Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I thank the gentleman for yielding the time. I know his general parsimony when it comes to minimums, so I appreciate the 5 minutes. It is in keeping with his overall approach. What we have here is one of the opening phases of the 1996 Presidential campaign. It is a Presidential campaign, the Republican campaign, which is not going sufficiently well on its own for the Republicans to conduct it in the normal way. So the House of Representatives is being enlisted into the Republican Presidential campaign. To the aid of a faltering campaign comes now the machinery of the House in a very unfortunate way. Mr. Speaker, the request is made so the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight can vote an extremely unjustified, unprecedented, unfair, and dangerous contempt citation for the President's counsel. We have had a number of ongoing investigations which the Republicans are conducting. They are spending enormous amounts of money for very little purpose. Well, I take it back; they have a clear purpose: election of a Republican President. They are spending enormous amounts of money for very little concrete result. What they now want to do is to change the subject on the travel investigation from the merits to a refusal by the administration to exceed to requests that should never have been made that are unfair and that the House itself would not respond to. And I think we should be very clear. We will be discussing this further. They are going to cite the counsel of the President for contempt for refusing to release documents to the Republican campaign effort on that committee when they would not release similar documents, and we are going to have a test of this because we are working now on some resolutions, and if in fact the House is going to say these types of documents must be made public. What are they? They have to do with information that would be relevant to a grand jury; they have to do with things that deal with lawyers, the independent counsel, the wideranging independent counsel who have also again come up with nothing damaging to this administration, as they have been cooperating with him. They have to do with communications between executive branch and Members. The White House is being threatened with contempt if they do not turn over for public discussion memorandums conversations, and comments between Members of this body and the White House. Mr. Speaker, if that is the standard, if the standard is that we will subpoena and then make public those kind of documents, let us apply it to ourselves. If we are going to threaten contempt against the counsel for doing his duty in a conscientious way, then let us understand that is the standard by which we will make documents available. When the Republican leadership sends out a memorandum to other Republicans and says, ``Come find some scandal. Have you got any scandal? Have you got any bad news about anybody,'' we will, I guess, ask that that be made public. If there are memorandums that have existed and letters, phone call conversations that are recorded between the Republican leadership and that committee, what is the strategizing? Yes; there have been conversations between the White House and the Travel Office, I have had some myself, between the White House and Congress about how to respond to some of these things. There have been similar conversations between the leadership of the committee and the Republican leadership, maybe the Republican National Committee. Let us have those out there. This is the most one-sided and blatant misuse of the subpoena power we have seen. I would simply say, if in fact that is the standard, let us make the standard uniform.

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

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, since coming to the House and joining the Judiciary Committee, I've been involved with the independent counsel law. When that law expired just as Bill Clinton was taking office, I was one of the Democrats who insisted that it was essential that we reauthorize the law, despite the fact that it would now be once again be a Democratic administration which would be subject to its impact. I noted that the law had originally been passed by a Democratic Congress under a Democratic President, and that Republican objections during the 1980's and early 1990's that it was a partisan instrument aimed at them was obviously inaccurate. And I am pleased that the Democratic leadership in Congress and President Clinton did everything possible to get the law reauthorized--even though it did lapse temporarily because of a Republican filibuster in the Senate. When questions arose involving accusations about the President in 1993, I was one of those urging that an Independent Counsel be appointed. I think Attorney Reno behaved with great integrity and appropriateness in doing everything she could under the law to provide for an independent investigation, even during that period when the law had temporarily lapsed because of that Republican filibuster. And I have continued to defend the institution as a necessary one. I am therefore all the more distressed by the insensitive and disturbing pattern of behavior engaged in by the current independent counsel, Kenneth Start. First, it should be noted that Judge Sentelle, who was named by Chief Justice Rehnquist to head the panel of judges who appoint independent counsel, erred grievously by appointing someone as partisan and as politically opposed to the Clinton administration as Kenneth Starr as the independent counsel to investigate the President in the first place. Mr. Starr should have said no. And having said yes, he should have determined that he would be extremely careful in carrying out his duties in a way that minimized any concern about his objectivity and fairness. Instead, he has behaved in a way that has bothered a wide range of objective observers, including apparently many of those who have preceded him as independent counsel. In Monday's Washington Post, R.H. Melton writes a story which is accurately headlined ``Ex-Prosecutors Concur on Case Against Starr's Private Work.'' In the article, R.H. Melton quotes from a wide range of former independent counsel, including several people who held important appointed office under Republican President, who agree that Kenneth Starr has erred seriously in his conduct in the independent counsel office. Particularly by taking on a wide variety of cases in which he is representing people who are legally and politically arrayed against the President he is investigating, Mr. Starr has compromised the very nature of the independent counsel office. This investigation of the President has already gone on for a very long time, with no results in terms of any negative information being brought forward against the President. It costs an enormous amount of money for the results we have gotten, and it has called into question unfortunately the usefulness of this very important office. Mr. Speaker, the article by R.H. Melton and the wide range of Republican and Democratic criticisms of the independent counsel so quoted in it makes it clear that this is a serious problem, and not simply a case of Democrats objecting to Mr. Starr's work. As one who has worked hard to preserve this important office, and who joined in asking for an independent counsel to look into the allegations against President Clinton, I am extremely disappointed by Mr. Starr's performance and I think it is appropriate for R.H. Melton's documentation of the view of previous independent counsel about Mr. Starr's work to be printed here. Ex-Prosecutors Criticize Kenneth Starr (By R.H. Melton) The former independent counsels are a varied lot, composed of Republicans and Democrats, smooth-talking silk-stockings and gruff old men. Varied, too, were their assignments. Some had big cases; some worked virtual anonymity. But from the well-heeled New York lawyer to the New Orleans septuagenarian, the former prosecutors agree on one thing; Whitewater counsel Kenneth W. Starr has put himself in a bad spot. In separate interviews last week, former prosecutors expressed a consensus view that their old U.S. government position, with its broad investigative powers, is too important for any counsel to be distracted by the busy outside caseload and high-profile clients that Starr has kept. They advise Starr to strictly limit the non-Whitewater activity that has prompted recent criticism and focus on his wide-ranging investigation into President Clinton's decade- old real estate venture and the White House reaction to inquiries into the matter. ``He's devoting a hell of a lot of time to private practice,'' said Gerald J. Gallinghouse, 75, a Republican and retired U.S. attorney from New Orleans who investigated an aide to President Jimmy Carter on a drug allegation in early 1981. ``He should either get in or get out,'' Gallinghouse said. ``I don't give a damn about the Republicans, Democrats, Bull Moose or mugwumps. He should get on with the investigation and bring it to a conclusion as soon as practicable. And you're not going to do it with the top man running all over the country making speeches and taking care of private clients.'' Starr's clients range from tobacco giants to the NFL Players Association. Last month his schedule took him from the halls of the Supreme Court to a federal appeals court in new Orleans within one week. He has some clients whose interests are inimical to those of the Clinton administration. In a major school-voucher case in Wisconsin, for example, Starr was paid by a conservative foundation that has funded some of Clinton's harshest critics. Even though his outside work is quite legal, critics point to such cases as evidence that Starr is not as independent or devoted to his government duty as he should be. Much of the criticism has been strongly partisan, fueled by White House aides and other Democrats who want a tidy resolution to Starr's inquiry before the presidential election this fall. Still, the observations of the former counsels are unusual in their breadth and force. Some of them know Starr personally, and others know his reputation as a brilliant legal mind with strong Republican credentials. nearly all of the seven counsels interviewed expressed surprise that Starr would load so much on his plate and stir partisan controversy, particularly in an inquiry focused squarely on a sitting president and first lady. A few of them voiced disappointment. Starr declined to be interviewed for this article, but a month ago he issued a spirited defense against the criticism that had been mounting against his outside caseload. Starr told a bar association group in San Antonio that the independent counsel ``was never expected to become a full- time employee of the government and leave his or her law firm.'' ``To require independent counsels . . . to become full-time employees wastes not only government resources, but the legal talents of the individuals called to serve,'' Starr said. Starr noted that nearly all of the independent counsels continued to maintain their private practices. But a number of them recalled in interviews that they scaled back their practices sharply and turned down prospective clients who may have created the appearance of a conflict of interest. Ten independent counsels were named between 1978 and 1992 and two others conducted confidential investigations. The inquiries ranged widely in complexity and cost; Iran-contra cost $47 million and lasted nearly seven years; a three-month investigation into a drug allegation against an aide to Carter cost $3,348. The Whitewater inquiry by Starr and his predecessor has cost more than $20 million so far and is one of three now pending against the Clinton administration. Arthur H. Christy, a New York lawyer appointed in late 1979 to investigate a drug allegation against Carter White House chief of staff Hamilton Jordan, said he declined to defend ``some white-collar criminal types because I didn't think it was appropriate to be defending them on the one hand and on the other trying to put some guy in jail.'' Arling M. Adams, a former federal judge from Philadelphia who looked into allegation of financial improperties involving Department of Housing and urban Development money, said that while he did not completely divorce himself from his law firm at the time, ``I did substantially restrict my activities. ``People might say I'm a fool'' because of the lost income, he said, ``but I had in mind in particular the necessity of gaining the confidence of the public and the press. I tried to avoid anything that would deflect attention from what I was doing as IC. The issue is perception and confidence.'' A number of the independent counsels interviewed last week said investigating a sitting president puts a special burden of probity on the investigator. ``It's different order of magnitude,'' said Lawrence E. Walsh, the Oklahoma lawyer and former judge who ran the Iran- contra investigation. ``The one excuse for an IC is his independence. If not necessarily full-time detachment from everything else, he can't be involved with anything that impairs his freedom of action.'' ``When you're investigating a president, it's different,'' said Joseph E. diGenova, a Republican who was named an independent counsel in late 1992. DiGenova, a former U.S. attorney in the District who as independent counsel looked into the State Department's search of Clinton's passport records, said that while Starr has ``pristinely adhered'' to the statute permitting counsels to keep their private legal practices, he should eliminate all the partisan sniping by relinquishing it for now. ``It's a distraction,'' diGenova said. ``He's giving the enemies of the law ammunition to use against him. He should take away the phony weapon from his adversaries.'' Whitney North Seymour Jr., a New York litigator who as counsel won a prejury conviction against former Reagan White House aide Michael Deaver, said the complexities of that case forced him to work virtually full time. ``When we were engaged in the intensive parts of the investigation or trial preparation, I did not have time for anything else,''Seymour said. ``My practice was to be hands- on; interviewing witnesses, reading documents and presenting to the grand jury.'' James C. McKay, a partner at the Washington firm Covington & Burling who investigated the Wedtech defense contractor and Reagan White House political director Lyn Nofziger in the late 1980s, said he regarded the assignment as a full-time job. ``I shed everything I was doing after a month,'' McKay said. ``I was devoting 99.9 percent of my time to the job I was given to do. I felt like I could concentrate on the very difficult problems much better if I did that and the job could be done more quickly and efficiently.'' Added diGenova: ``For the good of the office and the good of the investigation, sometimes you have to do some things you don't want to do.''

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I object because we need time to read this. We have not been given the courtesy.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, maybe we should find the gentleman from New York [Mr. Hinchey]. They stole the amendment offered by the gentleman from New York [Mr. Hinchey]. Why do we not get the gentleman from New York to explain it to the gentleman?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the prior unanimous-consent agreement regarding my amendment No. 7 be modified so that the modified version of amendment No. 7 be the one considered tomorrow morning.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I am reclaiming my time because the gentleman simply refuses to answer a plain English question. No, there is no disincentive, and I would ask the gentleman please to abide by the rules. The point is he does not want to answer the question. I did not ask him the question he answered. I am not mandating any increase. He talks about a disincentive. The disincentive came from Reagan, Gramm, and Latta. What we are doing is to say, no, there is no floor, they can charge less if they want to. We are saying not that rents have to be percentage based, but that 30 percent is the limit. They can use whatever formula and rules they want, but they cannot go above 30 percent. And the gentleman is going to protect tenants by not letting them have pets, he would protect tenants by not having more of them on the authority, and he will protect tenants in the most bizarre logic of all by allowing the housing authorities to raise the rents without limit. We are not talking about mandating 30 percent as the basis. We are saying whatever basis they have, it cannot for working people go above 30 percent. The gentleman's amendment says welfare recipients cannot go above 30 percent, but working people, there is no limit.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I sympathize with the gentleman from New York. He had an argument all set to make. There is no amendment to make it against. So he is going to make it anyway. We agree that requiring housing authorities to set a minimum rent of 30 percent is a mistake. Let me be fair to a man I voted for a couple of times, Ed Brooke. Ed Brooke did not do that. Ronald Reagan did it and Gramm-Latta did it. The Brooke amendment was never a floor on rents. The Brooke amendment set a cap on rents, 25 percent. Ronald Reagan came along and said, no, no, 25 percent is too low; we will make it 30 percent, and we will make it both a floor and a ceiling. Yes; if you say automatically that, if your income goes up, your rent goes up, there is some disincentive. Our amendment does away with that. We put a cap on of 30 percent but no minimum. And what does the gentleman from New York say? I am astonished that he could not come up with a better argument. He says, do not have a cap without a floor. Because if you have a cap without a floor, here is what he just said, the housing authorities hurting for money will go to the absolute limit. Well, if in fact the gentleman believes that the housing authorities will raise the rents as high as they legally can, he has got the problem, because at least in our case they are at a cap of 30 percent. The gentleman from New York on the one hand says take the cap off what housing authorities can charge working people. And then he says, because if you give them a cap, housing authorities will go up to the cap. So he, astonishingly, argues that, if you put no limit on the housing authorities, they will charge people less rent presumably than if you limit them to 30 percent. As a matter of fact, it is the gentleman from New York's amendment which has an absolute disincentive to work in there. His manager's amendment is some manager's amendment. That is a manager's amendment that is more comprehensive than most bills. It does not say much for the bill they wrote. His manager's amendment says, if you are making less than 30 percent of the median, then your rent is capped at 30 percent. If you make more than 30 percent of the median income, you are subject to no cap. In other words, it is under the amendment of the gentleman from New York that those who work as opposed to those who are on welfare are legally disadvantaged. If you are on welfare and getting 30 percent of the median or less, your rent is capped at 30 percent. If you go to work, if you go off welfare and you are now making 50 or 60 percent of the median income, there is no protective cap. So in the gentleman's effort to preserve the right of housing authorities to charge more money, he is the one who has created a disincentive. Let us be very clear about this. The amendment we will be offering will say, no, there is no minimum amount. The gentleman from New York says, no, but there will be a ceiling and they will go up to the ceiling, and the way to keep them from going up to the ceiling is to move the ceiling to the sky. It is illogical. Mr. Chairman, let me close by summarizing. As someone has noted, if Congress truly wants to remove barriers that discourage public housing residents from obtaining employment, the solution is to give housing authorities the flexibility to set rents below 30 percent in certain instances. Congress should not withhold operating subsidies from public housing authorities and try to balance the budget by reaching deeper into the pockets of our poorest people. That is what Ed Brooke said. That is what Ed Brooke said today. Ed Brooke is as right today as a compassionate Republican, the endangered species, as he was 30 years ago.

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, as I understand the manager's amendment, which we did not get much time to look at, instead did an excellent job of analyzing it, the manager's amendment does two things. First of all, it does a revised version of the Brooke amendment, and then it exempts people from its own revised version. So the amendment, in fact, contains both the revision and an exemption from its own revision as I understand it.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Arizona performed us a service. We may be able to save time for the rest of the evening, because no cliche was left unuttered, and a lot of remarks people might have wanted to make, they will not have to make. It was an interesting speech; not particularly relevant to the topic which, with the permission of the body, I will return to. Mr. Chairman, the question is, Should we accept the amendment of the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Watt]? Now, in opposition to the gentleman's amendment, and I must say, I wonder who the staff members were that advised the gentleman from New York to fight this amendment rather than take it to committee. I would not put that person in for a bonus next year. But the question we have is: Do we retreat statutorily from even trying to provide housing? Mr. Chairman, I want to comment on the history offered by the gentleman from New York. I am sorry the gentleman is not here. I asked him to yield and he would not yield. The gentleman talked about all the terrible things that the Democrats did in housing. Well, what thing has he been complaining about the most? The gentleman from New York [Mr. Lazio] has been denouncing the Brooke amendment as a job killer. Now, why does the gentleman so vigorously denounce a Republican who had the most distinguished record on housing of any Republican, and even any Member of this body? Why does the gentleman from New York continue denouncing Senator Brooke as a man who forced a job killing amendment? Because he said the Brooke amendment not only put a limit on what could be charged, but it put a floor on there and, therefore, it is a killer. But, Mr. Chairman, in Ed Brooke's amendment that language did not exist. Senator Brooke did not do that. Do my colleagues know who put the job killing part on the Brooke amendment? Ronald Reagan and everybody who voted for Gramm-Latta. The gentleman is denouncing the Democrats for the Reagan budget of 1981, which many of the Republicans here voted for. That is the job killer. Mr. Chairman, I cite that as an example of the lack of correspondence between the history, as narrated by the gentleman from New York, and reality. The gentleman simply is making it up. It is creative, it is interesting, but it is not congruent with the facts, which is, I think as clearly as one can say it under the rules of the House. Let us look at where we are on this. How do they defend the poor? By allowing the housing authorities to raise rents beyond any limit. I believe it is very creative. The Republicans, not all Republicans, not Senator Brooke and not many of my friends on the other side, but here is their problem: They want to build the B-2 bomber and they want to build star wars and a lot of other things, so they have to cut funds for housing. How Mr. Chairman, do we pretend that cutting the funds to maintain and operate public housing and provide security and combat drugs in the projects, how do we pretend that is in people's interest? Well, we say, ``That rent cap is hurting you, so we are going to take the rent cap off because we do not want your rent to go up when you get a job.'' We say we agree. We agree with Ed Brooke. We disagree with Ronald Reagan. We do not want there to be an automatic escalator. It is simply saying that there is a limit on the amount that a tenant can be charged, but there is no mandate that they a be charged that. Mr. Chairman, the problem is that that way the Republicans would not be able to cut housing and let the housing authorities increase the rents. Their rationale was ripped away from them, so they now come up with a new one. What is the new one? The new one is if tenants are making 30 percent of the median income or less, they will get the protection of the 30- percent cap, but not if they are making more. Who, now, is giving the disincentive? They are. Under the Lazio plan, as opposed to our amendment, if tenants are making 30 percent or less, their rent is capped at 30 percent. But if they go to work, if they get off of welfare, the 30 percent level, and go to work, then there is no cap. How does the gentleman from New York defend that? If we set a 30- percent cap, the housing authorities, because they need money, because the Republicans have cut it, will drive up to the top 30 percent. How does the gentleman prevent the housing authorities from going to 30 percent on working people? By taking the cap off. So, miraculously the gentleman tells us if there is a 30-percent cap, the housing authorities will charge 30 percent, but if they can charge whatever they want, they will only charge 28 percent. Mr. Chairman, here is what the gentleman does to the elderly. Those Members who are nostalgic for debating the Notch Act, be very happy with this because he says to the elderly, if they are in elderly housing, their rent will be grandfathered. We will grandparent the grandparents at 30 percent. But new elderly people who come in will be allowed to be charged 35 and 40 and 45 percent. So within a few years, we will have a building of elderly people, some of whom will be paying 30 percent, some of whom will be paying 40 percent. Mr. Chairman, this is inequitable, socially destructive, and indicative of the poor policy choices of this legislation.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I cannot forebear commenting on the pattern that we are hearing from the chairman. In the first place, he gives the same speech on every amendment. I would suspect that his familiarity with the specifics are not what they might be. He talks about one size fits all. We have one speech fits all.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield to the gentleman from New York, unlike the gentleman who would not yield to me any of the times I asked him this evening.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, I have not raised this before, then the assumption is that the vote on that would follow immediately after the close of the debate? I assume we would not be rolling that vote? The vote would come immediately at the close of the debate?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. Mr. Chairman, I would just point out that the gentleman from Long Island eloquently denounced several housing authorities, and I agree, but he is the one who says leave this to the housing authority. How in the name of a policy which says let us leave it all in the hands of the local housing authority does he decide that the way to argue for it is to denounce local housing authorities?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I want to know if the gentleman from Long Island could maybe answer this. I keep hearing that it is up to the local housing authority. I had thought I heard that there was an amendment that said that every housing authority would be required to administer this personal improvement plan. Is that optional with the local housing authorities, the personal improvement plan whereby every tenant, every working tenant, has to do that? I would ask the gentleman if he would yield to the gentleman from Long Island. Mr. Chairman, I would ask the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy] if he would yield to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Lazio]?

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. That is not the argument. The gentleman shifts from substance to this, ``Oh, no, it is not up to us.'' It is up to us. I think I understand the principle. It is up to us when we want it to be up to us and it is not up to us when we do not want it to be.