Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, the chairman and ranking member are entitled to congratulations for doing a very good job in very difficult circumstances. The difficult circumstances is the unrealistically low budget allocation that they were given, and I think the job they did as well as what they left undone, not because of their own faults, but because of what they had to work with, is very important for us to focus on. What they did was to show that we can work within a given amount of resources in both a bipartisan way, and we can also overcome some of the committee jurisdictional problems that sometimes beset us. As the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, I work with the chairman, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Lazio), along with the appropriators so the language that we developed and put through the House in the authorizing area to protect existing tenants in various subsidized programs is now made part of the law and funded simultaneously, and that is very important. We have a lot of people out there in housing and have been out there for a while who were threatened with the loss of their housing, and they can now be assured, those who are in these programs, the section 8 program and the assisted housing program, that existing tenancies will be protected, and protected not just for a year, but as long as they are around; and I think that is a very important commitment that we ought to reaffirm. In addition, I am very pleased that they voted some new vouchers because we have an enormous housing crisis in this country. We have millions of hard-working Americans who cannot afford to live decently or can do that only by biting into other parts of their income, and it was important that we did it. But it is also important to note how much we have left undone, and I want to say I am particularly struck that so many of my Republican colleagues have come to the floor and accurately praised this bill for funding government programs. But let us be clear of what we are talking about. We are talking about my Republican colleagues joining us and congratulating ourselves for spending government money because there is too often a kind of semantic separation, a disconnect, in which everybody is for the particulars and nobody is for the general, and let us understand this. One cannot have a whole that is smaller than the sum of the parts; one cannot be for more housing for the elderly, for adequately funding the National Science Foundation, take credit for better veterans' health, do more for environmental protection, and simultaneously boast at how little money they are spending, and that is the dilemma we are in. We have a political and idealistic attachment to striking the whole, while we have a realistic understanding of the importance of the parts, and the time has come no longer to subject people like the gentleman from New York and the gentleman from West Virginia to the need to do contortions, jumps and loops. Let us get a more realistic overall amount so that next year when Republicans and Democrats again come and congratulate ourselves for intelligently spending tax dollars on various important social needs, we will have done it with a lot less acrobatics.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, for those who have contested the theory of evolution, we have the Republican Party's position on this issue. It has been evolving very rapidly. We started out with many saying, no, there should not be any basis for lawsuits. They have moved. And I give credit to those who have helped them move, but they have been held back by some who still do not like the notion at all. We now have, apparently, agreement that there should be a right to sue HMOs. That is a considerable evolution. How wholeheartedly some believe in what they agree to, I am not sure. But we do have some agreement. The question is what kind of lawsuits. And, in fact, what we have are people who have been grudgingly brought to the notion that there should be lawsuits but, because it was grudging, have designed flawed lawsuits. They have designed, surprisingly to me, a Federal supremacy situation which is premised on the notion that we cannot trust the States. Indeed, what we have from some on the other side is a distrust of two entities with whom they have previously professed a lot of solidarity: States and doctors. They have to say that we cannot allow the States the freedom to deal with the lawsuits, and they also show a distrust of doctors. I also want to talk about the kind of lawsuits. Members on the other side have said, well, how has the AMA switched their position. These are very different kinds of malpractice lawsuits. Whatever we think of the other kinds of malpractice lawsuits, they are cases where the doctor who treated the patient is being sued and other people who did not treat that patient are coming in. Here the lawsuits authorized are a very specific kind. They will require the cooperation of the doctor who treated that patient. Here the malpractice claim is that the doctor who actually treated the patient was overruled and interfered with. So the doctor who treated the patient stands as a gatekeeper to prevent illegitimate lawsuits.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, the House has turned the Edmond Morris Ronald Reagan biography controversy on its head. Mr. Morris has been criticized for claiming to be present when he was not. The pattern here in the House is the opposite. Members are essentially claiming not to have been present when they were. Indeed, they are trying to disclaim responsibility for things they themselves did. Most frequently that has happened with the 1997 Budget Act, which cut Medicare and imposed unrealistic caps, and which a lot of Members are now acting as if they stumbled across this somewhere in a room and have no idea how it got here. But now we have a new version of this, the Republican pledge that we will not spend any of the Social Security surplus, which they vigorously express while they are simultaneously bringing out appropriations bills which spend the Social Security surplus. That reached a new height the other day when we passed a resolution which was a memorandum from the House to the House pledging not to do what we were in fact in the process of doing. Claiming that we will never spend the Social Security surplus this year, while we are, according to the Congressional Budget Office in fact doing exactly that, is about the starkest contrast between rhetoric and reality in recent times.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I congratulate the sponsors of this amendment for bringing it forward. The lack of an adequate universal health care system is one of the gravest defects in public policy in America. Now, there are many of us who are in favor of it on equitable grounds. I am going to take that segment for granted in my comments and talk to those on the more conservative side, the people in positions of responsibility, the financial community, and try to explain to them why I believe it is very much in their interest to get behind what we hope will be the first step in leading to the establishment of a universal health care system and would I say a single-payer health care system. By the way, for those who raise questions about the feasibility of a single-payer health care system, let us talk about one which we have had in this country for over 30 years. It is called Medicare. Medicare is a universal single-payer health care system if they are over 65. And those who think it is a bad idea, go tell the recipients of Medicare that they are going to abolish it and let them go back to other ways and I think they will find a great deal of negative response. Indeed, one of the great mistakes this Congress made in 1997 was to cut Medicare. Exactly how it happened, I do not know. Because so many people who were for cutting Medicare in 1997 are so vehemently against it now that I think there was something in the air, that people were, like, absent but voting because they did not know what they did. But here is the argument for going further. In 1993, when the President put forward a health care plan, we were told, well, look, most people get health care and we are solving this problem through our current system. In fact, the opposite has been the case. People have been losing health care. They are losing it, in part, because of the international competitive situation. Holding down the costs to employers, particularly in manufacturing, has become a major factor worldwide. Alan Greenspan a couple of months ago gave a speech in which he lamented the fact that the former national consensus for free trade had eroded and he complained that so many people today are not for tree trade anymore. And he said, I understand how some people get hurt, that some people who do not have access to the skills in information technology will lose their job in the short-run, but we should not let our inability to help them keep us from going forward with globalization. Well, the fact is that we do not have an inability to help them, we have an unwillingness, because this very wealthy Nation clearly has the resources. One of the single best things that people should understand, and here is what I want to address, conservatives, people who believe in globalization, people who want China in the WTO, people who want to go forward with Fast Track authority, who want a new round in Seattle to lead to further trade reductions, we are not going to get that until we have satisfied working people in America that they will not be unfairly disadvantaged. And one of the biggest problems they have, I think the single biggest problem now is, when they lose their jobs, they lose their health care; and when they get new jobs, having lost their jobs, they may well get a job without health care. Because with the lower paying jobs, the service jobs, it is not simply a reduction in income that people face when they lose a manufacturing job and go into another industry, they may very well not have health care. The insecurities that people in this country feel because of our patchwork health care system and the absence of a reliable universal health care system, I think it should be single-payer, but the reliance of that, the knowledge that losing their job could mean losing their health care for them and their family, their children, their spouse, that is one of the biggest obstacles to the support these people are looking for for globalization. So Mr. Greenspan is right to acknowledge that many of us are unwilling to go forward with the process of globalization if it is going to hurt some of the people at the lower end economically, but he is wrong to say that the reason we are not helping them is that it is an inability. There used to be a problem, we thought, 10 years ago. We thought we were spending too much on health care. We said the American economy was stagnating because we were spending too much on health care. We now are clearly the best performing economy in the world. The fact that our health care expenditures per capita are higher than in some other places is obviously not an economic problem. We face a moral problem in condemning people to inadequate care. But they also, I have to say to the establishment and financial community, must understand that there is going to have to be a trade-off. And if people want to reverse the move away from support for globalization internationally, those who believe that is very much in our interest economically have to understand that social equity is going to have to be part of that deal. And they are not going to go forward with the kind of economic global integration they want to see until they do a number of things, and one of them is the provision of a universal health care system. So, as I said, I know we got some votes for equity. But fairness is not enough to win. We are in a trade-off situation. And if we look at the Congresses of the past few years, we have had increasing contention over American support for the international financial institutions, American support for reductions in tariffs. That will get worse rather than better as long as we get a refusal to recognize the legitimate claims of American workers for a universal health care system.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Weygand), another member whose work is reflected in this bill.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds. When I was a kid growing up watching baseball games, I remember Mel Allen, the Yankee announcer, saying it was often the case that someone made a great play out in the field and then that person would be the first one up at bat in the next inning. The gentleman from Nebraska has just pointed out the great work done by the gentlewoman from Illinois, so it is only appropriate that she be first up now in speaking. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New York (Mr. LaFalce), the ranking member of the full committee, whose leadership was essential to this bill coming forward. (Mr. LaFALCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, to close on our side, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I want to begin by acknowledging the staff work on this. This is, more than most bills, one where the staff did a great deal of work because what we had was a bipartisan consensus on some very important but technical issues. So on the Republican side to Mr. Ventrone, Mr. Cassidy and Mr. Suarez; on our side to Mr. Olson, Ms. Kuntz and Ms. Johnson-Obey, a great deal of thanks is due because they are the reason we got this worked out. I want to talk for just a couple of minutes about the nature of both the bipartisanship and the partisanship because it sometimes can seem to people paradoxical that we are on the one hand sometimes very partisan and then we talk about the importance of bipartisanship. The answer is in our democratic society, they both have a place and this bill illustrates it. When it comes to the question of how much in the way of Federal resources we should put into housing, whether we should be expanding these programs, whether the government needs to step in or whether the private market can be left entirely on its own, there are legitimate partisan differences that ought to be debated, how much needs to be done by the public sector and how much can be left to the private sector. The bipartisanship comes in here once we have a decision made as to what resources are going to be available. This bill is a bipartisan consensus, because it deals with a fixed amount of resources and, in fact, it even deals to a great extent, not entirely, but to a great extent with programs in being. The chairman of the subcommittee, who did excellent work on this, and the other Members, including the senior Members on both sides, the chairman and the ranking member and myself, we were confronted with the consequences, potentially socially disastrous, of decisions made 30 years ago or more. Decisions were then made unwisely, but not much we can do about them, which put people into certain kinds of housing, especially more vulnerable people, all the people and disabled people, but not exclusively, and then had the programs set to expire in 20 or 30 years without apparent thought as to what would happen to those people who had moved in at the age of 68 or 69 or 70 into a program where the building was 15 years into that expiration, and then in their eighties faced the possibility, when this program expired, of being kicked out. So what we have here, and it is important for people to understand this, to the extent that the Federal Government has constitutional power to preserve existing subsidized tenancies for individuals who are now living in them, this bill does it. We cannot in some cases compel owners who want to move out of the program and were given the rights to do it. We hope, and the bill is generously enough drafted, and this is something, again, I acknowledge the bipartisan support which was important. The bill is well enough drafted so that owners ought not to drop out. No one can say I am driven economically to drop out. This bill would treat anyone fairly. No one is going to be asked to lose money by staying in the program. We cannot take away their legal right to get out; we can diminish their financial incentive to get out. We do that. We, to the extent that we can, preserve various forms of assisted-housing tenancies, and that is very important. We also, Mr. Speaker, again in a bipartisan way, say in this bill to the extent that we get some new resources for the future there will be more flexibility in how you use them, and that is also very important. That is what is bipartisan about this bill, and that is why I think it is something that ought to be passed by a large amount. On the other hand, I want to note the area where partisanship remains legitimately. That is, we may still have later in this session differences over how much we should be devoting to these kind of programs. I would simply say this, and I do not mean to delay us to get into that debate now because I hope we can resolve that debate because I hope this bill will become part of an appropriation bill that will become law, and let me say I have been told that some people at the Office of Management and Budget do not like some provisions of this because going forward it bothers them. Let me say that it bothers me that it bothers them, and speaking on behalf of the Democrats on our side, it is our intention completely and utterly to ignore them, and I hope my friends on the other side will join us in paying no attention to what I hear OMB may say. As long as we are within the overall limits, the specifics of this are not matters on which I wish to hear from them; and if they speak out, let them do that, but let them be the tree that fell in the forest where nobody was around, Mr. Speaker. But I would say this: we responded here, and I thank the gentleman from New York for this, the gentleman from Iowa, and the senior gentleman from New York on our side. We responded to a desperate set of pleas. We heard this in hearings: people now living in these federally assisted programs said to us: please save our homes. These are in many cases federally assisted, subsidized, taxpayer-supported housing units; and they are so successful as programs that the residents literally begged us not to allow them to be kicked out. Now obviously we have, as I said, legitimate debates about resources, but I would note the fervor with which they asked us to save their housing as an example of how government programs can be valuable and valued. We responded to people that said, It's a good thing that you put these public resources in here. Please don't leave us out. Now, with that, Mr. Speaker, you can finally get the gavel you reached for three times already because I am through. I just want to say in summary this is bipartisan appropriately in working within the limited resources we have, but I believe it also ought not to be forgotten when we get into the more partisan argument and the more philosophical argument about whether programs like this ought to be expanded into the future. The depths of the desire to preserve these programs to which we have responded is also an argument, I believe, for an expansion in the future.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Vento) who has for a long time been a leader in the most creative use of our housing resources.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would continue to yield, the gentleman just referred to misguided State judges. He acknowledges that the rules are largely the same, and what he is saying is, the Federal judges will be guided and they will have to guide those misguided State judges. It is okay to think that.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, this is the truth in labeling amendment. This bill was originally presented to me in the previous Congress as an effort to have more rationality as to whether or not a particular action ought to be tried at the Federal or the State level, and I agreed with that. Indeed if this amendment were adopted, I could be supportive of the bill, would be supportive of the bill. I had been a sponsor before, until this particular piece of it evolved. I am not sure where it came in, but here is the problem: We now have very technical rules about what gets someone in a Federal court and what gets someone in a State court. I think it makes sense to change that so that where the bulk of the plaintiffs and the bulk of the defendants and the bulk of the issues are in one State it stays in the State court, and where there is genuine factual diversity it goes to Federal court. That was the legislation I was prepared to support. There is a piece of this, however, that I think is, to many of the sponsors, a central part of the legislation and it says this: If a class action is filed in State court and can be, under the terms of this bill, removed, even though it did not meet the old technical terms for removal but would meet our new more substantive test for going into Federal court, if a Federal judge found that this particular class action did not meet the rules for class action under the Federal rules it could not be brought as a class action. It could then be returned to the State, but not as a class action. In other words, this piece of the bill is not to see that certain class actions are litigated at the Federal level rather than the State level. I am aiming at a piece of the bill that seeks to prevent certain class actions from being heard at all. What came out of the debate is this: some Members of the majority are disappointed in some States. I guess they are kind of like parents whose kids have gone bad. I know they are all for States' right. I know they talk about how much they support States' rights and do not want to see a Federal override. But the problem is, those darn States will not always do what they are told. Some of those States actually allow class-action suits that some businesses do not like, and there is unhappiness over the willingness of some States to do this. Mr. Chairman, I will say this. There is a certain delicacy on the part of my colleagues, they do not like to mention the States. It is one thing to condemn the States; it is another thing to actually mention which ones. So you probably will not hear during the course of the debate any actual States mentioned. There are a few. Off the floor maybe we can whisper some names. But the problem they have is, they believe some States are too lax and too willing to allow class actions, so part of the purpose of this bill is not simply to get class actions litigated in Federal court rather than State court, but to keep them from being litigated as class actions at all. That seems to me to be a grave error. This amendment is very simple. This amendment says that if one gets it removed under the general provisions of this bill, and this bill will make it easier to remove from State to Federal court, and I support that part of it, the amendment says if one gets it removed and a Federal judge says, no, one cannot have it as a class action, then one can go back to State court and have it as a class action in State court. In other words, one's choice is one wants it to be a Federal class action or a State class action, and that I think the bill addresses correctly. But using this as a way to prevent class actions at all is an error, and only this amendment will keep this from happening. What the amendment says is that if a Federal judge rules that it cannot be a class action, one has the opportunity of going back to the State from which it was removed and maintaining it as a class action. I do not think it is appropriate for us to simply say, as this bill otherwise will after this amendment, hey, some of you States have not gotten it right and you States are allowing class actions that should not be class actions and we, the Federal Government will step in. This is a proposal to substitute the wisdom and discretion of the Federal courts for State courts as to whether or not class actions ought to be maintained at all. As I said, and I want to be very clear, to a bill whose purpose it is to have certain actions tried in the Federal rather than a State court because it makes more sense for the class action to be tried there, I am supportive. But a bill whose purpose it is to prevent any class action at all, and that is part of the purpose of this bill, that, I think, is in error. This amendment would return the bill to what it was advertised as to me: an effort to put class actions where they ought to be, but it would remove from the bill that provision that says, some States have been imprudent in allowing class actions that should not be allowed. I do not think that is a wise decision for the Federal Government to make. We certainly have had no record for it and if, in fact, we are going to have legislation passed that rules that some States have been imprudent, let us have hearings. Let us give those States a chance to defend themselves. This is a gravely mistaken assault on States who have not been given a chance to defend themselves.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for that statement, because I think that makes it clear what we are talking about. The gentleman has just said that the problem is that the rules are the same but a lot of local, i.e. State, judges, are misguided. So this is not a statement that the Federal judges have superior wisdom; and it is, as the gentleman said, an effort to prevent the misguided actions of State judges who cannot be trusted to carry out their own State laws.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. In the future, I would trade three compliments for one vote.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding, because I want to straighten something out now. The previous speaker said that some of us were operating under a myth, but the myth was just propagated by my friend from Virginia, not by us. I would say to my other friend from Virginia, he accused the sponsor of this amendment of holding the view that there were different State and Federal standards for certifying, and he said that was not the case, it is just that the Federal Government is better at this than the State judges. But as the gentleman from Virginia now standing who graciously yielded to me just said that some of the States have looser standards. So I do want to point out that there appears to be some difference between the two gentlemen from Virginia here.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will again yield, I just wanted to point out that that argument, that there are some States with different standards, is contrary to the argument given by our other colleague from Virginia. I just wanted to point that out. He said we were operating under the myth that there were these States with different standards, and that, in fact, the standards detract from each other. The gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Boucher) is now acknowledging that there are some States with different standards, and I think that is frankly a better way to go than to have the argument that we previously heard that there were these misguided State judges who were misapplying the rules. In any case, I would say this. I would like to have a hearing and call forward officials from those States; I think it would be useful. Which States are we talking about? Which are the States that are abusive? We ought to be able to know which States we are talking about, and I think we ought to give those States, because I do not remember hearing where we asked those States to come and justify their loose procedures.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield further, I agree that intellectually both can be true. I would simply point out to the gentleman from Virginia, he is one who referred to one of those truths as a myth. The gentleman from Virginia first declared it was a myth, and then announced it was true. I am willing to wait for his judgment as to which he means.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I would just ask my friend, in his experience, has he ever heard himself or any other Member refer flatteringly to a Member whose amendment he intended to support?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the honesty of the gentleman from Pennsylvania. He makes it clear he is against Shays- Meehan, so he is for an amendment which would kill it. Here is one of the problems. We have, in the first place, some very large States, California. When the gentleman from California, and two of the three sponsors are from California, talk about how self- sacrificing they are going to be because they can only go from San Diego to north of San Francisco, that is not very self-sacrificing compared to people from much smaller States. We have small States in this country with ethnic diversity. Let us be very clear. Money and ethnicity are sometimes correlated. And if we now tell African-American candidates in the South, now that we have redistricting rules from the Supreme Court that say that the districts have to be fairly evenly balanced ethnically, if we tell candidates in Mississippi and South Carolina and Alabama, these smaller States, that the money has to be raised in State, we are putting minority candidates at a significant disadvantage. Because we know as a fact that wealth is not equally distributed, and we put ethnic minority candidates at a disadvantage. Finally, as to incumbent protection, when we limit money to that State, we are increasing incumbent protection because the incumbent in a small State is far more likely to be able to raise the money.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time. That commitment is reinforced by the really quite admirable passion that Portuguese Americans feel as a sense of responsibility towards East Timor which had been a Portuguese colony and it is that which helps energize myself and my colleagues from Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Two points. First, the Indonesian government should understand what a terrible price they are paying for this massacre. I offered an amendment to this bill in 1996 to cut IMET. I lost on the floor, because Members were not predisposed to be critical of Indonesia. Members felt Indonesia was a potentially valuable friend and ally. I do not criticize Members for changing their position. Events have changed. No one, I think, could have foreseen quite as much brutality as we have seen. Some of us were pessimistic, but the Indonesians managed to exceed even our worst fears. So what they are going to see when they compare the vote of 1996 to what I hope will be an overwhelming vote today is the price they have paid for this butchery, and they should understand that what we are saying is, they are on a very tenuous probation. No one is writing them off the face of the earth, but the heavy burden now is on the people and government of Indonesia to show that they understand how terribly they have misbehaved and for them to undo this. Secondly, will the military please, the U.S. military, now stop telling us how these training programs inculcate respect for human rights. If the military has geostrategic reasons for wanting alliances with other militaries, then let us be honest about it. But the argument they give us that when they have relations with brutal and repressive regimes, they are doing it to civilize the military of those regimes, they are doing it to turn the military of those regimes into relative Peace Corps, they do not tell the truth. Indonesia was one of their best examples of how by this relationship they were encouraging a more civilized military, and no military in recent history has behaved in a more brutal and less civilized fashion. So I hope both of those lessons are taken to heart by a very large vote in favor of the gentlewoman's instruction.