Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman, but here on the floor, in the people's House, for the people of the United States who pay the taxes that constitute this secret budget, we cannot know how much a 5-percent cut constitutes, so we cannot know whether it is prudent or imprudent. The gentleman said one other thing that particularly intrigued me, and this did concern me. He said the FBI would not be able to protect against international terrorists if this 5-percent cut went through. How much will be cut by this 5-percent cut from the budget of the FBI to combat international terrorism?

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. The gentleman from Florida makes a good case against across-the-board cuts. I for one have never particularly favored across-the-board cuts, but in this case we are confronted with a budget that is secret. We cannot come out here and debate the individual elements of the budget or the individual allocations to the individual components of this budget because it is secret. If I went up to the little room upstairs and found out how much the National Reconnaissance Office is getting and I came down here to the floor and revealed it, I would be subject to censure or removal from the House. So how is it that we can approach this more reasonably as long as we keep these numbers secret? What can our enemies learn from knowing how much money we spend or waste on the intelligence services, whether it is well spent or wasted? The sum is phenomenal. It is reported in the press to be more than $30 billion, an increase this year of about $1 billion. Perhaps the gentleman could help me out here. Could the gentleman from Florida tell me what the 5-percent cut would constitute? How much money would the 5- percent cut constitute?

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this legislation. I appreciate the willingness of the proponents on the other side of the aisle to work with the minority to address the significant concerns raised by the administration. It is my hope now that we will be able to move this process forward with some dispatch and, as I said earlier, to begin to look at a different way of managing our forests; reserving the roadless areas, the few that are left, reserving and preserving the wilderness areas that are statutorily defined by Congress, meeting the needs of the spotted owl and other endangered species in the area, clean water concerns, but also engaging in some forestry activities in what would be called a lighter touch, uneven age stand management regime, one that came after hours and hours and hours of discussion between traditional antagonists in this part of the country. I only hope that a similar process can be modeled on the Quincy Library project for my own district and other areas where for so long we have been engaged in pitched battles. Early on in the forest debates I got the carpenters union to go with some environmental activists up to look at management similar to what is being proposed here today, uneven age stand management, principally thinning, along with a forester who works on alternative management. There was substantial agreement that that would be something that had promise. I got the carpenters to then go to an ancient forest conference and say they would look at an alternative that preserved all the remaining old growth if we could look at alternative management on the remaining lands. Yet the administration out of hand rejected that as did Lord Thomas reject that in going through the plan, to develop the President's forest plan. I think this is a crack in the armor of the old save and sacrifice forestry. This threatens people that are polarized at either ends of the debate. I applaud this process to move away from save and sacrifice to uneven age stand management, selective management and forestry that is sensitive to all environmental laws and truly perhaps for the first time to multiple uses.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman now feels that this bill fully complies with all existing environmental laws, and reserves rights of appeal, litigation, and other things to the public and other concerned individuals?

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman raised a very serious concern earlier about one particular section of the bill which resembled language from the infamous timber salvage rider which I opposed. The language in concern was that the Secretary concerned shall not rely on salvage timber sales as a basis for administrative action limiting other multiple use activities, et cetera.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. I have followed this process as a person who comes from a district where the forest wars have raged during my entire tenure in Congress. I have followed the Quincy Library project with great hope as a way to move away from embittered and polarized interests to some solutions that make sense. I am very concerned that we have ended up with a bill on the floor that the administration has raised strong objections to a few points of language and concerns within the bill. I am hoping that we work that out, because I would like to see this project go forward to implementation. Because it is finally moving away from the forestry we have been practicing in this country since NFMA and before that, which is the approach of save and sacrifice. That is, over here we will have huge clearcuts, and over here we will put some land aside. The President's plan was an improvement, but what it did was saved more and sacrificed less. It did not look at alternative management. This project would, over a wide and large land base, first, reserve roadless areas, reserve wilderness areas, enhance riparian protections, follow all the recommendations for the spotted owl recovery program in terms of canopy closure, but it would engage in what is called light touch, uneven aged stand management, light touch forestry, over about a quarter of this land base. Now, that, to me, is a step forward in recovering the health of this ecosystem and in beginning to turn down the temperature on these conflicts. There are some who have vested interests in continuing the conflict, and they are going to object even if we come to a reasonable conclusion here, those at the poles of this debate. But I believe the vast majority of the people want to see us work out an agreement here that can be signed into law by the President, that will allow us to look at a different type of forest management to recover forest health and leave those areas that are already healthy alone. That is what the Quincy Library project is about. Those were the conclusions that were reached by this local group, rather amazingly. I was very skeptical when we put forward funding for the Quincy Library project. I said we will never get strong environmentalist and strong industry advocates to sit down in a room together and agree on much of anything. Well, there has been substantial agreement, but now the disagreement has gone beyond the walls of the Quincy Library to here on the floor, where we still have a few fine points to work out so that we can ensure that we have a bill that is acceptable to the administration and that we can go forward. Again, reserve the roadless areas, reserve the wilderness areas, enhance the protections, follow the spotted owl guidelines, but go to light touch uneven aged stand management on those lands outside of those critical areas that are not in a very healthy condition. It would definitely be a step forward in our understanding of how we might recover some of the damage that has been caused by mismanagement of Federal forestlands over the last half century here in this country. So I am hopeful that it will be possible to come to that sort of an agreement here on the floor today. I will support the gentleman's amendment when it is offered later and am hopeful that we can work out any other differences.

Mr. DeFAZIO

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, our colleagues on the other side are so concerned that a starting police officer at $23,000 or a young teacher at $23,000 might get a tax credit for their children, but they are not concerned that the changes they are making in the alternative minimum tax would give tax rebates to large corporations like Texas Utilities, that did not pay a penny in Federal taxes. The only reason they paid $19 million on their $1 billion profit was the AMT, and their repeal of the AMT will give them a tax rebate of $18 million on taxes they did not even pay, and we do not have a penny for the police officer or a penny for the young teacher. It is outrageous.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the Democrats would tax the very air we breathe, or so the Republicans would have us believe. But the Republicans would actually take oxygen from the lungs of senior citizens and disabled around this country to finance tax cuts for the wealthy. And I am not making this up. The measure before us today cuts the payments for oxygen and oxygen equipment by 20 percent and freezes payments through 2002 to save $1.6 billion. Eighty percent of the cuts in the bill before us today come from Medicare, not to reform Medicare and stabilize its finances, but to finance tomorrow's bill, the bill that will extend tax cuts to the wealthy, tax cuts that will average $27,132 a year for families that earn over $400,000. And for those families who earn $25,000 they will average zero, nothing. Is this fair? I do not think so.

Mr. DeFAZIO

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman just made the most salient point there. The cuts today are designed to cut taxes for the largest corporations in America and the wealthiest. Some of these cuts are extraordinarily cruel. They cannot be denied by my friends who will stand on the other side of the aisle: a 20-percent cut in home health oxygen benefits for seniors, and a freeze to the year 2002. Let me just read from one constituent, of the many letters I got: Dixie McNutt, Springfield, OR, my hometown. Dixie says, ``Having oxygen allows people like me to enjoy the comforts of home and to feel as though we are still an active part of the family. Without this benefit, the choice seems to be living at home without breathing, or spending our remaining days in the hospital, which would cost both Medicare and the patient much more.'' So today, Congress will cut $2 billion out of home health oxygen benefits for seniors and the disabled to pay for one-tenth of the repeal and the gutting of the alternative minimum tax for corporations, because it will be too much, too much to ask the largest corporations in America to just pay maybe 5 or 10 percent of their profits in taxes, a fraction of what working Americans pay out of their paycheck every month. This is a travesty. It should not pass. I stand against this bill.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, no one will stand on this floor today to defend China's arms trafficking to terrorist nations, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, America's enemies. But the apologists also say MFN is not a tool to stop illegal traffic and weapons of mass destruction. No one will stand on this floor today to defend the human rights atrocities of the Chinese regime. But the apologists will say MFN should not be used to defend human or labor rights. The apologists say MFN for China is just normal trade relations. How can you have normal trade relations with an outlaw regime? How can we have normal trade relations with the most unfair trading nation on Earth? The Chinese systematically exclude nonstrategic United States goods. First, there is a 23 percent tariff, on average. Then they have their discriminatory 17-percent value-added tax, which often only gets added to United States goods, not Chinese goods. Then, if that is not enough, they have nontariff barriers that make the Japanese nontariff barriers look like the work of amateurs. And finally, something might somehow get past that they have unwritten rules that change day-to-day, port- to-port in China to keep out anything that might get past those barriers. The bottom line is, the only United States goods allowed in are those that enrich China's corrupt leaders or add to their store of critical technology and military weaponry. Yeah, it is about jobs. It is about Chinese jobs, not American jobs. With a $50 billion trade deficit this year, according to the Commerce Department's own way of figuring exports and imports, we will export 1 million United States' jobs to China. Yes, this is free trade. One-way Chinese free trade into America, the largest consumer market on Earth, and not through their protected barriers into China. Stop the apologies. Stop the appeasement. Send the Chinese a tough message they will respect.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. One listening to this debate would think that there is not one penny that can be cut from the Pentagon budget without hurting our preparedness, or ignoring the needs of our enlisted families or the working people of America. This cut would total $13.4 billion. That is a lot of money. However, the Pentagon has $14.6 billion in unneeded inventory that exceeds the war needs of the United States for more than 100 years, and they still have a computer over there placing more orders. Not a penny. This 1 year's cut could be absorbed by their unneeded inventory. We heard we would have a gap between our strategy and the military program. Well, the strategy is absurd. We are going to fight two wars at once with no allies. Two World War II's at once with no allies. Our budget is two times the total of all our enemies combined. And they are saying we cannot depend on our allies, so we have to be able to fight two wars at once. If we cannot depend on our allies, why are we spending billions of dollars to expand NATO to former Soviet bloc countries. At one time in my life, we had a great warrior in the White House, and this warrior said it better than anybody else will say it here today. Dwight David Eisenhower. ``This world in arms, it is not spending money alone, it is spending the sweat of our labors, the genius of our scientists, the hopes of our children.'' That is what this debate is all about. Every gun made, every warship launched, every rocket fired is, in a final sense, a theft from those who hunger, those who are not fed, and those who are cold and not clothed. That was a great warrior, Dwight David Eisenhower, a general who led us to victory in World War II. If he were here today, he would urge Members to support these justified cuts in the bloated Pentagon budget.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, this was to be the year of tough decisions in Congress, as they planned for a balanced budget, decisions between tax cuts, increases in military spending, stability for Medicare and Social Security, investment in transportation or education. It is incredibly difficult for Congress and the President to decide between these competing priorities and constituencies. We cannot have it all, as we learned in the early 1980's. So after months of wrangling and hand-wringing, Congress and the President did the predictable: They decided they did want it all and they wanted a balanced budget; big increases for the Pentagon, big tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and even a nod toward transportation and education. It is too good to be true. Guess what, it is not. The budget negotiators simply assumed an additional $225 billion of income; no new CBO baseline forecast, no new economic forecast. Let us assume our way out of this problem, $225 billion that does not exist and will not exist, and I am not being allowed to offer a budget that does not assume that today.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing legislation that would create a national fund to provide matching grants to State and local programs promoting energy conservation, renewable energy resources like wind and solar power, and universal electricity service for low income, rural and other consumers for whom basic electricity service may be compromised by deregulation. Nationwide, it is estimated that regulated utilities spend between $6 and $7.5 billion annually on energy conservation, renewable energy, and low income energy assistance programs. In the brave, new world of deregulated electricity markets, many of these public purposes could fall through the cracks. My bill provides a stable funding source to not only help maintain existing energy conservation, renewable energy and low income energy assistance programs, but to expand them around the Nation. This is not a new Federal bureaucracy. It is a simple mechanism that will funnel money directly to programs crafted at the State and local level. Its cost to the Federal Treasury will be near zero. The national program would be funded by a competitively neutral, non- bypassable transmission access charge paid by all electricity suppliers. The charge would be set to a level sufficient to fund qualifying State programs each year, but would be limited to no more than 2 tenths-of-a-cent per kilowatt-hour. The fund would be administered by a joint Federal-State board with oversight from the Department of Energy. If fully utilized, the national electric systems benefits fund would provide between $5 and $6 billion each year in matching grants for locally designed energy efficiency, renewable and low income energy assistance programs. Electric utility industry deregulation without this important incentive-based program would be a disaster for the environment and for low income families.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield just a moment, this is a common misunderstanding, because the administration and the Republican leadership made a great show of adding environmental protections to the original NAFTA agreement, because they saw in fact that we probably were going to beat the NAFTA fast track agreement on the floor. But it was all cover. It was not in the agreement. It was not in the annexes. It was not in any part of the North American Free-Trade Agreement. It was in fact a nonbinding side agreement by administrative rule by the President. It was basically to do nothing except to provide cover to some of our weak-willed colleagues, who were torn between the opposition of people concerned about the environment and other things with this agreement and the pressure from some of the largest industries and some of the largest employers in their district, who were going to become smaller employers in their district real soon after this passed. So this was all cooked up. In fact, there is no binding environmental agreement. We have seen the conditions along the border deteriorate dramatically. It is going to continue to accelerate and get worse. In fact, I do not want to bring in too many side issues, but there is the recent problem with the strawberries. This is a problem of lack of environmental safeguards in Mexico. Americans are threatened with hepatitis because of some strawberries snuck in here in violation of the standards which control our school lunch program, but in any case, labeled as an American product, sold to children, to schools, fed to children, infected with hepatitis because, again, there are no enforceable environmental laws in Mexico. Yet we are opening our border to these goods coming across. This is an incredible threat.

Mr. DeFAZIO. If the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. Speaker, if we could just return, again to my surprise, that Oregon, so-called free trade, high-technology, a growing State, is No. 5 on the list for applications for people's jobs having been exported or dislocated. I would just like people to be aware of the other States. No. 4 is the State of Washington, again, looked at as another vital, growing, exporting, high-technology State, dominated, of course, by Boeing and Microsoft. Then, you know, we get to States that, well, again, Texas, I do not think too many of us have thought in the past about Texas as being one of the them. Actually they are No. 2. No. 1 is Pennsylvania, and No. 3 is New York, and No. 2 is Texas. So what we have pointed out here is that there has been extraordinary job loss. There are those, as the gentleman pointed out, who would say that this could not have been anticipated. Well, who could have anticipated the decline of the peso? Mr. Speaker, the bottom-line truth here is that this agreement was never intended to create a market for American products. This agreement was always about protecting the movement of United States capital and manufacturing resources to Mexico to exploit the cheaper labor, the lack of enforcement of safety standards, and the lack of enforcement of environmental laws. The key part of this agreement was something that protected United States capital and set up an independent court of claims in case any of it was expropriated, because United States industry was looking back to the days when, in Mexico, the oil industry had been expropriated. That was the barrier we are talking about. What they did is opened up the floodgates for capital that is needed in this country to update equipment and productivity, so we can compete in world markets, to move to Mexico with impunity, to exploit their people and the conditions in that nation. We also opened the floodgates for other foreign nations to move their capital into Mexico in order to obtain access to our markets. It was never about Mexican workers earning a dollar an hour buying the Dodge Ram trucks that they are building. That was an impossible equation. It was never a reality. In fact, the total purchasing power of all the people of Mexico, if they had spent every peso before devaluation on United States goods, would have been less than the purchasing power of the people of New Jersey. Tell me that in the United States we would enter into an agreement and allow New Jersey to wipe out environmental laws and its labor protections and all that so that we could just gain access to their markets because it was going to boost our economy so much. No offense to the people of New Jersey, the Garden State, a great State. The point is, this was a blip, even if every peso spent in Mexico could have been spent in this country, that was never the intention. In fact, this agreement has worked out very much the way that its principal proponents intended. United States capital has fled to Mexico. United States jobs are seeing downward pressure on their wages. United States jobs are fleeing to Mexico. The people of Mexico have seen actually a decline in their standard of living and a decline in their environmental conditions. Now they want to extend this to other countries in Latin America, the great new frontiers where maybe labor is even cheaper than Mexico and maybe they will let us despoil the environment even more than they will in Mexico.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I saw a cartoon once that basically the punch line was that I always wondered where we are spending all this money on the space station, and this one economist looks at the other and says, well, I know somewhere way out there there may be someone who will work for less than 10 cents an hour. So I mean in part, I mean what are these brave new frontiers. Of course, we are having some contention over China and other countries that are even more oppressive or repressive than Mexico. It is an extraordinary race to the bottom. Ultimately it will undermine the strength of our Nation, which was created in part by the spirit of capitalists like Henry Ford who said, I am going to build a product that the people who work in my plants can afford to buy. And for many years there was a wonderful linkage between the owners of capital and the managers of the corporations and the working people, which was to say, if you produce more and do better, we will all go up together. And now, for whatever reason, they have decided to break that link, to both use agreements like NAFTA to push down wages in our country. In the heartland of our country, we are seeing people who are getting hardballed in negotiations. It was either Delco or Packard Electric, and I do not want to misspeak, but it was a producer of electrical components for automobiles and wiring looms and all those things. When the agreement came up, the company said, look, it is real simple, you take a 50-percent cut in your wages or all your jobs go to Mexico. There was nothing else in the community. And ultimately the workers had to accede to those demands.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Another point, I have a lot of small business in my district, not a lot of large manufacturers. It came to some of the small businesses and the Chamber of Commerce in my hometown of Springfield, when what had been a profitable door and window manufacturing company was bought out by a nonunion firm from out of state. And they came in with the intent of busting the union, and it did not take very long for the business community, the small business community in this small town in Oregon to figure out, you know, if the people who work at Morgan Nicolai see their wages go down by 50 percent, which was what was being proposed in the busting of the union, they will not have the money for the dry cleaning or the restaurants or the new televisions and the other things. Actually the workers got support from the traditional community. The small business community in many cases has not yet made that linkage. But it is their livelihood that is also being threatened by this downward trend. It is just not people who work for wages in factories. It is not just union members in the public or private sector. It is everybody who they patronize. And as we drive down wages in this country, we are ripping the heart out of all of middle-class America. Particularly disheartening to see it happening in this case where not only have the workers in Mexico seen their standard of living go down, but America workers are seeing their standard of living decline, while CEO's in this country go to 200 times average wages of manufacturing employees. What are they doing with all that money? They should not be so greedy. It is just extraordinary to me. It is a recipe for disaster, a recipe for disaster. Indeed, it is. And we are creating a hollow shell under this economy of ours; and some day it is going to collapse, and when it collapses, it is going to come down with a thud that is going to shake the boots off of people in this country. Too many folks in America are making money on money, not enough making it on manufacturing and building things that are important for our economy and for our communities. And when this wage issue continues to erode, as it inevitably will with these trade agreements, I think it does not bode well for our children and grandchildren. And I am very, very concerned about it and I am very disappointed about this tragic turn that many of our colleagues have bought into with respect to trade like we have to do this because it is the only way that we can compete. It is nonsense, it is crazy, and it is driving the living standards of a lot of our families into the ground. I thank my colleague for coming.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman for his leadership.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman again for his extraordinary leadership for this so far discouraging debate and battle to bring sanity to the trade practices of this country. I think the study the gentleman just mentioned is something that the American people need to know about. Of course, they have not really heard about it, even though their taxpayer dollars paid for it. The study the gentleman referenced which points to the extraordinary use of NAFTA by the largest corporations in America to drive down the wages of their workers, with threats of moving their jobs to Mexico, to prevent unions from forming by threatening to close the plant and move to Mexico if the union is formed, to drive down the benefits for those working people and their families, put extraordinary pressures on them. That was all very well-documented in a study paid for by our tax dollars, but strangely enough, it has not been published. I would think, having been a Democrat for a number of years, that I was dealing with a Republican administration that would repress such a study, but no, I find out that the Clinton administration, that the Department of Labor is repressing a study, a documented study by a well-known academic economist from Cornell University, that documents how destructive NAFTA has been beyond the job laws, beyond the destruction of the environment. It has hit average Americans who still have their jobs in this country, driving down their wages, while their CEO's, as the gentleman mentioned, see their bonuses and stock options rise to the sky. This is extraordinarily discouraging. I would call on the administration to release this. Let us have a full and fair debate over the impact of NAFTA. Do not try and hide it, do not try and hide reports that point to the problems. Like my colleagues say, if we are going to consider NAFTA or extensions of NAFTA, let us fix it first. The gentleman mentioned also the fast track. I think a lot of people say, fast track, what does that mean? What it really means is to get an agreement through the Congress with no scrutiny, no change allowed by your elected representatives, and no accountability. That is how we got NAFTA, that is now how we got GATT, and that is how they want to extend NAFTA. What does that mean? Well, the administration goes out and negotiates this agreement, of course privileged between the administrative branch, the executive branch, and the executive branch of another nation, and what they tell us is these agreements are so delicate, of course these nations are desperate to have these free-trade agreements with the United States, but it is so delicate that they will get upset and take their marbles somewhere else if we allow the elected representatives of the people, the Congress assembled, to make a single change in a single period, a crossing of a T, let alone a substantive change to those agreements. That is fast track. That is what the administration and the Republican leadership want to foist upon us in the very near future in an attempt to extend NAFTA even further into Latin America. I am no rust belt Congressman, no offense to my colleagues from the middle part of the country with a proud industrial tradition. I come from what is supposed to be the brave new world of free trade, the West Coast of the United States, Oregon. I have been one of the few who stood and questioned these so-called free-trade policies. I was shocked to find out just today, I said to myself, I am going to go down and speak on NAFTA, it has been a while, give me some updated statistics, to find that my State, the great bastion of so-called free trade is fifth out of the 50 States on the list for companies who have filed for trade adjustment assistance, fifth. We are not talking about declining, old plants; we are talking about one of the fastest growing States in the union losing jobs across the wide variety. Wood products, plastics, computer products, ship repair, natural gas, shirts, coats, clothing, sawmill machinery, circuit boards, trailers, and related mushrooms, we are losing the mushroom business to Mexico. Air crew training, natural rubber, latex gloves for nuclear plants, computer integrated information systems. These are not the declining jobs that we heard, well, there might be a little dislocation, but all of those workers will get better jobs in these new industries. These are many of the new industries we were told that would bring jobs and prosperity to America, to Main Street, America, under NAFTA, and instead, they brought disaster, dislocation, and a loss of hope on the part of many of my constituents and others across the country. There are some Members of Congress listening, and we are going to try and stop the fast track and we are going to demand a review of NAFTA as it stands now, and some accountability. Let us go back to those promises, let us look at a bill we introduced called the NAFTA Accountability Act. Let us compare the promises to the reality, and if they do not match up, which they do not, as my colleague has pointed out, then let us ask the President to go back and renegotiate the agreement in a way that we can achieve the goals and the promises that were first rendered to us when NAFTA was jammed through this Congress on the last fast track experience we had. Mr. Speaker, I yield back to my colleague if he has a comment on that. I see our colleague from West Virginia is here, if he would care to comment.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, as we debate today, millions of Americans across the country are still laboring over their taxes. No one can argue that the current system is simple or fair. But today, under the guise of offering relief to average taxpaying hardworking wage-earning Americans, this Congress is going to consider a constitutional amendment that would make it impossible to close the loopholes and make other needed changes in the Internal Revenue Service and the Tax Code. It would be more properly titled ``The Corporate and Special Interest Loophole Protection Amendment.'' It would not allow us, except with a two-thirds vote, to close the loophole that allows 71 percent of the profitable foreign corporations in America to pay not a penny of tax in this country, and 31 percent of the largest, most profitable U.S. multinationals to pay not a penny of tax in this country. Foreign firms filed claims on our precious minerals last year. A foreign company got $13 billion of gold for $13,000. We would not be able to charge them anymore without a two-thirds vote under this ridiculous amendment.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, it is tax day. I am certainly not going to stand up and defend the existing system as either comprehensible to mere mortals or for being fair. It is extraordinarily unfair, the current tax system, in this country. We have heaped a massive burden on middle income wage earning families in this country. Earlier one of my colleagues from the other side of the aisle stood up and carried on at great length about the tax system of 40 years ago. The gentleman was correct. The tax system 40 years ago was much more fair. The top rate was twice what it is today. The wealthiest Americans paid twice as much percentagewise as they pay today, corporations carried twice as much of the total tax burden in this country as they do today, and they were doing quite well in the days of Dwight David Eisenhower. So corporations were paying a larger share, the wealthy were paying a larger share, and, yes, under those conditions middle income wage earning folks could pay a lower part of their salary in taxes, and we could have that again today. But I fear under this amendment that the last thing this Congress is going to do with a two-thirds vote requirement is raise taxes on the wealthiest one-half of 1 percent of the people in this country who are doing quite well, thank you very much, or raise taxes on those corporations who in fact are paying no taxes. Seventy-one percent of the profitable foreign corporations operating in the United States of America pay zero income taxes, and the rest pay at a marginal rate of less than 1 percent of their gross. And 30 percent of the largest profitable U.S. multinational corporations pay zero income taxes in this country. Some of them pay, Intel company, something called a nowhere tax. That means their income is created nowhere, they do not pay taxes in Japan, they do not pay taxes in the United States. They pay taxes nowhere. This amendment would lock that system into place. Is that fair? No. Is that what our colleagues on the other side of the aisle want? I think not. One challenged us saying, well, those people over there do not support a balanced budget amendment. I do. I have been a cosponsor, I have supported it for a long time. Are we going to get to balancing a budget by saying it will require a two-thirds vote to raise taxes and close loopholes on those wealthy corporations and the people at the top who are getting away with murder now and it only takes a 50 percent vote plus 1 to spend more money? That sounds like a recipe for disaster. Come on. Give us a break here. Fifty percent to spend more money which people around here love to do and a two-thirds vote to balance that off with revenues. I think I know who is going to win under that formula. Let us talk about large mining companies. We gave away a $13 billion gold claim to a Canadian mining company last year for $10,000. If we got a royalty fee which I got in a mining reform a few years ago, that would be considered a tax. We should not have asked that poor Canadian corporation that is operating here in America and not paying income tax here to pay a royalty for the minerals they might extract from public lands. I mean $10,000 is more than fair for a $13 billion gold claim. To assess them a small royalty, the same that private landowners do, State landowners do, every other foreign nation on Earth does, Indian tribes do, no, the U.S. Government will not have a royalty and under this amendment we will never have a royalty and we will never get a fair share. My colleagues want to talk about operating Government as a business, let us operate it as a business and stop giving things away. This amendment quite simply is going to again open up the cash drawer. One-half of this body can vote to spend money on anything and it will require a two-thirds vote to pay for it. That sounds again, as I said earlier, like a recipe for disaster. It is time to be honest with the American people. The honest thing is, there has been a massive shift onto middle income and working families in this country and that is going to be perpetuated today if we pass this two-thirds requirement. When the American people finally wake up and they say, ``Let's close some of those loopholes, let's raise some money, let's pay for some things I want, like college loans for my kid to go to college,'' they are not going to be able to get it because it will only take one-third of this body to block any increases in revenues, any closing of loopholes, any asking the wealthy and the biggest corporations to pay their fair share. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to reject this special interest amendment and move on toward fiscal sanity in this Congress and give real tax relief to middle income families.