Henry Hyde

Mr. HYDE

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Speaker, policy makers have been discussing the merits of orphanages within the concept of foster care and the need to restore the family in our society. R. Bruce Dold, the Pulitzer Prize winning deputy editorial page editor for the Chicago Tribune, has written an excellent article for Notre Dame magazine, Summer 1995 edition on Maryville, a ``home of last resort.'' I am extremely proud of Maryville, which is located in my district, and of Father John Smyth, the academy's director. Mr. Dold's article deserves a wide audience and I am pleased to commend it to my colleagues: [From the Notre Dame Magazine, Summer 1995] A Place to Call My Own (By R. Bruce Dold) He was a real wisenheimer, as they called it in those days, a cigar-smoking, card-playing, suspenders-and-fedora kid, and if he didn't straighten out quick, why, ``he'd turn out to be a 5-and-10 mug.'' That's what his older brother said. That's the reason Whitey Marsh had to go to the orphanage. Oh, it wasn't easy at first. The kid ran away, but the sound of the lunch bell brought him back on the double. And when his brother robbed the bank and Whitey wouldn't spill the beans, it looked dark. But Whitey was a good egg after all, and when he explained everything, how he was just trying to help his own flesh and blood, they let him go. And he was elected the mayor of Boys Town. His father took off when he heard Tony Kohl was born. His mother was a drunk who beat him and burned him, and when he was 5 and his brother was 2, she dumped them both outside a child welfare office in Chicago. They were adopted, but the new parents grew fearful of Tony as he got older. They said he was violent and emotionally unstable, that he hit his brother and other kids. When he was 10, they dropped him at an orphanage and tried to make sure he'd never see his brother again. The child welfare officials wouldn't let him stay at the orphanage. They put him in a foster home. But he lured some of the younger kids into sex games, and the foster parents got rid of him. The officials put him in a psychiatric hospital, and after four months they placed him in another foster home. He set that one on fire, earning himself another trip to a hospital. He went through a dozen foster homes, each time getting in trouble and getting kicked out. So they shipped him to a place in Arizona he describes as ``a prison,'' and he hated it. Finally, a year ago, he was sent to Maryville Academy, the 112-year-old children's home in Des Plaines, Illinois, run by Father John Smyth '57. After a failed adoption and a dozen foster homes and two psychiatric hospitals and one ``prison,'' he's finally, at age 16, found a place that won't kick him out or lock him up. He's not the mayor of Maryville, but he's doing okay. When House Speaker Newt Gingrich raised the prospect of removing unwed teenage mothers from welfare and allowing states to use the saved money to open orphanages, he stepped into a quietly raging war among those who make it their business to look after abused and neglected children. When First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton slammed the Gingrich proposal as ``unbelievable and absurd,'' it appeared to be one more clash of partisan politics. Actually, the public was getting its first glimpse of that war among child-care experts. Gingrich's suggestion that the naysayers watch the 1938 movie Boys Town to get an idea of what he had in mind was cockeyed. Whitey Marsh, the mug-to-mayor character played by Mickey Rooney, is as much like Tony Kohl as The Great Train Robbery is like Star Wars. But in a sense he probably didn't grasp, Gingrich was on to something. The United States is currently the de facto parent for nearly half a million abused and neglected children, and the number is growing at a dizzying rate. The nation doesn't know what to do with all these kids, or with scores more who are on the way. The revival of the orphanage is an unhappy, but utterly unavoidable, choice. The experts just aren't willing to admit it. They held a roast last year for John Smyth, but nobody could think of anything particularly snide to say about him. The best line came from Chicago Police Superintendent Matt Rodriguez, who claimed that the good father held the Notre Dame record for most fouls in a varisty basketball game. In a town that routinely chews up and spits out public figures, Smyth, 62, is regarded as an uncommon savior. He was a 6-foot, 5-inch center and team captain at Notre Dame when the 1956-57 basketball team placed third in the Mideast Regional of the NCAA tournament. He was picked in the first round of the National Basketball Association draft by the Saint Louis Hawks, but after barnstorming for 30 games with a group of college stars picked to play against the Harlem Globetrotters, he gave up basketball to enter Saint Mary of the Lake Seminary in Chicago and, in 1962, the priesthood. He knew nothing at all about Maryville when he was assigned there, fresh out of the seminary, but he though he could hack it for a few years. The place hadn't changed much since 1983, when it opened as Saint Mary's Training School, an outgrowth of a Chicago orphanage started a dozen years earlier to care for children orphaned by the Great Chicago Fire. In the 1920s, Maryville housed as many as 1,200 children during a flu epidemic, and that many again during the Great Depression of the 1930s. But its fate was tied to changes in the nation's child-welfare policies, and in the early 1970s it nearly closed. Today there are 276 kids on the campus, a third of them girls. None of the 276 is a Whitey Marsh. [[Page E 1738]] There was a time, more than a century ago, when the orphanage seemed on the cutting edge of child protection. Children who were orphaned in the mid-19th century, usually by health epidemics, either lived on the streets or were placed with adults in poorhouses or jails. Some were shipped west to live with farm families, who often treated them more as indentured servants than as children. By comparison, the orphanage was a refuge. But orphanages fell into disfavor in the 1950s and '60s, when studies suggested that very young children who grew up in them suffered from developmental delays and failed to establish personal relationships. With the advent of antibiotics and the welfare system, far fewer children were orphaned by disease or economic depression. If children had to leave their homes, it was more likely because they had been abused or neglected. The nation moved toward placing those children with foster families, volunteers who provided a temporary, substitute family. In 1980, Congress passed the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act, which established that the nation's goal was to prevent the removal of abused and neglected children from their homes and, if they were removed, to reunify them with their families as quickly as possible. The way station of choice for kids who had to leave their homes was now the foster family. The orphanage, officially, was on the outs. What few people anticipated in 1980 was a new epidemic, one that can't be wiped out by antibiotics: an epidemic of child abuse. In 1982 there were 262,000 children living in substitute care; that number now has soared to 450,000, a high percentage of them the victims of sexual or physical abuse or neglect. Smyth estimates that 85 to 90 percent of his youngsters come from homes where parents are afflicted by cocaine or alcohol abuse. A decade ago, 85 percent of the children at Maryville could be expected eventually to return to their parents. Now, just 15 percent have an realistic hope of ever going home. Heck, only 15 percent have any hope of a parent so much as showing up at Maryville for a visit. When kids come to Maryville, they are angry and lost. ``We assume that they have not been taught any social skills at all,'' Smyth says. ``Most of them have been through several foster homes. It's just a mismatch there. We're the safety net.'' Indeed, by the time kids land at Maryville, they have likely failed a half a dozen foster homes, deepening their sense of distrust and cynicism and shattering their sense of self-worth. Maryville is usually the last chance to repair them. Since 1979, Maryville has run an intensive therapy program based on the teacher-parent model pioneered at the modern-day Boys Town in Nebraska. Up to nine children live in a townhouse on 98-acre grounds in Des Plaines with a live-in adult or a married couple. Everything is a socialization experience. the kids make their own meals, shop for their groceries, clean house, wash the dishes and balance the house checkbook. During the day, the parent notes all of their positive and negative behaviors and assigns points for each behavior. Shaking hands and establishing eye contact with a visitor earns points. Cleaning the dishes earns points. Asking for help, giving compliments, completing homework can all be worth points. Anti-social behaviors such as talking back or picking a fight bring negative points. At 7 each evening, all the points are tallied on a 5-by-8- inch card. It is, in essence, a daily report card. Each child has to accumulate 10,000 points every day to earn privileges for the next day: snacks, television, Nintendo, the telephone. Over time, the kids move up to higher levels. On the second level they get a later bedtime, more TV time and a point-card review every other day instead of daily. On the third level, privileges are more loosely negotiated. On the fourth, the kids achieve a considerable measure of independence. Run away from Maryville and they're busted right down to the bottom. In 1982 there were about 140,000 foster homes available to take in kids; in the most recent count by the National Foster Parent Association, there were just 100,000. So where are they putting all those kids? ``They're just putting more children in the homes,'' says Gordon Evans, spokesman for the association. ``There's an exodus of families. The kids' problems are much more severe than ever before, and (the foster parents) don't know how to cope.'' The foster care system, noble in intent, is a bureaucratic nightmare. Numerous studies have shown that many foster parents aren't adequately trained to handle the most troubled children. Moving children from foster home to foster home forces them to deal with rejection again and again. Health care for those children is so haphazard, as they bounce from home to home, that some states have resorted to issuing health-care ``passports'' so the latest doctor has some idea of the child's health history. Some states have reacted to the problem by redoubling efforts to prevent child abuse--or responding to it with counseling and other services to parents and children in their homes. Those efforts are necessary, but the results of prevention efforts have been, at best, mixed. While the child welfare system imploded, something else happened. Orphanages--the best of them, at least--evolved into highly sophisticated models for turning around the lives of the nation's most troubled kids through intensive, round- the-clock treatment. Far from the barracks image of the old-style orphanages, the Maryville townhouse would be the envy of any college kid crammed into a dorm room. Each house has a roomy kitchen, a living room, a dining area and bedrooms--one for every two kids. The living room has comfortable sofas and lounge chairs, a 27-inch TV and a VCR. On the cork bulletin board, the therapy schedule shares space with the gym schedule. ``They provide consistency, motivation and professional care,'' says Patrick Murphy, the Cook County Public Guardian, whose father was a Maryville resident from 1914 to 1917. ``It's the only option for kids who can't handle the intimacy and demands and inconsistency of a foster home.'' Critics of institutional care argue that it can harm children by depriving them of a family structure. Says Marion Wright Edelman, director of the Children's Defense Fund, ``We went back to foster care because orphanages are not all Boys Towns. Most families are better than most institutions. That does not mean it's not possible to have humane institutions, but we believe in having a few adults and a few children relating to each other. I don't want to say there's never been a good orphanage, but it has to be at the very, very end of the continuum.'' Many of the kids at Maryville would agree. Give them a family that wanted them and they'd be gone in a moment. But many of those kids also acknowledge, perhaps reluctantly, that they can't cut it in a family right now. Says Tony Kohl, ``I want to go home after school and not think of myself as a Maryville kid. It'd be much different if I had a regular family, but I understand that's not going to happen.'' Maryville will never force a child to leave, no matter how difficult he is. But Tony has still had to deal with a different kind of rejection. In the spring, his parent- teacher took a new job somewhere else. The change to a new parent-teacher was hard on him, and his school grades dropped. No one has the corner on perfection in child welfare. ``Any kid who can be in a foster home should be in a foster home. And if every kid can be in a foster home, close Maryville,'' Smyth declares. ``The question you have to ask is, what happens to the kids who are bounced out (of foster homes). If you're going to turn your back on those kids, they'll be on the street. ``When you take a kid who's bombed out from a foster care program, who is destructive, then you better have the wherewithal to hang in there and solve the problem. Now, that is tough duty.'' Besides psychological therapy, Maryville provides preparation for teenagers to live on their own. It tries to prepare them not only for independent living but for family life as adults. It has a Career Development Center with programs in carpentry, printing, auto repair and other vocations, each one sponsored by a local company. While studies show nearly half the children who go through foster care drop out of school, every child who lives at Maryville graduates from high school. If a Maryville kid is accepted to college. Maryville pays the tuition, thanks largely to private donations. On average, one-third of each graduating class goes on to college, and two-thirds of those students earn a degree. Maryville has graduated kids from Notre Dame, Northwestern and other top schools. All that comes at a hefty price; Maryville spends about $35,000 a year on each child. The parent-teacher, unlike a foster parent, is a paid professional. At Maryville they earn at least $34,000 a year, plus room and board. These costs are paid by the government and private donations. Smyth's operation also recruits and trains foster parents and runs a parenting-teen center in Chicago, a witness protection program, a farm school and an emergency shelter for sexually abused children. Altogether, Maryville facilities assist more than 12,000 children each year. Yes, Maryville works. The aversion to orphanages nevertheless rages on. Gingrich's proposal to direct money saved from welfare to orphanages raised such an outcry that all references to orphanages were removed from the House bill. But Gingrich had twisted the debate. Orphanages shouldn't be repositories for the children of poor parents who are forced off welfare; that's both mean-spirited and prohibitively expensive. But more orphanages are needed right now for children who are victims of serious physical or sexual abuse. The genesis of the move to revive orphanages is generally traced to Lois Forer, a retired judge in Philadelphia who spent years in family court and saw no end to the foster-care treadmill on which many children were running. Joyce Ladner, the acting president of Howard University and a child welfare expert, echoed Forer's opinion that more orphanages are critically needed. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan sounded the alarm in 1989, writing that the prevalence of crack-cocaine will ``soon give us the no-parent child as a social problem.'' The likely answer, he said, was the re-establishment of orphanages. Much in the way that Moynihan's prescience about the underclass was ignored in the 1960s, his warnings about the state of children have been ignored today. [[Page E 1739]] In 1991, Illinois became the first state to launch a formal investigation into reviving orphanages. But a state- established task force concluded that orphanages are ``not consistent'' with the goal of rapidly returning abused children to their families. The task force seemed not to notice that in the 18 months it spent preparing its report, Illinois' foster-care rolls had swelled by another 11,000 children. The opponents of orphanages make several critical errors. They raise fears that orphanages will be used inappropriately in place of foster homes, but they don't recognize that foster care is being destroyed by a system that forces troubled kids into it who don't belong there, don't benefit from it, and whose behavior hounds foster parents into quitting. The opponents cling to the hope that better foster care and ``family preservation'' programs can handle the child-welfare crisis. It's true that prevention programs are critical and show real promise, but they are still in their infancy. And they're being swamped by the child-abuse epidemic. Just as flu and typhoid created scores of orphans in the 1890s, so have crack-cocaine and AIDS in the 1990s. ``We're always going to have dysfunctional families. But I'm convinced that sexual abuse and physical abuse is the result of being high on crack-cocaine and alcohol,'' says Smyth. ``They're nuts, they're crazy: When they walk in a room, a 7- year-old girl looks like a 21-year-old girl. Human nature has not changed that much in 10, 12, 15 years.'' In the 1990s, child abuse often starts in the womb. At the child intake center run by Maryville, roughly 5 to 10 infants arrive each day suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome or the symptoms of crack-cocaine use by their mothers. The nation can't handle its drug epidemic, which begat the child welfare epidemic. It can't prevent drugs from being manufactured here or shipped in from somewhere else. It doesn't have enough jail cells to lock up the users. And it does not want to spend the money for treatment. On top of that, the nation is just beginning to deal with the disaster of a federal welfare policy that prevents outright destitution but contributes to a permanent underclass, which is most prone to child neglect. ``Everything it has done has destroyed families,'' says Smith, who works closely with welfare recipients. ``These are the conditions of welfare. You cannot own anything. You cannot save anything, you cannot work and you can't get married. I think that's slavery. If you took away welfare, they'd work. And they'd live and they'd succeed. But you have to raise people up so they can compete. You start by making sure the family stays together and the kids stay in school.'' Until the nation figures out how to raise up the underclass and end drug abuse--utopian notions, perhaps--it has to figure out what to do with all the kids who can't live safely at home, particularly those whose emotional scars run deepest. It cannot afford to turn its back on any reasonable solutions. And that includes the 1990s version of the orphanage.

Mr. HYDE

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, this is more than a legal or a constitutional question, although it certainly is that. It is a moral question. I do not think anybody who claims to be human can be indifferent to the proposition that a tiny, vulnerable, defenseless unborn life is being crushed, is being destroyed, is being exterminated in an abortion and be indifferent to that. That is the one missing factor in all of the reasoned arguments on the proabortion side. Mr. Chairman, they talk about women's rights, they talk about safe abortion, but they totally forget the invisible element, the unborn child. That is not a nothing. The term safe abortion is an oxymoron. It is terminal for the unborn child. What is safe about being sucked out of a mother's womb and thrown away with the trash? Abortions are evil. They are not a benign neutral act. They take a human life that has been guaranteed the right to life in our Declaration of Independence as inalienable. Why is that erased in all of our contemplation? Do not euphemize reproductive rights. There is nothing reproductive about abortion. That is reproductive denial. Vote for Dornan against DeLauro.

Mr. HYDE

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call attention to a remarkable member of my district, Elizabeth Adkins, the Illinois winner of the 1995 Voice of Democracy scriptwriting contest. Each year the Veterans of Foreign Wars and its Ladies Auxiliary sponsors the competition, choosing winners from over 126,000 scripts submitted by high school students around the nation. Elizabeth, a recent graduate of Wheaton North High School, received top honors in Illinois for her speech entitled ``My Vision for America''. I am proud to recognize this bright young author as well as the thousands of patriotic students who participated in the contest. ``My Vision for America'' America has, since its conception, been the embodiment of democratic and moralistic ideals. As a nation we defend again and again the principles that we are built upon. Freedom, equality, justice, and opportunity. We struggle together over where the line is crossed between national morals and narrow- minded policies, between equality and reverse-discrimination, between personal choice and the rights of an unborn child. But only in America could these struggles strengthen a country. Only in America could citizens dare to disagree with their government. Only in America could political leaders and parties change every four or eight years and not cause a complete collapse of the nation. And so, in asking what my vision for America is, I cannot say a New America or a different America. For I do not want to abandon the America of today or forget the America of yesterday. I do believe, however, that this nation can and will be improved. I see a need in America. And I believe that this need has been growing for the last thirty years. Each American citizen must begin to take some responsibility. Responsibility for his or her own actions, mistakes, and well-being. Responsibility for those less fortunate who do not have the ability to care for themselves. And responsibility for what this nation does. A devoted citizen would not disown their country every time it made a mistake, or didn't have enough money, or lost one battle or another. As devoted citizens, we Americans must stand behind this country, improving it when we can and fighting for it when we must. The major problems of the Untied States would be alleviated if citizens took initiative and were willing to bear the burdens that citizens of a powerful democratic nation must bear. In the America of tomorrow, each citizen will have rediscovered their moral basis and built a motivational basis. A strong moral basis will help to alleviate the crime problem. Children who are taught simply what is right and wrong and who are challenged and encouraged to do what is right will be more equipped to lead lives void of crime. Perhaps what this country needs are a few reminders from the America of yesterday. Maybe we need to hear a few more stories where good battles evil and the good guy wins. In the America of tomorrow there is only one winner in the fight between right and wrong. Americans must begin to develop moral responsibility. And it isn't just about doing what is right anymore. America needs to advance beyond doing what is right to doing what is best. Is it enough to simply take care of your family? What about helping your neighbors or your community? American citizens need to be responsible for fellow American citizens. My vision for America returns to neighborhood groups and local organizations that are trying to make some improvements. When citizens begin to take actions to assist their neighbors as well as themselves, vivid changes will take place. When citizens learn to give of themselves for someone else, materialism and special interests will vanish. When Americans develop a responsibility for their neighbors and their communities, they will be able to look forward as a unified nation to improving this country as a whole. My vision of America is that each man and woman will understand the need to pull together as a nation and to pull oneself together as an individual citizen. In this America, the word duty will have the resonance that it once did. Each American has a duty, and that duty is what makes a democracy work. In order for America to maintain those freedoms and liberties which we all cherish, we must fulfill our duties and responsibilities to ourselves, our neighbors, and our nation.

Mr. HYDE

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I commented more extensively on the manager's amendment in the debate in chief on the general debate, so I will not repeat that now, except to say I do support the manager's amendment. I think it has tied up a lot of loose ends and makes the entire telecommunications field more competitive. The purpose of the entire legislation was really to enhance competition, because that certainly helps the consumer, facilitates development of all these various industries, and benefits the country and the economy at large. Given the complexity of this legislation, this manager's amendment goes a long way toward resolving that. The Committee on the Judiciary met with the staff of the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Bliley] and resolved many controversies, so I am pleased to support the manager's amendment.

Mr. HYDE

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I want to congratulate the gentleman from Michigan for reviving the judiciary bill which did pass our committee 29 to 1, because it does go a long way toward establishing or reestablishing a principle that I believe in; namely, that antitrust laws should be reviewed and administered by that department of government specifically designed to do that, and that is the Department of Justice. When a Baby Bell enters into manufacturing or into long distance, antitrust questions are brought into play. The Department of Justice, it seems to me, is the appropriate agency to oversee that transition and analyze the competitive implications. Once the bills are in these new lines of business and operating, it becomes a regulatory proposition and then oversight by the Federal Communications Commission is appropriate. Mr. Chairman, what the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers] has done is to propose a more meaningful role for the Department of Justice, which is what the Judiciary Committee wanted to do. But the problem is, that DOJ comes in at the tail end of the regulatory process. It becomes a double hurdle for a Baby Bell trying to get into manufacturing or long distance. It is not the same quick, clean expedited process that we had in our legislation (H.R. 1528). So, it adds additional hurdles for a company, a Bell company seeking to get into manufacturing or long distance. It will add considerably to the amount of time that is consumed. A Bell company can make all of the right moves and do everything it wants, and then at the end of the process be shot down by the Department of Justice. Mr. Chairman, I had proposed and preferred a dual-track, dual-agency situation where options could be chosen by the Bells to get into these new businesses, but that is not to be. Having said what I have just said, I do approve and appreciate the fact that a more expansive role is proposed to the Department of Justice in dealing with these important antitrust issues. After all, it is an antitrust decree that we are modifying, the modified final judgment.

Mr. HYDE

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, if there is anything unjust, almost by definition, it is being coerced out of funds and having them spent on causes one violently disagrees with. That is really at the heart and soul of having funds that one must pay to get into a school or to be a student in good standing, and have those funds subsidizing causes that may violate their conscience or their sense of prudence or proportion. It is just the definition of injustice. If a cause is worthy of its name, it will be supported. If you build it, they will come. But to coerce money for lobbying on things that you abhor is just wrong. I do not want public funding of elections, my money, to go to pay for Lyndon LaRouche's campaign, and I daresay the Members do not either. If a charity deserves contributions they will get them, but do not have them coerced out of people who resist.

Mr. HYDE

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I am certainly against violence against women. I am also against violence against innocent, unborn children. You can punish the rapist. I do not know what crime the unborn child has committed. The Supreme Court, when it found a statute imposing capital punishment on a rapist unconstitutional, said, ``The punishment is grossly disproportionate to the crime.'' What crime has the unborn child committed? Unless, of course, you want to put more value on a spotted owl or a snail darter than an innocent, unborn child. Now, I am the author of the Hyde amendment. Does legislative intent mean anything? I did not intend that to be mandatory, but to be permissive. I do not support abortions as a result of rape or incest, because I view the child in the womb as a human life. Abortion is a terrible thing. Rape is a horrible thing. The only thing worse than rape is abortion. That is killing. That is killing. Violence in the womb against an innocent human being is, it seems to me, the ultimate crime. I do not say that a woman who has been raped has anything less than a horrible situation. But there is adoption. There is private funding. But do not tell the States who do not want to fund with tax dollars abortions, do not lack the moral imagination to understand, there are two people involved, not just the woman, tragic as that is. That is a call on our love, on our concern, on our help. But why compound the wrong by executing an innocent human life? If you believe the unborn is a bunch of cells, a tumor, an appendix that could be taken out, then go ahead and dispose of her. But its a tiny human life--and deserves a chance to live. Vote for Istook.

Mr. HYDE

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I am filling in for the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Gingrich], who was supposed to close, but he is tied up somewhere, so here I am. This debate is not about family planning. This debate is about who will deliver the family planning. On welfare, on grants to fight crime, the Republicans have taken the position that Washington can not do it as well as the localities can, that States ought not to be administrative districts of the Federal Government, and so we have sought to return to local government, to local agencies, the funds that heretofore have been disbursed by the all powerful Washington bureaucracy. Now I tell my colleagues what this debate is about. It is about a $33 million Federal earmark to the largest purveyor of abortions in the world, Planned Parenthood, and they are fighting because that is big money, but under our proposal they can still line up with other agencies out in the States and compete for those dollars. After all, Medicare today spends well over one-half billion dollars on family planning. Who is sounding the death knell of family planning? Community health centers, social services block grants, maternal and child health block grants, and Medicare. They serve 13 million women, and children, and adolescents who need medical care, as well. Mr. Chairman, let me in the time left simply say family planning is a good thing. I am for family planning, always have been. I am against a big Federal earmark. I am for letting the States handle it as we are doing in welfare reform and in crime grants.

Mr. HYDE

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, the gentleman from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania [Mr. Fattah] is just about to make a privileged motion. Now we are going to get along here, we are going to have unanimous- consents, we are going to try and move along. Many of us share the discomfort of the hour. But look. We want to get out on our recess, but is the gentleman going to move to adjourn, because if so, it is going to be difficult to agree to much around here. So, I do not know if the gentleman wishes to disclose what his privileged motion is, but I suspect it is going to be to adjourn.

Mr. HYDE

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I want to say Aloha Oahu. It is 9 o'clock in the beautiful Hawaiian Islands where America's day almost begins, and I just wanted those lucky folks in that beautiful climate to know that we are here thinking of them. To my good friend from Michigan who did know the names of his staff, for which I should not be surprised because he would know those details, I just thought he missed George Slover, who has returned to the staff, having been away for a little while, and we welcome him, even though he serves the minority. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of H.R. 1555, the Communications Act of 1995. This legislation represents the most sweeping communications reform legislation to be considered in this House in 60 years. It will establish the ground rules for telecommunications policy in our Nation as we proceed into the 21st century. If enacted, this measure will have much to say about the future health of the American economy, America's international competitiveness, and expanded job opportunities for American workers. However, it should be pointed out that H.R. 1555 does not take the approach I would have preferred, and I would like to take a few moments to discuss the role of the Judiciary Committee in the development of this legislation. The Judiciary Committee took a fundamentally different approach from that of the Commerce Committee. I believe that the entry of the regional Bell operating companies into the long distance and manufacturing businesses is an antitrust question. After all, it is an antitrust consent decree, commonly known as the modification of final judgment or MFJ, that now prevents them from entering those businesses, and it is that decree that we are now superseding. Based on this fundamental belief, I introduced H.R. 1528, the Antitrust Consent Decree Reform Act of 1995 on May 2, 1995. H.R. 1528 proposed to supersede the MFJ and replace it with a quick and deregulatory antitrust review of Bell entry by the Department of Justice. On the other hand, the Commerce Committee understandably took a Communications Act approach. H.R. 1555 requires the Bell operating companies to meet various federal and state regulatory requirements to open their local exchanges to competition before they are allowed into the long distance and manufacturing businesses. For example, the Bell companies are required to provide interconnection to their local loops on a nondiscriminatory basis. They must unbundle the services and features of the network and offer them for resale. They must also provide number portability, dialing parity, access to rights of way, and network functionality and accessibility. Both the FCC and the state commissions will review the Bell companies' verifications to determine that they have met these regulatory requirements. In particular, there must be an actual facilities-based competitor in place before the Bell companies can get into long distance and manufacturing. In keeping with the long tradition of these committees sharing jurisdiction over the area of telecommunications, H.R. 1528 was referred primarily to the Judiciary Committee, and secondarily to the Commerce Committee. Likewise, H.R. 1555 was referred primarily to the Commerce Committee, and secondarily to the Judiciary Committee. I want to stress that both the antitrust approach taken in H.R. 1528 and the regulatory approach taken in H.R. 1555 are valid approaches to the problem of how to end judicial supervision of the telecommunications industry under the MFJ. My preference was the antitrust approach. Again, that is because I believe entry into new markets to be an antitrust issue, not a regulatory issue. However, despite extraordinary cooperation between the Commerce and Judiciary Committees, the two different approaches are not easily reconciled without creating precisely the kind of regulatory overkill that we are trying to eliminate in this bill. Thus, it was necessary to choose one or the other of these approaches. Let me now describe the antitrust approach of H.R. 1528 and its consideration in the Judiciary Committee. Under H.R. 1528, the Bell companies would be able to apply to the Department of Justice for entry into the long distance and manufacturing markets immediately upon the date of enactment. The Department of Justice would then have 180 days to review the application under a substantive antitrust standard--if DOJ did not act within this tight time frame, the application would be deemed approved. Unlike the MFJ, the burden or proof would be on DOJ. Specifically, Justice would be required to approve the application unless it found by a preponderance of the evidence that there was a dangerous probability that the Bell company would use its market power to substantially impede competition in the market it was seeking to enter. DOJ's decision would then be subject to an expedited appeal to the Federal Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia. At the most, the procedure would take 11 to 13 months. H.R. 1528 also included the electronic publishing provisions that were included in last year's telecommunications bill and which passed the House by an overwhelming vote. H.R. 1528 received broad, bipartisan support within the Judiciary Committee. The full Judiciary Committee reported H.R. 1528 by a 29 to 1 recorded vote. However, subsequently we found that there was not broad support for a substantive Department of Justice role either within the rest of the House or from interested outside groups. Thus, while I still prefer the approach taken in H.R. 1528, I have decided that it would be futile to press that approach as an alternative to H.R. 1555-- there simply is not sufficient support to make such an effort worthwhile. As I have already noted, the regulatory approach taken in H.R. 1555 is also a valid approach, and it is very difficult to reconcile the two approaches. If we do not pick one or the other, then we get right back into the interminable delays that we have faced under the MFJ. I would emphasize that in deciding not to offer such an amendment and allowing H.R. 1555 to proceed to the floor without further Judiciary Committee proceedings, I am not in any way waiving the Judiciary Committee's traditional jurisdiction in the area of antitrust law or telecommunications policy. The Judiciary Committee expects to have conferees on this bill, to participate fully in the conference, and to retain all of its existing jurisdiction over this area in future legislation. In this connection, I note that later in the debate, the distinguished ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Conyers, will offer an amendment that will include some aspects of the bill as reported by our committee. Specifically, my friend from Michigan will offer the language of the antitrust test contained in H.R. 1528. However, the Conyers amendment also differs in important respects from our committee's bill. I will speak to those differences in greater detail when the Conyers amendment is debated. For now, I will simply point out that although the Conyers amendment would utilize the antitrust standard that was in H.R. 1528, it does not include the many procedural and substantive features that were central to my bill. Despite my preference for the antitrust approach taken in my bill, I believe that H.R. 1555 is good legislation that will move America's telecommunications industry forward into the 21st century. In the development of the manager's amendment to be offered by Chairman Bliley, the Judiciary Committee has worked closely with the Commerce Committee to improve H.R. 1555 in areas that are of particular concern to, and under the jurisdiction of, the Judiciary Committee. Let me now briefly explain those changes which are included within the manager's amendment. First, the manager's amendment does include a consultative role for the Department of Justice. Under this part of the amendment, DOJ will apply the antitrust standard contained in H.R. 1528 to verifications that the Bells have met the competitive checklist contained in H.R. 1555. After applying the antitrust standard. DOJ will provide its views to the FCC and they will be made a part of the public record relating to the verification. Under this approach, the FCC will at least have the benefit of a DOJ antitrust analysis before the Bell companies are allowed to enter the currently restricted lines of business. Second, we have made improvements to the electronic publishing provisions of the bill. Under the manager's amendment, the Bell companies will be required to provide services to small electronic publishers at the same per-unit prices that they give to larger publishers. This will allow small newspapers and other electronic publishers to bring the information superhighway to rural areas that might otherwise be passed by. Also, we have broadened to definition of basic telephone service to ensure that the Bell operating companies are not able to use the more advanced parts of their networks to skirt the intent of the electronic publishing provisions. Third, we have made various changes to title IV of the bill. Title IV addresses the effect of the bill on other laws. Those changes that we have made to the MFJ supersession language, the GTE consent decree supersession language, and the wireless successors language are technical improvements to clarify the language and they are not intended to change the substantive meaning of these provisions. Other changes to title IV are substantive. State tax officials have complained that section 401(c)(2) of H.R. 1555 would unintentionally preempt State tax laws. Because of their concerns, this language us being stricken in the manager's amendment. We are also adding language that expressly provides that no State tax laws are unintentionally preempted by implication or interpretation. Rather, such preemptions are limited to provisions specifically enumerated in this clause. In addition, we have also amended the local tax exemption for providers of direct broadcast satellite services to make it clear that States may tax such services and rebate that money to the localities. This change balances the need to protect State sovereignty against the need to protect the direct broadcast services from the administrative nightmare that would result from subjecting them to local taxation in numerous local jurisdictions. Fourth, we have changed the restrictions on alarm monitoring to make it clear that those Bell companies that have already entered the alarm monitoring business will be allowed to continue in that business, and to manage and conduct their business as would any other participant in that industry. That is basic fairness to any Bell company that chose to enter the business when it was perfectly legal to do so. Their investment decision should not be undercut by a retroactive change in the law. Fifth, law enforcement and national security agencies have expressed concern about the provisions of the bill that relate to foreign ownership of telephone companies. In particular, these agencies are rightfully concerned that there should be a national security review before a foreign national or foreign government can have access to the core infrastructure of America's telecommunications system. Cooperation among the agencies and the judiciary and Commerce Committees has led to language in the manager's amendment that addresses these concerns. Finally, I have included language within the manager's amendment to address a burgeoning problem in the fast advancing telecommunications markets. Much to the dismay of concerned parents both softcore and hardcore pornography is freely available on the Internet. Virtually anyone with a home computer hooked up to that remarkable technology can get pictures, movies--some with sound--and explicit descriptions of the most vile and base aspects of human sexuality. Although the law currently outlaws the interstate transportation of obscenity for purposes of sale or distribution, as well as its importation, this has not stopped the corruption of one of the greatest technological advances in our modern society. Computerized depravity continues unabated, largely because of the confusion over whether the obscenity statutes include the transportation and importation of the obscene matter through the use of a computer. Furthermore, the law currently does not address the issue of sending indecent material--by contrast to obscene matter--by computer, to a child. It is time to end this dissemination of smut that only serve to debase those depicted and to defile our children. Consequently, my language makes it a crime to intentionally communicate, by computer, with anyone believed to be under 18 years of age, any material that is indecent. Indecency is defined in the provision as any material that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs. This provision is entirely consistent with Supreme Court holdings in this area of law, because it is narrowly tailored to effectuate its particular purpose of protecting minors from directed communications that involve sexually or excretorily explicit functions or organs. The first amendment, as construed by the Supreme Court, requires this much. The Court instructs that Congress must be careful not to reduce the adult population, which is guaranteed a right of access to simply indecent material, to the status of children. But, the first amendment recognizes that the Government has a compelling interest in protecting minors from both obscenity and indecent materials. The Court has carved out a slim area in which we can legislate on these matters. And, we have managed to stay within those confines through this provision. The clarification of the current obscenity statutes, simply adds to the myriad of ways in which the obscenity can travel in, or be transported, or be imported. This section includes the word computer in those provisions to make it a certainty that Congress intends to regulate and prohibit one's access to obscenity by means of computer technology. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank Commerce Committee Chairman Bliley and Communications Subcommittee Chairman Fields and their staffs for their cooperation in addressing the Judiciary Committee concerns. Mr. Chairman, as America advances into the 21st century, this telecommunications legislation is tremendously important. It is my firm belief that this bill means more jobs for Americans and will greatly enhance American competitiveness worldwide. It is high time that we replace this overly restrictive consent decree with a statute that recognizes the telecommunications realities of the 1990's. I intend to support H.R. 1555 and the manager's amendment because it will accomplish these goals. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, if the gentlewoman will yield, if you are leaving the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers] out, could you leave me out too?

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I am very pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman for New Jersey [Mr. Frelinghuysen].

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Goodlatte]. (Mr. GOODLATTE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Flanagan].

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, everybody has been thanking everybody around here, and I have kind of missed out, so I want to take this time to thank the staff: Alan Coffey, Joseph Gibson, Diana Schocht, Patrick Murray, and Dan Freeman on our side, and if I knew the names of the staff on the other side, maybe next round I will include them. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Houghton].

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Ney].

Mr. HYDE

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, there are all kinds of peace. There is the peace of the jail and the peace of the graveyard. You can have peace in Bosnia, kill all the Moslems, and they cannot fight anymore. Next to that, just keep them disarmed while everybody else brims with armaments. Freedom has to be defended. Genocide, its modern incarnation, ethnic cleansing, must be resisted if we are to retain our membership in the human race. Does the United States have any interest in faraway Balkin Bosnia? I would say yes. The moral imperative is resistance to genocide. The slaughter in Bosnia has uncovered the inadequacy of the United Nations and NATO, for that matter, to deal with wars of ethnic nationalism, wars of states within states rather than between states. But please remember, Bosnia was recognized formally as a sovereign nation by the United States, by the European community on April 7, 1992, and by the United Nations on May 22, 1992. The U.N. charter guarantees the right of self-defense. So lifting the embargo is merely implementing the elementary rights of people in sovereign nations, and it ought to prove that aggression is not without cost. This is not the time or the place to discuss the incredibly complicated problems of peace in the Balkans. I agree with everybody who has pointed out the incredibly difficult, shattering problems that we have trying to adjust borders and peace. It is incredibly difficult. But before we get to that problem, we ought to understand genocide cannot be tolerated. We cannot remain indifferent to it. In this century there have been three major genocides, not counting Rwanda, Burundi, the Sudan, Nagorno-Karabakh, and all of the ongoing tribal killings that are going on. But the Armenians in 1915, the Jews in World War II in the Holocaust, and the Moslems in Bosnia today, are three genocides. We stand and avert our eyes because we have no interest there. When the Holocaust Museum was dedicated by the President, he stood there, and I am sure he meant it, he said two words: never again. What did he mean, never again? Never again will the Jews be killed in Germany in 1940? Or does he mean never again will we permit holocausts against ethnic groups because somebody does not agree with their religion or their color or their way of living? Never again. Let us put some flesh on those words and start by lifting the embargo.

Mr. HYDE

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I just wish to weigh in as strongly as I can with great respect to my good friend, the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Hoyer], in opposition to his amendment. If abortion is a good thing, or even a neutral benign thing, and one really believes that, then, as my colleagues know, they should support Mr. Hoyer's amendment. But if they believe that abortion is the purposeful killing of an unborn child, a little life that is on its way to enjoying citizenship, then it is wrong. It is a rejection, a repudiation, of the notion that one should be responsible for one's acts. It is an act not of compassion and of love, but of selfishness and coldness, and abortions are just a bad thing. Mr. Chairman, that is my conviction. I do not take a gun to anybody's head and say, ``You have to think as I think,'' but I would appeal to the common sense and the logic of people who realize that abortion is really so abhorrent that we hardly use the word. We use ``pro choice.'' We use ``reproductive rights.'' We use all sorts of euphemisms to avoid confronting the fact that abortion is the deliberate killing of a life that has begun and a mother who should be the natural protector of her child suddenly its adversary. Mr. Chairman, I resent that if my money is paying for this extermination of this pregnancy. It is not a termination. All pregnancies terminate at the end of 9 months, but this is an extermination of a little life that has begun and is entitled in simple justice to at least have that right to life, which is an endowment which the Creator, according to our Declaration of Independence, respected. Now I say to my colleagues, 72 percent of the costs for these premiums is Federal money, your money and my money, and people say, ``Get the Government out of the bedroom.'' Well, get the Government out of our pockets paying for this heinous activity called abortion.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, in response to the gentlewoman's remarks which are common argument against our position, that we should ``mind our own business,'' that brings up a most interesting question: Whose business is it when a member, tiny little member, of the human family is about to be killed? Is it anybody's business? Is it a matter of privacy only between the doctor and the pregnant woman, or is society involved? I would remind the gentlewoman of the words of the great English poet, John Donne, who said ``Every man's death diminishes me for I am involved in mankind.'' Does society have any responsibility for the taking of an innocent human life? Mr. Chairman, she obviously says, ``No, turn your back, walk away,'' and I say, oh, no, we have a responsibility toward fellow human beings to protect them in the most basic right, which is the right to life. I have seen animals protect their young with a compassion and tenderness that is very instructive. I have seen a crocodile scoop up eggs and carry them down to the waterside with a gentleness that was almost poetic, and then, when I think of the abortion mills, or reproductive health clinics, pardon me, churning out death, it is more than ironic. I say government exists to protect the weak from the strong, and the gentlewoman's party, political party, more than my party, has always been for the ones that are left out, left behind, the forgotten ones, but they sure ignore the unborn, and I take pride in the fact that my party looks to the unborn and will protect that unborn when the mother becomes its deadly adversary.

Mr. HYDE. I yield to the gentlewoman from Michigan.

Mr. HYDE. The gentlewoman from Michigan can get time, Mr. Chairman, and we can have our colloquy.

Mr. HYDE. So. far.

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman let me say something? Will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I think Roe versus Wade ranks right us there with Dred Scott as a terrible decision.

Mr. HYDE

Mr. HYDE. Mr. Chairman, I rise in enthusiastic support for the Parker amendment. It will save American jobs, jobs which are being threatened by regulatory maneuvering by the Department of Energy. This amendment would cut $12.8 million in regulatory fat from DOE's budget and preserve a competitive marketplace and promote sensible energy conservation. More specifically, it would prohibit further departmental action on a proposed rulemaking concerning energy efficient standards for certain products. It is no wonder the Department of Energy received over 8,000 comments on the 1994 proposals. We are talking about one absurd regulation after another. For example, were DOE's proposals to take effect, the size of ovens would have to be so drastically reduced they could not even accommodate a traditional 18-pound Thanksgiving turkey. Refrigerators would have to be made so large they would not be able to fit through standard size doors in [[Page H 7111]] apartments and many homes. Consumers would be required to purchase larger air conditioners, even if the room size did not require it. The proposal for fluorescent lamp ballast, the devices used to start and operate fluorescent lamps, was so misdirected it would actually eliminate the primary ballast technology currently in use, known as electromagnetic ballast. DOE would simply wipe out this useful technology, made exclusively in the United States, in favor of another one, known as the electronic ballast manufactured in Mexico and Asia. Mr. Chairman, I support the Parker amendment. Mr. Chairman, electromagnetic ballasts are manufactured in my congressional district. And I can tell you first hand, that this proposed regulation would put some of my constituents out of work. Had the proposal gone into effect, literally thousands of American workers involved in the manufacture of electromagnetic ballasts would have faced unemployment, and estimates suggest that manufacturers of electromagnetic ballasts would have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in capital investment writeoffs. The companies that supply materials for ballasts, and their employees, would also have been severely impacted. Mr. Chairman, the proposals for ballasts and the other products I mentioned not only would cost American jobs but would severely chill free and open marketplace competition. The Department of Justice itself recognizes this. Let me just read an excerpt from a September 1994 letter from the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division to the Energy Department: For television sets, fluorescent lamp ballasts and professional-style or high-end kitchen ranges it is the Department's judgment based on the available evidence that significant anticompetitive effects are likely to occur. So, this administration's own Justice Department told DOE that its regulatory proposal would likely cause significant anticompetitive effects. And these anticompetitive effects don't stop there. The DOJ review also said that such anticompetitive effects might also result, under certain circumstances, from the proposed rule for electric water heaters. For microwave ovens, oil-fired water heaters, room air conditioners, and direct heating equipment, the review found there was evidence indicating that anticompetitive effects could result. Mr. Chairman, not only is DOE attempting to restrain competition, but the evidence shows that competition, without additional regulation, can achieve the very objective DOE purports to seek. Take ballasts for example. The original fluorescent lamp ballast standards working in tandem with market forces are already achieving the program's energy saving objectives. The market penetration of electronic ballasts, the devices that would have been mandated by DOE's 1994 proposal, has increased from 2 percent in 1987 to almost 40 percent in 1994. Moreover, without the heavy hand of DOE it is expected that electronic ballasts will comprise over 50 percent of the market by 1998. A free market approach is resulting in expansion of electronic ballasts, and it is doing so without causing severe economic hardships, creating significant anticompetitive effects, or sacrificing existing energy saving opportunities. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would save the thousands of American jobs being threatened by these regulatory activities, result in greater energy conservation, and cut almost $13 million in fat from DOE's proposed budget. In addition, it is important to note that the amendment will not prevent implementation of certain useful aspects of the program, relating to establishing testing procedures for products, labeling, and enforcement. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this common sense amendment to save American jobs, cut more regulatory fat from the budget, preserve a competitive marketplace, and promote sensible energy conservation.