Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK

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

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Chairman, I had consulted with the Parliamentarian. Mr. Chairman, this is not a general increase in the authorization. This is an authorization of $50 million specifically for the purposes authorized in the bill. It is a grant of money specific to the particular bill. The point is one we have already addressed. Many of us agree with the gentleman from Alabama that this is an important purpose. With the changes that the gentleman from New York talked about, we are very much in support of it. I agree and have worked long and hard to protect people who live in manufactured housing. The problem is that absent this amendment and subsequent action, we would hope, by the Committee on Appropriations, communities will be faced with a choice. They can accommodate this particular authority to build the shelters only by reducing activities in which they are currently engaged. Indeed, this would set aside $50 million only for these activities so that this particular level of activity would be in some ways protected. It is a lifesaving activity. If we believe that there is a very broad activity, then it seems to me incumbent upon us to fund it fully and not put communities to the choice. It is one thing when we are creating a brand new program; it is another when we are funding an already existing program. With existing programs in many areas, there tend to be existing funding patterns. So that if a new purpose is now allowed to them to take advantage of this new purpose, they may face the need to defund some other purpose, because their money has tended to be committed. That is not true in every area, but I do think in ongoing programs we are aware that there is very often a set of expectations that people have, such as these groups have been funded, et cetera. I do not think we ought to say to the local communities, okay, you must, if you are going to take advantage of this, stop doing something you are now doing; I think instead we ought to say, here is additional money for that purpose, and that is what this amendment does. This amendment authorizes additional money for this important purpose. It would seem to me odd if we were to talk about how important this lifesaving function is and not be prepared to provide communities with the money to make sure that they were taking advantage of it without them having to make the kind of difficult choices that they would otherwise have to make. I say this in particular because what many of us have found is, and again, I admire the gentleman's desire to protect people in manufactured housing; not coming from an area where tornadoes have been a problem, this particular aspect had not been one that is foremost in my mind, but I think they deserve protection; but what we found is that in some areas, people who live in manufactured housing are not fully respected in the political process. They are sometimes seen as a small minority, sometimes are seen as isolated within the community, and the danger here is that if we simply submit this into the regular Community Development Block Grant process, in communities where there is an ongoing set of claimants, the chances that the people who live in manufactured housing will be able to get the full benefit of this may not be great. So the virtue of this amendment is that it makes sure that in those areas where there is vulnerable manufactured housing, there is a very high chance that the people will get the benefit of the program and they will not be put in a political conflict with other claimants in that community, and it addresses the issue raised by the gentlewoman from Florida who is not now with us and who has been a great champion of this; namely, making sure that as we increase the purposes for which CDBG is put, we do not dilute the pot. I would hope this is a case that will be a precedent that would say, as we add to the functions of CDBG, we should add to the money that is available to perform them.

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

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Chairman, the rules of the House do not permit us to address people who are not present on the floor, so I would just take this opportunity to express my best wishes to the absent chairman of the full committee. It is not usual for a committee, in my experience, to consider a bill in the complete absence of the chairman of the full committee. I hope all is well with him.

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to simply say to the gentleman from Alabama, who began by saying that our complaints about the process were wrong because the bill had been introduced in January and referred to the committee, that the committee should then have had a hearing. The gentleman is a member of the committee. He should have asked for one. We could have had this out earlier. The Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity has had one hearing. I think we could have found the time. So the notion that because the bill was introduced in January, that that somehow justifies totally bypassing the process, seems to be wrong. And in fairness to the committee, it is not my impression the committee was pressed to have a hearing. Again, let us be clear. The only reason this bill is on the floor today is because it meets the needs of the majority's scheduling concerns so they could keep Members in town. It has nothing to do with anything else, and that is an improper way to go about things. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Meek), one of the great defenders of the true purposes of the Community Development Block Grant program.

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley).

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Shows).

Mr. FRANK. I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida.

Mr. FRANK. I would say to the gentlewoman it is not even acquiring the private land. What I understand in this bill, and this is the question I would have raised if we had had the possibility to do it during subcommittee and committee, the question would have been, the bill appears to say that public money, Federal money, given to the communities, can then by the communities in turn be given to a private owner to build a shelter on his or her private land which he or she would then own, with no provisions about recapturing anything. That does trouble me. That is what we would have addressed. We would be all in favor of building the shelters. The question is, should you provide the public money, the Federal money, to local private owners so they can own it? Should you do that without some further restriction? I want to get back to the other point about government. It illustrates a Republican dilemma. My Republican friends are against government in general. They are just in favor of everything government does. The government is a bad thing. The Federal Government is a bad thing. But Federal funds should go to local communities to build shelters. Now, I agree with that. The problem is they cannot continuously denounce the whole and inflate the parts. It does not work. But this is what we have. We have a Republican proposal now to expand the uses of Federal funds so that local communities in dealing with local problems can have more Federal money. I am all for that. But let us not think this only applies when you have a particular problem in your own area. There is another area where I want to talk about. I mentioned previously to our colleague, the gentleman from Texas, whose father, the gentleman from Texas, used to chair this committee back when we were allowed to refer to it as the Housing Committee in part. He was a great crusader to improve the safety of manufactured housing. Last year, we had a debate over improving the safety of manufactured housing. Frankly, years ago I thought some people were going to sue the distinguished gentleman from San Antonio, the former chairman of the Banking Committee, for defamation because he suggested that there was a particular danger with manufactured housing as it was then built with regard to storms, hurricanes and tornadoes. What do we have now? A recognition on the part of my Republican friends that manufactured housing is particularly vulnerable to tornadoes. Once again, we have known that, and many of us have been trying to fight it. Yes, the people who live in manufactured housing have been ill- treated. These are generally people of limited income, though not entirely. Many of them are retired people trying to live prudently on a reasonable retirement income. They deserve much better treatment in a number of ways. They deserve better treatment here. They deserve better consumer protections. Many of them deserve at the State level better protection against owners who simply decide to throw them out and they have no protection. They deserve better treatment in getting mortgages, when in the past their homes were treated as if they were automobile loans rather than housing loans. There is a lot that should be done for them. That includes the shelters. But there is this issue, as the gentlewoman from Florida raised, does it make sense to just give this money to the private owner in a relatively unrestricted way? We will address some of that with amendments. There is one other issue where the Republicans, having learned something, deserve credit. I want to again give credit where credit is due. In 1993, then President Clinton proposed a countercyclical program to deal with what he believed then was a recession. It turns out the economy was doing better than he thought. But one of the things he proposed was an increase in spending through the Community Development Block Grant program. I urge Members and others to go back to the Congressional Record of those days and read the denunciation of the Community Development Block Grant program as a big slush fund, as pork- barrel spending. The very aspects of that program which the gentleman from Alabama has hailed today were the basis for an attack on that program in 1993. The argument from the Republicans was, oh, this is terrible, these communities will just do all kinds of things with it, unsupervised. We now have a recognition of the value of the CDBG program. We have a recognition of the value of using Federal funds to do things that Thomas Jefferson might have thought were of local concern. The Republican Party has gone beyond Thomas Jefferson most of the time in terms of what the right function ought to be, but it is an incomplete lesson. They cannot continue to advocate increased Federal funding for particular programs and then consistently cut Federal programs elsewhere. The gentleman from Alabama and his colleague, the other gentleman from Alabama, correctly pointed out local communities will have the choice. They will be able to build the tornado shelters. In many cases, that is a good choice. But at present they will be able to do that at the cost of doing something about housing or doing something about a playground in a low-income area or doing something about other things. Why do we force them to give up the one to do the other? If this is a new thing they ought to be doing more of, maybe we ought to be increasing the funding for it. In fact, Community Development Block Grants, unrestricted ones, have gone down. The gentleman referred to some increased overall amounts, but those increased overall amounts tended to be in terms of some very specific projects. Members differed about the value of those specific projects. But the specific projects were not available for local communities to deal with. As we add to the purposes, we are, I think, disserving ourselves if we do not also add to the money. I want to again just return to the procedural point. The gentleman from Alabama again noted this bill was introduced in January, he said, and, therefore, we on the minority side should not be upset that it came to the floor in March. We do not set the hearing schedule. We do not set the markup schedule. If it was introduced in January, all the more reason to have done something about it. By the way, it was introduced in January and substantially rewritten last week, probably after consultation with HUD. I think it is a good idea to consult with HUD. I think it is a good idea, having filed the bill, to talk to HUD about it, but should the committee not have something to say about it? This bill was, in fact, revised. That is a good thing. The bad thing is leaving the committee out of the revision process. We will address some of these things in amendments, yes. I think we should be providing tornado shelters for people in manufactured housing. We should be enhancing their safety. We should be enhancing their ability to get mortgages on their homes. We should be increasing the consumer protections they have at both the State and the Federal level. I am for all those things, and with a couple of changes I would enthusiastically support this bill, but I hope that the next time we have something like this, instead of introducing it in January and waiting 2\1/2\ months and then bringing it to the floor without any committee process, we show people that we do care about their concerns and we care about their concerns enough to do it in the right way. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, on Saturday, March 10, an editorial in the Sun Chronicle, published in Attleboro, Massachusetts, accurately analyzed one of the major causes for the difficulties we are facing in providing decent nursing home care. As the editorial notes, ``the main problem can be traced back the Balanced Budget Act of 1997.'' As the Sun Chronicle editorial writers note, today, ``patients sit neglected in nursing homes, . . . meanwhile the federal and state governments-- both enjoying budget surpluses--pay the nursing homes less than it costs to take care of patients.'' It is disgraceful in this wealthy nation for us to allow this situation to continue. We allocate far too little of our great wealth to pay the hard working people who provide essential nursing home services, and the consequence is that we do not provide these services nearly as well as we should. I was delighted to read this forceful, thoughtful, persuasive editorial in the Sun Chronicle and I ask that it be shared here. [From the Sun Chronicle, Mar. 10, 2001] Nursing Home Neglect in an Age of Surpluses What's wrong with this picture? Patients sit neglected in nursing homes, wounds soaking through bandages, food growing cold before feeding help arrives, sheets smelling of urine. Administrators can't fill aide positions and nurses leave for higher-paying jobs. Meanwhile, the federal and state governments--both enjoying budget surpluses--pay the nursing homes less than it costs to take care of patients. This fractured picture is all too real, as the Sun Chronicle's Rick Thurmond reported in last Sunday's edition. The only thing that explains this unconscionable situation is politics--and only politics can fix it. The main problem can be traced back to the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, enacted to counteract federal deficits and eventually bring the budget into balance. Thanks to the surging economy, that day arrived far sooner than expected, and now such a big surplus is projected that a major tax cut is supported by both parties. The Medicare cuts in the Balanced Budget Act, while softened last fall, continue--placing nursing home companies in an impossible position. The government pays for 80 percent of nursing home patients. In Massachusetts, Medicaid provides about $130 a day for patients, while the costs are about $150. The result is such low salaries that the homes have difficulty keeping aides and professionals alike, with a direct impact on patient care and comfort. But even keeping salaries low isn't doing it for nursing homes. A number have closed, including Sheldonville Nursing Home in Wrentham and Van Dora Nursing Home in Foxboro. One- fourth of the state's nursing homes face bankruptcy. Obviously, the answer is money, and the money is there. The question is whether it will be a priority. Local congressman James McGovern and Barney Frank voted against the Balanced Budget Act and have fought to restore Medicare cuts. We hope the next federal budget, drawing on the burgeoning surplus, will do more for a vulnerable elderly population than have recent budgets. At the state level, a small step has been taken in approval of two years of wage supplements for nursing home workers. Another state bill has been introduced to boost nursing home reimbursements, but the sponsor has expressed concern that the state income tax cut approved by voters last year will make funds hard to come by. Obviously, the state tax cut and the coming federal tax cut will increase competition for funding but they should not prevent it. The sorry picture of nursing home care today can be improved. The means are there. What's needed is the will.

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, as we in Congress and in the Executive Branch intensify our efforts better to support public education in this country, we should be sure to continue to focus on teachers as the central element in this effort. The dedicated men and women who have entered the teaching profession over the years deserve far better treatment than we have given them. Too often they are inadequately compensated, and given too little to work with in the way of resources. Despite that, large numbers of talented, intelligent, creative individuals have continued to go into the teaching profession because of their love of learning and their concern for young people. In June, one individual who is an excellent example of this tradition will be retiring. Patricia Cullen is a sixth grade teacher at the Wareham Middle School in Wareham, Massachusetts and she will be enjoying a well deserved retirement after 33 years of dedicated teaching at the end of this year. In the words of Judith Bruno of the Wareham Middle School staff, speaking on behalf of the faculty and staff of the school, ``Mrs. Cullen is a dedicated, caring and loving teacher to all of her students. She focuses on her student's strengths and positive attributes instead of the negatives. Pat helps her students to strive, to achieve, and to be successful in their endeavors. All her students love and respect her. The faculty and staff have the same feelings for her and trust me when I say we have mixed emotions about her leaving. We are happy for the new chapter beginning in her life but saddened to see her leave us.'' Ms. Bruno continues, ``Mrs. Cullen is truly a remarkable woman and a credit to the teaching profession. Pat Cullen truly personifies what a teacher should be.'' Mr. Speaker, I am deeply committed to providing more resources at the federal level so that Patricia Cullen, her colleagues, and those who will join this profession can do an even better job than they have been doing. But in addition to the material resources which we owe these dedicated public servants, we owe them better recognition as well for the job they do in often difficult circumstances. I am delighted to join Patricia Cullen's students and colleagues in recognizing her excellent work, and wishing her well.

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, one of the most thoughtful analysts of the appropriate level for American military spending is Lawrence Korb, a former high ranking Defense Department official in the administration of President Reagan. Unlike many others who served in the Reagan administration and subsequently, Lawrence Korb does not believe that conservatives ought to suspend their skepticism about public spending simply because the requests come from the Pentagon. He has consistently applied his experience with defense matters, his keen intelligence and his knowledge of government to point out that we could fully defend our legitimate interests with a military budget smaller than the current one. Along with Dr. Korb, I am pleased that President Bush is refusing to be pressured into asking for billions of dollars in increased military spending before he and his staff have a chance to study the important issues that are raised by Dr. Korb and others. But I also agree with Dr. Korb that an accurate analysis of the defense budget requires discarding some of the points which President Bush himself made during the campaign. In a recent article, Lawrence Korb set forward some of the principles that ought to guide such an investigation of our true defense spending needs. Mr. Speaker, I disagree with Mr. Korb's first point, to some extent substantively, and also in the way in which he has phrased it. The fact that most military people aren't on food stamps does not mean that it is acceptable for even a small number of them to be in that situation. We owe the men and women who volunteer to face danger on our behalf better than this, and I am very supportive of proposals to raise the pay levels. Given the disruption of their lives and the danger they face, I do believe that our military personnel are underpaid. But while I disagree with Dr. Korb's first point, I am an enthusiastic believer in the rest of his essay. I was particularly pleased when he noted the absurdity of trying to fix the relevant amount to spend on defense simply by looking at the percentage which a defense budget represents of the gross domestic product. According to this, if we have significant economic progress, we are required to increase military spending even if the threats against which we deploy our military have deceased. Mindlessness has never been on more graphic display. Lawrence Korb's clear thinking is a very welcome antidote to the efforts being made by some to panic us into busting the budget on behalf of unnecessary military spending. I ask that his thoughtful article be reprinted here. [From the Los Angeles Times, Mar. 11, 2001] Bush's First Battle: His Own Military Myths (By Lawrence J. Korb) New York.--His campaign rhetoric notwithstanding, President George W. Bush has taken a good first step by not increasing the defense budget he inherited from President Bill Clinton until he completes a top-down review of strategy. Such a review will come to naught, however, if the new president does not reject the six oversimplifications about the state of our armed forces that he embraced repeatedly during the campaign. Military people are not overworked and underpaid and, despite campaign rhetoric, most aren't on food stamps. During the 1990s, an average of 40,000 military people were deployed in various ``operations other than war.'' This represents less than 3% of the active force and less than 2% of the total force, counting reserves. A greater percentage of the active force was stationed in the United States than during the 1980s. Certain units like Army civil affairs battalions, which help restore order in foreign countries torn apart by civil wars, or Air Force search and rescue units were over- utilized. But that is a management problem, not a revenue problem. As for pay, most men and women in the armed services make more than 75% of their civilian counterparts. And, if the compensation levels of military people were adjusted to reflect the fair market value of their housing allowances, fewer than 1% would be eligible for food stamps. The problem is that the military still uses an anachronistic ``one size fits all'' pay system that rewards longevity rather than performance. Also, the military employs a deferred-benefit retirement system that costs twice as much as a deferred-contribution plan, while providing the wrong incentives for retaining the right people for the appropriate length of time. For example, to justify the training investment, pilots need to be retained for 13 years, but infantrymen only five. Yet, no military person is vested in retirement until he or she serves 20 years. The military does not need to be rebuilt; it needs to be transformed. In the 1990s, the Pentagon invested more than $1 trillion in developing and procuring new weapons. But much of it was wasted on Cold War relics--$200-million fighter planes, $6-billion aircraft carriers, $2-billion submarines, $400-million artillery pieces--that will be of little use in the conflicts of the 21st century. The military is more than prepared to fight two wars. In fact, it is becoming more prepared each day as the military power of the likely opponents in these two conflicts, Iraq and North Korea, dwindles. Yet, while the capability of these states declines, the Pentagon has been increasing its estimates of the forces necessary to defeat these enemies. Moreover, the necessity of maintaining the capability to fight two wars simultaneously defies logic and history. During the Korea, Vietnam and Persian Gulf conflicts, no other nation took advantage of the situation by threatening U.S. interests elsewhere. Calculating the size of the defense budget by measuring it against the gross domestic product is nonsensical. Yes, the U.S. spends a smaller portion of GDP on defense than it did during the Cold War, but the U.S. economy has grown substantially since the collapse of the Soviet Union while spending by adversaries has markedly declined. Even counting inflation, the $325-billion defense budget--which includes the military portion of the Energy Department budget--that Bush inherits from Clinton is about 95% of what this nation spent on average to win the Cold War. In fact, the last Clinton defense budget is higher than the budget that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld prepared for the outgoing Ford administration 25 years ago, at the height of the Cold War. Carrying out peacekeeping missions, like Bosnia and Kosovo, is not undermining readiness. During the 1990s, peacekeeping operations accounted for less than 2% of Pentagon spending, and readiness spending per capita was more than 10% higher in the 1990s than in the 1980s. In order to meet their recruiting goals, the armed forces have not lowered their quality standards below those of the Reagan years. The force that Bush inherits from Clinton has a higher percentage of quality recruits--that is, high school graduates and individuals scoring average or above on the armed forces' qualification test--than at any time during the Reagan years. Most of the retention problems that the services are having are self-inflicted. For example, 80% of the pilot shortage in the Navy and Air Force is caused by the fact that, in the early 1990s, the military made a serious mistake by reducing the number of pilots it trained. Likewise, the shortage of people on Navy ships is because the people are not in the right place. If Bush and his national security team abandon these myths, they will have a much better chance of developing a coherent defense program--and may even be able to cut defense spending to an appropriate level.

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, a very special person, Fay Cohen, is being honored by her friends and colleagues on the occasion of her retirement as aide to Massachusetts State Senator Cynthia Creem. Fay Cohen is special in many ways. She is a woman who has successfully balanced her professional life with years of volunteering for the causes she believed in. She is, indeed, a person with a special commitment to the democratic ideals we all espouse. Fay Cohen served her community as an elected official on the Newton, Massachusetts Board of Aldermen. She was a tireless campaigner for the Massachusetts Democratic Party, and for political candidates who went on to serve both the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the United States Congress. Senator Edward Kennedy, Senator John Kerry, former Congressman Robert Drinan, Governor Michael Dukakis, State Senator Lois Pines and I have all been the recipients of Fay Cohen's wisdom, dedication and hard work. Fay Cohen may be retiring from her professional career, but I know that I and others who have relied on Fay's political astuteness will never let her retire from being one of our cherished activists.

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, in an area where we talk about our military budgets in almost unbounded terms--whether it's the hundreds of billions of dollars of accounting entries in Pentagon books that can't be supported, or the multiple billions of dollars that Congress added to the Pentagon's coffers in recent years beyond what the administration requested--it's easy to lose any sense of scale about this spending or the sacrifices we make for such largess. Therefore, I submit into the Record the following piece by John Isaacs, President of the Council for a Livable World and one the most thoughtful voices in America on the subject of rational national security spending. Pentagon Upset With $14 Billion Boost (By John Isaacs) President George W. Bush's recent decision to use the Clinton Administration's defense budget request for fiscal 2002 has set off a wave of criticism. Big defense spenders are angry that the $310 billion request for Department of Defense programs is only a $14 billion increase from last year's budget. Only in Washington would a $14 billion raise be considered ``paltry.'' To put it in perspective here are some comparisons: How much is 414 billion? It's more than the defense budgets of all the state of concern--Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan and Syria combined ($12.8 billion). It's greater than total federal spending on law enforcement activities including the FBI, DEA and the INS ($13.6 billion). President Bush just announced he will cut the Justice Department budget by one billion dollars. It's equal to the entire budget of the U.S. Treasury Department. It's more than the federal government spends on higher education ($13.8 billion). It's almost as much as the non-military international affairs budget ($15 billion). It's equal to all federal government expenditures on water resources, conservation and land management, and recreational resources combined ($14.3 billion). It's greater than the Gross Domestic Products of 40 individual nations including: Azerbaijan, Armenia, Angola, Estonia, Chad, Cambodia, Niger, Madagascar, Jamaica, Haiti, Trinidad & Tobago, Qatar and Papua New Guinea.

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, I join my colleague in thanking the majority leader for really speaking, I think, on behalf of the whole House in his very personal eloquent statement. We will have to be forgiven, those of us who do this as a profession, because, to be honest, we are all reacting personally in these last couple of days. Joe Moakley had enormous benefits to the country, to this institution, to the city and the State, but for us also the personal was there. We could not come into this Chamber on the worst of days, having encountered all kinds of unpleasantness, and not have our spirits uplifted by sitting with Joe. There was no way that anyone could fail in his presence to be cheered. And for that personal element, even in this time of trial for him, he has been cheering the rest of us up. Typical of this really quite extraordinary man. I also want to talk about another aspect in which he is extraordinary. He is a great stereotype breaker. One of the things we suffer from in this country is this assumption that if we are A, we cannot be B; if we are X, we cannot be Y. Joe Moakley showed us that we could be. There is a lot of talk about civility now. No one had to tell Joe Moakley that a person could be a deeply committed advocate of issues, not simply a partisan in the sense of being a Democrat but a partisan Democrat who cared a lot about what was necessary to improve the lot of those people in our society who were not going to do well on their own, no one had to tell him that someone could be deeply committed without being truculent or belligerent. No one had to tell that a passion for doing the right thing in public policy was incompatible with friendliness, and we have seen that demonstrated here. We have talked about people in whose tradition Joe Moakley was, and Tip O'Neill is the one who comes most to mind with me, because Moakley and Tip O'Neill shared something which I think is a defining thing about greatness. We throw this word around a lot; but to me, in our political system, it means among others things this: that someone can be a master of a given set of rules. Tip O'Neill and Joe Moakley were both masters of the old politics. They were both masters of politics in the old school. Joe Moakley, 50 years ago in south Boston, was beginning a very impressive career in politics as it then was. And both of them, first Tip O'Neill then Joe Moakley, showed that an individual could be a master of the old ways and welcome the new. Too often people who are good at one set of arrangements feel threatened by change. Joe Moakley was not threatened by change. He understood that being a basic Social Security-getting, job-getting Democrat at home did not mean a person could not worry about human rights abroad. Joe Moakley bridged by the greatness of his personality his commitment, his caring about individuals and humanity at large, a lot of things people have tried to pull apart. It is for that reason that we will be impoverished personally by not having his companionship here on the floor when he leaves this House, and this Nation will be impoverished by someone who did so much to try to get us to put aside artificial differences.

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, while there are many aspects of recent developments in Russia which are encouraging, especially in the economic area, there are also some very disturbing trends from the standpoint of human rights and democracy. Recently, in the Boston Globe, one of the leading American scholars focused on Russia, Marshall Goldman, wrote about the disturbing aspects of President Putin's apparent opposition to freedom of the press. As a professor of economics at Wellesley College, who is also the Associate Director of the Center for Russian Studies at Harvard University, Mr. Goldman is one of the most acute observers of what is happening in Russia and I think his very thoughtful analysis ought to be widely read by those of us who have policy making responsibilities. I submit it for the Record. Russia's Unfree Press (By Marshall I. Goldman) As the Bush administration debates its policy toward Russia, freedom of the press should be one of its major concerns. Under President Vladimir Putin the press is free only as long as it does not criticize Putin or his policies. When NTV, the television network of the media giant Media Most, refused to pull its punches, Media Most's owner, Vladimir Gusinsky, found himself in jail, and Gazprom, a company dominated by the state, began to call in loans to Media Most. Unfortunately, Putin's actions are applauded by more than 70 percent of the Russian people. They crave a strong and forceful leader; his KGB past and conditioned KGB responses are just what they seem to want after what many regard as the social, political, and economic chaos of the last decade. But what to the Russians is law and order (the ``dictatorship of the law,'' as Putin has so accurately put it) looks more and more like an old Soviet clampdown to many Western observers. There is no complaint about Putin's promises. He tells everyone he wants freedom of the press. But in the context of his KGB heritage, his notion of freedom of the press is something very different. In an interview with the Toronto Globe and Mail, he said that that press freedom excludes the ``hooliganism'' or ``uncivilized'' reporting he has to deal with in Moscow. By that he means criticism, especially of his conduct of the war in Chechnya, his belated response to the sinking of the Kursk, and the heavy-handed way in which he has pushed aside candidates for governor in regional elections if they are not to Putin's liking. He does not take well to criticism. When asked by the relatives of those lost in the Kursk why he seemed so unresponsive, Putin tried to shift the blame for the disaster onto the media barons, or at least those who had criticized him. They were the ones, he insisted, who had pressed for reduced funding for the Navy while they were building villas in Spain and France. As for their criticism of his behavior, They lie! They lie! They lie! Our Western press has provided good coverage of the dogged way Putin and his aides have tried to muscle Gusinsky out of the Media Most press conglomerate he created. But those on the Putin enemies list now include even Boris Berezovsky, originally one of Putin's most enthusiastic promoters who after the sinking of the Kursk also became a critic and thus an opponent. Gusinsky would have a hard time winning a merit badge for trustworthiness (Berezovsky shouldn't even apply), but in the late Yeltsin and Putin years, Gusinsky has earned enormous credit for his consistently objective news coverage, including a spotlight on malfeasance at the very top. More than that, he has supported his programmers when they have subjected Yeltsin and now Putin to bitter satire on Kukly, his Sunday evening prime-time puppet show. What we hear less of, though, is what is happening to individual reporters, especially those engaged in investigative work. Almost monthly now there are cases of violence and intimidation. Among those brutalized since Putin assumed power are a reporter for Radio Liberty who dared to write negative reports about the Russian Army's role in Chechnia and four reporters for Novaya Gazeta. Two of them were investigating misdeeds by the FSB (today's equivalent of the KGB), including the possibility that it rather than Chechins had blown up a series of apartment buildings. Another was pursuing reports of money-laundering by Yeltsin family members and senior staff in Switzerland. Although these journalists were very much in the public eye, they were all physically assaulted. Those working for provincial papers labor under even more pressure with less visibility. There are numerous instances where regional bosses such as the governor of Vladivostok operate as little dictators, and as a growing number of journalists have discovered, challenges are met with threats, physical intimidation, and, if need be, murder. True, freedom of the press in Russia is still less than 15 years old, and not all the country's journalists or their bosses have always used that freedom responsibly. During the 1996 election campaign, for example, the media owners, including Gusinsky conspired to denigrate or ignore every viable candidate other than Yeltsin. But attempts to muffle if not silence criticism have multiplied since Putin and his fellow KGB veterans have come to power. Criticism from any source, be it an individual journalist or a corporate entity, invites retaliation. When Media Most persisted in its criticism, Putin sat by approvingly as his subordinates sent in masked and armed tax police and prosecutors. When that didn't work, they jailed Gusinsky on charges that were later dropped, although they are seeking to extradite and jail him again, along with his treasurer, on a new set of charges. Yesterday the prosecutor general summoned Tatyana Mitkova, the anchor of NTV's evening news program, for questioning. Putin's aides are also doing all they can to prevent Gusinsky from refinancing his debt- ridden operation with Ted Turner or anyone else in or outside of the country. According to one report, Putin told one official, you deal with the shares, debts, and management and I will deal with the journalists. His goal simply is to end independent TV coverage in Russia. An uninhibited press in itself is no guarantee that a society will remain a democracy, but when it becomes inhibited, the chances that there will be such freedom all but disappear. When Western leaders meet Putin, they must insist that a warm handshake and skill at karate are not enough for Russia and Putin to qualify as a democratic member of the Big 8. To do that, Russia must have freedom of the press--a freedom determined by deeds, not mere declarations.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, we often hear tales of woe from local officials and it is important that we remain cognizant of these, so that we can act to correct policy mistakes and other circumstances that cause undue stress to the people who have the important job of administering our municipalities. But it is also important to note when as a result of cooperation among the various offices of government, we get something right. I was pleased to receive from the Mayor of New Bedford, MA, Fred Kalisz, an interesting discussion of how cooperation at all three levels has resulted in a policy involving the cleaning of New Bedford Harbor which has had beneficial environmental and economic effects, without having an excessively harsh financial impact on the citizens of that area. I submit the following instructive discussion from Mayor Kalisz into the Congressional Record. [From the City of New Bedford, Office of the Mayor] The City of New Bedford Wastewater Improvements Funding History The City of New Bedford is an old coastal community located on the South Coast of Massachusetts, approximately 50 miles south of Boston. Considered by many as the gateway to Cap Cod, Marth's Vineyard and the Islands. New Bedford's colorful history is intimately tied to the sea. As one of three deep-water ports in the State of Massachusetts, and home to the second largest fishing fleet in the country, New Bedford's history, past and future is tied to the sea and the stewardship of its resources. The City occupies a land area of 19 square miles and has a mean elevation of 50 feet above sea level. Established in 1787, New Bedford was incorporated as a City in 1847. The New Bedford wastewater collection system was originally constructed in the middle 1800's as a system of sewers that discharged wastewater directly into the City's inner harbor and Clark's Cove. Between 1910 and 1920, the City expanded the system by adding a main interceptor, conveying wastewater through a now abandoned screen house, into an outfall, discharging into Buzzards Bay. In 1972, the City added a primary treatment facility located on Fort Rodman, at the southern most tip of New Bedford, to provide primary treatment to the outfall discharged to the Bay. In 1986, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (the ``EPA'') and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts issued joint permits to the City requiring immediate compliance with the secondary wastewater treatment requirements of the Federal Clean Water Act of 1972 (the ``CWA'') and the Massachusetts Clean Water Act (the ``Massachusetts Act''). In 1987, the City entered into a Consent Decree and began implementation of a Capitol Improvement Program (CIP designed to comply with regulatory mandates of the CWA and the Massachusetts Act. Capitol improvement costs identified by the Decree totaled nearly $225 million and were projected to increase typical household sewer bills from less than $70 per year to over $1000 per household. This court action put the City on schedule to improve its collection and treatment systems through the planning, design, and construction of approved collection and treatment facilities. The cost of complying with the mandates of the Consent Order represented a major economic and financial burden for the City and its citizens. The City entered into In total, the City of New Bedford completed twelve major wastewater related infrastructure projects totaling 177 million dollars, to comply with Federal and State clean water mandates ending decades of deferred maintenance and environmental neglect. Today, New Bedford boasts its heritage of the sea with renewed commitment to the stewardship of its resource. Thousands of acres of shellfish beds, closed for decades, are now open, creating jobs and providing tangible evidence to the success of a community committed to environmental progress. However, these efforts came at great cost for resident shard pressed to afford the resources necessary to end these decades of neglect. To a community that experienced double digit unemployment, and a blue-collar workforce with a median family income of less than $28,000 per year, New Bedford initiated and raised sewer fees in a depressed economy to support this Herculean effort. The community viewed original rate projections in the initial phases of the projects timetable with despair. They could ill afford the enormous expense of the commitment before them, help was needed, and New Bedford could not do it alone. In July of 1988, the City of New Bedford established and adopted the first sewer fee in the municipalities' history, equal to 34 cents per thousand gallons of water discharged into the sewer system. By January 1994 this rate had increased to $3.55 for the same thousand gallons, a 1000% increase. Based on project engineering estimates and financial considerations, rates were expected to approach $6.00 per thousand gallons by the year 1999. The Massachusetts Water Pollution Abatement Trust (The Trust) was established in March 1993. Utilizing Federal grant money, the Trust established a State Revolving Fund that provided zero interest loans for sewer related infrastructure improvements for municipalities faced with mandates to meet environmental regulations. This form of Federal and State support of capital improvement project has become a critical component for municipalities to move progressively forward in achieving environmental goals. In the case of the City of New Bedford, this support has enabled the community to complete every project outlined in their facilities plan to provide infrastructure capabilities for industrial, commercial and residential growth, while meeting clean water mandates and environmental commitments. As a result of our efforts, New Bedford is the first community to take advantage of extending State Revolving Fund debt and amortizing these commitments out over 30 years. Thus extending the term of the SRF debt to reflect the useful life of the financed projects again minimizing impacts to rates. A community that once faced sewer fees that were unaffordable has completed the largest sewer related capitol improvement program in its history, without breaking the back of the ratepayers. This is testament to Federal, State and Local governments forming partnerships to solve problems.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the consideration of my friend, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), and the consideration from the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Porter). Mr. Speaker, I want to express my appreciation to the Members of the Committee on Appropriations who worked so hard given the unfortunate context which was created through no fault of theirs, and there is a great deal in this bill that I admire. Indeed it is to some extent a pleasant surprise in some respects. But there is one aspect which disappointments me greatly, and I feel the need to comment on it. In 1996, again as part of an overall appropriations bill, this House passed an immigration bill which included one of the cruelest, most unfair provisions this Congress has legislated in my memory. It was one which retroactively subjected people who had committed minor crimes mandatorily to deportation. In the ensuing years, its implementation has ruined families; it has destroyed lives; it has inflicted on innocent children more pain than almost any other single act I can think of in a concentrated way. People who were the age of 18 or 19 or 20 who committed a minor offense and who had turned their lives around and had become responsible members of their community, responsible parents, have found themselves ripped from the communities where they have been living, ripped from their families and sent back. We worked, those of us on the Committee on the Judiciary, in a bipartisan way to try to deal with that. The gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde), the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary; the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum); and I and others worked and put together a bipartisan bill to relieve some, albeit not all, of the damage that bill does to people and it went through this House unanimously. It went to the other body, and we had hoped, given the difficulty that sometimes occurs there of getting separate legislation passed, that it would be included in this final bill, just as the bill that was seeking to amend had been included in this final bill. We had agreement from the White House. We had, as I said, Republican and Democratic support here. At the last minute, the negotiations to include that vital humanitarian measure, supported by many Members of both sides of the aisle, was killed by the objection of the senior Senator from Texas. I do not think we have seen more cruelty inflicted on well-intentioned and well-behaved people than by that act. So while I congratulate the Committee on Appropriations for the work they have done on the appropriations, I do have to note that a stunning piece of cruelty is left uncorrected by this bill.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, a few years ago our Republican colleagues instituted a new procedure known as Corrections Day to deal with mistakes Congress has made. I did not think that the concept would do a great deal, and I believe it has been only marginally useful, although it has of course done no harm. But as I thought about it, it struck me that there would be a much more useful procedure to be called Corrections Day--namely, an opportunity for Members of the House to correct the errors that are propagated by the media. Unfortunately, given the number of these, and the great reluctance of the media to engage in correction of its own errors, a Correction Day would not suffice, and I can see that dealing with the errors of the media on a regular basis would probably crowd out other important business from the Congressional Record. But I do think that from time to time it is useful for us to take advantage of this forum to correct errors in those instances when the medium propagating the error has refused to do so itself. I do this because the public is entitled to an accurate picture of what its elected officials are saying and doing, as opposed to one which includes inaccuracies stubbornly maintained. And I have also found that where one is misquoted, and fails to take concrete action to correct the misquotation, one may subsequently be held accountable for it by people who have read it, and have seen no objection to it. I was recently the subject of a blatant misquotation in the New York Times, and to my regret, but not my surprise, the New York Times declined to print the Letter to the Editor correcting it. In an article published on the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, Times reporter Michiko Kakutani, lamenting incivility in public dialogue, incorrectly said that I had ``compared Republicans' intolerance to that of the Taliban.'' In fact, I did no such thing. I did say in 1998 that the Republicans' claim that they were behaving in a bipartisan fashion during impeachment was as credible as the Taliban would be if they claimed to be practicing religious tolerance. Apparently, the notion of an analogy is absent from the Times style book. Because I do agree that we should refrain from unjustified incivility, I wrote to the New York Times in the hopes that they would clarify the situation by acknowledging their error and went on to explain that I had made no such comparison. The Times refused to do so. I therefore ask unanimous consent that my unpublished letter to the New York Times be printed here to correct the mis-impression the New York Times left, and refused itself to correct. I should note, Mr. Speaker, that not all media outlets share this reluctance to acknowledge their errors. The Providence Journal which subscribes to the New York Times news service also ran the article, and I was pleased to note that the Providence Journal ran the Letter to the Editor which I had submitted also to them and a copy of which I submit to be printed here. Congress of the United States, House of Representatives, Washington, DC, November 27, 2000. Letters to the Editor, The New York Times, New York, NY. Dear Editor, Michiko Kakutani's November 26th article on polarization of the national dialogue incorrectly says that I ``compared Republicans' intolerance to that of the Taliban.'' I did not. When House Republicans praised themselves for bipartisanship, after unilaterally deciding how to structure the impeachment process, I said that if what they did was bipartisanship, then what the Taliban was doing was religious tolerance. That is, I compared the Republican approach to bipartisanship to the Taliban's approach to religious tolerance. Ms. Kakutani should understand that when you answer an aptitude test question by saying that C is to D as A is to B, you are not accusing C of being B. My point was that the Republicans were inaccurate in claiming to be partisan, not that they were forcing women members of Congress to cover themselves completely. Barney Frank.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa (Chairman Leach), and I hope we have set an example for our colleagues by referring to something we both said before and not repeating it. The manufactured housing piece is important, because manufactured housing is important. Manufactured housing is an undervalued housing resource, particularly for people of moderate income, and to the extent that we can advance the ability of the manufactured housing industry to supply that important niche in the housing market, we should take it. We advance it in this bill. There are some gaps, as we have said, and I look forward to working on them next year. We also took some steps to further protect those tenants who are living in federally subsidized tendencies, not public housing, but privately owned, federally subsidized tenancies, who would otherwise have been victimized by a 20-year expiration date that was put into the law that should not have been. This tweaks further legislation, that we did in a favored way earlier, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Lazio), chairman of the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, and I had worked on. We in this past Congress, essentially protected virtually all of the tenants in those tenancies from eviction. I wish we could have also protected the tenancies. We could not. That is, when the existing tenants leave, we will lose those subsidized units. That is something I hope we will address next year, but we have protected the tenancies. I appreciate the ability to work with the gentleman from New York (Mr. Lazio) on that, and we extend that somewhat here. We do some other important things in this bill within the limits that were set for us, and this is the final point I want to make, this is an example of cooperation on a nonideological set of issues where we were able to, within the framework of existing programs and law, improve things. There is one other specific thing I want to mention that is important, and that was we make it easier to ease Federal housing assistance supplied through HUD in conjunction with the low-income housing tax credit, and we should again be doing more of that next year. That is a very important piece that the gentleman from New York (Mr. Lazio) and I have worked on, and I am very pleased that we have been able to do that to improve the efficiency of both programs so they can go further. This leaves us, however, with an undone task. And I am grateful to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Leach), the gentleman from New York (Mr. Lazio), and the staffs of both committees who did an enormous amount of important technical work on this bill, which is primarily a technical bill. We did the best we could within the framework. Now is the time to address the framework. There is a housing crisis increasingly in this country caused, ironically in some part, by prosperity because, as some people increase their wealth, those who are not participants in that prosperity find themselves squeezed. That is why we tried, as the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Leach) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. LaFalce) mentioned, to extend some special help in cities to policeman and teachers, people who serve our public interests and who are sometimes required by law to live in the municipality where they work but find themselves by economic trends priced out of an ability to live there. We tried to help them. It is time for us to get back in the business of increasing housing production. This bill and the previous bill that we adopted goes as far as it is possible to go without getting back in the housing production business, but the demands of this society are such that now we have to get back in the housing production business, and I hope we will be able to do that next year. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I would just on behalf of everyone on our side want to reciprocate, because the gentleman from New York (Mr. Lazio) has been an exemplar of our ability to at the same time have disagreements on major policy issues that are legitimately debated and yet to be able to work in a very constructive fashion on a broad range of common agreement. I thank the gentleman from New York for helping us set that wonderful example, and he can look back on a record of a very significant accomplishment of protecting vulnerable tenants.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield the remaining time to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), one of our most active and dedicated supporters of the inadequate housing response.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/4\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones), a very active member of the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity. (Mrs. JONES of Ohio asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)