Lloyd Doggett

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. I thank the gentleman, and, you know, as I have listened to your comments this evening and those of our other colleagues, I think there are several conclusions that can be drawn about this Medicare debate, and as important as Medicaid and Medicare are themselves, some of the most important programs ever set up in this Congress, I think the first conclusion is even more important than Medicare, and that is the conclusion that, as you listen to this debate, and you listen to the way the Republican leadership has run away from Medicare, it is because the American people are paying attention, and most of the people who are informed, who have followed this debate, understand what the Republican majority, the first time they got a majority in this Congress, the first thing they went after was Medicare and Medicaid. They set out to undermine and dismantle those systems, and the American people understand that. All of the excuses and the subterfuges that have been brought up here, when you get right down to it, the American people all over this country who have followed this debate, they understand it, and they know that Speaker Gingrich set out to cut Medicare and that he is still committed to that program. And I think the second conclusion that is very apparent from this debate is there is no doubt what Speaker Gingrich was talking about, and I know in the course of this special order you had the speech, almost his entire speech, given again for him by our colleague from Pennsylvania, but I want to emphasize that it is not only the words of that speech, but as some of our other colleagues pointed out, and I am quoting from a story in the New York Times 2 days after he gave the speech, he was at a town meeting down in his district near Atlanta, and the Atlanta Journal and Constitution reported that, quote, Gingrich said he was referring to the fee-for-service portion of Medicare which he believed that seniors would leave. That is what he said about ``wither on the vine.'' And 2 days after that, the Los Angeles Times referred to his press secretary, Mr. Blankley, who said here in Washington that what he was referring to in saying he wanted it to wither on the vine, that Mr. Blankley said Mr. Gingrich's comments were consistent with the Republican belief that seniors would voluntarily leave the traditional Medicare system. Now, that is one of the few times Mr. Blankley has said anything that I, frankly, have agreed with. I agree with him completely that the Speaker's comment that he wanted Medicare to wither on the vine was consistent with the overall strategy. Indeed this was occurring at the same time that our Republican colleagues, as you may already have pointed out on Medicaid, came before the same committee that our colleagues from Michigan was talking about, and they said, ``Let's just totally eliminate, terminate forever, any Federal health and safety standards for those who are in nursing homes.'' Now, I think that is the kind of extremism that the American people reject. They realize that too often our nursing homes, though there are many fine ones, some of them have kind of gone along from crisis to crisis, and to say we will just totally abolish any kind of health and safety standard for those who are not able to protect themselves in nursing homes was part of the same strategies that was going on at the same time. It was consistent with that. But I would draw a third conclusion from your comments, and that would be a contrast between the Dole-Gingrich ticket with reference to Medicare because, you know, as coincidence would have it, or maybe it was not a coincidence, the same day that Speaker Gingrich gave his speech, October 24, 1995, last fall when they were going gung ho, shut the Government down, we do not care how many billions of dollars it costs the taxpayers, close it down, which is what they did, and it came up to about a billion and a half dollars that were squandered of taxpayer money, but the very same day that Speaker Gingrich made his comments Senator Dole was speaking the same day to a different group, and he said, and I quote, I was there fighting the fight, 1 of 12 voting against Medicare in 1965 because we knew it would not work. It may not be expected in this election year for a Democrat to compliment a Republican, but I would tell my colleague from New Jersey that I do compliment Senator Dole, not on the substance of what he said about Medicare; indeed I could not disagree with him more on that, but at least, unlike the Speaker and the House Republicans, Senator Dole has not tried to run away from his comments. You do not see him going around and saying, ``Well, when I was talking about voting against Medicare, I was only talking about the Health Care Financing Administration.'' He has stood by his statement. Indeed, he has taken pride in the fact that he has a record here. Just as Speaker Gingrich and these Republican followers of him who wanted to let Medicare wither on the vine, Senator Dole has at least been willing to stand by his belief that Medicare was a mistake. And I think that is where this debate should be. It should be about whether in the future of this country, and there is, no doubt, some need for some restructuring and some improvement and some strengthening of the Medicare and Medicaid system, but whether we will trust those who believe in the value of insuring all of our seniors and protecting them after all they have done for this country or whether we will turn it over to someone who said I was proud 30 years ago that I voted against Medicare at a time when well over half of the seniors had no health insurance program at all, whether you are going to turn it over to someone like that as well as someone who says, well, let us just let Medicare wither on the vine, instead of standing by their statements, as has so often happened here in the House on a variety of subjects. Our Republican colleagues here in the House have, when caught and when the American people have realized what has occurred here, they have reacted by having their lawyers attempt to intimidate those who would spread the word. They would like to distract the American people and wait until after November to continue with letting Medicare wither on the vine and to intimidate anyone who would remind the American people, as our colleague from Pennsylvania pointed out, who would dare to put on television the Speaker saying this in his own words, who would dare to repeat those words to Americans who might not have heard the speech, to Americans who may, in their struggle to make ends meet, have forgotten what an outrageous comment and what an outrageous plan this was. And I know that the gentleman from New Jersey will remember that when we were trying to get the details to find out how much they were going to hike the premiums, how much they were going to hike the deductibles, how much they wre going to hike the copayments, all things that were in the secret plan originally, that the first plan that was laid out in public was not a plan about how Medicare could be restructured. It was a public relations plan. It was the one the gentleman will recall that talked about kind of the herd mentality among our seniors and that they could be led around by their nose basically and that they would not realize what was being done to them in this instance. History in the recent months has certainly demonstrated that that public relations adviser, I think he is the same fellow involved in this so-called Contract on America, was all off because the American people are more intelligent than that. They realized what was happening here, and as I have discussed with some of our folks down there in Texas, you know if you have got a gardener that says, ``Let it wither, let your plants wither on the vine,'' most people have the good sense to realize that what you need is a new gardener because that is not the kind of gardener you want tending to your plants, and it is certainly not the kind of gardener that you want tending to something that is important and is vital to people as Medicare. And to all of those who say that this campaign with reference to Medicare and making American people aware of it is too hard hitting, I would just submit that they need to consider how hard hitting this plan was on seniors, on individuals with disabilities. If this plan, as originally envisioned, has gone into effect, the consequences would have been dramatic, and if this election passes and there are not more people here willing to stand up and fight against these Medicare cuts, there is no doubt they will be back with the same secret plans that they had in the past.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, Americans realize that the welfare system is working neither for the taxpayer nor for those it is designed to help. But the question is not whether to change the system but how to change it. The question is, will we provide the means to escape welfare or will we simply be plain mean to poor people? Like most every other problem that this Gingrich Congress has faced, the best way to solve the problem is with a bipartisan approach. I have not found any party or, for that matter, any individual who has got a perfect answer to this challenge. Unfortunately, like strengthening Medicare, like trying to get a balanced budget, like trying to avert these costly Gingrich Government shutdowns, when some of us have said, let us work together and find a common moderate approach, others have replied, it is Newt's way or no way. That is where we are this morning. Do we pursue a bipartisan approach such as that advanced by Governor Castle and by the gentleman from Tennessee, Mr. Tanner, and try to place the emphasis not on targeting poor kids but targeting what is wrong in this system, or do we take an extreme approach that is more designed to address the political welfare needs of those who have failed again and again in this Congress rather than repairing the real welfare reform system? I believe we have got an approach that will work, imperfectly, to get us out of the welfare problems we have today. Let us get about adopting it in a bipartisan way.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, last year these Republicans promised revolution, a reformed Congress. Indeed America witnessed a year of zealotry that culminated in a billion and a half dollars of squandered taxpayer resources on costly Government shutdowns. So this year the Republicans narrowed their focus from 1 year to 1 reform week. This week. And now that also has vanished because after weeks of Speaker Gingrich trying to convince the American people that the solution to special interest influence in this Congress was more money and congressional campaigns instead of less special interest money, and when that approach was rejected by the citizen watchdog groups and even by a few Republicans, the Speaker pulled the plug on reform week. It seems that yesterday's arrogant cries of revolution have been replaced by this year's whimpers of partisan failure.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, last January 1995, this House began its proceedings with great fanfare and with claims that this would be in fact a revolutionary reform Congress. In fact, things have changed quite a bit over the course of the last few months. The taxpayers have seen this House squander $1.5 billion of taxpayer money with costly Government shutdowns. They have seen the extremism of this House in one failure after another, with almost no legislative accomplishments to point to. And now we get to 1996, and the reform Congress has, by the Republican leadership, been reduced to a reform week. This is reform week. The only problem is that all the reforms that our Republican colleagues have come up with they now have taken their reform week, and I think they are reducing it to a reform hour. At the rate they are going, they may be down to a reform minute for this Congress. The strange thing about the reform of this Republican Congress is that not many Members, Republican or Democrat, have much motion of what this reform hour will actually consider. Because, Mr. Speaker, in the reform hour that we will now have out of this reform Congress in this reform year, the Committee on Rules has yet to meet to even decide what amendments will be in order with reference to reforming the way this Congress operates. Most people do not really realize that the Members themselves will not have an opportunity to vote on many of the reform ideas that people across America are talking about that they would like to see this Congress adopt. Indeed, we will consider two of the most important issues facing America: That of welfare reform and that of campaign finance reform and the way this Congress operates, without having adequate forewarning of what amendments will be considered in order, and what alternatives that people across America have advocated might be considered. But, of course, all of this is consistent with the experience that America had last year leading up to the costly Government shutdowns. Because people across America will remember that we struggled against the Speaker, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Gingrich], to get a gift ban to end the ties that bind legislators and lobbyists. We finally were able to overcome his opposition and obtain that reform last year. He held here at the desk, at his Speaker's rostrum, last year for a matter of months the first lobby reform bill in almost 50 years. We were able to build up enough public concern over lobby reform that we overcame the Speaker's opposition to that reform. Now we are finally to the most important issue, that of campaign finance reform for which there is some bipartisan support in this House. There are Members on both sides of the aisle that have come up and have spoken out in favor of genuine campaign finance reform. Indeed, it was the Speaker himself who a little over a year ago stood there in front of a crowd in New Hampshire with President Clinton, shook hands and said, ``We will have a bipartisan effort to address this issue of campaign finance reform.'' Yet once the smile was over and the cameras had gone away, nothing happened. Indeed, it took the Speaker from the summer until the end of October or the beginning of November to even announce his plans. Those plans were to appoint a commission to look at the issue. Of course, a commission has never been appointed in all the ensuing months. With all that valuable time going by, the chance that any reform, even from this reform hour that we have left, affecting the elections this year has simply gone down the drain. I think that is extremely unfortunate. Because there was a proposal out there supported by Common Cause, supported by the Reform Party, supported by a number of independent organizations that neither the Republican Party nor frankly the Democratic Party, many elements of it, liked all that much. I think the only kind of reform that will really change this system once and for all is one that hurts each side a little bit, that there is dissatisfaction on from each side a little bit. I believe we have such a proposal in the bipartisan approach that Members of both sides have come together on and have advocated, but it now appears, not through any formal action of the leadership at this point but my word of mouth of what they may do, that they will refuse to even let this House consider that proposal in the very little time for reform, the hour or so for reform that we will have the day after tomorrow, to deal with the way that campaign dollars and campaign financing are polluting and affecting in a most negative way the way that this House operates. It is wrong that we have been narrowed to this little time. It is time for the American people to speak out and demand that this system be genuinely reformed.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. On your time I will yield for the full 30 minutes but on my time I want to talk about the way you are flouting the law, flouting the Congressional Budget Act. If you think that act is inappropriate, then change the law, but it is on the books. Tonight we find that only half of the appropriations bills have been passed, and we further find that our Republican colleagues, including those who have asked me to yield, have boasted of the fact that they do not plan to complete their work, never planned to complete it, because, purely for political advantage, they have decided to wait until September, not until July as the law requires but to wait until September to even bring up the last reconciliation act, so they plan to provide us the same old kind of brinksmanship that led to the Government shutdown, that led to the crybaby incident, that produced the failure of the last Congress. I think America does not want a repeat of that kind of failure. It cost us too much before, and it resulted in a great deal of pain and anguish for millions of American citizens. I know it takes you time to get this job done, especially when you want to cut Medicare and you want to cut education and you want to put all these restrictions on enforcing our environmental laws. It takes a lot of time to figure out how to do it. But it is wrong and you ought to stay here and get your job done.

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

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, all of this, with all of those failures, all those attempts to wreck education, to wreck Medicare, what they call reconciliation, which was the right name for that bill that they did that it, all of that and then they have come, have they not, this year and they are actually increasing the budget deficit with the bills that they have proposed and not passed, they are going to increase the budget deficit this year after we had it on the path the last 4 years coming down every single year under Democratic leadership. This year they have passed a bill to increase the deficit this year, then to do it again next year. Maybe that is why they want to go home: they are not too proud of the increases that they proposed this year and next year.

Mr. DOGGETT. If the gentleman will continue to yield, I believe that the more the American people find out about these failures of this Congress that some of these folks are going to have an opportunity to go home for a lot longer than 3 days.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I am stunned genuinely to hear the last speaker refer to whining, to refer to crying. I find even more stunning the comments of the distinguished chair of the Rules Committee referring to crybabies. I had thought that would be an incident that our Republican colleagues would just as soon forget, because all America knows there was only one crybaby involved in all this and that is what finally led to the Government shutdown last November. Mr. Speaker, I think that America can look at what is happening here tonight and can say in short, ``Been there, done that.'' We had your hurry-up-and-stop approach to government all of the last year. Where did it lead America? It led us down the road to two very costly Government shutdowns, and when all was said and done and we followed your path, the American taxpayer got a bill for $1.5 billion of wasted taxpayer money because you did not do your job and then a crybaby came along and pouted and we ended up with a Government shutdown and no budget. The law on this is very clear. You are such revolutionaries apparently you would believe in flouting the law instead of following the law. The law does not say anything to prevent Mr. Solomon from going to upstate New York and talking to all the other revolutionaries that he might want to talk to. It says you can take 3 days and have your watermelon and your apple pie and make your Fourth of July speech but if you do not have your work done, come back to Washington and get it done. The only reason that you are having to offer this resolution is you do not want to do that work. You do not want to follow the Budget Act that is written into our law. If you did that, you would not need this resolution. You profess so much concern about the budget, about getting it balanced, about protecting future generations. I share that concern. Mr. Speaker, it is unique that the gentleman from Cleveland would ask me to yield. He is the one who raised the crybaby point last November when a crybaby did lead to the problems that we have in this country.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that integrity begins at home. Or, more particularly, integrity begins in this House. Every Member of this House will have an opportunity to go on record concerning the integrity of the proceedings of this House and of its Members today. When the privileged resolution is presented, if you believe in a fair and impartial investigation, you vote ``aye''. If you believe in a cover up, you vote ``no''. If you believe that this House should be muzzled and that this issue should not get a full and fair airing, you vote for Dick Armey's motion to muzzle. This resolution, in its enacting clause, is one sentence. It does not prejudge charges, as some have done in their remarks here today. It simply instructs the Ethics Committee to immediately transmit the remaining charges against Speaker Gingrich to the outside counsel for his investigation and recommendations. How could anyone oppose, given the way these charges have lingered for over 6 months in the committee, simply referring them to the outside counsel to fully and thoroughly investigate them and take such action as is appropriate. That is where integrity begins.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, I have a further parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, is the privileged resolution that the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Harry Johnston, has filed for consideration later today regarding the failure of the committee to thoroughly investigate these charges and refer them to a special counsel the type of motion that would be proper for presentation of these matters?

Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, if no motion to table is filed to immediately cut off debate on the privileged motion this afternoon on this matter about the Speaker's ethics, then will the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Linder] and all of his side have an opportunity to speak and ask questions at that time?

Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, in view of the Chair's statement, what mechanism exists under the rules for a Member of the House to bring to the attention here on the floor of the House the failure of the Ethics Committee to explore fully and thoroughly ethical complaints that have been pending for over 6 months against Speaker Gingrich?

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, I would say to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Armey], the only apology that is due in this House is one from him for obstructing the investigation which ought to be occurring; an apology that is due to the American people. I think one of the world's most majestic monuments is that which sits in this city honoring Abraham Lincoln. But apparently not content with that, Newt Gingrich and his crowd decided they would erect a second monument to Lincoln. They called it the Abraham Lincoln Opportunity Foundation. It was supposedly created to help poor teenagers, but it was converted into a vehicle to recruit more Gingrichites for Congress. Political donors to this partisan organization were advised they could take a tax deduction just as if they were giving to their church or soup kitchen, even though what they were doing was supporting Gingrich's GOPAC farm team. In the name of Lincoln, our tax laws were perverted and our democracy was polluted. It is time for this to end. It is time to explore these misdeeds. Approve the privileged resolution today and get to the bottom of this and stop the coverup.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I commend and thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina [Mrs. Clayton] and all of those who have joined with her for her leadership in expressing our collective outrage at what has been occurring in communities across this country. Now is the time for people of good will regardless of religion or their political persuasion or their region of the country to join together to condemn the outrage that has occurred and the attempt at intimidation steeped in hate on which it is based. It is not enough merely to condemn. For while we are all outraged by what has occurred, we know that simply expressing our fury through resolution is only a first step. It is time to match our actions with our words and resolutions. So it is extremely important that the Church Arsons Prevention Act introduced by our colleague, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers], that would strengthen our ability to fight this kind of arson, be enacted at the earliest possible date in this Congress. We should move forward on this legislation to halt attacks on our communities. Our communities are suffering, and they should look to our national leaders with confidence, for we have the responsibility to prove, as Barbara Jordan would say, that America is as good as its promise. In keeping this promise, we can be inspired by the congregations who refuse to be intimidated.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Regular order. He has not vetoed this budget, because it was never offered, and you know it, just like your last misrepresentation, sir. point of order

Mr. DOGGETT. I know you want to let Medicare wither on the vine. You let Medicare wither on the vine.

Mr. DOGGETT. It does all of that without wrecking the Medicare system.

Mr. DOGGETT. You have had your opportunity to misrepresent the facts, including the fact that only a handful of Democrats supported the conservative coalition budget when well over a majority of our caucus supported that budget. It gets the budget deficit down this year, it gets the budget deficit down next year, and every year until it achieves true balance. It does not talk. It has real action in the numbers and the real numbers.

Mr. DOGGETT. Regular order, please.

Mr. DOGGETT. No, I will not. With 1 minute to speak, there is the matter of correcting the misstatements that you just made.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, once again our Republican friends demonstrate they do not know up from down. Talk is not cheap in this body, Mr. Radanovich, because the gap between the reality and the rhetoric that has come out here tonight is several billion dollars extra this year and several billions dollars next year because you increase this budget deficit during all the time you have this great talk about trust and care and concern for future generations.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his leadership. I join him today in offering this amendment, because it is time for our Government to stop subsidizing death. That is really what this is all about. A government subsidy to promote the growth of tobacco makes as little sense as a government subsidy to promote the production of the plants and the seeds from which strychnine is derived. In either case, it uses public money to deliver poison to the American people. The only difference is that the tobacco kills a little more slowly and a little more painfully than the strychnine. And tobacco ultimately costs our American taxpayers literally billions of dollars in additional health and disability claims that we end up having to pay rather than a swift strychnine death. Tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death in this country. Yet there are people on this floor today opposing this amendment who are at this moment expending public money to promote the production of even more tobacco. Some 80 percent of adult smokers begin as children in their smoking habits. That is why it has been described as a pediatric disease by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Every day more than 3,000 young people take up smoking. The average age, according to one study in Texas, was a little under 13 years old to begin this terrible situation that ultimately leads to death for so many. But the opponents of this amendment say, ``Keep the Government in the driver's seat. That's the only way to make it fair.'' Well, the Government is in the driver's seat all right. It is in the driver's seat of a hearse. That hearse is carrying and transporting 400,000 Americans directly who are smokers and about another 50,000 every year who die from the indirect consequences of secondhand smoke. This amendment eliminates the public funding of tobacco-related extension services and it eliminates Federal funding for tobacco crop insurance subsidies. But this amendment is more than just one of fiscal responsibility. It is more than just one of saving lives. It is about breaking the stranglehold that one of the most powerful lobbies in the country has on this Congress. As always, the purveyors of poison are hiding behind the small farmer. They picture some fellow with a big plug of chewing tobacco in his cheek in an old beat-up pickup truck rumbling down some back road. This is not about that guy. This is about the most pernicious lobby in this country today. If our citizens could vote directly on this issue, they would see right through this sham. They recognize that the tobacco companies are going to continue to peddle this poison as long as they can pay for the right to do so. And my how they have been paying. For while I recognize that they have exerted tremendous influence over both parties in the past and while I applaud my Republican colleagues like the last gentlewoman who rose to support this amendment, I think we have got to be clear that the Republican National Committee these days is like a giant cigarette vending machine. The tobacco companies put in their money and they pull out the influence they want. In the first 6 months of 1995 alone, the tobacco companies poured more than $1.5 million into the national treasury of the Republican Party in so-called soft money. By the end of the year they had gotten up to almost $2.5 million. Who knows, now that we are finally in an election year, how much money they have been able to dump over there. With those kinds of dollars, you can bet that when a tobacco lobbyist calls the National Republican Party that they do not get put on hold or get forwarded to voice mail. No, they get Haley to pick up the phone as he did and call the Governor of Texas. They get him to call all over. As far as the soft money is concerned, then there is the hard money. Of course the tobacco lobby does not make it too hard on Members of Congress to get their largesse. Indeed, they had the head of the Republican conference running around here on the floor of this body, on this very floor, acting as an errand boy for them so that the Members of Congress that want that tobacco money will not even have to walk across the street to get it. All during 1995, tobacco interests gave a total to people of all parties associated with Congress in soft money and PAC money over $4 million. That is a pretty good harvest. I would say it is a very bountiful harvest. It was Mark Twain who said, ``It's easy to give up smoking. I know so because I have done it a hundred times.'' Well, we only need to give up this public largesse in return for the favors from the tobacco lobby one time. Let us do it today. Let us get out of the hearse and get this program revised and the public out of the business of promoting death.