George Miller

Mr. MILLER of California

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

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, if you lose in the courts, you lose in the courts. A lot of initiatives have gone down and people have shrugged their shoulders. That is the process.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentlewoman from Colorado. I think the gentlewoman raises a good point. My concern here is that if we had a three-judge panel in place after 187, and that three-judge panel, as did the appellate panel, find that there were these constitutional questions, we would be here today asking for a five-judge panel. Because this is about a political motivation to try to tell the people that they got cheated out of a result that they voted for, before we know whether or not that result is constitutional. Mr. Chairman, we are just here politically trashing the courts. This judge is a perfectly honorable person, and I am assume the three judges were perfectly honorable judges. But some people believe that when they lose, somebody cheated, and then they have to run around and tell everyone. Mr. Chairman, I do not think the people who are vehement on this issue on 187 would be here saying we have 3 judges overruling 5 million people, so that sound like a good deal. That is not the case at all. I just think the motivation here is terribly bad. I think it is terribly costly for the court system and costly for the institutions of this country and I think it is how we make cynics out of the American public.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. Bono].

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, and I will yield if the gentleman needs more time, but I would have the same passion. What I said at the outset, my point was this, if we want to represent that somehow the pure view and motives of the California voting public was overruled, and I am suggesting to the gentleman that we are all residents in California and we watched this process. The initiative process is the most manipulative process because usually it is bankrolled by tens of millions of dollars by people who want to change the rules of the game one way or another because they were not successful in the legislature for one reason or another. Mr. Chairman, this is not just Polly Purebreath and her friends coming out and saying, we want to do this for the good of society. It does not happen that way, because most of those people cannot gather the signatures because the legislature makes them get more and more signatures, which means citizens have to have more money, and the gentleman knows that.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I am almost less concerned about the content than I am about the political motivation here. I think when we see a country that is more and more disenchanted with its institutions, we are suggesting here that when one side or the other, however it happened, whatever the issue is, and again we have been through this numerous times in California, when one side exercises their rights, people want to run around and suggest that they cheated. That somehow the institutions let them down. That is what concerns me here more than anything else. Again, there will be millions of people that will vote on initiatives this next election in California. We have several that are slated to come up. And in the gentleman's State of Virginia, they have the initiative process. That will happen, but that does not mean that the result of their work product, their voting and interest and involvement, is necessarily constitutional.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, this is more about suggesting to them that their review was outside of the system; that they should have prevailed simply because they won at the ballot box. The gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Goodlatte] knows, the gentleman is a lawyer, that is simply not the case. We do not get to do that.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words and to speak in support of the amendment. Mr. Chairman, the reason we are here today and the reason we are in this debate is because some of those who are elected to public office simply do not have the courage to explain the facts to the people they represent. In the State of California, that I represent, along with many of my colleagues in this body, we use the initiative process like some people change their clothes or change channels. It is not a pure process, it was put in as a reform, but now anybody who can came up with about $\1/2\ million, I can guarantee, can get the signatures for an initiative in California on any subject matter they desire to have put on that ballot. Many have ridiculed the California initiative process. Many people say it is crazy, it is out of bounds, whatever, but it is a means by which the people get to express their views on various issues. But it is not always the people that put it on the ballot. Very often it is a commercial interest. It is the tobacco industry that puts an initiative on. And then people who do not like smoking, but put an initiative on. The farm bureau put one on so nobody could regulate farm workers. The people turned that down. Then the farm workers put one on that said everybody has to regulate the farmers, and the people turned that down. When they got to putting a smoking initiative on they said, the people who wrote that said, people can smoke in rock concerts but they cannot smoke at the opera. The people said, that sounds funny, and they turned it down. The tobacco industry put on an initiative that said we will overrule all the local jurisdictions trying to eliminate smoking, and the people said that does not sound good, we will turn this down. Most of this happens because it gets stalled in the legislature. The insurance industry said we will have no fault insurance. Somebody else said, no, we will have fault, fault, fault insurance, and we passed both of those. The insurance industry, and the gentleman from California [Mr. Bono] maybe will remember this, I think they spent $20 million on this. This was about the will of the people? This was not about the will of the people. Mr. Chairman, now along came 187 and people decided that they did not think they should any longer pay for illegal aliens in this country, residents in this country who had not come here legally. It made a lot of common sense. But as they got into it, they started writing it harder, harder, and kind of overreaching, going further and further, and they went right past the U.S. Constitution. People were emotionally caught up so they voted for it and it passed overwhelmingly. A lot of politicians were for it and a lot of politicians were against it. Most people reviewed it after the fact and said it probably was not the greatest idea. Well, the people who were impacted by it or disagreed with it under the laws of the land of the United States went to court and said, I think this is unconstitutional. The court said, well, I think they might be right, and they had a restraining order. Mr. Chairman, the people who lost on that side said this is not good, we will appeal it. They appealed it. It went to a three-judge panel and they said, we think the lower court might be right and they upheld the injunction. Those are the laws of the United States of America. Rather than tell people that some individual out there that might be impacted was petitioning the court to protect their rights under the Constitution of the United States, the gentleman from California [Mr. Bono] has decided he would make the Government the enemy. He has decided it was come corrupt judge who was not really giving him a fair shake; that was forum shopped. What the gentleman is suggesting is that somehow the system let the people down; the system let the people down because the judge came from northern California instead of southern California. Were they disenfranchised during the vote? Should they be disenfranchised from reviewing it? Of course not. This is not forum shopping, this was testing the provision against the Constitution. Mr. Chairman, this is not the first time this has happened. Not the first time in California. They have done it on handguns and other gun control measures. Sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. This is what the Constitution does, it protects the single individual, it protects the minority, it protects the unpopular, that they have a right to go and petition. If that one judge had ruled in the gentleman's favor, he would not be here today. But we must understand something. Because 5 million people in this country vote for something, that certainly makes us take notice, and that is why we are on the floor today, but it does not make their vote right in terms of the Constitution. Mr. Chairman, we have nine members across the lawn here that have overruled the desires many times and the wants of tens of millions of Americans when they decide cases, when the decide cases on abortion, or they decide cases on apportionment or on civil rights.

Mr. MILLER of California. I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule and in opposition to the legislation. As both my colleague from California and my colleague from Wisconsin have pointed out, there is just so much wrong with this bill that it is unbelievable that we are considering it in this form, both in the harm it does to the environment and the harm that it does to the American taxpayers. The deficiencies are complete, they are throughout, and this bill should not become law. One of the most egregious provisions of this bill is that instead of maintaining the patent moratorium on giving away lands, western lands, to mining companies as this House has strongly advocated year after year, the conference committee chose to ignore the clearly stated House intent. Earlier this year the House voted 271 to 153 to support extension of the 1995 patent moratorium. We took this action in response to widespread concern that taxpayers were being cheated out of hundreds of millions of dollars because of an archaic law enacted in the days of Jesse James, the robber barons, and mineral kings. Rather than honor or solidify the established bipartisan position, the conference adopted language that replaces the patent moratorium with even more deplorable language that currently exists under the 1872 law. The conference report not only renews the processing of patent applications which were substantively frozen by the 1995 appropriations bill, but it also directs the Secretary to take such action as may be necessary to take final action on all pending applications within 2 years. This is no small matter. Since 1872, the United States has let over 3.2 million acres of lands and 231 billion dollars' worth of mineral assets slip through our fingers in this way, charging minimal costs for land transfers and no royalties at all for the people of the United States who were the owners of this land when the land was transferred. If this conference report is approved, the mining industry will receive title to an additional 607 patents covering 230,000 acres of the public's lands for the measly price of the surface rights. Corporations clamoring to loot the public domain include ASARCO, U.S. Gypsum, United States Steel, Exxon, Union Oil, American Barrick, Manville Corp., Georgia Pacific, Santa Fe Pacific, Pfizer, Newmont, and Noranda Mining Cos. Just this year, because Congress failed to reform the 1872 mining law, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt was forced to sign away three patents worth as much as $1 billion in public mineral resources for a pittance of their true value, and no royalty will be paid on those minerals that were owned by the taxpayers. Lifting the moratorium will not only promote a giveaway of public land, but it will put approximately 15.5 billion dollars' worth of Federal minerals beyond the reach of any royalty payment for the American taxpayer that this Congress may subsequently come up with. So the taxpayer will sort of get screwed twice here, first by being forced to give away the land, and then by collecting zero economic rent or royalty for the extracted minerals. Nobody on the adjoining private land conducts their business with the mining companies in that fashion. We are constantly asked why do we not run the company like a business? That is one of the reasons we do not, because the mining companies are so powerful that we cannot get around to taking care of the public interest. The conference report should be rejected because it would also allow applicants to use private contractors to gather and analyze critical data to determine whether an applicant legally qualifies for the patent or for free land. But this obviously creates a tremendous potential conflict of interest. There is no need for such haste as is envisioned in this conference report. This conference report is clearly contrary to the best interests of the environment of the West, and it is clearly contrary to the best interests of the taxpayers of this Nation. We have endured this giveaway of public resources for over 100 years now. We have tried time and again to amend this law, to reform this law, and we have been beaten back by the lawyers and the lobbyists of the mining companies, and it is time to call a halt to it. If we cannot change the law, we certainly should not ask the American public to endure the continued whittling away of their wealth and their assets at the expense of the mining companies' special interests. Mr. Speaker, I would hope that we would reject this legislation. If a motion to recommit the conference report to exclude this provision is offered, I would hope Members of the Congress would support that, as they did earlier this year in their motions to maintain the patent provisions of the bill. Mr. Speaker, the flaws in this conference report are not limited to the failure to extend the [[Page H 9642]] moratorium on issuing mining patents. An egregious example of abuse of the taxpayers and an unprecedented attack on our natural resources is contained in the Senate rider dictating that timber interests dominate management of the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. Without any public hearings, the Senate has insisted on sweeping language which will greatly increase taxpayer subsidized logging of the magnificent old-growth forest in Alaska. Over the past several years, the Tongass has earned the dubious distinction of losing more money-- $64 million annually according to one economist's study--than any other national forest. The Senate language makes things worse. The Senate rider would abort the Forest Service planning process and congressionally dictate that the Tongass be managed according to a discredited, draft 1991 plan. That plan--which has been rejected by the administration for relying on outdated science--would provide for at least 418 million board feet of timber annually, one-third more than the average annual harvest on the Tongass over the past decade. Fully implementing this provision could cost an additional $18 million annually in Federal subsidies to support the increased logging. Language added by the conference committee would permanently constrain the Forest Service from amending the forest plan in any manner which would limit lands allocated to timbering. Moreover, the provision attempts to overturn a ninth circuit decision in a case brought by tourism, Native, and conservation interests and would insulate timber sales from environmental and subsistence use laws. Mr. Speaker, the Tongass language has been highlighted as objectionable to the administration by Vice-President Gore in conveying the President's veto threat. It is opposed by Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman. It is opposed by the Governor of Alaska, Tony Knowles. It is opposed by the Alaska Outdoor Council, a coalition of conservative hunting and fishing groups. It is opposed by every Alaska and national environmental group. As an architect of the 1990 Tongass Timber Reform Act, I take special offense at this assault on our largest national forest. These permanent changes in law are not within the proper jurisdiction of the appropriations committees. Moreover, there is simply no justification for this outrageous abuse of public process and legal rights. Southeast Alaska's jobless rate is lower than the national average. The economy is more diversified than ever before and is growing. The Senate language is an ill-advised attempt to turn back the clock and to manage these public lands to favor a heavily taxpayer subsidized special interest over all other competing users of the forest. While the Tongass language alone provides sufficient reason for the conference report to be rejected by the House, there are many other fundamentally flawed provisions which undermine the 1994 California Desert Protection Act by giving the National Park Service only $1 to manage the Mojave National Preserve; unfairly target Indian tribes and people by cutting the Bureau of Indian Affairs budget $351 million, 19 percent below the President's request, and $184 million or 11 percent below the fiscal year 1995 funding level; derail the Columbia River Basin ecosystem management project; fund Department of the Interior scientific research at $35.7 million below the President's request; prohibit wildlife species from being added to the endangered species list and the designation of critical habitat; fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund land acquisition programs at $71 million notwithstanding a $11.2 billion surplus in the fund. Mr. Speaker, the list of objectionable provisions goes on and on. This conference report should be rejected by the House. If not, the President should veto it and insist that the Congress come up with a new bill which is not an insult to the American people and our natural heritage.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the TEAM Act because it would undermine the current successful balance between employers and employees. The National Labor Relations Act was designed to make companies more productive and efficient by ensuring employees independence and freedom, and the National Labor Relations Act is working. Mr. Chairman, over the last decade American workers have become the most productive workers in the world. In every industry, large and small, American workers today are the most productive in the world. The increased productivity is partially the result of managers and employees working together in teams at companies like Nabisco, Saturn, Boeing, Chrysler, Xerox, Levi Strauss, and United States Steel. All of these companies, and many, many, many more small companies, have successful labor-management teams today under the current law. The essential ingredient in their success, Mr. Chairman, is the ability of the employees to have an independent voice on issues that impact the conditions of their employment. Because conditions of employment, such as work time, wages, health, safety issues, dramatically impact the lives of the employees. These issues must continue to be left to independent employee organizations to deal with without employer control. That is what this bill seeks to do, Mr. Chairman, to take away the independence of those employee organizations and insert employer dominance. Where the employer can set up an organization that is the fundamental equivalent of an independent organization, then employees lose that independent voice and, instead, we now have an adversarial system where once again we are dictating top-down from the employer to the lineworkers what is best for them. Under the TEAM Act, the employers would be free to exclude from a labor-management team individuals who want to express an independent voice through a union. Employers would be able to start up a team whenever they want to stop a union drive. This is not employee empowerment. This is employer domination. Management can now set up worker organizations to deal with productivity and efficiency. If that is all the Republicans care about, then the current law should not be changed. If they want more, if they want employer domination, then we must change the law. If there is a perception that the law is unclear whether labor-management teams can sometimes deal with the conditions of employment, then those can be dealt with under the Sawyer substitute. But the TEAM Act should be rejected because it ends the cooperative arrangement and it creates the adversarial arrangement. Mr. Chairman, the fact is, if we look at the Dunlop Report, and we look at the others, the thousands and thousands of American corporations now deal, and workplaces deal, with team relationships with the workers, but they are working with independently chosen worker organizations as opposed to those dominated, and we ought to reject the TEAM Act and reject that kind of one-sided domination of the American workplace.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, that is correct.

Mr. MILLER of California. Not that I know of. I thank the gentleman, and I would just say that I appreciate his comments. I would say that if we are buying incremental safety, if we are buying a value here, we are helping the workers, then maybe this program works. But if we are not doing that, then I think we are perpetrating a fraud on the workers and probably on the taxpayers. I think that maybe people may be more diligent about it if it came out of their local--out of the fare box, so to speak, or out of their local tax rate, than if they just thought maybe the Federal Government was contributing half to the safety bonus programs. I do not know. That is for the committee, and that is why I am not pressing the amendment, because I do not know that this is a solution. And I do not want to paint every other transit district with the same problems that have been highlighted in this article. But if the committee would give some attention to this, and the Chairman has been nice enough to ensure that, I appreciate it, and I thank the gentleman for his comments. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. (Mr. MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I think we ought to support the Lowey amendment, because I think the Lowey amendment does what very often we like to do in our own families with our children, and which I think most American parents like to do with their children. That is, they like to be able to send a clear and unambiguous message, because very often we understand that young children need clarity in that message, and ambiguity very often confuses and causes misjudgments on their part. What we have here is a situation where the government is sending two different messages. We clearly recognize that it is illegal, and with the support of the parents of this country, we have made it illegal for young people to drink under the age of 21. However, we say, on the other hand, ``If you have been drinking and then you get into an automobile and drive, and you are under the influence, we can tolerate that, and you will not be punished or some other action taken.'' So we are sending two different messages. It is illegal to drink, but if you do not get caught, but you are later caught in an automobile, actions are not going to be taken for your drinking. That is a message that we should not be sending. The ambiguity of that message we should not be sending, and that is not a message that parents, I believe, want their government sending to young people. Yes, it is illegal, but if you do not get caught, it could be OK if you are in the right set of circumstances. That is not what we do. We do not do this with marijuana, we do not do this with drugs. We do not say, You can use marijuana and then if you get caught driving under the influence, if you appear to be OK, you are released. We do not do that. I think we have to make it very clear here that parents send a message that they do not want their young people to use alcohol, and we ought not to allow this ambiguity. Many of the arguments used against zero tolerance are the arguments that were used against it when we decided last year that we would have zero tolerance in our schools for people who bring weapons to schools. There are a lot of hard cases, a lot of difficult cases, but the fact is schools do not need to have weapons in them. People should not bring weapons to school. We needed to send out right messages. We heard that some States had done it, some were going to do it, some States did not like being told to do it. The fact is today all States have it. We have zero tolerance. We have sent a very clear message: Bring a gun to school, you are out for a year. No ambiguities. Bring a gun to school, you are out for a year. What we are saying here, climb into a car, if you have been drinking and you are stopped for some reason, the State is going to make a determination about the price. This is not about sending edicts. This is not about sending mandates. This is about sending a set of values that we share with our constituents, we share them as parents, as grandparents, as people who are concerned with children. These are values that we share, and what we are saying is, Let us get on with it. Let us get down to the point where we can provide this kind of protection for our children. This is a very nonintrusive way. We are not saying how you have to mete out the penalties, we are not saying they cannot send them to education or counseling, what have you. All of that is available for communities and States to decide. What we are saying is, as a national legislature we no longer want to tolerate the ambiguity and the danger, the danger that that ambiguity places our children in on a nightly and daily basis, and other people in on a nightly and daily basis on the roads of America.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for those assurances. I want to say to the gentleman how much I appreciate that, because I know the work load and the demands and the requests that this committee gets from all of the Members of this Congress. I appreciate his response to this amendment.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment, No. 22.

Mr. MILLER of California. I yield to the gentleman from West Virginia.

Mr. MILLER of California. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I introduce this amendment and present it to the body to raise an issue that I think is of serious concern that has been raised recently in the press in Los Angeles, basically in the Los Angeles Times. That is the payment of safety bonuses to the contractors on the Los Angeles Metro project where we see a situation where already some nearly $3 million has been paid in safety bonuses to contractors on that project. Those contractors are in fact eligible for millions of dollars and more in safety bonuses. Now, we all agree about trying to achieve a goal of the safe workplace, and it has been a very high priority of mine throughout my congressional career, and I am a strong believer in that. But what upsets me in this situation is that we see safety bonuses being paid and they are paid to contractors whose safety record is not very good at all. In fact, as we know, this subway system has been plagued with a series of problems that not only have been embarrassing but also, tragically, have been dangerous to the workers in that area and, in some cases, even to the surrounding property owners. I notice in the story that they say, despite the higher than average injury rates on some of the contracts, the agency, in this case the Metropolitan Transit Authority, says that they believe that the project's overall record is no worse, no worse, than any other major project nationwide. Then why did we pay the bonuses for them if we only got a project that was no worse? The fact is, what we find out in this story is that the people that have received, or the companies and the consortiums that have received, these bonuses, in the case of Tudor Selby, I believe it is, and Perini, received $1.3 million in bonuses. But their comparison of them to the U.S. injury rate, they are 138 percent higher. Then it goes on to Mass Electric, 113 percent higher, and they have $300,000 in safety bonuses. My concern is that I do not think that these safety bonuses are all that much related to safety. My concern is sometimes maybe these are used to kind of lubricate the process to keep the job going and cover up for some of the mistakes, or what have you, that are going on, higher than the ordinary course of business decisions that have been made. I just do not think that when transit dollars are as hard to come by as they are today in this Congress, and we know the demand that this committee has placed on it every year from people who want additional transit dollars, I introduced this amendment because I would like to believe that the committee would take a look at this. I do not know the right solution. I introduced the amendment as a cutoff of funds, or not a cutoff, but saying you could in the use of Federal dollars, and I am informed that perhaps maybe Federal dollars are not being used, but we know once you combine the pool, money is fungible. And I am just concerned, one, very much so, that we are not buying an incremental value of safety important to the workers on this project; but, secondly, if the local transportation agency, whether it is the Bay Area Rapid Transit district in my area or the Los Angeles district, if they want to engage in this, maybe they ought to do that with their taxpayer or ratepayer dollars. And that should be a local decision. If they want to think that, they want to spend this kind of money in L.A., that does not appear as a block, to greater safety, then maybe the ratepayers and the local taxpayers ought to be in on that decision. But they should not just be using a pool of money that is supposed to be buying [[Page H 9308]] miles of tunnel or miles of track or cars for these systems, and dishing it out in this fashion. So I do not expect to press this today, but I would just hope that the committee would give some attention to this matter, because I think it goes to the credibility of our authorizing process and it clearly goes to the scarcity of transit dollars.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, my colleagues from New Jersey and Texas were in the well earlier pointing out the flaws of the yet- to-be-released proposal by the Republicans to cut the Medicare Program in this country and to cut the Medicaid Program in this country. It is very important certainly that the senior citizens of this country, but also that their families, focus on what the Republicans are about to do. As my colleague from New Jersey just pointed out, these changes in Medicare were not created out of the concern for the Medicare Program or its solvency into the future or for the beneficiaries. These cuts in the Medicare Program were created for one purpose, and that is so that the Republicans can fund a $245 billion tax cut, the primary beneficiaries of which are the richest people in this country. Mr. Speaker, they do not have $245 billion to give away. We have a $260 billion deficit this year and we have a $4 trillion deficit in this country. We do not have that money to give away, but they want to give it away. So where have they gone to get the money? They have gone to the Medicare trust funds to get that money and that is why they have a $270 billion cut in Medicare and a $182 billion cut in Medicaid. Now, most people think that somehow they are insulated from those cuts in Medicaid, that this only deals with poor people, this only deals with people of the inner city, somebody that they are never going to be part of. The fact is that over 65 percent of all of the money in Medicaid goes for nursing home and long-term care for people who never thought in their lives they would be in those nursing homes or in long- term care. Medicaid is what stands between not only the people in the nursing homes and bankruptcy; it stands between bankruptcy and their families, because there are very few, if any, middle income families in this country that can pay the full freight of taking care of the long- term care needs of their parents, if necessary. That is why we have Medicaid. Now, to be eligible for Medicaid, you have to spend yourself down, get rid of all of your assets, and then we will take care of you, but under this proposal to cut $180 billion, we may find that situation dramatically changed because they will have to change the benefits dealing with long-term care. They will have to change the benefits dealing with home health care, the idea of having somebody come in instead of putting somebody in a nursing home, have somebody come in and help them throughout the day so that they can live in their own home, live with some dignity, be in the neighborhood that they are familiar with and be taken care of. Those are going to be cut. These are not charges made by me. These are points made in the National Journal that was delivered to Members of Congress. This is a nonpartisan policy magazine that discusses policy every week, and their point is in fact that the Medicaid cuts are going to have horrific impacts on the States. They go on to point out that much of the rhetoric about how these Medicaid cuts will not hurt because everybody can be put into managed care, and therefore they can say that Medicaid will not grow more than 4 percent. Mr. Speaker, the State of Arizona has had everybody in their State in managed care for 13 years and the average increases are 7 percent. That means, under the Republicans' plan, it is twice the growth rate that the Republicans would allow. How do you make that up? You make that up by cutting services, because they have already squeezed all of the savings that they thought were possible by putting people into managed care. How did the State of California, when it cut Medicaid, how did it make it up? It started reducing payments to doctors. First they told the doctors, ``we will pay you 90 percent of what you get in the private marketplace;'' then, ``we will pay you 70 percent of what you get in the private marketplace'' and then pretty soon the doctors told them, ``Don't bother bringing Medicaid patients to us. We are not going to take care of these people because we cannot afford to do that.'' That is the slippery slope that is started when you start creating a medical system based upon the needs to provide tax cuts as opposed to what is needed to reform and take care of the Medicare system and its recipients, and we have got to understand that the program that the Republicans are putting forth now, according to the Washington Times yesterday, according to the chairman of the Budget Committee, may have the gap of about $80 billion in it. They do not know where they are going to get 80 billion dollars' worth of cuts. So what do they want to do? They want to put the Medicare system on an automatic cut provision that in 3 years, if we are not advancing toward the balanced budget, if the cuts have not been realized in Medicare, then they would have an automatic $80 billion in Medicare, again, coming out of hospitals, coming out of doctors who pretty soon are going to decide, like they have with the Medicaid patients, that they do not want any, that they do not want any Medicare patients. Mr. Speaker that simply is an intolerable situation for the elderly in this country and for their families. Let us understand what Medicare and Medicaid have done. They have allowed families to stay together, to stay intact with confronting what, in some cases, are catastrophic medical costs for our elderly population. As generations mature and they look to their children to help out, there are very few children that can help out with hundreds of thousands of dollars in health care costs as their parents reach 70, 80, 90 years of age. That is what is happening to the baby boomers. As the baby boomers try to figure out how to buy their homes for their families, how to educate their children, how to preserve a standard of living in this country, they are now confronted with their aging parents. I would look very carefully at this program to slash Medicare and Medicaid by almost $450 billion.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. And I want to thank my colleagues for taking this time. I would commend to them an article in the National Journal that came to our offices this afternoon which goes to exactly the point the gentlewoman made. People believe that huge amounts of money can be saved in Medicaid by throwing low-income people off of the rolls. As the gentlewoman correctly points out, over 60 percent of all the money in Medicaid goes to long-term health and nursing home care. In the State of California, the State of California several years ago, in 1982, cut Medicaid spending by 18 percent. The Republicans are proposing a 30-percent cut. With an 18-percent cut, what the State of California, and this is a study that has just recently been completed, almost 300,000 people were knocked off of the rolls. Then the State transferred that responsibility to the counties, and in the first year the State gave the counties 70 percent of what they were giving them before. And then the State got into more financial trouble, and it gave the counties 55 percent. By 1991, it was less than 35 percent. So now the counties are knocking people off of the rolls. What happened? They started reimbursing the doctors less and less. It went from 91 percent reimbursement to now 70 percent. They would pay the doctors 70 percent of what those doctors got in the private market to cover Medicaid recipients. No wonder nobody will take a Medicaid recipient in California. No wonder these people cannot get care. Now, on top of those cuts that have already been enacted in the State of California that I represent, and in many other States, along come the Republicans and say we want to put a 30 percent cut, $180 billion, on top of that. What this article goes on to show all of my colleagues is that, in fact, now we are into competition between nursing homes. Home health care, so that a family can continue to work and take care of their parents in their own home or in the home of the children, that will be slashed. And so what we are really seeing here is a huge, huge threat and assault on nursing home care and long-term care for people who find themselves in that situation. That impacts not only the elderly but, as we all know, in talking to our constituents and to Members of Congress, it impacts the children who are trying to educate their children, who are trying to pay their mortgage and trying to work it all out. Now, without that help of Medicaid, they are saddled. So California is a case study for how we start that downward spiral. I noticed the gentlewoman has the article from the Washington Times that talks about the $80 billion gap, hole, or whatever it is in the budget that they are presenting. Now it will be a look-back. Let me tell Members, if California is an example, seniors will be looking back in fear and looking back in anger, because not only will all of these cuts have taken place, but then we find out, and, as this article in the National Journal, a nonpartisan organization, goes on to say, most of the savings they contemplate will not achieve what they say they will. The governors admit it. The private people admit it. That $80 billion will grow and it will grow, and then will come year 3 of a 7-year budget, which means all of those savings then have to be achieved in a 4-year period of time. So we are really talking about reaching in and grabbing the health care system for the elderly right by the throat here. I just wanted to tell Members, we will look back and they will look back and say why did we not know this before we voted. Remember, the look-back provision? It must be automatic to be scored. No contingencies, no but-fors, no ifs, ands, or ables. This must be automatic. And that is the price we are taking from the seniors, with no knowledge of the size of that cut or the impact of that cut. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman would yield on that point?

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I would hope that the Members would focus on this legislation. This is not a park closing bill, and this is not the bill that passed last year. What this is, is a very, very good piece of legislation to allow us to deal with some of the problem that exist within the national parks of this country. Let us not pretend that the process by which all of the units and all of the obligations and all of the duties were given to the National Park Service was a pure process that nobody can question or raise issue with, because the fact is, we know that this Park Service and its resources have been assaulted from time to time by this Congress in the middle of the night in a conference committee without hearings, without jurisdiction, but based upon the individual power of a Senator here or a Congressman here, or what have you. We ought to now reexamine the operations of this most valuable, valuable agency of the Federal Government. This is not to pass judgment whether there should be more or less parks. This is about making sure that we are using the resources to the best extent that we can, that we can assure the people of this country that we are doing all that we can to maintain and improve the parks that we have, and to maintain the standards for the creation of those parks, and that we are making the best utilization we can out of the resources of the National Park Service. Nobody in this body can stand before the American public and say that is the situation today, and if we [[Page H 9090]] cannot say that, then we ought to put into motion a process by which we can review that. Because of the contributions of the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Hefley], the gentleman from Utah [Mr. Hansen], the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Vento], and even the gentleman from New Mexico [Mr. Richardson], this legislation in fact does that. It lets us look at the system. This is the rational way to go about reforming or reorganizing or reinventing, whichever term you are comfortable with, because it lets the front-line agencies, the Secretary of the Interior and the Park Service, make some determinations, and we all know that privately they come to us. Whether they are rangers in the West or they are in the seashores in the East or in the Gulf, they come to us privately and tell us, this is not working terribly well, Mr. Speaker. There is another way to do this. We ought to know that. They ought to be able to bring that forward and then have the citizens commission screen that process, screen that process so that there is input from affected parties, from localities, because all of us know that all of these parks have different importance to different communities and States and local jurisdictions. Some of them are huge engines of economic activity. Some of them are huge engines of activity, but you do not have the economics to take care of it. Some of them, quite simply, nobody knows why they are there, except that somebody got it done in the legislative process. Mr. Speaker, this is a process that is reasoned out, that has protections in it, that is very thoughtful, and does not mandate that any action take place, but it puts us in a position that at one point we can stand before our constituents and say that this is the best run agency, the best use of resources of the National Park Service. Mr. Speaker, I urge support of the bill.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, in a clear demonstration of the fact that fish truly do not know political boundaries, I find myself on the same side of an resource management issue as the gentleman from Alaska, Mr. Young and rise in support of H.R. 39, the Fishery Conservation and Management Amendments of 1995. As many Members have mentioned here, our fisheries, and in turn our family fishermen, are in trouble. In northern California, the salmon fishermen have seen their season remain closed two years in row, the stocks devastated by habitat loss. In New England, overfishing of cod and haddock have closed significant areas of the once teeming waters of Georges Bank. In the Gulf of Mexico and the North Pacific, some fisheries are in decline or must be shut down early as a result of high bycatch of these species by fishermen who are targeting totally different fish. When we harvest our fish at an unsustainable rate, when we decimate the habitat that fish depend on for reproduction and growth, and when we continue to discard non-target species at unchecked rates, everybody loses. The resource, the fishermen that depend on it to make a living, and the consumers that face higher prices due to limited supplies. Overfishing, habitat loss, and bycatch are just a few of the problems that face our fisheries, severe economic impacts to our coastal fishing communities is the result. Last week, there was yet another news article documenting the plight of the fishing industry. ``Fisheries going the way of the family farm'' was the title of the story which detailed the challenges the small independent operators face today, driving many out of business. To stem this tide, we must act now if we want to preserve the fish and the fishermen and protect fishermen's jobs, instead of short term investors' profits. We must act now if we want to maintain an industry that encourages small independent owner-operators and holds the promise for crew members that invest their hearts and souls in the fishery that their hard work will enable them to fulfill the dream of owning their own vessel and fishing just as their fathers and grandfathers did. The bill before us today represents a bipartisan effort to improve our fisheries management system and maintain this way of life. I congratulate the Chairman and the gentlemen from Massachusetts and New Jersey for their efforts to bring this legislation to the floor. At the appropriate time I will be offering an amendment that I believe takes us even closer to what I hope would be our goal for the future of the fishing industry. In total, however, this is a good bill and I urge Members to support it.