Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. No, no longer than he would to me.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I do want to repeat, because the outrageous tactics being used here need to be underlined This is an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the text of which has never had a public hearing, has in fact been in existence for barely 2 weeks, during almost all of which time we were out of session. It is being rushed through late tonight just for the symbolic version of it being on April 15. It really shows a fundamental disrespect to democracy. There has been zero pubic hearing on the text of this amendment. We had a hearing on the text of the earlier amendment they introduced, and it was so shabby that they had to withdraw it. They come up with a new one and they learned they better not expose it to the light of day. But this amendment shows a disrespect for democracy in another way. The question here is not the substantive one of whether or not taxes should be increased. Sometimes taxes are increased unnecessarily. When Ronald Reagan and the then Senate Finance chairman Robert Dole and the Democrats in the House collaborated in 1982 for a tax increase, I voted ``no.'' In 1982, with a Republican Senate and Ronald Reagan as President, we did a tax increase. I thought it was a mistake. A year later when Ronald Reagan and Robert Dole and Tip O'Neill came together to raise taxes again for Social Security, I thought that was a mistake a I voted ``no.'' I thought they made a mistake. The Reagan-Dole-O'Neill tax increase of 1982 and the Reagan-Dole- O'Neill tax increase of 1983, I voted against both of them. But I did not think that I had the right to have them defeated when I could not get a majority on my side. We are not talking substance here. We are talking about majority rule. As of now, there does not appear to be much public sentiment for significant tax increases, nor does there appear to be a lot of sentiment for tax decreases. At this point the general public's sentiment appears to be, let us do deficit reduction. But 8 years from now, 12 years from now, should the majority of the American voters have a right to decide then by majority rule that we need to increase taxes some? Yes, I think they should. As a matter of fact, one of the problems you will have with this poorly drafted amendment, this keep it in the dark and let's not have a public hearing amendment, is that you may make it harder for people to lower taxes in the future, because in a rational world under the right circumstances, we might decide to reduce taxes. But under this amendment, if we were to reduce taxes 1 year and then 4, 5, 7 years later decide that we erred or that for unforeseen reasons things did not work out as we thought and we needed more revenue to defend the United States, to protect the environment, to protect Social Security, we should need two-thirds to do it. In 1981 Ronald Reagan and Senator Dole and Tip O'Neill collaborated, that time they fought. There was a tax cut in 1981. Apparenly it was the Republican view, the Reagan-Dole view in 1981 was that they cut taxes by too much. So they raised taxes back in 1982 to offset some of that they had done in 1981. They said they overshot in 1981. You would make it impossible for them to to do this. Make it impossible for people to correct errors, and you make it less likely they will act in the first place. I talked about Social Security. We have a problem with Social Security. One possible solution might be right now, Social Security taxes stop at $62,000 of income, making it by far the most regressive tax we have. Medicare used to stop, and we raised the amount of income that is subject to the Medicare tax. I think a reasonable thing to do might be to say from $60,000 to $90,000 you have got to pay half a percent to Social Security, and from $90,000 to $200,000 you pay 1 percent, and above $200,000 you pay 1.5 percent. That would be one way to help protect Social Security. But you would make that impossible, or at least require a two-thirds, which makes it very difficult. So any possibility that we might want to raise taxes on people who make $60,000 or more to help protect the Social Security system, that is what you are aiming at. Are there bad tax increases that would be hurt by this? Yes, the Reagan-Dole-O'Neill tax increases of 1982 and 1983 that I voted against would not have become law. But I do not want to change the rules. I want to have to go by majority rule. What this amendment says is, ``No, no, we don't like this majority rule stuff.'' That might have been all right for a while ago. Maybe that is OK for France or Sweden or Belgium, but this is America. We do not have majority rule anymore. Those of us currently in power will change the rules and we will take our substantive preference, and right now what they are saying is, ``We don't like government, we think government is too big, so we want to change the rules so that a majority in the future that disagrees with our position and thinks we need more aid to education and more environmental protection but doesn't want to cut the military, that they won't be able to do that without getting two-thirds.'' By the way, what we are having here now is a fundamental distortion of the democratic process to try and freeze in the views of a temporary majority.

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I had been undecided on this bill. I am now going to vote against it. It is a far better bill than the one the House previously did. I still have concerns about the unequal effects on women. But I must tell you that I am very unprepared at this point to vote for one more piece of legislation that the corporate leadership of the country wants at a time when it has unfortunately been so resistant and unyielding to the cries many of us have made for some fairness and for some social justice. A company in the city I represent, New Bedford, we just learned, has been bought up by a larger entity and a profitable company will be shut down, jobs will be lost, and it will be moved away. In the right overall mix, I am prepared to support product liability. But at a time when the minimum wage is stonewalled, when unions are, in effect, dismantled by the misuse of the law by employers, when corporate salaries go up and up and up and we get no sympathy whatsoever for the plight of workers, I am not prepared to provide one more thing on the shopping list of those who are already doing well. On the merits, as part of an overall package, I could support this. I would hope it would be somewhat better drafted. But I will not at this point contribute, will not be part of furthering a public policy imbalance which says that those who own do better and better and those who work, unfortunately, are treated less and less fairly. As part of an overall approach to fairness in America, I would be supportive of this, but not as simply one more gift to those who are already gifted.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, it has to do with the nature of the question we are voting on. As I understand it, we are talking about the new rule adopted at the beginning of this Congress dealing with what to do when there is an unfunded mandate. Would this vote, and this would help, I believe, us clarify it, because we have dealt with this once before in my recollection, would a vote now to proceed with the minimum wage vote be the equivalent of what the House did when we adopted the rule on the agriculture bill which waived the unfunded mandate point of order? When the House adopted the majority's proposed rule on the agriculture bill, it waived the point of order with regard to unfunded mandates and allowed us then to proceed on the bill which CBO said had unfunded mandates. Are we now being asked to do the same thing; namely, take up the bill although CBO does not say there are unfunded mandates in there, as we did when we adopted the majority's rule on the agriculture bill?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, I was sorry the gentleman from New York would not yield to me. He said there was a glass of milk here from Massachusetts. Yes, there is a dairy compact from New England, which I opposed, which I think will hurt the consumers which was not in the House bill or the Senate bill. As I understand it, it shows up in the conference report. Typical. If people want to know what contempt of Congress means, it is the way the House has been treated recently on major issues, with the minimum debate the rules of the House allow. And now I can understand why they do not want to debate this. The gentleman from Mississippi talked about this program. This is the biggest welfare program we have left. It will be bigger than AFDC from the Federal dollar standpoint. What we are saying is, farmers will get welfare payments. There is a difference, however. By the way, I am not the only one who first thought of this. I must give credit where credit was due. In 1990, Richard Armey, writing in the Heritage Foundation, said ``If the goal of our farm programs is to help needy farmers, we should do so directly with welfare payments rather than with the complex and costly system of price supports. That would only cost $4 billion a year, rather than $12 billion.'' Mr. ARMEY was a prophet, and that is what we are doing. We are giving to welfare to farmers because they are in need, rather than costly price supports. But the majority leader Mr. Armey is a little more expansive than the critic Mr. Armey, because we are going to do $35 billion over 7 years, so it is $5 billion a year rather than $4 billion. Note it is 7 years. If you are a 3-year-old whose mother has not done everything she should have done, you get cut off after 2 years, as I understand it, in the bill. So the farmer's welfare lasts for 7 years. Also if you are a 3-year-old, your parent has a work requirement. There is no work requirement in here for the farmers. There is not even, as I understand, it is a life requirement. If I am correct, under this bill a farmer who dies may pass on his share of these billions of dollars to his or her heirs. So at the same time we talk about how tough we are going to be on the dependent children, we are going to cut them off after 2 years. We are going to have a work requirement. Very late at night, in the hopes there will be no debate, we are going to give $35 billion to able- bodied working people. As the majority leader said, ``let's give them welfare instead of requirements,'' and they will simply get that $35 billion. The inconsistency between the toughness that is meted out to the poor and the lavish and gentle treatment that goes to the favored political few is outrageous. What right do people have morally to condemn the poorest people in this country, to not even allow them to debate the minimum wage, to cut welfare, to cut Medicaid, to cut everything else. But the farmers, apparently free enterprise has no real meaning here. Let us take $35 billion of deficit spending and simply give it to farmers because they happen to be farmers over the next 7 years. That is what is in the majority's bill, and that is why they are trying to burp this discussion and have it late at night and hit and run, and not have it talked about.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by not apologizing at all for speaking on a major piece of legislation in the House of Representatives. The majority's manipulation of the schedule is outrageous enough, but now to say that this major piece of legislation, which the House majority leader a few years ago described I think aptly, he predicted welfare for farmers as he said in his Heritage Foundation piece. And I would not necessarily mind welfare for farmers, but they get 7 years of welfare, the AFDC recipients get 5, and of course there is no work requirements. But for the House to spend so much time doing so little for so long, and then take up a major piece of legislation, and the leadership decides it will come up late at night and then to say oh, well, it is late at night, you cannot debate it. That is like the kid who kills his parents and say, have mercy, I am an orphan. As the gentleman from California pointed out, before we were told that something is not an unfunded mandate, could not even be debated, the minimum wage, but this bill, according to CBO, has five unfunded mandates. And when it came before us as a bill, the Committee on Rules waived it. They would not even vote on that. So we get a bill with a lot of unfunded mandates. The first test of the new rule on unfunded mandates, they do not pay any attention to. They now are trying to browbeat the House into ignoring all of these important substantive issues, give the farmers welfare, spend billions of dollars, let us have some unfunded mandates, but it is 11:30, let us go home. Well, if my colleagues do not want to debate things at 11:30, they control the House, schedule them at a reasonable hour. But to take a major piece of legislation like this and then so manipulate the schedule that they want to sneak it through without adequate debate is unworthy of the House. Mr. Speaker, we ought to debate these unfunded mandates. We ought to debate the fact that farmers get billions of dollars for years for doing absolutely nothing whatsoever. I hope that the House will in fact repudiate these tactics. Let us debate this. My colleagues have waited a very long time. We could pick an appropriate time of the day and debate it honestly and fairly, and do not come here, deliberately work the schedule this way and then say, oh, but we want to be nice to everybody, let us go home. If Members want to go home, let them go home and let the rest of us stay here and do the business that we are paid to do.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, let me just say, of course there is no foolishness in here about States rights. This is a pure, 100 percent unadulterated Federal entitlement. So we have fiscal discipline and toughness and harshness and work requirements and strict time limits for the very poor, but for those who can vote and those whose support politically is important to the majority, all of these hifalutin principles go out the window, and they are treated with a degree of consideration and care that the poor never get. Mr. de la GARZA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Speaker, we spend over $26 billion a year for food stamps, we provide additional monies for school lunch, for school breakfast, for temporary emergency food assistance, and for other assistance programs for migrants. No one can say that we are not attempting to care for the poor. Yet even as we try to provide assistance to the poor, we have managed to reduce expenditures in Agriculture programs in order to balance the budget. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Stenholm]. (Mr. STENHOLM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I salute the courage of the gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] and her willingness to take this issue on. Mr. Speaker, we are clearly here dealing with a political issue. We heard one of the previous speakers say the purpose of it is to give the President something to veto. The President has said, amend this bill and he will sign it. Amend it to say that if the particular procedure is deemed necessary by a doctor to avoid serious adverse health consequences, he can do it. Understand that this bill would say to a doctor, if in his judgment performing the abortion in this way is necessary to prevent severe physical damage to the mother, as long it is not life-threatening, he cannot do it. He can do it if it will save her life, but if it will destroy forever her chances of having a child, if it will cause her serious, long-lasting physical pain and disability, this bill says it is a crime to do it.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, we will get to debate the substance of the bill, although very briefly. The gentlewoman from Utah [Mrs. Waldholtz] said that this rule provides adequate time to discuss the Senate amendments. This rule, in fact, provides quite deliberately the minimum time that it is legally possible to give a bill on the floor of the House. The rule gives 1 hour. That is the minimum that is allowed under the basic rules, so this is part of an effort to suppress debate and discussion on this bill. We will get to the substance, but I want to talk here about the outrageous procedure. It is one more example of this majority running absolutely roughshod over the notion of open debate and democracy and fairness. This is, once again, a rule as we say in previous weeks where to achieve their political purpose, to make sure that their political message is unadulterated, the majority sacrifices the right of the American people to have free debate. For example, the gentlewoman from Utah talked about the amendment that was adopted in the Senate. She said people felt that the life exception for the mother was not done right so the Senate straightened it out. Many of us raised that same point here in the House, and why did we not straighten it out here in the House? Because they had the same rules the last time. The rule did not allow that amendment. It is an amendment that we in the House were prevented from considering because of the close-fisted rule of the majority on this bill. The Senate did adopt the amendment, so they are giving in and they say, ``OK, we will do it''. They are almost taking credit for the improvement the Senate made when they refused to allow us to vote on such an amendment here. Now we have another amendment that we want to offer, and I understand here that we cannot even offer a motion to recommit this. It is a very cleverly crafted procedure they have. This is not a bill. It is a concurrence with the Senate amendment because, by making it that way, we cannot even recommit it and no amendments are in order. We can do nothing in the House to alter this. We can vote up or down. We have twice been asked by the majority, not asked, directed by the majority to vote on this very important issue with no amendment and with the minimum time for debate allowed under the rules of this House. They want to do it. They want to do it quickly and have as little conversation as possible because it will not stand up, apparently, they believe, to greater scrutiny. They are afraid to allow an amendment. We have an amendment that we offered, the gentlewoman from Colorado and I. It is an amendment that was offered in the Senate. The Senate adopted one amendment and then the Senate rejected another but it got 47 votes. We are hardly talking about some fringe position; 47 votes, including Republican votes, in the Senate, and we are not being allowed to offer it here. We cannot do it on the motion to recommit because there is no committee to which it can be recommitted. This is simply a motion to concur in the Senate amendment, and what is the amendment that the majority is afraid to allow the House to vote on? They cannot plead time. We are less busy than the guys in ``Marty,'' standing around on the corner. ``What do you want to do tonight?'' ``I don't know. What do you want to do tonight?'' Voting is not one of the things, because the majority cannot get itself organized. We have hardly overvoted ourselves this week, but the majority is afraid to allow the amendment. The amendment says the doctor will not be considered a criminal and sent to prison if he performs this procedure to prevent damage to the health of the mother. If a doctor were to decide that this procedure was necessary to avoid damage to the mother's ability to give birth in the future, he would be committing a crime if he did it because the majority will not even let us vote on an amendment that would say to avoid damage to her ability in the future to bear children. We are talking about serious adverse health effects. At the Committee on Rules, the majority allowed a debate in the Committee on Rules. They did not want to but they cannot shut us up. They are probably working on a way to do that in the Rules Committee. The gentlewoman from Colorado said this is so broad. What do we mean by health? My answer is simple. I think serious adverse health is good enough, and I am prepared to put the doctor's opinion up. But if you think that is too broad, then amend the amendment. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are afraid of open debate. If you think serious adverse health is too broad, why do you not put very, very, really serious adverse health? Or if you are afraid of psychological, put physical health. I do not agree with that. I would vote against that, but if you want to avoid serious physical damage to the mother but do not want to let in depression, then allow us to vote on it. But your preferred procedure which you are imposing successfully on this House, I am afraid, I reemphasize this, that procedure requires us to vote and will not allow an amendment that would say to a doctor if you perform this procedure, and by the way it is called a procedure by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. I will put their letter in opposition to this in the Record. You are saying that we cannot even offer an amendment that would say to avoid serious damage to the mother's physical health. Our amendment does not say that, but you could amend the amendment and make that in order. I know that democracy seems complicated to people who have so little practice with it. You are instead going to demand that we vote to make it criminal even if a doctor wanted to prevent serious physical damange to the health of the mother. Mr. Speaker, I include the following letter for the Record: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Washington, DC, November 1, 1995. statement on H.R. 1833: the partial-birth abortion ban act of 1995 The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is disappointed that the U.S. House of Representatives has attempted to regulate medical decision-making today by passing a bill on so-called ``partial-birth'' abortion. The College finds very disturbing any action by Congress that would supersede the medical judgment of trained physicians and that would criminalize medical procedures that may be necessary to save the life of a woman. Moreover, in defining what medical procedures doctors may or may not perform, the bill employs terminology that is not even recognized in the medical community--demonstrating why congressional opinion should never be substituted for professional medical judgment. The College does not support H.R. 1833, or the companion Senate bill, S. 939.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, and of course that is only life. It does not deal with health. The majority refused to allow an amendment. Be very clear about it. We have twice asked them let us vote, as the Senate did, and the amendment in the Senate got 46 votes and lost narrowly. Members have said, ``Your health exception is too broad.'' My colleagues on the other side of the aisle can narrow it if they want to. But they cannot, however, object that we have one that is too broad when they have none at all; when they are asking the House to vote for a bill that will make it a crime for a doctor to perform this procedure even if he believes that performing it is necessary to prevent serious physical, long-lasting, permanent damage to the mother. That is not a reason for going forward under this outrageous bill.

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Sticking to their guns, they are very good at that. They stuck to their assault weapons last Friday. So I assume they will stick to their guns. They are very good at sticking to their gun owners.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, we ought to emphasize, he may have already done this, when the gentleman from Virginia talks about the prior tax bills, many of those tax bills were listed as tax reductions and in gross they were. That is, several of them meant that the Government collected less taxes when we were through than when we started. Despite the fact that they were, several of them, listed as tax reductions, none of them would have been allowed without a two-thirds vote because tax reductions never in my experience are bills that only reduce. They reduce overall, but they offset the reductions by increasing in some areas. Unless we believe that we have as equitable a Tax Code as we are ever going to get and that the balance of taxes should never be changed, then we should be against this amendment. This amendment means that any effort to shift the balance, any effort to say that there are some elements that are not doing a fair amount and there are others that are, we would have to take two-thirds to deal with that. Mr. Speaker, what it shows is also a fundamental understanding, I believe, on the part of many in the majority that their ideological agenda is unpopular with the American people. That is what is at stake here. Increasingly we are being given proposals that limit what the majority can do. If we are in fact confident that the majority is on our side, then we do not try to limit them. But what we have are people who have found out, I think, that, while the general public disagreed with a lot of what the Government was doing, there is on the part of the public an unwillingness to dismantle the Federal Government as much as people on the other side think. They were, as we know, surprised that, when they shut down the Government as a deliberate tactic on several occasions earlier this year, the public was upset. Many Republicans said nobody will care. Well, they were wrong. The American people cared deeply about their Government because their Government is doing things that on the whole they have asked it to do. They understand, therefore, that they are not going to win this increasingly on a majority situation. So what they are trying to do is fix the game, require two-thirds so that on those occasions when a majority disagrees with them and wants to do more in health care and environmental protection and in law enforcement than they want to do, they will not have to appeal to a majority. They will have this minority veto that they can inflict. That is what is at stake.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I do not remember one. I was told that when the equal rights amendment came before us, I do remember it came before us under a suspension of the rules. It was my impression that it had gone through the committee. It had certainly gone through the amendment previously. I do not remember a constitutional amendment coming up that never went through the committee. You have to say, in defense of the Republican leadership, the bill to combat terrorism went through the Judiciary Committee, but after it went through the committee because the right wing in this Congress did not like it, it got totally changed before it came to the floor anyway. Similarly with the immigration bill, the Committee on the Judiciary voted out the immigration bill, but some people in the right wing did not like it so they changed it around. You people on judiciary, we are just being considerate. What is the point of you wasting your time engaging in a model U.N. here, having all these debates. We are going to do whatever we want on the floor anyhow. But we are going to suffer in this case because with regard to tariffs, with regard to a flat tax, there are serious questions here. Apparently these serious questions are going to be resolved not through some open debate in committee with the press involved but through private conversations between Members of the Committee on the Judiciary, sponsors of the bill and members of the Committee on Ways and Means, a totally undemocratic procedure.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Well, I thank the gentleman from Colorado for taking the initiative on this special order and for yielding to me. But ``enlightenment'' is hardly the right word, because the Republican leadership is determined that this will not be the product of an enlightenment, but rather of the dark ages, because one of the things they do not want is for anyone to really have a chance to think about this proposal. I am the senior minority member on the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary. We had a hearing on this a couple of weeks ago. The amendment was presented and the sponsors of the amendment were there, and in the course of their presentation they mentioned that this would be on the floor on April 15. Now, I guess, showing my inability to adapt to the new majority, I was a little puzzled, because, this was a week or so ago, no committee vote was scheduled, no subcommittee vote was scheduled. Ordinarily with legislation, we find that the process of first debating it in subcommittee and making some changes, and then going to full committee and making some changes, that is how you refine legislation. That is how you answer questions. None of us in my experience is bright enough to simply sit down and have a piece of legislation spring from our forehead like, was it Athena from the forehead of Zeus, or whoever sprang from whatever. Ordinarily you want some questions and conversation. I was a little surprised that this bill was going to go right from hearing to the floor of the House. I asked why, and I realize what the answer is. This legislation, this constitutional proposal, is so flawed, it does not command a majority within the subcommittee in the Judiciary that has jurisdiction, because there are significant, influential, respected Republicans who do not want to vote for it. It does not have a majority in the committee, so they plan to bypass the subcommittee and bypass the committee and bring it to the floor. But then a glitch developed, because as we discussed this, even at the hearing, it became clear that, for instance, you could not under this constitutional amendment raise a tariff. I know Pat Buchanan has not been getting much respect from the Republicans, and as the poor man's totals fall in the primaries they whack him again. But to pass a constitutional amendment to make it virtually impossible to raise tariffs, that seems to me one more indignity they would heap upon Mr. Buchanan, but apparently that is what this amendment would do, because under this amendment you could not raise tariffs. He talked about raising tariffs. Indeed, we have legislatively ceded to the President the right to raise tariffs, as we all know, in particular cases. You can raise a tariff in the case of dumping. It is a countervailing tariff. You might raise a tariff in a particular case by denying somebody most-favored-nation treatment, et cetera. Well, we cannot delegate to the President by more than we have ourselves. If it takes us two-thirds to raise a tariff, it would obviously take two-thirds to pass a bill that would delegate to the President the right to raise a tariff. So our ability to defend ourselves in trade by higher tariffs, that would also take two-thirds. In addition, it was pointed out and conceded by the sponsors of the amendment, that going to a flat tax would take two-thirds. So now they are not only going after Buchanan, they are going after Steve Forbes. This amendment is the revenge of the congressional Republicans and their upstart candidates. Because going to a flat tax means you increase the base. And the language of the amendment clearly says, if you increase the tax base, if you tax more items, if you take away an exemption for mortgage interest, if you take away an exemption for charitable deductions, that requires two-thirds. In fact, one of the sponsors, our former colleague, the junior Senator from Arizona, said, well, do not pass this constitutional amendment until we get to a flat tax. Another one said, no, we do not agree with that. So there was a certain amount of confusion about this. This is the vehicle they are talking about taking right from this intellectual chaos to the floor of the House. Then apparently another noncommittee intervened because it is going to be a nonjudiciary bill. But the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, who is a thoughtful individual, the gentleman from Texas, apparently looked at this and said, wait a minute, you cannot require us to take two-thirds to go to a flat tax. He wants to go to a consumption tax. I think there is a lot to be said for the approach of the gentleman from Texas, but it would take two-thirds to do that. He says, you cannot do this to tariffs. So apparently we are now having a conference between the Committee on Ways and Means and the Committee on the Judiciary except not with the committees. We are going from a nonmarkup in the Committee on the Judiciary to a nonmarkup in the Committee on Ways and Means, on as significant a piece of legislation as we can have, an amendment to the Constitution, something which has happened 27, 28 times in our 200-plus years. That is being now privately discussed by some very able people, but they are privately discussing it. It is a shambles of a way to legislate. It will come to the floor without any committee consideration, with uncertainty. Does this affect the flat tax; does it affect the tariff? What it shows is this is a search for a political gimmick. No one could think we would seriously legislate in this way. Let me add one other flaw that occurs to me on this. That is, the amendment would, of course, allow you to reduce taxes by a majority, but it would take two-thirds to raise them. But I think in effect this would also make it harder for future Congresses to cut taxes. Because if you are in a situation where you say, you know, things are looking very good now, and we are in a sort of a surplus situation, we can afford to cut taxes now because we can always raise them back again if later on we need them, people will be reluctant to do that. Because if it takes two-thirds to raise the taxes later on, then it may not be prudent to reduce them temporarily. The whole notion which we may reach of a temporary tax reduction, you will have to say, wait a minute, if we temporarily reduce them, we will need two-thirds to put them back up again. That seems to me to be a grave error. This is not only substantially a grave mistake, procedurally it is a complete and total botch.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, that is very reassuring because that gives us two chances to kill it: one with better minds; and, two, with the Senate as apparently an alternative line of defense there.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. The gentleman has a perfectly appropriate question. Let me say, I do want to say to my friend from Colorado, it just struck me, when he mentioned we are from Virginia and Massachusetts, we represented the people who voted on the original Constitution. Colorado was not around to get involved in the original one, so the Republicans are being very generous by letting you in. But I think the Philadelphia convention had a little better set of procedures than the current group. Any effort to close loopholes, any effort to diminish tax preferences that wealthy people now have, any effort to say, for instance, that the tax code encourages people to go overseas more than they should, the effort we had earlier to close the tax loophole on people who want to renounce their citizenship but retain their money, all of those would require two-thirds. As hard as it has been to deal with any of that loophole closing or excessive corporate luxury that we have done so far, going from a majority to two-thirds would make it infinitely harder.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. This is my eighth term.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Yes, I think that is exactly what is at stake here, but I think we have to give it some specific content. The current Republican majority in Congress won the 1994 election, and they won it, they got more votes than we got. I think they won in part because of dissatisfaction with what the Government was doing. Many of them misunderstood that to mean opposition to the Government in general. It is possible to be critical of waste and excess and sloppiness and not believe the Government should get of the business. And they have increasingly learned that now the public is far more supportive of environmental policies than many of the Republicans, not all, but many of the Republicans, understand. The public likes the notion of the Federal Government helping with college educations, helping with law enforcement, helping with medical care, and they have a dilemma. They have the dilemma of having a very ideological agenda which says, in the words of the majority leader, the Government is dumb and the markets are smart, and at a time when people are not so sure that the markets are fair, how do you prevent the public from having the Government play a more active role than they want ideologically? That is their dilemma because the public is getting away from them and not supporting these cutbacks, and it reminds me of my favorite musical, the musical ``Fiorello,'' and when he wins, and he was not supposed to win, the bosses are walking around very grumpily, and there is one set of lines in the song where they say, ``How did we know the people would go to the polls and elect a fanatic?'' And the other one says, ``The people can do what they want to, but I got a feeling it ain't democratic.'' Mr. Speaker, I think that is a dilemma that our friends have over there. They are afraid that what the people want to do to them ``ain't'' democratic and, therefore, they are going to restrict the ability of a majority of the American people, acting through their legislators, to decide 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now that they would like the Government to play more of a role in this or that area, or that they would like the tax code to be fairer. They would like wealthier people to pay a higher percentage. If we were to decide, for instance, that the Social Security payroll tax, which is a very regressive tax, unfairly burdens a lot of working people, and we want to alleviate that by changing the mix, we could not do that. If we wanted to say that wealthy people ought to pay more of their income toward the Social Security tax instead of having it cut off, we would need two-thirds, and what we have are people who, I would give them credit for perception, they understand that their very right- wing, ideological agenda is increasingly unpopular with a lot of people, and, therefore, while they still have something of a majority, they are going to try and change the rules so that that majority will not be able to work its will.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I sympathize with the gentleman from Colorado. He has been left all alone on his side to defend this latest trampling of open procedures, and he is a little testy because he apparently thought he had a nice deal worked out last night and democracy has broken out on the floor of the House. I understand that is unsettling, but he has to learn to live with it. On the other hand, I want to give him credit. Some people think others do not learn things. Clearly he at least has learned that shutting down the Government is a terrible idea. He has several times today talked about how outrageous it is to shut down the Government. One would not infer from that he is part of the majority that made a habit of shutting down the Government as a deliberate tactic. People boasted about shutting down the Government. Well, they have learned that was not a good thing and the gentleman from Colorado has the zeal of a convert against shutting down the Government. He has joined Government-shutters-down-anonymous. We are on a 12-step program. Unfortunately, it does not include democracy. What we are being told here is you may not continue to debate these issues openly. You may not have the rules which say you got to wait a day so we can study this big thing. He says you better do this in a hurry or we will shut the Government down. Why is that the case? Because the Republican majority has not been able to run the place sufficiently to give us enough time. So, yes, they have created an emergency from which they now want to profit. They are asking us to sacrifice democratic procedures on the altar of their own incompetence. I agree, it is an imposing altar. I have never seen incompetence so dazzlingly displayed. But I do not think that is a justification for shutting down fair procedures. What is their justification? ``Well, you guys did it, too. You guys did it.'' Every time we talk about one more procedural outrage, they go to the history books and they say ``Hey, the Democrats once did that.'' Well, as I recall, the Republicans ran in 1994 on a slogan of ``Throw the bums out. They have run the House unfairly, they have been undemocratic.'' Speaker Gingrich, whe he was still Speaker, before he kind of deposed himself and put Armey in charge, he used to talk about that. Now what do we have? Every time the Republicans get in a bind because of their own incompetence, they decide to do some shortcut that they used to attack us for. So they used to run on the slogan ``Throw the bums out.'' Then they decided to take power and emulate us, and this year apparently their slogan for reelection will be, ``Keep the bums in.''

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I will begin by stipulating that I do not purport to represent business here. I understand that a lot of businesses do not like this amendment. A lot of businesses, unfortunately, like to hire people who are here illegally. They find them easily exploitable. That is why there was, for many in the business community, opposition to what is really the central point here, whether or not we have employer sanctions. In fact, during this debate people have been blaming a verification system, when in most cases they should have been complaining about sanctions. It is logical to say we should not have employer sanctions. Understand that that is a decision we made in 1986. We said, and by the way, people should understand, there is a universal recognition here in this debate that people come to this country, whether legally or illegally, to get jobs. We recognize that. That is the magnet. It is not illegal welfare, and so forth, it is jobs. We have said that when people come here illegally and get jobs, they jeopardize our ability to maintain rules and laws that maintain occupational safety and health, minimum wages, et cetera. When you are here illegally, you cannot claim your rights. In 1986, this is when business got the mandate. In 1986 Ronald Reagan signed the law that said, ``You cannot hire people who are here illegally.'' It set up the verification system. That was set up in 1986. The difference now is that we believe we have a more rational verification system. The current system gives a whole bunch of documents that can be used. That is where you get counterfeiting. That is where you get inconsistency in who is asked and who is not. What we are saying is that given we have sanctions, and nobody has moved to repeal them, given that the employer is responsible for verification, and nobody has moved to repeal that, then the only question is what is a more efficient way to do it. We are saying that the most efficient way, the fairest way, is to say, not that you single out anybody, that is just a nonsensical argument, but this in fact says everybody who comes in must be verified. We have a 10-day period to catch up. No, I do not believe 20 percent of the American people are unfairly identified as illegal aliens. That is an exaggerated figure. We also have in here 10 days in which you can straighten it out. I believe my office can help people prove that they are here legally. Then we are told, ``But it is going to interfere with privacy.'' We have had a lot of inconsistencies here today. My favorite are the people who think that asking people to prove that they are here legally is an invasion of their privacy, but checking their urine is not, because we have people who have been for drug testing, mandatory drug testing, and they have imposed that on people, but no, we cannot ask people whether or not they are here legally. Now we have the question, ``Well, would the government abuse it?'' I understand some of my friends on the left who, I think, are unduly suspicious here, because I think it is in the interests of working people to have a good verification system. On the right, I guess we are dealing in part with the Republican wing that we were told on the floor of the House trusts Hamas more than the American Government. Maybe we can pick up a couple of votes if we subcontracted this out to Hamas, but I do not think they are here legally, so they could not work for us, fortunately. What we are talking about is efficiency. We have on the books the sanction system. If Members do not like it, they should be moving to repeal sanctions. We have on the books a requirement that we verify that you are here, but with a lot of documents in an inconsistent way. This is the most logical way to carry out the existing legal requirements.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I would just say to my friend that apparently we have now found out that the serious threat to civil liberties is the census. I would say in that case it is too late to worry. I do not myself regard the census as a threat, but if it is a threat, it is already there, so if people were going to manipulate things like the census, they would already have it and they would not need anything else.