Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I could have sworn about an hour ago Members were knocking each other down in a race to the microphone to talk about how much they love the Indians. And now we have a bill, which is, as we know, despite the technicalities, aimed at retarding the Indians' ability to have gambling. People watching C-SPAN could be forgiven if they thought they had turned to the American Movie Classics and were watching one of those bad old movies where the Indians win in the first reel and then they get ambushed by all the white guys in the second reel. We are into the second reel of a bad movie here. Whatever happened to all this pro-Indian stuff? And it is not only a bad movie, it is a bad movie if this amendment passes with a surprise ending. Because we have a concern for Indian health which some people want to beat by giving them more Federal money. We are saying, let us help Indian health by letting the Indians get into business and support themselves and make some money. And I think gambling has probably done more to help Indian health than the underfunded health service. So let us not have a surprise ending where the Republican House says, hey, enough of this self-sufficiency, enough of this making money on your own, let us give you a little more Federal funding.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, we stand accused by the gentleman from Illinois of recognizing reality. The reality is there is a budget. It limits the amount of money we can spend. If you spend on one set of things, you cannot spend for another. That is reality. If in fact you give large tax cuts to people who are very wealthy, you will have less money that you can spend elsewhere. The gentleman says, ``Oh, let's not have class warfare; let's just have the wealthy and the middle class and the working class all get along.'' It sounds like Woody Allen's statement, ``the lion shall lie down with the lamb, but the lamb won't get much sleep.'' The wealthy and the poor can work together, as long as the poor are prepared to be submissive. The Republican plan says that you will get some help in paying for prescription drugs, up to 150 percent of poverty, $16,000 a year. If you are a retired individual making $20,000, $25,000, $28,000 a year and you get hit with a drug bill of four, five or six hundred dollars a month, the Republican position is we cannot afford it. Now, we say you could afford it if you did not give large tax cuts, and the gentleman says, Oh, that is class warfare. That is not class warfare, that is reality. If you, in fact, decide that Bill Gates should be allowed to pass down to his children all of his money with no taxes, and deprive the revenue base of 20 or 30 billion dollars, and you then say, ``but we can't help you if you are making $20,000 a year,'' and that is the Republican's plan. We did not make it up. This is not class warfare, this is your plan. One hundred fifty percent of poverty is the level at which you get subsidized. The gentleman said, We don't need universal coverage under prescription drugs. It is the same argument that said on the part of the Republicans that we did not need Medicare, we did not need universal health care. The fact is if you were making up a health care plan today, you would fully cover prescription drugs. Yes, there are some older people who have private insurance for prescription drugs. They pay unduly for it. We have a very simple case, and the gentleman apparently objects to our pointing it out. The more you do for people at the upper end of the scale, given a limited amount of money, the less you can do for people at the other end. I am sorry that that makes the gentleman uncomfortable. It does him honor that it makes him uncomfortable, but we did not create this situation. It is the reality that you have brought to the floor with your overall program.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I agree, there are many people who have this dream, the dream of not doing very much during their life except have a good time, and then having been smart enough to have rich parents who have millions of dollars. Now, there is an inconvenience if one inherits millions of dollars today. There will be some tax on them. But if the Republicans have their way, one will be able to dream one's way into wealth, not because of any single thing they did other than to be born into the right circumstances. This is not a tax on death. Dead men tell no tales, and dead men and women pay no taxes. This is a tax on those who inherent the wealth that was earned by others. Now, there is nothing the matter with that. If people ask my advice, I would say sure, I think it is a very good idea to have rich relatives. If I were you, I would try very hard to have rich parents. I would try very hard to have rich parents, and maybe they will leave you some money. But the tax is on the beneficiaries of other people's work, and what a tax repeal. I think if we were giving a prize for the single worst idea to come forward from the group that has been rife with them, it would be this. The idea is this: let us make the Tax Code of America better for very rich people. Let us give substantial tax relief to the richest people we can find. Forget about the person making $40,000 a year and paying Social Security payroll taxes. Forget about all of those other people paying income tax. We are here to give tax relief to the richest 2 percent of America. Small business. I must say, every cloud has a silver lining. For once, some of my friends on the other side have seen merit in trying to help minority businesses and women-owned businesses, but I would say to my colleagues, do not do that by using them as a front to give substantial tax relief, not to the wealthiest people in America, but to the relatives of the wealthiest people in the America, who may or may not have done anything to earn it. Yes, people should be able to enjoy what they earn, and they can even enjoy what other people earn, but not quite without any taxation at all. This from a group that says we cannot afford to subsidize prescription drugs for middle-income elderly people. We have to cut Pell grants. My Republican colleagues want to help older people as long as they are very wealthy.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I was very pleased--but not at all surprised--to learn that on June 7, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston will be honoring Nancy Kaufman, who has for ten years now been the Executive Director of that important and well run organization. Nancy Kaufman personifies the best in the Jewish tradition, and she is also an outstanding example of the spirit of community caring that is so important in America. Under her leadership, the JCRC has played an extremely significant role in a number of aspects of both the Jewish community and the Greater Boston community at large. We are very lucky that she has chosen to dedicate her very considerable talents to the service of others. Her first rate intelligence, her high energy level, her compassion, her wonderful ability to work others and to get the best from them--these combined make her an extraordinary leader of an extraordinary organization. I have personally benefitted innumerable times from her advice and I have been proud to work with her on a number of important issues. Few people I know have worked harder, more consistently, or with more effect to make the world that they live in a better place.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, first, let me plead guilty to one of the accusations that was leveled by the previous speaker. I do believe that older people who are sick should have their prescription drugs covered. The fact that there are 70- and 80-year-old women who did not serve in the armed forces and who cannot afford their prescription medicine does not seem to me a good reason to deny them a prescription drug benefit under Medicare. So I will plead guilty to that accusation. Indeed, that is one of the reasons why I am opposed to this bill. Much of what it does is very important, the pay increase and the improvement in the living conditions for the people; but it maintains an effort to fund inadequately an extremely flawed strategy. Obviously, we should provide the funds necessary to carry out what we say we are going to do militarily. The problem is we say we are going to do too much. We continue to err by keeping large numbers of troops in Western Europe when our Western European allies are well enough financed to be able to do this on their own. We continue to hold to an obsolete two- war theory. We continue to fund weapons whose idea began in the Cold War. So, yes, I want an adequately funded military. I want one with a margin of safety. I want the United States to be as it has been and will continue to be by far the strongest Nation in the world. But we make a mistake when we overreach and then use the overreach as an excuse to overspend. And there we have also, of course, the tendency of people, particularly in the Senate, to add weapons whose primary justification is not the enemy they will confront but the constituents they will comfort. We have nuclear attack submarines that we are going to fund, and I have not yet been able to have anyone explain to me who the enemy is. They are wonderful weapons. But the fact that they are so technologically skilled is not enough of a justification to have them. It is unlikely that they are going to encounter Iranian, Libyan, or North Korean submarines that they have to encounter. This bill will spend more than half of the money available to the Federal Government in discretionary accounts. And prescription drugs are relevant. Because the people who support this bill are telling us, on the other hand, some of them, that we cannot afford prescription drugs, that we cannot afford to send money to build schools, that we cannot afford more police on the streets, that we cannot afford more effective cleanup. This bill overspends to defend the people of Western Europe against nonexistent threats when they can afford to do it themselves. It overspends on weapons whose political justification far exceeds their military justification. It overspends to fund outdated theories that date from the Cold War. And, consequently, it requires us to underspend on important domestic priorities. The bill ought to be defeated and sent back to the committee. It increases by tens of billions of dollars over last year, and that comes directly out of every other appropriation bill.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, in the first place, I did not question nuclear weapons. I questioned nuclear submarines, attack submarines. Obviously, we should have nuclear weapons. I want us to keep most of them. My point was nuclear attack submarines had a Cold War justification; and given the state of the enemy that we are likely to confront today, the smaller, poorly armed, evil-minded states, nuclear attack submarines are a waste of money and do take away from other things.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word and hopefully the program. Mr. Chairman, I, like many Members here, have became a student of the eminent gentleman from Pennsylvania, (Mr. Murtha), the ranking Democrat and once a future chairman I hope of this subcommittee; and he always does a wonderful job. And I am particularly impressed because he has managed to classify all amendments that would cut defense spending into two categories: some are premature and others come too late. The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha) has in my time here successfully managed to consign every amendment to either too soon or too late. We never quite hit the moment. Indeed, if there is anything less likely than that ballistic missile system that is going to hit a missile, it is that it will hit the right time, according to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha.) I do not think either is very likely. They could not comment that failure in both cases is very expensive. If we do not meet the gentleman's timetable, there goes a few billion. If we do not hit the missile, there goes a few more billion, sometimes in the same billion. Now one of the arguments for not adopting this amendment to move the spending is that the money it seeks to spend will not be spent. The fact that money will not be spent until very late in the year and maybe never because a new President will come in and make a decision, it is hardly a reason to do it. We have paid a lot of lip service to TRICARE. Indeed, any veteran who has lip problems is probably in great shape, any Member of the military, because we have done a lot for the lip area; but we have not done a lot for some of the other health areas. Previously, I did not get a chance to respond, the gentleman from Indiana said, well, you know, we are under a tough situation now, because the bear, the Soviet Union, has been replaced by the vipers. Well, I challenge that history. If we listen to that statement, there is an assertion that we used to have the Soviet Union, and then when it disappeared, a new threat came up, North Korea, Libya, Iran, Iraq. It is not my impression that any of those countries sprang into being in 1991. We used to have the bear and the vipers, to use that metaphor. Now we know longer have the bear; we have the vipers. And as I look at this, I think the business of many of my colleagues in many of the defense spending a very profitable business has had their vision clouded. They cannot adjust to the fact that the Cold War is over; and the fact is that, yes, there are countries out there run by people who are unstable, who are evil, who wish us harm; but their capacity to do us harm is much less. Now, let us take the situation which we are told we confront here that North Korea might decide to launch a missile against us. My own view is that the people who run North Korea are immoral, but not totally suicidal; for any nation as weakly armed as any of the vipers to attack the United States consciously is to expect total devastation. We are not talking here about mutually assured destruction; that was the U.S. and the Soviet Union. We are talking now about very poor countries, none of which could do more than provoke great retaliation against the United States. I want us to have the capacity to continue to deter that, but spending ultimately hundreds of billions of dollars on a technologically very unlikely scheme to try to prevent North Korea from attacking America when there are a number of other ways in which we can prevent North Korea from attacking America is a mistake. We are told the next President is going to decide it. Let us then deal with it at that point. But I will tell my colleagues what will help because premature and too late will come forward. Now, we will be told, as we have been, that it is premature to strike the money. By the time that the next President gets around to it, we will be told it is too late, because we will have already spent the money and after all you do not want to spend the money for no good purpose, unless you are in the Pentagon, which you will do occasionally. We have a tight budget. We have unmet needs in this country. Let's say this, I may differ from some of my colleagues, if someone wanted to give me this ballistic missile defense system for free, I would accept it. The Chinese would not like it, some others will not like it, but I will accept it. Paying, however, tens of billions of dollars at a time when we are denying ourselves so many important necessary programs domestically makes no sense. It makes no sense, in particular, to begin to commit now to a vast amount of money to deter North Korea from attacking the United States; that is what we are talking about. We are talking about deterring North Korea from attacking the United States. I believe we have far superior, more cost-effective methods of preventing North Korea from attacking the United States. Committing ourselves to this ballistic missile defense system, and that is what we will be doing, the rhetoric now will be this is very tentative, but tentative will become a decision already made when we attach it later. By the way, it is only when we are dealing with the defense budget that we can talk about spending a few hundred million or a couple of billion tentatively. Tentativeness of the Pentagon is, of course, the entire budget of many important programs. I commend my colleague, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney). It is a very thoughtful amendment. My colleagues say we are not getting really ready to make a decision; let us put it into health care where we need it, and let us once try to hit the mean between premature and too late.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, in the May issue of SeniorScope, the newspaper published by the city of New Bedford dealing with issues of particular importance to older people, editor Rona Zable has an excellent column. Ms. Zable effectively refutes those who would interfere with the rights of older people to make their own decisions, specifically in this case with regard to their choice to gamble if they wish in legal establishments. I have been struck by the degree to which people who usually respect the rights of others to make their own choices make an exception for gambling, and for some reason, people seem often ready to use a caricature of older people as an excuse for this. Indeed, some who believe that we should make a radical change in the Social Security system and have people be dependent on their stock picks for retiring income draw an inexplicable line against letting them go to a casino every so often with some of that retirement income. As Rona Zable trenchantly asks, ``are older people perceived to be so witless, so gullible, that we need to be protected from ourselves lest we buy too many lottery tickets or play bingo too often? . . . If Congress is really concerned about senior citizens, they ought to do something about the sky high cost of prescription drugs. Because, chances are, we're more apt to blow the family inheritance at the drugstore counter than we are at the casinos!'' Mr. Speaker, Ms. Zable is exactly right and I submit her very thoughtful essay here. Do You Need a Chaperone at the Casino? There are folks out there who are quite concerned about you. They worry that one of these days, you might gamble away your kid's inheritance. ``Are Casinos Preying On Our Elders?'' was the headline of a recent story in the AARP Bulletin. Noting the popularity of bingo halls, lotteries and casinos, the article asked, ``Is it harmless entertainment? Or are older Americans being targeted deliberately by advertising and marketing efforts designed to ensure that they keep pumping large sums of money into the gambling industry.'' The focus of the article was a study published in the Law Journal of the University of Illinois College of Law. The author stated that older people are at greater risk than others for problem gambling because of circumstances that make them vulnerable . . . namely, loss of a spouse loneliness and boredom. The study concluded that ``the casino industry targets its marketing to older people because they are reliable spenders with leisure time to visit casinos often.'' Well, duh! Like--we didn't know that? Apparently, our legislators also believe that seniors are more at risk than other age groups for problem gambling. Timothy A. Kelly, executive director of a commission appointed by Congress to examine the economic impact of gambling, believes state and federal lawmakers should consider halting the expansion of gambling around the nation pending further research. Kelly, whose National Gambling Impact Study Commission spent two years examining the issues, says, ``We heard a lot of stories about elderly parents gambling away the family inheritance.'' Aw, come on, guys. Seriously--does any SeniorScope reader know of any elderly parent who gambled away the family inheritance? (Maybe some younger folks have done that, but not the old folks). To me, this is one more instance of the Dumbing Down of Senior Citizens. Are older people perceived to be so witless, so gullible, that we need to be protected from ourselves lest we buy too many lottery tickets or play Bingo too often? Do we need Big Brother to watch over us at the blackjack tables and slot machines? If this sounds like I am some kind of a big-time casino player, rest assured I am not. In fact, I have never set foot in Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun. But I defend the right of anyone over age 21 to spend their money where they please--be it a casino, bingo hall, sports arena, vacation resort, ect. It so happens I am a ``shopping mall'' person . . . and just as some people enjoy the socialization and buffets at Foxwoods, I enjoy the clearance sales and food court at the Galleria Mall. Nor would I like it one bit if the Senate appointed a Commission to limit the expansion of malls to curtail shopping by senior citizens. Or, for that matter, to limit the expansion of restaurants because older Americans are eating out too much and putting on weight. If Congress is really concerned about senior citizens, they ought to do something about the sky high cost of prescription drugs. Because, chances are, we're more apt to blow the family inheritance at the drugstore counter than we are at the casinos!

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about some disturbing trends in the Middle East. I admire enormously the commitment of Prime Minister Barak of Israel to try to find a peaceful solution to many of the disputes that have troubled the region. I believe historically the record is very clear that Israel sought it first to live in peace with its neighbors. It was forced to resort to armed conflict to defend itself. Prime Minister Barak to his credit has been willing now after 50 years and more of conflict to take some risks for peace. That is not always unanimously agreed upon within Israel. Israel is, as we know, the only genuine democracy in this part of the world. The people of Israel are contentious in some ways as befits people in a democracy when important issues are at stake. And Prime Minister Barak to me is an admirable example of an elected official who is trying to lead in the direction that he thinks is important. And in so doing, he has espoused some positions that he believes and I believe will lead to a lasting peace if they meet with an appropriate response from those with whom he seeks to negotiate. What is especially troubling to me has been the negative responses his initiatives have drawn. His offer to withdraw from the Golan Heights is really by historical standards an extraordinarily generous one. Very few nations which have won this sort of strategic territory and battle have voluntarily given it up, even in the face of the kind of hostility that Syria has evinced towards Israel. But Prime Minister Barak, taking a request politically based on his military judgment, which obviously everyone who knows him respects, was willing to make a deal with the Syrians in which Israel would have given up that very large strategic amount of territory with some safeguards, and essentially, President Assad of Syria refused any kind of reasonable deal. Interestingly, had Assad agreed to the deal, it would have been controversial within, as real as having given too much to Syria, but Syria would not accept that. For years, people have been urging Israel to withdraw from Lebanon. There is a U.N. resolution that says Israel should withdraw from Lebanon. When the negotiations with Assad ended, because I believe of Assad's unreasonable hostility, Prime Minister Barak again courageously said, I will withdraw unilaterally from Israel; and one of the most extraordinarily depressing reactions I have seen people who had for years had been pressing Israel to withdraw then began to attack Israel for withdrawing unilaterally, as if they needed permission to do what people had been berating them for not doing. And what happened when Israel withdrew was an outburst of hostility and of inappropriate behavior in much of Lebanon which can only strengthen the hands of those who believe within Israel that Prime Minister Barak has been making a mistake. So in these two important areas with regard to Syria and to Lebanon, you have an elected official, a democratic leader of his country, taking some risks for peace and being met with an extraordinarily hostile reaction; and then, finally, we had a few weeks ago violence on the part of many in the Palestinian areas, including gunfire between the Palestinian authority in Israel. Again, I want to stress Israel has in the past couple of decades beginning with Prime Minister Begin in the Sinai, engaged in more withdrawal from territory it had been forced to fight to conquer than almost any nation I can think of. And I am talking now about turning it over to the enemies, not with a period of demilitarization. It is not like America, the allies keeping Germany in a very subordinate position for a long time that was not being occupied. It was simply turned over in many cases, and to see the negative reactions from Syria, from people in the south of Lebanon, the more extremists there and within the Palestinian community, is very troubling to me. I admire the willingness of Prime Minister Barak to persevere. I believe he does this because he understands what is truly in his country's long-term interests. I hope the United States Government will continue to be a strong supporter and partner of Israel and, in particular, make it clear to the extent that Israel does withdraw from some of these areas, potentially exposing itself to some of the problems that might come up that the United States will continue to be a reliable partner. But it has to be noted that the kind of negativism, the kind of extreme hostility which Prime Minister Barak's openness has called from on the part of many Arabs cannot be helpful. I admire, as I said, Prime Minister Barak for not being deterred by this. He is not allowing the extremists to undermine his efforts, but they ought to understand and people elsewhere ought to understand that there is a price to be paid for this. So I hope, Mr. Speaker, that as Prime Minister Barak goes forward in partnership with the U.S., we will begin to see responsible leaders in the Arab world exercise the kind of reciprocal approach that the prime minister's courage deserves.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I recently saw an editorial of such eloquence and passion that I believe it should be shared with the membership of this body. Since we from time to time deal with issues involving the rights of gay and lesbian people, I believe it is extremely important for the Members to read this mother's cry for justice and I hope that it will factor into the decisions we make in the future. [For the Valley News (White River Junction, VT/Hanover, NH, April 30, 2000] (By Sharon Underwood) As the mother of a gay son, I've seen firsthand how cruel and misguided people can be. Many letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace in Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I've taken enough from you good people. I'm tired of your foolish rhetoric about the ``homosexual agenda'' and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant. You have been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since my children were tiny. My firstborn son started suffering at the hands of the moral little thugs from your moral, upright families from the time he was in the first grade. He was physically and verbally abused from first grade straight through high school because he was perceived to be gay. He never professed to be gay or had any association with anything gay, but he had the misfortune not to walk or have gestures like the other boys. He was called ``fag'' incessantly, starting when he was 6. In high school, while your children were doing what kids that age should be doing, mine labored over a suicide note, drafting and redrafting it to be sure his family knew how much he loved them. My sobbing 17-year-old tore the heart out of me as he choked out that he just couldn't bear to continue living any longer, that he didn't want to be gay and that he couldn't face a life without dignity. You have the audacity to talk about protecting families and children from the homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear apart families and drive children to despair. I don't know why my son is gay, but I do know that God didn't put him, and millions like him, on this Earth to give you someone to abuse. God gave you brains so that you could think, and it's about time you started doing that. At the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief that this could never happen to you, that there is some kind of subculture out there that people have chosen to join. The fact is that if it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours, and you won't get to choose. Whether it is genetic or whether something occurs during a critical time of fetal development, I don't know. I can only tell you with an absolute certainty that it is inborn. If you want to tout your own morality, you'd best come up with something more substantive than your heterosexuality. You did nothing to earn it; it was given to you. If you disagree, I would be interested in hearing your story, because my own heterosexualtiy was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever on my part. It is so woven into the very soul of me that nothing could ever change it. For those of you who reduce sexual orientation to a simple choice, a character issue, a bad habit or something that can be changed by a 10-step program, I'm puzzled. Are you saying that your own sexual orientation is nothing more than something you have chosen, that you could change it at will? If that's not the case, then why would you suggest that someone else can? A popular theme in your letters is that Vermont has been infiltrated by outsiders. Both sides of my family have lived in Vermont for generations. I am heart and soul a Vermonter, so I'll thank you to stop saying that you are speaking for ``true Vermonters.'' You invoke the memory of the brave people who have fought on the battlefield for this great country, saying that they didn't give their lives so that the ``homosexual agenda'' could tear down the principles they died defending. My 83- year-old father fought in some of the most horrific battles of World War II, was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart. He shakes his head in sadness at the life his grandson has had to live. He says he fought alongside homosexuals in those battles, that they did their part and bothered no one. One of his best friends in the service was gay, and he never knew it until the end, and when he did find out, it mattered not at all. That wasn't the measure of a man. You religious folk just can't bear the thought that as my son emerges from the hell that was his childhood he might like to find a lifelong companion and have a measure of happiness. It offends your sensibilities that he should request the right to visit that companion in the hospital, to make medical decisions for him or to benefit from tax laws governing inheritance. How dare he? you say. These outrageous request would threaten the very existence of your family, would undermine the sanctity of marriage. You use religion to abdicate your responsibility to be thinking human beings. There are vast numbers of religious people who find you attitudes repugnant. God is not for the privileged majority, and God knows my son has committed no sin. The deep-thinking author of a letter to the April 12 Valley News who lectures about homosexual sin and tells us about ``those of us who have been blessed with the benefits of a religious upbringing'' asks: ``What ever happened to the idea of striving . . . to be better human beings than we are?'' Indeed, sir, what ever happened to that? (Sharon Underwood lives in White River Junction, VT)

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I am sorry that my friend from Connecticut, the ranking member of the Committee on International Relations was unfortunately called off the floor because I am going to express my strong disagreement with him, and he is one of my closest friends in this institution. Indeed, he and I share a common ethnic heritage. It is an ethnic heritage which has an affinity for certain foods. So I would not have been surprised to have my friend from Connecticut down here talking about pickled herring or schmaltz herring, but when he comes down here with a red herring, I am a little bit disappointed. Certainly the suggestion that this is a means of getting us out of Kosovo is the reddest of red herrings. I only hope he will never serve it to me when we dine together. This is not an effort to get us out of Kosovo. Some Members want us to do that. But that is not what this is. Indeed people who simultaneously tell us that they have great faith in our allies and also that they do not want to go out of Kosovo must not be talking about this amendment. Here is what this amendment says on page 3. Our European allies have to put up 50 percent of what they said for reconstruction, 85 percent of what they have pledged for humanitarian assistance, 85 percent of their pledges, and this is just for this year and next year, and 90 percent for police. In other words, this amendment will have no effect if our European allies put up 50 to 90 percent of what they pledge. Now, my friend from Connecticut said, well, they have been doing most of the lifting here. I guess I must have been under a misapprehension when I saw all those planes flying in Kosovo and bombing Serbia. I could have sworn they were American planes. But my eyesight is not what it has been. Maybe they were Belgian planes, maybe they were Italian and Portuguese and Norwegian planes. It is hard to tell from very far away. But my impression was that it was the United States taxpayer and the United States Defense Department that carried most of the burden of that air war. We are not suggesting that they do that in our stead. We do not think they can do that. We are saying once that combat phase is over and we are in the policing phase and the peacekeeping phase, Europe ought to do it. Now, the United States is alone in South Korea with no European help. That is appropriate. The United States carries the burden in the Middle East. Does Europe not ever get the primary responsibility anywhere? This is, after all, Europe. Now, my friends say, oh, but they are doing this, they are doing this because you have already raised it. Well, yes, every time we raise an issue about burdensharing, the establishment, the Defense Department, the State Department, and I agree, it is nonpartisan. My friend from Connecticut said it, Bush said it and Gore said it, that is true. And Albright says it and Cohen says it and Kissinger said it and Weinberger said it. They all say it. Once you become a very important foreign policy person, with this comes the obligation to absolve our European allies of any financial responsibility. I think it is right there in your council on foreign relations membership card. But it is wrong, because we have been proven right. Every time we have come forward with a burdensharing argument, they have predicted terrible consequences. And then afterwards they take credit for the favorable consequences that resulted from our raising the argument. The answer here is a very simple one. Europe lives up to a substantial percentage of the commitments it made. Our European allies jointly have a population and an economy larger than ours. We are not asking them to take our difficult combat operations here. We are not asking them to duplicate American air and sea power. We are not withdrawing the 6th Fleet. We are saying that in the continent of Europe where you have such an interest as well as us, we will do the things that you cannot do, that we can only do, the combat, but you can do the policing. Members here have said again and again on both sides, we have overstrained our military, they are overcommitted. What we are saying is instead of sending Americans to do peacekeeping 4,000 miles, let us ask Germans, Italians, French and others to go a few hundred miles. Let us have them do what they can do. That is what this amendment calls for. If Members believe that the allies are going to live up to what they said they were going to do, if indeed they believe they are going to live up to between 80 and 90 percent of what they said they can do, they can safely vote for this amendment because it will then have no negative effect. Everything will work out as it should.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote, and pending that, I make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds to say that none of the threats my friend just mentioned, North Korea, China, Iraq, chemical weapons, or biological weapons, date from 1990. They all existed contemporaneously with the Soviet Union. So it is simply not remotely accurate that we have all these new threats. We used to have all of those and the Soviet Union. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of the time to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I am sorry my friend the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) cannot join me in supporting the Clinton administration on this issue, but maybe he will come back on a later one. The Clinton administration did ask for a significant increase. I think they asked for too much. But I am still prepared only to cut back to even a little bit above what they asked. Now, I acknowledge that the Department of Defense does not have everything it would like to have. It does not have all of its proposals. Neither does the Department of Health and Human Services. They do not have enough money to pay for prescription drugs for all the people. Vote against this amendment and then go and tell the elderly people in their district that they cannot do a prescription drug program the way they would like it because we cannot afford it. Now, I want to help the living conditions of the people in the military. If they would listen to this debate, they might not know that we buy weapons, and not only that we buy weapons, but let me quote here a former presidential candidate, the Senator from Arizona, who talks about all the pork that gets put in. There were weapons in here that no one asked for except the people in whose districts they are made. I am talking about 1 percent of the budget, 1 percent of the $309 billion. I believe that we could look at a list of projects that were generated by Congress put into this bill that were not requested by any of the services that would amount to this. We just voted an amendment to say that our European allies have to pay more of the joint costs. That provides some savings. Now, it is true we are spending less on defense than we were. Ten years ago a major event happened. There was the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the major threat to our ability to exist as a free society collapsed. That does not mean there are not still countries in the world that cause us problems. But they existed before the collapse of the Soviet Union. North Korea did not come into being in 1995. Iran was not invented in 1992. Libya did not spring to Earth in 1993. Twelve years ago we had the Soviet Union with its nuclear weapons and the Warsaw Pact and all these over threats. I have heard Members say, oh, well, it is much more dangerous now that the Soviet Union has collapsed. We have, believe it or not, nostalgia for the old days when we were facing a thermonuclear threat amongst some Members because they can use that to justify increased expenditures. I have more confidence in the members in the authorization and appropriations committees than they have in themselves. I believe if we say, look, they are going to have 99 percent of what they asked for, which includes billions more than they had, the increase in the military budget from last year and this year would pay for a prescription drug program. Not the budget, the increase in the budget. What we are saying to them is show a little restraint, we will leave to them the authority to pick and choose. Do not cut things that are important to manpower. Cut out some of the projects that they are being asked to pay for because they will provide employment in certain districts. There is an intellectual double standard here that says, when we are talking about housing, when we are talking about health care, when we are talking about the Environmental Protection Administration, if we catch them misspending money, we will punish them. In the Pentagon, when we catch them misspending money, we reward them by giving them more.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Luther), an intellectually consistent budget cutter.

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, it is important for Members to understand that in the 2 days in which we will be dealing with this bill we will have spent more than half of the discretionary funds available for expenditure by the Federal Government in the next fiscal year. If we go along with the committee's proposal. The committee has proposed a very significant increase in the military. It has gone significantly above what the President proposed. And the result will be that, according to the calculations I have gotten from budget people, 51.8 percent of the total money spent on discretionary accounts by the Federal Government this year will be spent on the military. Now, many of my colleagues will have told their constituents that they would like to do more for prescription drugs for older people. We have older people in desperate need of help in paying for prescription drugs. Members have told local police departments that they would like to be even more responsive to their needs. We have told, many of us, local educational authorities that we understand their needs for expanded school buildings and we would like to help them. We have told communities affected by environmental problems that we would like to expand the money EPA has so that they could do more to clean up Superfund sites more quickly and to do more to deal with brownfields. But this bill will make a lot of that impossible. And we ought to establish a standard of honesty for Members. If we vote for the full amount asked for by the Committee on Armed Services today, we should not expect to be able to tell people honestly that we would like to help them but were somehow deprived by someone else of the ability to do it because this will be a self-imposed deprivation. Now, my amendment is a rather small one. It calls for a 1 percent cut in the authorized level. That would be $3.09 billion. This bill is $4.5 billion over the President's request. On the last amendment many of my Democratic colleagues felt they had to support the President. Well, I hope that carries over. Raising the President's defense budget by $4.5 billion more than he asked for, when that comes at the expense of education and the environment and health care and law enforcement, is not a good way to show support. Even if this amendment passes, the bill will still be a billion and a half more than the President asked for, and the President asked for a significant increase. Now, the bill exempts personnel and it exempts operation and maintenance and it gives to the Congress, not the White House, the ability to decide how to allocate this. So that is the question before the Members. Are we prepared to increase by $4.5 billion what the President asked for; do we believe that there is apparently no waste in the Pentagon; are we prepared to say that 51.8 percent of the total discretionary spending will go to the military, when that increase that we will be voting for will lessen our chances of providing prescription drugs, will undercut our ability to deal with local law enforcement and will reduce the resources available for housing for the elderly or environmental cleanup? Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Is there a copy of this available? We do not have a copy over here.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. So 1 minute remains to debate, and then the vote. I thank the Chairperson.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Officially, what time is it now?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Parliamentary inquiry, Madam Chair.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Madam Chairman, first let me announce that a prize will be given to anyone who can connect the dots between the previous speech and the subject under discussion. As to the subject under discussion, it is whether or not we should extend a moratorium for 2 years or 5 years, and it is a moratorium which already has more than a year to go. That is, there are no advocates right now of taxing the Internet, per se. There are many of us, nefarious organizations, one that the previous speaker did forget to mention, most of the governors of the United States, whom some people here do not trust because they believe that if the governors are allowed to continue to administer their sales taxes, they will spend us into oblivion. But what we are talking about is not allowing taxes on the Internet as the Internet. We are talking about the dilemma we face in not being able to enforce the collection of sales tax which are concededly legally due and owing through Internet purchases. Now, there is currently a moratorium. It expires next year. The gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt), my colleague, has offered an amendment to extend that for 2 years. The underlying bill would extend it for 5 years. There is an amendment, the never-never land amendment, that would extend it out indefinitely. But I believe the real issue of a serious note is whether we extend it for 5 years or 2 years. That is the key, do we extend the moratorium until 2006 or until 2003. So it is not a case of wanting to tax the Internet. It is not a case of letting the moratorium fail, even though it has no expiration date until next year. The question is whether it is a 3-year extension or a 5-year extension of a moratorium; in other words, a moratorium or a less-atorium. But it is still going to be a veto on any taxes. The question, then, is why are some of us against a 5-year extension. The answer is this: States today depend in many cases heavily on the sales tax. There is a reason for allowing the States to collect the sales taxes that are already owing, both to finance important State activity, and also so that retailers who operate in cities and elsewhere are not at a competitive disadvantage because the purchaser has to pay a tax when, de facto, a purchaser over the Internet may not have to. Collecting sales taxes on Internet purchases is conceptually easy but has some specifics of that to be worked out. What we need is the participation of the people who do the retailing over the Internet and the local and State governments and others so that we can work out a sensible regime whereby sales taxes that are legally owing can be collected once, not in a duplicative fashion, so that we do not put the Internet at any disadvantage but neither do we give them a competitive advantage over those physical retailers located in communities and so we do not detract from the revenues that States need to carry out their responsibilities. The problem many of us feel is this: If we further extend this moratorium for 5 years and, a fortiori, if we do it forever, as the pending amendment proposes, we reduce substantially any incentive for those who have the expertise about e-retailing to participate in the negotiations we need to work out a fair system. The retailers over the Internet will say, well, wait a minute. We are worried we may have multiple sales tax claims. People may claim we owe in this State and owe in that State. How do we find out the best way to enforce it? By some conversations and negotiations. The effect of passing indefinite moratoria, first until 2001 and then to 2006 and then maybe ultimately forever, will be to undermine the possibility of discussions so that we can come up with a regime not where we tax the Internet but where we fairly allow State sales taxes to be collected irrespective of where the purchase is made. That is the goal. We do not want economic decisions to be made based on tax avoidance or tax advantage. We want them to be made based on the real economic activity. And, therefore, the legal system ought to be neutral as between physical stores in particular locations and retailers over the Internet. In fact, today they are not. In fact, there is an advantage in buying over the Internet because of the difficulty of collecting the sales taxes and the uncertainties. What we are trying to achieve is a regime where there will be no such disadvantage, where the States will not be losing revenues. People have said, ``Well, not that much is sold over the Internet now.'' But the goal, of course, is greatly to increase that. That is a perfectly legitimate goal. That ought to be a matter of consumer choice. Whether to do it through the Internet or do it through a physical location, or go back and forth. But if we allow a tax disadvantage, then we will not reach that ideal.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. The gentleman could e-mail it to me.