Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the leadership once again of the gentlewoman from New York. I was surprised by this. We have debated gun regulation, and the arguments have always been we should not interfere with the right of an individual to own a gun. This has got nothing to do with that. What we now see is that what we have got is an animus against trying to improve gun technology. This does not interfere with anybody's right to own a gun. This is not an amendment; it is a dangling participle. It rewrites the second amendment. The second amendment will now say, ``A well-regulated militia being necessary for the security of the people, let's not have any smart guns in local police forces.'' This is total disconnect between all of the previous arguments about gun regulation. Individuals will be totally free to buy guns. What this says is HUD will not coerce, but will work with and cooperate with local police departments and local governments that want to purchase safer guns. It is not an accident that two of the previous speakers against this amendment were former mayors of tough urban areas, who understand the importance of law enforcement. This is a cooperative effort, and as my colleague, the gentleman from Massachusetts, said, there is an animus against Smith & Wesson. The gentleman from Indiana said, ``Well, you won't have competition if this happens, because if Smith & Wesson gets a preference for selling smart gun technology, where will the incentive be to improve it?'' I will tell you where it will be, from all of the other manufacturers. That is precisely what we want. We want to encourage a competition for the best smart gun technology. One way you do that, one way to increase that supply, is to increase the demand. So what this is is a cooperative effort, led by HUD but fully voluntary on the part of the cities, to increase the demand for smart gun technology, knowing that that will lead to an increase in the supply. I understand people's objections when individuals are concerned, although I do not agree; but this can only be an objection to the principles of safer guns.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. I was disappointed that the gentleman from New Jersey, when we thought we were having some back and forth, would not give us time. I did want to point out to the gentleman from California that Ronald Reagan had a Republican Senate for 6 of his 8 years. That is a fact that even I believe the gentleman from California would probably have a hard time disputing. At no point was there ever in the House a majority approaching an override, so the notion that Ronald Reagan was facing this overwhelmingly Democratic Congress is one more figment of the imagination of the gentleman from California.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I would like to say that I raise the question about the legitimacy of the point of order. I want to make it very clear the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Sanford), given his intellectual honesty, has every right to raise a point of order. I would just say this, any Member who, unlike other Members, sticks by his term limits pledge is entitled to raise this point of order. Point of Order

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

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman from New Jersey yield for disputing?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman for making the point. For those who may not be fully familiar with our jargon, let me make the point that ``hybrid ARMs'' referred to a particular form of mortgage, and it is not a hotel for people of uncertain genealogy. With the renewed hope that in conference, once the point of order does not lie, the very sensible prioritization of the gentleman from New York will survive, I yield back.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey).

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I accept that. I thank the gentleman, and I would say, yes, the gentleman has been consistent in this regard, so my charge of inconsistency does not lie against him. It is true, the gentleman is the one individual Member who raised that, and I appreciate that. All the more reason though to say when we get into the conference committee and when this comes back to the floor, unless the gentleman's numbers multiply more than I expect, and unless 8 becomes twice 80, 3 times 80, then this will be law. So we can ask, I hope, if the only reason we are not going to accept this now is the admirable consistency of the gentleman from South Carolina, he has been admirable in his consistency and I appreciate that, but if that is the only problem we have to adopting it now, I would hope when this bill finally comes before us as a real bill, and not the Halloween fake skeleton that it is now is, this amendment of the gentleman from New York will be in it, and the gentleman from New York's proposals will be accepted.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I share the gentleman from Wisconsin's lack of interest in jurisdictional fights, but for those who are inclined to disagree with us, I should note that the committee of legislative jurisdiction on this particular set of offsets passed it unanimously, so there is certainly no quarrel there, and the gentleman from Wisconsin is correct, this is a technicality. I do recognize the right of people fairly to insist on technicalities, if they are, in fact, people who have been consistently technical. But the notion of legislating in an appropriations bill, my word, what will they think of next? We have seen appropriations bills in this Congress that had more legislation than appropriation. Indeed, as you people drop the appropriation, you increase the legislation. It is kind of a zero sum game. Being accused by my Republican colleagues of legislating in an appropriations bill is like being accused by Wilt Chamberlain of being too tall. I mean, it just boggles the mind that a party which regularly legislates whenever it wants to in an appropriations bill would do this, and that is why the gentleman from Wisconsin's parliamentary argument had such force. We have a bill which has been supported by the authorizing committee unanimously, which was overwhelmingly supported on this floor, in fact, it was amended somewhat on the floor. There were some concerns raised by the gentleman from Florida, who has been a very diligent watchdog in the interests of lower income people. So the form in which it survived, it was not some accident or some oversight, it received a lot of work, a lot of compromise. In fact, we worked this one out. And now to be told, well, we are going to knock it out because it has not yet completed the authorization process is very hard to live with. But I will make this proposition, because obviously a single Member has the ability to pursue this, it could have been protected by the Committee on Rules, but the Committee on Rules apparently had a rare fit of opposition to legislating in an appropriations bill, so they did not do this one. But by the time this bill goes to House-Senate conference, we will, I believe, have finished the authorization process. So I guess I would say to the gentleman from New York who has offered an excellent amendment, and let us be clear, the gentleman seeks to add funds to programs of uncontested popularity and moral worth, for helping the homeless, for housing for the elderly. These are programs which are overwhelmingly supported by local governments, by constituents, by the people who benefit from them.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. In other words, to the Members of this House, do not expect to make the real decisions. Pass through a budget, an appropriations bill, that we know is inadequate, that we know denies to the very needy people important programmatic resources, many of which are well spent. We talk about the Section 8 problem being terrible, but the previous speaker, the gentleman from New Jersey, correctly pointed out that one of the things we have done is to spend money to preserve the existing Section 8 tenancies. Why are we preserving them? Overwhelmingly, we do that because the people who live in those units which were created by Federal funds are so fond of their housing that they put pressure on Members of Congress, so Members of Congress who voted against the program, who voted against funding the programs, vote to keep the programs going so people can continue to live there. We have housing programs that are not perfect, but they do a very important job of trying to alleviate the severe economic distress of tens of millions of our citizens who are not participating in the general prosperity. When we bring forward a bill that say we will do less of that this year in real terms than last year in the face of this great prosperity, we are not serving the basic values of the country. So I hope the amendment is adopted.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the indulgence of the chairman of the subcommittee, and I want to speak strongly in support of the Mollohan amendment. Mr. Chairman, this appropriations bill as it comes before us exemplifies a very dangerous trend in America, and we have been manifesting it in various ways in this House. We are at a time of great prosperity. The free market system as it works in this country with the cooperation of many branches of government, of the private sector, obviously, of labor unions, that private sector is generating wealth at a rate unheard of in human history. That is a very good thing. A large percentage of our population is living in material terms better than we ever thought such a large number of people could live. But that very fact, as the gentleman from Wisconsin and others, the gentleman from Florida, have pointed out, exacerbates the problem for those among us, and they are in the millions, who through no fault of their own are not the beneficiaries of this prosperity. Alan Greenspan has acknowledged that trade, globalization, helps some Americans and hurts others, not because of their inherent worth or lack of worth but because of where they were placed in the economy. So we have a situation where, in many of the metropolitan areas in this country, it has become more and more expensive to live. That reflects the fact that a large number of people who want to live in those metropolitan areas have more and more money, but it also means that those who do not have money, and they number in the millions, the tens of millions, are disadvantaged. In this bill, in other appropriations bills, in immigration legislation, in tax legislation, in public policy area after public policy area we help the wealthy, which is a good thing. That is part of our job, to help people who are productive and are making wealth do better, and we do that well; but we at the same time turn our backs on people at the low end. People wondered, how come there was such a debate over China trade? Because there are so many economists and financial sector people, that was an easy one. Why is there resistance among America's historically generous people to globalization? Here is why, because when we have a situation in which the rich get richer and the poor and working class gets poorer, that is a problem. It is not simply that the rich are getting richer and the poor are not getting richer at the same pace. We are talking about real drops in people's incomes if they are in basic manufacturing. We are talking about people living in cities for whom housing prices have gone out of sight, who have to move out of areas where they already live, who cannot find decent housing, who find housing only if they have to pay far too much money. Mr. Chairman, it is not simply housing. We have had a big debate on Section 8s. I agree there are Section 8s that do not get used. I will tell the Members why in the area I represent, because we do not put enough money into the Section 8s. Housing rents have outpaced the fair market rents that we pay, so we make it worse when we cut the budget, when we begrudge relatively small amounts of the vast resources this country has for low-income people. They say it is because it is not administered well. What about community development block grants? The community development block grant program is a Nixon program whereby the Federal government simply passes through money to cities and to States and they are allowed to spend it within a broad range of flexibility. What have they done? They have cut it. This budget cuts community development block grants, a program on which HUD simply serves as a pass-through to local communities. A few years ago Congress changed under the Republican rule the way public housing is governed. We were told they have really fixed it up. Why, then, is the public housing capital fund underfunded? Why then are the people who live in public housing, who live in an area now where they say they have improved the administration, are they given less money than they need significantly, less money than they got last year for the physical repair of public housing? Part of what is going on is that we know, some of my friends on this side will privately acknowledge, this is not a real budget. They understand that this is too little. What they are saying is, let us get this budget through, this appropriations bill, and let it go over to the Senate, and let us get into negotiations with the President. Then the real budget will emerge.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman from New Jersey yield for corrections? It is the gentleman from New Jersey's time. Will the gentleman from New Jersey yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Is it not the person who controls the time who has the right to yield?

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, let me say, I believe we have too little in here for veterans health care. I have to say, however, this $4 million, especially as the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) explains it, is not a threat to veterans health care. Now, losing $20 billion so Bill Gates does not pay any estate tax, that cuts into veterans health care. Lavishing money on wealthy people in tax cuts elsewhere cuts into veterans health care. A military appropriation that goes way beyond what is reasonably necessary, that gets into veterans health care. What we have here, and everybody understands this, they will go to the conference, and they can come out and account for this however they want. What we have here is legislation which has a stricture against using money to contribute to the Justice Department so we can have an adequately funded lawsuit. If this amendment is defeated and if this bill passes with antitobacco lawsuit language in it, we all know that it will be interpreted by many in the leadership of the Republican Party working with the tobacco industry on this particular point to say no lawsuit at all. It will be part of a campaign to get the lawsuit dropped altogether. So I will defer to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh). He has done a good job about the sow's ear he was given. He did not even get the whole ear. He got the sow's earlobe. I do not expect him to be able to give us much soap with a sow's earlobe, but that was that foolish budget that he was stuck with and an inadequate quality allocation. So I have confidence on this point, I believe if we pass this amendment and the House says yes, we want there to be a contribution so we get a very adequately funded lawsuit so we can go up against the best lawyers in the company that the tobacco industry will have, I will be confident that they will be able in this budget to find money.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, we know finally that this is not the real budget. This is the fake budget. Everybody knows that this budget is too low. But we have people who do not like to admit that they were wrong. They do not like to admit they were wrong in 1997 with that Balanced Budget Act with those silly caps. They do not like to admit that they voted for an inadequate budget out of party loyalty earlier. So this budget will go out of here inadequately funded. It will go to the other body. It will go into negotiations with the President. Low and behold, it will get bigger. So we should not fight too much about which inadequacies we deal with here. Let us make a statement in principle that we are in favor of the tobacco lawsuit; and when this bill goes to other places which are a little less addicted to unreality, and adequate funding magically appears, then we will be able fully to fund the contributions to the lawsuit and I hope to do even better for veterans health than we have done in this budget.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, there are a couple of fallacies, it seems to me, in the arguments being made against this amendment. To begin, it should be clear that the Justice Department cannot use volunteers. People who said, well, they have enough money, Members will recall that the Justice Department has been criticized by some, including some on the other side of the aisle, for not prosecuting more gun cases. The Justice Department is under pressure to do a number of things. Tobacco litigation is very expensive. Tobacco litigation involves a good deal of effort. It is not simply sending a lawyer into court to make an argument. In fact, the discovery and the pretrial work is very, very significant. Now, it turns out, as we know, that funds invested by governments in tobacco litigation bring a very good return. We have a good deal of useful work being done in the various States right now because the States brought tobacco litigation and won it, and we are trying to do the same at the Federal level. So the money will be returned in multiples to veterans health. Now, people said, well, we do not need to take it out of veterans health. I would say this, we are going to pass this bill, not with my vote, because it miserably underfunds almost everything, and we are going to send it to a conference. If in conference the appropriators decide that a different account is a better source of this funding, they are free to do that. But I think it is very clear, this vote today will be taken as kind of a referendum on whether or not there ought to be this participation in the lawsuit. I stress again, funding it entirely out of the Justice Departments account, given the expense of such a lawsuit. Given the other demands of the Justice Department it is not going to fully fund both this lawsuit and the other law enforcement priorities we have and which people have urged the Justice Department to take on. Now, let us be clear what we are dealing with here. If I listened, if I hear correctly, some of my friends on the other side are saying, well, we are funding this lawsuit, but we do not want to take it out of veterans health. This is the constant refrain we heard last week and we will hear for the rest of this month dealing with the appropriations bills. We should be clear where the problem started. It started with a foolish budget, a budget that Members on the other side voted for, knowing it was inadequate. It is a good thing we do not vote under oath around here or some of my friends would have had some problems, because they voted for a budget that they knew substantially underfunded a whole range of government activities. Now, every time an appropriations bill comes up, we are in this game, we had it last week, Indian health versus the arts, now it is veterans' health versus a lawsuit that is going to bring more money for veterans health. It is constant. But we should be very clear before we sympathize with those who lament this terrible choice that this is an entirely self-inflicted wound. People who voted for a budget that they knew to be inadequate have really no right to come before us and say, gee, you are making us make terrible choices. Revenues are increasing. There are important needs in this society that must be met together. Much of what we want we can do individually. Much of what we need to satisfy the quality of life we want comes from individual spending. But some things can only be done jointly through government. What we have is a budget that substantially underfunds these necessary elements, including the lawsuit. Lawsuits are not free. Discovery is not free. The tobacco industry will put up a very good fight with very high-priced lawyers in this regard. We need to have an adequately funded public advocacy group to go on the other side. That is really what we are talking about. Now, I would agree, and the appropriators have this power, if we win this amendment, the House will have spoken. We want there to be an adequately funded lawsuit without it necessarily coming at the expense of gun law enforcement or other kinds of enforcement at the Justice Department or antitrust for which the need seems to be growing. Then it will be up to the appropriators in their conference to decide. If they can find a better place to fund this, I do not think anyone will object. If they came back from a conference with an appropriation and said, well, we are not going to take it from here, we are going to take it from there, that will be okay. But what I fear will happen is, if the amendment is not accepted, we will then have an argument that will say, hey, the House voted not to let you do this. The argument will go from a narrow technical discussion of this particular account to a more general assault on the notion of the lawsuit. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman).

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I agree. The gentlewoman has said that the President has also cut Medicare. And I will say for this purpose, a plague on both the Houses. Yes, the President was wrong and they were wrong. And if they take some comfort that the President was in this regard wronger than them, they are entitled to it. But they were both wrong, and some of us told them so at the time. They collaborated in cutting Medicare to an unreasonable level, and they also collaborated in putting caps on the budget. The gentlewoman is the one who got up and said, vote for this budget, warts and all, i.e., vote for this inadequate, underfunded budget. Because in conference we will not be bound by the pretense of what we did in 1997 made any sense. But they are still hobbled by this philosophical commitment to hating government in general, even though on program after program after program they want to improve government in the particular. It does not work, and that is why we are in this terrible bind.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, despite the fact that most of us would rather be home right now, life isn't really very tough for us. Tough is not choosing whether you're going to underfund one group or underfund another. Tough is being in the groups that are underfunded. We have it, after all, relatively easy. The people who have it tough are the struggling artists who could use some extra funds so they can make a creative contribution, or the Indian children who are being underfunded. And what is striking about this debate is the implicit acknowledgment that the Republican Party's budget is wholly inadequate to the moral needs of a great Nation. What we have is a dispute, including an intramural Republican dispute, about who among worthy people are we going to hurt the worst. Yes, it is a terrible situation, and people will decide differently as to who they are going to stiff. But let's be very clear. We are in this situation where we have to choose. And people have said Indian health is woefully underfunded, and if we pass the gentleman's amendment it will be woefully underfunded plus 1 percent or 2 percent. People are admitting that the Republican budget gravely underfunds Indian health. Many of us believe it underfunds a number of other things. There's virtual unanimity in this place that we don't have enough money to go around. Why? The economy is doing well. Revenues are coming in at a greater than expected pace. The problem is we have this philosophical commitment that holds amongst some Republicans that says government is bad. The problem is that while government is bad, virtually all of the components that make up government are pretty good. And that's why you're in this bind. Everybody wants to take credits for supporting the individual components. Clean coal research. A lot of people want to do that, and they are upset it is getting cut back. The arts. Indian health. There are virtually no programs in this entire budget, in this entire appropriation, that anyone denounces. We have this terrible paradox. You know what your problem is? You have a whole that is smaller than the sum of your parts. You have the entity that you despise, government; but it's made up of a lot of components that you like. So you do two things, you pass a budget that puts too little money into the pot and then we fight about trying to get these inadequate things out of the pot. What this debate confirms is the inadequacy of the budget. And the gentlewoman from Connecticut, and I admire her courage in getting up as she did, but I have two differences with her. First of all, she says, well, a lot of warts will come out in conference. Let me translate that. In the conference, thanks to the intervention of the President of the United States, pretending that the budget they are trying to operate under makes any sense at all will stop, the pretense of that grave mistake we made in 1997. And let me not be that generous. I did not make it. I voted against that budget in 1997. We have been lying about it and cheating on it and avoiding it and evading it and denouncing it ever since. But it is still there. So what we are being told is vote for an appropriations bill which is admittedly inadequate, vote for an appropriations bill that has too little money for all of these important purposes, but vote for it if we can get a couple more nickels in the arts because in conference it will be made better.