Cleo Fields

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Chairman, I listened to the gentleman's dissertation of the amendment that he has on the floor, and it is my appreciation this amendment is all legislation and no appropriation. Can the gentleman legislate on an appropriation bill?

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Who waived? Because the gentlewoman from Ohio has a great amendment, and her amendment is certainly an appropriation and not a legislation and not dealing with legislation but appropriation.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Are there any other amendments that the House waived all points of order other than the gentleman's amendment?

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Can the gentleman inquire in terms of which amendments they are? I mean, because the gentlewoman and I am having some confusion.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. I am trying to understand the rules. I am new here. I do not recall the House, is that rule from the Committee on Rules because you said the House waived the rules? I do not recall voting on waiving these rules other than through the rules that we adopted that I voted against. So you are talking about this rule came from the Committee on Rules?

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Which other amendments did we waive?

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. You are not privy to that information?

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Chairman, very briefly, I would like to make one or two points as relates to the point of order. First of all, I think the gentlewoman's amendment is in order, one, because it is not legislating according to the rules of the House on an appropriation bill. It is simply providing for an appropriation. It is taking money out of title III of this appropriations bill and it is putting it in title II of this appropriations bill. Title III of this appropriation bill deals with FEMA, so she is simply taking money out of FEMA and putting it into the drug elimination portion. The last point I would like to make, Mr. Chairman, is that in doing that it makes this amendment budget neutral, it does not add any additional dollars to the bill, so therefore I think the gentlewoman's amendment should be made in order.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding time to me, and for all of her efforts she has put into this amendment. Mr. Chairman, this is a very important amendment. If we look at the problems we have in our public housing system across the country, we will find there still exists today, though I think there are Members of Congress, based upon the way we are moving in this legislation, who do not believe that; but I can tell the Members, coming from a district that has a sizeable amount of public housing, there are still problems within the public housing system. For us to sit here or stand here today and not consider this amendment to me would be absolutely unbelievable. We have already cut out drug free schools and communities out of our schools. We have taken drug education funding out of the school system. Now we are coming to the public housing and taking drug prevention programs and elimination programs out of it. I just do not understand how that makes sense. Mr. Chairman, in Louisiana, for example, this amendment, if it is not passed, will cost Louisiana somewhere in the neighborhood of about $600,000. We have big housing facilities like the one in New Orleans, LA, for example, DESIRE projects. They are working hard every day to try to eliminate the drug problem that they have.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Chairman, let me thank the gentleman from Massachusetts for yielding time to me, and let me thank him for all the hard work he has done in the past and is presently doing as it relates to fair housing, as well as the other coauthors of this amendment, the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Waters] and the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Stokes]. Mr. Chairman, I rise tonight to magnify the point that this amendment is right on target, because this bill prohibits HUD from issuing any enforcement or rules that would apply to fair housing. I think that is simply unbelievable and unconscionable. Let me tell the Members why. First of all, this whole Fair Housing Act was passed, this portion of the Fair Housing Act that deals with tracking insurance, redlining, was passed under the Bush administration in 1989. I think the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Watt] makes a very good point. How can one buy a home in America if they do not have mortgage insurance? I do not know the last time Members have mortgaged their homes or the last time we bought a home in America, but the last time I bought a home in America I had to go to the bank. When I walked into the bank, before they loaned me the money I had to show that I had insurance on the property. Banks do not loan money to people who do not have insurance on homes, so it just makes practical sense to talk about insurance, protecting individuals so they can get insurance on homes, because in a real sense, what this debate is all about is actually giving them an opportunity to buy the home in the first place. Mr. Chairman, if you cannot buy a home, if you do not have insurance, it makes practical sense that we put this kind of mechanism in the bill. It is already in the Fair Housing Act. For us to have the audacity to come here on this floor and take it out and be upset with my friends, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy], the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Waters], and the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Stokes], because they are trying to provide some equity to this legislation, to me it is unbelievable. Mr. Chairman, how do we look constituents in the eyes in America? We know that redlining exists even in the insurance industry. I have people who are in my district, and I have had an insurance agency who called me and said, ``I cannot issue insurance in certain ZIP Codes.'' What can you do about that? Last year we introduced legislation to deal with that issue. Everybody knows about American families. Insurance redlining still exists today in America and the only way to correct that is by having Federal agencies involved in making sure that everybody is treated fairly in the insurance business.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur] for yielding me the time, and I wanted to commend her for an excellent job in fighting for the drug elimination program in this country. If we were sitting here tonight talking about building jails and prisons and housing facilities, or turning public housing into jails and prisons, there would be little debate on the other side of the aisle, but we are only trying to provide kids with hope and opportunity. Mr. Chairman, I was at the Ordonwood Apartment Complex this past weekend in my own district, and I had an opportunity to meet with kids and their parents and also had an opportunity to meet with the management of that facility. They looked me dead in the eyes and said, ``Congressman Fields, it is because of programs like the drug elimination program that we are able to run the drug dealers and drug pushers out of our community.'' Now we are here tonight talking about the very program that is benefiting this housing facility and we are talking about cutting it out. I said earlier on the House floor tonight that we are already cutting out drug-free schools and communities. We are telling kids in public school that we are not going to teach you to say no to drugs; we are just going to say, ``Just say no to drugs,'' but we will not teach about drug education. We are telling kids in public housing that they can use drugs by eliminating the drug elimination program.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from West Virginia [Mr. Mollohan], the ranking member.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I commend the chairman and the ranking member on our side of the aisle for all the hard work they have done on this particular piece of legislation. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is a very straightforward amendment. It is an amendment that many Members of the House have already considered in one form or another. This amendment will take 10 percent of the $2 billion and use that money for crime prevention. This bill appropriates $2 billion in the form of a block grant. This amendment will simply take 10 percent of that, which would be about $200 million, and $200 million will be used for the precise purpose of prevention. When we passed the crime bill in 1994, we enumerated several crime prevention programs within that legislation and we balanced the bill such that money will not only go into jails and prisons but also go into crime prevention. If we pass the Fields amendment, this amendment will provide the $200 million that could be used for the Ounce of Prevention Council which was a part of the 1994 crime bill; Local Crime Prevention Block Grant Program; the Model Intensive Grants Program; Family and Community Endeavor Schools Grant Program. All these programs are very conducive programs for preventing crime so that we will not spend the kind of money that we spend today in locking people up and putting them behind bars: Family and Community Assistance Program; Assistance for Delinquent and At-Risk Youth; Police Retirement; Local Partnership Act; the National Community Economic Partnership; the Urban Recreation and At-Risk Youth Program; Community- Based Justice Grants for Prosecutors; the Family Unity Demonstration Project; substance abuse treatment in Federal prisons as well as State prisons; and Gang Resistance and Education Training, which is a great program that many people in many States across the country use. I think this is a very important amendment and I would hope that Members accept this amendment. We spend $60,000 to build a jail cell in this country, $30,000 to maintain it. This is prevention. I think it is in the best interests of our country to spend money where it is most needed. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Wynn].

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I have a point of order.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, is it proper for the Member to address the C-SPAN audience? Should not the Member address the Speaker of the House?

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, today we are debating H.R. 2067, which was the legislation that we debated earlier today and the legislation we will resume debating on tomorrow. On tomorrow we will introduce an amendment to this piece of legislation to restore money for an interest that I have, an interest that I feel is very important to the American people, and that is the prevention dollars that were taken out of the bill and put in a block grant form and give the States the discretion to use money, either for prevention or for incarceration. Mr. Speaker, I think one of the problems we have in this country, we fail to realize one of the problems with crime, is that we do not put money where I believe it needs to be, and that is in the area of prevention. If we just send block grant money to States and let them make the decision as to where they want to spend this money, we could very well end up with 90 percent or 100 percent of the dollars that we send to a particular State being used in incarceration, building more jails and prisons, and not dealing with the root of the problem. And in my opinion the root of the problem is in fact prevention. The amendment that I introduced today, as a matter of fact, Mr. Speaker, and will debate on tomorrow will provide that 10 percent of the funding must be used for crime prevention, which would allocate about $200 million of the total $2 billion that is allocated in this appropriation to crime prevention. It just makes basic sense to me, Mr. Speaker, that we take 10 percent of the dollars and use it for crime prevention. We passed the legislation last year to appropriate about $30 billion to fight crime. We allocated X number of dollars to go toward building jails and prisons, and we also allocated X number of dollars that would go toward prevention, because we felt that was a balanced approach. We felt that in order to fight the real crime problems in this country, you had to do it twofold, not only just build jails and prisons, but also have drug treatment, also have educational programs and recreational programs for youth all across the country. In this bill, I am sad to say, this bill does not address that problem. Many argue that you can use the money for crime prevention or you can use the money for incarceration and enforcement. That is absolutely true. But the trend in this country is many States are using money only for locking people up. Let me tell you why prevention makes sense, Mr. Speaker. Prevention [[Page H 7688]] makes sense because if you look at my own State, the State that I come from, the State of Louisiana, in the State of Louisiana we have the highest incarceration rate per capita in the whole country. We also have the highest high school dropout rate. If you look at the people incarcerated in the State of Louisiana, 80 percent of the people who are behind jail cells in Louisiana are high school dropouts. So it does not take a rocket scientist to realize that education and incarceration does have some nexus. It makes more sense that if we spend $60,000 to build a jail cell and then $30,000 a year to maintain that jail cell, it just makes more sense to me that we put that kind of money in education, when we only spend about $4,000 a year to educate a child. So this amendment that I will introduce tomorrow, Mr. Speaker, will do just that. Up to $2 billion that we will allocate for enforcement and crime and crime prevention, we will earmark 10 percent of that, which would be $200 million, that will be designated for the sole purpose of crime prevention. On another note as relates to crime prevention and education, I am going to introduce another bill, because I have gotten to the point that I am somewhat tired of us debating the issue of crime on the floor of the House of Representatives and never talking about the real root of the problem, and the real root of the problem is prevention. I am introducing legislation that would deal with one of the main roots of the problem, and that is education. It is ironic that we have spent time, days and nights debating the crime bill and appropriate billions upon billions of dollars to put people in jail, and by the same token, we spend very little time talking about how to provide education to our children. There were discussions on this very floor to eliminate the Department of Education. How can anyone even entertain the thought of eliminating the Department of Education in this country? What message do we send to our children? I am introducing a national education plan the latter part of this week on this House floor that will provide for a national educational trust fund. Those moneys will be used for three purposes and three purposes only, Mr. Speaker. One, moneys will be used to provide a book for every student for every subject. I think that is a commitment that we as Members of the Congress ought to make. There should not be a student who walks into a public school in America that does not have a book, the very basic requirements, a book for every subject. Some may think that is very radical. But we spent $30,000 to build a prison cell, but we will not spend $10 to buy a kid a book and guarantee every kid in America who goes to a public school have a book for every subject that he or she engages in. How do we expect teachers to teach and kids to learn if they do not have the proper tools; so I just think that is basic sense and basic logic for me. The second part of this legislation I will introduce will deal with infrastructure. I am sick and tired of walking into schools all across this country and the schools are in worse conditions than in our jails. I have visited schools and jails, and, when I visited jails in Louisiana and in this country, the ceilings are never leaking, the air conditioners are always working, the infrastructure is absolutely gorgeous, but when you visit public schools in this country, unfortunately many times the ceilings are leaking. I mean the building is about to collapse. But yet we study, put down more and more money into jails and prisons and fail to make the investment in our children and in our schools. And lastly this bill would provide for the funding of teachers' salaries. We take money and put--I think the national Government, the Federal Government, has an interest in what we pay teachers. You know we cannot any longer expect teachers to work and raise a family for little or nothing. I mean teachers cannot buy bread and milk cheaper than anybody else. So I think we have to make that investment now. Many say how are you going to fund this. I mean we are facing trillions of dollars of debt. And we have a deficit. I mean how are you going to fund it? It sounds very great to stand up on the floor of the House and talk about providing a book for every student and providing teacher's salaries as well as building new schools and improving infrastructure of the schools we presently have. Well, there is a proliferation of gaming that is taking place all across this country. You know I think we ought to have a Federal tax on gaming, 5 percent, and that 5 percent ought to go to a national education trust fund, and those dollars ought to be used solely for the three purposes I enumerated on the House floor tonight, and it is amazing what we will do with education in this country if we can put those kind of dollars in education. I see the gentlewoman from Texas is standing in the well, and I would be happy to yield to the gentlewoman

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her comments, and she certainly makes some very strong points in both areas, first in terms of the seniors. I mean it is so important that we not forget about those people who have worked hard all of their lives, who have built this country, and their mothers and fathers, and their grandmothers and grandfathers, those people who built this country, and who worked hard, who fought our wars, who served in our governments and who just did basic things, those people who worked in hospitals and those people who worked in schools, and to say to our seniors now that you are just not important anymore to me is absolutely asinine and unconscionable to say the least. So, we have to have some consideration when we talk about this whole issue of Medicare because it is an important issue, and it will impact when you talk about billions of dollars in cuts. You know you could call it what you want to call it. It is a cut, and it will impact a bunch of senior citizens in this country, and I am glad that the gentlewoman took the time to stand up in the well tonight to talk about the need to preserve programs such as that and the need to protect elderly people in her own State in Texas and all across this country. So I thank the gentlelady. I yield to the gentlewoman for just a second.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. I thank the gentlewoman for her comments and, taking it a step further, in the VA-HUD appropriations they also cut off moneys for national service. I mean eliminate the President's program on national service. Now here was a program, or here is a program, that dealt with kids who were caught in the middle and parents who were caught in the middle, I mean parents who made a little bit too much money to qualify for Government assistance to send their kids to college, but did not make enough money to afford to send their kids to college on their own. So last year we came up with this innovative idea. We said we are going to have a national service program under the President's leadership, and it was a program that did not have an income criterion. If you want to volunteer your services and work your way through college or work your way even after college and pay off your student loan because of the high default rate we had among students who graduated, and even those who did not graduate from college, so this Congress came up with a unique idea to provide a national service program for kids, young students, who decided to go to college, and work their way through college and work with nonprofit organizations. In this legislation, it totally wipes out that program, zero dollars, not phased down, but wiped it out. I mean 20,000 kids right now and today are benefiting from the national service program what will not be in effect in 1996 if this appropriation passes this House. You know I mean what are we saying? On one hand we are telling seniors we are going to cut Medicare, on the other hand we are telling young people we are going to cut out drug-free schools in communities and national service programs. And then we tell them God knows if you have AIDS in America, then you are going to be cut out of public housing. I mean zero, not phased down. I mean zero. I mean to zero these kinds of budget items to me is you have got to have a hard conscience or no conscience to make these--to come to these kinds of conclusions. I mean from the elderly to the youth, to those people who need assistance, the most--you know, people with AIDS--to tell them that they are no longer going to have this kind of public assistance as relates to housing--you know, what is wrong with the conscience of this Congress to be making such drastic decisions? In fiscal year 1995, for example, we appropriated $18.7 billion for housing programs; in 1996, only $13 billion were appropriated, which means that is going to be a $4.9 billion cut. I mean $4.9 billion; that is a 26-percent cut in this program. Assisted housing programs, 1995, we appropriated $11 billion. Next year we are going to appropriate, according to this legislation, $10 billion. That is a $1 billion cut. Well, you say that is a $1 billion cut. What is wrong with a $1 billion cut? Well, let me tell you what is wrong with a $1 billion cut. First of all, it is 9 percent, and you have more homeless people. We have 600,000 families in America right now today who are homeless. We are not fixing the problem. We are adding to the problem when we cut assisted housing programs and homeless programs to the degree that we are cutting them in this budget. I mean homeless programs. This year we appropriated $1.2 billion. We are going to cut about $576 million. I mean next year we are going to appropriate $576 million, which will provide a $544 million cut in the homeless program, not to mention what we are going to do to the environment. We are talking about how we need to preserve the air, water, and soil. But if we do not have an agency that has the wherewithal to do that, then we are failing. We cannot grow more land in America. It is the Federal Government's responsibility to preserve the air and preserve the water and preserve the soil. That is our responsibility, in my opinion. If we do not do it, who will? Are we going to just depend on somebody from space to protect the air and environment that we live in? We talk about deficit reduction. We have a deficit reduction as relates to the environment as well. There are a lot of cleanups that we must provide, a lot of cleaning up that we must engage in right here in this country. In my own district, I have several Superfund sites. There needs to be an agency in Baton Rouge, LA, next to a community called Ethel and next to a community called Scotlandville. There [[Page H 7690]] is a polluted Superfund site that needs to be cleaned up. But will the EPA be able to do it? We appropriated $7 million last year. Next year, they will appropriate only $4 million, $2.3 million cut, 32 percent. We expect our kids to look at us and say yes, son, we are going to make sure when you go fishing 10 or 20 years from now you can fish in clean water. When you walk outside you can breathe clean air. When you decide to grow crops, you are going to be able to turn over clean soil. Yet we are failing to provide EPA the kind of mechanisms they need to protect these natural resources.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Further in the environment portion of this legislation, as the gentlewoman knows, it also cuts money that deals with water treatment grants. Fiscal year 1995, we appropriated $2.6 billion. This year, for 1996, we appropriate $1.7 billion. Now, there is some who probably do not appreciate, as I do, the need for these grants. I have several little small towns and villages in the district I represent that do not have water treatment plants and do not have the wherewithal, do not have the tax base to develop a water treatment plant. I have citizens who live within the district that I represent who do not drink clean water everyday, not because they enjoy drinking water that is probably not safe. There are people who live in my district, I can give you a town; for example, the town of White Castle, I have an excellent mayor, Maurice Brown, who worked hard. We were just able to appropriate money to that town so they could improve their water situation. Before such time, we have citizens who were drinking water that had color in it. Some refused to drink it. Some just bought bottled water. Then they asked, Congressman Fields, I drink bottled water, but what do I do when I have to take a bath? Those kind of things. I do not think people really have a real appreciation of those kind of problems that really exist in rural America today. To cut this kind of program to this degree will not allow this Congress to help small towns like White Castle. It will not allow this Congress to help little, small towns like the town of Donaldsonville and other small towns in rural America. That makes sense. It is through no fault of their own. I want to thank the gentlewoman from Texas for coming out tonight to discuss some of these budget cuts in these appropriations bills, because they are devastating, and they will have an effect on real people back home in all of our districts. It is something we need to be cognizant of. Lastly, I just wanted to say tomorrow, when we debate the amendment on the Commerce appropriation, that we will put 10 percent, earmark 10 percent of the dollars to prevention. I would hope that Members of this body will stand up and support that amendment, because we cannot fight the crime problem in this country by only dealing with jails and penal institutions. We are going to have to fight it from both angles. That is incarceration, law enforcement, and prevention. I think that this bill fails to provide that.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, tonight I rise to talk about a decision that was handed down by the Supreme Court today. I find it very ironic that the Supreme Court would rule in a case that affects the District, the 11th District of Georgia, to be unconstitutional, and it is ironic that we stand at a time in our history that we are trying to bring about a color blind society. We are trying to bring about a democracy to represent all of the people, and the Supreme Court ruled today that the 11th District of Georgia is unconstitutional, and ruled that the Fourth Congressional District, the district which I represent, did not rule on that district at all, simply because the plaintiffs in that case did not have standing. Tonight I wanted to take just a moment to talk about some of the districts that are majority districts across this country that look just as irregular as the majority minority districts in this country, and try to give some sense of understanding as to why would courts and why would people across America, even entertain the thought that districts, simply because of their shape and simply because of their appearance, are unconstitutional. [[Page H 6651]] I wanted to start by talking about the Fourth Congressional District in Louisiana, the district which I represent. Mr. Speaker, I represent a district that is a very diverse district. The district that I represent is in fact the district of the future. It is a district that is comprised of about 55 percent African-Americans and about 45 percent are white citizens. Therefore, this district in my opinion is a very diverse district, and it really bothers me tonight that the Supreme Court would even consider striking down a district that is as diverse as the district that I represent. If you look at the shape of the Fourth Congressional District in Louisiana, one may say on its face it is irregular. One may say that it looks somewhat different from the form, because it does move from the northern part of the State of Louisiana, to those who are not familiar with the Fourth Congressional District. This district moves from the northern part of Louisiana, which is the Shreveport-Bossier area, and then it goes down to the more southern part of the State, which goes a little bit past Baton Rouge and goes into St. James Parish. This district in my opinion is a pretty nice looking district. Most people when they look at this district on a map, they say, that is an irregular-shaped district. It looks bad, it looks bizarre and it ought to be unconstitutional, and it ought to be unconstitutional because it is a majority black district, and why would anybody in their right mind draw a district like that? However, when you really look at the facts of the matter, Mr. Speaker, you see that many districts all across this country look the same and look just like the Fourth Congressional District of Louisiana. For example, if you take the Fourth Congressional District of Tennessee, which was created in 1990, this district, Mr. Speaker, is 96 percent majority, 96 percent white. This district is not under attack tonight, it probably will not be under attack tomorrow, and probably will not be under attack in the future of this country. I often wonder, why would one allege that the Fourth Congressional District and the 11th Congressional District of the State of Georgia are unconstitutional because they look irregular and the majority of the voters in those particular districts are black.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. I am happy to yield to the gentlewoman from Georgia.

Mr. FIELDS of Louisiana. Let me present another scenario to the gentlewoman. If I would suggest to the gentlewoman that this district is 60 percent black and 40 percent white, and this district is 96 percent white and 4 percent black, which of the two districts would the gentlewoman suggest would be the most diverse district?