George Miller

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. I think it has become clear that the language in the appropriations bill has become unacceptable. I think somebody said earlier on the Republican side of the aisle, we should thank them for the language but we should reject it because I think it does not deal with this in a proper fashion. We have all understood and many of us have been struggling for many years on a bipartisan basis on many committees to get around the mismanagement of these funds, to get an accounting and get the money to the people who deserve it. It is a massive mismanagement of the funds by the Federal government and people have been hurt and damaged by this and we must resolve it. I think the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) has made some good points. I think the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young) and others have made some points that we are at a point here where to some extent the Department of Interior does not want to admit that they cannot reconcile the accounts, and we keep giving them money to do a job that maybe they cannot do. Other people are not interested in a settlement at this point, but my concern here with bracketing this to 1985 is we really have not discussed what we do with the others. I appreciate people said our intent is not to close it off, but maybe we ought to reject this language; and hopefully between now and the conference committee be discussing with the parties that this is a staged operation. What happens to the people before 1985 or the accounts in 1985. Is there a parallel negotiations that can be entered into, because everybody has pointed out those records will not be full and complete. I am afraid that this alone leaves us with kind of a large unanswered question, what happens pre-1985, and I know the Members of the committee have expressed, well, this really, we can come along and authorize that later, but that puts a lot of people at a disadvantage. So I think we ought to reject this language, but we ought to do it in the spirit of what people have said both on the Committee on Appropriations and on the authorizing committee about, I do not know that we can direct in legislative language a settlement, but we have got to direct the parties that we cannot keep funding this sort of Alice in Wonderland attempt at accounting when it will not resolve the issue in the end, and it is taking money away from vital programs.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Exactly.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me, Mr. Chairman, and for offering this amendment. Let us just begin that by understanding for $200,000 we are not going to get a quality study covering this range of issues. It is just simply impossible, and to assemble the expertise for the time and effort to do that. That is why we spent $5 million just on gaming in that commission. Let us all understand that to say that 80 percent of the Native Americans do not participate in gaming does not tell us anything. Many States do not allow gaming. Many do not allow gaming at all. Many reservations cannot participate because it is not economically viable. Many have chosen voluntarily not to do that. That does not tell us anything about the benefits of Indian gaming. What we ought to do is spend more time on reservations and see the kind of economic development, the kind of economic diversity, the kind of opportunity that is being presented now that did not exist. I sat on the Committee on Resources and watched this Committee on Appropriations appropriate millions and millions and hundreds of millions of dollars in economic development that went nowhere, that went nowhere, just disasters across Indian country. Now we have an opportunity to have some success. They may not like that it is based in gaming, but the fact is that it is successful and it is providing that economic opportunity. I have listened to this ruse argument about organized crime from the day we wrote the first statute to the Supreme Court, and nobody has been able to prove it; nobody has been able to show it. These people operate their casinos under more restrictions than any other operators in the country. This is just disingenuous. Disingenuous is what this is about.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, this is a critical issue for so many reasons. It is not only a question of equity of whether or not California will be treated the same as Florida, but it is also a question about the California economy. Our oceans, our beaches, our seaside landscapes are huge economic engines within our State. They are the engines that drive individuals who want to come and reside there and start businesses and provide opportunity. They are the engines for tourism. They are the engines for a whole range of economic activity. Now, we know that this is a much better oil industry today than it was at the time of the Santa Barbara oil spill. We know that the technology is much better today than it was then. But we also know that we have a much more intense concentration of economic benefits on our coast today than we had then, and that an accident and the risk of that accident for the benefits of the amount of oil available just does not make sense. Mr. Chairman, our colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) said, how can we do this? How can we turn down the supply of oil? Well, if we are going to take the supply of oil and put it into cars that get 12 and 13 miles a gallon, we have already made a decision that we are going to waste this oil. Seventy percent of our oil goes into transportation, and earlier this year, this Congress made the decision that we are not going to improve the CAFE standards, not a mile, not 2 miles, not 3 miles. So why would we risk this magnificent coastline, its magnificent benefits to us and its dynamic economic energy, why would we risk that at a time when the Congress has made a decision that they are simply going to waste the oil? We have to support the Capps amendment. I want to thank the gentlewoman for her leadership and her tenacity on this issue. We are not going away until we get the same justice that the people in Florida got and we get it for our economy and for our environment.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I ask for a ruling on my point of order.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. First of all, Mr. Speaker, on the question of budget authority, the gentleman made a determination that this cost money and there were no offsets. The gentleman said there were no offsets, but he would not even let us look for offsets for these amendments. We also happen to have a number of free amendments. We happen to have a number of free amendments we are willing to offer. The second thing is, the gentleman wanted to do something that was not controversial, where there could be agreement. On that theory, we just went through the securities bill in the House that turned out to be an embarrassment to everybody because, today, people ran down to the floor to add criminal penalties on almost a unanimous vote. So the question on that point, the Republicans were determining what is controversial. They said if we have criminal penalties against people who perpetrate fraud, that would be controversial and they left it out of the securities bill. In the Senate today it was 97 to 0, and this morning it was 400 to something. So, again, my colleagues are setting themselves up as the arbiters of what is controversial, what can be considered, and what cannot be considered. That is not democracy. That looks like forms of government that we fight against around the world. That is not a democracy. In our democracy, we take a vote and we win or we lose. We get excited about winning, and we lick our wounds when we lose and come back another day. But that is not what is happening here. So this is far beyond that. People were not raising the budget act when the farm bill passed through here. Or, actually, the gentleman was raising the budget act when the farm bill came through here, but the leadership was not raising the budget act when the farm bill came through here; and they are not raising it now in the supplemental. So the notion that somehow loan forgiveness for teachers is completely out of consideration, let the Members decide that. Let the Members decide if we want to make trade-offs. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 6 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this legislation, not so much on its merits. It does a number of good things, technical changes to be done, but really, this is really about an important part of this institution, and that is, to whether or not the minority will be given an opportunity to affect and change hopefully bills that come through this House or whether or not we will be disenfranchised by the manner in which the process is run. I say that as one who has had a very good relationship with the chairman of my committee where we were able to work on the Leave No Child Behind bill, and we have been able to work in the committee on an ongoing basis, but in this particular instance, where we had the one opportunity that we will have in this Congress, in this committee, to address a number of important issues, to meet other Members of the committee on the Democratic side of the aisle, we find that we were, in fact, closed out. Again, it is not about the language of this bill, but it is about the opportunity and whether or not we would have been able to offer amendments to this legislation that were important to us, and what we see is a continuing pattern in the House of Representatives, whether it is on the floor of this House, now that has drifted into the committee, on whether or not Democrats will be allowed to offer amendments. What we see is where we represent 49 percent of the country and the districts in which we have been elected, we find out that we are not allowed to offer amendments. We are not allowed to offer amendments if we can win those amendments. We are not allowed those amendments if it means the Republican must take a tough vote, if they disagree with it. We are not allowed to offer those amendments if it means the bill might take an extra few minutes of consideration, and yet basically the Congress has been working on a Tuesday-to-Thursday schedule. Why the disenfranchisement of the Democratic Members? I think it is simply because they choose not to have us be able to articulate policy differences that we have with them. This was true on the welfare bill where simply amendments were not allowed. We were allowed a substitute. We all know that legislative gimmick. There are enough things in a substitute that everybody can justify a no vote or a yes vote but with amendments. The same was true on pensions. The same was true on the securities legislation where we just limited access to the Democrats to offer this kind of legislation. One would think this was a politburo. One would not think this was the people's House where theoretically each and every Member should be given an opportunity to voice his or her concern as legislation moves through the House of Representatives, through the committees, to offer amendments that some of us may like or not like, where we take a vote, a person wins or they lose. This is the politics that rules the House. That is what people come to expect. Now we are simply prevented from raising these issues. This is not just about us and the process of the House. In this case, this was about whether or not we were going to be able to offer amendments to deal with whether or not there would be loan forgiveness for teachers that were trying to attract, that we recognize in the Leave No Child Behind Act, to try to attract teachers to high poverty schools, to try to attract teachers to come in and teach in math and sciences, to teach in special education, all of the areas that we know we have a shortage. Would America's children, would America's parents, would America's schools have an opportunity to be able to attract additional teachers to those areas where there is the shortage, where there is a difficulty with the performance of America's school children on testing in math and science where we were ranked in the world? We are foreclosed from having that debate and offering that opportunity. The gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. McCarthy) wanted to offer the right to make sure that those who are lost family members in 9/11 would have their student loans forgiven where the first responders were killed. We were told by the majority leader we would have an opportunity to have a vote on that amendment. We were told that last year. We are still waiting. This is one of the last vehicles where we may have been able to come through and offer such an amendment. We wanted to offer an amendment to deal with the questions of vocational education and the enforcement of title IX. These are amendments that may win and they may lose, but the fact of the matter is we were precluded from it. This is a good technical amendments bill. This is a good corrections bill, but that should not preclude it. The majority says, well, it is getting too heavy; the bill is getting too heavy. That is not for them to determine. That is for the body to determine. It may not be too heavy to get out of committee, may get too heavy to get off the floor, the amendments may lose. That is the process the people in this country are supposedly guaranteed, but we see more and more that that process is closed down. So the end result is the matters of great concern, matters of merit, to millions of people across this country will be foreclosed from being considered in this Congress. The question of whether or not we have loan forgiveness, the loan forgiveness is a Republican amendment. The gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Graham) and I are cosponsors of this effort. It was in the President's budget. This is not some controversial idea we thought up to gig somebody. This is what the President said we should do. This is what the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Graham) and the committee said we should do, and many people cosponsored that effort to do that, but we are precluded from offering it. The FETA program was an outgrowth of an idea about what is the biggest problems these schools are having. The number one reason, one alluded to, was the question of what happens to students who had a violation of controlled substance laws prior to their entering a school of higher education. We cannot even address that in this bill now. We were going to offer the amendment. It was in the bill at one time. It was taken out of the bill. We talked to them and we were going to put it back in. What happened? The committee meeting was cancelled. Now we find ourselves on the floor in the suspension and we are denying America's teachers, we are denying America's schools an opportunity to try and get additional help to them. For that reason, I oppose this bill and I would ask my colleagues to do the same. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the words of the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), except under that theory, why have a democracy? The other side of the aisle would make a determination what is good, and then that is what is voted for. That is not the issue of whether we support the underlying bill or provisions of it, it is whether or not under a process that would have allowed us to offer amendments, we were not allowed to offer those amendments. That is called fairness. That is called fairness. It is not a question of whether, as the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Petri) said, we got all we wanted, we simply wanted a debate. We might have won the votes. Maybe we were wrong. That is the process in this House. The other side does not get to unilaterally decide whether we have enough. The votes in the House decide whether a bill goes too far. We weigh that every day. But that opportunity is being offered to us less and less. That is why when we have a bill of decent merit, but the suggestion is that is it, folks, take it or leave it, that is not our process of government.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I do not think there was. When we started to offer amendments in the full committee, the hearing was cancelled.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. That is the problem. The gentleman is quite correct. I appreciate his question. Then when we get to the floor, we are told we cannot have amendments because it was on suspension. Mr. Speaker, when is it we get to offer amendments? When is it we get to present a differing view, either on the technical underlying bill or on amendments that are germane, under the rules of germaneness, the rules of the House? Members can be the arbiters of that. But I do not think the Members of the Democratic side should go along with that. I would hope that Republicans understand that and would not support the bill, and we can have this under an open rule. Maybe our amendments would be germane. It is not like we have been busy around here. All of a sudden we have to close down democracy when it looks like we have to take a tight vote, or maybe the minority might prevail. Mr. Speaker, as has been pointed out, a number of our amendments were supported by the President's budget, they were supported by Members on the Republican side of the aisle. This is simply about trying to preserve the notion that this is a people's House. The amendment is not for me or the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey). It is for the teachers in this country, it is for the young kids going to school thinking about whether they go into math and science. Do they go to a high poverty area or not. That is who the amendments are for, but that is precluded. Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members on the Democratic side of the aisle to vote against this, and hope our colleagues would join us in trying to preserve some semblance of democracy in the House.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. McCarthy).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, the Republicans have been caught with an embarrassing bill. They passed a securities bill to tell the American public they cared about their pensions and their financial well-being. Then the Senate took really tough action, and now the Republicans have been caught with egg all over their face. What do they want to do? They want to put everybody in jail. Fine, we will vote for the bill. But it is the things that people do today that are legal that is causing the heartburn. They pass an embarrassingly weak pension bill, and embarrassingly weak securities bill. It is not the things that they do that are illegal, it is the fact that people under the pension bill are still locked into that stock for 3 years. They still cannot have a representative of employees on the board of their pensions. They cannot have an independent representative of their employees on the board. They cannot be notified on a timely basis of inside sales. So the pensioners absorb all of the financial shock for the ill-doings, but they happen to be legal under the law, just as many of the provisions that the Senate outlawed under their securities act continue to remain legal. Now they come along and say if somebody engages in fraud, they should be put in jail. Where is the Attorney General today when they engage in fraud? The Republican bill is going to give it to the Attorney General to come up against these people on whistleblowers. Where does Sharon Watkins go to get her job back if she loses her job? Where does she go to be made financially whole? Nowhere. She goes to John Ashcroft and begs him to bring a case. In the past 6 months as we have been having a meltdown in stock markets and peoples' pension plans where investors have lost over $5 trillion, we have not heard a word from the Attorney General; not a word from the Attorney General. The Republican plan puts all of their eggs there. I know they are covering their tracks. They are like the cowboys that did the bank robbery, and now they are dragging the trees behind their horses to cover their tracks. Good try. It will not work.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, Members of the House, every day the people we represent receive devastating news from the results of the action of the Enrons, the Tycos, the Arthur Andersens, the WorldComs and the Merck Pharmaceuticals. They receive devastating news as employees when they are laid off, as pensioners when they see that their retirement is no longer secure, and as shareholders as they see that their net worth has gone down. It has gone down because of slipshod accounting, illegal activities, bias portfolio management, hundreds of millions of dollars in insider unsecured loans and tens of millions of dollars in golden parachutes for the economic elite in the corner offices. Nothing for the employees, nothing for the pensioners, and nothing for the shareholders. Mr. President, this is not going to be solved by having the markets voluntarily clean themselves up. You appointed Harvey Pitt. You appointed Harvey Pitt as the lapdog of the industry, as a defender of the industry. What America needs is a watchdog. You are not going to be able to take a lapdog and turn him into a watchdog. Mr. Pitt should leave this office. You should appoint somebody who can get to the bottom of these scandals and protect America's shareholders, America's pensioners, and America's employees in the future from these kinds of scandals.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, today President Bush went to Wall Street, and he went to Wall Street because he believes that Wall Street is now in trouble. It is in trouble with investors, it is in trouble with the American people, it is in trouble with the international capital communities; and therefore, the President went to Wall Street. The President today recognized that we have a crisis and a scandal in the financial markets in the United States; that, rightfully, professional investors, amateur investors, and people who really do not even know how to invest but have a stake in Wall Street through their pension plans have lost their confidence and are starting to think that somebody ought to go to jail. This did not happen today, it did not happen yesterday, it did not happen last week when the President made up his mind he was going to Wall Street. This has been a crisis for the average American for more than a year. This has been a crisis since Enron and Tyco and many other companies started to falter as their fraudulent bookkeeping schemes started to come to light. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have had their pensions evaporate as companies disguised their financial health and then immediately declared bankruptcy. Hundreds of thousands of Americans who thought they might be able to retire in the next couple of years now recognize that they are going to have to work the rest of their lives if they are going to get by. This was a crisis for tens of thousands of employees whose jobs evaporated overnight because of the greed of the corporate executives who, while they told employees they could not provide additional health care dollars, they could not provide extra compensation, they could not give to their pensions, were taking hundreds of millions of dollars off the top of the corporation. This has been a disaster for millions of shareholders across this country and in the rest of the world as they lost value in their portfolios, some of it for their retirement, some of it for their children, some of it for their families, because of the deception, the greed, the dishonesty that was rampant on Wall Street these last couple of years. Yet it took almost 18 months for George Bush to ask what was going on. It took almost 18 months for George Bush to deliver a major speech on this crisis. The President did not deliver the speech when it was just the American family that was in trouble. He did not deliver the speech when it was just the workers at Enron or ImClone or Dynergy that were in trouble. When we in California tried to tell him that they were manipulating the energy market, that they were gouging our consumers, that they were gouging the State, that it was all manipulation, they told us there was nothing to talk about, that they were comfortable that the market would work it all out. There was no market. It was manipulation. It was greed. It was dishonesty. It was fraud. The same was true when he appointed Harvey Pitt as the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who said that the previous chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Levitt, had been too hard on American corporations; when he tried to get honesty and transparency in their accounting processes, the industry came to Congress and got them to stall out. So Mr. Pitt said he is coming to be kinder and gentler to these corporations. That is not what we need. We need a watchdog. We do not need a lapdog. But Mr. Pitt was appointed to be a lapdog. I do not think Mr. Bush can retrain him fast enough to take care of the American investor, the American worker, and the American shareholder. Every week now we get a new revelation. And the interesting thing is that many of the things these corporations were doing may not be against the law. Merck was taking money that went to the pharmacists and saying it was their revenue. They never saw the money; it never came to them. And they are saying this is generally accepted within accounting principles. Generally accepted to what? To misstate revenues, to misstate earnings? I do not think so. But apparently it is. That is why we need what Senator Sarbanes is presenting to the Senate right now, a strong, independent review board, and not some industry control board that the President has been for, or that Mr. Pitt has been for, controlled by industry, making up the rules for industry for the good of the industry and not for the American people. An investor today in the American stock market, whom are they to believe? Are they to read the 10K statements? They apparently have been misleading. Are they to read the page that is signed off by the accountant? They have been lying to the public. Are they going to go talk to the attorneys? They have been misleading the public and the boards of directors and others. Mr. President, we are glad that you finally recognized this is a crisis, but for millions of Americans who have lost their pensions, lost their jobs, and lost their savings, this was a crisis a long time ago.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, the committee has completed their markup on the prescription drug benefit last night, and what we are now confronted with is having to pass legislation that may or may not provide prescription drug benefits to the elderly in this country. It may or may not provide the insurance that they need to purchase those drugs. Those drugs may or may not be available, based upon whether the insurance companies think those drugs are too expensive. We just went through this with our senior population, with the HMOs. People who thought they had health insurance now find out they do not have health insurance because the HMOs have left the field. People who thought they were covered in rural America now find they are not covered in rural America. Why? Because the insurance companies decided the population was too expensive, and they were not going to cover them and gave them back to the government. That is why the Democrats put forth a program where the prescription drugs were guaranteed, the drugs Members need or their families need to take care of their illnesses in the twilight years of their lives will be there, will be guaranteed, and will be paid for. That is far different from the Republican plan that is made out of Swiss cheese and does not serve the interests of the elderly of this country.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, the President had it right soon after Enron when he was speaking down in Virginia at the naval base and he said, ``We've got to make sure that what's good for the captain is good for the crew.'' Last year prior to Enron, we passed this legislation, and this legislation greatly increased the disparities and the privileges to high-income earners within the pension system. Yes, we have done some things for those people at the bottom, for middle-class earners, but the fact of the matter is that increasing the amount of money that they can contribute is somewhat meaningless when only 2 percent of the individuals contribute the maximum because they simply do not make enough to have that kind of discretionary income to make additional contributions. But for those at the top, it is a very generous bill. Yes, we are simply extending last year's bill, but what we had is we had an opportunity to review last year's bill, but we chose not to take that opportunity. We could have reviewed last year's bill in light of Enron, in light of Global Crossing, in light of Adelphia, in light of Tyco, when we see that clearly there are two classes of pensioners in this country. Those ordinary employees get treated with far less deference, with far less resources by the corporation than those who are at the corporate elite. We see those who are at the corporate elite have their pensions insured. They have their stock options not taxed in some cases if the company moves overseas. We see that those individuals are given severance pay that is insured, that is guaranteed, so that the very people who destroyed some of these corporations are now getting the most benefit. Yet this legislation refuses to address those issues. The gentleman in the well that just preceded me said it is a simple basic rule: If you violate the law, you should be prosecuted. If you have not, no. What we are finding out is it is really not about a violation of law. Many of these activities are sanctioned within the law. That is what has got to trouble middle-class Americans as they see this rush in the Congress to continue to stuff benefits to the wealthiest elite people in this country, whether it is in the pension system, whether it is in the estate tax system, whether it is in the income tax system. There has been a rush by this Congress to stuff the money to the wealthiest people in this country before we hit the deficit wall and before America realizes that we are looting the Social Security Trust Fund. It is very much like the executives of Tyco and Enron and Adelphia and these corporations that in the months preceding their bankruptcy, they started paying off their debts. Now when we examine who they were paying off, their children's real estate companies, their children's travel companies, their wives' auction houses, their wives' small businesses. They are getting the money out of the corporation to get it into their friends' hands before the bankruptcy. So what was the end in Enron? One hundred forty executives walked away with 3- or $400 million, and the thousands of employees that were laid off walked away with $13,000. We have an opportunity to reexamine the laws that govern the pension plans of this Nation, and we refuse to do it. We are now coconspirators in that disparity between the captain and the crew. But as this ship starts to sink, and we start to take the Social Security Trust Fund with us, the Republicans are not even going to hit the emergency bell as they head for the lifeboats with their friends. They are just going to get in the lifeboats with the income tax cuts, with the estate tax cuts, with the pension changes for the wealthiest people in this Nation, and they are going to sail away and watch everybody else go down with the ship. What we are doing here is we are taking the payroll tax that pays for Social Security, and we are transferring it to the wealthiest people in the Nation, because that is how this $50 billion is being paid for, because there is no other tax available because we are running a non- Social Security deficit. We ought to understand that. If we are going to do that, we ought to make sure that some of those middle-class income workers in this Nation get some of the benefits. But in this bill 77 percent of the benefit goes to the top 20 percent of the people.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, as Americans picked up their newspapers this morning, they once again learned that the Enron Corporation was run for the fun and profit of its top executives, not for the benefit of the energy market, and certainly not for most of its employees. In the year that Enron was failing and heading toward bankruptcy, 140 of its top executives took out almost $800 million in bonuses; $800 million, which is about the same amount as its 20,000 employees lost in their 401(k) retirement plans; $800 million that those people will not have for retirement, but which these 100 executives will have for the rest of their lives. As the Republicans talk about privatizing the Social Security system and insisting that everybody go into the equity markets with their own little account, they had better understand that corporate America is not running this system for the benefit of the shareholders. Corporate America is not running the system for the benefit of the corporations. They are running it for the benefit of the executives, those executives that took out $800 million on the eve of the bankruptcy at Enron Corporation.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to offer my congratulations to the Athletes United For Peace (AUP), a nonprofit organization based in Berkeley, California, which is committed to promoting peace, education, friendship, and understanding through programs and events for young people. AUP is a member of the United Nations Department of Public Information's worldwide team of non-governmental organizations (NGO), and represents the voice of young people throughout the Bay Area counties of Alameda and Contra Costa. Some of the organization's duties as an NGO include attending international conferences; developing programs; and disseminating information on the United Nations' current issues, initiatives and projects to constituents in the Bay Area through workshops and media projects. AUP regularly conducts media projects in partnership with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In 1997, AUP established the Digital Technology Academy, a ten-week summer media arts program that trains inner-city young people in the ever-growing field of digital technology with an emphasis on digital video production and multimedia integration. The program was designed by the AUP staff to address the growing concerns and issues surrounding the ``Digital Divide`` in relation to access and training for disadvantaged youth in the East Bay. The AUP membership association with the United Nations has offered members of the Digital Technology Academy opportunities to engage in interactive teleconference and media presentations to the UN General Assembly. In 1999, the Contra Costa County's Employment and Human Services Department's Service Integration Program (Martinez) formed a partnership with AUP to conduct the Digital Technology Academy for groups of economically disadvantaged teens from the county's unincorporated and under-served communities of North Richmond and Bay Point. In addition to receiving comprehensive training in the areas of digital camera operation, audio, lighting, script writing and desktop editing, each of the teen participants were required to conduct research on the history of their respective communities. Research performed by the teen groups at the public libraries and local historical societies was refined and developed into scripts for the academy's series of award-winning community history documentary film projects. The current documentary film ``An Exploration of Our History: The Story of East Contra Costa County,'' was produced during the Summer/ Fall of 2001 and competed in the Spring of 2002. The documentary objectively examines the areas history from 1900-1944 from both social and economic perspectives. Presentation of the historical content was conducted through on-camera interviews with several residents and local historians from the Contra Costa County, Pittsburgh and Concord historical societies. During this period of East Contra Costa County's community history, several events of national prominence occurred. The most notable events include: (1917) Walnut Creek Land developer Robert N. Burgess received a $20 million contract from the federal government in Washington, D.C., to build 10 cargo ships for the war effort during World War I. The ships were built at his Pacific Coast Shipbuilding Company located at the deep water port in Bay Point next to the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe transcontinental railroads. (1942) The United States Army constructs Camp Stoneman military base in Pittsburgh, which served as one of the largest embarkation centers for soldiers preparing for combat during World War II in the Pacific. (1942) The United States Navy constructs the Naval Ammunition Depot in the town of Port Chicago, where enlisted African American sailors (material handlers) unloaded and loaded ammunition that was transshipped by rail onto cargo ships at the deep-water port facility. The U.S. Justice Department's Relocation Order in February of 1942 forced hundreds of Italian residents of the East Contra Costa County area to relocate away from the newly built Camp Stoneman military based in Pittsburgh. All Italian residents who were not legal citizens of the United States were labeled ``enemy aliens'' and deemed a threat to national security by the government. On Tuesday, June 11, 2002, ``An Exploration of Our History: The Story of East Contra Costa County'' will be presented at the Amborse Recreation Center in Bay Point, California. Athletes United For Peace is thankful to Contra Costa County's Service Integration Program and the local historical society for having an opportunity to train young people in digital technology for the purpose of documenting and preserving the community's history through this innovative intergenerational program that blends multimedia integration and education.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.