Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, at her request, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Oregon [Ms. Furse].

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Wynn].

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I would point out to the gentleman that Mr. Shays got the 30 seconds from us, so if he wants to go through the middleman, he is entitled.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 additional seconds to the gentleman from New York [Mr. King].

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I am glad to hear this pledge about taking time and doing things right and not doing them too hastily. I thought the contract outlawed that. I wanted to explain to my colleagues why our friends on the other side are not so worried about this. They are not worried because they have the solution. We are worried about wealthy people feeling that the Tax Code burdens them too heavily and renouncing their citizenship. But you forget, they are going to change the Tax Code. By the time they are through with the Tax Code, if they have their way, no wealthy people will feel bothered by it. By the time they are through weakening the minimum tax and giving them capital gains and giving tax credits for people with hundreds of thousands of dollars, there will not be any problem. are going to make the Tax Code rich-people-friendly, and no one will leave.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, it has occurred to me that people who are thinking of launching military action against the United States are probably likeliest to do it in November of every year, because it is in November, just before the budget is prepared and sent to us, that our friends in the Pentagon and their supporters often argue that America is militarily vulnerable and must spend billions of dollars more than we were planning to spend to defend ourselves. Most recently, this came in the form of an argument that our readiness was below where it should have been. Lawrence Korb, who was in part responsible for maintaining readiness during the Reagan administration as an assistant secretary of defense, very effectively refutes this argument in the article he published in the Sunday New York Times of February 26. Lawrence Korb has done his country enormous service, both when he was in government, and even more so afterward by his willingness to speak out forcefully and honestly, even when this has unfortunately been at some cost to his own professional career. His refutation of the most recent arguments that have been advanced to send an already excessively high Pentagon budget even higher make an extremely contribution to our national debate and I ask that they be printed here. [From the New York Times, Feb. 26, 1995] The Readiness Gap (By Lawrence J. Korb) To listen to Republicans and the military brass, you would think America's armed forces have fallen into the same 1970's morass that spawned the term ``hollow military'' and gave Ronald Reagan a potent issue for the 1980 campaign. Is it possible that just four years after one of the most stunning military triumphs in modern times the services could be suffering from inadequate training, shortages of spare parts and poisonous morale? Just to pose the question in those terms points strongly to the common-sense answer--of course not. This is not the 1970's and the Clinton Administration is not repeating the mistakes of the Carter Administration. Today, the United States spends more than six times as much on defense as its closest rival, and almost as much on national security as the rest of the world combined. In 1995, Bill Clinton will actually spend $30 billion more on defense, in constant dollars, than Richard Nixon did 20 years ago and substantially more than his own Secretary of Defense argued was necessary in 1992. Since the collapse of the Berlin wall, the Pentagon's forces have declined by 25 percent and financing for new weapons has fallen by 50 percent while readiness spending has dropped by only 10 percent. In the last year, readiness accounts increased by $5 billion while the overall military budget dropped by 3 percent. The Pentagon now spends more on readiness (about $60,000 per person) than it did in the Reagan and Bush Administrations (when readiness hit all-time highs) and 50 percent more than during the Carter years. And the quality of entering recruits is still very high (96 percent) and retention rates are so good that the Pentagon is still dismissing people. If readiness spending is higher than in the Reagan and Bush years, and if the manpower situation is still so solid, why do so many politicians and generals warn darkly about a readiness gap? That--not the theological question of whether our forces are combat ready--is the crucial question. The answer is more nuanced than most people would imagine, and sheds a great deal of light on Pentagon politicking in the post-cold-war era. I first encountered the politics of military readiness 30 years ago when I was a Naval flight officer in the Far East. One Sunday afternoon, in response to a call from the Seventh Fleet, I reported that only 3 of our 12 planes were ready for combat. For my honesty, I received a severe tongue-lashing from whenever headquarters called we were always ready. The military, he explained correctly, prized a ``can do outfit,'' and the services promoted those who performed regardless of circumstances. My next encounter was in 1980, when I was preparing a monograph on the subject for the American Enterprise Institute. When word of my project reached the Pentagon I was drowned in data (some of which was highly classified) and anecdotes from normally tight-lipped bureaucrats. When I went to the Pentagon to conduct some interviews, I was treated like a foreign dignitary. One of my conclusions was that readiness is a slippery and poorly understood concept. To most people it is a synonym for military capability or preparedness. To the military, however, readiness is only one of four components of preparedness, and not necessarily the most important one. To obtain a true picture, one had to look at the other three pillars--force structure (the number of ships, planes, tanks), modernization (the age of the forces) and sustainability (staying power). Thus, a very ready force could be considered militarily impotent if it was too small, too old and lacked staying power. By the same token, a force that was bigger, more sophisticated and better armed than its adversaries could be deemed unready if it was considered improperly trained and outfitted. I also concluded that readiness is a hot-button political issue, subject to unlimited manipulation. Even the informed public can't judge such matters as the appropriate force structure, the proper time to replace a plane or tank and the level of effort necessary to win a war. But everybody wants and expects a ready force. Military leaders were quick to grasp the political potential of readiness scares. In the late 70's, word went out that reports of readiness problems would be welcomed by headquarters. The only exception was the Marine Corps. I was told by a general that the Marines had been C-2 (ready) for 200 years! I also came to understand that measuring readiness is hardly an exact science. Each service defined readiness differently, and I found similar units with similar problems reporting different levels of readiness. The Air Force claimed that a fighter pilot needed to fly 20 hours a month to stay battle fit. The Navy and Marine Corps said their pilots needed a minimum of 24 hours a month; Air National Guard units needed only 10 hours per month. No one could ever explain why readiness demanded that Army tanker trucks drive 800 miles a year, why ships needed to steam 55 days per quarter or why helicopter pilots needed only 14 hours a month flying time. Finally, I discovered that a unit's readiness was determined by the lowest grade it received in any of the four categories (personnel, equipment and supplies on hand, equipment readiness and training). Thus, a fully manned unit with modern equipment in perfect working order would be classified as not ready if it trained for only a brief period of time. Nonetheless, my report for the American Enterprise Institute concluded that the armed forces were indeed experiencing severe readiness problems, for three reasons. Given the threat posed by our principal adversary, the Soviet Union, military expenditures in the 1970's were too low. Moreover, the civilian and military leaders of the Department of Defense decided to spend the few extra dollars they received on stealth war planes, cruise missiles and other new technologies at the expense of flying hours and spare parts. Finally, the Carter Administration allowed military pay and benefits to fall 25 percent behind comparable rates in the private sector. Consequently, the quality of recruits fell below acceptable standards and retention rates dropped precipitously. My conclusions were attacked by the Secretary of Defense but embraced by the military and candidate Reagan. My reward, following the Reagan triumph, was to be appointed ``readiness czar'' in the Pentagon. Once in office, I was introduced to another side of the politics of readiness. The military chiefs, having skillfully used the issue to help secure a large spending increase, were much less interested infixing readiness than in modernizing and enlarging their forces. The same Army chief who had coined the term ``hollow military'' told the Secretary of Defense that the best way to improve a soldier's readiness was to buy him a new rifle. Spending for readiness did increase by about 20 percent, or nearly $10,000 per person (in total, less than one-fifth the increase in procurement). Nonetheless, according to the Joint Chiefs, by 1984 the readiness of all major units, except Navy ships, had gone down and I was being pilloried by the Democrats. How did this happen? Without telling their civilian ``superiors,'' the service chiefs had raised the standards for readiness right along with the Reagan buildup. After these standards were made more realistic, readiness began to grow significantly during the last half of the 1980's, reaching all-time highs. The performance of the American forces in the gulf in 1990 and 1991 showed just how capable and ready they were. With the ascension of Bill Clinton to the Presidency, readiness once again emerged as the hot-button issue. Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, issued a report called ``Going Hollow,'' in which he drew heavily on the views of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Last December, a weakened President Clinton pledged an additional $25 billion for readiness. Nevertheless, it is obvious that the current readiness gap, like others since the 1970's, was designed and manufactured by the Pentagon to serve its political agenda-- to maintain the cold war status quo. Despite several reviews of force structure in recent years, the services remain configured to contain a non-existent Soviet empire. The Navy still keeps three active carrier battle groups, with thousands of battle-ready marines, while the Army and Air Force have nearly 200,000 troops stationed in Europe and Asia. Thus, when a crisis erupts in a Haiti or a Rwanda, these forces must take on these assignments as ``extra tasks,'' for which they often lack training and equipment. The question here is not readiness but why we continue to train and deploy forces for cold war tasks. Additionally, the services have inflated the threat against which readiness is measured. According to President Clinton, the armed forces should be prepared to fight two major regional wars simultaneously: one against Iraq and one against North Korea. According to the Pentagon and many Republicans, the services have neither the money nor the forces to accomplish this. Since defense spending is at about 85 percent of its average cold war level, this leads to the absurd conclusion that Iraq and North Korea (which together spend less than $20 billion a year on the military) equal 85 percent of the might of the Soviet empire. Finally, the joint chiefs are simply manipulating the system. Two of the three Army divisions that they identified as unready were in the process of being demobilized. Other units were not able to do routine training because they were involved in a real war, that is, the October deployment to the Persian Gulf to deal with Saddam's thrust toward Kuwait. The Marines, who have finally caught on, now say that their readiness is lower than in 1980! The U.S. has the finest and best financed military in the world. It is also the most ready, prepared to go thousands of miles on short notice. But it is inadequately controlled by its civilian superiors. Because of Bill Clinton's perceived political vulnerability on defense issues, the civilian leaders do not wish to risk a confrontation with the Republicans or the military chiefs. As a result, the ``nonpolitical'' admirals and generals running the military are taking all of us to the cleaners, using the readiness gap to snatch up precious dollars to defend against a threat that no longer exists.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, one of the speakers on the other side said, ``Can we accept that we are all for children?'' Well, we can't for a couple of reasons. First of all when one of the Members on that side used the analogy of feeding alligators as the basis for his argument for cutting off welfare entitlements, I heard no protests on that side. He cited the Declaration of Independence. Apparently in his version it says all men are created equal to alligators and we will treat them equally. That kind of dehumanizing and degrading analogy is why we cannot take seriously that profession. There is another reason. You are block-granting everything here and you say, ``Well, why is that a problem?'' Because it is very clear. When the Republican Party cares about something, they don't block-grant it. When they were worried about manufacturers' liability, they went into the States, took it out, and brought it up. When the elderly complained about elderly nutrition being block- granted, they dropped it out of their bill. If taking it and block-granting it is such a good thing for the children, are we to believe you are penalizing the elderly? I mean, you were originally going to block-grant elderly lunches and children's lunches. Now you are only doing it for the children. Is that because you are mad at the elderly, you are showing how tough you are? Nonsense. It is because they have the political clout to get out of your scheme, and I am glad they do. The same with food stamps. You almost all voted against an effort to really block-grant food stamps yesterday because the farmers did not want you to do that. As a matter of fact we here all of these arguments against even entitlements. I will be waiting to see my friend from Kansas and my friend from Wisconsin when we talk about the antimeans testing of entitlements in America, the ones that go to wealthy farmers and the wealthier you are the more you are entitled to get. Let us see how antientitlement you are then. Finally, we have a jobs program in this bill and it is a public jobs program because we do not believe everybody now on welfare is going to be hired in the private sector, especially with the Fed trying to slow it down. What does that bring forward? Denigration. The gentlewoman from Kansas sneers at ``make-work jobs.'' Well, when you sneer at public service jobs in that tone you are hardly showing a respect for the work ethic.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I hope the amendment is defeated. We fall into an unfortunate pattern when we do things like this. We, outside the context of an overall consideration of a program, say this particular group is very worthy, and we give them a preference over everybody else, and Members vote on that thinking of the worthiness of the particular recipients of the preference. What they do not realize is that giving a preference to group A means giving a disadvantage to every other group. So I say to my colleagues, You're not voting now, if you vote on this, as to whether or not this particular group is worthy of a preference. The question is: Is every other group in need of housing unworthy? Should every other group be put down? In fact, you have people who are very poor. You have people who have been working and not quite making enough wages to make it in the private market. Both groups get disadvantaged by this. It simply falls into a pattern that we have fallen into before. You hinder the law with a set of preferences that are often inconsistent, that don't harmonize, that don't, in fact, represent a rational preference system because you simply say this one group, and this one group is all you can deal with here because we're dealing with welfare. So this says this one particular group will be deemed by us more worthy than everybody else, and this is not a basis on which we should be deciding who everybody else is. Mr. Chairman, I have served on the Housing Subcommittee, and I could not tell my colleagues who everybody else is, and I am sure other Members could not either. So the question is not whether we should do something for the people in this program. It is should we disadvantage everybody who is not in this program, should we decide that everybody not in this program is not worthy of getting housing or not worthy of a preference because, as the gentleman from Massachusetts pointed out saying, ``No, you get pushed down the list,'' meaning they do not get housing at all. I do not understand why we would say, without the ability to make comparisons, that we are going to single out one group to the inevitable disadvantage of every other.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, the chairman of the subcommittee rather unfairly, it seemed to me, criticized us for not talking enough about the amendments. The Republican Party has not succeeded at much lately, but they have succeeded in making this debate the most disjointed one possible. Because they have clearly decided that this is not going as well as they would like. They miscalculated. Attacking welfare recipients is usually more popular than it has been under their leadership, and maybe they will learn as they keep doing it. But I have an example of an amendment I want to talk about that we have not been to able to talk about. The chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary offered a noncontroversial amendment which said none of these funds can be used to provide medical services. The gentleman from New York raised that question. When he was asked about it, when the gentleman from Illinois was asked about the phrase medical services, he said it meant abortion. Mr. Chairman, this is a wonderful, truly wonderful thing. The chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary is empowered apparently not only to change legislation involving the judicial code of the United States, he can change the language. He can say ``medical services'' and really mean ``abortion.'' this, I think we might have been able to pursue this. I do not regard it as noncontroversial when we get an amendment that says none of this can be used for medical services, and one of the moderate Members on the other side, one of the very pliant moderates that they have, got up and said, ``Well, do you really mean everything?'' He said, ``No; I just mean abortion.'' Well, the power of the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary to change the plain meaning of words simply by what he says on the floor contradicting what will be written into statute does not exist. What we have is language that was offered that says medical services. We were told it means only abortion. We do not have time to explain it. We get 11 amendments, and the gentleman graciously gave us an extra half-hour, so we have 4 minutes per amendment. It is an example of the shambles they have managed to make of this debate.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Texas said we had time constraints. Could someone tell me what the legislative calendar is for next week, because my understanding is that we have a very light schedule for next week and that, in fact, we could have this bill go over, and we have plenty of empty days for next week.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I too hope that the Members today and this week will stand up for America, that they will stand up for an America that has a sense of responsibility and compassion and the wisdom not to panic. We have got some economic problems brought about by the changing nature of work which puts people without technological skills at something of a disadvantage, exacerbated by the increasing integration of the international economy. Those are things that we ought to be addressing. But what the public is being offered by the Republican Party is an alternative explanation for that. It is a form of scapegoating. Working Americans who have found their economic futures insecure are being told it is the fault of those poor people and those immigrants and those women who keep having children so they can make the few bucks you get on AFDC. In pursuit of that, what we will have this week brought forward by the Republican Party is an assault on people who are poor, who lack education, who lack skills, and most of all we will have an assault on children. What we get in American politics today is a very selective quoting of the Bible. The part that says you shall not visit the sins of the parents on the children apparently has been written out of the editions of many people, because we are being told that children who make the terrible mistake of being born in the wrong circumstance, children who make the bad judgment to have a mother who was not married, will pay for that. Those children will see basic sustenance denied to them. The answer of our Republican friends is, ``Oh, no, no, we're not going to cut that,'' although in fact they are cutting it ``What we are doing is returning it to the States.'' Well, understand one very important point. When there is a program which is important to the Republican Party, they federalize it. When we are talking about issues that the Republican Party or its major constituencies in the corporate community feel strongly about, they bring them to the Federal level. Where we have an issue which is not one that they favor, it gets sent back to the States with less money and in circumstances that invite the States to reduce things further. There will be no safeguards, there will be no requirements. Today if you are a child born in those kind of circumstances, your lot is not going to be a happy one. The young child born to a single mother is those kind of circumstances will live a life that no child in America ought to live. And what is the response of the people on the other side? Let's make it worse. Let's penalize that family in the hopes that there will not be so many families like that in the future. That is why a very wide range of organizations, religious groups, advocacy groups of various sorts are so unhappy with this. Let's again be clear. The Republican Party says ``Oh, no, we're just returning it to the States.'' When it came to prisons and how to sentence criminals, this Constitution, they took it away from the States and gave them orders. When it came to lawsuits of any kind, not just manufactured products but automobile accidents, people slipping and falling on the stairs, the Republican Party put through an amendment that makes those matters of national concern. We are going to be debating term limits. I said to a couple of the Republicans, well, are we going to have uniform national standards? They said, ``Of course,'' some of the Republicans have said, ``We can't leave that up to the States. That's too important.'' e fate of poor children, that is not too important. And we know that the States are subjected to a competition among themselves for industry, industry which can decide whether it is from overseas or here where to move. They will tell a State, ``We don't think your taxes are low enough. We think your benefits are too high.'' So what we have is a deliberate dismantling of this safety net, sketchy as it now is, sent back to the States, and the absolute predictable conclusion is that poor 2- and 3- and 4-year-olds will be poorer and worse off in the future.The same is true with the school lunch program and with other programs. The military budget will go up. The space budget will be protected. The House gym will stay open. We will be OK, but poor children will be the victims of an assault unlike any we have seen in a long time. I hope that the House will indeed stand up for America by saying that is not the kind of country we want to live in.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased that on Saturday, March 25, I will have the honor of attending the 1995 dinner of the Young Israel of Sharon Synagogue. The theme of this dinner, acknowledging 23 years of the synagogue's existence, is community service and leadership. Since that is the theme that many of us in Washington are trying to stress, I am especially pleased to attend an event in which people have been exemplifying this spirit in their own community. The dinner will honor Eleanor Herburger, a vital and important citizen of Sharon who will be presented with a Shachain Tov--Good Neighbor--Award for her varied and valued community service. Rabbi Meir Sendor and his congregation have a great deal of which to be proud. I am pleased to be able to call attention here to their excellent work, and the model they present to so many others, and I am honored that I will have a chance to be with them to mark this great occasion.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, the rescissions voted by the Appropriations Committee last week threatens serious harm to the social fabric of our Nation. By increasing military spending, and focusing overwhelmingly for reductions on programs which seek to provide assistance for those most in need in our society, you and your fellow Republicans have seriously erred. Increasingly, it is becoming clear to many people that the priorities of the House Republicans threaten seriously to exacerbate some of the gravest social and economic problems we face. I will from time to time be sharing with our colleagues information I receive about the devastating effect these cuts will have as they become available to me from people in my district and elsewhere who are grappling with these issues. For example, on March 3, the New Bedford Standard Times printed an article in which the executive director of the New Bedford Housing Authority Joseph Finnerty, clearly outlines the terrible effects which will result from the devastating cuts voted in housing programs by the Appropriations Committee last week. Interestingly, Mr. Speaker, some in your party have sought to justify these cuts by pointing to defects in the way HUD has been administered. It is true that HUD has suffered from maladministration in recent times--most grievously during the 8 years of Ronald Reagan, when Samuel Pierce presided over a department which was corrupt, inefficient, and overall a disaster. Victimizing lower income people today who are in continuing need of housing because of the outrageous record of Secretary Pierce under President Reagan is terribly unfair. But that is what the Appropriations Committee has chosen to do. Mr. Speaker, in the hopes of persuading my colleagues not to go forward along this path, I ask that the New Bedford Standard Times article featuring Mr. Finnerty's discussion of housing programs be printed here. [From the New Bedford Standard Times, Mar. 3, 1995] Reduction Would Cause Chaos, Finnerty Says (By Bill Ibelle) The massive federal funding cuts that are racing through Congress will have a devastating effect on public housing tenants in New Bedford, according to Executive Director Joseph Finnerty. The cuts, which would slash the maintenance budget and the five-year modernization program by 30 percent each, would create ``chaos'' in the city's public housing, Mr. Finnerty said Thursday during the Housing Authority's monthly meeting. ``This is not a false alarm,'' he said. ``The new Republican majority in Congress has the votes for these cuts. Now, just when we are on the verge of major improvements in our neighborhoods, we have this ax hanging over our head.'' The maintenance cuts, which would amount to $625,000 a year, would cause a steady deterioration in public housing, Mr. Finnerty said. ``This is not something that is going to be felt immediately, but it will have a devastating long-term effect,'' he said, ``These cuts are unprecedented, massive and eroding to public housing.'' The federal cuts also would kill or seriously delay major modernization projects like the one scheduled for the aging Bay Village complex later this year. That project includes lead paint and asbestos removal as well as installing new windows and doors. Similar modernization projects have already taken place at the Westlawn and Brickenwood projects and are about to begin at Presidential Heights. ``The improvements we're making now are not just for public housing tenants but for all residents of the surrounding neighborhoods,'' said Mr. Finnerty. ``By modernizing these units, we're making these neighborhoods into a better investment.'' Mr. Finnerty also unveiled exterior drawings for the 43 units of new public housing to be built throughout the city this year. The units will replace units lost with the demolition of Evergreen Park. The duplex units are designed to blend in with the single family homes common to the city's neighborhoods: Three of the sites will have two duplexes each (the corner of Shawmut Avenue and Coggeshall Street, the corner of Cottage and Campbell streets and a plot that runs between Sylvia and Howard streets). One site will have four duplexes (North Street behind the City Hall annex parking lot). One site will have two row houses with a total of seven units (South First and Rivet streets). The largest site will have eight duplexes (New Plainville Road just north of the tank). Mr. Finnerty said the Housing Authority completed buying all six sites Feb. 24. Construction is slated to begin in June and last 12 to 14 months. In other business the board: Approved payment of an additional $10,864 to the Boston Architectural firm, Hicks & Krockmalnic, for rebidding of the Presidential Heights modernization project. Due to a legal challenge by two of the unsuccessful bidders, the Housing Authority had to cancel the original contract and put the project out to bid a second time. The $4.5 million project which includes removing lead paint and asbestos, installing exterior siding, windows, doors and building new porches and fixing the roofs, is slated to begin this summer. Approved payment of an additional $3,875 to Enviroscience for drawing up new bid speculations for lead and asbestos removal at Presidential Heights. Approved a $15,980 contract to Coro Construction of East Greenwich, R.I., for re-roofing eight duplexes on Chaffee Street. Coro was the lowest of eight bidders. Approved the payment of $5,255 to Seaview Construction of Providence for installing railings at Harwich Manor. Approved a $23,763 contract with Electronic Sales and Service of New Bedford for installing a communications system that includes 43 portable radios. The system will be used by the authority's maintenance staff. Approved a 2.3 percent increase in the income limits for the Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program, which serves 182 families in the city. Approved a 1.2 percent increase in the income limits for the federal Assisted Housing Program. Voted to support efforts by John G. ``Buddy'' Andrade to increase membership in the Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts among public housing tenants. Mr. Andrade requested the authority's support in drumming up interest for a Scouting show scheduled April 2 at the Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School on Ashley Boulevard. Fielded a request from the Caroline Street Tenants' Association for several maintenance improvements. The residents asked the authority to cut down an apple tree, complaining that youths throw the apples through windows, the apple blossoms attract bees and the fallen apples are hazardous to senior citizens using walkers and canes. The association also requested the removal of tree roots that have caused sidewalks to buckle and the installation of outdoor lighting around the apartments. Observed a moment of silence at the beginning of the meeting in honor of commissioner Umberto ``Battle'' Cruz, who died unexpectedly last month.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, under the general rules of germaneness here and since I will not get a chance to talk about this elsewhere, I want to say a little bit about HUD. We are hearing a lot and a lot in this bill beats up on HUD, and I want to acknowledge, HUD has been badly run, because from 1981 to 1989 under Ronald Reagan, the Secretary of HUD was Samuel Pierce, and rarely in the history of America under that Republican administration has any Federal department been run so incompetently and corruptly at the same time. They rarely did anything at all and when they did anything, it was likely to be crooked. The problem we now have is that the poor people in this country are going to be penalized by savage cuts in HUD which are a consequence in part of mismanagement of that Republican rule. With Samuel Pierce having presided under Ronald Reagan over the most corrupt administration and the most inept in recent memory, it is a very cruel thing now to penalize the poor people today, and so these cuts in HUD which are being justified by HUD mismanagement are a clear case on the part of the Republican Party of killing your parents and claiming justification because you are an orphan.

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I would just say, my friend, if the gentleman does not like so much what is here, then one good way to deal with that would be to vote against it, and maybe if the gentleman does not like the rule because he is precluded, a good thing would have been to have voted against the rule. I think to vote for a restrictive rule and then vote for the bill which makes all of these cuts and then to lament them is very puzzling.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I think it useful for me to share with my colleagues a brief but very pointed letter from Mark Sullivan, who is the head of the community action agency in the city of Fall River, Citizens, Inc. Mr. Sullivan is one of the outstanding leaders in the fight to improve the quality of life for people in the lower economic brackets, and he has been doing it long enough to have considerable perspective. Thus, he points out that the arguments in favor of the creation of the community action agency, and their subsequent inclusion in a community service block grant, grew from concern that we bypass bureaucracy and provide help directly to the people most in need. Citizens for Citizens is one of the organizations that exemplifies the success of this approach. And because the point Mr. Sullivan makes about the relevance of that experience to much of the rhetoric we are now hearing from my Republican colleagues, I ask that this letter be printed here. Citizens for Citizens, Inc., Fall River, MA, January 31, 1995. Dear Barney: I just finished watching a 30 year history of the War on Poverty on PBS and the irony of history repeating itself became crystal clear. The basic concept of all the programs in the War on Poverty was the empowerment of local citizens to make decisions and help design economic programs that affect their lives. Thirty years later, the new majority in Congress headed by Speaker of the House Gingrich, is talking about designing government so that citizens will be empowered to make economic decisions on the local level for policies that affect their lives. It seems to be redundant to reinvent the wheel when there is a Community Service Block Grant which serves all of the purposes and meets all of the criteria as established by the new leadership; albeit, it deals with low-income people who need the economic empowerment the most. I believe that Speaker Gingrich, with his background as a historian has a knowledge and appreciation of these programs for economic empowerment. I welcome him as a spokesman for the need to extend and expand the Community Action Agency through increased funding for the Community Services Block Grant, and wish you would thank him for his generous forthcoming support.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, from time to time I will share with my colleagues evidence from people who are at work in Massachusetts of the damage that is being done to our social fabric by the proposed cuts that the Republican Party is putting forward. By increasing military spending, keeping other spending such as the manned space station sacrosanct, and advocating large tax cuts, many of which will go to wealthy people, the Republicans are forcing unduly deep cuts in many important programs that help our society attain the degree of civility that is essential. Recently, the commissioner of education in Massachusetts wrote to me and my Massachusetts congressional colleagues to talk about how seriously damaged programs in Massachusetts will be by cuts in the education area. I ask that Commissioner Antonucci's letter in which he stresses ``the important connection between education and the nation's economic competitiveness and the vital role of federal investment in education'' be printed here as one more argument against the cuts the Republican Party is now launched upon. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Education, Malden, MA, February 28, 1995. The Massachusetts Congressional Delegation, Washington, DC. Dear Members of the Massachusetts Delegation: As the Appropriations Committee proceeds to vote on March 2 on the rescission package that would cut $1.7 billion from Education programs, I have implored them to please consider the important connection between education and the nation's economic competitiveness and the vital role of federal investment in education. For Massachusetts, a leader in education innovation and reform, the proposed cuts would shatter our best investment. For example, the Goals 2000 initiative so closely tied to each state's reform efforts is scheduled to be cut by $142 million. Programs such as School To Work and Tech Prep have been lauded as providing high-skilled preparation to 7000 students each year in the work place and the community colleges--the only entry for these particular students for higher wage jobs. The Safe and Drug-Free program has served each one of our cities and towns since 1986. Through these drug and alcohol abuse programs, we have seen a significant drop in alcohol abuse as reported by students since 1990. The loss of $2,000,000 in Adult Education funding has very serious consequences to our most vulnerable population. These monies provide workplace literacy to 1200 adult students, and literacy training to 1500 homeless adult students. Our business community has been so impressed with our success, that they match the federal grant with $1,800,000 each year. We have written each member of the Appropriations Committee. We need their vote to reflect a level of funding that ensures every student's educational success. Sincerely, Robert V. Antonucci, Commissioner of Education.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

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

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. If the chairman decides then to simply follow partisan instincts, does the Member have any recourse?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, if the Chair decides to give partisan advantage, is there any recourse?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I have another parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Is there a relative standard?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. But the question is, by what standard do you determine that? My parliamentary inquiry is, are there any standards by which you determine that? Or is it just arbitrary as it appears to be in this case?