, Mr. Stephanopoulos got it backward: For this President actions are words, because his vetoes speak volumes about protecting Washington's values.

Mr. BALLENGER

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, my colleagues may not have seen this, but today's Washington Post features a neat little chart showing the progress in the Contract With America. Congressional compliance--signed into law; unfunded mandates--signed into law; Defense spending increases--signed into law; and on and on. Mr. Speaker, just this week, Congress gave the President the line- item veto, we lifted the regulatory burden on small business, we started reversing the Clinton Social Security tax on the elderly, and we passed commonsense health care reform. We have a solid record of achievement in the 104th Congress. Our Contract With America is on track--just like it says here in the Post-- and, in addition, we have changed the terms of debate here in Washington. It is no longer about should we do the right thing, it is about how we do the right thing. I am honored to be in the party that stands for America's values, not Washington's values.

Mr. BALLENGER

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 3103, and want to address the provisions relating to medical savings accounts for MSA's. During the debate over the President's health care reform package during the 103d Congress, we saw that Americans view choice as fundamental to our health care system. By allowing people the chance to choose a high-deductible health insurance plan and to place the premium savings into a personal savings account, we are providing a way for people to manage their health care expenses. This plan would be used to cover major health costs while the savings account would cover routine and preventive care. Under this bill, individuals could deposit up to $2,000 per year and could save, in the account, what they didn't use. Any withdrawals from the account for non-medical expenses would be taxable and subject to an early withdrawal penalty of 10 percent. Also, MSAs would allow patients to choose their own doctors and participate in their own care. These accounts belong to the individual and are portable during a job change. Employers are currently able to offer MSA-like plans. However, unlike other traditional plans, the Government does not allow these plans to be tax deductible. MSAs should receive equal treatment, because recent studies indicate that these plans reduce the health care costs for employers by around 12 percent compared to traditional plans. This cost reduction directly enables employers to maintain quality health benefit plans to their employees at no additional charge. As we look for market-oriented ways to contain the costs of health care, MSAs should be viewed as an attractive option.

Mr. BALLENGER

Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, most working men and women in this country prefer the Republican vision of the future. They support a change in the way the Federal Government works and operates, they want a change in the way the welfare system operates, they want an end to race and gender preferences on the job and in our schools, and they want to decide who spends their money and on what. Yet, the self- proclaimed champions of ``working men and women'' resist this popular agenda at every turn. On Monday, a group of elite, liberal, big union bosses levied a $35 million tax increase on the men and women of the AFL-CIO, money they will use to attack the pro-family, pro-middle-class agenda of change offered by this Republican-led Congress. Despite their efforts, the union bosses better be wary, because it is only a matter of time before the rank and file throws them out and replaces them.