Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, in our national effort to find policies which to put an end to the terrible tragedies of school children shooting each other to death, one very promising development has been the increasing attention to the problem of bullying. We have for far too long made the mistake of indulging bullying, and in ignoring the anguish of those who are victimized by it. A 30-year-old adult who is being severely taunted and physically harassed by others can receive legal help. But a 15-year-old is often told that it is his or her responsibility to deal with this without any outside intervention, and that is both cruel and can lead to a dangerous results. This has been a particular problem with students who are--or are thought to be by their school mates--gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. And especially in this latter class of cases, students who learn that bullying and physical violence abuse are OK in high school sometimes extrapolate from that the message that violent assault and even murder are OK a few years after the high school. In the April 26 edition of the newspaper Bay Windows, an extremely responsible journal published weekly in Boston, with a particular focus on matters relevant to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community, editor Jeff Epperly wrote a first rate editorial on this subject. Mr. Epperly's points are very important ones for those formulating public policy to understand, and I submit this extremely well reasoned and eloquent piece to be printed here. [From Bay Windows, Apr. 26, 2001] Bullying Is Not a ``normal'' Part of Childhood (By Jeff Epperly) ``Stick and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me,'' was the dismissive reply that came from a school administrator with whom I was discussing the often brutal treatment heaped upon openly gay--or perceived-to-be-gay--students in schools. That was shortly after I started at this paper nearly 15 years ago. In the intervening years that children's schoolyard chant has been, in the context of how gays should deal with verbal abuse, thrown in my face by everyone from police officers to mainstream newspaper columnists. For too many years, the attitude of many school administrators and teachers toward student-on-student harassment has been that it's a ``normal'' part of growing up. Gay students, like kids who are overweight or have speech problems, should learn to lighten up, ignore the taunts or fight back in the face of abuse. But as anyone who's followed this issue knows, anti-gay harassment rarely stops at name- calling. Openly gay or lesbian students can attest, along with girls who are a little too masculine, or boys who are a little too feminine, that sticks and stones are just some of the items used to pummel and ostracize those who dare to be different. But even if we were to assume for the sake of argument that anti-gay harassment in schools rarely escalates beyond verbal taunts, the unrelenting nature of anti-gay verbal harassment, along with the sense of isolation that accompanies it, makes for an uneven playing field for gay and lesbian students who are supposed to be guaranteed the equal opportunity to learn. Speak at length with adult victims of systematic anti-gay verbal attacks committed by hateful neighbors, and you understand how ongoing harassment can make simply living in one's home unbearable. Imagine what it must be like for targeted students in the captive environment of a school. The effort and desire to learn lag far behind the simple act of trying to preserve one's dignity while keeping one eye out for the bullies behind you. That so many of these students suffer academically is not surprising. (There is also increasing evidence that schoolyard bullying, now the subject of intense study by Students and parents in many districts have begged administrators to stop such harassment--even after it has escalated to physical violence, and even though some teachers and administrators themselves have taken part in the harassment. Many times, as Wisconsin student Jamie Nabozny could attest, the student being harassed is made to feel as if he or she is the culprit for having the temerity to simply be who they are. It was in 1997 that Nabozny caused a stir in school board meetings across the country after he got fed up and sued the school district that failed to see how its inaction was affecting his rights to equal educational opportunities. He won in a landmark ruling in federal court. In a heartening after-effect, more students and their parents, emboldened by the Nabozny decision have stepped forward and are filing similar suits against their school districts for similar reasons. Some pundits are already saying that these cases are just one more example of how destructively litigious American society has become. But these cases cannot be compared to lawsuit-obsessed citizens trying to wring money from slip- and-fall accidents or restaurants who dare to serve hot coffee which is then spilled on some klutz's lap. These cases are legitimate examples of citizens seeking redress from the judicial branch of government when the executive and legislative branches are unable or unwilling to offer equal protection to its citizens. But court action alone will hardly solve the problem. And it's not just gay kids who are being tormented. Nor is it only gay kids who are bringing guns and knives to school to gain revenge on their tormenters. So it's heartening to hear that the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network is working with other education organizations to make sure that school administrators and other government officials continue to work toward programs and solutions for a problem that ought not ever again be covered up or dismissed.

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, the greatest strength of our democracy consists of those citizens who take their obligations of citizenship seriously. We are very well served in particular by men and women who are active in our private sector, creating wealth, but who do not allow this to preclude meaningful civic participation. One of the best examples of this whom I have encountered is Michael Lipof of Newton, Massachusetts. Mike Lipof has been an extremely constructive force in the economy of the Greater Boston area. He has been a leader in the real estate field, and is currently serving in a very important capacity as the President--and a very operational hands on President-- of New England's largest Jewish cemetery, Sharon Memorial Park. At the same time, he has been very active in both public and community affairs. He has been a leading member of the Jewish community of Greater Boston, in partnership with his wife, Rabbi Emily Lipof. And he started a family tradition of participation in public affairs as an Alderman in the city of Newton, which is now being carried on by his son, Richard Lipof. And Mike was a very able member of the Board of Trustees of the Newton Free Library, a very important entity in our city. I have known Mike Lipof in a number of capacities, and in every one of these, private, public, elective, and communitarian, he has been an extraordinary asset. And of course he and Emily have been proud and loving parents and grandparents as well. I congratulate the people at Sharon Memorial Park for their decision to honor Mike Lipof for his extraordinary range of contributions to all of us and I am delighted to join in that congratulation, and in presenting to my colleagues an example of the kind of active, creative citizenship on which our country thrives.

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, the terrible tragedy that led to the loss of Japanese lives when one of our submarines surfaced and crashed into a ship obviously consists of the loss of those lives and the trauma of the other people involved, both on the submarine and on the Japanese trawler. But there is another disturbing aspect of that, although it is, of course, far less disturbing than the loss of life. But we cannot do anything about the loss of life. However, we can do something as a House of Representatives, which we are not doing, about the kind of circumstances that led to that. It is clear that those lives would not have been lost were it not for the Navy's program of bringing civilians along on military activities for the purposes of lobbying the Congress of the United States. Now, that is true at one level without debate. That submarine would not have left port if it were not for the need to take 16 apparently well- connected, politically influential civilians for a ride. As the New York Times points out, that purpose was to build support among these civilians so they will lobby the Congress for more money. In addition to the excursion for the 16 civilians being the sole reason for that particular submarine going out, we have questions that the Navy refused to even ask, and certainly to have answered, about the extent to which the 16 civilians on board a very crowded submarine might have contributed to the terrible tragedy. We have a commander who was ordered to take the submarine out for the purpose of giving the 16 civilians a ride, who has ended his career. That is a sad thing. He appears to have been a very able, very dedicated man. We have other sailors who may be disciplined. No one appears to be dealing with the policy by which the Navy sent those people into that difficult situation, surfacing the submarine in an area where ships would be around, with 16 civilians present, and the investigation conducted by the Navy which led ultimately to the resignation of the commander appeared designed not to get to the bottom of these questions. As the New York Times reported on April 22, one of the sailors who had initially indicated that the presence of the civilians was a problem, changed his testimony. Indeed, it appeared that the pressure was on him from the Navy to change his testimony. ``It was very dramatic, recalled Jay Fidell, a lawyer and former Coast Guard judge who followed the proceedings as a commentator for the Public Broadcasting System,'' the New York Times reports. ``There was this long pause, and then he said `no' '' to the question about whether or not the civilians had interfered. He previously said ``yes.'' What bothers me now is that this House of Representatives, with oversight responsibilities, appears to be ignoring what went on in that situation. The policy of the Navy of scheduling trips solely for the edification of civilians in the hope that they will become political lobbyists appears to be nothing we are going to challenge. I do not think any other agency in the Federal Government guilty of this practice would be let off so easy. We are told that we do not have enough money in the budget for training missions, but we had enough money in the budget for a mission that had nothing to do with training, was not required for training, but was required to show off for 16 civilians. We do not know who the 16 civilians were. Were they contributors? I did not think it was a good idea to let contributors sleep in the Lincoln bedroom under President Clinton. But we did not build the Lincoln bedroom solely to let them sleep there. We did not undergo any expenses to let them sleep there. Letting people sleep in the Lincoln bedroom seems to me to have probably less of a negative impact than sending out a submarine into waters where there are civilian ships, just to make 16 civilians happy. I would rather those 16 civilians have got 16 nights in the Lincoln bedroom than to have a submarine go out there. Now, it is no one's fault that this led to the loss of life. No one wanted that to happen. Everyone is genuinely sad. A career of a very distinguished officer has, unfortunately, been lost to this. But we did allow a submarine to go out there, knowing that this is a dangerous thing. So I hope my colleagues in the House with supervisory responsibilities will look into this policy. I believe we ought to say to the Navy, look, it is one thing if you let people observe something that is going to be happening anyway; but scheduling complicated military events, potentially dangerous ones, just so you can show off to people who will become political lobbyists? Do not do that anymore. [From The New York Times, Apr. 23, 2001] Despite Sub Inquiry, Navy Still Sees Need For Guests on Ships (By John Kifner) Honolulu, Apr. 23, 2001.--The Navy's inquiry into the submarine Greeneville's collision with a Japanese fisheries training vessel has sidestepped one factor in the fatal crash: a program hugely popular with the Navy brass in which thousands of civilians, many wealthy or influential, are invited on excursions aboard warships in hopes of bolstering support for the services and, ultimately, their financing. Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, the commander of the Pacific Fleet, acting on the report of a three-admiral court of inquiry, is expected to recommend a review of the visitors program and suggest a few rules--some of which were already in place and violated by the Greeneville--but the program is regarded as so vital, not only by the Navy but by all the services that it is likely to continue virtually unchanged, military officials say. ``There is very strong support for this departmentwide,'' a Navy official at the Pentagon said. ``There is no chance that bringing civilians to Navy units is going to stop. By no means.'' The role of the visitors program in the accident that killed nine people aboard the Japanese vessel, the Ehime Maru, on Feb. 9 is still unclear for several reasons: The court of inquiry was convened specifically because it was one of the few military panels that could compel civilian testimony, but one of the 16 civilians aboard the submarine were called before it. The chairman of the panel, Vice Adm. John B. Nathman, said that part of his charge from Admiral Fargo was to look into ``implementation of the distinguished visitor embarkation program,'' but there was little testimony about it. Two targets of the inquiry--the Greeneville's captain and a sailor who failed to manually plot the location of the Japanese ship--have reversed their accounts on whether the presence of civilians in the control room was a factor in the crash. ``In my opinion the investigation is not complete,'' said Eugene R. Fidell, the president of the National Institute of Military Justice, in Washington. ``Never to summon 16 witnesses jammed into that control room is bizarre. ``The Navy, I think, is collectively desperately concerned not to give up the distinguished visitor program,'' Mr. Fidell added. ``They don't even want to talk about this. This is a real big deal to the Navy. ``It absolutely has to do with funding, weapons programs,'' he said. ``They compete like crazy with the other branches.'' Last year, the Pacific Fleet welcomed 7,836 civilian visitors aboard its vessels. There were 21 trips aboard Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarines like the Greeneville, with 307 civilian guests, and 74 trips to aircraft carriers, with 1,478 visitors. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, embarrassed by the incident, said at the time that he would order a review of the program. Mr. Rumsfeld made his statement after disclosures that the sole reason for the Greeneville's cruise on the day of the incident was to give a tour to the civilians and that a Texas oil company executive was at the controls when the submarine shot to the surface, striking and sinking the Ehime Maru. Mr. Rumsfeld put a moratorium on civilians' handling controls, but otherwise the programs are continuing in all services. A Navy official said that no review orders had yet been issued by the Pentagon and that the Navy was conducting a review on its own. The submarine's skipper, Cmdr. Scott D. Waddle, is not expected to be court- martialed. Instead, Admiral Fargo, acting on the court of inquiry's report, is expected to announce an administrative punishment on Monday, under which Commander Waddle will resign from the Navy, ending his career at his current rank with an honorable discharge and a full pension. On March 20, Commander Waddle's civilian lawyer, Charles W. Gittins, seemed to shift direction as he was winding up a rambling closing statement at the end of 12 days of hearings. Mr. Gittins raised the question of the 16 civilians with the retired admiral, Richard C. Macke, who made the arrangements for the submarine tour. Most of the civilians had been planning to take part in a golf tournament, which was later postponed, to raise money for restoration work on the U.S.S. Missouri, the World War II battleship on which the Japanese surrendered in 1945. Among them were oil executives, their wives and a Honolulu couple. Mr. Gittins also wondered aloud about whether there was a business benefit for anyone involved in getting the civilians aboard. Admiral Macke, once a four-star commander in the Pacific, lost his job after he made remarks deemed insensitive, saying that three marines stationed on Okinawa, Japan, who raped a 12-year-old girl in 1995 were stupid because they could have simply hired a prostitute. Although he is retired, Admiral Macke remains active in social affairs related to the Navy, and he is prominent here as an executive of a telecommunications company based in Reston, VA. To some people here, it seemed an implied threat that, if Commander Waddle were to go to a court-martial, Mr. Gittins would raise the presence of civilians as part of his defense and might produce embarrassing material about the visitor program. Commander Waddle, in his testimony--given voluntarily after he had been denied immunity--said the 16 civilians crowded into the control room did not interfere with operations. Asked twice by different admirals if the civilians were a factor in the accident, Commander Waddle each time replied, ``No, sir.'' But last Monday, the main article on the front page of The Honolulu Advertiser quoted Mr.. Gittins as saying that Commander Waddle had changed his mind and now believed that the presence of the civilians broke the crew's concentration at a crucial time. The article also noted that the visitors program ``could figure prominently in the unlikely event of a court-martial and prove an embarrassment for the Navy.'' That same day, Time magazine published an interview with Commander Waddle that said the skipper had ``revised his previously benign view of the presence of civilians on board.'' Time quoted Commander Waddle as saying ``Having them in the control room at least interfered with our concentration.'' But Petty Officer First Class Patrick T. Seacrest changed his account in the opposite way. Petty Officer Seacrest was the fire control technician, whose job involves keeping track of nearby ships as potential targets for a submarine's torpedoes. On the day of the accident, an important piece of equipment, essentially a television monitor that displays the sonar soundings, was discovered to be broken soon after the submarine left Pearl Harbor. With the monitor down, Petty Officer Seacrest's old-fashioned plotting of the positions of vessels on paper became the crucial substitute. He was to have gotten up from his chair and gone to a nearby bulkhead to mark the positions on a scrolling device visible to the officer of the deck at intervals of about three minutes, a former submarine commander said. But some of the visitors were crowded into the narrow path between his post and the plotting paper, and he did not push through them to update the positions. Petty Officer Seacrest told the National Transportation Safety Board investigators and the preliminary Navy inquiry that the presence of visitors had interfered with his task. John Hammerschmidt, the chief N.T.S.B. investigator, said Petty Officer Seacrest reported that ``he was not able to continue his plotting.'' But when Petty Officer Seacrest appeared before the court of inquiry, testifying under a grant of immunity, he said the civilians had no effect on his task. ``It was very dramatic,'' recalled Jay M. Fidell (the brother of Eugene R. Fidell), a lawyer and a former Coast Guard judge, who followed the proceedings as a commentator for the Public Broadcasting System. ``There was this long, long pause and then he said `No.' '' Under questioning, Petty Officer Seacrest agreed when one of the admirals told him, ``You just got lazy, didn't you?'' The main note on the visitors program was struck in the testimony of the submarine fleet commander, Rear Adm. Albert H. Konetzni Jr., a strong advocate of using the program to gain support for more nuclear submarines at a time of shrinking budgets. Admiral Konetzni remarked that attack submarines were named for cities rather than for fish because ``fish don't vote.'' His views were echoed by the other admirals. ``The visitors program is the whole thing that's driving this,'' said Mr. Fidell, the former Coast Guard judge. ``Every flag witness said the same thing. It was like something out of `The Manchurian Candidate.' They are desperate to protect this program.''

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, if that is the case, why is the President not putting adequate money into prescription drugs this year instead of saying only $17,000 as an income cutoff?

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, what we are seeing today is a declaration by the Republican Party that they recognize that the majority of Americans cannot be relied upon. One of the previous advocates to this amendment said the power belongs to the people, but he misstates what this amendment does. Power now under our Constitution belongs to the representatives of the majority of the people, taking into account, of course, the two Senators per State, which is nonmajoritarian, but within that the majority rules. Well, apparently the Republicans do not have much confidence in the majority, so they want to change the rules so that this particular decision cannot be made by a majority. The gentleman said the power belongs to the people. We used to have a slogan, ``power to the people.'' Well, this amendment would change that slogan to ``power to one-third plus one of the people.'' If the majority of the people, as they are represented in Congress, decide that they want to improve our ability to do environmental cleanup, or if people thought that having the Social Security tax base cut off at $75,000 so that if one makes $30,000 every penny one earns is taxed for Social Security, but if one makes $300,000 the great majority of one's income is exempt, we could not do that without two-thirds. Not only are they declaring a lack of faith in the people, they are repudiating the legacy of some past Republican presidents. For instance, President George Bush raised taxes in conjunction with the Congress, because he thought it was very important for the economy. We all remember the President's famous slogan, ``Read my lips, no new taxes.'' Well, any future President I guess would have to say, ``Read two-thirds of my lips, no new taxes.'' George Bush asked us to raise taxes. I do not think he was profligate and irresponsible. I think he was responding to the particular needs of the particular time. At this point, no one is advocating tax increases, but different situations occur at different points. Ronald Reagan. We have heard a lot about the legacy of Ronald Reagan, but I was here when Ronald Reagan asked Congress to raise taxes on several occasions. I did not always vote for the Reagan tax increases. I thought the Reagan tax increase of 1982, which was to undo some of the Reagan tax decrease of 1981, was not fairly constituted. I did not like the Reagan tax increase for Social Security in 1983. But if we read the history books and if we read the assessments of President Reagan, one of the things they say is that President Reagan, Senator Dole, Speaker O'Neill came together to save Social Security and extend its solvency. They did it in part by reducing benefits in a way that I did not agree with, but they also did it by raising taxes. Indeed, some of the tax increases that were imposed under President Reagan remain in effect. They not only remain in effect, they remain untouched by the current President's tax reduction proposals. It was in 1983 at the request of Ronald Reagan, with the concurrence of a Republican Senate and a Democratic House, that taxes were first levied on part of a Social Security recipient's income. The taxation of part of one's Social Security benefits for people making $25,000 in addition, to be recycled into the Social Security system, was part of President Reagan's attempt to extend the solvency of Social Security. Now, if the Republican constitutional amendment had been in power, I do not think President Reagan would have had the votes. I do not think President Bush would have had the votes. The point I am making is that despite partisan efforts to make it look as if this is somehow an effort to prevent feckless decisions to raise the revenues, it would have, had it been in effect, prevented the last two Republican presidents from getting legislation through that they thought was important to protect Social Security and to protect the economy. Now, I have noted a tendency on the part of my Republican colleagues to implicitly acknowledge that the public is not thrilled with some parts of their agenda, and I understand that. They have a right, I suppose, when they are campaigning to kind of soft pedal some things; you should tell them the truth, but you do not always volunteer things. But changing the Constitution because they believe the public is not likely to support their position is a totally inappropriate way to go. I guess we have to explain why this happens, because if one believes the rhetoric that says it is just the government taking people's money for no good reason and the people have to be protected from that, one has to ask the question, why would people let Members of Congress who, by a majority, would vote to increase the taxes that they pay. The answer is, as President Reagan knew and President Bush knew and President Clinton knew, all three of whom asked that taxes be increased, there are important purposes that the people want that may require more revenue. I want to go back to Social Security. The Social Security system now is financed by taxes that are paid up to 70-some odd thousand dollars worth of income. Many of us believe that is inequitable. Many of us believe we ought to have a package in which we reduce the Social Security bite on some people in the lower end, but increase it for wealthier people. Maybe we want to have a little gap, but then at $150,000 or more, start collecting some Social Security tax. Any effort to do that would, by this amendment, require a two-thirds vote. Power to one-third plus one of the people. One-third plus one of the people could block that effort. If we decided that we needed more revenue for other purposes, it is not there. Mr. Speaker, it seems to me a rational decision for the public to make in a civilized society that at a time of great wealth they might want to spend more on environmental cleanup. They might want to do more for police. They might want to help people with prescription drugs. The Republicans have said, well, we want a major tax cut, so here is what we have to do. We have to end the program that allows public housing authorities to hire police officers to combat drug-related crime. I understand people who think cutting taxes, particularly for wealthy people, is more important than fighting drug-related crime in public housing. They do not live in public housing, they do not relate to the people in public housing, and in a democracy that is a legitimate view to put forward. But why do they need two-thirds? Are they not confident they can win that one on the merits? We have people who believe we ought to be increasing the amount we spend on environmental cleanup. Unfortunately, there are people who disagree. I am prepared to debate that. But if we decide that we have these important public needs and the current revenues are not enough to meet them without going into deficit, I do not understand why we should take two-thirds. Prescription drugs. We have a proposal from the Republican Party that says, to get taxes at the level we think desirable, we cannot help any elderly person needing prescription drugs whose income exceeds $17,000. I think that is a very grave error. I think making sure that Bill Gates pays no taxes when he dies, or his heirs do not; once one dies, they do not pay any taxes, but the notion that Bill Gates' heirs should be able to inherit billions of dollars, but we cannot afford to help someone making $20,000 with prescription drugs at the age of 82, I think that is wrong. But I am prepared to debate that without fixing it. I say these things because they are directly relevant to this amendment. This is why the Republicans feel that they have to change the rules. They understand that there will be times when a majority of the Americans will say, we would rather have more revenue. By the way, while the Republicans claim to dislike taxes at certain times, they come to love them, and that is the other thing I would say to my Republican friends: do not underestimate your capacity to adapt. For example, when President Clinton in 1993 asked Congress to raise the gasoline taxes, there was a great deal of unhappiness on the Republican side, at least it was expressed and I under the Rules of the House of course take at face value everything said here, and when President Clinton remained in office, time and again the Republicans said, we have to get rid of this gasoline tax increase. Well, we now have a Republican President and we have a Republican House and we have a Republican Senate, and we have tax bills coming forward that would reduce various taxes. Do we know what else we have? The same gasoline tax increase that went into effect in 1993 unchallenged.

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

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is ignoring the fact that with his amendment that he is putting forward today, and we will cut taxes this year, I think by more than we should but we will, if we decide next year that at the level of revenue available for Medicare we cannot afford a prescription drug program, it will take two-thirds to put one back. That is the flaw in the gentleman's reasoning.

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

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, apparently the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner) wants to reciprocate the lack of confidence the American people have in Congress by having a congressional expression of lack of confidence in the majority of the people. But I want to talk about prescription drugs.

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, I am glad that the gentleman is being consistent. He is not only being consistent, he is being unique, because while it is encouraging to some, I thought increasing the gasoline tax was a useful thing to do to help us reduce the deficit in a socially responsible way, the Committee on the Judiciary does not have jurisdiction over it. I will say as I read the Republican program for the year, with $1.6 trillion worth of tax reduction, they could not find room in there to reduce the gasoline tax. So the Republicans did not think it was a good idea to raise the gasoline tax in 1993, but now that they have complete control over both Houses of Congress and the White House, they are leaving it alone. They have decided, apparently, on second thought, that it was not such a bad idea after all. Regarding the taxes that people pay on their Social Security benefits, including those that Ronald Reagan asked us to pass in 1983, Ronald Reagan said, if one is making $25,000 a year or more, we are going to tax 50 percent of your Social Security benefits. That is not a huge amount of money, but that is what Ronald Reagan said. I voted against that bill. Many of my Republican colleagues who are still here voted for it; some Democrats voted for it as well. I had heard that denounced until the Republicans had the power to do something about it, and that is another one which has grown on them. This is not a debate as to what the level of taxation ought to be; it is a debate about democratic procedures. The Senate, as we know, is not majoritarian. The House is. By Supreme Court decision, the United States House of Representatives represents population very, very closely. What the Republicans are saying is this: we cannot trust the people elected by a majority of the House of Representatives to make this decision, because we do not think they will get it right. Therefore, we will change the Constitution to make it a nonmajoritarian decision as to what level of public expenditure there will be. Yes, there are two competing sets of needs. There are private needs, best settled by people having money in their own pocket; there are public needs, environmental cleanup, public safety, some others which can only be dealt with if we spend the money together. They are both needs of the people. Some are best done individually, some done together. What we have today is an effort to bias the decisionmaking process, because the Republican Party does not have any confidence in the people, apparently thinks that Ronald Reagan was wrong on the several occasions when he asked for tax increases, George Bush was wrong when he asked for tax increases. The point is this: no one today, given our economy, no one is pushing for tax increases. On the other hand, to say that for all time it should not be a majority decision, but that this decision will have to be made by an extraordinary majority so that a minority can block the decision of a majority of the American people, 40 percent can stop 60 percent from going forward, is bad constitutional government and an unfortunate expression of a lack of confidence in the American people.

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

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, I would say parenthetically I guess the gentleman has decided to reciprocate.

Mr. FRANK. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, on April 17, one of the leading educational institutions in America, Boston College, will honor Dr. Francis B. Campanella as he prepares to retire this year from his job as Executive Vice President. Dr. Campanella has been an extraordinary asset not just to Boston College, but to the Greater Boston community, and to higher education in America through his extraordinarily creative and diligent work at Boston College. Last September, David Warsh appropriately described Dr. Campanella's work in an excellent article in the Boston Globe. I am delighted to have this chance to join in honoring this very distinguished educational leader on the occasion of his well earned second retirement, and I ask that Mr. Warsh's column about him be printed here as an example of what commitment at its best means to our broader community. [From the Boston Globe, Sept. 12, 2000] The Hero of Chestnut Hill (By David Warsh) Anyone strolling across the densely built and sparkling campus of Boston College would find it hard to believe that there was a time when the school was nearly bankrupt. Yet in the early 1970s, Boston College came very close to failing. The school had run major deficits for five years in a row. Its net worth was negative. Its endowment was a paltry $5 million. BC had a sympathetic banker in Waltham, Giles Mosher. But only by temporarily dipping into the pension fund for Jesuit professors was the administration able to keep doors open from year to year. In a memorable report, economist Edward Kane warned the faculty that BC soon might find that its (then) spacious campus had become the University of Massachusetts at Chestnut Hill. It was about that time that the trustees hired Donald Monan, S.J. Within a year Monan persuaded professor Frank B. Campanella to leave the faculty where he had been teaching finance and take over the school's internal management instead. The rest is history. Boston College took off like a rocket and the University of Massachusetts built its new campus at Columbia Point. Last week Campanella, 64, said he would return to teaching at the end of the current academic year. That $5 million endowment has grown to $1.1 billion, the 35th largest in the country. (In contrast, Boston University says the market value of its endowment currently is about $980 million.) Faculty salaries, which in 1973 had been at the 50th percentile of category I institutions, are in the 90th percentile. Undergraduate applications, which had totaled 8,400, last year were 21,000 for 2,100 places--making BC the fifth most heavily applied-to university in the country. And on the 1991 list of BC's top 12 application overlaps-- meaning those schools to which a prospective BC student also had applied--the names of Fairfield University, Providence University, and UMass had been elbowed off by 1997 by Harvard, Penn, and Brown. Campanella was a logical, if not an obvious choice for executive vice president. He had been raised in Jamaica Plain, then graduated from Boston College High School in 1954. After earning an engineering degree at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and serving three years as a Marine Corps lieutenant he worked for five years in the construction industry. Low margins and chronic uncertainty led him to retool as a finance professor, beginning as a night school MBA at Babson College, then as a doctor of business administration at Harvard Business School. (He tested Harry Markowitz's portfolio theory for his dissertation; Rober Glauber was his supervisor). He had been teaching for three years when Monan took him by the arm in 1973. He had the confidence of the faculty. Campanella's strategy from the first was to run a surplus. He established a depreciation account--a standard business practice but among the first in the nation at a university-- which freed up cash for investment. Then he set out to build the college's balance sheet. He borrowed as much money as possible, taking advantage of the bargain rates available to tax-exempt institutions. He used it for bricks and mortar, budgeting debt service as an expense. With the physical plant growing, he lobbied the faculty to increase enrollment, and plowed the growing surpluses into endowment. He invested aggressively as well. Then came ``enrollment management,'' a set of yield management practices more or less invented in education at BC. The offices of admissions and financial aid were combined, making it possible to purposefully compete with other institutions on price. BC's applications pool broadened to include Texas, California, the Midwest. Retention became part of the picture as well. Campanella gradually attracted national attention. Campanella retired for the first time in 1991. It didn't take. In 1994, the trustees asked him to come back. He stayed long enough to get new BC president William Leahy, S.J. settled in his job. ``He's a man who understood the world of higher education, the world of business too,'' Leahy said. ``He'll be a very difficult man to replace.''

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. It was MIT that was the real hero of this, and to whom I think credit should be given.

Mr. FRANK. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK. Madam Speaker, I thank the ranking member for yielding me this time. I want to express my appreciation to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Smith) for moving on this so expeditiously and to the chairman of the committee. For people to understand this, briefly, we had a situation in which the Ivy League schools, MIT and a few others, formed what they called the overlap group. The purpose was, given that they have limited resources to give out in scholarships, and obviously there is not an infinite amount of money for universities, even wealthy ones, to give out scholarships, they wanted to avoid the situation where they competed for desirable students who were not financially in great distress, because that would have taken money away from the pool available to help young people go to school who might not otherwise be able to. Many of these schools strive to achieve what they call a needs-blind admission policy, or at least they used to the last time I talked. Maybe there is a new euphemism. But what it meant was that they strove to admit young men and women based on their ability to do the work of that school, and then, having admitted them, endeavored to make sure they could afford it financially by some package of financial aid from the university itself, loans, work study, Federal aid, et cetera. The overlap group was an effort to maximize the resources that could go to the students in need, and I regard that as one of the most socially responsible things universities did. The Justice Department challenged it. Particular credit, in my judgment, goes to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which declined to go along. Some of the other colleges thought, oh, well, the Justice Department is coming after us, we better just drop this. MIT, to its credit, said, no, we will go to court and litigate this. During the litigation all parties then agreed to a settlement, and essentially this is the legislation that embodies the settlement, which allows some of what they used to do. It does not allow it all. If it were up to me, I would have restored totally what they were able to do. This is not a complete restoration of the overlap group, but it is a substantial restoration of their legal authority to be socially responsible. We are not talking now about government money, now, but their private funds. What this does is allow them to try better to target the private scholarship money available to them so that it goes to help bright students who are capable of doing the work at these first-rate universities, but unable to finance it and attend the universities. I think that is a goal all of us in this Chamber agree with, and I am, therefore, glad to be in support of this legislation.

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I always like to congratulate those who have seen the error of their ways, and the Republican Party is entitled to that on several counts in this bill. In the first place, the gentleman from Alabama approached me. We talked privately and publicly. He said that they have this terrible need in Alabama, and the local communities cannot afford to do it. The local communities, given the nature of some of the jurisdictions, do not have the financial ability to do it, and here is this important lifesaving goal. This is not a matter of interstate commerce. We are not talking about something that transcends State lines. We are talking about providing physical protection for residents of vulnerable structures in particular localities. It is a very local business. But because the local communities either do not want to or cannot easily raise the revenues, they come to whom? The Federal Government. This is a request that local communities be allowed to use Federal funds collected by Federal taxes for local purposes. I am all for it. I welcome my Republican colleagues to the recognition of the point that in this one country of ours we have an obligation to help. Some people used to believe in something they called States rights and States responsibilities. Some people used to argue against the Federal Government. Ronald Reagan, who was inaugurated the year I came to Congress, and those were not causally related, said, ``The Federal Government is not the answer to our problems. It is the problem.'' Today we have a Republican recognition that the Federal Government must be part of the answer to a problem, that absent Federal revenues, local communities cannot make it on their own. I think that is a very wise evolution on the part of my conservative friends. I congratulate them for it. I will point out the gentlewoman from Florida knew this earlier. She did not have to be convinced.

Mr. FRANK. It is an endorsement of the legislation if the gentleman would address, and I have never objected to the legislation, if he addresses the issue that I have about giving public money through the communities to a private owner who then owns the structure and has unrestricted control of it. That is what concerns me.

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

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to say I guess this is apparently a temporary bill, because the gentleman from Alabama, the author of the bill, said that we needed this because Federal taxes were too high, although the rates are not higher than they were 20 years ago when Ronald Reagan reduced them. We put them part of the way back up. But the Republican Party apparently is about to put taxes at what it thinks is the appropriate level. In fact, that is why we are doing this bill today. We are doing this bill today so they can corral enough Republicans to be here and stay in the Committee on Ways and Means and vote for another part of the tax cut. That is the reason it is on the floor today. So the gentleman from Alabama said you need CDBG because Federal taxes are too high. So I assume that once they get their tax cut through at the level they have decided, if they are able to do it, that we will then see the demise of CDBG, because once we have cut taxes back to what the Republican Party thinks is the appropriate level, we will not need the CDBG program. Many of us have long suspected that that was the plan. When we look at their approach to the Federal budget, it occurred to us that when you enact the level of tax reduction they are talking about, then many current Federal programs we will no longer be able to afford. So I think what the gentleman has given us is the philosophical rationale, first come the tax cuts, then will come the elimination of programs such as CDBG.

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from New York (Mr. LaFalce), the ranking member of the full committee. Mr. LaFALCE. Mr. Chairman, I would like to put the entire debate on this bill in some perspective. The gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus) has introduced a very good-faith effort to deal with a real problem. At every single Congress, at the beginning of the Congress, especially when you have a new administration, you run into a difficulty. You want the committee to work; and unfortunately, there is not that much legislation that has gone through the committee process, so you try to create filler legislation on the floor. There is a difficulty, however. Very frequently the leadership will bring to the floor exclusively bills that have been principally sponsored by Members of their own party. They will not look at all the bills that have been principally sponsored by Members of the opposition party. Secondly, sometimes they go as far as totally bypassing every single procedure that is required by the rules of the House, that is, subcommittee hearing and markup, full committee hearing and markup, et cetera. Sometimes they bypass that in cooperation and consultation with the minority; sometimes they just bypass the minority and have no prior consultation and concurrence. That is what happened here. There was nothing. They needed filler, they went to a Republican chiefly sponsored bill and said we have to bring something to the floor, let us bring it up, and forget about the fact that there was no hearing, forget about the fact there was no markup, and forget about the fact that you did not discuss it with the Democrats; we will just bring it to the floor. That is what we objected to, not all that strenuously. We had one motion to adjourn, and that was it, just to make the point. We were willing to go on. It was the Republicans that then called for the vote on the rule. Why? Because they wanted to delay, because they have got committee meetings going on right now, the Committee on Ways and Means, for example; and they wanted more filler. So they were the ones that engaged in the dilatory tactics on that. With respect to this bill, this can be a very good bill, a bill we can support. I, for one though, have two, and, depending upon the disposition of those two, possibly three amendments. For example, a State or locality right now is required to use 70 percent of its CDBG funds for the support of activities that benefit persons of low and moderate income. That means that States and localities could use 30 percent for affluents, if they wanted to. Under this bill, the monies could be used for a for-profit owner of a manufactured housing development for higher-income individuals, or even in resort properties. So I think we need to deal with that, and I have an amendment that I think should be accepted that deals with that, that says it should only be used in a neighborhood consisting predominantly of persons of low and moderate income. Secondly, who are we going to help? Is it just going to be the individuals who live within this complex? Is it going to be exclusively for them, even though it should be a shelter for the public? We could deal with that, and I have an amendment that would deal with that. It would say they may not be made available for use on an exclusive basis, but shall generally serve the residents of the local area. If those two amendments are accepted, I would be able to support the bill. If they are not, I have a third amendment.

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Chairman, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. LaFalce), the ranking member of the Committee on Financial Services, for the first time in the consideration of this bill. Since there has been no committee deliberations, this is the first opportunity the gentleman from New York (Mr. LaFalce), the ranking member of the Committee on Financial Services, gets to deliberate on the bill.

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, I am disappointed that the gentleman from Alabama would suggest that we were trying to delay this. The majority has been in control of this Congress last year; this year. This could have been brought to our subcommittee and our committee at any time. No one is trying to delay this. The suggestion that the orderly process of subcommittee and committee is somehow a delay is nonsense. Let us talk about why this bill is really up today. We ought to keep to an unavoidable minimum the times when people say things that are unlikely to be believed. We are not here because we expect a tornado tomorrow. If in fact this was important, we could have had the hearing last week, 2 weeks ago. This bill could have been on the floor today after a subcommittee and committee process. We offered that to the gentleman from Alabama. Indeed, to his credit when I talked to him on Monday and said we just have a couple of questions about the bill, he said, let us pull it. But he was overruled by his leadership. Why? Because last night the Republican schedule called for the budget to be voted out, and today the Republican schedule calls for a vote on taxes. Now, we are not working very hard on anything that is not part of the President's agenda. Apparently, we are on the limited attention span approach. The people can only keep track of one or two things at a time, so let us only do one or two things at a time. The problem is that when we finished this hard- working Congress' business yesterday, at about noon, maybe it was 1 o'clock, I should not exaggerate, Members would have left. There was nothing to keep them for the week. And the Republican leadership was afraid they would not have the quorum they needed to put through the budget last night and to put through the tax bill today. So that is why this bill is on the floor today and everybody knows that, despite what they say. Of course, it is important for us to provide help, but there is another issue I want to raise. If it so important to provide help, as I believe it is to these people living in the mobile home parks, why are we doing it without adding a penny to the pot from which it comes? That is part of the problem the gentlewoman from Florida and I have. We are expanding more and more the purposes of CDBG while providing CDBG with less and less. The whole Community Development Block Grant money now, thanks to the other party, has less money in its authorization and appropriation than it had years ago. I would love to do this, but I would like to do it with an expansion of the money so that protecting these people who ought to be protected does not come at the expense of other important purposes. And then there is one substantive question. This bill does not just say cover manufactured housing, which is a very important resource for low-income people in order to be better protected than they are, it says that the entity getting the Federal funds can give them to a for- profit entity, who presumably could then own the shelter. The gentleman from Alabama conjured up the favorite device here, the ubiquitous poor widow. I sometimes think that poor widows must own about 97 percent of America, given the frequency with which they are the justification for various grants of money to private owners. If in fact we are talking about providing special assistance to lower income owners, let us put that in the bill. That is why you have subcommittees. That is why you have committees. That is why you legislate. But, as I read this bill, nothing would prevent a community from helping to build a shelter for a wealthy owner of second-home manufactured housing which could then be part of that property and sold. Maybe I am wrong, and maybe that is not the case. I do not know that because we have not had a chance to discuss it in the kind of forum we ought to have. That is the issue here. For scheduling purposes, the Republican leadership took a bill that should not have been controversial, that has got a very laudable goal, as the gentleman from Alabama points out, and that could have been refined in subcommittee and committee. I have to say one other thing that bothers me and the gentlewoman from Florida and the gentleman from New York. They would not do this to a banking bill. They would not do this to the securities industry. Community Development Block Grants is a disfavored program under this congressional regime. It is about poor people's needs, and poor people's needs are not often given that same consideration. It is not an accident that the committee that used to be the Committee on Banking and Urban Affairs is now just the Committee on Financial Services. Not only did the title disappear but so did some of the concerns. We have real concerns about the ability of the CDBG program to meet all of its needs. When you continually add in new functions and do not give it any money but in fact reduce money, you cause stresses. The goal of providing shelters for people in manufactured housing is wholly noncontroversial, and we would be glad to work on it. We would have been glad to work on it a month ago. This bill could have been brought up before that. We had a hearing in the subcommittee on the FHA. It was a very good hearing that the Chair called. I was glad that she did. But we could have used that time for this. I should say, by the way, it does not occur to me that this decision was made anywhere but at the Republican leadership. I do not think we have an intracommittee problem here. We have a problem that the Republican leadership had a need to keep the Members here. They could not ground the planes and they could not force people to stay, so they put a bill on the floor. That is our method of house arrest. That is what we have got. It is a shame that this bill is being used for that purpose.