Lloyd Doggett

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman from New York [Mrs. Lowey] for yielding this time to me. Mr. Chairman, Lu Ann Nye and her daughter are the kind of folks that are going to be impacted by what is happening here today. She is a courageous woman who had the courage to leave welfare, and go back to Austin Community College, and get a degree to support her daughter. Our Republican friends came after the daughter and her friends when they began cutting school lunch earlier in the year. Now they come after the big brothers, and the big sisters, and the older students, like Lu Ann, and cut into their Federal study financial assistance, and when they cut, it is not just dollars that they are cutting, but the hopes, and the aspirations, and the dreams of a generation of people, up to, as the chairman said, the ranking member said, 150,000 young people on the Perkins loan program. How extraordinary it is that this House is headed by a Speaker who is a sometime professor of history at a time that we are ending an historic Federal commitment to education.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, we have seen all this before. You have seen it on late night television, and ad, the fellow with the Ginzu knives. He brandishes them. He swings them over his head, and whack, an onion is in two. Before you know it, a radish lies in slivers. He can whack anything with those knives, whether it needs whacking or not, and what we have this morning is the Republican equivalent of a Ginzu knife ad. The Older Americans Act, whack; student financial assistance, whack; assistance for education, whack. They keep slicing up the American middle class. Well, we have heard for 40 years from the Republicans about how they could solve all these problems by simply whacking out waste and fraud. If they can do it with whacking the waste and fraud, why do they not do that and stop slicing with their Ginzu knives the American middle class? I have got a program called the Retired Senior Volunteer Program. It has operated for 23 years in Travis County. It provides 2,000 of our citizens opportunities to volunteer. Nobody has ever suggested that it involved one cent of waste or fraud, and yet, they have got their knives out whacking it, terminating it, so that seniors in our community will not have the opportunity to have the coordination they need to give back to the community. Mr. Chairman, it is wrong. It is wrong. Why not use a surgical knife and cut out the waste and the fraud and leave middle-class America alone?

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, if this bill really deserves a full and open debate, as the gentleman from Georgia has suggested, then why are we taking it up at midnight? Mr. Speaker, this is a bill that affects the telephone in every house and every workplace in this country. It is a bill that affects every television viewer in this country and a wide array of other telecommunications services, and when does this Congress consider it? At midnight, after a full day of debate on an appropriations bill. Regardless of your view on this bill, and I think it has some merit, regardless of your view on the substance of the bill, this sorry procedure ought to be voted down along with this rule. What an incredible testament to this new Republican leadership that they could take a bill of this vital important to the people of America and not take it up until midnight. You can roll the votes. That just means there will not be anybody here listening to the debate. You can roll them all night long, as you plan to do. The real question is whether you will roll the American consumer.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I salute the gentleman for doing that and I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object. It is my understanding we have been consulted and that there is no objection from our side, with the exception of the Committee on Resources, and I believe the gentleman from New York has taken them off the list, since there was objection.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, this is a debate about Elizabeth. Elizabeth, a young woman in Austin, TX, who makes use of the services of Planned Parenthood of Austin. It is a debate about Elizabeth and about thousands of other women across this country who should have the right to turn to agencies like Planned Parenthood. What type of birth control they use or whether they choose to use any birth control at all is none of my business, and it is none of the business of this Committee on Appropriations. She ought to be able to make the decision for herself. Mr. Chairman, what this is all about is the agenda of an extremist coalition that thinks they can put an end to planned parenthood and to deny choice to people like Elizabeth to choose the type of family planning that they think they ought to have. Mr. Chairman, I want to preserve her choice. I want to preserve her choice not to have an abortion because she has effective family planning through an agency that is providing quality health care services. This is a chance to speak up for Elizabeth and for women across this Nation to have the choice of effective family planning that they choose, and not this Congress.

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, there are so many cuts on middle-class working Americans in this bill, it is hard to know where to start. However, one example is an organization called the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, including the Southwest Center at the University of Texas in Houston. That is not in my district, but what that center and other regional centers do affect people across this country in every congressional district. This program is purely scientific. It is a research organization. It is headed by scientists, not by politicians, not by bureaucrats, but scientists who are trying to prevent injury and illness in the workplace, to protect people so there are not lawsuits, so there is not government interference, so there is not an accident or an illness to start with. It is that program that is about prevention, not prosecution, that is about research, not redtape, that gets slashed in this Republican proposal. By cutting this proposal, what Republicans are doing to middle-class working Americans is to cut research to improve the protective clothing for our firefighters, to cut research to cut out the investigation of new ways to improve respirators for our pilots, to cut research in painful and debilitating illnesses, like asbestosis and lead poisoning, that affect workers in the workplace, to cut research about workers who get crushed by machinery, who get crushed in accidental rollovers of large equipment. Additionally, the Republicans abolish vital training and education programs that produced 2,700 health and safety professionals last year. They proceed to kill continuing education programs that taught 150,000 working men and women last year about the dangers of injury and illness. The goal of all these programs is to prevent injury and illness before it occurs. Stop the testing, stop the training, close the labs, turn out the lights. That is what this program is all about.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. It is the 30th birthday of Medicare, Mr. Speaker. What we have heard again this morning are birthday greetings for Medicare recipients from our Republican colleagues. It all boils down to a single sentence: They are saying to the older Americans of this country, ``If you will pay more for your health care, we will give you less health care.'' That is a pretty sorry birthday greeting, so they had to hire a public relations firm, and I have their report here, to tell them, ``Don't talk about improving Medicare. We can't afford to raise expectations, but keep in mind that seniors are very PAC-oriented and very susceptible to being led.'' That is what the Republican public relations firm told them to tell older Americans. Then they came up with a Medicare pledge from a so-called Seniors Coalition. What that pledge says is, when you read between the lines, ``Raise the deductible, raise the premiums, pay more, and get less, Mr. And Mrs. Older American.'' That is a sorry birthday greeting for Medicare. When Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law, he signed a candle of hope, and we cannot have that candle extinguished by this Republican initiative.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, this amendment concerns the Advanced Technology Program, but it would be more rightly called the initiative from the gentleman from West Virginia for jobs for Americans, because that is what it is all about. It focuses on science and technology, but it is about whether we want jobs in this country or we want to continue to see the good, high-wage jobs going somewhere else. We understand that in Austin, TX. You see, in our community, concepts like public-private partnership, consortium, teamwork, alliance, the idea that the government and the private sector can work together, those are not alien concepts. They are what has given us the kind of economic development problems that every other county in the country would like to have. Unemployment that has stayed consistently below 4 percent, because we are developing good, high-wage jobs in a public- private partnership, and technology has been essential to that. It is essential today as we recognize the kind of fierce international competition we have. Other countries, our competitors like Germany and Japan, are spending 3 percent of their gross national product on research and development. We are spending about 2 percent. And with this kind of approach, that investment is going to plummet. I believe tonight that the opposition to the Mollohan amendment has reached a new standard in myopia, with reference to this whole question of how we can work together to improve research in this country and keep jobs here. Moreover, unless we adopt this amendment, this appropriations bill is going to break the word of the U.S. Government to those who have submitted requests and who are not going to be funded unless the Mollohan amendment is adopted. Let me just give one example of the kind of company we are talking about, a small company called SciComp, Inc., in Austin. It is a small startup company that is developing numerical software. As a result of the ATP they will be able to continue to do that and provide more good jobs in America. If we adopt the Mollohan amendment, that kind of thing can be going on all over the country.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, I say to the gentleman, Mr. Mollohan, I applaud your efforts, and, if these young men and women could be here tonight, new law enforcement officers sworn in last Friday night in Austin, TX, they would want to applaud your efforts also because Austin, TX, has 25 new police officers on the beat tonight as a result of this cops program, and tomorrow they'll have another $600,000 available to put more officers on the beat and to provide them with some of the equipment they need under the flexibility that our Republican colleagues ignore under the Cops More Program. Mr. Chairman, they tell us they are against redtape. They tell us they want to allow local decisionmaking. Let me tell my colleagues every one of these police officers is on the beat tonight with a grant approved in less time, in [[Page H 7643]] less time, than the 45 days they are going to allow Republican Governors to comment on these applications under their program. I say to my colleagues, if you want to eliminate redtape, if you want to stand up for local law enforcement officials, you'll listen to them as the experts. I heard the almost frivolous comments of the gentleman from Illinois suggesting that we were against local sheriffs. Well, the National Sheriffs Association, along with every other major law enforcement association, was there today standing along with the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Stupak] supporting the Mollohan amendment. They are supporting it because they recognize that just as the Republicans want to cut Medicare, they are cutting the commitment to 100,000 police officers. Mr. Chairman, I am unyielding in support of my local law enforcement association and unyielding in opposing the kind of cutback in this commitment which was for 100,000 new police officers. Can my colleagues tell me things are different in Florida or in Illinois from Texas? I defy my colleagues to find a community in this country that cannot benefit from having more law enforcement officers out there to protect that community. That is what this amendment is all about. If my colleagues believe in standing with the men and women who are willing to risk their lives for our community, they will support the Mollohan amendment and reject this kind of bureaucracy that is being proposed.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, well, another day has passed without our Republican colleagues disclosing even a single detail of how they are going to hike health care costs for American seniors. What they have disclosed in a cynical memo are the details of how they are going to try to convince seniors that they are not in fact being had. Yes, Speaker Gingrich has turned to the same public relations firm that generated that all-time great campaign gimmick, the contract on Americans. And now they have produced an interesting document called, everything you ever wanted to know, not about saving Medicare, but about communicating Medicare. And what does it tell us? It says: Do not talk about improving Medicare, Republican colleagues. We cannot afford to raise expectations. Well, that is revealing. Then it goes on to say: Keep in mind that seniors are very pack oriented and very susceptible to being led. When it comes to older Americans, I respect their intelligence as well as their pocketbook, and they are not going to be led in a pack off a cliff by a bunch of Republicans. They are going to fight for Medicare.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, thank heavens there are young men and women across this country who are willing to dedicate their lives to protecting the rest of us, who help to secure us in our neighborhoods and our homes, who protect us against crime and violence and crimes of property. I particularly want to salute and recognize some of the young men and women, and I have actually brought pictures of them here today, who joined the men and women in blue last Friday night in Austin, TX. You will see each of them is actually in a tan or khaki uniform because these are their cadet pictures, and on Friday night, they graduated from being cadets in the Austin Police Department to serving now and are today, as I speak, many of them are out patrolling the streets and the sidewalks of the city of Austin, TX, assuring that the good citizens of our community can go about their lives and their livelihoods without the threat of violent crime. Today in this House and throughout this week we are going to have an opportunity to back up these young men and women who are out there patrolling our streets or to abandon our commitment to them. And it is the concept of community policing and the important vote that this House will take this week when it takes under consideration the appropriations bill for the COPS Program that I wanted to address this afternoon. You see, this particular class of young men and women is the largest class that we have had in Austin, TX, for some time, because it includes some 63 young men and women who have dedicated themselves to the protection of their neighbors there in central Texas, and the only reason that the class can include 63 cadets, now 63 new law enforcement officers in Austin, TX, is because of the backup of the Federal Government. Of course, law enforcement must always be principally a local responsibility, and we are fortunate in Austin, TX, to have one of the finest law enforcement agencies in this entire country under the command of our chief of police, Elizabeth Watson. In order to back up that strong local initiative, in recognizing our local communities are many times strapped for tax resources, the Federal Government can provide some support, not only through an occasional speech on the floor of the Congress or from the White House but actually by putting dollars where the Federal mouth is, and in this case something was done right by this Federal Government and something was done right on the floor of this House last September when a new crime offensive was approved by the House, over tremendous opposition, and that bill was signed into law, and within little more than a month of the time that that bill became law late last October, the city of Austin learned that it could go out and would have the Federal support, the Federal moneys that 25 of these 63 young men and women would be paid for through Federal tax dollars through the COPS Program. We have had a real interest in Austin, TX, in community policing because we realize that getting our law enforcement officers into the community, knowing the people in the neighborhoods, backing up Neighborhood Watch, backing up crime stoppers, using every tool available to involve law enforcement officers with the neighborhoods in doing effective community policing was the best way to do something about the rising tide of crime that we had faced in Austin, TX. So within a month of Congress acting, little more than a month, the city of Austin, like communities across this great land, learned that there would be Federal dollars to back up local efforts and to add new cadets to the training course. Come January of this year, our cadets began a very rigorous training that is done right there in Travis County, TX. Last Friday night they completed that training and are now out serving. But what an unusual coincidence, I must say, it is this week, just as these cadets hit the street and began protecting our citizenry, that we are faced with a critical vote that will probably come up tomorrow night or Wednesday morning in the Justice Department appropriations, and if that bill is approved in the form that is recommended to this House for action, we will yield in our support to these young men and women. We will be saying to communities across the country that the commitment to add 100,000 new law enforcement officers to our Nation's streets is a commitment that this Congress does not intend to fulfill. I think that would be a serious mistake. That is why I want to draw attention to that appropriations bill this afternoon and particularly to an amendment that I believe will be offered by our colleague from West Virginia [Mr. Mollohan], to restore support for the same program that has added these young men and women to our streets. It is ironic that a group of people, our Republican colleagues who refer to themselves frequently at campaign time as law and order supporters, would be withdrawing support from the very program that put these people on the street. You see, the administration backed the initiative here in Congress and signed it into law to get 100,000 new police officers on the street. But the bill that passed this Congress earlier in the year and the appropriations measure, instead of backing up our law enforcement officers, takes away the commitment of 100,000 new police and substitutes something that I guess you would have to call a blob grant because no longer do we stand by our commitment of 100,000 new officers. Rather, we say we are going to transfer to the States and localities a blob of Federal money that can be used for a variety of things. Under the legislation passed, and as it would be funded as an alternative to actually putting law enforcement officers on the street, is an incredible amount of new bureaucracy. In this particular case, the reason the city of Austin was able to move so fast as communities across our country have done so is because all it had to do is file a simple application. It did not have to go through the bureaucracy of the State of Texas and get that bureaucracy involved in evaluating its application. It could come directly to the source of the money, and I know that that has been true in other States. I see the gentlewoman from Colorado. I am sure you have had that experience in Colorado. I yield to the gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder].

Mr. DOGGETT. Or as you wisely suggest, to simply ride with, to walk on the beat with, our law enforcement officers. When I have done that, I have had the same experience as the gentleman from California. You talk to the young man or woman who is out there on the beat, standing between us and violent crime, protecting our businesses, protecting our neighborhoods and our families and their dwellings. They are not interested in having to get immersed in city politics. They sure do not want to have to go to the governor and ask if more police is okay. They do not care whether Republicans or Democrats or President Clinton or President somebody else takes credit. They just need help. What this piece of legislation that we will vote on tomorrow night does is it pulls that help away and says we will not stand with them against crime. We are going to immerse them in the very kind of politics that they asked not to be immersed in, instead of backing them up and lending them the support they need to protect communities, whether it is in California, Colorado, or Austin, TX, or anywhere else in this great land.

Mr. DOGGETT. It is really extraordinary. I know the gentlewoman served on the committee that reviewed some of this legislation. Did the gentlewoman hear any good reason advanced for why a program that is putting young men and women like this on streets across this country, why we should pull the rug out from under that program and say that we need the Pete Wilsons and the George Bushes and the Governors and the State bureaucracies suddenly getting in the way of a program that takes money directly from Washington and puts it onto the streets and sidewalks of our communities across the country?

Mr. DOGGETT. I appreciate your comments. As you know, one of the really good points about this program is, if you have a community of 100,000 or less, the entire application process is filling out one piece of paper and sending it directly to Washington. And what a contrast, as the gentleman knows, between that effective program and this new block grant program that the Republicans want to substitute. I note particularly, and I think this could have a particularly negative effect in California, that under their block grant program the Governor of the State has not less than 45 days to review and comment on the application. That is not true under existing law. Your cities found out within 45 days of the President signing the law that the money was on the way. I do not know in California if Governor Wilson would even have time to look at the application since he is off and about the country.

Mr. DOGGETT. I thank the gentlewoman for that observation and would add one other aspect of this, that seeing our colleague from California [Mr. Miller] here, I know it is particularly important in California, but it is important in San Antonio, TX, as well, and that is that under this cops program one of the programs that is very important is the Troops to Cops Program. That is taking people who are leaving our military, who have obtained training in security as military police and other aspects of the military and channeling their skills into law enforcement and particularly in parts of our country that have had recent base closings. I would think there would be particular support for this Troops to Cops Program, and what an extraordinarily ill-timed initiative by our Republican colleagues to come in and gut this cops program at the very time that it could turn to those who will be leaving some of our military bases and help them get on the streets to make our--they have done a great job in protecting our national security, but now they can help us with our neighborhood security. I yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. Miller].

Mr. DOGGETT. I thank the gentlewoman for her observations and comments. I would just close in saying that crime is not like the weather. There is something that we can do about it. The ``something'' this week in the House is to stand behind the men and women who just graduated from the academy in Austin, TX, that are out there because of Federal dollars, and keep that program going, backing up our law enforcement agencies, not substituting some weird blob grant program, but standing behind the men and women who are protecting our neighborhoods, our homes and businesses, doing something about crime with a program that works today, right now. Keep that program and defeat this reactionary change that has been proposed.

Mr. DOGGETT. I really appreciate the gentlewoman's observation because while I focused, naturally, on my community in central Texas, this is really just an example of what has been happening throughout this country. As you know, I am new here to Washington. I think it is truly amazing from the time that you and others provided the leadership in this Congress to pass this bill and then it got signed, over this tremendous objection that you had, so many roadblocks and obstacles thrown up by what was at that time a Republican minority, the President signed the bill in September. By late October, cities across the country know they will have money coming, and here, 10 months later, we have across the country almost 3,000 new officers that are on the street. That is a Federal bureaucracy that was actually working the way it is supposed to: lean. It gets its office set up, gets any regulations it needs set up, and you actually have under the program that Austin and Denver benefited from, already 3,000 new officers; and in our smaller cities of under 100,000 there are almost 5,000 new officers under the COPS Ahead program; and still under another program of the COPS Fast program, which, I believe, is the one actually targeted at the smallest communities, there are about 7,000 officers that have come on there. So that is the Federal Government for once operating the way it is supposed to do: getting a program started and actually getting the officers on the beat.

Mr. DOGGETT. This is just Friday night, and ironically they will begin their service this week on the very week that our Republican colleagues proposed to just pull away this entire commitment to 100,000 new police officers across the street. Twenty-five of these young men and women were funded through Federal dollars, and you know you have raised, as you so often do here on the floor of Congress, a very important point in referring to Attorney General Janet Reno and her experience in law enforcement because when I have talked, not just to these young men and women, but to our existing Austin Police Department officers, to law enforcement organizations around the country, I do not find any law enforcement experts coming forward and saying, ``Junk this program that is actually providing us support.'' Rather I find them agreeing with our chief of police in Austin, Elizabeth Watson, and I know the gentlewoman will be pleased to know that our leader in the law enforcement office in Austin is a woman who is doing an outstanding job in law enforcement. She said that these neighborhood enforcement teams that have been packed up with Federal dollars will really make a difference, and she is saying the same thing I am sure you hear in Denver, that I have heard from the various law enforcement organizations that have come before the committee on which you serve that have come here for press conferences here at the Capitol saying, ``Please continue to lend us the support; this program works,'' but for some unfortunate partisan political reasons, just as this program begins to get the law enforcement officers on the street, our Republican colleagues want to jerk the rug out from under this program.

Mr. DOGGETT. Indeed we do, and you make such a vital point about the Violence Against Women Act portion of this. If I understand this same bill, it essentially eliminated all of the funding for the excellent work that you and your colleagues did last year in establishing a violence against women portion, a tremendous portion and a tremendous advance in this same piece of legislation, and about the only thing they left in the appropriation was the hotline for women who are abused and are the victims of violence to call in, and so the question that we have here today is whether, when they call in, there will be a law enforcement officer there to meet their calls along with the counselors, and our battered-women centers, and groups that work against violence, but will there be a law enforcement officer, or will all of the support for Federal support for law enforcement officers be pulled away and denied to communities across this country to support women who are the victims of violence and people across our society that suffer from either physical violence or crimes of property.

Mr. DOGGETT. In attempting to do that, let me bring to the attention of the House one other aspect of this cops program, and that is something called cops more. Again, it is ironic that this very week, probably by midweek, the administration, the Department of Justice, will be announcing cops more grants. Hopefully, the city of Austin will be one of those and cities across this country. That is money that does allow some flexibility. It will, for example, provide Federal dollars, again, directly to the city of Austin, to other communities, to allow some of our law enforcement officers that are now tied up with paperwork and other duties within the station to be replaced with civilian workers so that those skilled law enforcement officers can be out on the street. It will allow for the paying of overtime when our police officers are stretched to the limits at times and have to have overtime. It will allow for certain equipment to be purchased to facilitate police communications and other activities on the street. So the cops program, as the Congress approved it last year, has the necessary flexibility already not only to get 100,000 police officers on the street, but to give them the tools that they need to be effective. Not politics, but real law enforcement tools, and that program will be announcing grants across America this week. Yet, unfortunately, it is that very program that the House will undermine and destroy tomorrow night, unless we are able to get an amendment on changing the appropriations bill as it has been recommended and keep the support for our local law enforcement agencies.

Mr. DOGGETT. The gentlewoman from Colorado and the gentleman from California have both referenced prevention. I also wonder whether anyone is trying to undermine this cops program has ever discussed prevention with young men and women like this or with their older peers who are out there and have served our community, in some cases for decades. I know, for example, that in my community of Austin, TX, you mentioned this community meeting, last year we had a real problem in one neighborhood particularly, it has unfortunately affected a great deal of our community, with youth violence. So instead of looking only at the question of violence, our forward looking police department under Chief Watson sees leadership. One of the things they did about crime was to set up a job fair, to actually pull in local businesses to a high school, not far from this community. I went out to that job fair and there were young people coming out the doors, and there were some business people who I am sure instead of having someone who might come in and shoplift, someone who might some day because of drugs be burglarizing their establishment, they found a willing worker. Because if we provide some of these young people hope and we provide them opportunity, and if they begin to recognize that the men and women who go through cadet school and put on their blue uniform and go out to defend us are on our side, they are not the enemy, they are there working in the community with community police stations, with community prevention programs that work to try to prevent crime, that try to deter crime, and in turn, of course, unfortunately, when that does not work to a prison system to back them up, which we need. But if we rely only on the steel bars, we cannot build the prisons fast enough to fulfill the need of our community for security.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Reserving the right to object, Mr. Speaker, I would say that the Democratic leadership has been consulted and the ranking minority member of each of the committees the gentleman referred to. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, ``What you don't understand is why I ain't dumb enough to fall on my sword.'' Let me repeat that. ``What you don't understand is why I ain't dumb enough to fall on my sword.'' Those are not my words. Rather, they are the words as quoted in the Houston Chronicle of the majority leader of this House, my Republican colleague from Texas, the Honorable Dick Armey, when asked to explain why the Republican majority is unwilling to detail to American seniors, to American families, the specifics of their plan to do what they call reforming Medicare. We have, since that time, been told by Speaker Gingrich that perhaps 2 months from now, and it is almost 2 months to the day, on September 22, we will finally hear the details of how it is that our Republican colleagues propose to deal with the Medicare system. One can hardly stop in amazement as to why it is, if this is such a good plan to reform and save Medicare for future beneficiaries, rather than run to decimate it for people who are on Medicare, why it is that they are hiding their light under a bushel, why it is that they will not detail to the American people so that they can evaluate how great a plan this is, rather than having it sprung on them as a September surprise for seniors, why it is they are hiding their plan. I think the reason is clear to any close observer of what is happening to Medicare, why it is that our Republican colleagues are, in fact, mediscared when it comes to revealing the details of their plan to alter and decimate the Medicare system. The whole plan is based on two premises. No. 1 is the premise that it is not so much about Medicare that they are concerned, but they need a certain amount of money and it just so happens that what I have always viewed as the Medicare trust fund, but what they seem to see as the Medicare slush fund, has moneys coming into it that are available to meet their need to provide some tax shift and relief for the most privileged few in our country. It is really not a battle about Medicare. It is just that there are Medicare funds there that they want to use for something else. The second and the most significant premise about these so-called reform plans that the majority leader does not want to fall on his swords on and is not dumb enough to fall on his sword on, is that all of the various approaches that have been conceived in the name of reform are based on one simple premise, and that is that health care is just too cheap for our senior citizens; they are not contributing enough to their Medicare. In fact, even though they contribute more on the average as a proportion of their income than any other age group in this country, although they have no Medicare coverage for prescriptions, which is an extreme cost for many of our Nation's seniors or for the families that are backing up their parents, although there is no real effective coverage anywhere for long-term health care, for the long-term health care needs of many of our Nation's seniors, these so-called reform plans are based on the assumption that our seniors are just getting by with having to pay too little and that they ought to have to pay more with reference to their health care. One of the concepts that is being advanced, and all of these concepts we get not from anything that has been said at this microphone or anywhere on the floor of this House, because to this very day, since this idea of junking Medicare as we have known it has come out from our Republican colleagues, from day one, they have been as silent as this microphone to my left is at the moment when it comes to detailing their plans. They have been mediscared to come to this floor and level with the American people and tell the American people what it is that they are doing. They have yet to utter a word of specifics. There are a number of internal memos that, thanks to the freedom of the press in this country, reporters have investigated and they have talked to staff members and they have gotten contact here and there, and some of the Nation's leading news periodicals, relying on those Republican staff members and off-the-record comments, have begun to get the details of what is about to be sprung on it two months from now in September. One of the ideas that is about to be sprung on us is the idea consistent with the approach that American seniors are just not paying enough out of their pocket for their health care, that we ought to discourage them from buying insurance, the MediGap insurance that many seniors purchase in order to cover what Medicare does not cover now. The theory, according to these investigative reports is that, relying on Medigap insurance, seniors just do not have to pay enough for their coverage. The second idea is to raise monthly fees, and the third is to actually raise the age at which people can qualify. All of these suggest that the American people need to get more informed about the September surprise for seniors that our Republican colleagues plan to pose with reference to Medicare.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, in Texas we believe in giving credit where credit is due. Today I, as a Democrat, rise to salute and applaud the Republican majority leader, Bob Dole, for allowing gift and lobbying reform measures to come before the U.S. Senate this week. I believe that this is a great development for the American people, who will recall that in the waning hours of the last session a Democratic initiative for lobby reform was killed by Republicans to the cheers of lobbyists outside. Senator Dole has at least reluctantly agreed to the Democratic demands for a vote on measures severing the ties that bind lobbyists to legislators in this Congress. Strangely, the Washington Times reports that the same thing is not happening here in the House of Representatives. Rather, they report that the House Republican leadership's agenda calls for no action on gift and lobby reform this year. Students of Congress know that if we delay until next year, we will not get the reform we need. Mr. Speaker, it is time for Speaker Gingrich and the Republican leadership to follow Senator Dole's lead and reluctantly agree to Democratic demands that we address gift reform and lobby reform now and stop intimidating those who demand that we address them.