Brian Baird

Mr. BAIRD

Mr. BAIRD. Madam Speaker, I rise today to inform my colleagues about a rather unique, but important natural disaster that has occurred in my district. Since actually well before I was sworn in, a very slow moving but powerful landslide has destroyed more than 130 homes in the city of Kelso, Washington. The nature of landslides is such that they are not well covered by coverage normally available through FEMA and HUD and other disaster relief mechanisms available through the government. The result is that these people have lost virtually everything they own. Fortunately, we have lost no lives. But 130 people have seen their dreams destroyed by this landslide. I have exhausted and worked very hard with my staff and the agencies to provide whatever help we can provide. Yet, still uncompensated and uninsured damages remain, and we have looked for ways that we might be able to help them. Therefore, we have devised some targeted tax measures that would assist folks in this particular type of situation. It would provide targeted tax relief to homeowners located in State or federally declared disaster areas who have lost their homes due to disasters for which insurance is not readily available. Let me underscore that. One can buy insurance for a great many natural disasters, but landslide and mud slides, it is very difficult to find insurance, and it is very expensive if one can find it. Let me underscore also that normal FEMA coverage does not help in situations like this. The homeowners in this particular district have done everything they can. They have done it right. They have played by the rules. They are two income families. Yet, they have lost everything. So this is what our bill would do. It would clarify the law to ensure that any mortgage forgiveness provided to homeowners would not be taxable as income. What would happen there is, should a lender decide to forgive interest or forgive a mortgage, under current law, that forgiveness could be considered a gift, and the poor taxpayers who now have their home buried under mud would have to pay taxes on a home which has been completely obliterated. It will not be a common thing, but if people are kind enough to step forward and forgive mortgage in those cases, it would be important. Additionally, this legislation would establish a tax credit to help those taxpayers who required to continue paying mortgage payments on the destroyed home as they also pay rent or additional mortgage payments for a new residence. Put ourselves in the position of these homeowners. Again, they have played by the rules. Through no fault of their own, their primary home has been destroyed. They are still having to pay mortgage on that home while they rent another residence for their family. This proposal would provide some tax relief in that circumstance. There is a third thing this would do. If one should try to claim a casualty loss for one's destroyed home, under current law, the calculation on that loss is on the basis of the home. As we know, the basis is its initial value when one purchased it, not the current value. So what we would do is adjust the way that calculation is developed so that one could deduct, take a casualty loss based on the current value of the home, the most recently assessed value. These are common sense measures. They are fair measures. They would help good hard working constituents who played by the rules and, through no fault of their own, have lost virtually everything they own. It would have minimal impact on the Treasury because it deals with the very small and specific instance in which our existing laws have not been able and our existing agencies have not been able to help these folks. Finally, Madam Speaker, and there are some cases where homeowners are fortunate enough to sell their home in these disasters, and this legislation would allow the homeowners to deduct the full value of the loss. There are some complexities to it which we could share in accompanying written testimony, but my main point is to share the following points: We have homeowners who have, again, lost everything they owned, who were not able to buy insurance and for whom FEMA and the other disaster mechanisms have not been able to help. This is a targeted, specific and quite inexpensive proposal to just help those folks in federally- or State-declared disaster areas who have lost virtually everything try to get a little bit back through the structure of the tax codes. I thank the gentleman very much for yielding, and I hope the Congress will consider this favorably. Madam Speaker, I rise today to inform my colleagues about a natural disaster situation in my district that warrants significant relief, and to introduce legislation that will provide some badly needed assistance to the victims of these disasters. Since even before I was sworn in as a member of this body, I have been working with a group of constituents from the City of Kelso, in my Southwest Washington district, to provide assistance to their disaster- torn community. This city has literally been torn apart by slow-moving landslides that resulted from heavy rainfalls. In fact, during the last 14 months, more than one hundred homes have been destroyed by those landslides, and the remainder of the homes may suffer the same fate in the next 5 to 10 years. These constituents and their families have struggled to rebuild their lives after their homes or their businesses tumbled down the hill under tons of mud and debris, and I have done everything in my power to ensure that the federal government does everything that we possibly can to help them to that. Our Nation has experienced several very powerful natural disasters in the past few years. What differentiates these disasters in my district from many others is the fact that insurance was not readily available for this type of disaster--in fact, most homeowners policies specifically exclude mudslides as a covered peril--and now many of these folks have lost nearly everything they own. Therefore, Madam Speaker, I have devised some targeted tax measures that would assist folks in this type of situation. My legislation would provide targeted tax relief to homeowners located in state or federally-declared disaster areas, which have lost their homes due to disasters for which insurance is not readily available. I can't emphasize enough--many of these folks have lost everything. In most cases, any assistance received from FEMA or state agencies might compensate for 15 to 20 cents on the dollar for their losses, but will only be a small step in helping these homeowners get back on their feet. These homeowners need a fair chance to get back on their feet, without continuing to shoulder the burden of heavy debt for a destroyed residence. So this bill combines a number of changes to the tax code to help give them such an opportunity. First, the bill clarifies the law to ensure that any mortgage forgiveness provided to these homeowners would not be taxable as income. Madam Speaker, I have heard from some financial planners in my district that in some cases, they have advised their clients not to seek forgiveness of their mortgage debt from their lenders for this very purpose; and I know for a fact that there are some local lenders who would generously provide such relief for some borrowers if, in fact, such forgiveness was sought by the homeowner. The Federal Government simply should not be taxing the generosity of these lenders who may provide relief of a disaster-victim's heartache. To me, this is common sense and should be expressly defined by the tax code. Additionally, the legislation would establish a tax credit to help those taxpayers who are required to continue paying mortgage payments on that destroyed home as they pay rent or additional mortgage payments on a new residence. These are some of the most devasted homeowners that I have encountered. Not only have they lost nearly everything they own, but now they face years of carrying this heavy burden of debt in addition to the regular expenses of purchasing a new home and rebuilding their lives. So I have developed a tax credit that would permit these taxpayers to reduce their taxes by the amount of the mortgage payments on that destroyed home in the years following a disaster. As I stated before, this provision would apply to those disasters for which insurance is not readily available, and only to those mortgage payments made after the qualifying disaster. I simply believe that this is the most direct method of helping our constituents who carry this enormous burden. Third, the bill would adjust the computation of the casualty loss deduction by allowing taxpayers to deduct the fair market value of a home, instead of only the basis in the home as permitted under current law. Again, this applies only to taxpayers facing this extreme set of circumstances and would not apply to taxpayers who elect to take the credit which I discussed previously. But more importantly, this is a fair measure. Taxpayers who may have lived in a particular home for 20 or 30 years, who may have nearly all of their savings tied up in that home, deserve to get an adjusted deduction that accounts for the modern-day value of that home. Finally, Madam Speaker, in those cases where the homeowner is fortunate enough to sell a home located in such a devasted area, which may or may not have been irreparably damaged but may be severely devalued, this legislation allows taxpayers to deduct the full value of that loss. Current law limits taxpayers to a capital loss deduction of $3,000, with the ability to carry over any balance to future years. Section 5 of this measure would eliminate the $3,000 limit under these narrow circumstances, so that taxpayers would be able to immediately deduct the full value of a loss taken on the sale of their property which, in many areas heavily impacted by natural disasters, may have depreciated extensively. As under current law, any balance of the capital loss beyond taxable income would be carried over to future years. In my opinion, there's no reason for applying this limitation to capital losses to natural disaster situations and, for that reason, I am proposing that we lift the cap in only these cases. Madam Speaker, I realize that the situation in Kelso may be unusual, but as such, the impact of this measure on the federal government should be limited. It's impact, however, in helping to rebuild the lives of our disaster victims would be enormous. This is clearly the right thing to do to help our neighbors get back on their feet. As we wrestle with the option for spending projected budget surpluses in the foreseeable future, I ask my colleagues to consider the plight of our nation's disaster victims and to support these efforts to expeditiously enact the measures that I am proposing today.

Mr. BAIRD

Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce legislation that will help restore tax fairness to millions of people in my home State of Washington and in other States throughout this great Nation. The problem, Mr. Speaker, is the lack of a deduction for sales taxes in the current tax code. Although the government allows tax deductions for a number of things, State and local income taxes, property taxes, self- employment taxes and others, one category is noticeably missing and that is sales tax. Today and every year at this time, taxpayers send their tax returns to the IRS. It is a ritual that all Americans have become accustomed to. It is often frustrating. But we do it because we have to uphold our duties as a citizen. But that ritual brings added frustration for taxpayers in my State. A taxpayer in my State who has identical income and expenses to someone in another State should be able to deduct the amount they pay in State income tax, but that is not the case in Washington. We have no income tax, and we are not allowed to deduct our State sales taxes. Folks in my State have the same amount of Federal income taxes withheld from their paychecks, but when it comes time to itemize their returns, they can only deduct nothing, because they have no income tax and they are not allowed to deduct their sales tax. It is not that we pay less in taxes. On the contrary, we are in the top quarter of States in the amount of our personal income that goes to taxes. But thanks to the change in the tax code in 1986 when lawmakers decided to remove the deduction for sales taxes, people in Washington State were shortchanged. Let me ask this simple question. Should residents of Washington have to pay hundreds more to the Federal treasury than those who live in other States, including States right across the river? Does it make sense for the Federal Government to dictate to States how they should structure their tax system? I would assert that the answer is clearly no. Federal taxes should be levied on all of our Nation's citizens in a fair and equitable manner, not in a way that gives preference to some who happen to live in one State with an income tax while penalizing residents in States with sales taxes. That is why today I am introducing legislation to correct this inequity. My bill, the Tax Deduction Fairness Act of 1999, would reinstate the sales tax deduction and direct the IRS to develop tables of average sales tax liabilities for taxpayers in every State. It would then give the taxpayer an option, to deduct either the State income tax or their State sales taxes paid in the previous year. Frankly, this is nothing new. Before 1986, taxpayers were allowed to use simple tables to deduct their sales tax. Mr. Speaker, I enter into the Record a sample of the form that was used in 1986. [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH15AP99.000 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH15AP99.001 Critics might suggest this would make the tax code more complex. I am the last to want to make the tax code more complex and in fact I will work vigorously to simplify that code. But the bill I am introducing today does not complicate the tax code. It adds one very simple line to one simple form already filled out by a taxpayer itemizing his or her deductions. Adding that line will save our taxpayers hundreds of dollars every year. For clarity, I will submit that Schedule A for the Record as well. [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH15AP99.002 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH15AP99.003 If you look simply at line 5 of Schedule A, you see where people who pay income taxes to their State can deduct that, and you will see there is no line for Washington State taxpayers or taxpayers in similar States to deduct their sales tax. This is not a complicated bill. It is a very simple bill, it is a fair bill and I would urge my colleagues to support it. We have an obligation to treat citizens fairly at the Federal level. That is why I am here, to fight for simple fairness. This is the second time I have stood here in this well in less than a month to sponsor legislation that will protect our citizens from being subjected to unfair taxation. I will come back to the well of this House again and again until we achieve that standard. I hope that my colleagues will see the wisdom of this fair proposal and that we can take swift action to restore this common-sense option. I invite them to join me in this effort for the simple reason that it is the right thing to do.

Mr. BAIRD

Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I would like to just offer a couple of closing comments. Let me just briefly reiterate the common sense behind this proposal. It provides low-interest loans up front so small business owners can prepare for disasters before they happen. They can prepare for earthquakes or floods or fires or hurricanes. By spending money up front, through low-interest loans, they will save the taxpayers dollars down the road. That is why this bill makes so much sense; it will save taxpayers money. It will help small businesses out and it will reduce the overall net cost of disaster response. That is the kind of bill we should be putting forward, and I thank my colleague from South Dakota (Mr. Thune) for doing so. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I thank my distinguished colleague from South Dakota and also express my gratitude to the chairman of our committee, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Talent) and to the ranking member from New York (Ms. Velazquez). Together they have worked to develop this bill which I think has a wonderful potential to help small business owners reduce the cost of disasters before they happen rather than after. As the gentleman from South Dakota has indicated, the bill before us today is virtually identical to a bill that this House passed on March 2. It establishes a demonstration project at the SBA to make financing available to small businesses so they can make improvements to businesses that just might reduce property loss and could increase worker safety in the event of a natural disaster. Mr. Speaker, my district in southwest Washington happens to be one of the more disaster-prone in the Nation: We have Mount Saint Helens, we have periodic flooding, and recently in the towns of Kelso and Olympia we have had landslides which have claimed in the case of Kelso more than 140 homes, and in the case of Olympia more than 60 homes have been rendered unstable. I have been working with these good people since before I came to office, and I feel we have to be working more to help people prepare for disasters before they happen as well as cope with disasters after the fact. That is what this bill does, is helps people prepare for disasters. It authorizes up to $15 million in SBA loans each year for the next 5 years to be used for mitigation efforts so businesses can make structural or interior changes to their businesses that can result in significant savings. The program runs for five years. It requires a report to Congress on the use and effectiveness of the mitigation loans, so it includes a key and important accountability provision. This is sensible good government, and it is a costs savings measure. It has been estimated that for every dollar we spend in disaster prevention we could save up to $2 or $3 in disaster recovery. So I join with my colleague from South Dakota (Mr. Thune), and I urge all of my colleagues in the House today to support this commonsense legislation and help get this program underway. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez).

Mr. BAIRD

Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my support for this legislation, that seeks to address the serious steel dumping problem which has resulted in the loss of over 10,000 steelworker jobs nationwide; but also to inform my colleagues about a concern that I have about some potential impacts of such legislation. Mr. Speaker, I do believe that the rapid escalation of steel imports into the United States over the past eighteen months has reached crisis levels. Reports indicate that steel imports increased by 72 percent from November of 1997 to November of 1998, and that increase has led to staggering layoffs and reductions in work hours for those working in our nation's steel industries. Those layoffs and work stoppages have seriously concerned me and should alarm all of us. During that period, imports from Japan were up 260 percent, imports from Russia advanced 262 percent, and those from Korea increased by over 220 percent. Imports from Brazil, Ukraine, China, Indonesia, and South Africa have steadily grown. In some cases, foreign manufacturers have been shown to have sold steel for well under the cost of production. It is clear that the United States must take strong action to ensure the enforcement of our trade policies. Mr. Speaker, I support policies that enhance U.S. trade partnerships, but I also believe that we must demand fair and responsible trade behavior from those partners. Our nation must not stand idle while our laws are flagrantly violated. Therefore, I strongly support the intent of H.R. 975 and the measures that the legislation would implement to control steel import levels at pre-crisis levels. However, my concern lies in the potential impact that this legislation may have on a manufacturer in my district--a manufacturer that would face legitimate hardship under the current version of the bill. The district which I represent, Washington's third district, includes several steel and aluminum production facilities. One of these facilities is The Broken Hill Proprietary Coated Steel Corporation (BHP CSC), located in the city of Kalama. In December of 1997, BHP began production of cold rolled full hard steel and galvanized sheet steel that is frequently used in the metal building and construction industries. The facility annually utilizes approximately 350,000 tons of hot band steel in the manufacture of over 300,000 tons of bare and painted sheet steel products. Unfortunately, I have been informed that availability of the hot band steel needed for this plant is limited from domestic producers. The technologies utilized in the manufacturing process at the Kalama facility apparently require that very specific requirements be met for the quality, physical properties and size of the hot band steel used as a raw material, and most domestic producers of hot band steel are reportedly unable to meet the demands of the Kalama plant. Therefore, BHP CSC has relied on imported hot band steel for the majority of their needs since beginning operations in 1997, and the primary source of those imports has been the BHP parent company, located in Australia. That Kalama plant has been the exclusive recipient of imports to the U.S. from the company's Australian parent. This plant has not been used as a conduit for large quantities of steel imports to be used by other manufacturers. My concern deals with the consequences of imposing a strict quota on steel imports. In its current form, the legislation only cuts back steel imports to levels existing in July of 1997. This restriction is not only reasonable, it is necessary, and to be clear, I think we need this legislation. However, it may also severely limit the availability of the high-grade hot band steel required by the Kalama BHP facility. As a consequence, Mr. Speaker, the productive capacity of the plant will be significantly diminished, and the limits may, in fact, result in the loss of jobs in the steel industry. Now, I can't imagine that supporters of this legislation would find job losses to be an acceptable result of a United States response to illegal trade activities. And Mr. Speaker, I want to take a moment to call your attention to why this facility is so important to the economic survival of this corner of rural America. This economically disadvantaged area in Southwest Washington was, until recently, primarily dependent on natural-resource based industries for its economic survival. As a result of increasing limitations on timber cutting and shrinking salmon runs, the workforce needs in Cowlitz County have been scaled back again and again. Only six years ago, this area faced double-digit unemployment rates, and still has one of the highest rates in the nation. So, Mr. Speaker, when we pass legislation that may affect the job security of over 250 hard-working people in Cowlitz County, I get gravely concerned. That's why I immediately began working on this issue when I was sworn into office at the beginning of this year. And it is also the reason that I drafted an amendment to this legislation to provide limited waiver authority for companies with legitimate barriers to obtaining steel products for their manufacturing processes from domestic sources, to import limited amounts of steel in order to continue operations. My amendment would have permitted the Secretary of Commerce to establish a certification process to determine whether or not a manufacturer has sincere impediments to obtaining adequate quantities of steel raw materials; and, in such cases, to waive the import restrictions in only those cases. Unfortunately, the rule providing for consideration of this legislation prevented me from introducing such an amendment, and precluded members from having the opportunity to vote on a measure that I believe would make a minimal, but desperately necessary adjustment to the overall bill. In fact, that rule prevented the introduction of any amendments. Although I find this disappointing, I have received assurances from my colleagues that efforts will be made to address this situation as this legislation moves through the process, and I will continue to support those efforts. As a Member of Congress, I have a responsibility to ensure that what we do here in Washington, DC, benefits my constituents in Washington State, and also to help safeguard our national interests. I believe that the enactment of this legislation, as perfected by my amendment, would serve both of these purposes. Although still imperfect, I will act today to enforce the trade policies of the United States, while continuing my efforts to protect the economic security of all steelworkers nationwide as the legislative process moves forward. I ask my colleagues to support these efforts as we work with the other body in considering this measure. We all have an interest in keeping jobs in the United States, so let's work together to take the strongest, most appropriate measures possible to bolster this industry. Of equal importance, I call on the President to address this situation before this flood of steel imports overwhelms what remains of the United States steel industry--an industry that has retooled to become one of the most efficient in the Nation. In the future, as a result of this measure, I hope that we can take swifter, and more effective actions when sudden surges in foreign exports to our nation unfairly threaten our industries. Mr. Speaker, I want to again thank my colleagues Mr. Visclosky and Mr. Traficant, and many others, for their tremendous, persistent work in bringing public attention to this issue and for helping bring this measure to the full House for our consideration.

Mr. BAIRD

Mr. BAIRD. Madam Speaker, I rise today to introduce important legislation to provide tax fairness for thousands of hard-working Americans throughout this Nation who are employed by interstate water carriers. I am talking about river boat pilots, I am talking about men and women who work on barges, and I am talking about other hard-working crew members who do an honest day's work and want a fair shake when it comes to paying their taxes. Madam Speaker, I am deeply concerned that a significant number of interstate waterway employees who are employed on vessels that operate on the Columbia River, the Mississippi, the Ohio, the Missouri, the Kanawha, and many other inland waterways throughout this Nation may be double or even triple-taxed for their labor. These river pilots, officers and other crew members perform most of their work on rivers which flow through multiple States, and in many cases these folks are subject to income tax filings and additional withholdings from multiple States. The rivers these folks navigate, whether it be for shipping, for transporting passengers, for tourism or other purposes often course through the territories of multiple States. That is a fact of nature, and because of that fact the folks who ply their trade on these rivers are subject to taxation by several States. That is simply not fair. When truck drivers, railway workers and aviation employees go about their jobs, all of whom are required to conduct their work in States other than their home State, Congress has seen fit to grant them an exemption from this double or triple taxation unless a majority of the work is performed in another State. This is not so for interstate waterway employees. No. If one is a crew member on a barge, they can be required to pay taxes in several States, and that is simply not fair. An airline pilot, for example, is subject to taxation by the State in which the pilot resides, period. Only if pilots earn 50 percent or more of their income while working in another State are they subject to taxation by that other State. This restriction, for all practical purposes, exempts airline employees from multiple taxation. However, interstate water carriers, bargemen, river boat pilots, ferry boat operators, for some reason these people are treated differently, and that is simply not fair. Frankly, Madam Speaker, it is a clear example of taxation without representation, an obvious oversight of this body. Over the past 22 years, Congress has acted to address inequities in the Tax Code when it dealt with interstate transportation employees. I am asking my colleagues today to again take action to address and correct this problem. Interstate waterway employees are devoted, hard working folks, who provide essential transportation services throughout our Nation and pay their fair share of taxes in their home States. Additionally, the companies which employ these workers contribute significantly to the economic well-being of the State's concerns. Yet, Madam Speaker, due to an existing oversight, workers living in my district in southwest Washington may be subject to additional tax burdens imposed by other States along the Columbia River. The current law allows States to impose additional taxes based on the percentage of time their vessel was docked or operating in those States' waters and I will say it again, that is simply not fair. Madam Speaker, we can do something about that. We can make the law fair and we can make it apply equally to everyone. Madam Speaker, the legislation I am introducing today, the Transportation Employee Fair Taxation Act of 1999, will correct this oversight. My bill will expressly prohibit the taxation of income earned by waterway workers by States other than the ones in which the workers reside. It will close the unfortunate loophole that says we treat all the other groups of interstate workers one way and bargemen and river pilots the other. It is not complex legislation. It is very straightforward. It is not lengthy legislation. It is a two-page bill. But it is good legislation. It is needed legislation and it is fair legislation. I am proud to say also that it is bipartisan legislation. Of the 12 original cosponsors of this measure, 8 are Democrats and 4 are Republicans. So I urge my colleagues from both parties to join in this effort, to ensure tax fairness for all of our citizens by taking swift action to pass this bill.

Mr. BAIRD

Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, the gentleman from Maryland, and speak today as someone who is new to this institution. I have been listening for the past number of minutes to people recounting old battles and old wars and old perceived injustices. We are new as freshmen to this institution, our first term. When we came here at orientation we pledged on both sides, Democrats and Republicans, to work together in a spirit of bipartisanship and a spirit of fairness. It is to that spirit of bipartisanship and fairness that I speak to my Republican colleagues today. I have to ask a simple question: If the ratio of Members in this House is divided 49 to 51, how is it possibly fair that the ratios in terms of funding for committees should be less than one-third to two-thirds? This is not, today, about injustices of the past. This is about a simple discussion of what is fair and what is right and how we should conduct ourselves. I am calling today on my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, freshman Democrats and freshman Republicans, to ask a simple question: What is fair, and do we stand for fairness? I would submit that the request that has been made as a minimum of one-third to two-thirds ratio is perfectly fair. In fact, it is factually quite imbalanced, but we are only asking one-third to two- thirds. I would call on my friends and colleagues from the Republican side to join with me and with the freshmen to achieve that balance which just a couple of years ago people asked to achieve, and which frankly is perfectly just, perfectly reasonable, and would set this institution on a true bipartisan course.

Mr. BAIRD

Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Moakley) for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I ask that the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Visclosky) join me in a brief colloquy. Mr. Speaker, I want Members to know that this is a good bill and I support the bill but I do have some concerns about its impact on the steel producer in my district who has told me about problems in obtaining the types and quantity of steel that they need from domestic producers. In the past, the government has been able to make very specific case-by-case exceptions to the import restrictions to allow manufacturers with legitimate short supply problems to continue producing their products and employing their workforce at full strength. I believe there are conditions which may warrant further examination along these lines in the bill before us today and I would appreciate the assistance of the gentleman in working to rectify these problems. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Visclosky) for his response.

Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the consideration of the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Visclosky) on that. I appreciate, again, his hard work on this bill.

Mr. BAIRD

Mr. BAIRD. I agree. Absolutely. The Shays-Meehan bill is a start. It is a first step, an important and essential first step, and one we should take today or tomorrow. We should not wait until the end of this year. But there are other things we can do, and the gentleman raises an interesting point. Throughout my campaign, for example, I said that we needed to have informative voter pamphlets. In our State of Washington a candidate for the United States Congress is allowed 250 words in the State voter pamphlets. Two hundred and fifty words, with critical issues like national defense, health care, Social Security, our children's education, stopping crime. With those issues on the table, we get 250 words to condense a lifetime of community service and teaching and training and experience. Two hundred and fifty words. We need informative voter pamphlets. We need to work with the media. And I think that is part of what the gentleman is addressing. In our district we have some very, very responsible broadcast stations, stations that do grant candidates time; that do air debates. We need to encourage those stations, and we need to encourage the viewers to not just dive for the remote and say, oh my goodness, it is a political debate, I have to watch something else. Because if they do that, candidates have no choice but to change them with advertising, and a 30-second advertisement will not tell them as much as a 1-hour debate. So we have got to encourage the stations that do provide coverage. We need to work, I believe, in our public schools, and it is something I am going to work through and throughout my life in Congress. And here is what I would like to see us do. I would like to see us consider every senior in this class getting an American Government course which talks about their personal responsibility to the country, which talks about how the transition from high school is not just the end of drudgery, as some view it, but it is their transition to the most sacred responsibility a person in a democracy has, that of citizen. If we combine those informative voters pamphlets, meaningful broadcast information, better public civics education in our public schools, we could, in addition to things like Shays-Meehan, reinvigorate a vibrant and vital political debate, a debate on which a democracy depends. And so we need exactly, as you said, to strengthen that commission, to let it do its job and provide comprehensive recommendations for further improvements in this process.

Mr. BAIRD. Absolutely. I cannot tell my colleague the numbers of people, fine, decent, upstanding people, who would make outstanding representatives at all levels of government, who come to me and say, what is it like? I have to tell them that I believe being a representative to the United States Congress is the highest privilege, the highest honor one could ever aspire to, but it is a tremendous responsibility as well. That is the positive side. What I hate to have to tell people, but I do, because it is, unfortunately, the truth, that if they want to serve today in the United States Congress, and if they are from a district that is competitive, they need to be prepared not to study the issues as well as they wish they could, not to have as much time as they wish they had to meet the people, not to spend time with their family sometimes, but that they need to be prepared, regrettably, to attach themselves to a telephone and become basically a phone solicitor. That is a tragedy. It is nothing short of a tragedy. When Jefferson and Madison and Mason and George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, the Founding Fathers of this country, were establishing this great Nation, they did not envision, in their wildest imagination, that good people, people who they inspire every day by their example, would be tied to a telephone asking for money. They did not envision that all the wonderful people who care about the democracy would feel that dollars sometimes mean more than votes. That is wrong. It should not be that way. I want to compliment the people who do contribute, the donors who, most of the time, are not asking for anything. I cannot tell my colleague how many folks have said that they are contributing to my campaign because they believe in me as a person. They are not asking for anything except for me to do my best for our country. We should not insult them. We should not demean them. We should praise them for being active participants. But we should also honor their contributions by setting reasonable limits like those proposed in Shays-Meehan. I talked to a woman once who was on Social Security, a fixed income, and she said she knew how much we have to raise to run for Congress and she wished she could give it all to me. She said she would offer to give $5, but she would be embarrassed because she knew that I may have to raise $1 million and that I would not get there very fast if I went at it $5 at a time. I was happy to accept her contribution. That $5 meant a lot of me. Proportionately, it was probably a greater portion of her income than a lot of folks, and it should not be overwhelmed by a tide of soft money. It should not be overwhelmed by a tide of enormous contributions. It should stand as her contribution to the democratic process. We need to ensure, through legislation like this, that everyone's voice matters in this process. The gentleman is exactly right, we have to free our candidates up, we have to reinspire a sense of hope and civility and civic pride that once led people to say, I would like to run for political office and serve this country. The gentleman is exactly right.

Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, we are here today to discuss an issue which, if we ask pollsters, they will tell us it does not poll high. Education, fighting crime, Social Security, that is all the American people care about. Those things are absolutely critical, and we have spoken on those issues here as well. But if this body is to be able to address those critical issues, we need to give our Members time and we need to give them the freedom to speak their mind without fear of political attack. This is my first term in Congress. I was sent here by the good people of southwest Washington to represent their views. Southwest Washington is a beautiful area. It is a rural district as well as urban-suburban. I am here to speak their voice. We should be here to speak the voices of our people, not the voice of money. That is why campaign reform is so important. People across this country are losing faith in the political system. Young people are saying their vote and their voice do not matter. People are saying they do not need to turn out and vote, and we are seeing voter turnouts below 50 percent, even below 30 and 25 percent in primaries. Mr. Speaker, yesterday our freshman class submitted a letter to the Speaker's office signed by 22 of our 23 Democratic freshmen, and what we called for was early consideration of meaningful campaign finance reform. Early consideration. We cannot wait until the end of this year or until the end of this session of Congress and then say, gosh, we tried, but we ran out of time. We must address this issue early for two reasons. Early, to give us time for meaningful, informative debate; early, so that we show we are sincere in this effort; and also early so that we have time to enact some of these laws to save the integrity of the next campaign season. Mr. Speaker, I do not want to see any more campaigns of the kind that we have seen in recent years, with vast independent expenditures, with scorched earth policies of saying anything and doing anything to be elected. We have seen too much of that. It is poisoning the political process; it is souring people in the belief that their voice and their vote matters. During the 1997-98 election cycle, the national political parties raised $193 million in soft money. That is right, my colleagues, $193 million. I have to ask myself, how else might we have spent that money in this country? Could we have put it towards improving our education system? Could we have put it towards helping to reduce crime in our communities? Could we have helped senior citizens pay for their housing? Could we have improved the environment? There are innumerable uses we could put $193 million towards, but we put it towards advertising. We have had some laws that have attempted to deal with the problem of campaign funding, but existing loopholes have actually made the system worse, not better. Last year, 252 Members of this body voted to pass substantial reform legislation. Now, the Shays-Meehan bill may not have been perfect, but it was the best that we had before us, and I personally have signed on as a cosponsor of that bill because I think it is reasonable and it is responsible. We have to do everything possible to maintain the public trust. Reforming campaign finance laws is not a Democratic problem, it is not a Republican problem, it is an American problem. It is a threat to our constitution if we do not achieve it, and we need to work now to do that. I would like to speak to a couple of elements of the Shays-Meehan bill that make common sense, and I firmly believe if we ask the general public, the folks who sent us here to represent them, if these proposals make sense, they would encourage us to put them forward. First, and my colleague mentioned it, a soft money ban. When we receive in the mail every single day during the campaign's final weeks a letter attacking one person or attacking another person, and at the bottom, as the gentleman from New Mexico said, it has some innocuous sounding name suggesting that that fine group of responsible citizens voluntarily put small contributions together to have a voice, that sounds reasonable. But that is not what happens. In fact, huge, virtually unlimited donations can come in and they can be spent on so- called issue advocacy ads. Let me share with my colleagues what some of those issue advocacy ads do. In our campaign, one issue advocacy group spent over $12,000 for a single 30 second advertisement. That is correct, $12,000 for 30 seconds. The ad was later denounced as deliberatively false and misleading, but they continued to run it. Now, $12,000 for 30 seconds comes down to $400 a second. Four hundred dollars a second to disseminate disruptive, deceptive and mean spirited information. Misinformation. That is wrong, Mr. Speaker, and we need to change it. The Shays-Meehan bill before us this year would ban soft money and would set hard dollar contribution limits for the party so that we know where the money is coming from, and it has a meaningful ceiling. The Shays-Meehan bill would recognize sham issue ads for what they truly are. They are campaign ads. It would say that if that group identifies a person in an advertisement, and it is within 60 days of an election, by golly, that is not information, that is political advertising, and they will fall under the restrictions that restrict political advertising. It would say that any ad that contains unambiguous support or attacks on a position of a politician would also fall under the guidelines of campaign financing and, therefore, under the restrictions. It would improve FEC disclosure. We should not have to spend days and weeks after an election to find out who contributed to a candidate or who spent money on issue ads during the election. It would establish a commission to study further reforms to our campaign system. It would also limit and restrict foreign soft money contributions. It would restrict further franking. Franking, as a means of informing the public, is a wonderful thing, but if it happens just a few weeks before an election, and currently I believe the limit is about 60 days, if it happens a few weeks before an election, it may well be political in nature. The Shays-Meehan bill would limit the amount of money that wealthy candidates can contribute. When the young people who visit us here every day look down on this floor and say to themselves, I would like to be a representative someday, they should say, I would like to be a representative because I believe so strongly in this democracy; I believe in the issues I care about. That is what should bring them here. It should not be a question of how much money they have to raise or how wealthy their friends are. It should be a question of how decent their values are, how strong their commitment to this country is, how much they know about the issues, and how strongly they will fight to make this a better Nation. That is what should get them into Congress, and not just how much money they are able to raise. The Shays-Meehan bill would establish a clearinghouse for information from the FEC and it would strengthen penalties for violations. Mr. Speaker, my good friend, the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Udall), was elected by our class to lead our freshman class's efforts to make campaign finance reform a top priority issue in this congressional session. He is doing an outstanding job in that. We are united as a freshman class in the commitment to campaign finance reform being addressed early in this session. I stand with my friend from New Mexico and with our freshman class in a commitment to keep bringing this issue forward until we pass meaningful legislation.

Mr. BAIRD. If I could echo that a little bit. One of the things that is frustrating about some of these discussions of reform, people have come and said that the politicians are corrupt. People need to understand that I do not know a single person who says, ``Gosh, I'm so excited because there's 5 hours of call time on my schedule today.'' We need to understand that money does not come to the candidates. It goes to your campaign fund, which then typically goes almost directly to a TV or radio station or direct mail house. The people who are running for office, the people I have met in this great body, are decent people. They are here because they care about the system. They do the fund-raising side not because they like that, not because they line their own pockets but because they are willing to endure the humiliation and the drudgery and the frustration in order to get here and have a voice for the people of their State. We need to be very careful when we talk about this to not tear down this House and not tear down our colleagues because they are good, decent people. The system of funding may be corroded but the people involved are not corrupt people. I want to make sure what we do is we free them from that drudgery and we free them from that stigma and that stain that other people might attach to it.

Mr. BAIRD. People have said that the legislative process is like making sausage, it might taste good at the end but we do not want to see how it is made. I think people are all too familiar and believe that the process is made unfortunately through contributions. What we are trying to do here is say, and I want to emphasize this, the bill that we are putting forward that the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays) and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Meehan) have put forward and in our class and my colleague and myself have endorsed does not say we have to stop all money. Because, quite frankly, we do need financial resources. Campaigns to reach 500,000 people with their message do cost money. But it says the way we raise the money needs to be reformed. It says the playing field needs to be level. It says enormous special-interest contributions and thinly disguised attack ads need to be eliminated. It says they need to have access to information about who is contributing so they can see the groups they agree with or disagree with support this candidate, they can see if the group says, ``we are citizens for a wonderful, happy economy and gracious environment,'' or some such thing, who the heck are those people? Because oftentimes the names they choose are different than the agenda they would have us believe through their titles. That is why we need the reform. We have got to have transparency. We have got to have a level playing field. We have got to have reasonable limits. And we have got to set our candidates free from the drudgery of having to spend their lives on the telephone. We get to talk to a lot of nice folks when we do that and there is merit to that. And I have met some wonderful people through the process of politics so far, but I will tell my colleagues that I would most of all like to meet with them and just listen to their issues and never have to have them or myself worried about the proverbial pitch for money, because that is a blight on our system. And the more we can do to reduce that, the more we can do to level the playing field for the small and individual donors, to limit soft money, to ban soft money used in political advertising, the better off we will be.

Mr. BAIRD. Let me share with my colleagues an example actually from our recent experience. We had a very expensive campaign, I will admit it, because we were getting attacked heavily, one of the number-one targets in the whole country. But we also had a grassroots campaign. That is what we need to have more of. We had 1,100 volunteers in the field on the day of the election, 1,100 people going around the district working telephones, saying why they cared so much about that election. I know my good friend from Illinois had a similar organization. That is politics at its best. Politics at its best is people working in the field for people they believe. Politics at its worst is when people pay telephone solicitors to call with smear campaigns. Politics at its worst are last-minute $100,000, $200,000 and $300,000 TV attack ads. What I am hoping we can do is inspire the young people who come watch us each day and watch us on TV and who are in our schools today to be a part of politics at its best. This bill will help reduce the impact of politics at its worst and maybe inspire people to do more. I know my good friend from Illinois has had similar work with people in the field.

Mr. BAIRD. I sometimes think we need to pose to the American people a basic choice, and the choice would be this. Do they want people who are going to represent them to spend their time on the telephone raising huge amounts of money so they can run 30-second advertisements or do they want them to come visit them in town meetings? Do they want them to be studying the issues, to be listening to them, to be meeting with their colleagues to try to propose constructive progressive legislation? I personally believe that there is no question people want us to do the latter. But until we have campaign finance reform and until the American public feels that they have a voice and a responsibility in the political process, we will not have the kind of dialogue that my colleague has described. That is why I think Shays-Meehan is so important and it is why we need to dedicate ourselves to that. Let me, if I might, address one other issue that I feel real strongly about. In a sense, people might say we are foolish to be even talking about campaign finance reform. We are incumbent now for goodness sake. The incumbent potentially would have all the advantages of a system where large dollar contributions come flying in because of our position here. In some ways, we are saying we are willing to set down our advantage, what might be a financial advantage, for the good of the country, we are willing to say we are prepared to compete on a level playing field, we are prepared to clean up the process. So that, for the good of everybody, we have got to stop saying in this body, how will this legislation impact our opportunity to win the next election and we have got to start asking, how will this legislation work for the good of the country. That is what it is about with campaign finance reform. It should not be a partisan issue. And if there are special-interest groups pressuring Members of one party or the other and saying, ``you must not support campaign finance reform or we will come after you,'' which I know to be a fact, there are special-interest groups doing that, those special-interest groups that do that are the problem, and Members who feel pressured need to speak out about that. It is not right for people to threaten Members by saying, ``we will attack you with financial resources if you try to change the campaign finance system.'' That is symptomatic of the problem, and we need to speak out vigorously about that and the public needs to speak out and I think they need to ask themselves where their Member was on the issue of campaign reform. That is why we are here today.

Mr. BAIRD

Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from New York for yielding this time to me. I am speaking to my colleagues today on a matter of deep personal importance to me. For 3 years my family and I hosted a young Bosnian student. His name is Namik, and when he was 14 years old he was running through his village when a Serbian mortar shell landed next to him and blew his left leg off just below the hip. For 3 years I worked with Namik, kept him in our home as my own son taught him to climb and to kayak so that he could have a normal life. But for 3 years I helped him deal with what it is like to be a young man who has lost a leg in a war that was not his fault. When we talk about this issue, Mr. Chairman, we are talking about human lives, we are talking about NATO, and we are talking about standing up to genocide and standing up to tyranny. Mr. Milosevic is a sociopath. He is bloodthirsty, he does not respect basic tenets of human dignity and morality. If a sociopath were holding hostages, and he had a police scanner and heard that the police were debating about whether or not to send in officers to put a stop to what he was trying to do, we know what would happen to those hostages: they would be killed. Mr. Milosevic has got to be stopped. I urge my colleagues for the sake of Namik, for the sake of the future of NATO, for the sake of the future of our country and for the sake of stability in Europe and peace internationally, please pass this resolution. Do not undermine the President at this time, do not allow the killing to continue in the Balkans.

Mr. BAIRD

Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. Mr. Speaker, every day when we address people in this body, we are surrounded by young people who look down on us from above and ask what we are going to do for this educational system of this country. I would like for them to look up to us, look up to us because we have done the right thing. We have supported education, not just through our rhetoric but through our actions. We have supported education by building schools that this Nation can be proud of and in which young people can learn and learn with dignity. I have come from an area where we have some of the fastest growing school districts in Washington State. Southwest Washington, home of the Evergreen School District, is experiencing extremely rapid growth. In fact, the growth rate is 4.5 percent a year, which means that in just over 4 years we will have 20 percent growth, up to 26,000 students in that school district. We have over 320 portable classrooms in this district, portable classrooms, classrooms not designed to last for years and years and not designed to house large numbers of students, but that is what we are using, and it is a disgrace. I am an original cosponsor of H.R. 996, the School Construction Act, and I encourage my colleagues to support this important legislation. It will help us leverage up to $7.2 billion in local school construction bonds. It will help solve the problems that we were sent here to solve. It is a good bill. It is the right bill for America. I encourage our colleagues to support it.

Mr. BAIRD

Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Chairman, we have introduced an amendment which has been incorporated in the en bloc amendments to which the gentlewoman from Florida will be speaking. It has bipartisan support, but I rise now to give my colleagues a sense of the rationale and the background and the need for it. I want to begin by thanking the chairman, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster); the subcommittee chairman, the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Fowler); the ranking members, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar) and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Traficant); as well as the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert) and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Borski); and I particularly want to thank the committee staff. When I brought these concerns to the committee, the committee staff immediately worked with my office and with FEMA to find an appropriate solution. I want to thank Ken Kopocis, Arthur Chan and Marcus Peacock. Here is the situation we are dealing with. In my district a landslide, a slow-moving landslide, has destroyed 137 homes. The landslide moves a few inches a day, but over the course of the last year people's homes have been moved as much as 200 to 300 feet down a hill and completely destroyed. We are speaking today of a bill that is designed to reduce the cost of disasters by preventing them, and I strongly support that. Clearly, a dollar saved in prevention can save us $3 down the road in recovery. H.R. 707 reduces the Federal share for alternative projects from 90 percent to 75 percent. These projects are used when local governments decide not to repair, restore or reconstruct public facilities. The amendment we have offered today would ensure that communities which are unable to rebuild due to unstable soil, such as a landslide, would still receive the higher Federal contribution; and there is a good reason for it. The folks in my district built with good intent and every reason to believe their homes would be safe. There had been no landslide there before. They could not buy landslide insurance because, as my colleagues may know, it is very difficult. So they had every reason to believe they would be free from disasters. Actually, some had built above a floodplain, saying they did not want to be flooded out. They had done the right thing. But here we have this landslide that has wiped them out. So what we want to do is make sure that in cases where the land is unstable, where the local government decides not to rebuild, which I think is a prudent decision, we would provide the full support of the current law and not penalize folks who, for no fault of their own, had their possessions wiped out. Areas like Kelso, Washington, have no alternative to an alternative project. So reducing the Federal share in these situations would unfairly hurt these residents. Included in the manager's amendment is a provision to preserve the 90 percent funding level for alternative projects where communities decide not to rebuild due to soil instability. Frankly, that is a sound decision. Not rebuilding where the soil is unstable will prevent disaster recurrence in the future. So this bill will not only protect my local communities, in the long run it will save us money. I would like to thank the committee again, the gentlewoman from Florida and the chairman for their support, and I very much appreciate this chance to address this important amendment.

Mr. BAIRD

Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, if this Nation sincerely believes that education is the foundation of our democracy, then it is time to act like it. In high-growth areas like the Evergreen School District in Clark County, Washington, the growth rate is too high for the local district to keep up. Evergreen is the fastest growing school district in our State, with a growth rate of 4.5 percent a year; and by 2004 their student enrollment is projected to increase by 26,000 students. To respond to the number of students enrolling, Evergreen has put up 320 portable classrooms where 20 percent of our school district students are educated. This is not an effective environment in which to teach or to learn. That is why I am proud to be an original cosponsor of the School Construction Act of the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge) which will create new tax credits to leverage $7.2 billion in school construction bonds. Under this bill, the bonds would be allocated according to enrollment growth over the next 10 years. It is a good bill for our students, it is a good bill for our communities, and it is a good bill for our democracy. I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. BAIRD

Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong support of this legislation, and I would like to thank the distinguished Chairman and the ranking member for giving members the opportunity to express their concern about this situation. At a time when the United States has advanced measures to reduce trade barriers and open doors to the global marketplace--and while the European Union has done much of the same--we're facing the passage of a new European Union regulation to limit the fair trade of aircraft. The regulation will have the effect of targeting the resale of U.S. aircraft that already meet International noise standards. And one of the most frustrating aspects of this initiative, common position 66/99, is that some of the aircraft banned under that regulation are quieter than some that are permitted to be sold. The regulation would prohibit the purchase of aircraft, from non-EU nations, that have been re-engined with a ``hushkit'' to meet internationally-established noise standards agreed upon by the International Civil Aviation Organization. And the regulation, which is presumably designed to reduce environmental noise, will allow purchases of aircraft with the same level of noise emissions that are already owned by EU operators. This type of gerrymandered regulation is a step backward in our efforts to promote international cooperation and a freer flow of trade, and may actually be a violation of some bilateral air service agreements between EU member states and the U.S. If the rule is adopted, U.S. manufacturers, airlines, and leasing companies stand to lose billions of dollars--and the impact on U.S. aviation workers will be substantial. I've heard estimates that the EU rule could result in job reductions as high as 16 thousand at impacted airlines and engine manufacturers. The U.S. can't stand by and watch as the EU unilaterally takes steps with this wide of an impact on U.S. airline, machinist, and aerospace workers. H.R. 661 is an appropriate response to an unfair barrier, and I strongly support its passage. Again, I thank the Chairman and the Ranking Member for their efforts and I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. BAIRD

Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. BAIRD asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, as the statements of my colleagues clearly indicated, the need for preventative, proactive, advanced measures to prevent the damages of natural disasters is clear. I would like to commend the chairman of this committee for his foresight, his initiative, in moving this bill forward. I would like to thank him and thank the ranking member, the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez) for her support as well. This is a bill that has common sense, it will save the taxpayers money, and it has bipartisan support. I strongly urge my colleagues on both sides to support it. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Guam (Mr. Underwood).

Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Napolitano).