Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, we have here Congress and American politics at its absolute worse. We have a very important issue, illegal immigration. I worked for a very long time in a bipartisan way with departing Senator Al Simpson, whose departure I regret now even more than before, and others, in 1986 and in 1990 to fashion legislation in a bipartisan way to deal with this problem. Bipartisan, because this is not and ought not be an ideological issue. Some issues are legitimately partisan. I was sorry to here hear the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary defend the shabbiest legislative procedure I have ever seen here. Yes, we had full markups; yes, we had full debates. And then once we did, this bill disappeared into a series of secret meetings between the Republican House and Senate staffs, it seemed to me, with some input from the Members, and the Dole campaign, and virtually all of the things on which we seriously worked in committee disappeared, and others appeared. Now, this is a popular issue, getting rid of illegal immigrants to the extent that we can, as it ought to be. Unfortunately, this is a bill which does not do nearly as much as it could to diminish illegal immigration, and, instead, as the gentleman from Texas noted, makes it a little easier than it used to be for people to take advantage of them once they are here. This is a bill that says gee, it would be nice if there were not so many illegal immigrants, but as long as they are here, maybe we can get a little cheap work out of them. That is the general thrust. But then it does other things. I want to talk about one thing that appeared that was in neither bill. At the Republican Convention we had speakers who talked about AIDS and how terrible it is. When the Republican leadership amended the military bill to say that if you are HIV positive you would be forced out, that was recognized to be a mistake and it was repealed. But here they go again. What they have done is to take the issue of illegal immigration, a popular issue, and use it as a shield behind which to do ugly things to vulnerable people. The gentleman from Texas pointed out the extent to which they are weakening the civil rights protection. Here is another thing they do. It was not in either bill. It has not been voted on, and in the most extraordinary arrogance ever seen, we were not allowed to offer an amendment on this or any other thing in the conference. Because I will give my Republican leadership friends credit, they know how embarrassing this is, and therefore they are determined not to let anyone vote on it, so they did it in a forum in which you could not vote. They simply say, OK, we got a bill on illegal immigration. By the way, they are going to stick in a couple of these things, and you have no way to vote, other than no on the whole bill. The one I am talking about has to do with people who are HIV positive. This bill says if you are a legal immigrant, you came here legally, and there has been some economic misfortune and you get very sick, you cannot take federally-funded medical care for more than a year. That in and of itself seems to me to be cruel and unfair. But then they say, well, in the interest of public health, we do not want epidemics around, we will make an exception for communicable diseases. That was in the bill as it came out. Then, in the mysterious darkness that they use instead of a conference report, they gave an exception to the exception. What is the exception to the exception? If you are here legally and you are HIV positive, you may not get any treatment if you need Federal funds. If you are here legally and you contracted this terrible illness, which they profess to think is something we ought to fight, then you are, by this bill, condemned to death, with no help, because you cannot get Federal assistance. I guess when they tote up the death penalties that they want to take credit for, they ought to add one: Legal immigrants here with HIV illness. They created an exception for communicable diseases, but then they created an exception to the exception, so that if you are here legally and you get HIV, no matter how, and, by the way, we have changed the law, I did not agree with it, but this is the law, no one is now challenging it, so if you are known to be HIV positive and we test you, you cannot come in. So we are not talking about becoming a magnet for people who are HIV positive to come here. There is already a limit on that. What we are talking about are people who are here and become HIV positive, or who are here and become HIV positive when they got here, and they are denied medical treatment for more than 12 months, which, of course, if you are HIV positive, is the medical treatment you need. What is the reason for that? What is that doing in a bill to deal with illegal immigration? I am talking about illegal immigrants. They can be deported if they take advantage of this medical care. I do not think it is a good idea to deny medical care to people in need elsewhere. But this? We said ``Gee, we made a mistake. We should not kick people who are HIV positive out of the military.'' Should we kick them out of existence? Because that is what you do when you say to people who are here and do not have a lot of money and who are HIV positive, that you cannot get any medical treatment beyond 12 months. I take it back. When they are about to die, then I guess they can get some. This is an unworthy substantive and procedural piece of legislation, and it ought to be defeated.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I understand why the gentleman did not want to yield. The bill does not say that legal immigrants can get AIDS treatment and illegal cannot. It gives disabilities to both of them for getting it with Federal funds. Anybody who can pay for it on their own the bill does not affect. The bill says with regard to legal and illegal immigrants, they cannot get it with Federal funds. The distinction between legal and illegal does not exist in the bill. The degree of penalty may be different. In both cases the bill says if you are here legally or illegally and you have HIV, you cannot be treated with Federal funds. That includes legal immigrants.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. It is the chairman in exile, Mr. Speaker. The gentleman who just spoke acknowledged that there are cases where there are health reasons. He said they are a small number. This bill is controversial for one reason and one reason only. The majority absolutely, in both branches, refused to allow an amendment that would have provided an exception where the health of the mother was at stake. In the other body, such an amendment was put forward and it was defeated. In this House, we went to the Committee on Rules and asked for the right to present it, and we were not allowed to do it. If the majority feels that the health-generated abortions of this sort are such a minuscule portion of the total, why have they adamantly refused to allow us to vote on such an amendment? We are talking here when we talk about health, about cases where the child to be born is unfortunately so severely deformed as to have no chance of life whatsoever, and the question is, if a doctor decides late in a pregnancy when this is dicovered that the child will not survive if born and that this is the method of abortion that minimizes risk to the mother, this bill makes that a crime. We were not even allowed to vote on that. Members have said that on the other side, ``Well, if you just say health, it will be too vague.'' Well, they have got the votes. They could have defined health. They could have said physical health. They could have said significant physical health. Understand that this bill would outlaw, as it is presented to us, and this is what the President justifiably discussed when he vetoed it, this would outlaw the doctor deciding in his or her judgment what is the best procedure for a fetus that has no chance of life outside the mother and the doctor says this is the safest way. We have had people who have said, ``Look, the doctor said to me if I didn't use this procedure, my ability to have children in the future would have been wiped out.'' This bill says no. If in fact they believe that medical-generated cases are a small number, why did they not allow us to vote on this? The reason is, this is part of an effort by people who conscientiously believe that all abortion is wrong. The people pushing for this bill do not really differentiate in their own minds, morally, philosophically, any other way, between this particular form of abortion and any other form performed in the second or third month. They do not like the whole notion. No one does. It is not a pleasant thing to describe in any form. But the question is, if a doctor says to a woman in her sixth or seventh month, ``Look, we have sad news, the child you will give birth to will have no chance whatsoever of life and in fact if you give birth in the normal fashion, this could damage your health, and I want to use this procedure''; the doctor says, ``I advise that we follow this procedure, because in my medical judgment any other action would threaten your health,'' that doctor has just proposed the commission of a crime. Send this back to conference, give us an amendment that says significant physical health effects would be a reason to allow this, and you would not have a controversy because the President would have signed the bill. So that is the whole story. This bill refuses to allow a doctor and the pregnant woman to decide that in the case of a fetus that has no chance to live this is the best procedure and you would make that a crime.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I agree that this is a very important subject. I agree that we should be acting to try to diminish illegal immigration. It is for that reason that I deplore as seriously as I can both the method by which this bill has been considered and the substances. I am a member of the Subcommittee on Immigration as I have been since coming to Congress. I am very proud of the bipartisan efforts in which I participated in 1986 and in 1990 and at other times to deal with immigration legislation. For the first time in the 16 years I have been a Member of Congress, gross partisanship has run this process. Those of us who participated in good faith have assurances from the chairman of the subcommittee that this would be done in a bipartisan way in the deliberations at the committee stage. Those of us who were Democrats were completely excluded from the process to the point where, despite our repeated requests, we could not even see a copy of this complex legislation until 9:30 last night. My colleagues will remember that the Republican leadership was ready to push this bill through before the recess, and only our objection stopped it. They were going to put it through without our having a chance to see it. Then, despite the fact that it was ready to be passed in August, they withheld it from us, despite our requests to be able to look at it until last night. This substitution of partisan exclusion for a bipartisan process is the reason why we may very well not have a bill. The fault will lie at the feet of those who changed a tradition of bipartisanship. I believe the chairman of the subcommittee when he said, do not worry, we are just talking among ourselves. We will have a participatory process. That apparently consists of us seeing the bill last night and then trying to run it through conference tomorrow. That is their participatory process. Now, I understand why they did it that way. There are in this bill several provisions which do not deal with illegal immigration, they deal with discrimination. They make it easier for people to discriminate against American citizens of Hispanic or Asian origin in particular. In 1986, back in the bipartisan days, now long over with us, we adopted legislation that said, if you hire people who are here illegally, you will be punished. We feared that that would lead to discrimination. People would say, I better not hire anybody who is Hispanic or Asian who might be foreign because they might be here illegally. We had a variety of safeguards in there including antidiscrimination provisions which were unanimously agreed to finally by the conference. We put provisions in there that said, if you are denied work by someone who is motivated by fear of sanctions, despite your having done the right things, we are going to protect you. And we said to businesses, you cannot use the rules against hiring people illegally as a justification for saying, Mexicans are too much trouble, Asians are too much trouble. This bill weakens that. This bill deliberately, clearly and intentionally, to use the word this bill likes, weakens those protections for Hispanics. By the way, we had a study by the General Accounting Office. They said the provisions were not strong enough. The General Accounting Office said, yes, the sanctions have led to discrimination. Understand, we are not here talking about keeping out people who are here illegally. We are talking about Mexican-American citizens, Asian-American citizens. And some employers say, I do not want to mess with you guys because you might be here illegally. We said, you cannot do that. You cannot simply refuse. You have to give them a chance to prove that they are here legally. We had provisions there that protected people. They now changed that law. Those provisions are not before us. This sanction proposal, we are not dealing with that. What they did in this bill is gratuitously go back to the 1986 law and weaken the antidiscrimination provisions by saying that you will be found guilty to discriminating only if the Government proves intent. In other words, if you are by now dumb enough to use bigoted words, we can do it. but if it is overwhelmingly clear from the way you have behaved, from your work force, et cetera, that you are discriminating, we will not be able to protect you. We also have problems from people who apply and are illegally turned down because the Government makes a mistake. We said, what if somebody said, I will hire you if you are here legally and the Government makes a mistake. My friends on the other side talk frequently of the fact that the Government makes mistakes. We know the Government makes mistakes. So we said, if you are in fact someone who is here legally and you are refused a job because the Government made an error, we will allow you to recover damages from the Government. Do my colleagues know what they did? They knocked that out. What does that have to do with illegal immigration? We put provisions in there to protect people who are lawfully here, American citizens, people who may have been born here. We put in provisions to protect them from harmful error. My colleagues knocked it out. No wonder they did not want to let us see it until last night. They weakened anti-discrimination provisions that have been in the law for 10 years, that the GAO said should have been strengthened. They weakened out ability to have Americans get money back from the Government. We passed the Taxpayers Bill of Rights for the IRS. But if the IRS and the Social Security Administration, somebody else, makes a mistake about one's eligibility to work, and they lose a job because of it, they do not get any help, and do my colleagues know what the Republican answer was? ``Oh, well, there's a reciprocal problem there because you, if you were illegally turned down for the job, you lost the job, but the employer has also been hurt because the employer didn't get to hire you.'' That is the kind of equivalence we get here. We have legislation that addresses an important subject, and up until the committee process we dealt with it in a bipartisan way, and once it got out of committee somebody made a decision, and I do not know; we could not find out who. Everybody I talked to thought it was a terrible decision. Apparently the decision was made by the ether. But the decision was to withhold from the Democratic members of this subcommittee and full committee and others in the House, and I am told this happened on the other side as well, any chance to look at this complicated bill. We got it at 9:30 last night, and they plan to pass it tomorrow, quite contrary to the assurances I received from the chairman of the subcommittee and others, and they also, having let us play games, having apparently made us feel good, pretending they were paying attention to us, it seems to me, during the committee process, they then systematically weakened or took out of that bill everything that would protect American citizens against discrimination, American citizens against government error. Mr. Speaker, we do not stop illegal immigration by diminishing the rights of Americans citizens, but that is what this bill does. I do not like the amendment offered by the gentleman from California regarding education. The right of children to go to school the second to the sixth grade does not seem to me a great right, and if my colleagues believe that education stops at the sixth grade, I guess it does to my colleagues, too. But I want to say that that is not the only provision of this bill that bothers me and there are provisions of the bill that systematically reduce rights that are now available to American citizens who, if they happen to be Hispanic or Asian, might get caught up in the web. I am very disappointed that the Republican leadership choose a partisan method and choose to give in to these kinds of fears because they will be responsible for the likely result: no legislation. We pass immigration legislation when we do it in a bipartisan and cooperative way. We defeat it when we use these kinds of partisan methods, particularly when they are used to diminish rights that already exist among American citizens.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Pennsylvania is understandably confused, because he thought we were using regular procedures. He kept saying, you have agreed in the conference report. No, there is not any conference report. There was an internal Republican discussion, and they produced something that they intend to ram through the conference in a day. But in fact the gentleman mistook the current situation for regular legislative procedure.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I just want to say this is an appropriate amendment for the gentlewoman to have come forward with and get unanimously approved as she ends her very distinguished tenure here, because she really, more than anybody else, began to call people's attention to it, and we need to continue to work on this. Mr. Chairman, we cannot read a study of the economic success of the tigers of East Asia without learning of the essential contribution of free American military protection to their economies as an element in their economic development. Our European allies continue to scale down. We are in a situation now where we are responding as we see fit for an emergency in the Middle East and many of our European allies who are the beneficiaries of our largesse are nowhere to be found in our support. One of the most important mistakes we make today, to our own misfortune, is to continue to subsidize at the cost of tens and tens of billions of dollars a year the wealthy nations of Europe and the increasingly wealthy nations of Asia. This is an important reaffirmation of that. It is appropriate that the gentlewoman from Colorado be the one once again to bring this to us. But we have a lot more work to do. This is a very good step. It will show what we know to be the case, the enormous disparity between what the American taxpayers put forward and what is put forward by nations in Europe and Asia that could very well afford to do more.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I congratulate all of those who helped bring forward this increase in the minimum wage, a small but important step toward social equity which we very much need. I also want to express my appreciation within this bill to the U.S. Treasury Department, to the Committee on Ways and Means, the chairman, the gentleman from Texas, and the ranking member. My colleague, the gentleman from Massachusetts, and I approached them on behalf of fishermen in the greater New Bedford area who were caught up unfairly in a tax dispute. They found themselves, in effect, retroactively taxes, I believe. We made our case. These are very hardworking people, already facing great difficulties because of conservation-imposed restrictions. I am very appreciative of the willingness of the Committee on Ways and Means, on a bipartisan basis, to entertain our requests; the Treasury Department, to make a rare exception and say retroactively would be acceptable in this case; and I am pleased that as part of this bill, some very hardworking people in the greater New Bedford area will get the tax relief they are entitled to. They are getting nothing they should not have had in the first place. They have been through a lot of expense and aggravation to get here, but at least from now on they will not have this burden.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker I have a list: Head Start; antiterrorism efforts at airports and elsewhere; NIH research; cops on the street; drug treatment programs; cleaning up hazardous waste sites; housing for the elderly; aid to college students, Pell grants, student loans; the Community Development Block Grant Program; child care; and earned income tax credit. If we funded the Defense Department at what it asked, we could give each of these programs an additional $1 billion. Every one of these programs is $1 billion poorer because we decided to play Santa Claus to the Defense Department. We did not end welfare. We just transferred it. We transferred it to Western Europe and Japan. Our European allies spend an average of 2 percent of their gross domestic product on the military. We spend 4 percent. It is in this $11 billion gift we gave. The greatest gift any nation ever gave to another is the free military defense we provide to Japan so it can keep its military spending at such a minuscule level. Every Member here who votes for this bill who has ever told someone, ``Gee, I would like to have given you more for child care in the welfare bill. I couldn't afford it.'' Or, ``Gee, I wish we could have cleaned up that hazardous waste site. We couldn't afford it.'' ``Yes, Project Head Start is a good program, I wish we could do more.'' ``Oh, I'm sorry you didn't get your cops on the street application. If we could only have increased it, you would have gotten more.'' ``And elderly housing, boy, of course we could use more elderly housing.'' Would you also tell them that you spent it here? Do not tell them that you wanted to do that if you vote for this bill without telling them that you took $11 billion more than the Pentagon asked, which goes to help defend Western Europe against I do not know what, which goes to defend Japan against people they want to trade with, that is where this money went. So the next time we tell people we are sorry NIH was not bigger, we are sorry we did not do more on the earned income tax credit or child care or Cops on the Street, please also tell them that we gave $11 billion more to the Pentagon than they wanted. Please also tell them that programs like the Community Development Block Grant could have got another $1 billion, one-eleventh of that, and that would have been 25 percent of what they got. If we have cut anything else, please give them the full picture about the $11 billion giveaway to Western Europe and East Asia.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Reserving the right to object, Mr. Speaker, I would just note that this is legislation correcting a matter involving employee rights that has been fully agreed to and has gone through the House previously without objection, and I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I would Mr. Speaker, if the resolution were debatable.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I got to know Ham Fish when I joined the House and became a member of the Committee on the Judiciary where he was then a senior Republican. Later he became the ranking Republican. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk a little bit about some of the things he so exemplified that are less in fashion than they used to be. You will look very hard to find a politician who worked as hard for people unlikely to vote for him in return. In the first place Ham Fish was a champion of a decent policy protecting the human rights of people all around the world. Ham Fish spent an awful lot of time on people who were never going to be able to vote for him, were never going to be able to vote at all in the United States. He was a man who became an expert in the intricacies of immigration law so that he could give full vent to his burning desire to help people live in freedom. I say burning desire because Ham's quiet, relaxed demeanor may have fooled people. One of the things we can learn from him is that being civil and being thoughtful in no way rules out being passionate. This was a man of great passion on behalf of human rights, and he exerted a good deal of his own influence and his own resource of time and energy on people all over this world. Immigrants are not the most popular people these days, and people who live in other countries are not the most popular people in America. I wish the spirit of Ham Fish informed this place a little bit more today when it came to recognizing that we, with the great blessing of living in this wonderful free country have some obligation to help people elsewhere. Similarly Ham, hardly from a district where civil rights in the traditional sense was a burning constituency issue for him, was a consistent defender of legislation that said America has an obligation to end discrimination, to do what we can as a Federal Government to reach into those pockets that unfortunately persist of racism and of sexual discrimination. He was a consistent and staunch defender. I must tell you as we have debated affirmative action in these past couple of years that I missed Ham Fish because I believe that the voice and the commitment and the passion he showed on behalf of fairness would have served us very, very well. I also want to talk about Ham Fish as a legislator, a longtime legislator. He was here for what, 26 years. I guess the term-limits people think that is a terrible thing. People who think we should have term limits regret the fact that a man like him was here for 26 years, not for lack of anything else to do, not as a careerist, but as a man who had a passion which could best be satisfied by helping other people and who got better at it and better at it and who was a superb legislator who understood. And sometimes people defend moderation and give it a bad name because moderation gets defended sometimes as a kind of mindlessness, as if the middle was the place to be, as if by definition, as if the arithmetic means was always the right place. Ham Fish was moderate in his approach, and, yes, he was a great legislator, and he could compromise and bring people together, but it is because he started from somewhere. He did not walk out and say, ``OK, what's the middle of this issue and how can I be a big hero by talking about what a middle-of-the-roader I am?'' He had passionate and firm convictions on immigration, on racial justice, on other areas. He understood how to legislate, and that is a talent unfortunately scorned these days in many quarters rather than celebrated. So I consider this country to have been enormously enriched by Ham Fish's service on the judiciary committee as a senior Republican, a man who, as we know, was not always in accord with his party on all issues but who understood the importance of party in this country and showed, I think, how you could both be loyal to your party and independent on issues of principle when that was important. And finally, let us talk about family values. I think he exemplified that at its best too in a 2-generation way. He had fundamental disagreements with his own father. He was in Congress a few years and had his own father, a man of very, very strong convictions. Yes, his father opposed the New Deal, he also opposed American participation in World War II, and he took out ads criticizing his son when his son voted for impeachment, and Ham Fish, the Congressman, never let that interfere with the loving relationship with his father, his ability obviously to differ strongly with his father on these issues and maintain the loving relationship that was there. And I was privileged to see that duplicated in Ham's own response to his own children. I knew his son, Ham. I was particularly friendly and had been with his son, Nick, and I send my condolences to them, and both of Ham's sons became Democrats and had differences with him, and they maintained with Ham the same kind of loving relationship in which strong personal affection coexisted with deep political differences that Ham had showed with his father, and that ability to do that is something all of us would benefit from. So he is a man who enriched our lives in a lot of ways, and, like everybody else here, I miss him a lot.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. First the argument that this will be the end of free TV is, of course, nonsense, as Senator Dole pointed out. The broadcasters say, if you make us pay for this license, we will not be able to give you free TV. Ninety-four percent of the current broadcasters paid for that license. What they mean is, if we can pay each other billions of dollars, then we can do it for free. But if any of that leaks into the public, we will have to charge. As Senator Dole pointed out in this speech, 94 percent of the current broadcasters paid for their license. What happens, of course, is they get the license for free. And that will happen with these licenses. We will give some digital, some licenses to the spectrum. People will get into the digital business. They will sell them back and forth to each other. Some of the wealthiest entities in this society are making money off of each other on this, which would be fine if it did not all begin with a free grant from the public. That is the second point. My friend from Texas says, this is the way it ought to be, by Government fiat. Understand, and this, it seems to me, is the greatest inconsistency, I guess we once again understand, the free market is for minimum wage workers. The free market is for women on welfare. The free market is for little people. You reach a point where you are too big to be in the free market. Then you negotiate your deals with the Government, except it is not really a deal because you get this for nothing. What we are being told is, given this new technology, given this great resource, the unused part of the spectrum, the central Government will decide how to do it. It will not be a free market decision. We will allocate by Government fiat these resources to the existing very wealthy entities, and they will decide how to do it. Should there be high definition television? Should it replace the other? Why is the free market not for that? This reaffirms the majority's view here that they believe the free market is great for small people and working people, but when wealthy entities come, let us not disrupt them with the free market.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2\1/2\ minutes. First, I want to correct the correction of the gentleman from Virginia. He said we dealt with this in the telecommunications bill. No. What we did in the telecommunications bill was to say that we will deal with this later. Now that it is later, we are saying we dealt with it in the telecommunications bill. I read from the letter of January 31, 1996 to Reed Hundt, signed by the gentleman from Virginia, chairman of the committee in the Senate, the Senate majority leader now, and the Speaker. ``We share Senator Dole's determination to protect American taxpayers.'' They did in January. Kind of faded. ``We wish to inform the Commission that it is our intention to conduct open hearings and move legislation to overhaul our Nation's policies governing the electromagnetic spectrum. We request the Commission not issue any initial licenses or construction permits until legislation is completed.'' There is no legislation. So, in fact, what they said when this came up in the telecommunications bill is we will do it later and now they say we did it in telecommunications bill. Second, I say to my friend from Michigan, and I was delighted when he said he had great respect and affection for me. One day I will be here when he has respect and affection for someone he agrees with. It has not reached that. We are only lending it to them. I accept that. This is the world's most expensive lendaway. This says here, ``You can have this extraordinarily valuable asset for a very long time, there is no end date, and you do not pay for the use of it.'' So it is now a giveaway; it is a new thing; it is a lendaway. But I have to say if the gentleman were going to lend me his house to rent out and not pay him anything, if he were going to lend me a couple billion dollars that I could lease out and get the interest on, I would be pretty happy. It is turning over to the private sector people an enormously important asset. Finally, the gentleman from Michigan sketches out a thoughtful way that we should have this view, and I understand from his perspective why he does. It is particularly intriguing that Members on the majority side agree because this is central planning. This is a valuable asset. We have a question about how the economy will use it in the future. I am proposing the free market. I guess this shows that the broadcasters follow the model that Senator Magnuson said: All any business in America wants from the government is a reasonable advantage over the competition. All they want is that we give them this. Then they will be great enterprises, once they have got a $15- or $20- or $30-billion head start. In fact, Senator Dole, when he was still Senator Dole, was right then when he said that. The letter which said, we will not do this until we have passed legislation was right. We should not countenance a giveaway or a lendaway today.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I insert the following documents in the Record. First, a letter dated, July 22, 1996, from a broad coalition of liberal, moderate, and conservative organizations expressing their support for the amendment to prevent the Federal Communications Commission from giving away licenses for advanced television services; second, a statement by former Senator Bob Dole in support of auctioning the spectrum for advanced television services; and third, a letter dated January 31, 1996, from Republican leaders requesting that the FCC not issue any licenses or permits for the provision of advanced television services until they can ``move legislation to overhaul our Nation's policies governing the electromagnetic spectrum'' which the Republican leadership has not even tried to do. July 22, 1996. Hon. Barney Frank, Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC. Dear Representative Frank: We are writing to express support for your amendment to the Commerce, Justice, State and the Judiciary appropriations bill to prevent the Federal Communications Commission from assigning licenses for advanced television services in fiscal year 1997. The issue of whether incumbent broadcast licensees should simply be given additional spectrum for digital operations free of charge is of great importance to the debate over fiscal policies for the next decade. The FCC estimates the value of the digital spectrum at $11 billion to $70 billion. In a time of budget cutting and fiscal belt-tightening, it would be irresponsible for Congress to permit the FCC to assign digital spectrum to existing broadcasters without a thorough examination of the costs of such action. While we believe broadcasters should have the opportunity to convert to digital broadcasting format, we do not believe that an open-ended giveaway of an extra 6 MHz of spectrum to all existing broadcasters is the best way to accomplish that end. We applaud your bold move to ensure that Congress will have the opportunity to take a hard look at whether to auction or give away the spectrum, and whether to establish a specific time frame for completing the transition process. American taxpayers deserve no less. Sincerely, Media Access Project; Center for Media Education; Common Cause; Consumer Federation of America; Council for Citizens Against Government Waste; National School Boards Association; National Taxpayers Union; People for the American Way; Small Business Survival Committee.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I had no objection to the gentleman from Virginia giving a significant chunk of time to the gentleman from Michigan. That is reasonable among colleagues. But giving a large part of the broadcast spectrum now owned by the public to some of the wealthiest entities in America for nothing seems to me to be in error. I would have preferred a legislative forum in which to discuss this because we have a fundamental decision here. We now have, through technology, available a significant part of the broadcast spectrum currently unallocated. No one has any legal right to it. We have people who want simply to give that for nothing, this enormously valuable asset, the right to broadcast, to the TV networks, the TV license holders, entities wealthy in themselves, controlled by some of the wealthiest entities in America. The alternative, of course, would be to auction this off. The alternative would be to say, well, the public owns this important asset, it ought to be utilized. Let us let the free market decide. Now, remember, there are two aspects to an auction. First, when you sell this to the highest bidder, and you could put conditions on it if you wanted to, but as you sell it you get two results: First, you get revenue for the public. We are being told every day of the week that we cannot do things. The majority Member just complained that we are not doing enough for maritime, we are not doing enough for health care, we are not doing enough for the environment. Yet we will give $11 to $70 billion in assets away for free to some of the wealthiest people in the country. This retires the corporate welfare title for all time. It would seem to me that those who advocate this, who then want to object to corporate welfare, would have a heavy burden of proof in differentiating this from that concept which they would then purport to lament. But there is another aspect to it which it seems to me the majority should like, the Republican majority. We have two ways to allocate this resource: One is by government fiat, by central planning. We can go to the Federal Communications Commission, that agency of public officials appointed by the President, and say, you decide. Forget all this market stuff. Market schmarket. Let us not get into this business. Let us make a nice central planning decision how to do this. Or we go the free-market route. We can say here is a valuable asset. The best way to decide how to use it is, in fact, to allocate it to the market and let the market decide. We have had a series of auctions in other parts of the spectrum, and in every case they have produced even more money than we thought. My amendment simply says do not go forward. But as I made clear by offering the first amendment, to which people objected on procedural grounds, my preference is, in fact, to say either we have an auction or we say that this has public interest obligations, because I want to address now the approach of the broadcasters. The broadcasters say, ``Oh, don't auction this off; we are the trustees of the public interest. This is something which we want to deal with as a matter of the public interest. Give it to us, don't have something as crass as an auction. Don't talk about money. We, after all, are seeped in the obligations to advance public debate.'' That is until they get it. Once they get it, as witness the debate over children's television or the fairness doctrine or anything else, once they get this asset for free, having justified the gift on the grounds they are the trustees of public opinion, it all of a sudden becomes private property. I have never seen such a transformation. When the broadcasters want to get it, the question is whether they should pay for it or get it for free. They are a charity. They are the United Way. They are the spokesperson for the public interest. Once they get it this becomes private property, and no one should tell them what to do with it. My first version of the amendment, ruled out of order, would say it has to be one or the other. Either they pay for it in an auction and let the free market decide how to best use it or they get it under the guise of they are seeped in the public interest and we then make clear that their public interest obligations are. Mr. Chairman, as I close off at this point, let me just quote from someone who says: * * * the broadcasters should be happy with the deal they already have. They have been getting free channels for years. In return, they fulfill public interest obligations, such as reporting news and information. Now they want more airwaves for free. Newspapers also report the news, but Congress has never had to buy them off. It seems to me, this man says, that giving broadcasters free spectrum is like giving newspapers free paper from our national forests. Congress has never challenged whether broadcasters should be allowed to keep a channel. Instead, we are simply stating that if broadcasters want more channels, then they are going to pay the taxpayers for them. That does not kill television. The broadcasters say they cannot afford to buy additional airways, which the Congressional Budget Office says is worth $12 billion. Broadcasters say that if they had to pay for the extra airwaves, it would be the end of so-called free, over-the-air television. The facts speak otherwise. According to the Washington Post, over the last 2 years broadcasts deals in the private sector amounted to $31.3 billion. All TV broadcast licenses in America were originally given away for free, but only 6 percent are still in the hands of the original licensee. The other 94 percent have been bought and sold. My point is that broadcasters have a long history of paying top dollar for existing channels. Somehow they cannot afford any new ones unless the taxpayer picks up the tab. That was not just me speaking, Mr. Chairman; that was a private citizen by the name of Bob Dole. I suppose if he was a Senator under the rules I could quote him. But I quoted what Bob Dole said in April. I just think it is disrespectful to the memory of that great Senate career so blatantly to disregard what Senator Dole said within a few months. Sic transit gloriea Dole. Here we have Senator Dole making this very important statement against this giveaway and within months of his departure his colleagues have forgotten the principles he enunciated. I think on this issue Senator Dole, when he was Senator Dole, was right. I think Mr. Dole is still right. I think Mr. Dole would undoubtedly say himself that Mr. Dole is still right in exactly those same words, and I hope we will not make a multibillion dollar giveaway and allow the free market to make this decision. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I offer amendment No. 6.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I offer amendment No. 5.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I will not take very much now because, the point of order having been reserved, I think we will probably be debating the second of the amendments. Mr. Chairman, I am very frustrated that we are about to make, as a government, a decision involving the disposition of one of our most valuable national resources, the currently unused portion of the broadcast spectrum. We were about to see it given, if we do not do something different, to the broadcasters, very wealthy entities. The broadcasters have already made it clear that when they accept this gift from us, they believe it is subsequently their property essentially to do as they wish with. What is interesting is, we are talking not simply about a loss of revenue to the Federal Government, estimated upwards of $11 billion, some estimates go as high as $70 billion, but what is particularly striking to me is the majority is apparently expressing its preference here for central planning over the free market. We are being told that a Federal agency, the Federal Communications Commission, should as a matter of fiat decide how to allocate this valuable resource, and that the free market will not work to do it. We will, as I said, be able to debate this at greater length. There are two versions of this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time at this point so that the gentleman's point of order could be acted on, and depending on how it is disposed of, we can proceed from there.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I will be heard to say that I would not have offered legislation under an appropriations bill if we were offered the chance to legislate on a legislation bill. In the absence of our being given a chance to legislate any other way, I offered this.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, one of the most infuriating aspects of our economic affairs to many people is the extent to which the bond market treats good news as bad news. This was of course most recently displayed when the best employment news we have had in years triggered serious financial downtrends. People who trade bonds have of course a right to do whatever they wish. But we as policymakers must make it very clear that we will not be driven by their short term gyrations and in particular that we will continue to pursue policies that expand employment opportunities and real incomes for working people without being deterred by the negative short term impact this may have on the bond business. James K. Galbraith, formerly of the staff of the Joint Economic Committee in better days, and now a teacher of economics at the Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, recently wrote on this subject in a very instructive fashion. It is essential that we listen to Mr. Galbraith and not allow financial speculation to perform the reverse alchemy which has from time to time characterized their efforts. What Inflation? (By James K. Galbraith) Austin, TX.--The economic news on Friday was so good it was a disaster. Unemployment has fallen to 5.3 percent, the lowest it has been in six years. June payrolls increased by 239,000 jobs. And the average hourly wage rose by nine cents, the biggest one-month jump ever recorded, a level ``noticeably above the inflation rate,'' as The New York Times reported. Pandemonium on Wall Street! The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond leaped a quarter of a point, finishing at 7.18 percent. And stocks plummeted: the Dow Jones industrial average dived 114 points. Amid the commotion, one could hear the bond bears roaring their message that, with inflation sure to surge, the Federal Reserve must raise short-term interest rates. Many of the bears said that had the Fed's Open Market Committee known at its meeting last Wednesday what the secretive Bureau of Labor Statistics would announce two days later, it would surely have raised them. Some urged the Fed to correct this ``error'' immediately without waiting until the next regular meeting in August. Nonsense. There is no cause for alarm. The evidence does not portend surging inflation. To begin with, the annual rate remains low: 2.9 percent in the year that ended in May. Inflation is not accelerating. Instead, productivity growth appears to be picking up. If this pattern continues, it will permit wages to grow for some time, with little effect on price inflation. The decline in unemployment also means little. Some economists still hold to the notion of a ``natural rate of unemployment'' at 6 percent or a slightly lower figure, below which they believe inflation spirals out of control. But joblessness has been less than 6 percent without raising inflation since September 1994. Recent economic studies confirm their is little reason to fear that prices will rise simply because of low unemployment--or for that matter, rapid growth. Most inflation of past decades had different causes, like oil shocks and war. Some say to forget the facts. An official of a regional Federal Reserve bank recently told Business Week (anonymously, of course) that ``you have to move on anecdotal data'' In other words, monetary policy should be based on gossip. Mercifully, it is likely that the Federal Reserve Board's governors do not share this view. The bears in the bond market must also know that their inflation warnings are unfounded. So what are they up to? The answer seems clear. We have a speculation problem, not an inflation problem. The bears make their living by betting on the Fed's next decision, not by calling the economy. The bears predict when short-term rates will be raised and when they will decline. By selling and buying long-term bonds in advance, they can make a lot of money--if their predictions are right. So it is natural that they try to affect the Fed's decisions. This game has been in full cry since at least October 1993, when bond-market insiders correctly anticipated (and may have provoked) the Fed's rate increase of February 1994. All through that year, each time the Fed raised interest rates, the stock and bond markets churned. If short-term rates are pushed up tomorrow, many ordinary investors will panic and dump their bonds and stocks. Then the speculators can buy cheap and ``shear the sheep''--the small investors, in the speculators' lingo. Sell bonds, create gossip, influence policy--what a game! But maybe the game has changed. News reports preceding the Fed's inactivity last week suggested that the chairman, Alan Greenspan, may have given up the ``pre-emptive strike'' anti- inflation strategy of 1994. Good. The idea that the economic evidence counts for something is central to proper monetary policy. But Mr. Greenspan's possible credibility as a pragmatist, only a week old and none too sturdy, will depend on facing down the bears. It would be an extremely good thing if the Federal Reserve held the line through the summer and fall--at least as long as core inflation (calculated without volatile food and energy prices), measured over six months or so, remains reasonable. In that event, the interest rates on long-term bonds will finally begin to decline, and maybe short-term rates will follow. Traders committed to a strategy of creating panic will lose money. So what? The Fed did the right thing. Now it should stand firm and show the speculators who is in charge.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I have no disagreement with what he just said. I do not claim to be a crusader for States rights. I have the position I think most Members have. I am for the State or the Federal Government deciding where we will best get the outcome that I think public policy ought to have.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I am fascinated by this piece of legislation. It is an act of repudiation of several of the principles that the majority has said it was governed by. In some cases I am glad to see the repudiation because I was not too crazy about the principles; in other cases I like the principles and I am sorry to see them eroded. But let us look at what this bill does. The expansion of gambling has on the whole been a matter of decisions by the States. It is true that there is a Federal statute which grants the rights of Indian tribes, in return for their having given up rights to property, by the way. The Indian tribes did not get this right to conduct gambling one-sidedly. They gave up, as a result of this act, some substantial property claims. But Indian gambling is only a part of what is being studied here. If this is a bill to study and look at the Indian Gaming Act, it would have been a different story. It would have come out of a different committee. Much of the impetus for this comes from the feeling of the Members of Congress, apparently very much on the majority side, too, that we cannot trust State and local officials to make good decisions without our supervision. I have to say I think the chairman of the committee has been very responsible and has helped improve the bill. It is a better bill than before. But even in his own comments, for instance, he said, I noted here, that we need to do a study because currently State and local policymakers are often misled. Well, I have tended to believe that myself. I have felt that there were times when State and local policymakers would be misled and the Federal Government should intervene to try and prevent that. I had not expected to find such enthusiastic and overwhelming support from the Republican side, so I am glad to have it. I hope people will, when they read these remarks in the Record, go up a column or two to the distinguished chairman. Let us get the point here: State and local policymakers are often misled, but do not worry, State and local policymakers, the Federal Government here comes riding to your rescue. So here we will keep State and local policymakers from being misled as often, and it is not simply a case of their being misled. I was particularly pleased when the chairman said that one of the problems States face, and I quite seriously agree with him on this one, and I am glad to have his affirmation of it because it is a central policy point, he said the problem is when States go to make decisions, they are sometimes unable to make the decisions they might like because of competitive pressures from other States. That is a profoundly important point. We live in one national economy in which a State's desire to make certain decisions can be circumscribed by competitive effects. That is true with gambling. It is true with minimum wage. It is true with the level of medical care we provide for the poor. It is true with environmental protections. Indeed, I believe it is truer with regard to these economic issues. So once again, I am glad to have the chairman articulate and the majority overwhelmingly about to vote in both branches to establish the principle that, given the competitive pressures that exist on the States in this one national economy, Federal intervention is sometimes called for. Now, it is true this does not, in and of itself, impose a Federal policy. But the premises are that the States are not doing a good enough job and the Federal Government must come to their aid, that they are uninformed in some cases. We have to have a study so they will not be misled by bad information. They are coerced and circumscribed by competitive pressures, I agree. Now I have long felt that this body has very few people in it who are conscientiously and thoroughly dedicated to the proposition that we should always prefer States' rights or always prefer Federal rights. In fact, I believe the overwhelming majority of Members believe that decisions should be made at that level of government where they are most likely to agree with the outcome. When it comes to some things, some people are for States' rights, and when it comes to other things, other people are for State's rights. I do not think that is hypocritical or inconsistent at all, because one needs not have a preference for one or the other. The error, it seems to me, is to assert a preference when one does not really exist. I think this shows when people think the States have been given too much gambling, and that is clearly what we are talking about. People here think, on the majority side as well as the minority side, Republicans as well as Democrats, that the States, ill-informed as they often are apparently, subject to competitive pressures, are not making the right decisions, so we, the Federal Government, will try to extend a restraining influence and not in this bill by any legislation yet, but it certainly seems to me that we are laying the predicate for some legislation. That is one principle, the principle before States rights. So much for the States' ability to do what they want. Let us talk about the next one, and that is the right of individuals to make their own decisions with their own money, because clearly what is most driving this is the notion that we cannot trust the American people to make their own decisions, because there are people here who believe that individuals who work hard for their money go out and gamble too much. I do not doubt people gamble too much. I do not doubt that a lot of people do a lot of things too much. I had not thought it was the role of this Federal Government to start making those individual choices for people. We have State decisions to allow private businesses in many, many States to set up places where individuals can voluntarily go and pay their money for gambling. In fact, I have had people say, ``Well, you know, it is terrible because it just teaches them to get rich.'' I have talked a lot about gambling. I have a proposal for an Indian casino in the district I represent, overwhelmingly supported by the people there, including the working people who want to get jobs there, and I have talked to a lot of people about gambling. Most of them do not think they are going to get rich. They enjoy it. A lot of older people rent buses and go to various casinos because this is a form of recreation for them, and they get together, they get on the bus, they go down, they gamble, they like it. These are not stupid people. None of them are unaware of the odds. None of them think they are going to be rich overnight. A percentage of people, a small percentage, it is true, abuse this. They have an obsessive problem. There are people who have obsessive problems about drinking, about eating, about doing a lot of things. A rational society which honors the choices that individuals make with the money they earn themselves provides programs to deal with the obsessive problem but does not try to restrict other adults from doing that. But again, permeating this is this notion that people really cannot be trusted to make these decisions. So much for the theoretical framework of States' rights. So much for this notion that we will let individuals make their own choices. The Federal Government is going to have to restrain people from doing this. Then we get into the question of fiscal responsibility. Now, this bill is not going to cost a lot of money, but whatever it is going to cost is extra money that we do not need to spend. There will be nine commissioners here. I guess they will be called commissioners; I do not know. Maybe they will be called moral censors, whatever they will be called, the nine elders who will stop the States from being misinformed and keep the people from unwisely spending their own money. They will be compensated at the annual rate of $104,000 a year plus per diems if they go to meetings. There are nine of them. It is a 2- year deal. I do not know how often they are going to meet. They have incentives, obviously, to meet a lot. They have an executive director who gets $114,000 a year. They are going to pay witness fees. They were going to go around and have meetings. Clearly several million dollars will be spent here. One of the mistakes the people on the Democratic side have made in the past is to talk as if several million dollars of Federal money is not a serious expenditure. Of course it is. Of course when we spend several million dollars of public money, particularly when we are in a deficit situation, that is a problem. Why, then, is the Federal Government about to spend millions of dollars, and by the way, the legislation is silent on the amount. There is no cap here. It authorizes ``such sums.'' That is because I think in part some people did not want to limit the amount. I had proposed some amendments in committee to try and limit the amount. It is not limited to $2 million or $5 million or $10 million. Theoretically, the nine commissioners, if they meet a lot, could make, each of them, close to $100,000 a year on a 2-year basis; the executive director, the other staff, transcripts, travel, witness fees. So we are talking millions of dollars. So here is what we have: An area where the States are on the whole competent to legislate constitutionally, and again, if we were talking about Indian gaming this would be a different story, but this goes far beyond Indian gambling. That is a Federal responsibility. This deals with State and local, and there have been efforts to focus on State and local. In fact, the gentleman from Illinois read a quote from the Washington Post, and the Washington Post reporter seemed to be upset that more people went to see the pyramids in Nevada then went to see the pyramids in Egypt. Now, I have to say it would have seemed to me, according to good Republican principles of limited Government, not the slightest business of anybody here that more people wanted to see the pyramids in Nevada than the pyramids in Egypt. What, are we in charge of which pyramids people see? Are we now doing the cultural advice for people? ``Oh, no, you cannot go look at those pyramids, they are too gaudy. Go look at the other pyramids.'' I do not think we should be in the pyramid picking business. I do not think we should be spending several million dollars of Government funds because the Washington Post does not like which pyramids people go to see. That is what this is about. That is what motivates this. So while I am glad to see the Republican Party backing away from this rigid States rights principle, acknowledging that competitive pressures can drive the States, acknowledging the States might be misinformed and need more Federal help, while I am glad to see they think sometimes the Federal Government must come to the aid of individuals, although I disagree with the degree of intervention here, I would hope they would hold to a more libertarian principle and in general not use the fact that people pick the wrong pyramids as the basis for spending millions of dollars, and I wish we would not find new ways to spend Federal money. This is several million dollars new to the Federal Government, not spent before. So I am against this bill. I think it is a bad idea. I believe that while people might want to look at the Indian Gaming Act alone, to go into the whole area of States and local spending and to decide that what we really need is a federally funded study costing millions of dollars, which subpoena power to go around and essentially tell the States they are doing a bad job of regulating gambling, to tell the American people they are going to look at the wrong pyramids and not spending their own money wisely, that is not a very good idea and I think the time of the Congress and the money of the Federal Government could be better used. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.