Maurice Hinchey

Mr. HINCHEY

Mr. HINCHEY. Let me say this, Mr. Speaker, the Senate wanted this in the bill, and the conferees in this House wanted it dropped out. That was the gentleman's activity. That was his contribution to this conference report. He dropped out that provision which would have closed the loophole. That was his contribution.

Mr. HINCHEY. Yes, I am.

Mr. HINCHEY

Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Chairman, what is wrong with this en bloc amendment is the same thing that is wrong with the underlying bill. It covers up the fact that what is being done here is to take away precious resources from the most needy of our citizens and to give them to those who already have more than they know what to do with. In every civilized society worthy of the name, the first mandate is take care of women and children, protect the women and children, look out for the women and children, except under this new majority in this House. Here, the mandate is to abuse the women and children, make them suffer, suffer the women and children, make from the most needy people, women and children in this society, to the richest members. Give them tax cuts while you take away from those who need it the most, and in New York alone, over 5 years, you will deny $8.5 billion to needy children. Nearly a half a million children in the State of New York alone will not get the needs and attention that they deserve under this bill and these en bloc amendments obfuscate that fact. The amendment should be defeated as well as the bill.

Mr. HINCHEY

Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Chairman, there is no doubt that our legal system can and should be improved. But this measure like so much of the Contract With America, goes too far. It is extreme, it is radical and it is unfair. It would deny people their opportunity to go to court to get justice. Let me tell you a story of a person who lives near my district. Alice Hayes, 57 years old, worked on an assembly line all her life, went to work one day in the plastics molding factory, stuck her hands in the machine to remove the plastic mold, and the machine came down on those hands and severed them and her forearms as well. Alice Hayes no longer has her hands and no longer has her forearms; she will never get those hands back. But under the present law in New York, she at least has the opportunity to get justice. Under this bill she will lose both, her hands and the opportunity for justice. This amendment at least provides some opportunity for punitive damages, so that she could be somewhat compensated for the loss that she has sustained. This bill will deny that opportunity. This amendment should be passed. Furthermore, this bill ought to be defeated. There was another instance, an elementary school in Coldenham in which one day the cafeteria wall collapsed and the roof came crashing down on the children in that school. A number of them lost their lives, others were injured. This bill will prevent them from getting the opportunity for justice. The amendment should be passed. The bill should be defeated.

Mr. HINCHEY

Mr. HINCHEY. Yes, I would. But first let me remind ourselves and anybody who might be watching this that during the debate on the balanced budget amendment in this House, we attempted to pass an amendment that would exclude Social Security which would take Social Security off the table, and an attempt to balance the budget so Social Security would not be in jeopardy. That amendment failed here. The majority party in this House defeated that amendment, so we can sense from that where lies one of the sources from which they intend to derive the revenue to balance this budget after the year 2002. Also, Medicare, the Medicare Program which is a health care program for our elderly citizens, the majority leader in the other House of this institution, when he was a Member of the House of Representatives, voted against Medicare. It is no surprise why he is against national health insurance and why he is for the balanced budget amendment today. They are going to go after Social Security. They are going to go after Medicare. Already we have seen them going after programs that affect the most vulnerable Americans, children, for example. They are cutting away at the school lunch program. There is going to be less availability of school lunches. They want to put it in a block grant, reduce the amount of money that is available for it, and send it down to the States. We know the consequences of that. The school lunch program is going to be less effective. Fewer children are going to benefit from it. Their learning is going to decline as a result of that. Their health is going to decline as a result of that, and we are going to have a weaker America. So those are the programs they are after, the WIC program, the food stamp program. That is where they are going to get the money for their tax cut for their wealthy friends.

Mr. HINCHEY. It sounds eerily familiar, tax cuts for the very rich, substantial increases in military spending, balanced budget amendment. In the words of the great American philosopher, Yogi Berra, ``Deja vu all over again.'' It is 1981 all over again. It is the same prescription that brought us record budget deficits, the same prescription that brought us record debt, the budget deficit, and debt that we are trying to dig our way out of. The irony is, the inexplicable irony is that the same people in this House who pushed through those budgets in the 1980's that brought us that incredible debt fueled by those budget deficits year after year after year are now going back to try to bring us the same kind of disastrous economic policies now in the last few years of the decade of the 1990's, the same kind of prescription that is going to bring us the same disastrous consequences.

Mr. HINCHEY. I think obviously you are right. These are the issues that concern me, and these are the issues that we ought to be talking about here in this institution, in this Chamber, in this room. We ought to be talking about the economic conditions that are afflicting the American people more and more. We have seen a stagnation in the standard of living of the vast majority of the American people, and even a decline in that standard of living substantially over the course of the last 20 years, going back to 1973, and especially since 1979, and I think that that is clearly associated with the decline in manufacturing jobs and other productive jobs, manufacturing, construction, the kinds of jobs that add value to material things and, therefore, create wealth. We have lost most of those jobs, many of those jobs, such that only 26 percent of the American work force today is engaged in those productive kinds of activities such as manufacturing, mining, and construction. When you contrast that with those statistics for other countries, you find that of the major industrial powers, we now have among the smallest percentage of people working in those kinds of occupations, and that is why we have had the decline in wealth and a decline in the standard of living of the majority of Americans. People are insecure. They do not know if their job is going to be there tomorrow or next week or next month. They worry deeply about the availability of meaningful employment for their children. They worry substantially about whether or not their children are going to enjoy the same standard of living that they have enjoyed, and they fear, in fact, their children's standard of living is going to be less than theirs. That is a dramatic departure from the experience of this country, particularly over the last 50 years since the Second World War.

Mr. HINCHEY. I am not really certain but I remember it was an extraordinary amount.

Mr. HINCHEY. I want to thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to join you in this discussion this evening and for focusing the discussion exactly where it ought to be focused, on the economic issues, on ways that we can take in this Congress to improve the standard of living of American people. There is nothing more important for me. I know that is true with you. We have got to make sure as best we can that it becomes equally important for a larger number of people who serve in this Congress.

Mr. HINCHEY. I think we could spend, I tell the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders], more than an hour on that discussion alone here this evening. But to make it brief, the effects have been frankly what you and I and others who voted against NAFTA predicted they would be. We said at that time that the peso was overvalued, that the Mexican economy was riddled with corruption and that if we were to pass NAFTA, it was really not a trade agreement but an investment agreement, it would siphon off investment capital from the United States down to Mexico and there would be a net loss of jobs from this country, and that is precisely what we have seen. We have seen a loss of 10,000 jobs, a net loss of 10,000 jobs from the United States to Mexico as a direct result of NAFTA. And we have seen the collapse of the Mexican economy. Our trade policies since 1979 and perhaps as early as 1973 have been a disaster for this country. We have taken it on the chin. We have been a sap for other countries. We have a built-in trade deficit now which is of historic proportions. That trade deficit means that we are subsidizing good jobs in other countries while we lose those good jobs here in America. We need to reverse our trade policies and focus on our own domestic economic needs. Trade is important only to the extent that it provides value to the United States, that it helps us improve the standard of living of the American people, that it provides more jobs for Americans. Our trade policies have taken us precisely 180 degrees in the opposite direction. That has been going on now for nearly 20 years. No wonder we are suffering the economic circumstances we are. That is a major part of our problem.

Mr. HINCHEY. Well, I think it is very clear that the working conditions here in the United States have deteriorated. The quality of the jobs is not keeping pace with what it ought to be. The level of benefits are far lower than they are in European countries where in many European countries it is customary for a person working in the first year to get 4 weeks vacation and some countries, Australia, it is even 6 weeks vacation. But here in the United States it is, you are lucky to get 2. And more importantly, more and more American companies are moving toward a situation where they hire part-time employees so that they do not have to provide benefits such as pension systems, things of that nature, health insurance. And that is one of the reasons why we have a larger growing number of people in the United States who are without health insurance. And that is one of the principal driving forces forcing up the cost of health care for all the rest of us. It is a major part of our economic problems over the course of the next several years. We need to get a handle, get control of our health care costs. And we cannot do it, because one of the reasons we cannot do it is because so many more people are without health insurance. And when they get health care they get it under the most expensive circumstances. So these are all part of pieces, part of a larger entity that has to do with what we ought to be doing in this House, and that is working to improve the standard of living of the majority of American people, making education more accessible to middle class working people, making good jobs available to middle class working people, jobs that pay a decent salary and provide health insurance and other reasonable benefits, the kinds of things that we have taken for granted in the past and which are being taken away from us insidiously as a result of the failure of this Congress to operate the way that it ought to. If it was operating in the best interests of the American people, that is what it would be doing. It would be developing programs to create jobs and improve the standard of living, and making sure that when people work, they are compensated appropriately for that work and included in that compensation is basic health insurance and other kinds of fundamental benefits.

Mr. HINCHEY. And workers who are making higher levels than that because it will have a tendency to push up the wages of others as well. Because as we discussed earlier in our colloquy here this evening, we have seen the standard of living of Americans not keep pace with the cost of living or advance ahead of the cost of living but actually decline so that people are living today in a more difficult circumstance. The vast majority of Americans are having a tougher time making ends meet, paying the electric bill, as you said before, paying the rent, paying the mortgage, worrying about how they are going to put their kids through school. It is a more difficult proposition today as a result of the declining standard of living and one of the aspects of that is the failure of the minimum wage to keep pace with the cost of living.

Mr. HINCHEY. It makes a great deal of sense to me. It makes it even more difficult for me to understand how the majority leader in this House can say that he would like to see the minimum wage done away with completely. If he had anything to say about it, that is what would happen. He also said that he would fight with every fiber of his being an increase in the minimum wage. Well, look what has happened to the minimum wage. The president has proposed a modest increase from where it is now, at $4.25 an hour, to $5.15 an hour over the course of 2 years. If the minimum wage had kept pace with the cost of living in our country over the course of the last several years, it would at this moment as we stand here today, the last day of February 1995, the minimum wage would be more than $6 an hour. So even what the president is proposing will not take us to where the minimum wage ought to be at this moment, let alone where it ought to be 2 years from now. The minimum wage is a basic standard from which we attempt to elevate the standard of living of all Americans by placing a floor under the salary that should be paid for someone's labor. What more can a person give outside of family experience to someone else but their labor? They ought to be compensated for that appropriately. And in this, the wealthiest nation in the world, with the biggest economy in the world, we ought to be able to pay our workers at a rate that will afford them a decent standard of living.

Mr. HINCHEY. I think absolutely so. There is no class of Americans to whom we owe a greater debt of gratitude than those who served in the military, particularly during times of conflict, during times of war, when they put themselves in jeopardy, put their lives on the line, were certainly in danger of that at any moment. We need to live up to our responsibilities to our veterans. The majority party in this House has just slashed away at veterans benefits. Outreach programs for veterans at veterans hospitals are going to be virtually eliminated if we pass what they have reported out of the committee so far. That is just one example of the way that they are striking away at veterans benefits. But the irony of it is that while they attack the veterans and the benefits and the responsibilities and obligations that we as a country owe to veterans, they wrap themselves in the flag by talking about a constitutional amendment against burning the flag. There was a great British parliamentarian who once observed that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. I have a friend who says that patriotism is often the first refuge of a scoundrel. [[Page H2390]] I think that we may be seeing a little bit of that here in this proposed flag amendment, because I think that they are using this proposed flag amendment to hide their real agenda, which is to slash away at veterans benefits, to deprive veterans of what we owe them really for what they have done for this country, and take that money, again, to use it for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. It is a scandalous part, only one of many scandalous parts of this so-called Contract on America.

Mr. HINCHEY. It does not make any sense. I cannot help but wonder what has happened to the great Republican Party, a party which had care and concern for the middle-class people of this country, particularly. Even Richard Nixon, when he was President, commented on the school lunch program, and he did so by saying that he knew a child would be able to learn much better if he has good nutrition. That child will be stronger, be able to accept knowledge easier, to learn, he will be able to be a better participant in school. President Nixon knew the value of the school lunch program. In my State, Nelson Rockefeller was responsible for the establishment of the State University of New York. He took a system of scattered and disparate normal schools and small colleges and brought them together in the most magnificent way and created one of the best State university systems in the Nation and one of the best public systems of higher education anywhere in the world. This was done by a great Republican Governor. Now we found Republicans in this House, the majority party in this House, attacking public education in the way that the gentleman described, hacking away at Pell grants, hacking away at new student loans, depriving more and more people of the opportunity to get a good education. Back in my State, the new administration in New York wants to raise the tuition at the State university system by over $1,000, $1,300. It is going to price out of the opportunity for higher education many middle-income people, concentrated more and more in the hands of wealthier and wealthier people. That is not what Nelson Rockefeller wanted that State university to be. He wanted it there for all people regardless of their income. And this new Republican Party inexplicably has gone far to the right and is destroying some of the basic elements of this society which were created by good, solid, responsible Republicans in prior times.

Mr. HINCHEY. You are precisely correct. The HEAP, the Home Energy Assistance Program, is a program that assists primarily elderly people. It helps them heat their homes in the wintertime. When you live at the latitude that we do in New York and Vermont, we know the winters get quite cold. Elderly people are particularly susceptible to hypothermia. It does not have to stay too cold for too long for the life of an elderly person to become in jeopardy and for them to lose that life. So this HEAP program is literally, for people like that a matter of life and death. In another sense, though, the hypocrisy of the agenda of the majority party in this House is becoming more and more apparent. Their attack on the WIC program, which the gentleman mentioned, is a clear indication of that. The WIC Program is one of the most effective and efficient programs that we have, domestic programs that we have in the country. It has been shown statistically that for every dollar spent on the WIC Program we spend as a Nation, the American taxpayer saves $4. How does that happen? It happens in this way: The WIC Program provides nutrition for pregnant women, lactating mothers, and small infants. If a pregnant woman gets proper nutrition during her pregnancy, she is much less likely to give birth to a low-birthweight baby or a child that encounters other postnatal problems. When a child is born of low birthweight or has some other postnatal problem, all of the resources of the medical institution wherein that child is born are brought to bear to save that child's life. That requires an expenditure of ten's of thousands, if not, in some instances, hundreds of thousands of dollars. How much wiser to spend a few dollars to insure good nutrition for pregnant women in this country. This attack on WIC, mind you, is coming from people who profess to be the guardians of the infants and small children. While they say that out of one side of their mouth, they are attacking children, pregnant women, and the most vulnerable, and people least able fend for themselves in this society, children, elderly people, pregnant women. Those are the ones they are going after to get the money for their tax cuts for their wealthy friends.

Mr. HINCHEY. I do not think it is a coincidence at all. I think there is a very direct relationship to that and I suspect there is a very direct relationship between the book contract we have seen and the controversy around that with regard to the Speaker and his relationship to Mr. Murdoch. And it has been alleged there are some of these people who are interested, if they could manage to achieve it in some way, of taking over the public broadcasting system, because as I indicated and I think as anyone who has thought about it for 30 seconds realizes, the public broadcasting system is unfortunately, unfortunately because there ought to be many more aspects of this in American life, but unfortunately the last system that really attempts to communicate anything that is meaningful about what is happening in the American political process, and that is meaningful in an economic way to the lives of the vast majority of the American citizens.

Mr. HINCHEY. I think it is obvious that we still have a democracy electorally. Everyone is encouraged, they are allowed and encouraged to participate in the electoral process. But more and more we are seeing a decline of economic democracy, and I think that the concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people is becoming more apparent almost yearly. I think that that has been particularly so over the course of the last 20 years. We have witnessed the decline of the middle class. We have witnessed a growing underclass in America, and obviously the concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Also, the concentration of the ability to distribute information, the ownership of the instruments of communication in our society has become more and more concentrated, particularly over the course of the last decade. For example, we have had laws in this country up until fairly recently which said that if you owned a major newspaper in a particular city, you were not then to own a major television station, a radio station. The idea behind that, of course, was to prevent single individuals or single corporate individuals from controlling the means of communications or the means of distribution of information in a particular media market. That, unfortunately, was done away with in the decade of the 1980's. So what we are seeing now, and we have seen evidence of it here, I think, in this Congress, the relationship between some mass media moguls and the Speaker of this House currently, the concentration of the ability to distribute information in the hands of fewer and fewer people, and I think that is a means of eroding democratic principles and the idea of democracy.

Mr. HINCHEY. No, I don't think so. And I think that that is very unfortunate. The abdication of responsibility by the major networks to provide real information and real news is evident certainly in the period of my adulthood. I can recall a time when news broadcasts back in the 1960's and even in the 1970's were real, material broadcasts. The networks competed with each other in a way to try to distribute the best quality information through their news vehicles and a variety of important news items in their major newscasts, in the evening, and then late at night. We have seen recently the transformation of media news into more of a tabloid kind of presentation of information, sort of titillating things, having to do with a variety of things that do not really relate to the most important aspects of what is occurring in our country, politically, culturally, and economically.

Mr. HINCHEY. I think so. I think it is something you can observe, a phenomena that is occurring across America in various places to one degree or another. More and more people are disaffected from the political process because they believe it is irrelevant to their lives, and there are few things that are happening, frankly, in this Chamber on a routine basis over the course of the last couple of months, there are few things that have happened here that are going to make in any way a material difference in the lives of any people. The kind of activity that has been going on here is not going to create one job, is not going to raise the standard of living of one person, is not going to make a material difference in the lives of anybody in this country, and that I think is very unfortunate. I think also the assault that we have seen on the public broadcasting system is also one that is alarming, because in the public broadcasting system we have the last vestiges of an attempt by the communications media to really communicate information that is relevant, that is important, that means something to people, and in a very serious way.

Mr. HINCHEY. Well, I think the contract is first of all a very elitist document. It is elitist in the sense that whatever benefits are going to accrue as a result of the passage of these items that are contained in the contract, should any of them actually become law, will accrue to the richest 1 percent or the richest 5 percent perhaps of the American population. It is also a very radical document. It is radical in the sense that it is a departure in many ways from the historical context of the American experience going back over the 206 years of our history, and particularly over the course of the last 50 years when there has been a concentration and an effort really by both parties, more or less, to try to achieve a greater sense of economic justice and economic prosperity for the vast majority of Americans. Going back to the Eisenhower administration, and even during the Nixon administration, this country continued to make economic progress, and the middle-class people had jobs and had economic opportunity. That is not part of this agenda. In fact, over the course of recent history, we have seen a loss in the standard of living, a loss of economic opportunity, a loss of availability of jobs, particularly decent-paying jobs that have associated with them the kinds of benefits that we are accustomed to, medical benefits and pension benefits and things of that nature. We have seen a dramatic decline in those jobs.

Mr. HINCHEY

Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. HINCHEY

Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Speaker, the majority party of the House of Representatives has declared war on our Nation's children. The leadership has taken their campaign against working Americans to one of its lowest points yet attacking the most vulnerable in our society--millions of American children who rely on school lunches for a well balanced meal every day. The most profound effect will be upon the ability of our children to learn. Undernutrition effects a child's behavior and performance. In support of a 1969 expansion of school nutrition programs, President Nixon once said: ``A child ill fed is dulled in curiosity, lower in stamina, distracted from learning.'' What has happened to the Republican Party? In my home State of New York, more than 1,700,000 children currently participating in the school lunch program will be affected by a cut in funding. We can do better than to try to balance the budget by jeopardizing the health and nutrition of 13 million American children who depend on the School Nutrition Program each day for a balanced meal.

Mr. HINCHEY

Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Chairman, it is obviously a good idea to allow people who are self-employed to deduct the cost of their health insurance premiums. And for that measure, this is a good bill. The problem is, it does not go nearly far enough. Why only 25 percent? Why are we not allowing people who are self-employed to deduct the full cost of their health insurance premiums? This bill ought to do that. There is another deficiency as well. This bill does not relate to the insurance premiums of employees. The McDermott substitute would correct that deficiency. People who are out working, working every day, carrying lunch pails, standing in line, working in supermarkets and checkout counters and factory situations, many of them do not have health insurance. We ought to make it possible for them to get health insurance, too. They ought to be able to deduct the cost of their health insurance, a minimum of 25 percent. They ought to be able to deduct the full cost of that health insurance. We really have not done our job unless we do that. The McDermott substitute would provide at least the beginnings of that kind of allowability for deduction of those health insurance premiums. I very strongly support the McDermott substitute, because it will allow employees also to deduct the cost of their health insurance premiums. Yes, let us do it for people who are self-employed. Let us not stop at 25 percent. Let us go to the full cost of that health insurance. But let us take the first step here tonight by passing the McDermott substitute and providing that people who are employees will also have the opportunity to get health insurance by deducting the cost of those health insurance premiums. Let us pass the McDermott substitute.

Mr. HINCHEY

Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I think it is true that the real threat to our security does come from the former Soviet Union, nuclear threat to our security does come from the former Soviet Union, but not in the way that some of our friends and colleagues imagine. It does, in fact, come in a way that was described for us an hour or two ago by the former chairman of the Committee on Armed Services, the gentleman from California. He talked about the ability to smuggle into the country, in the tons of contraband that cross our borders daily, a nuclear device, or parts of a nuclear device, to be assembled here and then set off possibly by terrorist or terrorist organization. That constitutes the real most immediate threat to our security. Now coincidentally, just within the last several weeks in Czechoslovakia authorities seized an automobile and the contents of that automobile. In that care were approximately 6 pounds of highly enriched uranium which were smuggled out of the Soviet Union by a Russian, a Ukrainian, and a citizen of Belarus. They were trying to take that 6 pounds of enriched uranium and sell it to terrorists on the open market. Now there are within the former Soviet Union at least 150 sites that contain enriched uranium from which those people, or people like them, can obtain that fissionable material, take it out of the former Soviet Union and put it on the marketplace for terrorist organizations. We are not paying any attention whatsoever to this most immediate, most serious threat to the security of the United States and in fact our allies, and we fail to recognize this threat at our peril. That is the most serious threat and the most immediate threat, and that is the one we need to pay attention to.