Ed Markey

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kucinich].

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the majority leader for yielding. I want to begin by congratulating the majority leader. This is a wonderful award, the Freedom Works Award, and I think he is doing excellent work in helping to single out ``Touched By An Angel'' and ``Promised Land'' and Martha Williamson and the work which she is doing in this area. I cannot give him enough praise for helping to create something like this that does focus upon that which should be given special honor. Television has been called a vast wasteland and it struggles every day to find a balance between America's insatiable appetite for escape and its extraordinary capacity to teach. Entertainment programming in particular often panders to the familiar human desire to turn the brain off simply by turning the tube on. Yet as a mass medium, television has the greatest potential since the dawn of civilization for prodding society to confront its troubles and to look within for a renewal of the values of community and caring. This potential is usually realized in news or documentary formats or in made-for-television specials, but not in regularly scheduled entertainment programming. Yet out of this tension, there occasionally rises programming that breaks the mold, that finds the balance but projects a level of quality and thoughtfulness that transcends its format and sets a new standard for the rest of the industry. Martha Williamson and her colleagues have accomplished as much with the creation of these two excellent shows. They get high ratings, but they send a positive family message out to America. I recently discovered that the poet Maya Angelou wrote a poem especially for ``Touched By An Angel.'' It closes with these lines: ``Yet it is only love which sets us free.'' I want to congratulate Martha and everyone who works on this program for having the courage to send this simple message to every American home each week. I congratulate CBS for having the courage of putting these two programs on. The outstanding public response to them is evidence that their judgment was correct. In conclusion, once again I want to congratulate the majority leader for taking the leadership in creating this award.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I am voting ``no''. Here's why: 1. This deal increases the deficit. We should not un-balance the budget now for the sake of balancing it 5 years from now. The purpose of passing this legislation was supposed to be to balance the budget. I support that goal. In fact, since 1993, when I supported the Clinton budget package against the vote of every Republican in the House, the deficit has been going down. But if we approve this latest budget deal, we will, according to its authors, make the deficit worse, not better, next year. But that's not all. It has been apparent to me since March that revenue projections used by both the administration and the Congress have grossly underestimated the amount of revenue flowing into the Treasury recently. The deficit for this fiscal year has been re- estimated twice already, reducing it dramatically from over $100 billion to less than $45 billion. We have not seen deficits this low for 20 years. At this rate, the budget will be balanced in 1998, not 2002. In order to ensure that the final budget agreement reflected a true snapshot of current reality, I asked OMB to provide its overdue mid-year estimates before we had to vote on the agreement. OMB refused. OMB finds the truth inconvenient, but the truth is that we have a better chance of balancing the budget without a deal than with one. Let's not turn our backs on the goal of a balanced budget just as we are about to reach that promised land. 2. The tax cuts go to the wrong people for the wrong purpose. Targeted tax credits for worthy purposes can be justified, even in the absence of a balanced budget, as long as they are going to people in need. But the vast majority of these tax cuts will go to people who are not needy. Like Pacman, the wealthiest 5 percent of all Americans gobble up half of the benefits. The wealthiest 20 percent gobble up over 70 percent of the benefits. In fact, the lowest-income Americans are expected to pay more, not less, under this bill. Is this fair? Is this moral? Is this wise? The only justification for fattening the pocketbooks of the very wealthy has been some notion of stimulating the economy by favoring the tax treatment of long-term investments. But we don't need a stimulus. In fact, any artificial stimulus to this very healthy economy is likely to trigger a move by the Federal Reserve Board to raise interest rates. Higher interest rates are a tax on all of us. We should not ask to be thrown into that briar patch. 3. We are cutting deep so the rich can keep. The more we give back to the wealthiest individuals in this society the deeper we have to cut in spending programs that benefit everyone else. This is a time to ask those with high incomes to shoulder more of the burden of deficit reduction, not less. As many commentators have noted, we have some major decisions ahead regarding the solvency of Medicare and Social Security as our population ages and our employment pool shrinks. Prudence dictates that we devote resources to solving those intractable problems. Today, we compound them. In short, there are many good things in this package that I support, and it is always difficult to vote against a package that has much good mixed in with the bad. But I cannot in good conscience engage in the pretense of balancing a budget that is already balanced as a vehicle for a tax cut that is so unfair to average Americans. 4. Telecommunications provisions of the budget. The telecommunications proposals contained in the budget do not represent good telecommunications policy. In fact, they contain appalling precedents, highly-flawed assumptions, and radical departures from established, sound telecommunications policy--all in the name of raising cash for the U.S. Treasury. The blame for this lies with an overzealous desire to appear to balance the budget at any cost-- including the use of highly speculative and likely fraudulent spectrum numbers and the disruption of the universal service system. The blame for this lies with the ranks of ``budgeteers'' who have little knowledge of telecommunications issues and apparently no respect for telecommunications policy. The telecommunications budget proposals accelerate the dumping of more spectrum on the market in the immediate aftermath of having already sold airwave frequencies for PCS, paging and other wireless services. It should be clear that much of the money that is expected from the auctions that we have already had may not ever show up in the Treasury because multitudes of winning bidders are already struggling to find the capital to build out their networks. In a recent FCC auction forced by budget priorities, many wireless franchises covering entire States sold for a mere dollar. That auction raised only $13 million out of the $1.8 billion it was expected to raise. And today we have another budget-driven proposal that attempts to raise billions and billions more from the sale of the airwaves. It is pure fantasy. Moreover, this policy will adversely affect our ability to democratize the holding of radio licenses. In the 1993 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act [OBRA 93] we built in provisions to help minorities, women, and entrepreneurs to gain access to the airwaves. By placing the highest societal value on the highest amount of cold hard cash that can be raised at auction we are subverting other important telecommunications policy objectives. On July 23, eight Democratic members of the House Telecommunications Subcommittee joined me in writing the FCC about this issue. We wrote that we are concerned about the increasing emphasis placed upon spectrum auction revenue to assist in balancing the Federal budget and that that placing budgetary priorities foremost in Commission licensing decisions ultimately shortchanges the American public because spectrum allocation and licensing decisions must encompass a broad interpretation of the public interest, of which taxpayer interests are but one part. In our view, a short-term, temporary injection of cash into the Federal treasury for the purpose of achieving revenue goals for an arbitrary 5-year budget target serves budgetary interests, but it does not necessarily serve the broader public interest. In particular, we wrote that budget policy pressures may unwittingly work to thwart the ability of women and minority-owned firms to become spectrum licensees. Diversity in mass media licensing has been shown to play an important role in providing programming that reflects the community and its interests. In our letter we noted that this fundamental goal is not only supported by Congress, but also by President Clinton. As he recently said in his commencement remarks at the University of California-San Diego June 14: ``We must continue to expand opportunity. Full participation in our strong and growing economy is the best antidote to envy, despair, and racism. We must press forward to move millions more from poverty and welfare to work; to being the spark of enterprise to inner cities . . . We should not stop trying to equalize economic opportunity.'' Third, I want to mention the spectrum sale and its dubious budgetary numbers. The sale of frequencies from the returned analog broadcast TV channels is scheduled for the year 2001. The actual return of that spectrum to the FCC will not occur until 6 years later--in 2007. The proposal then allows broadcasters to continue to operate on their analog channels if the FCC grants waivers. Think about that--that's the equivalent of asking business and entrepreneurs to pony up money today for airwave rights they won't see until 2003 and then in 2003 a determination may be made to extend that indefinitely. Who is going to bid anything for these frequencies? At the subcommittee and committee markup on the legislation, I offered an amendment to try to achieve greater certainty to the broadcasters, the spectrum bidders, and to consumers. The amendment would have required that after 2001, when the so-called returned analog spectrum has been auctioned, that all TV's sold in the United States must be dual use capable. In other words, they have to be able to pick up and display both analog and digital signals. This will make the transition in the consumer market to digital technology more rapid. This in turn, would increase the likelihood that bidders in 2001 would get the airwaves they won at auction sometime during their lifetimes. The legislation also contains policy changes that promote media concentration at the local level. As many of my colleagues know, during consideration of the Telecommunications Act, I battled the mass media concentration provisions of the bill and successfully amended the bill on the House floor to help protect localism and diversity. The budget provisions will allow local broadcasters to bid on the spectrum that is returned even if this returned spectrum were to be reallocated for broadcast use. During consideration of the Telecommunications Act, Congress rejected repeal of the TV duopoly rule, which had been part of the House-passed legislation. The conference committee on the Telecommunications Act refused to accede to repeal of the duopoly rule because of concern from many members and the administration about the very real threat to localism and diversity posed by deregulating in this manner. This concern, incidentally, has been borne out by the experience in the radio market in the aftermath of the sweeping deregulation of radio ownership rules contained in the Telecommunications Act. The NTIA has noted that adverse effects on minority ownership, and diversity in general, that has resulted from the radio ownership provisions. I strongly oppose the provisions in the budget agreement that would allow stations in the top markets to bid on returned spectrum reallocated for broadcasting. The budget agreement waives the duopoly rule to allow broadcasters to bid on spectrum and thereby own two TV stations in a local market. It is important to note however, as the FCC considers regulatory rules governing local TV ownership, the intent of Congress in this area. First, the conference committee on the Telecommunications Act duly considered and rejected repeal of the TV duopoly rule just over a year ago. Second, the budget's telecommunications provisions only permit a waiver of the TV duopoly prohibition at a point 4 or 5 years from now, and then, only in the largest TV markets. Moreover, this future waiver of the rule is quite limited in that it reflect's Congress' intent to only allow such limited waivers in the largest markets when we are adding outlets to the market. Even so it represents, in my opinion, unfortunate telecommunications policymaking. Finally, the budgetary legerdermain entailed by tampering with the universal service system to cynically pretend to balance the budget is terrible policy and precedent. This will directly affect telephone ratepayers around the country adversely. The universal service system was created to ensure that affordable telephone service would be available to all Americans. It has successfully resulted in achieving a 93-percent phone penetration rate in the Nation--the highest in the world. I strongly oppose this unprecedented gimmick of utilizing the universal service system as a budgetary gap-filler.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Not at this time.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, there are so many red herrings that are tossed out in a debate like this that we might as well put an aquarium down in the well to contain them all as they are swimming around in this debate. Mr. Chairman, this is a technology which makes it possible to extract highly enriched uranium. Highly enriched uranium can be used to make nuclear bombs. Terrorists can find the designs for the building of nuclear bombs on the Internet. It took me 10 minutes tonight to find the documents titled ``Documentation and Design of an Atom Bomb'' on the Internet; 10 minutes. What are they missing? They are missing the enriched uranium. What this technology does is make it possible for enriched uranium to be extracted from a very small, very simple process that our Government is funding. Now, we have had a 25-year policy in the United States against reprocessing, and it is a policy that we try to spread across the rest of the globe. Now, what do we gain by having this tiny project, for our purposes, be funded in the United States, having it be viewed by other countries in the rest of the world who view us as hypocrites for developing reprocessing technologies, and for the long-term not expect those countries then to seek to emulate us? Mr. Chairman, if we are in fact going to be realistic about the post- cold war era that we live in, we live in a world of deregulation. The United States and Soviet Union can no longer control the rest of the world. So as a result these issues of nonproliferation loom larger in our future. Do we voluntarily want to undertake policies that gut a 25-year message we have sent to the rest of the world that we are not going to reprocess spent fuel in a way that can create nuclear bomb grade material? Mr. Chairman, I think that is not the right direction for our country to be heading into the 21st century. That is why I urge a yes vote on the Markey amendment. We do this because for no other purpose we must begin to seriously discuss in our country the real threats of the 21st century, the threats of nuclear materials going from Russia into Iran, from China into Pakistan or into Iraq. We must begin to discuss what we ourselves can do to give the world leadership on this issue. If we here tonight continue to fund a project which is nothing more than a leftover from the breeder reactor debates of the 1970s and 1980s, then yes, for a very short period of time we might be able vampirelike to allow this program to suck the budgetary life's blood out of the taxpayers' pockets. But, Mr. Chairman, we will also be sending a message to a couple of dozen countries in the world that there is a technology that perhaps they as well should start to think about availing themselves of, and this technology will come back to haunt us because the next ayatollah could in fact have nuclear weapons. The process that they use could very well be this process. The internet tells them how to build it. We should not in any way send a message that we think is appropriate for it to be built. That is why I make this amendment this evening. That is why the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Shays] and the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Foley] make this amendment this evening. It is that we begin the process ourselves of giving the world leadership on an issue that for several decades the United States and Soviet Union turned their backs. It is now time that we turn to this issue. We are never going to blow ourselves up, the United States and the Soviet Union. What is 10 times more likely to happen is that a terrorist or a Third World country will gain access to this technology and then we will reap the whirlwind. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey so much for yielding to me.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, this is an amendment which I am making with the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Shays] and the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Foley], along with the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Spratt], the gentleman from Oregon [Mr. DeFazio], and the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Andrews]. It is an amendment that is going to attempt to deal with a technology which is called pyroprocessing, which is bad energy policy, bad environmental policy, bad budget policy, and bad nonproliferation policy. Friends, colleagues, countrymen, lend me your ears. We come to bury pyroprocessing, not to praise it. The evil that dead government programs do lives after them, while the good is oft interred with their bones. So it is with pyroprocessing. Pyroprocessing is the last living remnant of one of the biggest budget-busting boondoggles in congressional history, the failed breeder reactor program. Pyroprocessing is not exactly a household word. In fact, if Members do not have a degree in physics they may not understand what it is, but it is in fact a chemical procedure by which separation of plutonium and uranium is in fact achieved, and the building blocks of nuclear bombs are in fact made available to those who have the technology. There is in fact a secondary definition in the Webster's Dictionary for pyroprocessing, which is a very efficient and fast way for burning money, taxpayers' money, with boondoggle projects that have been left over as remnants from nuclear projects of the 1970's and the 1980's. This is an amendment which is endorsed by the Citizens for a Sound Economy, by the Taxpayers for Common Sense, by the League of Conservation Voters, by the Physicians for Social Responsibility, by the Natural Resources Defense Council, by the Friends of the Earth, and by arms control groups such as the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Nuclear Control Institute, and it is on the top 10 list of the Green Scissors wasteful, environmentally destructive programs that they believe should be cut out of the Federal budget. What more do Members want? Just about every leading budget, environmental, energy, and nonproliferation group in America says this is a bad idea, but it lives on because in fact we need someplace, I guess, that we can have some of the leftover nuclear scientists who have been left behind from the nuclear arms age to continue to work. Mr. Chairman, the reality here is that pyroprocessing, according to the Department of Energy, is a piece of equipment that is about the size of a bathtub. Its original purpose was to be attached to the back of the breeder reactor, a nuclear reactor that could create more plutonium and highly enriched uranium than it burned. Pyroprocessing technology would reprocess the spent fuel and extract as much of the bomb-usable leftovers as possible. That way, reasoned the nuclear industry, we could produce lots and lots of cheap nuclear electricity and still make more nuclear fuel once we pyroprocess the uranium and plutonium out of the spent fuel. We all know what an oxymoron the phrase ``cheap nuclear energy'' has become, and in 1994, after the Cold War ended, we found ourselves with 50 tons of extra plutonium that we did have to still get rid of. Congress decided that pouring more money into the multi-billion-dollar sinkhole that was the breeder reactor program was just pointless, so we killed that program. Pyroprocessing should have been terminated along with the nuclear breeder reactor, but instead it has metamorphosed into something new but just as deadly. It entered the Federal witless protection program, hiding out in a DOE safe house. Advocates contend that the new pyro identity was that the program would be a good way to treat DOE spent nuclear fuel before it went into permanent storage at Yucca Mountain. They said it was the only way to treat that fuel in order to make it stable for permanent burial. They said pyroprocessing would take care of everything. They were wrong.

Mr. MARKEY. The 5-minute rule? There is no time limitation?

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, may I make an inquiry? What is the parliamentary procedure we are operating under now?

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote and, pending that, I make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. I yield to the gentleman from Oklahoma.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me, and I ask the Members of the other side if they would please not have this amendment pass. These are two great programs, the Man and the Biosphere and the World Heritage Recognition Program are both wonderful programs that make America proud without restricting our laws in any manner, shape, or form. Please, anyone who is listening to this debate, we must reject this amendment.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to proceed for 1 additional minute.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I am Irish and my points are made by parables. So my colleagues have to sit back. If they just wait a little bit, there is a point to the story. So the book entitled ``The Day After Roswell'' purportedly documents the U.S. Government's real cold war against the extraterrestrial biological entities. To my great relief, the book does say that the deployment of our space-based advanced particle beam weapon has scared the aliens away for now. So I think it is a particularly auspicious month, this 50th anniversary, for us to be debating this issue out on the floor, because clearly it is going to take its rightful place at the center of paranoid conspiratorial theories. There is no infringement on State or local or national laws in any way. These are just designations that the country itself embraces. Now, for reasons that make about as much sense as that we are communicating with little green men telepathically into outer space, we now have a discussion over this subject. What is the plan? What is the plot? The plot is that Secretary Bruce Babbitt of the Department of the Interior is playing a role, coordinated with the U.N., UNESCO continues to be mentioned out here, to coordinate the subordination of American land to international authorities, compromising the local zoning, the State zoning laws all across our country, and Bruce Babbitt is part of this conspiracy. Who does he work with? He clearly works with Bill Richardson, our Ambassador in the U.N. What State is he from? New Mexico. Think about it. Where is Roswell? Is Richardson a Hispanic name? I do not think so. Where did he come from? And why is he participating in this conspiracy at the U.N. to subordinate the local and State zoning laws of our country. We do not have any evidence, of course, as yet of a single local or State zoning law having been changed, despite the many years that this process has taken place, but yet we are supposed to believe that this theory, along with other theories of black helicopters with U.N. troops flying over public lands in the United States, continuing to operate without the detection of ordinary Americans.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, we are.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words, and I rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, this amendment that we are debating right now divides into two parts. One part deals with the Man and The Biosphere Program. The other deals with the World Heritage sites. That basically designates areas of countries that the countries are really quite proud of, in our country, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and it goes on a list. The list is one that kind of makes the whole country feel proud. If a travel magazine was listing the top 10 sites to visit in the United States, any one of these places would be thrilled to have their names on the list, but because the United Nations is participating in this process, there is some kind of threat that there is an international conspiracy to somehow or other take over the local rights of citizens in the United States, when in fact there is absolutely no infringement upon the local or the State or the national laws of the United States by having either one of these designations made, either the Biosphere or the World Heritage sites. I think that what might be going on here is that we might in fact be engaging in a bit of, I think there is a term for it but essentially it is an anniversary syndrome, because 50 years ago this month something landed in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico, and early reports indicated that the wreckage consisted of the remains of a flying disk but those reports were quickly changed to identify the flying object which had crashed to be a mere weather balloon. Those are only reports which suggested the only recorded statement by the U.S. military that ET might exist, now form the basis for one of the most convoluted conspiracy theories in history, in this solar system anyway. Eighty percent of Americans believe that the U.S. Government has covered up what it knows about aliens from outer space.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, first of all, this budget is a house of cards. There are so many assumptions built into the Republican budget and tax bill that it is important for them to keep them separate. Yesterday, the budget. Then after a respectful overnight wait, we bring the tax breaks out here onto the floor. Today they give the tax breaks to the people who do not need them. Do they give them to the people who they hurt yesterday? Well, they say, with bleeding palms yesterday on the floor, look how much we would like to help those uninsured children. We have no money. Look how much it hurts us to cut the Medicare for the elderly. We have no money. And then after a respectful overnight wait, the tax break fairy shows up on the floor on the Republican side, sprinkling tax breaks across America. And who do they give them to? Do they give them to the families with uninsured children? No. Do they give them to the elderly on Medicare? No. They give them disproportionately, overwhelmingly to those that come from families of $100,000 or more. Now, Mr. Chairman, these are the same Members who said that the Democrats in 1993, when they voted to reduce the deficit from $300 billion down to $50 billion today, were going to ruin the American economy. What do they do? They bring out a proposal here that increases the deficit next year and the year after and the year after and the year after and in the year 2001 magically it is going to balance itself. And how are they going to do it? Auction off spectrum. Auction off spectrum, like Rumpelstiltskin forcing the young maiden to spin gold.

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I absolutely did. And it is an incontrovertible truth. That is how the tax benefit breaks, if you look at it over the 10-year period, as we should have done with the Reagan tax break in 1981, which ultimately turned out to be that kind of pinata of goodies for the rich.

Mr. MARKEY. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, is it just me, or have we gone ``Back to the Future.'' My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are once again presenting the American people with a false choice--slashing Medicare to provide huge tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. The Republican leadership seems caught in a playback loop--putting on a straight face and arguing here on the floor and in committee that cutting $115 billion in Medicare spending will somehow save the program, despite the fact that not one dime of these savings goes to the trust fund, and despite the fact that the budget plan also includes an $85 billion tax break for the wealthy. That's nearly a dollar for dollar tradeoff. And what would the Republicans have us trade off--health care for seniors versus health clubs for the wealthy--Medicare for maid service. Is this any way to make public policy? Is it sensible to construct a public policy that sends 87 percent of the benefits of tax and entitlement changes to people in the top 20 percent of income levels in our country? Is it sensible to construct public policy that sends a measly 4 percent of the benefits to people in the bottom 60 percent of income levels? ``Holy hatchet job, Mr. Speaker'' the Republican Party's dynamic duo of proposals for this week is a double-barreled attack on working families. Piled on top of last year's policy changes, the Republican tax scheme will actually reduce the after-tax income of the poorest 20 percent of our people by $420 per year. The top 20 percent in our country will get an after-tax raise of $2,500, and the top 1 percent get a whopping after-tax raise of $27,000. ``Riddle me this, Mr. Speaker:'' What piece of legislation expands tax subsidies for IRA's, nearly doubles the maximums for estate taxes, and reduces the alternative minimum tax on huge corporations? Why, it's the so-called Taxpayer Relief Act that we will take up tomorrow. Who would launch such a dastardly scheme? Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle like to claim that Democrats are waging class warfare on tax and entitlement issues. Well, Mr. Speaker, the facts speak for themselves. The Republicans have launched an all-out attack on seniors and working families. When the top 20 percent in our country are getting 87 percent of the benefits of this supply-side scheme, and when the scheme actually increases taxes for the 40 percent of Americans who earn less than $27,000 per year, who is making war on whom? This budget legislation makes the rich more comfortable and the poor more miserable. Only Mr. Freeze could produce a colder plan for seniors. Mr. Speaker, we're not in Gotham City. We should be more focused on tax and entitlement equity, than on turning a cold shoulder to seniors and the less fortunate. But that's not what Republican tax-cut crusaders have proposed. Republicans have voted to spend $2 billion on medical savings accounts [MSA's] to benefit the healthiest and wealthiest of our seniors. It's an experiment no less--and it comes at the same time that Republicans are proposing $115 billion in Medicare cuts to save the program. The $115 billion that the budget resolution slashes from Medicare has little or nothing to do with saving the program. And, if we're not actually saving the program, why are we being asked to make cuts--why are we being asked to raise premiums for seniors and cut payments to hospitals, doctors, community health centers, and home health care? Because Medicare once again has become the piggy bank to pay for tax breaks for the rich. This budget not only protects corporate welfare and shields big defense contractors, it shamelessly sacrifices seniors for CEO's. The budget ax is being sharpened and Medicare is back on the chopping block--all because Republicans need to come up with the cash to balance the budget and give huge tax breaks to the wealthy. Now, we all applaud those who have had the good fortune to be wealthy and successful--but let's not make the rich richer at the expense of quality health care for seniors. And make no mistake, the rich will get richer under the Republican plan--87 percent of the benefits of these tax and entitlement programs go to the top 20 percent in our country. On the tax cut alone, over 57 percent of this tax cut flows to families with incomes of more than $250,000, just 5 percent of all Americans. At the same time, this plan hikes taxes on the 40 percent of Americans who earn less than $27,000 per year. Who will really pay the price for this Republican largesse? Who pays, our parents and grandparents that's who. These proud men and women have fought for this country, sacrificed for this country, and many survived the Great Depression and turned this country around and made it such an economic success. Our seniors understand sacrifice. They struggled so that their children and grandchildren would have a better life, a more prosperous nation, and a more hopeful future. But what will happen when Medicare and Medicaid are cut for working families. What additional burdens will middle-aged Americans have to bear? If seniors are unable to cover the cost of their health care, whom will they turn to? their adult children, of course. And in each of these families the $64,000 question will be, do we pay for mom and dad's health care or do we pay to send the kids to college. No middle- aged parent should have to make that choice. We should not insult our seniors' legacy of sacrifice by allowing the leadership of this Congress to sacrifice them--our parents and grandparents--just to give a tax cut to the rich and super rich. It was wrong in 1980. It was wrong in 1995. And it is wrong today. We can do better than this. Join me in standing up for fairness. Vote against this proposal. Let's not cut Medicare for seniors just to give huge tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. spectrum provisions of the budget We should be highly concerned about the increasing emphasis placed upon spectrum auction revenue to assist in balancing the Federal budget. Placing budgetary priorities foremost in FCC licensing decisions ultimately shortchanges the American public because spectrum allocation and licensing decisions must encompass a broad interpretation of the public interest, of which taxpayer interests are but one part. A short-term, temporary injection of cash into the Federal Treasury for the purpose of achieving revenue goals for an arbitrary 5-year budget target serves budgetary interests, but it does not necessarily serve the broader public interest. This auction is not going to raise the money that the CBO and OMB believe it will. Moreover, we will not see all of the rest of the money that has already been bid in previous auctions because we are flooding the market and making it awash with spectrum. There are literally billions that have to be collected from small businesses, women-owned firms and minority-owned firms who bid for spectrum at the FCC believing that they were bidding on a scarce resource. These are entities who historically have had difficulty in gaining access to capital. What will happen to their hopes of raising the funds necessary to get into the marketplace and compete if the Federal Government rushes to make more frequencies available for bidding to some of the largest companies on the planet. This spectrum auction proposal represents a departure from the principles of diversity that we built into the spectrum authority we granted the FCC as part of the 1993 budget. In 1993, we said that we wanted to see a democratization and diversity in the holding of FCC licenses. In this budget, after we finally saw minorities and women- owned businesses beginning to get access to this public resource, diversity and entrepreneurship is getting trumped by an increasing emphasis to simply let the deepest pockets bid on the spectrum. This is in direct contradiction to the message President Clinton delivered in California last week where he said that: We must continue to expand opportunity. Full participation in our strong and growing economy is the best antidote to envy, despair, and racism. We must press forward to move millions more from poverty and welfare to work; to bring the spark of enterprise to inner cities * * * We should not stop trying to equalize economic opportunity. Further, the idea that an auction in the year 2001 for spectrum from the broadcasters that will not be returned to the Government in 2007 is a very dubious way to raise money. I offered an amendment in committee to make this return of spectrum more likely by requiring after 2001 that all new TV's be digital capable. That amendment was not agreed to. changes from commerce committee bill The bill before us allows the FCC the discretion--rather than mandatory based upon a 95 percent digital TV household penetration test--an extension of the date by which TV broadcasters must return their so-called ``analog'' spectrum from 2007 to some later date. The bill, however, takes away a Commerce Committee requirement for minimum bids for FCC auctions. A few weeks ago, licenses for wireless communications services [WCS] in 4 states sold at auction for a total of $4. This WCS auction was estimated by CBO to raise $1.8 billion and yet raised only $13 million. Why should we condone a firesale on the public's assets. [From the CQ's House Action Reports] Changes to H.R. 2015, Balanced Budget Act (By Joe Nyitray and Chuck Conlon) The recommended rule automatically incorporates several changes into H.R. 2015, Balanced Budget Act, as reported by the Budget Committee. Spectrum Provisions The rule modifies the bill's spectrum auction provisions to increase from $9.7 billion to $20.3 billion over five years the revenues that would be generated through sales of the radio broadcast spectrum. The increased revenue are accounted for by striking or relaxing numerous restrictions included in the bill on the FCC's ability to auction spectrum. Among other changes, the rule strikes the bill's requirements that minimum bids equal two-thirds of previous CBO estimates, and that the FCC void spectrum auctions that fail to meet such minimums. It makes discretionary (rather than mandatory) FCC authority to extend the deadline of 2006 for referring the analog spectrum for television stations where more than 5% of the station's viewers continue to rely exclusively on over-the-air analog television signals; it requires the FCC to complete by the end of FY 2002 the bidding and assignment of licenses for returned analog television spectrum and spectrum used for UHF channels 60 through 69 (the bill only requires that bidding for such spectrum commence by July 1, 2001); it requires the FCC to ``seek to assure'' that low-power TV stations currently assigned to channels 60 through 69 be reassigned to a lower channel (the bill prohibits the auctioning of that spectrum unless such TV stations are reassigned to lower channels prior to such auctions); and it eliminates provisions that prohibit the reallocation of spectrum used by NASA for space research. Low-Income Medicare Premium Protection The recommended rule adds an additional $1 billion to the $500 million already in the bill for Medicaid to help pay the Medicare Part B premium for low-income beneficiaries, thereby bringing the total up to $1.5 billion, the amount called for in the balanced budget agreement between the President and congressional leaders.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I wish to convey my strong support for the disapproval of most-favored-nation status for China. Six days from now, China will gain considerable strength nationally and internationally with the inclusion of Hong Kong. By approving most- favored-nation status, we will be using the power of the United States of America to condone their misbehavior not only in China, but its extension into Hong Kong as well. Let's just review China's record. First on nonproliferation, in the 1980's, we received information that China was covertly assisting Pakistan's shadowy nuclear program. China promised it would mend its ways, and in return we signed a Nuclear Cooperation Agreement in 1985--an agreement which has never been implemented throughout its 12 year existence because no U.S. President has ever been able to certify that China is being a responsible member of the international nonproliferation community. In the 1980's, the Chinese National Nuclear Corporation secretly built a nuclear reactor in Algeria. After a multitude of denials, China finally admitted its involvement in the reactor construction--only after aerial photographs identified it in 1991. Another lie exposed. In 1994, after China had signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, press reports indicated that the Chinese National Nuclear Corporation was building a secret military reactor in Pakistan, as well as two reactors and a uranium facility in Iran. More promises broken. In 1996, the transfer of 5,000 ring magnets from the Chinese National Nuclear Cooperation to Pakistan for use in a uranium enrichment facility was leaked to the press. China promised that it wouldn't do it again, and the Clinton adminsitration chose to believe those promises, despite the years of deception that should have called the nature of China's assurances into question. In the area of missile proliferation, a press report published just last week described a new short-range missile being developed by Iran with the help of technology and assistance from the China Precision Engineering Institute New Technology Corporation. China has been selling M-11 missiles to Pakistan for 5 years, according to a June 30 article in Time magazine, and recent satellite photos indicate that not only are missiles being transferred, but that an entire missile factory is being built. This latest information comes after the all too familiar series of promises Beijing made in 1994 not to do it anymore. Years of lies, years of broken promises--what we have here is a proliferation pathology. China is as hooked on selling weapons of mass destruction as an alcoholic is to his scotch. We need to prescribe the appropriate therapy, and as with alcoholism, it will take more than a 12-step self-help program at a proliferators anonymous group. The alcoholic will first promise to cut down on his drinking. When he gets caught, he'll make the same promise. If he keeps getting caught, he'll up the ante and promise to stop cold turkey. When does the alcoholic really stop drinking? When an intervention take place. When his family and friends tell him that they will no longer support, accept, or tolerate his behavior, and he is forced to confront his addiction honestly in order to regain their love and trust. Mr. Speaker, what we need to do with China is undertake a proliferation intervention. On trade, every year we are told that renewing China's most-favored- nation status would help reduce our trade deficit with China; however, we have seen that trade deficit rise from $2.8 billion in 1987 to $39.5 billion in 1997. Supporters claim that MFN is normal trade relations. These so-called normal relations produce a 2-percent tariff on Chinese goods, but the Chinese levy a 35-percent average tariff rate on United States goods. In 1996, Chinese piracy of United States intellectual property cost our economy over $2.3 billion. The Chinese have continually used this status to their advantage, including the most recent development of Chinese military owned business' selling enormous amounts of goods to the United States, all because we allow it. These normal trade relations produce nothing but negative effects on our economy, and we can no longer stand idly by and let our country move further into debt. Finally on human rights, we have an obligation to promote human rights throughout the world. To support China in its practice of suppressing democracy, and encouraging slave labor would be a contradiction of everything our country stands for. The State Department Country Report on Human Rights from this year states that the Chinese Government continued to commit widespread and well-documented human rights abuses, in violation of internationally accepted norms, stemming from the authorities' intolerance of dissent, fear of unrest, and the absence or inadequacy of laws protecting basic freedoms. Mr. Speaker, we can not continue to support the abhorrent practices in China, economically or abstractly. We are told to wait and see what happens when Hong Kong changes hands, but the players have already moved to centerfield. Already the hand picked legislature for Hong Kong has given the police broad new powers to ban even peaceful demonstrations, and any group wishing to hold a protest march or rally must get prior approval from the police. Granting MFN status to China now would be like buying your 16-year- old a Porshe for flunking out of high school. It only reinforces bad behavior and leads to big trouble down the road. China is speeding up down the runway, ready to take off with Hong Kong. There is no justification for renewing China's most-favored- nation status until they have proven to abide by international standards and practices. We should not be handing them MFN on a silver platter, they must earn it. Every year on the day after we grant China MFN status, the Chinese Government votes to grant the United States MFN for most-foolish-nation status for being duped again on nonproliferation, trade, and human rights. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to granting China most-favored- nation status. Back in the 1980's, we received information that China was covertly assisting Pakistan's shadowy nuclear program. China promised it would mend its ways, and in return we signed a nuclear cooperation agreement in 1985--an agreement which has never been implemented throughout its 12 years existence because no United States President has ever been able to certify that China is being a responsible member of the international nonproliferation community. In the 1980's, the Chinese National Nuclear Corporation secretly built a nuclear reactor in Algeria. After a multitude of denials, China finally admitted its involvement in the reactor construction--only after aerial photographs identified it in 1991. Another lie exposed. In 1994, after China had signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, press reports indicated that the Chinese National Nuclear Corporation was building a secret military reactor in Pakistan, as well as two reactors and a uranium facility in Iran. More promises broken. In 1996, the transfer of 5,000 ring magnets from the Chinese National Nuclear Cooperation to Pakistan for use in a uranium enrichment facility was leaked to the press. China promised that it wouldn't do it again, and the Clinton administration chose to believe those promises, despite the years of deception that should have called the nature of China's assurances into question. In the area of missile proliferation, a press report published just last week described a new short-range missile being developed by Iran with the help of technology and assistance from the China Precision Engineering Institute New Technology Corporation. China has been selling M-11 missiles to Pakistan for 5 years, according to a June 30 article in Time magazine, and recent satellite photos indicate that not only are missiles being transferred, but that an entire missile factory is being built. This latest information comes after the all too familiar series of promises Beijing made in 1994 not to do it anymore. Years of lies, years of broken promises--what we have here is a proliferation pathology. China is as hooked on selling weapons of mass destruction as an alcoholic is to his scotch. We need to prescribe the appropriate therapy, and as with alcoholism, it will take more than a 12 step self-help program at a proliferators anonymous group. The alcoholic will first promise to cut down on his drinking. When he gets caught, he'll make the same promise. If he keeps getting caught, he'll up the ante and promise to stop cold turkey. When does the alcoholic really stop drinking? When an intervention takes place. When his family and friends tell him that they will no longer support, accept, or tolerate his behavior, and he is forced to confront his addiction honestly in order to regain their love and trust. Mr. Speaker, what we need to do with China is undertake a proliferation intervention. We need to exercise some tough love, and tell China that we have had enough of the empty assurances and broken promises. Let's get China onto the nonproliferation wagon--vote to revoke MFN status.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I rise in favor of the Spence-Dellums amendment to this bill. Last fall, four supercomputers that are powerful enough to design nuclear weapons were sold by an American company to the premier nuclear weapons facility in Russia--Chelyabinsk 70, a place whose very existence was top secret until the end of the cold war. The company said that it didn't know that the facility was a weapons lab, and that they had been told that the supercomputers would be used to forecast the weather. But the only clouds these computers will be modeling will be the mushroom cloud of a nuclear blast. In fact, after the sale was disclosed, Viktor Mikhailov, head of Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy, or Minatom, which controls the Nation's weapons labs, bragged that Russia had the supercomputers, admitting that they would be useful for mathematical modeling of nuclear blasts. The CEO of the American company had this to say: ``It is possible we were duped.'' I guess so. U.S. law currently calls for an export license on these powerful supercomputers to be requested by the company seeking the license only if it is suspect that the intended recipient might be a suspicious customer. As the Russian case shows, this honor system method just isn't working. Other than the most infamous foreign weapons facilities, American companies often have no way of knowing which recipients are the weather forecasters and which are the would-be proliferators. Once supercomputers get into the wrong hands, there is absolutely nothing we can do to recover them--all we can do is sit and hope that the nuclear weapons they are designing are never aimed at us. The Spence-Dellums amendment requires that every supercomputer exported to countries of proliferation concern--like Pakistan, India, China, Russia, and Syria--be accompanied by letters of approval from the Secretaries of Energy, Commerce, Defense and State, and from the Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Moreover, it calls for a report to be provided to Congress which lists all exports of such supercomputers since January 25, 1996. If a supercomputer that is being proposed for export really will be used to forecast the weather, the sale will be approved. But if it is determined by the Government agencies charged with collecting such intelligence that the supercomputer sale would endanger U.S. national security, the sale will be denied. What's wrong with that? Let's take the export control job away from private industry and give it back to the people who should be doing it--the U.S. Government. Support the Spence-Dellums amendment.

Mr. MARKEY

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, the problem that I have with this budget is its total lack of optimism. The deficit has been reduced from $300 billion down to $60 billion over the last 4 years, and it is going to continue to be reduced whether we do anything on the floor tonight or not. In fact, today Alan Greenspan in his decision not to increase interest rates has reflected the reality that our economy is growing at an over 4-percent rate of growth with negligible inflation. There is a very high probability, in other words, my colleagues, that the budget is already balanced this year, 1997, not the year 2002; that the final $60 billion, in other words, is going to be found this year before the end of the fiscal year. So I just wish that we all reflected that more optimistic view of America. The American people have done it. They are working hard. They are producing the revenues. We should not be engaging in this root canal politics of cutting valuable programs so that we can hand over tax breaks to those who do not need them, thereby spurring interest rate increases which are sure to follow by the Fed.