C. Cox

Mr. COX

Mr. COX. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. COX

Mr. COX. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Chairman Gekas) for yielding me this time. I am pleased to rise in support of the Gekas amendment, which will provide a sustaining mechanism so that whatever conflicts and debates might arise between the branches, between the executive branch and the legislative branch, during our annual exercise of allocating our national resources, we will not suffer needless brinksmanship exercises, we will not have budgetary games of chicken, and we will not have wasteful government shutdowns. In 1986, the Federal Government shutdown, I was working in the White House for President Reagan at the time. That prompted President Reagan to observe that the 1974 Budget Act, which establishes our current budget process was badly flawed. He proposed budget reform legislation which is essentially the Nussle-Cardin bill that we are getting to vote on today. The only difference between what President Reagan then proposed and the base text that we have on the floor today is that we lack a sustaining mechanism in the base text. That is what the Gekas amendment provides. I urge my colleagues to vote aye.

Mr. COX. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from Iowa (Chairman Nussle), the chairman of the task force that is bringing this legislation to the floor; as well as his colleague, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin); the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kasich), chairman of the Committee on the Budget; the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), who, on the Democratic side, did so much work on this bill; the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Sununu); and the gentleman from California (Mr. Radanovich), Members who spent a great deal of time making this happen. A dozen years ago, Mr. Chairman, President Reagan stood at the rostrum just before us addressing Congress with his State of the Union message and he demanded that Congress reform the incomprehensible Budget Act of 1974. President Reagan submitted legislation to do just that. I know, because, as a White House counsel, I drafted that legislation, brought it to Capitol Hill, and then 2 years later, as a Member of Congress, had the opportunity to introduce it here, with over 100 sponsors. By the 105th Congress, that legislation had over 200 sponsors. And thanks to the leadership of the Members whose names I have just recalled, this bill is on the floor today 14 years later. The ideas are the same. Rationalize this budget process. Make it a law, not a nonbinding resolution. Give us discipline. Plan for disasters. All of these reforms are in this legislation. It is the most important vote, perhaps, that we will cast this year. I urge an ``aye'' vote.

Mr. COX

Mr. COX. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. It is in fact my purpose to rise to thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss) and the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), who chaired the budget task force that produced this product, along with the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin) and, of course, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kasich), the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, and also the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm), who did such good work on this in his capacity as a member of the task force, and the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), the chairman of the Committee on Rules. All of the people who are associated with this project are owed a great debt of gratitude by the Members of this House and indeed by the other body as well, because proposals to overhaul the badly broken budget process have been under debate and under consideration in this Congress for as long as I have been here. I came to Congress 12 years ago, having already spent 2 years working as a lawyer for President Reagan in the White House trying to overhaul our badly broken budget process. President Reagan in 1986 appointed a White House working group on budget process reform, a Cabinet level working group, that put together many of the recommendations that have found their way into this legislation. I did not know at the time that 2 years later I would be a Member of this House myself, but in my initial term in Congress I was the cochair of a task force on budget process reform that produced legislation very similar to this that had over 100 sponsors the first year that it was introduced. I introduced that legislation in successive Congresses. In the 105th Congress it had over 200 sponsors. The legislation was introduced and authored on the Senate side, in the other body, by the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Lott). What is before us right now is not about Republicans and Democrats. It is not about more spending or less spending. It is not about higher taxes or lower taxes. It is about doing business properly, in an organized way. It means that we are going to have a budget first and spending second. In this legislation, it is made very plain that we are not to get to the business of spending money until we have agreed between the executive branch and the legislative branch on the outer limits of what we think we can afford. It is the same way that anyone would produce a budget in the private sector, in a nonprofit organization or in your own home. In Congress, too often for many years we have simply spent money on what we considered to be worthy projects and added it up at the end to find out what our budget was. Our budget was nothing more or less than the residue of all those small decisions, or all those relatively small decisions. Our budget, since 1974, has been a nonbinding resolution. We can ignore it if we please. We can even not pass a budget if we please. We have supplemental bills that come to the floor whenever there is a natural disaster that break the budget. If we happen to have a horrible earthquake or flood in a given year, no provision is made for it, no forethought, as if these things had never happened before in our country. So, in a cash budget, all of the money runs out of operations in that current year. None of these things is consistent with the way a significant substantial operation in America today conducts its business. Least of all, is this the way a trillion dollar annual enterprise should run its business? The Budget Process Reform Act, which I am very, very happy to see come to the floor under this rule, gives us an opportunity, a first opportunity after many, many years of effort, to rationalize all of this work that we do here. Also one more important thing needs to be said about this: The process will become increasingly transparent, understandable to our constituents. The budget process has been very arcane in the past. Making it clearer for everyone to understand inside of Congress and outside of Congress is yet another noble objective of this legislation. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the rule for being broad and including many amendments, and I want to commend the legislation to all of my colleagues.

Mr. COX

Mr. COX. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. As the author of the legislation, along with Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, in the other body, I just want to underscore what the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte) has said. There are only two points that need to be made so that we can vote on this motion to recommit. The first is, as the gentleman from Virginia pointed out, that nothing in the motion to recommit, nothing in the amendments that we have adopted, nothing in the underlying legislation, and nothing in the Cox-Wyden moratorium that we are extending here has anything to do with sales taxes. The ban on multiple taxes, the ban on discriminatory taxes in the current moratorium is what we are talking about extending here. In my view, we ought not to have any taxes on Internet access because we are trying to deal with the digital divide, and that ban should be permanent. In addition, multiple taxes, taxes by two States on the same commerce, ought to be banned indefinitely. And, likewise, also discriminatory taxes that would target the Internet but not off-line commerce. That is all this legislation is about. The reason that we are having this debate at all is that people want to take this perfectly good bill hostage so that they can get a debate on a different subject, Internet sales taxes. I remember the cover of National Lampoon some years back where they had this cute little puppy with a pistol to its head, and it said, ``Buy this magazine or we'll shoot this dog.'' It was a macabre example of the dark humor of the editors of National Lampoon, but a good illustration of what is going on here. We should not take this perfectly good Internet moratorium hostage for our separate debate on sales taxes. The 5 years is already a compromise. Let us go with that compromise, as we have earlier, so that we can move forward and provide certainty to the participants in the new economy that there will not be discriminatory and multiple taxes on the Internet.

Mr. COX. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. I rise in support of the amendment that is pending, the Chabot amendment. Madam Chairman, the preceding speaker began by asking whether anyone could connect the dots between the preceding speakers and the subject under discussion, then told us that the subject under discussion was whether we should have a 2-year extension or a 5-year extension of the existing moratorium. Whereas, in fact, the subject under discussion is the Chabot amendment, and the Chabot amendment, as the author made very plain when he explained it, would make the existing moratorium on discriminatory and multiple Internet taxes permanent. It is not a question of 2 years or 5 years. The subject under debate, the current amendment, and every Member should focus on this, is whether or not to make the existing moratorium permanent. So that is mistake number one that I wanted to correct. It is, we are not debating 2003 or 2006, we are debating permanent or not. The second thing that the gentleman said is that we should oppose either a 5-year extension or impliedly a permanent extension because States depend on sales taxes. But it is very, very important to repeat, again, as we have so many times in this debate, that neither the Chabot amendment, which is now under consideration, nor the underlying bill which it amends, nor the existing Cox-Wyden moratorium on Internet taxes, multiple and discriminatory taxes, even mentions sales taxes. Sales taxes are not covered by this amendment or by the legislation. The third thing that the speaker mentioned is that we need to give e- tailers, that is, small businesses and businesses of all kinds that do business on the Internet, an incentive to negotiate on the sales tax question, which I think everyone in the Chamber appreciates is an important question. But doing something unfair, injurious to them and to the economy as a means of getting their attention and supposedly giving them an incentive to negotiate is hardly a legitimate means for this government to proceed. It is like offering to help you by driving a nail through your hand and then saying, I will pull it out. The ban on multiple taxes and on discriminatory taxes is one that ought to be made permanent because it is the right thing to do. The governors agreed with me when I originally wrote the legislation that we should not have taxes on Internet access and indeed they support a permanent ban on taxes on Internet access. Governor Leavitt, as the head of the National Governors Association, has long supported a permanent ban, not just one for 2 years or 5 years, or what have you, on Internet access taxes, because he, like so many of us is, worried about the digital divide or does not wish one further to develop. If you are interested in getting broader access to the new economy through the Internet to more Americans, we would like to keep the freight charge on getting on the Internet in the first place as low as possible. And certainly we should not have people piling on with new taxes. Lastly, let me add to what has already been said. That not a single State in the country has enacted legislation to tax the Internet. Not one. All of these attempts to tax the Internet are illegitimate acts of bureaucrats, tax-collecting bureaucrats in the States who are reinterpreting the tax laws of those jurisdictions to apply to the Internet which Al Gore had not even invented yet when these laws were passed, but not a single State out of all 50 has passed an Internet tax in this country. That is to say, the legislature never said, ``Here's the Internet, let's tax it.'' Instead, they have utility taxes or they have telecommunications taxes or line charges or various things that have been laying around that were designed for something else, and the bureaucrats, the tax administrators, have decided that they were going to reinterpret them cleverly to apply to the Internet, even though the legislature of the State never made any such determination. That is why Democratic Senator Ron Wyden and Republican Congressman Chris Cox first got together with the Internet Tax Freedom Act to say, no, there are plenty enough taxes on the books already. We do not want new taxes, either ones cooked up in the imaginations of tax bureaucrats or by legislatures that will single out the Internet for discrimination, for discriminatory treatment. There are only three kinds of taxes that are covered in this moratorium, and I will conclude by saying this, Madam Chairman. The first is a tax on Internet access. The second is a discriminatory tax, that singles out the Internet and taxes it when a main street business would not be taxed in the same way, or a street corner would not be taxed in the same way. The last is a multiple tax where two States would tax the same commerce. Since none of us is in favor of those things, we should be in favor of the Chabot amendment. I urge all my colleagues to vote for it.

Mr. COX. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. COX. Reserving the right to object, Madam Chairman, I think this discussion is consuming time off the clock, and that if we simply proceeded with debate on the amendment that is already under consideration, we could then proceed in order to the next amendment and the next amendment. I am aware, for example, that the amendment of the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook) is largely duplicative. It also is for 2 years, which we are already debating. A lot of this debate is supportive of debate on the other amendments as well. But I would urge we stop the parliamentary infighting and just get back to our regular business. I, therefore, object.

Mr. COX. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I would like to respond to the comments that were just made. It is suggested that a continuation of the status quo, which protects users of the Internet from discriminatory taxation, would somehow harm the State of Texas. But the State of Texas is increasing its tax take under the status quo. As a matter of fact, sales tax collections in the State of Texas for the year we have just completed are up 5 percent. The same is true across the country. There is not a State in America that is not better off now than it was before the passage of the Internet Tax Freedom Act and the two are not disconnected, because the growth of the new economy is fueling a growth in American productivity and a record increase in jobs and a flood of revenues to government at all levels. There is no revenue impairment. There is no revenue loss. There is more taxation and more collection of taxes for State and local governments, and for the Federal Government, than ever before in our Nation's history. Mr. Chairman, let us look at the figures. At the end of 1999, all 50 States were in surplus. The States finished 1999 with $35 billion in total surpluses. And that is at the same time that they were growing their spending by nearly 8 percent on average. Total tax collections among the 50 States are up not by 1 percent, not by 2 percent, not by 3 or 4 percent, the range of our economic growth, but by 11 percent. Total tax collections among the States, up 11 percent from $420 billion in 1998 to $466 billion in 1999. We do not need more taxes. We do not need discriminatory taxes. We do not need double taxation. And all that this bill does, all that it does, is ban discriminatory taxes and multiple taxes. So I need to know which one, which kind of taxes, the discriminatory ones or the multiple ones, the opponents of this legislation are in favor of. But in my view, there should not be a moratorium. There should be a permanent ban on such taxes. We should not have discriminatory taxes against the Internet and we should not have multiple taxation. Two States should not tax the same commerce twice. One State ought to do that, and that is what this legislation wisely does. Now, in truth the debate is not about what it seems to be about. We are not really arguing about that. Instead, people are taking a very good piece of legislation, the Internet Tax Freedom Act, and they are holding it hostage. They are saying, ``All right. We agree with you, there should not be multiple taxation. There should not be discriminatory taxation. But we have another issue with sales taxes and we would like you to address that some time, and we think that only if we take this perfectly good piece of legislation and hold it hostage will you listen to us.'' I remember once when I was in college, I think, maybe I was a little older than that, the National Lampoon put out one of their magazines. Some of my colleagues have seen the National Lampoon, and it had a very clever cover. On the cover was this adorable little puppy with a gun to its head. It said, ``Buy this magazine or we will shoot this dog.'' Of course the message was meant to be humorous, but it is an illustration of the legislative tactic at work here. People do not like the fact that they have a Supreme Court decision that impairs State sales tax collection on remote sales. They would like Congress to address that legislatively under our Article I, Section 8 power. Because that is not what we are debating here on the floor today, they want to take this piece of legislation hostage and say, well, at least it is about the Internet. Let us slow down this legislation and make them add on to this other issue. That would be a bad idea because what it would mean is that people would not have the certainty that they now have that we are not going to at the Federal level, we are not going to at the State level, and we are not going to at the local level impose discriminatory taxes on the Internet that tax the Internet when the off-line commerce would not be taxed in the same way or multiple taxes on the Internet. We are not going to tax Internet access because we really do care about the digital divide. If my colleagues care about the digital divide, do not pile new taxes on Internet access. That is what the existing legislation, which this would extend, prevents. There are many good reasons, but none more significant than the flood of revenues to our States to support the Internet Tax Freedom Act and its extension in the form of the Internet Nondiscrimination Act. For those reasons, I urge strongly that we oppose the amendment.

Mr. COX. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Gekas) not just for yielding me this time, but also for the splendid work that he has done in bringing the legislation in timely fashion to the floor. As the author with Senator Wyden of the original Internet Tax Freedom Act and also of this Internet Nondiscrimination Act, I am very pleased at the bipartisanship in this effort. Senator Wyden of course, our former colleague here in the House of Representatives, is a Democrat from Oregon. I am a Republican from California. President Clinton signed this legislation. We have been, Republicans and Democrats, working on this for a very long time with very good results. What we now find, having enacted a moratorium a few years ago, a time-out, as it were, on new taxes on the Internet, discriminatory taxes on the Internet or multiple taxation on Internet commerce, that we have nothing to fear from good policy. Originally when Senator Wyden and I introduced our bill, it was a permanent ban on taxes that would discriminate against the Internet, treat the Internet less favorably than Main Street, treat the Internet less favorably than brick-and-mortar enterprises. But in order to make sure that we were not shortchanging State and local governments, we worked with them and fashioned a moratorium for a short while so that we could see with empirical, real-world results whether this good policy, what we knew in the abstract was good policy, worked in the real world. Now the results are in. In my home State of California, for the most recent month, sales taxes are up some 20 percent. As a matter of fact, brick-and-mortar sales at the shopping malls of America were up 8 percent. That is a much bigger base, by the way. There is a lot more retail through brick and mortar than there is over the Internet. In fact, there is a lot more catalog sales over the telephone than there are Internet sales these days. But brick-and-mortar sales are way up in this new economy. Sales taxes are up in this new economy at all levels of government, not just in California, but across the Nation. The Federal Government, which does not impose any sales taxes on these transactions, is benefitting hugely from the growth in this new economy through an increase in income taxes and other kinds of revenue flows that are the natural result. When more people are working, people are more productive. That is what is going on in America right now. So by adopting a policy of not killing the goose that is laying the golden eggs, adopting a policy of moderation in taxation, we have had some great successes. Remember why we did this in the first place. Not because we wanted in any way to crimp the ability of a State or a local government or even the Federal Government to collect taxes, but rather because there was a risk that the number of taxing jurisdictions in America, the sheer number of them, some 30,000, could, if they all laid claim to their modest piece of the Internet, drown the whole thing in a sea of red tape, paper compliance and, not least of all, revenue exactions. And so we said no, this is not something that we want to see fall victim to the tyranny of the parochial. The new economy is something that we cherish, something that gives America a competitive advantage in the world, that is creating jobs as we have never seen them created before. So let us ensure that from a policy standpoint, we look at the Internet as what it is, not just State commerce, not just local commerce, but interstate commerce subject to the jurisdiction of the Congress under Article I, section 8 of our Constitution and, indeed, global commerce. What we are doing now today is falling short of perfection, which would be to make permanent the ban on multiple taxes on the Internet or make permanent the ban on discriminatory taxes on the Internet, but we are doing the next best thing. Because this is a legislature and we have to compromise, we are extending this moratorium for 5 years. That is at least a minimum amount of time to give people some certainty of how to plan. People can wake up tomorrow morning and know that there is not a government effort to shake down the Net. It is important, I think, for us to recognize specifically how brick- and-mortar people are benefiting from this new Internet economy. First of all, many of them are starting out with their own e-commerce windows on the world, so a little company locked away in some rural area that could only serve a tiny community in a tiny market of customers a few years back now through the Internet has the world's cheapest ever means of reaching customers throughout their State, throughout the country and around the world, and we are seeing a great deal of that. As a result, as I said, taxes collected by government which depends on growth of this economy are up. Mr. Chairman, I want to emphasize for my colleagues what has been pointed out in this debate before. The sales tax debate is a very important one, but it is not this bill. This bill keeps discriminatory and multiple taxes off the Internet. There is no justification for doing otherwise. Please vote yes on the legislation.

Mr. COX

Mr. COX. Mr. Speaker, on April 28, 2000, Marine Corps Major Burks A. Via will be laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery. Major Via was a constituent; and the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, where he was based for many years during his quarter century of military service, is of special significance to Orange County, CA. It is my honor to bring Major Burks' record to the attention of the 106th Congress as the nation prepares to honor him at Arlington. Burks Via was born in Roanoke, VA, June 7, 1917. He joined the Marine Corps on his birthday in 1938. After the Royal Canadian Air Force trained him as a pilot, he flew missions in the South Pacific--207 from American Samoa and 40 from Munda, Bougaineville, and Guadalcanal. Via piloted the first Marine Corps aircraft to land in Hong Kong after end of World War II. As the United States worked for post-war peace and stability in Asia, he served with the First Marine Air Wing in Tsingato, China. When Chinese Communist forces grew stronger, and turned their gun sights to U.S. Marines, he flew the final missions out of Chengchun, Mukden, and Peiping. His service record with the Fleet Marine Force, Western Pacific, from June 1948 to January 1949, includes salutations for ``extensive behind the lines intelligence missions'' against the Communist forces. In 1949, he was transferred to Cherry Point, NC, the long-time East Coast counterpart to the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. After duty at the Naval Air Station at Anacostia, where he was promoted to Major, he began a tour in 1953 that took him to El Toro, Hawaii, Japan, and Korea, flying 566 missions. Starting in 1955, Major Via took charge of transport missions for senior U.S. and NATO military officials and diplomats around the world. As Marine Colonel William L. Beach noted in his eulogy on December 17, 1999, Major Via was considered the best VP pilot in the Marine Corps and the Navy. In fact, when President Johnson flew to California to dedicate the University of California at Irvine in 1964, the Marine Corps pilot was asked to back up the President's Air Force One pilot. That same year, Major Burks retired, having logged 14,000 flight hours. Major Burks served not only his nation, but also his family, and his community. His wife, Shirley, five children, and seven grandchildren, survived him. Orange County will miss him. At Arlington, the nation will honor him. His contributions to freedom in Asia, in Europe, and around the world, and his service to the Marine Corps and the nation, merit our appreciation and our gratitude in Congress.

Mr. COX

Mr. COX. Mr. Speaker, I thank both of my colleagues for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, I share the goals of the sponsors of this legislation. The fundamental problem is simple: There are, according to the Congressional Budget Office, 3 million people in America who do not get over the air free television and who do not get cable, so they cannot get their local TV, 3 million people. Now, until 1999, Congress made it illegal for satellite TV providers to put local stations into the homes of those people. We fixed that with SHVA, with the Satellite Home Viewer Act, a short while ago; but there remains a catch. In order to deliver even one local station into a market, the satellite provider has to deliver all of the locally originated stations. Now naturally, the satellite providers trying to make money are going to start with the big markets like Los Angeles and New York, and in my TV market of southern California, where Los Angeles dominates, there are so many locally originated TV stations, scores of them, that it fills up all the satellite capacity. What we have essentially said, by way of Federal regulation, is that it is more important for people who live in big TV markets, in big cities, to get all of the locally-originated TV stations, even if they do not have any local content by the way, than it is for people who live in rural America to get just one. We are doing nothing about that unfair mandate in this bill. Now, I want to draw the attention of my colleagues to the fact that the procedure that we are using to pass this bill today does not permit any amendments. In the Committee on Commerce, where we worked very hard on this issue, I offered an amendment that passed in subcommittee that would have addressed the very reason that rural America is not getting service from satellite TV today. We passed that amendment in subcommittee. We lost it in full committee. I would like to have brought it to the floor and directly address the problem that we are facing in America today, and that is not enough local TV for this group of 3 million people. But instead of lifting that Federal mandate, which the satellite providers tell us would permit them to get 80 million more people, instead of doing that we are going to create a brand new Federal program. We are going to take one of the oldest, stodgiest, failing bureaucracies that we have in Washington, the former Rural Electrification Administration, which is on a covert mission now that we will not recognize it to change its name to the Rural Utilities Service, and get a new lease on life, we are going to give them a billion dollars to go help these 3 million people. We are going to put them in the business of trying to compete with for-profit satellite TV companies, and one of the two biggest in America still is not making money. The Congressional Budget Office tells us that the Rural Utilities Service is writing off billions of dollars in their existing loan portfolio left and right, at taxpayer expense, and that about 30 to 40 percent of the loans that are going to get made under this program are likely to be written off. So one can look at the cost of this program right up front is about $400 million. The Rural Utilities Service, which we are putting in charge of this, does not know anything about which technology, which TV technology, to invest in. They may know something about agriculture. They are part of the Department of Agriculture. But they certainly do not know anything about which technology to bet on. The loans that we are going to be providing have a term of 25 years. Does anybody in this Chamber understand what the digital information marketplace is going to look like 25 years from now? Would someone want to make a competitive bet to go into this market in competition with the Federal Government, with the Department of Agriculture, on their side? That is what we are doing in this legislation. It is an extremely unlikely assumption that the Federal Government is going to make money in the satellite TV business, but one thing we know for sure nobody who lives in a rural area is going to get anything but pay TV under this proposal. Free, over-the-air TV, which the Government usually subsidizes, is not helped by this proposal. I urge my colleagues to take a hard look at this, to ask why it is that it is being rushed through here without any opportunity to amend it; why we are giving a 70-year-old bureaucracy so much power, and I ask my colleagues to vote it down.

Mr. COX. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. COX

Mr. COX. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 55, had I been present, I would have vote ``yea.''

Mr. COX

Mr. COX. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Kristine Thalman, a loyal staff member at the city of Anaheim, CA. Kris will be retiring from the city after a long and distinguished career. In her career, especially for the last 13 years, Kris has served as the Governmental Relations Director for the city. She has ensured very smooth relations between the city of California and many of us in Congress that we represent. Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I ask my colleagues to join with me in honoring Kristine Thalman. It is fitting that all of us join with the family, friends, and the community of Anaheim, CA, in recognizing her service and dedication to the city and wish her well in her future endeavors.

Mr. COX

Mr. COX. Mr. Speaker, the New York Times has editoralized against any minimum wage at all. Their editorial was headlined: The Right Minimum Wage: $0.00 Let me quote from that editorial: Raise the legal minimum price of labor above the productivity of the least skilled workers and fewer will be hired. If a higher minimum means fewer jobs, why does it remain on the agenda of some liberals? A higher minimum would undoubtedly raise the living standard of the majority of low-wage workers who could keep their jobs. That gain, it is argued, would justify the sacrifice of the minority who became unemployable. The argument isn't convincing. Those at greatest risk from a higher minimum would be young, poor workers, who already face formidable barriers to getting and keeping jobs. Perhaps the mistake here is to accept the limited terms of the debate. The working poor obviously deserve a better shake. But it should not surpass our ingenuity or generosity to help some of them without hurting others. * * * The idea of using a minimum wage to overcome poverty is old, honorable--and fundamentally flawed. It's time to put this hoary debate behind us, and find a better way to improve the lives of people who work very hard for very little. Tonight's debate is just as hoary as when that editorial was written--in 1987. Indeed, this debate is so hoary that I need only to reproduce here the remarks I made in 1996 and 1989 when Congress debated this same subject. Washington, May 23, 1996 The Minimum Wage Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, I would like to share with my colleagues some words that come from a 67-year-old woman who works at the minimum wage in Santa Ana, CA: Dear Congressman--she wrote me recently--I strongly advise you not to raise the minimum wage. In my working career, I have had a lot of under, slightly over and straight minimum wage jobs. As a single parent, I managed to raise my son without any handout from the government. Although raising the minimum wage may sound like a great humanitarian idea, it really isn't. In the past every time minimum wages were raised, the entire national work force, plus welfare recipients, also demanded and received raises. The cost of goods and services rose to meet the higher cost of labor, and you forced me to work a lot of overtime to maintain the same buying power I had before my `generous' raise. I am now 67 years old and consider myself extremely lucky to have an employer willing to hire elderly people like myself. My employer is a small businessman. Recently because of the economy he was forced to raise his prices and cut his overhead just to stay in business. I took a Small Business Administration class in college, and I know that he has to match my Social Security payments, pay higher State disability and workers compensation. He and others like him will have no alternative but to close their doors and I will be unemployed. When I lose my job, because my employer can no longer afford to stay in business, what is the government going to do about me, someone who is willing to work? How is the government going to help support me? Who is going to pay for this? Very truly yours, Joanna B. Menser, Santa Ana, CA. That is a personal story, but how about the big picture? How about macroeconomics, and how about the views of such institutional stalwarts of the liberal point of view as the New York Times? Some time ago the New York Times ran an editorial on the minimum wage. The headline was, the right minimum wage, zero. By that the New York Times did not mean that people should actually work for nothing. Rather, what they meant is that wages, the cost and the price of labor should be determined in a free market and in fact no one should be held to a so-called minimum wage but, rather, everyone should have the opportunity to make an increasing wage in return for higher skills and higher productivity. Let me read from that editorial in the New York Times which was titled, `The Right Minimum Wage: $0.00.' `Anyone working in America,' the New York Times says, `surely deserves a better standard than can be managed on the minimum wage.' I think we can all agree with that. But there is a virtual consensus among economists that the minimum wage is an idea whose time has passed. Raising the minimum wage by a substantial amount would price poor working people out of the job market, people like Joanna Menser, whose remarks we just heard. `An increase in the minimum wage,' the New York Times wrote in their editorial, `would increase unemployment.' Let me repeat this line from the New York Times editorial: `An increase in the minimum wage would increase unemployment. Raise the legal minimum price of labor above the productivity of the least skilled worker, and fewer will be hired.' If a higher minimum wage means fewer jobs, why does it remain on the agenda of some liberals,' the New York Times asked. `Those at greatest risk from a higher minimum wage would be young poor workers who already face formidable barriers to getting and keeping jobs.' They conclude their editorial in the New York Times as follows: `The idea of using a minimum wage to overcome poverty is old, honorable, and fundamentally flawed.' This is the New York Times now. This is not Congressman Chris Cox from California. `The idea of using a minimum wage to overcome poverty is old, honorable, and fundamentally flawed. It's time to put this hoary debate behind us and find a better way to improve the lives of people who work very hard for very little.' Finally, the New York Times of Friday, April 19, just last Friday, is worth noticing here on the floor in this debate among our colleagues. Three factoids from the New York Times, Friday April 19, 1996, I commend to all of my colleagues: Number of times in 1993 and 1994, when Democrats controlled Congress, that President Clinton mentioned in public his advocacy of a minimum wage increase: zero. Number of times he has done so in 1995 and 1996, when Republicans have controlled Congress, 47. Number of congressional hearings Democrats held on the minimum wage in 1993 and 1994: zero.

Mr. COX

Mr. COX. The Committee on Rules is going to be meeting on Wednesday for that purpose, and I am sure that is the very topic they will consider.

Mr. COX. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, I am pleased to announce that we have completed legislative business for the week. There will be no recorded votes on Thursday or Friday of this week. The House will next meet for legislative business on Wednesday, March 8, at 10 a.m. We will consider a number of bills under suspension of the rules, a list of which will be distributed to Members' offices later this week. The House will also consider H.R. 1827, the Government Waste Corrections Act, under an open rule. On Wednesday we do not expect recorded votes until 2 o'clock p.m. On Thursday, March 9, and Friday, March 10, the House will consider the following measures, all of which will be subject to a rule: The Small Business Tax Fairness and Minimum Wage Legislation; and H.R. 1695, the Ivanpah Valley Airport Public Lands Transfer Act. Mr. Speaker, conferees report they are making progress on the conference report accompanying S. 376, the Communications Satellite Competition and Privatization Act. I am hopeful that it will be ready for consideration in the House at some point next week. Mr. Speaker, I wish all of my colleagues safe travel back to their districts.

Mr. COX. We do expect it, certainly, to come up; and we hope to be completed on Thursday.

Mr. COX. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, Tuesday is the only day we have not had votes on a primary day, and that is an important accommodation that as a California Member I am pleased is being made. We, of course, have our primary on Tuesday. I am in a position of traveling back that day myself, on Wednesday. So I know that every accommodation that can be made will be made for Members on the West Coast. Two o'clock is currently the schedule; but of course I understand the pressures that puts on travel, because I myself will not be able to be back here until 5 o'clock.

Mr. COX. There will be two separate bills, which it is my understanding will be enrolled together if both are successful.

Mr. COX. Mr. Speaker, the Committee on Rules has yet to meet on that point.

Mr. COX

Mr. COX. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the Speaker of the House, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), for his long commitment to repealing the punitive tax on seniors. One of the first bills I sponsored way back in 1989, during my first year in Congress, was Denny Hastert's ``Older Americans' Freedom to Work Act.'' I'm delighted that we are finally moving forward with this historic legislation. It is long overdue. I recently pointed out, while arguing for repeal of the marriage penalty tax, that in America you should not be discriminated against by our tax code solely because of your status. We have civil rights laws in America to make sure that each of us is protected against unfair treatment by our government. Yet, just as the marriage penalty discriminates against people who are married, the earnings test discriminates against people over 65 who choose to stay productive. This costly and regressive tax forces many seniors from the job market. Whereas 50 years ago 47% of men over 65 were employed in the labor force, today it is only 16.5%. A senior who chooses to work after the retirement age of 65 faces a tax burden that amounts to government confiscation. A senior who chooses to work loses $1 in Social Security benefits for every $3 in wages and salaries he or she earns over $17,000. Yet $17,000 is close to the official U.S. government poverty level for working families. When one adds the burdens of income and payroll taxes, this amounts to a marginal tax rate on working seniors as high as 80%--higher than the rate for billionaires. The government should not penalize working seniors by canceling their Social Security benefits. These benefits are not welfare; they have been earned over a lifetime of hard work. Repeal of the earnings test is also another important step toward ensuring that Social Security is always there for seniors. I am hopeful we can bring the same bipartisan support we have today to the upcoming debate on supplementing Social Security benefits through personal retirement accounts. The Clinton-Gore administration has had eight years to repeal this discriminatory burden on seniors. The Democratic Congress has 40 years to do it. Not only did they fail to do so, they raised taxes on working seniors. The 1993 Clinton tax increase included a 70% increase in income taxes on Social Security benefits, for seniors earning as little as $34,000. In 1996, for the first time ever, the new Republican majority in Congress provided relief to seniors by reducing the Social Security earnings penalty. The new law more than doubled the amount a senior citizen could earn without losing his or her Social Security benefits, from $11,280 to $30,000 in 2002. This change has already had a positive effect: the number of senior citizens choosing to remain in the labor force has increased by 7%. Today's long-overdue step--passage of H.R. 5 to completely repeal the unfair earnings test--finally finishes the job Congress started in 1996, and that Speaker Hastert started more than a decade ago.

Mr. COX

Mr. COX. Mr. Speaker, we are all in favor of eliminating the marriage penalty is what I understand from listening to the debate. The only objection that some colleagues raise is that this is not the right time to do it. It is too soon. We have only been trying to repeal the marriage penalty since 1981. We have not had enough hearings on it, only in successive Congresses going back decades. We should pay off the national debt first. There are a number of reasons we should continue to discriminate apparently, but nothing in my view is more important than eliminating this horrible discrimination now. From 1913 to 1948, we did not discriminate in our Tax Code. We began discriminating in the Tax Code to protect working men who did not live in community property States, because people in community property States could income-split and reduce their rate of tax, and those working men in other States could not do it. Their wives did not work according to the way that the Congress looked at it. As a matter of fact, back when we adopted our income tax code, less than 3 percent of women worked. But in the second half of the 20th century, we watched those numbers change dramatically. By 1997, the number of working women was 100 percent greater than what it had been in 1947. Today the marriage penalty is not just a tax on marriage. It is a tax explicitly on working women. Even more so, it is a tax on African- American working women because a greater proportion of African-American women are employed full time than the rest of the labor force, than the rest of the female population. So would we say that it is too expensive to have an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, it is too expensive to have a Civil Rights Act, it is too expensive to enforce the laws against discrimination? I do not think so. As a matter of fact, it is not a question of how to spend tax dollars that we are discussing today; it is a question of how to collect it. We ought to collect it fairly without discriminating against people similarly situated just because one person who we personally tax more happens to be a working woman and the other person is not. We should repeal the marriage tax penalty as soon as possible, and we should do so for a very simple reason: it is the right thing to do. It is fair. It eliminates discrimination. I applaud the leadership of the Congress for bringing this forward. I applaud those of my Democratic and Republican colleagues who are finally willing to make this important step forward. I expect we will be able to succeed today. I expect we will strike this blow for fairness, for working women above all, for families, and ultimately for respect and integrity for our government.

Mr. COX

Mr. COX. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, we have heard that it was important to reduce the marriage penalty a few years ago but we cannot do it this year. We have heard that we should be bipartisan, and yet every Republican is in favor of this and 38 Democrats, not a single bit of bipartisanship in the opposition. From 1913 until 1948, there was no discrimination against married people or against singles. The Tax Code treated them the same way no matter what. The reason we got a marriage penalty is that back then when the prejudice was in favor of working men, Congress decided to give a protection to working men who did not live in community properties States who could not income split. So now what we have is not just discrimination against married couples, but explicitly we have discrimination against working women. Back when we got the income Tax Code, women did not work, about three percent of the labor force. That has dramatically changed. From 1947 to 1997, there was a 100 percent increase in the number of working women. We need to pass this legislation because discrimination is at stake. We would not get rid of the court system, the Civil Rights Act, or the EEOC because it was spending money. Vote for this bill because it is the right thing to do.