Jesse Jackson

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, the stated purpose of the PFC Act was to, and I quote, enhance safety or capacity of the national air transportation system, reduce noise from airports and furnish opportunities for enhanced competition among or between the carriers. In theory, this is a good policy. Today, with the passage of Air 21, that passenger facility charge or ticket tax will go from $3 to $6. While I have shown my colleagues that not one dollar is going to be spent on site for this particular airport, this airport with a 6,446 foot runway, a 747 will never land at this airport, a 767 will never land at this airport, a 777 will never land at this airport, because they are spending a billion dollars creating first class waiting areas for passengers; not only at Midway Airport, but the same thing is occurring at O'Hare Airport and airports all across our country, because Air 21 fails to define the word ``capacity,'' leaving mayors in many municipalities with the ability to spend passenger facility charges as they so choose. Mr. Chairman, I am respectfully withdrawing this amendment, but the next amendment, which we will debate for the next hour, I look forward to supporting. I thank the ranking member for the opportunity, I thank the chairman of this committee, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster), for the opportunity to debate this issue. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw amendment No. 3.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from South Carolina for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, competition and capacity concerns are not new. In fact, many of the same issues were raised in 1991 when the mayor of the city of Chicago came to this House under then the leadership of the very powerful Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski where he proposed building a third airport in the city of Chicago. Heeding warnings from the FAA, the mayor hoped to ease overcrowding and boost competition with a new airport on Chicago's south side. At the time, the Federal Government was cutting funds for new airport construction. But then our most powerful Democratic Ways and Means chairman pushed through legislation which created a $3 passenger facility charge, and the stated purpose of that PFC was to do this, enhance safety or capacity of the national air transportation system, reduce noise from airports, and furnish opportunities for enhanced competition among or between carriers. Now, what does that have to do with the parking lot? What does that have to do with light rail being built to and from inner-city areas to airports? It has absolutely nothing to do with them, because local mayors are using the passenger facility charge for their own purpose. How about this? In Chicago, the mayor's third airport was never built. Yet he continues to collect a $3 passenger facility charge. Because of AIR21, he is going to get a $6 passenger facility charge, $6. So how do we increase capacity? Here is one of the shortcomings of the bill, Mr. Chairman, it does not define capacity for the passenger facility charge to be used on site. How do most pilots define capacity? Not first-class waiting areas and red carpet rooms at airports or more beverages or more leather seats for passengers waiting to get on a flight. They define capacity in the air, in the air, spacing between planes. That is a safety concern. They define it on the ground, the length of a runway. 747s, 767s, 777s, hey, a trend is emerging here. Aircraft are getting larger. They are not landing on little bitty runways. They need longer runways. Because their wing spans are getting wider, guess what, they also need more space between runways and taxiways. But the passenger facility charge is not being used for that purpose. So I stand in support of the amendment of the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Graham). I am urging you, my colleagues, to support the Graham amendment. It makes sense. Until Congress is willing to define the passenger facility charge consistent with the 1991 intent of Congress, and that is to enhance competition amongst the carriers and capacity of our national air transportation system, that has nothing to do with the space between first class and coach on an aircraft, I say to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Lipinski). It has nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with the length of runways and space between runways. Our FAA Administrator has just recently argued that we need 10 new airports the size of O'Hare in order to handle the capacity concerns. That is where the passenger facility charge revenue should be going, taking pressure off of existing systems as opposed to trying to find more ways to add pressure to existing systems.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Hyde-Morella amendment to address the high-density rule at hub airports that are essentially at capacity. It does not take a rocket scientist to understand the nature of the problem here, I would say to the ranking member and to the chairman; not a rocket scientist at all. There are 875,000 take-offs and landings at the busiest airport in the world, 875,000 per year; at Midway Airport in the city of Chicago, 175,000 take-offs and landings every year. At operational capacity, O'Hare essentially reached it 6 years ago and now there is an effort afoot by this Congress, which this amendment fortunately stops, an effort afoot to add more than 875,000 operations at O'Hare Airport every year; 875,000. The head of the FAA, Jane Garvey, has suggested that air transportation in the future, particularly in this region, will grow as much as a million additional operations at the O'Hare Airport and in the midwest region, 1 million. Without that high-density rule, we are now trying to squeeze 1,875,000 potential operations at O'Hare Airport, an airport that is incapable of handling the kinds of operations that the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde) and I have been articulating for the last couple of hours today. So what is the airport doing to accommodate 875,000 operations? They are now cross-landing flights at O'Hare Airport. That is not half of it; cross-landing flights at O'Hare Airport at night. The pilots' union has objected to it, saying that it is dangerous. Most recently, maybe within the last year, year and a half or so ago, a British Airways flight was in the process of taking off, a 747 taking off on one runway, I believe it was 32 left, at O'Hare Airport; a 727 was landing. They had approval to take off and land on cross-runways at the same time, and because the British Airways pilot saw it, he hit his brakes and blew out six tires because he realized that the 727 was incapable of stopping. We just implemented this cross-landing procedure at O'Hare Airport within the last 2 years to address the capacity problem, and so because smaller air flights are now being cancelled from rural Illinois and other parts of Illinois into O'Hare field, our effort now is to try our best to increase competition amongst the carriers by lifting the high- density rule so that smaller aircraft can arrive at O'Hare Airport. It always works in the short run, but the high-density rule was specifically put in place for safety reasons, and that is critical and it is also very, very important. In particular, because when one looks at the reality that most of these routes are not as profitable for the larger carriers, once they get the slots they end up cancelling the small aircraft to smaller rural areas in favor of larger international flights and longer distance hubs. It keeps happening at O'Hare and that is why Archer Daniels Midland no longer has access to O'Hare Airport. That is why aircraft traveling directly from Moline, Illinois no longer have access to O'Hare Airport because the larger aircraft need the slot space, and that will not happen and be addressed until we balance this growth and build a third airport.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from New York for yielding me this time, and I want to rise today in support of this rule. I want to talk about a contentious issue for which we will be debating at great length throughout consideration of AIR 21, and that is the passenger facility charge. In 1990, Congress responded to concerns that the aviation trust funds and other existing sources of funds for airport development were insufficient to meet national needs by creating the PFC. The Aviation Safety and Capacity Expansion Act of 1990 allowed designated commercial airports the option of imposing a PFC on each passenger boarding an aircraft at the airport. PFCs are not Federal taxes. Rather, PFCs can be viewed as local taxes that require Federal approval. Unlike Federal airport improvement program funds, AIP, PFC monies can be used for a wide range of projects and can also used for debt service and related expenses. As a result of this broad project eligibility, PFC funds are more likely to be spent on landside activity, such as terminal development, road construction, and debt service. The PFC system has been enormously popular with airports. According to some estimates, the FAA has already approved PFC collections in excess of $18.5 billion. This large and growing source of airport funding is also viewed by many observers as a way to fund needed airport improvements without raising Federal Aviation taxes. It is clear, however, that there are some concerns by many Members of Congress with respect to legislative intent. It is clear that additional capacity was a major goal of the authors of this legislation. What is less clear is how capacity is defined. As suggested in previous announcements, the Federal Aviation Administration has taken a broad view of the types of airport projects eligible for PFC funding. It has been suggested by critics of several PFC projects that the FAA view is overly broad and that a redefinition of capacity would be appropriate and appropriate in AIR 21. This issue, generally referred to as an appropriate use issue, will be discussed in great detail in today's debate. The single most controversial issue associated with PFCs has been the issue of appropriate use. Recent FAA approval of PFC funding for a $1.5 billion light rail system connecting JFK Airport with New York's subway system has raised the visibility of appropriate use. Recent testimony before the Subcommittee on Aviation of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure indicates that airlines are still very opposed to this project and other types of projects that airports wish to undertake using PFC funds on the site of airports and not off site from airports. The city of Chicago has chosen to use much of its PFC income to undertake large terminal-related projects. These terminal improvements are largely aimed at upgrading existing infrastructure as opposed to creating new infrastructure. The first terminal upgrades are aiding incumbent carriers. That is, the gates and terminal space being rehabilitated will already be under control of an air carrier. As a result, the space is unlikely to be available to new air carriers who might provide new and competitive services at the airport. Second, this type of project has been historically subject to bond financing. In this historical financing framework, the airports would have to work with the incumbent air carrier to create new or improved terminal capacity by using its landing or other fees to support the bonds financing. Unfortunately, PFCs are acting as a subsidy for existing carriers and are not consistent with Congress' legislative intent to enhance competition amongst the carriers, which we will discuss in great measure. The failure to concentrate PFC funds on the airside improvements is having the effect of increasing existing congestion in the air traffic control system. In this view, using PFC funds to build new airports, such as DIA and perhaps, even in my own district, Peotone, Illinois, has the effect of reducing ATC congestion at major transportation hubs. New runways, new taxiways, even at existing airports, are also seen as enhancing ATC capacity in an area and in a way that new terminals and parking loss indeed cannot. On the issue of competition, by choosing not to spend money on new air site capacity and gates for potential new competitors, some airports seem to be working to maintain the status quo, thereby benefiting incumbent air carriers. Just this past Friday, the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) sat on the runway at Reagan National Airport for 5 hours, not because there were not enough terminals at Chicago at its airport, not because there were not enough parking lots at Chicago at its airport, she sat on the runway because of bad weather at the airport and had nowhere else to go. In the future, Chicago's airports will have to lengthen their runways from their present lengths, expand space between runways and taxiways so that generation and series 4, 5 and 6 aircraft will be able to land at those airports and, indeed, enhance competition amongst the carriers. Madam Speaker, I look forward to continuing this debate and offering several corrective amendments to this bill to make Congress' intent a reality.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong opposition to the supplemental bill before you and in support of the Obey substitute. As you all know, my father, along with our colleague Rod Blagojevich and a group of ministers and religious leaders, met with President Milosevic and other Serbian leaders in Yugoslavia last week. As a result of that trip and other factors, I have come to firmly believe that the United States and other NATO leaders should pause for peace and make another attempt at a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Kosovo. The release of the American POWs provides an opening that the U.S. and our allies should take advantage of. I do not support continuing the bombing at this time, but the Obey substitute presents an opportunity to support our humanitarian efforts in Albania and Macedonia, our continued military presence in the Balkans, and disaster relief to Latin America. Another point I want to make today is that it is pure hypocrisy to classify military construction projects unrelated to the event in Kosovo as emergency funding, while maintaining the position that funding to assist in relieving the devastation in South and Central America be offset. This effort to sneak extra funding into the defense budget, outside of the self-imposed budget caps, by including it in the Supplemental is underhanded and should not be allowed to continue. I would love the opportunity to provide similar amounts of ``emergency funding'' for education, health care, housing and other vital domestic programs. At the very least, the humanitarian refugee crisis in Albania and Macedonia as well as the crisis in Latin America resulting from Hurricane Mitch should be classified as an emergency, and they are in the Obey substitute. The Obey substitute amendment correctly defines an emergency as an emergency and I urge its support.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, let me begin by thanking the distinguished gentleman from New York (Chairman Gilman) and the gentleman from American Samoa (Mr. Faleomavaega) for this opportunity, and I certainly want to begin by commending and thanking the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Meek) for sponsoring today's resolution. Mr. Speaker, I am overwhelmed that the gentlewoman would be so kind as to think of Reverend Jackson and all of the members of this delegation who sought to bring about an opportunity for peace in this crisis. I am only troubled in that the present signals that we are getting are not ones that indicate that we are going to take advantage of the opportunity that Reverend Jackson has created. I could talk about Reverend Jackson, my father, for hours. Maybe for a lifetime. But I want to take the few minutes that I have, that has been given me, just to mention the names of those ministers who participated in this event. The Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr., founder and president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. The Reverend Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary, National Council of Churches. Mr. Nazir U. Khaja, medical doctor, chairman of the board of the American Muslim Council, head of the Islamic Information Service. Father Leonid Kishkovsky, Orthodox Church of America. The Reverend James Meeks, Salem Baptist Church, Chicago, Illinois. The Reverend Father Irinej Dobrijevic, Serbian Orthodox priest, International Orthodox Christian Charities. Landrum Bolling, Senior Advisor, Conflict Management Group, Director-at-Large, Mercy Corps International. John Wyma, chief of staff to Congressman Rod Blagojevich. Father Raymond G. Helmick from Boston College in Boston, Massachusetts. Amy Toensing, photographer. Walter Rogers from CNN. Yuri Tadesse, the director of International Affairs at Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. David Steele, Center for Strategic and International Studies of Washington, D.C. James George Couchell, His Grace Bishop Dimitrios of Xanthos, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. His Grace Right Reverend Bishop Mitrophan, Serbian Orthodox Bishop of Eastern America. Bishop Marshall ``Jack'' Meadors of the United Methodist Church. Rabbi Steven Bennett Jacobs, Temple KOL Tikva from Los Angeles, California. Mr. Zoran S. Hodjera, president of the Saint Luke Serbian Orthodox Church in Washington, D.C. Our colleague, Congressman Rod Blagojevich from the Fifth Congressional District in Illinois. Obrad Kesic, Director of Governmental Affairs, IGN Pharmaceuticals. Reverend Roy Thomas Lloyd, Broadcast News Director of the National Council of Churches. Jonathan Alpert from HBO. Susan Sachs from the New York Times. Bryan Puchaty, CNN. Marie Nelson, the director for Africa Policy, Rainbow/ PUSH Coalition. Mr. Speaker, this interfaith delegation made it possible to bring our prisoners of war home.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, there have been a number of recent, very positive developments involving the proposed merger of Ameritech and SBC Communications. I was delighted when the Justice Department gave its green light to the merger on March 23rd. This approval followed a thorough review by the Justice Department and confirms that the merger is not anti-competitive. The merger approval by DOJ was followed by a favorable recommendation from a hearing examiner for the Illinois Commerce Commission. Then, just last week, the Public Utility Commission of Ohio formally voted to approve the merger. I would also note that the Rainbow-PUSH Coalition endorsed the merger on March 29th. In announcing its support, the Coalition said, ``Rainbow PUSH found that these companies are truly concerned about implementing corporate practices that favor workers and consumers, creating employment opportunities and fostering small business growth.'' Additionally, the Coalition pointed out that the merger enjoys strong, broad-based support from organized labor. Ameritech announced on April 6th that, consistent with the conditions imposed on the merger by the Justice Department, it was selling half of its cellular properties to GTE Corp. for about $3.3 billion. One of GTE's principal allies in this transaction is Georgetown Partners, a minority owned and operated company. Assuming the merger is approved, Georgetown Partners will become one of the most significant minority- owned communications firms in the United States. While all of these developments are extremely positive, Mr. Speaker, I must express my strong concern over FCC Chairman Bill Kennard's recent action adding a new, and unprecedented, hearing process to the Commission's deliberations on the Ameritech-SBC merger. I appreciate the Chairman's desire for thoroughness, but I must question the fairness of injecting such a process in a deliberation that has now been before the FCC for almost eleven months. In conclusion, I would note that as long as this merger remains in limbo before the FCC, it substantially harms the competitive positions of both companies in the national and international markets. I hope we keep in mind that, between them, Ameritech and SBC employ more than 200,000 people. Many of these people are my constituents in the 2nd District of Illinois. I strongly encourage the FCC to consider the Ameritech-SBC merger with the same efficiency and fairness that it has considered other recent mergers in the highly competitive telecommunications industry.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 573, a bill to award a Congressional gold medal to Ms. Rosa Parks. As the 91st African-American Member of Congress, I stand on the shoulders of Ms. Rosa Parks and the other mothers, martyrs, and soldiers of the struggle to create a more perfect Union. On December 1, 1955, a weary seamstress in Montgomery refused to give up her seat on the public bus to a white man for the long ride home. She was just too plain tired. By her simple yet significant act of defiance, Ms. Parks struck a mighty blow against the states' rights philosophy that justified Jim Crow American Apartheid, and helped set the nation back on the course of Reconstruction. Ninety years after the end of the Civil War, her actions were the catalyst for the sweeping and revolutionary changes that culminated in some of the most significant legislation to ever pass the House of Representatives: The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. In fact, my election to Congress, and the elections of every African- American serving in Congress, can all be directly attributed to her courage on that fateful day. But if we are to honor Ms. Rosa Parks for her courageous actions on that bus in Montgomery, surely we must also honor her for the life of activism that led up to that event. Ms. Parks was as a familiar participant in the civil rights struggle long before that bus ride. Through the forties and fifties, she served as an active and vocal member of the NAACP. She joined the Montgomery Voters League, and was active in registering others to vote well before her 44 years of fame began. Mr. Speaker, Members of the House, as we add our names to the litany of those who have paid tribute to the legacy Ms. Parks has created, let us also recognize the larger significance of her acts. The true legacy for all Americans in the beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott is the years of hard work, perseverance, preparation, and faith that preceded that moment. Mr. Speaker, Honorable Members of the House, Rosa Parks did not make history by refusing to give up her seat on a bus in downtown Montgomery in 1955; she made history by preparing herself to stand and be counted long before the spotlight was cast on her weary feet. She is a model citizen of this nation. And it is the entirety of her actions and the singularity of her purpose--a freer and more just nation--that we ought honor here today. Even more, we ought to continue to work in her legacy by striving to deliver on the constitutional promise of a more perfect Union, a Union in which no American is left behind. Ms. Parks, on behalf of myself, my staff and the constituents of the Second District of Illinois, I thank you for all of the sacrifices you made for the United States of America.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the ranking member, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, although I oppose this bill, I rise today to discuss an important element in this bill, debt relief. The ranking member, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), and the minority have been fighting very hard for debt relief. We sincerely believe that debt relief is central to any bill that intends to stimulate the rebuilding of infrastructure and to provide other necessities such as health care and food. This bill would devote $41 million to debt relief, $25 million to the World Bank fund for making payments on multilateral debt during the moratorium that lasts until February 1, 2001, and $16 million for an eventual two-thirds write-off of Honduras' bilateral debt. For just an additional $25.5 million, the U.S. could cancel all bilateral debts owed to Nicaragua and Honduras. That $25.5 million would cancel debt with a face value of more than $270 million. The supplemental came very, very close to alleviating this burden off of the families that have been suffering during this crisis but fell short by $25.5 million. Bilateral debt cancellation would be a significant investment in Central American recovery. It would send a signal to other countries that these countries' bilateral debts must be forgiven to make way for recovery and development. A few countries, Denmark, Brazil, Cuba among them, have already done such cancellation, but if the U.S. would do it many more would be expected to follow. More than the amounts involved, that would be the true and relatively small expenditure when one considers the enormous burden that this would lift. Nicaragua and Honduras already had severe debt problems before Mitch. The hurricane made a horrible problem absolutely unbearable, Mr. Chairman. Moratoria and reduction of bilateral debt stock by the Paris Club are not enough. Before Hurricane Mitch, Honduras was paying over a million dollars a day in debt service; Nicaragua about $700,000 a day. Once the moratorium ends, no one thinks that the recovery will be complete, but if in fact we go the extra mile and make the difference, we can take this burden off of these families. Although I do not plan to offer an amendment on this subject, I want to bring this issue to the attention of my colleagues because I feel that debt relief is important for any country to rebuild.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, Republicans say the underlying issue is not about sex, it's about perjury and obstruction of justice. Democrats say the underlying issue is about sex--a private consensual sexual relationship--and the President lied about it, possibly committing perjury in the process. But since lying about sex is not an act that involved using his official position against the state, as Nixon did, Democrats say Clinton's sins do not reach the Constitutional standard for impeachment. That is the essence of the arguments we heard presented by members of the House Judiciary Committee and members on the floor of the Congress who voted, along partisan party lines, to impeach President Clinton. That is what the current Republicans and Democrats are saying. What will history say? Underlying the Clinton impeachment is neither sex, nor lying, nor perjury, but American history itself. Essentially the same economic and political forces that drove the presidential impeachment process against Andrew Johnson in 1868 are driving the impeachment process 130 years later. There has been a ``role reversal''--the Republicans of 1998 were the Democrats of 1868 and I will show how their roles reversed--but the underlying issue is essentially the same; reconstruction. Our nation's first effort at economic reconstruction after the Civil War was at issue in 1868, our nation's second effort at economic reconstruction after the Civil War, beginning with Brown in 1954, is at issue in 1998. The end of the Civil War and the adoption of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution on December 18, 1865 ended legal slavery. Slavery, the Democratic Party, its geography and its ideology were all defeated. But Lincoln's assassination five days after Appomattox denied him and the Republican Party the opportunity to pursue a ``Big Federal Government'' policy of economic reconstruction and political enfranchisement for all Americans, leaving no American behind. When legal slavery ended, there were nine million people in the old Confederacy, which was led by the party of Thomas Jefferson. Then, the Democratic Party defined itself in exclusive terms--as slave holders with private property rights, which were protected legally by ``states' rights'' governments. Four million of the southerners were uneducated and untrained former slaves who needed to be educated, trained and brought into the economic mainstream and politically enfranchised with the right and ability to vote. That didn't include poor and working class whites who had similar needs and had been exploited, manipulated, misused and politically diverted through a focus on social issues (then, perpetuating the fear of interracial marriage and sex) by the slave owners to preserve and protect the southern economic system of elite special interests. Just eight years earlier, in 1857, in the Dred Scott decision, the Court had ruled that blacks had no rights that a white man must respect and that Congress could not outlaw slavery anywhere in the U.S. The Confederacy--its economy, religion, family, social customs, mores and politics--was based and built on the institution of slavery. The Civil War ended slavery, but there were still two outstanding problems: (1) How to bring four million former slaves into the economic mainstream? And (2) How to politically enfranchise them? That was the goal of the First Reconstruction and its goal has never been realized and those twin problems have never been completely fixed! One-hundred-and-thirty- two historically black colleges and universities were founded in this context. It was a massive Federal government commitment to educate the newly freed slaves--who were nearly half the population of the eleven former confederate states--not a commitment by those states to educate them. This Federal commitment to educate the newly freed slaves was determined to be central to a new black middle-class that could then lift themselves or take advantage of opportunities in the general economy. Northern Republican Federal troops were occupying the South after the Civil War because they could not depend on the Democratic South to enforce federal laws. With regard to education, it was the only way the Federal Government could prevent racial discrimination and insure that educated blacks had an equal opportunity of getting hired after they were educated and trained. Lincoln fought to preserve the Union and to end slavery. He defeated the southern slave forces militarily at a national cost of 620,000 lives and was prepared to reconstruct the nation with a Republican program of inclusion and political enfranchisement. ``Former'' Democratic Confederates opposed and resisted the ``Big Centralized Republican Federal Government'' and wanted ``the government off of their states' backs'' so they could go back to a legal system (``States' Rights'') that protected their economic interests (the ability to own slaves). The identification of Lincoln and the Republican Party with ending slavery and commencing reconstruction led southern Democrats to refer to Lincoln as the Black President and the Republican Party as the Black Republican Party. Blacks, after Lincoln's assassination, remained loyal to the Republican Party until 1936, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's second term. The New Deal appealed to black economic interests. Roosevelt defined a new more inclusive Democratic Party by offering an economic agenda that appealed to every American. The political history of African Americans shows that their loyalty follows reconstructive efforts. Senator Andrew Johnson was a Tennessee Democrat who had refused to join his fellow southern Democratic Confederates and stayed with the northern Unionists. Lincoln's concern about preserving and reunifying the nation following the war led our first Republican President to reward Johnson's loyalty by nominating him for Vice President in the 1864 campaign. After Lincoln's assassination, President Johnson focused on putting the Union back together, but lacked the Republican commitment to build a ``more perfect Union'' for all Americans. Unlike Lincoln and the Republicans, he was willing to preserve the Union by leaving some Americans behind, sacrificing the rights and interests of the former slaves. As a result, angry northern Radical Republicans investigated a vulnerable Johnson--who was not unlike Bill Clinton in terms of his personal foibles--to try to come up with an excuse to impeach him. It was a partisan Republican attack on a Democratic President in order to preserve undertaking the Republicans' First Reconstruction program. The struggle between these radical progressive northern Republicans and these radical conservative southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) continued following the Civil War, and finally came to a head in the 1876 presidential election and Tilden-Hayes Compromise of 1877--which ended reconstruction. Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, was finally elected President by one vote in the House in exchange for pulling out Federal troops protecting the newly freed slaves in the South, and agreeing to appoint conservative Dixiecrats to the Supreme Court. The Dixiecrats, with the help of new ``black laws'' of discrimination, psychological intimidation, physical violence and murder, were now on their way back to power in the South. By 1896, the Supreme Court appointments resulted in Plessy, which ushered in Jim Crow, and by 1901 the first Congressional Black Caucus was completedly eliminated from Congress, not to return for three decades. It is the same elitist southern forces and their continuing anti- Federal government ideology--except today they are called Republicans-- who want, this time, not to preserve but undo the nation's effort at reconstruction, a Second Reconstruction begun in 1954 with Brown--the desegregation of all aspects of American life, from public facilities to private corporate behavior--and continued with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act, affirmative action and majority- minority political districts. The southern Democratic Party, with the legacy of the Confederacy, generally found itself on the wrong side of history again in the 1960s. Governors George Wallace of Alabama, Lester Maddox of Georgia and Orville Faubus of Arkansas were all Democrats from Dixie. Renowed segregationists like Senator Richard Russell of Georgia and Congressman Howard Smith from Virginia were Democrats. Today's Senators Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Richard Shelby of Alabama were originally Dixiecrats, but are now Republicans. Today's conservative southern-based Republicans' target is Second Reconstruction, especially the ``liberalism'' of Democratic President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, but also ultimately including many of the ``Big Government'' economic programs of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. The real underlying dynamic of this impeachment proceeding is not the removal of Bill Clinton, but the removal of the social and economic programs of the New Deal and the Second Reconstruction of the Great Society, a weakening of the Big Federal Government generally, and the destruction of liberalism as a viable political ideology in particular. Whether these conservative anti-Federal government Republicans are successful or not will be determined by history. There will be a few pro-impeachment Democrats thrown in for good measure because, politically, they must factor in the old Democratic forces in the South, now controlled by the Republicans. The Republican impeachment strategy can only be measured by future elections. Will the American people be lead astray again by the Republicans' new sex diversion or will a strong political leader be able to get them to focus on their real economic interests of full employment, comprehensive and universal health care, affordable housing and a quality public education? History--not President Clinton or the current crop of Democrats and Republicans-- will render that judgment! Today, the political, ideological and geographical roots of the anti- reconstruction and anti-more-perfect-union effort is in the South, though its tentacles have spread beyond the South. This Republican impeachment effort allows us to look at the roots, dynamic and current political structure of this post-Civil War and Current conservative political movement. One-hundred-and-thirty-three years after the ``Great Quake,'' the impeachment of President Clinton is a mere tremor in the on-going struggle to reconstruct America. Begin with the Judiciary Committee. Ten of the eighteen Republican members of the Judiciary Committee are ultra-conservatives from former Confederate states. In the middle of the impeachment hearings, one of them, Bob Barr of Georgia, was exposed for having recently spoken before a white supremist group. Move on to the House Republican leadership. The outgoing Speaker is Newt Gingrich (R-GA), whose history is laced with not-so-subtle new racial code words, and the Speaker-elect is Bob Livingston (R-LA). Their styles are different, but their substance is essentially the same. Both abdicated their leadership roles in the impeachment crisis only to have another southern conservative, Rep. Tom ``The Hammer'' Delay (R-TX), fill the void. He, through intimidation, forced Republicans, not to vote against censure, but to vote with their party on a procedural vote--which, in essence, is a vote to kill a vote of conscience for censure of the President's private behavior. In addition, call the roll of House leadership and committee chairmanships in the 105th Congress: Richard Armey (TX), Majority Leader; Bill Archer (TX), Ways & Means; Bob Livingston (LA), Appropriations; Floyd Spence (SC), National Security; Thomas Bliley (VA), Commerce; Porter Goss (FL), Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. In the 105th Republican-controlled Senate: Trent Lott (MS), Senate Majority Leader; Strom Thurmond (SC), President Pro Tem (3rd in line to be President), Chairman, Armed Services; Jesse Helms (NC), Senate Foreign Relations; John Warner (VA), Rules; Richard Shelby (AL), Select Committee on Intelligence. Today in Congress there are more people arguing on behalf of States rights than there are people arguing on behalf of building a more perfect union. That is why fighting against racial injustice cannot be relegated to a department of the government. That is why several of the nation's top journalists have chosen to focus on what Trent Lott (R-MS) and Bob Barr (R-GA) do with their political spare time, including speaking before and having memberships in certain southern political organizations. The institutional nature of our historic problem requires eternal vigilance on many fronts and in every election. The presiding officer at an impeachment trial in the Senate will be U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the ultimate conservative states' righter. Nominated to the Court by Nixon and elevated to Chief Justice by Reagan, this intellectually gifted conservative, while clerking for Justice Robert H. Jackson between 1952 and 1953, wrote a memorandum arguing in favor of upholding the ``separate but equal'' doctrine of Plessy versus Ferguson in preparation for the 1954 decision on Brown. As a conservative Phoenix lawyer, he appeared as a witness before the Phoenix City Council in opposition to a public accommodations ordinance and took part in a program of challenging African American voters at the polls. From 1969 until 1971, he served as assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel. In that position, he supported executive authority to order wiretapping and surveillance without a court order, no-knock entry by the police, preventive detention and abolishing the exclusionary rule, that is, a rule to dismiss evidence gathered in an illegal way. As a member of the Burger Court, Rehnquist played a crucial role in reviving the debate regarding the relationship between government and the states. The consequences of Rehnquist's state-centered federalism surfaced dramatically in the area of individual rights. Since the 1960s, the Court had held that nearly every provision in the Bill of Rights applies to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Rehnquist voiced his disagreement with such a method of determining the constitutional requirements of state action, particularly in the context of criminal proceedings, urging a return to an earlier approach whereby the states were not required to comply with the Bill of Rights but only to treat individuals with ``fundamental fairness.'' Likewise, Rehnquist narrowly construed the Fourteenth Amendment's mandate to the states not to deny any person the equal protection of the laws. He contended that all that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment hoped to achieve with the Equal Protection Clause was to prevent the states from treating black and white citizens differently. The most important value for Rehnquist is his state-centered federalism, followed by private property and individual rights. In other words, his current views are consistent with the core of the states' rights legal philosophy a century-and-a-half-ago, where the individual right to own property (slaves) was to be protected by a states' rights government! (Source: The Oxford Companion To The Supreme Court) To capture a new political base, Republicans abandoned the essence of Lincoln and decided to go after Dixie, using social issues as cover for their narrow economic interests. Barry Goldwater launched this modern conservative anti-Federal government movement with his 1964 presidential campaign. Ronald Reagan picked it up and sent the same signal by launching his southern campaign from Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1980, in the name of states' rights, where two Jews and a Black were murdered, in the name of states' rights, fighting for the right to vote. Now Republicans want to complete Mr. Gingrich's 1994 ``Revolution of Devolution'' by defeating and eliminating the twin evil forces of ``liberalism'' and ``Big Government'' in the 2000 election. The Republicans know that, based on the information they have gathered, if the President is impeached in the House, he will not be convicted in the Senate. They don't want him convicted and out of office, with President Al Gore given two years to solidify his hold on the White House. They want an impeached, but not convicted, President twisting in the wind for two years leading up to the 2000 election. This is a continuation of the November 3, 1998, strategy of the Republican hard liners to motivate and build their conservative ``social values'' political base as a diversion from economic justice issues. The Republicans will not allow censure because that would allow Democrats to say that they took some action against the President for his immoral actions, which would take away their ``social-moral'' issue for 2000 campaign. What the Republicans want out of this impeachment crisis is a ``family values'' issue for the 2000 presidential campaign. They want to say that Clinton's sexual misconduct is the result of the ``decadent values'' of the 1960's and liberalism generally. In other words, in some form, the Lewinsky matter will become a Republican ``wedge issue'' in the 2000 campaign. The fact that African Americans are so closely identified with both President Clinton and liberal ``Big Government'' programs fits perfectly with their consistent use of race to divide the electorate in presidential campaigns. They can send the subliminal race signal while publicly denying they are using race as an issue in the campaign, The Republican goal in 2000 is to use this strategy to retain control of the House and Senate and to gain control of the White House. They can then appoint hardcore right wing conservatives to the Supreme Court after 2001. Remember, Kenneth Starr's ambition before being sullied by the Lewinsky affair was to be appointed to the Supreme Court. Republicans, with Dixie as its geo-political and theological center, in control of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the Federal government, could turn the clock back to a twenty-first century version of the States' Rights days of the 1850s and the 1896 ``separate but equal'' days of Plesssy versus Ferguson--not a return to slavery, but a return to the days when equal opportunity for all is twisted and converted to equal opportunity for a limited few. By putting impeachment in the legislative rather than the judicial branch of government, the framers of the Constitution deliberately made it a political-legal affair. Republicans have done in 1998, what Democrats did in 1868. They have use the political-legal nature of the impeachment process to turn it into a political-political affair to further their anti-Big Government aims. Clinton launched a dialogue to talk about race, but the real race dialogue is what will happen to economic reconstruction in 2001 if the reactionary Republican strategy works. Clinton has worked hard to separate the race dialogue from the economic dialogue--joining with the Republicans in 1997, and ignoring his strongest liberal supporters today, to cut a budget deal to ``balance the budget'' with conservative Republicans. That deal assures that there will not be enough money to fix our historic problem or build a bridge to the future for Americans left behind. He has reduced his own defense to a personal defense instead of a defense of history. Republicans are trying to impeach reconstruction. The President's reckless behavior played into the political hands of Dixie's history- driven religiously-based self-righteous politics of advancing it's own lost cause. To whom much is given, much is required. The President was not elected to be our pastor, priest, rabbi or imam. He was elected to protect our constitutional rights. All Presidents are public servants, not perfect servants. His error of private behavior and poor public judgment played perfectly into Dixie's regional politics to undermine a century-and-and-a quarter of economic progress for all. President Clinton risked all of that history of social and economic progress by lying about an issue of personal satisfaction. He has not committed treason as defined by the Constitution as an impeachable offense. His ``teason'' is against the cause of building a more perfect union. After economic and socially conservative Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter (and economic conservative, but more liberal socially), Reagan and Bush, a moderate-to-conservative southern Democrat, President Clinton, has helped to prepare an economic bridge which would allow us to again begin to work on some of the unfinished and unreconstructed tasks of the Civil War. The Monica Lewinsky affair has now reduced the defense of that agenda to a defense of him. On December 19, 1998, Republicans are trying to impeach Social Security (privatize it), affirmative action, Medicare, Medicaid, a clean environment, women's freedom to choose, Supreme Court justices who believe in equal protection under the law for all Americans, public education for all over vouchers for some, universal and comprehensive health coverage over medical savings accounts for the few, affordable housing for all, versus mansions for a select few. Something deeper in history than sex, lying and perjury is at issue here--just as something deeper in history than the removal of a cabinet secretary was at stake in 1868. At stake in 1868 was the First Reconstruction. At stake in 1998 is the Second Reconstruction. The struggle taking place in Congress and nationally today is between those political forces who want to build a more perfect union for all Americans, leaving no American behind, and those who want to return an elitist economic program of more perfect ``States' Rights'' for the few. That is what underlies the impeachment crisis. [From the Washington Post, Dec. 13, 1998] 130 Years Ago, Parallels Up to a Boiling Point (By Peter Carlson) The president was a Southern Democrat who'd risen from the class scorned as ``white trash.'' His personal life inspired widespread snickering. The Republicans who controlled Congress detested him. They investigated every aspect of his life and then voted to impeach him. With his fate in the hands of a few moderates, he hired a claque of lawyers skilled in nitpicking and pettifoggery. The president was, of course, Andrew Johnson. The year was 1868. When news of Johnson's impeachment reached Philadelphia, Republicans celebrated by firing a 50-gun salute while Democrats threatened to send scores of armed men to defy Congress. In 1868, unlike 1998, Americans were not blase about impeachment. Passions ran high, at least at the beginning. The issue was not sex--or even perjury. It was far more incendiary. On paper, the question was whether the president could fire the secretary of war without the consent of Congress. In reality, it was a battle over Reconstruction-- over the fate of former Confederates and former slaves. Wild rumors spread: Johnson would use the Army to stay in power. Confederates were marching toward Washington to help him. The Houston Telegraph reported that the War Department had been burned, the secretary wounded in battle. The Louisville Democrat asked readers: ``Are you ready once more to take up the musket?'' Many Americans were ready to fight. Iowa's governor, who supported impeachment, cabled his state's congressional delegation: ``100,000 Iowans are ready to maintain the integrity of the Union.'' On the same day, a man from Terre Haute cabled Johnson: ``Indiana will sustain you with 100,000 of her brave, stalwart and tried men.'' For a while, it seemed that America was on the verge of a second Civil War. But soon things settled into a spectacle more familiar to today's impeachment watchers--one part drama, one part farce and many, many parts legal hairsplitting, windy speechifying and mind-numbing tedium. The Secretary of War War ``I am in favor of the official death of Andrew Johnson,'' an Indiana congressman said during the House debate on impeachment. ``I am not surprised that one who began his presidential career in drunkenness should end it in crime.'' Other congressmen were almost as nasty. One said the president was stained with ``the filth of treason.'' Another called him a ``despicable, besotted, traitorous man.'' The only American president ever impeached was a tailor by trade. He grew up dirt poor in Raleigh, N.C., and didn't learn to read until he married and his bride tutored him. He opened a tailor shop in Tennessee and drifted into politics. He had a gift for oratorical invective--populist volleys directed at the Southern planter elite. He was elected state legislator, then congressman, then governor, then senator. In 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected president and Southern states began seceding from the Union, Sen. Johnson returned to Tennessee to campaign against secession. He wasn't opposed to slavery--he owned a few slaves himself--but he was loyal to the Union. When Tennessee joined the Confederacy, Johnson returned to Washington. On the way, he was nearly lynched by a rebel mob in Lynchburg, Va. The only Southern senator who stayed with the Union, he was a hero in the North--``the greatest man of the age,'' said the New York Times. In 1864, Lincoln chose him as his vice presidential running mate. Feeling a tad sick on inauguration day in 1865, Johnson fortified himself with whiskey--too much whiskey. Visibly soused, he delivered an incoherent speech, and forever after his enemies mocked him as a drunk. When Lincoln was assassinated, Johnson inherited the task of reuniting the nation. He was determined to bring the South back into the Union as quickly as possible. Under his rules, the rebel states merely had to end slavery and pledge loyalty and they could send representatives to Congress. In December 1865--only eight months after the war's end at Appomattox-- those representatives arrived. Chosen in whites-only elections, they included the Confederate vice president, six members of the Confederate Cabinet and four Confederate generals. Northern congressmen were incensed. Asked Sen. Ben Wade of Ohio: Did any nation in history ever welcome ``traitors'' into its Congress as equals? ``Would a man who was not utterly insane advocate such a thing?'' Congress refused to seat the Southern delegations. Johnson was outraged. It was the beginning of the long battle that led to impeachment. When the Republican-dominated Congress passed a bill giving full citizenship rights to blacks, Johnson vetoed it. When Congress passed a bill funding a Freedmen's Bureau to assist former slaves, Johnson vetoed it. When Congress passed a bill allowing blacks in the District of Columbia to vote, Johnson vetoed it. In the South, the all-white ``Johnson governments'' passed laws denying blacks the right to vote or buy property or own firearms. Angry Republicans asked: Are we losing in peace what we won in war? But Johnson wasn't interested in the problems of former slaves. He wanted only to reunite the country. He was for union in 1860, he said, and he was still for union in 1866. He broke with the Republicans and toured the country campaigning against them. His strategy backfired. Republicans won big in the election of 1866. Emboldened, they started investigating Johnson, spreading rumors that he had conspired with the men who killed Lincoln. Over his veto, they enacted a Reconstruction Bill that dissolved the ``Johnson governments'' and put the South under military rule. That law gave Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who ran the military, a great deal of power over Reconstruction. Stanton was allied with the Republicans. To keep him in office, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, which barred the president from firing Cabinet secretaries without the consent of the Senate. Johnson asked for Stanton's resignation. Stanton refused. Johnson asked the Senate to fire him. The Senate refused. Johnson fired him anyway but Stanton refused to leave, barricading himself in his office. Johnson's treasury secretary warned the president that he could be impeached if he persisted in removing Stanton. ``Impeach and be damned,'' Johnson replied. The Show Slowly, painfully, Thaddeus Stevens, the aged, sickly leader of the House Republicans, shuffled into the hushed Senate chamber on Feb. 25, 1868, followed by a group of congressmen. ``We appear before you,'' Stevens said, ``and in the name of the House of Representatives and all the people of the United States, do impeach Andrew Johnson, president of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.'' Clubfooted, gaunt and grim-faced, Stevens, 76, was an avid abolitionist who had spent the war urging Lincoln to crush the Confederates mercilessly, even if ``their whole country is to be laid waste.'' The rebels hated him so much they detoured on their way to Gettysburg just to burn down his Pennsylvania ironworks. After the war, he lived in sin with his black housekeeper and didn't much care who gossiped about it. He sponsored the impeachment bill, and after it passed, 126-47, the House named him to the committee that would prosecute the president in the Senate. The smart money was betting on conviction. Acquittal, the New York Times reported, ``is looked upon as simply impossible, unless some new and startling development takes place.'' The president hired five crafty lawyers, including his attorney general, and paid them each $2,000 out of his own pocket. They opted to stall. On March 13, they asked for another 40 days to prepare their case. ``Forty days!'' roared Rep. Ben Butler, the former Union general who was serving with Stevens as a prosecutor. ``As long as it took God to destroy the world by a flood!'' Butler wanted to start the trial immediately. The Senate compromised, scheduling the case for March 30. When that day arrived, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presided over the Senate, which was stuffed with 150 extra chairs to accommodate House members. The President did not appear--nor was he expected--but the galleries were packed, mostly with well-dressed women who had connections to senators, who each got four gallery tickets, or to congressmen, who each got two. ``Congressmen appear to be very good judges of female beauty,'' the Washington Star reported. ``We looked and looked in vain for a dozen plain-looking women in the galleries.'' Butler delivered the prosecution's opening statement. He started slowly, droning on about this unique historical moment, but soon he was orating grandiloquently: ``By murder most foul he succeeded to the presidency and is the elect of an assassin to that high office!'' After a few hours, Butler's audience began to wilt but Butler kept going. He was still chugging along on April Fool's Day, when wags in the press gallery amused themselves by sending notes, purportedly from women in the galleries, to the congressmen on the floor, and then snickering as they read the congressmen's replies. When Butler finally finished his opening statement, he began calling witnesses who had observed the attempt to remove Stanton from office. The scene they described barely rose above farce: Gen. Lorenzo Thomas, the new appointee as secretary, went to Stanton's office and ordered him to leave. Stanton refused and ordered Thomas to leave. Thomas refused. Back and forth it went, each man ordering the other to leave, until finally Stanton poured two stiff shots of whiskey and the dueling secretaries sat down for a friendly chat. One witness, a Delaware buddy of Thomas, recalled his efforts to buck up the general during this historic confrontation: ``Said I to him. `General, the eyes of Delaware are upon you.' '' The senators burst out laughing. Next, Butler summoned several newspaper reporters to testify about the president's speeches during the 1866 campaign. The reporters confirmed that the president had indeed said many nasty things about his Republican congressional enemies. To Butler, this was proof that Johnson was subverting the power of Congress. To most observers, it was proof of nothing more than politics as usual. Tedium was setting in. Many hours were spent in the reading of legal documents and senatorial speechifying. ``Spectators found the proceedings rather uninteresting,'' the Star reported. Rep. James Garfield was equally bored: ``This trial has developed, in the most remarkable manner, the insane love of speaking among public men,'' the congressman wrote in a letter. ``We are wading knee deep in words, words, words . . . and are but little more than half across the turbid stream.'' Newspaper editorialists began complaining about the lack of public interest in the impeachment controversy. The Baltimore Gazette lamented that ``the greatest act known to the Constitution--the trial of a President of the United States'' was inspiring ``less interest in the public mind than the report of a prize fight.'' Johnson could have enlivened things by appearing at his trial but he never did. He also refused to make any public comment on impeachment. Privately, he contemptuously referred to the proceedings as ``the show.'' Behind the scenes, the president was wooing moderate Republican senators by appointing officials whom they supported and by sending signals that he would stop obstructing Reconstruction. ``The president,'' the Chicago Tribune reported, ``has been on his good behavior.'' Finally, at the end of April, both sides began to sum up their cases. The ailing Thaddeus Stevens, who spent most of the trial huddled under a blanket, rose on wobbly legs to make his final statement. The case was about Reconstruction, he said, about how the president had usurped congressional power and helped to create new Confederate governments in the South. Stevens denounced Johnson as a ``wretched man'' and a ``pettifogging political trickster,'' but then his strength gave out and he had to sit down and let Butler read the rest of his speech. The next day, while another prosecutor was delivering a long summation, British novelist Anthony Trollope fell asleep in the gallery, much to the amusement of the press corps. Then the defense began its summation, and the president's lawyers more than earned their $2,000 fees. They quibbled about the definition of ``high crimes and misdemeanors'' and concluded that the president's actions did not rise to that level. They said the Tenure of Office Act was unconstitutional. They said that violating that act couldn't be an impeachable offense because the act hadn't been passed when the Constitution was adopted. Finally, in a delightful demonstration of the art of legal hairsplitting, they claimed that Johnson could not be convicted of removing Stanton from office but only of attempting to remove Stanton from office. After all, Stanton had never left his office--he was still barricaded in his suite at the War Department. As the speakers droned on, the Washington Star tracked the daily fluctuations in the betting action. On May 2, the odds were 3 to 1 for conviction. On May 5, the odds were 2 to 1 for acquittal. The next day, the paper reported: ``Today impeachment stock is as unaccountably up as it was unaccountably down yesterday. The bulls have it.'' On May 6, as prosecutor John Bingham prepared to deliver the final summation of the trial, a false rumor swept the galleries that Sen. James Grimes had died. Grimes was a Johnson backer, and Republicans in the galleries began to sing gleefully: ``Old Grimes is dead, that bad old man.'' Justice Chase gaveled for order and then Bingham began his speech. It was a full-blown barn-burner. ``We stand this day pleading for the violated majesty of the law, by the graves of half a million martyred hero-patriots who made death beautiful by the sacrifice of themselves for their country.'' After much florid rhetoric, he spoke the last words of the trial: ``Before man and God, he is guilty!'' Now it was time to decide the question--except the senators insisted on discussing the matter in secret sessions for a few days. Finally, on May 16, 1868, they were ready to vote. Close Call The galleries and the Senate floor were packed but the room was absolutely silent as Chief Justice Chase called the roll. Conviction required a two-thirds majority, which meant 36 of the 54 senators, and everyone knew that the vote would be close. ``Mr. Senator Anthony, how say you?'' Chase asked. ``Guilty,'' said Henry Anthony, a Rhode Island Republican. ``Mr. Senator Bayard, how say you?'' ``Not guilty,'' said James Bayard, a Delaware Democrat. Those votes were no surprise. Anthony and Bayard, like most of the senators, had already announced their opinions. There were 35 certain votes for conviction and three undecided. The first of the undecided was William Pitt Fessenden, a Republican from Maine. ``Mr. Senator Fessenden, how say you?'' Chase asked. ``Not guilty.'' Across the country, crowds packed newspaper offices to get news of each vote as it came over the telegraph. In the White House, Johnson also learned of each vote by a separate telegram. The next undecided voter was Sen. Joseph Fowler. He was from Tennessee, Johnson's home state, but he was a Republican who'd frequently voted against the president. ``Mr. Senator Fowler, how say you?'' Fowler mumbled something that sounded like ``guilty.'' ``Did the court hear his answer?'' a senator called out. Chase asked the question again. ``Not guilty,'' Fowler shouted. Now it all came down to Edmund G. Ross. A Kansas Republican, Ross was new in office, having replaced a senator who had committed suicide in 1866. Ross disliked Johnson and voted against his Reconstruction policies. He'd been seen as a certain vote for conviction until he sided with Johnson supporters on some procedural motions. Since then, he'd been bombarded by mail demanding that he vote to convict. But he worried that conviction would damage the presidency forever. During the vote, he sat at his desk, nervously ripping papers into strips. When his name was called, he stood up and the strips fell to the floor. ``Mr. Senator Ross, how say you?'' ``Not guilty.'' It was over. The president was saved by a single vote. His lawyers sprinted to the White House to bring him the news. Johnson wept with joy. He called for whiskey, poured shots for his lawyers, and they celebrated with a silent toast. Back in the Capitol, the senators elbowed their way through a rowdy crowd. ``Fessenden, you villainous traitor!'' somebody yelled. Fessenden said nothing and kept moving. Too ill to walk, Thaddeus Stevens was carried from the chamber in a chair. Seething with rage, he glared down at the crowd. Someone asked him what had happened. ``The country,'' he screamed, ``is going to the Devil!''

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, Republicans say the underlying issue is not about sex, it is about perjury. Democrats say the underlying issue is about sex, a private consensual relationship, and the President lied about it, possibly committing perjury in the process. But since lying about sex is not an act involved using his official position against the state as Nixon did, Democrats say Clinton's sins do not reach the constitutional standard for impeachment. That is the essence of the arguments we have heard presented by Members of Congress and the Committee on the Judiciary, but underlying the pending Clinton impeachment is neither sex, nor lying, nor perjury, but American history itself. Essentially the same economic and political forces that drove the presidential impeachment process against Andrew Johnson in 1868 are driving the impeachment process 130 years later. There has been a role reversal. The Republicans of 1998 were the Democrats of 1868, but the underlying issue is essentially the same: Reconstruction. The first reconstruction was at issue in 1868; the second reconstruction is at issue in 1998. It could not possibly be about the standard. Congress determined that Mr. Nixon's failure to pay taxes and his lying about failure to pay those taxes did not meet the constitutional standard while felonious. Mr. Clinton's actions, while potentially felonious, does not reach the constitutional standard. So we look to history for the answer. People keep asking me every time I step outside of this Congress why does the African American community keep sticking with Bill Clinton? When legal slavery ended, this is why. There were 9 million people in the old Confederacy which was led by the Democrat Party. Then the Democratic Party was defined in exclusive terms, as slave holders protected by States rights governments. Four million people, southerners, were uneducated, untrained former slaves who wanted to be brought into the mainstream of America, that it include poor and working class whites who wanted to be brought in. The identification of Lincoln and the Republican Party with ending slavery led southern Democrats to refer to Lincoln as the black President and the Republican Party as the black Republican Party. Former Democratic confederates opposed and resisted the big centralized Republican federal government and wanted to get the government off of their States' backs so they could get right back to their old States rights ways. Senator Andrew Johnson was a Tennessee Democrat who had refused to join his southern Democratic Confederates and stayed with the northern Unionists. Lincoln's concern about preserving and re-unifying the Union, the Nation following the war led him to appoint that Democrat to become Vice. When Lincoln was killed, President Johnson focused on putting the Union back together but not on building a more perfect union for all Americans. And unlike Lincoln and the Republicans, he was willing to preserve the Union by leaving some Americans behind, sacrificing the rights and interests of the former slaves. This is why. As a result those northern angry Republicans investigated a vulnerable Johnson, who not unlike Bill Clinton had personal foibles, to try to come up with an excuse to impeach him. It was a partisan attack by Republicans on a Democratic President in order to preserve undertaking the Republicans' first reconstructive economic program. Today's conservative based Republicans' target is not Bill Clinton, it is second reconstruction, especially the liberalism of Democrat President Lyndon Baines Johnson, but also ultimately including the big government economic programs of FDR. Let us not be confused. Today Republicans are impeaching Social Security, they are impeaching affirmative action, they are impeaching women's right to choose, Medicare, Medicaid, Supreme Court Justices who believe in equal protection under the law for all Americans. Something deeper in history is happening than sex, lying about sex and perjury. In 1868 it was about reconstruction, and in 1998 it is still about reconstruction. Republicans say the underlying issue is not about sex, it's about perjury. Democrats say the underlying issue is about sex--a private consensual sexual relationship--and the President lied about it, possibly committing perjury in the process. But since lying about sex is not an act that involved using is official position against the state, as Nixon did, Democrats say, Clinton's sins do not reach the Constitutional standard for impeachment. That is the essence of the argument we heard presented by members of the House Judiciary Committee and voted on along partisan party lines to impeach President Clinton. That is what the current Republicans and Democrats are saying. What will history say? Underlying the pending Clinton impeachment is neither sex, nor lying, nor perjury, but American history itself. Essentially the same elitist economic and political forces that drove the president impeachment process against Andrew Johnson in 1868 are driving the impeachment process 130 years later. There has been a ``role reversal''--the Republicans of 1998 were the Democrats of 1868--but the underlying issue is essentially the same: reconstruction. The First Reconstruction was at issue in 1868, the Second Reconstruction is at issue in 1998. Congress determined that Mr. Nixon's failure to pay taxes, while felonious, did not meet constitutional standards. Mr. Clinton's action while potentially felonies, does not reach the standards so we look to history for the answer. The end of the Civil War and the adoption of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution on December 18, 1865 ended legal slavery, Slavery, the Democratic Party, its geography and its ideology were all defeated. But Lincoln's assassination five days after Appomattox denied him and the Republican Party the opportunity to pursue a ``Big Federal Government'' policy of economic reconstruction and political enfranchisement for all Americans, leaving no American behind. People keep asking me why the black community sticks with Bill Clinton. When legal slavery ended, there were nine million people in the old Confederacy, which was led by the Democratic Party. Then, the Democratic Party was defined in exclusive terms--as slave holders with private property rights (slaves) which were protected legally by ``States' rights'' governments. Four million of the southerners were uneducated and untrained former slaves who needed to be educated, trained and brought into the economic mainstream and politically enfranchised with the right and ability to vote. That didn't include poor and working class whites who had similar needs and had been exploited, manipulated, misused and politically diverted with a focus on social issues (then, perpetuating the fear of interracial sex) by the slave owners to preserve and protect their elite economic system of special interests. Just eight years earlier, in 1857, in the Dred Scott decision, the Court had ruled that blacks had no rights that a white man must respect and that Congress could not outlaw slavery anywhere in the U.S. The Confederacy--its economy, religion, family, social customs, mores and politics--was based and built on the institution of slavery. The Civil War ended slavery, but it did not create a more perfect Union because there were still two outstanding problems: (1) How to bring four million former slaves into the economic mainstream? And (2) How to politically enfranchise them? That was the goal of the First Reconstruction and it's goal has never been realized. Those twin problems have never been completely fixed! The identification of Lincoln and the Republican Party with ending slavery led southern Democrats to refer to Lincoln as the Black President and the Republican Party as the Black Republican Party. So the Rep. J.C. Watts' Republican Party has gone from being known as the Black Republican Party to one Black Republican. ``Former'' Democratic Confederates opposed and resisted the ``Big Centralized Republican Federal Government'' and wanted ``the government off of their states' backs'' so they could go back to their old ``States' Rights'' ways. Senator Andrew Johnson was a Tennessee Democrat who had refused to join his fellow southern Democratic Confederates and stayed with the northern Unionists. Lincoln's concern about preserving and reunifying the nation following the war led our first Republican President to reward Johnson's loyalty by nominating him for Vice President in the 1864 campaign. Lincoln fought a Civil War to preserve the Union and to end slavery. He defeated the southern slave forces militarily at a national cost of 620,000 lives and was prepared to reconstruct the nation with a Republican program of economic inclusion and political enfranchisement. When Lincoln was killed, President Johnson focused on putting the Union back together, but not on building a ``more perfect Union'' for all Americans. Unlike Lincoln and the Republicans, he was willing to preserve the Union by leaving some Americans behind, sacrificing the rights and interests of the former slaves. As a result, angry northern Radical Republicans investigated a vulnerable Johnson--who was not unlike Bill Clinton in terms of his personal foibles--to try to come up with an excuse to impeach him. It was a partisan Republican attack on a Democratic President in order to preserve undertaking the Republicans' First Reconstruction economic program. It was in this context that the historically black colleges and universities were founded. The struggle between these radical progressive northern Republicans and these radical conservative southern Democrats continued following the Civil War, and finally came to a head in the 1876 presidential election and Tilden-Hayes Compromise of 1877--which ended reconstruction. Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, was finally elected President by one vote in the House, but in exchange for pulling out Federal troops protecting the newly freed slaves in the South, and agreeing to appoint conservative Democrats to the Supreme Court. New Democratic Confederates, with the help of new ``black laws'' of discrimination, psychological intimidation, physical violence and murder, were now on their way back to being in power in the South. By 1896, the Supreme Court appointments resulted in Plessy, which ushered in Jim Crow, and by 1901 the first Congressional Black Caucus was completely eliminated from Congress, not to return for three decades. Blacks remained loyal to the Republican Party until 1936, FDR's second term. African Americans were attracted to his New (economic) Deal. Roosevelt defined a new more inclusive Democratic Party by offering an economic agenda that appealed to every American. It is the same white elitist southern forces and their continuing anti-Federal government ideology--except today they are called Republicans--who want, this time, not to preserve but to undue the nation's effort at reconstruction, a Second Reconstruction begun in 1954 with Brown, continued with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act, affirmative action and majority-minority political districts. The southern Democratic Party, with the legacy of the Confederacy, generally found itself on the wrong side of history again in the 1960s. Governors George Wallace of Alabama, Lester Maddox of Georgia and Orville Faubus of Arkansas were all Democrats. Renowned segregationists like Senator Richard Russell of Georgia and Congressman Howard Smith from Virginia were Democrats. Today's Senators Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Richard Shelby of Alabama were originally Dixiecrats, but are now Republicans. Today's conservative southern-based Republicans' target is the Second Reconstruction, especially the ``liberalism'' of Democratic President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, but also ultimately including many of the ``Big Government'' economic programs of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. The real underlying dynamic of this impeachment proceeding is not the removal of Bill Clinton, but the removal of the social and economic programs of the New Deal and the Second Reconstruction of the Great Society, a weakening of the Big Federal Government generally, and the destruction of liberalism as a viable political ideology in particular. Whether these conservative anti-Federal government Republicans are successful or not will be determined by history. There will be a few pro-impeachment Democrats thrown in for good measure because, politically, they must factor in the old Democratic forces in the South, now controlled by the Republicans. The Republican impeachment strategy can only be measured by future elections. Will the American people be led astray again by the Republicans' new sex diversion or will a strong political leader be able to get them to focus on their real economic interests of full employment, comprehensive and universal health care, affordable housing and a quality public education? History--not President Clinton or the current crop of Democrats and Republicans--will render that judgment! The political and ideological roots of this anti-reconstruction and anti-more-perfect-union crowd is in the South, though its tentacles have spread beyond the South. This Republican impeachment effort allows us to look at the roots, dynamic and current political structure of this conservative political movement. Begin with the Judiciary Committee. Ten of the eighteen Republican members of the Judiciary Committee are ultra-conservatives from former Confederate states. In the middle of the impeachment hearings, one of them, Bob Barr of Georgia, was exposed for having recently spoken before a white supremacist group. Move on to the House Republican leadership. The Speaker is Newt Gingrich (R-GA), whose history is laced with not-so-subtle new racial code words, and the Speaker-elect is Bob Livingston (R-LA). There styles are different, but their substances is essentially the same. Both abdicated their leadership roles in the impeachment crisis only to have another southern conservative, Rep. Tom ``The Hammer'' DeLay (R-TX), fill the void. He is intimidating and forcing Republicans, not to vote against censure, but to vote with their party on a procedural vote--which, in essence, is a vote to kill a vote of conscience for censure. In addition, call the roll of House leadership and committee chairmanships in the 105th Congress: Richard Armey (TX), Majority Leader; Bill Archer (TX), Ways and Means; Bob Livingston (LA), Appropriations; Floyd Spence (SC), National Security; Thomas Bliley (VA), Commerce; Porter Goss (FL), Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Add to that the 105th Republican controlled Senate: Trent Lott (MS), Senate Majority Leader; Strom Thurmond (SC), President Pro Tem (3rd in line to be President), Chairman, Armed Services; Jesse Helms (NC), Senate Foreign Relations; John Warner (VA), Rules; Richard Shelby (AL), Select Committee on Intelligence. Today in Congress there are more people arguing on behalf of states' rights than there are people arguing on behalf of building a more perfect union. But don't stop there. Look at who will preside as Chief Justice over an impeachment trial in the Senate--the ultimate conservative states' righter, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Nominated to the Court by Nixon and elevated to Chief Justice by Reagan, this intellectually gifted conservative, when clerk for Justice Robert H. Jackson between 1952 and 1953, wrote a memorandum arguing in favor of upholding the ``separate but equal'' doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson in preparation for the 1954 decision on Brown. As a conservative Phoenix lawyer, he appeared as a witness before the Phoenix City Council in opposition to a public accommodations ordinance and took part in a program of challenging African American voters at the polls. From 1969 until 1971, he served as assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel. In that position, he supported executive authority to order wiretapping and surveillance without a court order, no-knock entry by the police, preventive detention and abolishing the exclusionary rule, that is, a rule to dismiss evidence gathered in an illegal way. As a member of the Burger Court, Rehnquist played a crucial role in reviving the debate regarding the relationship between the federal government and the states. The consequences of Rehnquist's state- centered federalism surfaced dramatically in the area of individual rights. Since the 1960s, the Court had held that nearly every provision in the Bill of Rights applies to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Rehnquist voiced his disagreement with such a method of determining the constitutional requirements of state action, particularly in the context of criminal proceedings, urging a return to an earlier approach whereby the states were not required to comply with the Bill of Rights but only to treat individuals with ``fundamental fairness.'' Likewise, Rehnquist narrowly construed the Fourteenth Amendment's mandate to the states not to deny any person the equal protection of the laws. He contended that all that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment hoped to achieve with the Equal Protection Clause was to prevent the states from treating black and white citizens differently. The most important value for Rehnquist is his state-centered federalism, followed by private property and individual rights. In other words, his current views are consistent with the core of the states' rights legal philosophy a century-and-a-half ago, where the individual right to own property (slaves) was to be protected by a states' rights government! To capture a new political base, Republicans abandoned the essence of Lincoln and decided to go after Dixie, using social issues as cover for their narrow economic interests. Barry Goldwater launched this modern conservative anti-Federal government movement with his 1964 presidential campaign. Ronald Reagan picked it up and sent the same signal by launching his southern campaign from Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1980, in the name of states' rights, where two Jews and a Black were murdered in the name of states' rights fighting for the right to vote. Now Republicans want to complete Mr. Gingrich's 1994 ``Revolution of Devolution'' by defeating and eliminating the twin evil forces of ``liberalism'' and ``Big Government'' in the 2000 election. The Republicans know that if the President is impeached in the House, he will not be convicted in the Senate. They don't want him convicted and out of office, with President Al Gore given two years to solidify his hold on the White House. They want an impeached, but not convicted, President twisting in the wind for two years leading up to the 2000 election. This is a continuation of the November 3, 1998, strategy of the Republican hard liners to motivate and build their conservative ``social values'' political base as a dimersion from economic justic issues. What the Republicans want out of this impeachment crisis is a ``family values'' issue for the 2000 presidential campaign. They want to say that Clinton's sexual misconduct is the result of the ``decadent values'' of the 1960's and liberalism generally. In other words, in some form, the Lewinsky matter will become a Republican ``wedge issue'' in the 2000 campaign. The fact that African Americans are so closely identified with both President Clinton and liberal ``Big Government'' programs fits perfectly with their consistent use of race to divide the electorate in presidential campaigns. They can send the subliminal race signal while publicly denying they are using race as an issue in the campaign. So far the Republicans have gotten away with it and they have not been impeached for lying about it. The Republican goal in 2000 is to use this strategy to retain control of the House and Senate and to gain control of the White House. They can then appoint their hardcore conservative right wing friends to the Supreme Court after 2001. We will be treated to Kenneth Starr clones as nominees to the Supreme Court. Remember, Kenneth Starr's ambition before being sullied by the Lewinsky affair was to be appointed to the Supreme Court. Republicans in control of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the Federal government could turn the clock back to a twenty-first century version of the good old States' Rights days of the 1850s and the 1896 ``separate but equal'' days of Plessy v. Ferguson. By putting impeachment in the legislative rather than the judicial branch of government, the Constitution deliberately made it a political-legal affair. Republicans have done in 1998, what Democrats did in 1868. They have used the political-legal nature of the impeachment process to turn it into a political--political affair to further their anti-Big Government aims. Republicans are trying to impeach reconstruction. President Clinton risked all of that history of social and economic progress by lying about an issue of personal satisfaction. He has not committed treason as defined by the Constitution as an impeachable offense. His treason is against our cause of building a more perfect union. After economic and socially conservative Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter (an economic conservative, but more liberal socially), Reagan and Bush, a moderate-to-conservative southern Democrat, President Clinton, has helped to prepare an economic bridge which would allow us to again begin to work on some of the unfinished and unreconstructed tasks of the Civil War. Monica Lewinsky has now reduced the defense of that agenda to a defense of him. Today Republicans are trying to impeach Social Security, affirmative action, the right to choose, Medicare, Medicaid, Supreme Court justices who believe in equal protection under the law for all Americans, public education for all over vouchers for some, universal and comprehensive health coverage over medical savings accounts for the few, affordable housing for all, versus mansions for a select few in an effort to win elections. Clinton launched a dialogue to talk about race, but the real race dialogue is what could potentially happen to economic reconstruction in 2001 if this reactionary Republican strategy works. Clinton has worked hard to separate the race dialogue from the economic dialogue--joining with the Republicans in 1997, and ignoring his strongest liberal supporters today, by cutting a budget deal to balance the budget with the conservative Republicans. That deal assures that there will not be enough money to fix our historic problem. He has reduced his own defense to a personal defense instead of a defense of history. Something deeper in history than sex, lying and perjury is at issue here--just as something deeper in history than the removal of a cabinet secretary was a stake in 1868. At stake in 1868 was the First Reconstruction. At stake in 1998 is the Second Reconstruction. The struggle taking place in Congress and nationally today is between those political forces who want to build a more perfect union for all Americans, leaving no American behind, and those who want to return an elitist economic program of more perfect ``States' Rights'' for the few. That is what underlies the impeachment crisis.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me, and I rise today, Mr. Speaker, to pay tribute to a distinguished legislator, a paragon of virtue and a national treasure, Congressman Sidney Yates from my home State of Illinois. I am deeply saddened that Mr. Yates will be leaving the House of Representatives at the end of this term. I join my colleagues in thanking this truly remarkable man for his invaluable contribution to this Nation. Mr. Yates was first elected in 1948, and for 4 decades he has served as a member of the Committee on Appropriations. As the Member who coined the appropriations moniker, ``College of Cardinals'', he has spent 20 years as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Interior of the Committee on Appropriations and has been a staunch advocate for the arts and defender of the environment. Mr. Yates embodies all that is just and virtuous about public service. Through his exemplary tenure, Sid Yates has typified what it truly means to be called ``the honorable''. Mr. Yates has been considerate to me, generous with his time, and extremely helpful to me as a new legislator. On December 14th, 1995, Mr. Yates introduced me, after I took the oath of office, and has continued to serve as a guide and a teacher. As the dean of the Illinois delegation, he has proved inspiring by his courageous and principled stands on issues and legislation, despite great pressures to do otherwise. I believe I speak for everyone in this body by thanking him for his leadership, public service, experience and wisdom. I will miss my good friend and trusted mentor, and I wish him and his family the very best as they embark upon the next chapter of their lives. I want to take this opportunity to thank my colleagues, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rush), and certainly the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Lipinski), for being considerate enough to yield to me this time and for hosting this special order on behalf of Mr. Yates.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding time, and I want to thank the chairman of the full committee for his indulgence. I rise in strong support of the Pelosi amendment. I would encourage this Congress to move as quickly as it possibly can to fully replenish the International Monetary Fund. I was here when the chairman of the full committee the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Livingston) indicated that indeed the Russians had suggested, or a Russian had suggested that they conned the International Monetary Fund out of $20 billion. But we now know that when Mr. Greenspan came before the full Banking Committee yesterday and asked for this Congress to replenish the International Monetary Fund to the tune of $18 billion that the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board was not conning us yesterday. He recognizes that there are indeed turbulent roads in our economy on the horizon and it is very important that this Congress react with due haste and due speed to make indeed the necessary appropriations. Let us not just measure what is taking place in financial terms. Let us also measure what is taking place in human terms. Indonesia was on the brink of Civil War because, in part, of this Congress' inability to act. We need to save our own economy but the world as well.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, with a heavy heart I come before you today. On Friday, July 24, we lost two members of our congressional family: Capitol Police Officer Jacob J. Chestnut and Special Agent John Gibson. Although tragic, these men died in service to their nation, in service to us. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, ``Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.'' With faith and trust in God and the help of family and friends the Chestnut and Gibson families will endure this seemingly unbearable time. I hope that the families of these two men--genuine American heroes--take comfort in knowing that their husbands, their fathers, their brothers, their sons, did not die in vain. By laying down their lives, these two men upheld our most cherished principles of liberty and democracy. I speak for all Americans when I say I am grateful for and honored by their courage, service and sacrifice. While we mourn their death, we also celebrate the lives of Officer Chestnut and Special Agent Gibson. All Americans can rest assured that their freedom and the future of this great land remain intact because Officers Chestnut and Gibson died preserving liberty so that we may survive in freedom. We all are forever indebted to them. On behalf of the people of the Second District of Illinois, I thank Officers Chestnut and Gibson for giving the ultimate sacrifice so that all Americans can sleep tonight under a security blanket of freedom. Their earthly lives may have drawn to a close, but their lives with God are eternal. Psalm 30 reminds us that ``Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.''

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, just about a week or so ago I told Congressman Stokes that I had been preparing remarks for this occasion. The truth of the matter is, Mr. Stokes, I really do not want to say goodbye, and that is the honest to God truth. On the day that Congressman Stokes was born, February 23, 1925, there was no African-American representation in the United States Congress. In fact, there had not been for a quarter of a century since January 1 of 1901, when George White of South Carolina said that, ``One day, Phoenix-like, we will be back.'' There had been 22 African-Americans that had served in Congress between 1870 and 1901, the first Congressional Black Caucus, but we did not return until Oscar DePriest, a Republican from Illinois, won the election in November of 1928. Louis Stokes at that time was 4 years old. Forty years later, Louis Stokes was elected to the United States Congress on his first bid for public office, the first and only African-American ever elected to Congress from the Buckeye, or as the politics were known 130 years ago, the butternut State of Ohio. I am the 91st African-American ever elected to Congress. Congressman Stokes was elected to the 91st Congress and has served 15 consecutive terms 30 years since then. I was 3 years old when he came to this institution. For perspective, there are been 11,544 Americans to serve in Congress, and only 103 African-Americans have ever had the privilege of serving in the Congress and in the Senate. Of the 103 African-Americans who have served in Congress, Lou Stokes, Mr. Stokes, is a world historical figure. As a founding member of the second and current Congressional Black Caucus and as the Chairman of the CBC's Brain Trust on Health, he is the leading African for addressing health care needs in African- American communities. To his leadership on the special Committee on Intelligence, investigating the possible conspiratorial deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr. and President John F. Kennedy, to his current role as the third ranking minority member on the Committee on Appropriations, to the ranking minority members of the Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development and Independent Agencies, to his 11th ranking seniority among all Members of Congress, to his ninth ranking membership amongst all Democrats, to the recent passage on June 9, 1998 of H.R. 1635, the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Act, he has been a good man and an effective legislator. With elections every 2 years for 435 Members of this body, some Members come and go having never left their mark or impacting the lives of their constituents. But as a result of his 10 tours in this body, our young people can grow up with greater expectations and brighter futures, with more health care options, with better affordable housing options and more equal educational opportunities. I am here today to say thank you to Lou Stokes, thank you because there have been in his 30 years no letdowns, no scandals, no public embarrassment, no funny money, nothing that has shamed us. Nothing that is associated with the name ``Mr. Lou Stokes'' that brings a lack of dignity to those of us who long so hard for the opportunity to serve. So, I cannot honor Mr. Stokes enough. When I first came to Congress all of my colleagues said, please call me by my first name because we are colleagues now. Chairman Lewis says, call me Jerry and Ray LaHood says, call me Ray, and Roemer says, call me Tim, and others want to be called by their first name. But I always called Chairman Stokes Mr. Stokes. Why? Because I cannot thank him enough for all of the health care that he has fought for, for all of the options that he has fought to open up America for more people; I cannot thank him for every affordable housing fight that he participated in. I cannot thank him for every dollar that he appropriated for historically black colleges. I cannot thank him enough for all that he has done for so many families, for people that do not even know his name, I cannot say thank you enough. So the only way that I have honored Mr. Stokes is by calling him Mr. Stokes.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment. The chairman argues that no one can be against local flexibility and control. The reason for the 1937 housing law was because local communities were not addressing the scope of the housing dilemma in this country. H.R. 2 is a very unique bill. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1937, looked at housing law and treated it as a human right. H.R. 2 treats housing as a privilege in exchange for community work. The problem with this bill is it treats poor people differently than others. There is no mandate of community work for homeowners who have a mortgage tax deduction, who receive farm subsidies, food stamps, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, LIHEAP, corporate welfare, Fannie Mae, or loan guarantees. No, not since the Civil War have we imposed upon a group of Americans that in exchange for their Federal benefit they must volunteer without compensation. What is the government doing making a law about volunteerism? The government of the United States is under no obligation to force its citizens, in exchange for their Federal benefits, to volunteer. Mandating volunteerism is an oxymoron, and we should vote against this bill because it is simply wrong.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, let me first begin by associating myself with the remarks of all the speakers who have preceded. I want, for the 50 seconds or so that I have left, to address my remarks to the people of Jasper. They are hearing today the outrage of people across the United States, through their elected representatives, of what has occurred in their part of the country. But they alone in Jasper share the burden and responsibility, the pain of rebuilding the spirit and the soul of their community. It is now their obligation to move beyond black and white, rebuilding the hopes of every child in Jasper whose self-esteem will be questioned by the entire country because of the acts of just a few. So our colleagues today have come across the lines, Democrat and Republican, across lines of black and white, of liberal and conservative, to let you know that we are with you. We pray for you and the Byrd family during this very difficult time. Justice, we hope, is swift. We hope it is accurate. There was a time when laws did not protect people who were dragged across our streets, but we have laws on the books now that can make the difference.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to call attention to a contradiction in market economics. About 2 weeks ago, American consumers were told that oil prices had hit a record low, and last Tuesday the New York Times reported that crude oil prices rose 13 percent on the basis of a pledge to cut the supply. Thirteen percent was the biggest one-day rise in oil prices since the Persian Gulf War more than 7 years ago, yet there was no national or international crisis that precipitated the rise to 13 percent. There is presently an oversupply of oil on the market. One would expect prices to be low and stay that way until demand overtakes supply. But this is not a rise in price because of a reduction of the supply or increase in demand. That just simply could not happen in a week. This is not a response to the market. This is a reaction to the promise, the promise, of cuts in crude oil supplies. From my perspective, this is raw greed. For those Americans who are observing this process today, there is not one product that I can imagine, that many of us can imagine, that is not impacted by the price of crude oil, from our cars, motors, our engines, to the suit that I am wearing, to the tie that I am wearing, to our socks, to our shoes, to paper products, to all plastics, to paint, to chemical manufacturing, to computers. You have name it, just about every product that we produce in our Nation has some oil-based content. So today the Federal Reserve Board will meet to set interest rates. If they raise interest rates because they think oil prices will be low and overheat the economy, the economy will simply slow and the oil companies will make out like bandits. With the mere promise of higher oil prices, they can continue to produce oil in a glutted market, charge higher prices and, clearly, make out like bandits. So if the Federal Reserve Board today meets to raise interest rates, and therefore slow down growth of the U.S. economy, please do not blame the Democrats and, for that matter, do not even blame the Republicans. Just blame the oil companies, who happen to be Republicans.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I would ask the gentleman, is he aware in the bill of any African countries losing foreign aid they are now receiving unless they adopt the economic reforms dictated in this bill?

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. If those businesses are found to be discriminatory at home, not hiring African Americans, then it is problematic for the bill; is it not?

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, I am very concerned about majority participation, i.e. African Americans, in the African trade bill. If the gentleman would indicate any provision of the bill for the general audience about how African-American shipping companies and businesses are participants in this bill, I would be grateful for an answer. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois

Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Let me first thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Royce) and the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez) for this opportunity. I want to thank all of my colleagues for their participation in this discussion which I suspect will be a fruitful debate. This is an historic day as this Congress discusses and debates U.S. trade with Africa on the House floor. As my colleague noted, I was born on March 11, 1965, and on December 12, 1995, I was elected to Congress as the 91st African-American to serve in this House. There have only been 102 African-Americans elected to Congress out of a total of 11,541 Americans. Ninety-eight have been in the House, 4 elected to the Senate and 2 this last century, including 2 this century, Carol Moseley-Braun, the only African-American woman to ever serve in the Senate. This occasion to debate a respectful and reciprocal trade relation with Africa is a test of fate for the 60 million Africans taken from their native shores and forced to make the transatlantic voyage. It is because of that history that we are compelled to strenuously critique and analyze this bill. So I am periodically, Mr. Speaker, going to raise questions of some of my colleagues on the other side and this side that I hope will be taken in the spirit within which we have engaged in this discourse.