George Miller

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, my colleagues on the other side insist upon trying to tell the country that a cut is not a cut. But the problem with their calculations are as we talk to more and more local school districts, they clearly realize that these are cuts. The School districts and school nutrition programs will have less money over the next 5 years to feed children than they have under the current services budget by CBO that will allow them to continue to serve the number of children that they are serving now. Monroe County schools up near Rochester, NY, they are talking about serving 7,800 fewer children than they would otherwise be able to serve in the coming year. The point is this, that when you look at the cuts in school lunch programs, you see that the Republican proposal is off by some $2.3 billion. They can say this is not a cut, but the fact is it is a cut, because those children who would otherwise be served in this program over the next 5 years, many of them simply are not going to be able to be served. If they choose to serve every child, they have to decide to cut back on the meal and nutrition component of that meal, and as we know from many of these children, this is where they get a good portion of their nutrition in the entire day. They can decide to raise the price to those who are now paying a reduced price meal. The fact is when we have seen that, a good portion of the reduced price young people are forced to drop out of the program because they simply do not have in their family income sufficient money to increase that price. They can choose to throw all of the paying children out of the program who pay full price for the meal, but as we know, when you do that, you start to lose the economics of the program and programs close down as a result of that. So what we have here is a mismatch of about $7 billion in nutrition programs over what we should be spending to serve this population as opposed to what the Republicans are offering in the welfare reform bill under the child nutrition components. They say that they are offering $4.5 billion every year, and that is supposed to make everybody here believe that that in fact takes care of the problem. But the problem is that the 4.5 percent they are offering every year is not based upon the total cost of what it costs to deliver school lunches and pay for them under the current program, because it does not include the cost of the commodities, so that is excluded from the 4.5 percent. The cost of education is excluded from the 4.5 percent, and in fact they omit almost 20 percent of the funds currently used to provide nutrition programs for our young people, and that is why the 4.5 percent then, even though they add it every year, falls further and further behind, until by the 5th year, we see there is a gap in the nutrition component of my Republican colleagues of a little over $7 billion. That is roughly in the school lunch component because of 2 million children over the next 5 years that otherwise would be served under the current services budget as opposed to those who will not be served. Now, the Republicans also want to convince everybody in America that they are not cutting meals, they are only cutting the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy at the Federal level for all nutrition programs is $140 million a year. $140 million a year. If you do it over the 5 years, it is roughly $700 million. They are cutting $7 billion out of the program. So obviously it is not just the bureaucracy. The cuts go far beyond the bureaucracy at the Federal level. Where do the cuts go? They go right to the school lunches, to the participation in the WIC program, to the school breakfast programs, to the nutrition education programs that are sponsored by this program. What does that mean? That means a good many of our poor and our near- poor, the working poor in this country who rely on this program for nutrition, simply will no longer be able to do so to the same extent that they are today. They are not talking about waste, fraud, and abuse. We had those problems many years ago when the private sector thought it was open season on the school lunch program and they could deliver substandard meals and poorly packaged meals and stale meals and charge us. We are not talking about that in the WIC program, when we had the problems of being ripped off by some of the largest food companies in this country that thought they could sell us substandard formula or sell it to us at rates that far exceed the going rate. Unfortunately, in the Republicans' proposal, they no longer include the competitive bid process, which would save us a billion dollars, and we were using that money to plow back into providing the services for pregnant women and newborn infants. So the bottom line is that a cut is a cut. There is a $7 billion gap between this and whatever. I ask my colleagues, and Mr. Cunningham is on the Armed Services Committee, if someone said they were only reducing the growth of the defense budget, I suspect they would call it a cut. That is what they have been calling it over the last several years whenever it is suggested is that a cut take place or a reduction in the growth. But if you are a hungry child, the $7 billion gap that you create means that lunches will not be delivered, and that is the simple fact. The numbers cannot be denied. I assume that is why they are so frantically trying to convince people all is well in the school lunch program. It is not, and it is not well for the children.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring to the attention of all Members an article which appeared in the March 13, 1995, issue of U.S. News and World Report, and to insert in the Record an editorial by the editor-in-chief, Mortimer B. Zuckerman. The article, by Michael Satchell, reports on the deplorable situation now confronting Yellowstone National Park due to the onerous and archaic provisions of the 1872 mining law. Mr. Satchell describes the ill- advised efforts of a Canadian-owned mining company to open a gold mine on the outskirts of Yellowstone Park, thereby creating a potentially dangerous predicament for one of the crown jewels of our National Park System. Mr. Zuckerman's editorial confronts the absurdities of the archaic law, daring Congress to ``show some muscle about abuses that lose Federal revenues'' by taking on ``the politically powerful mining industry and its Western congressional allies'' and reforming this ``silly law''. Mr. Speaker, this coverage by U.S. News and World Report is particularly relevant and timely, in light of the recent introduction in the Senate of yet another industry-backed bill--craftily designed to look like reform but, in reality, devised to insure that the mining industry maintains its free-ride on the public dole. Representative Nick J. Rahall and I have also introduced legislation, H.R. 357, identical to the bill passed by the House last year on a three-to-one bipartisan vote. Last year, over 300 House Members--including 70 Republicans--voted to bring some fairness into the hard rock mining system. This year, instead of only cutting school lunches and rent money for poor working families, I hope the Republican majority will have the determination to expunge some of the welfare enjoyed by the corporate elite. Reforming the 1872 mining law by enacting H.R. 357 would be a big step in the right direction. [From U.S. News & World Report, Mar. 13, 1995] Bury This in Grant's Tomb (By Mortimer B. Zuckerman) How's this for a dream? You are free to roam anywhere on 600 million acres of public land in the West, staking out mining claims in the happy knowledge that if you strike gold or silver or copper, you can extract your find absolutely free. And, dream on, you will have the option on purchasing the land outright at a price of no more than $5 an acre. It's no dream. An antique called the General Mining Law of 1872, signed by President Ulysses S. Grant to encourage migration into the Rocky Mountain states, provides such beneficence. The West has long been settled, but prospectors and mining companies are still getting rich off the 1872 law, and the taxpayers are still getting robbed. It gets worse. You could have bought--or patented--17,000 acres of oil-shale claims near Rifle, Colo., for a mere $42,000 and a month later sold the package to Shell Oil for $37 million. But someone beat you to it. And that deal was no freak. An investigation by the U.S. General Accounting Office of some 20 patents examined at random found the government had been paid $4,500 for claims worth somewhere between $14 million and $48 million. Just last year the Secretary of the Interior was infuriated to discover he was obligated to let a Canadian company acquire, for a nominal amount, Nevada land with gold reserves estimated to be worth $10 billion. He called it ``the biggest heist since the days of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.'' To date, 3.2 million acres of public land--an area the size of Connecticut--have been sold. More than $230 billion in mineral reserves in 13 Western states has been given away since the passage of the 1872 law--more than 315 million ounces of gold, 5.5 billion ounces of silver, 79.5 million tons of copper, 19.2 million tons of lead and 13.9 million tons of zinc. Today, as much as $4 billion worth of hard-rock materials is taken out every year. The language of the law is such that a lot of ``mining'' land has been bought, then used to build everything from private homes to gambling casinos and luxury resorts. The not-so-funny name for all this is the Great Terrain Robbery. Injury is added to insult. The law contains no environmental protection. The mining residue--some 70 billion tons of tailings--has been left exposed to the elements, polluting rivers and ground water. There are also 550,000 abandoned mines and open pits, such as the infamous Berkeley Pit in Butte, Mont.--a mile wide, a mile and a half long, half a mile deep--filled with water that is more acidic than vinegar. You know who bears the cleanup cost. Yes, you, the taxpayer. A new crisis has emerged with the plans of Noranda. Inc., a Canadian corporation with a history of environmental problems, to mine 3 miles from Yellowstone Park's northeastern boundary. Today there is a moratorium on further land transfers. Yet nearly 400 patent applications are back up from companies that hope to slip through their claims to get their hands on $21 billion in reserves before the 1872 act is reformed. The reformers want the mining companies to be treated like other extractive industries, which, astonishingly, they are not. First, fair prices for these patents should be determined by the marketplace; they should include the cost of reclamation and the enforcement of environmental standards. Second, there is the issue of royalties. Loggers, coal producers and offshore oil and gas companies pay royalties when they extract wealth from public land. Reformers want mining companies to pay a royalty on their ore based on gross sales. With net revenues estimated at 25 percent of gross values extracted, a royalty is easily affordable. So is compliance with environmental standards-- federal standards, because oversight by the states, which the mining industry favors, has proven weak. It also makes sense to withdraw some federal lands from mining if they are close to national parks or similar natural resources. Why has this silly law lasted this long? Because a politically powerful mining industry and its Western congressional allies have blocked any revision. The argument that it would cripple a key regional industry and costs jobs in essentially a rational for gouging the public. Here is an opportunity for the ``new'' Republican Party. If it is determined to expunge abuses in federal spending, it should show some muscle about abuses that lose federal revenues.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. And that is minimal at this stage; 10 or 15 years ago it was a major problem, but because of the changes that have been made historically on a bipartisan basis with Senator Dole and Congressman Goodling leading the Republican efforts, this bipartisan effort on agriculture and on the education committees had worked out so that we have a program now which is the model throughout the world. The WIC Program is the model throughout the world on how to deal with high-risk pregnancies and all of the tragedies that can come from that. And going up front and providing a very strong prevention mode that has worked beyond people's wildest expectations. You point out that we saved $3 for every dollar that we expend in WIC and $10 for every dollar that we spend immunizing a young child. That is just the immediate medical cost. That does not go to what you save in special education and remedial education and all of these other problems that, unfortunately, these children manifest many years later that have been separated from the time of birth when people are no longer concentrating on what happened, so that now Sally or Johnny has a problem in class or with attention span or all of these other problems that occur today.

Mr. MILLER of California. It is not to block grant it. They make a big point about they give in the nutrition program 200 million more a year. But if the money is insufficient to meet the demand of the children that are eligible, the children who need this nutrition, then they are in fact cutting the program. If I said to the people in our Committee on the Armed Services: We will give you $500 million more a year every year for the next 5 years, they would say that is absolutely unacceptable. We have contingencies we cannot foresee. We do not know what is going to happen.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I probably will not take the whole 60 minutes, much to your relief and others, but I would like to take some time here to discuss some matters that concern me, some of which will be addressed in the rescission this week and later those that will come before us in the welfare reform bill proposed by the Republican Members of this Congress. First of all, let me just say that it is pretty well documented now and I think people have come to understand that the welfare reform bill holds major, major cuts to populations that are very vulnerable in this American society and especially with those cuts with respect to nutrition programs for school children and for newborn infants and for children in child care settings. Specifically, some $7 billion are cut out of nutrition programs that serve the women's, infants' and children's program and the school lunch programs. Now, many of my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle have come to the floor and suggested from time to time that they are not cutting anything, that they are simply slowing the growth, but the fact of the matter is that they are removing a little over $7 billion from these programs over the next 5 years, and that means that the people who are administering these programs at the local level, because that is where these programs are run, will have to decide whether fewer children receive a school lunch or whether they will receive a smaller school lunch or whether they will receive it fewer days a week than they would to keep up with the current--the current--demand on these programs. And of course, if the economy should go into any kind of downturn, as more and more people become eligible for these programs because they have lost their jobs in the economic downturn, there will be no money to provide for those children and those programs. The program also, and you will start to see the linkage here, that the Republicans also cut the moneys for the women's, infants' and children's program. Again, they will argue it is block granted. Again, they will argue it can be used more efficiently, but the fact of the matter is that the funding is incapable of keeping up with the current demand with a case load that unfortunately, unfortunately in this country, continues to grow, and that is, women who are pregnant, that are certified to be at medical risk of either not being able to carry the pregnancy to term and thereby giving it very extensive risks to a low-birth-weight baby being born. We know from all of the academic studies and scientific studies that have been done over the last 20 years that should a low-birth-weight baby be born, a baby generally under 5.5 pounds, that that baby suffers a dramatic increase in the likelihood of mental or physical disabilities or other complications, medical complications at the time of birth. That baby can very easily cause the increase, because of the intensive and increased medical attention at the time of birth, that baby can cause an expenditure in the hundreds of thousands of dollars over a very short period of time to try to get the birth weight of the child up and to get the child functioning properly, to deal with the problems of the lungs, the respiratory problems that come from low- birth-weight babies as they are born. If the baby is very low birth weight, of course the complications become much more dramatic and the costs much more dramatic. Interestingly enough, though, what we have found following these children over an extended period of time is that when you return them home from the hospital to the parents who now have a healthy child, a child that is up to par here in terms of its birth weight and it is looking healthy here, that many other problems continue to linger with these children, that these children now, as we track them, are 30 to 40 percent more likely to come in and need special education, remedial costs all throughout the early years of education. So these problems do not end. Their problems do not cease, and yet we know that if we get them back up and if we were not cutting the WIC programs, that we have a dramatically, a dramatically increased opportunity of raising the birth weight of this child, of having this pregnancy go to term and having this child be a healthy, bouncy baby at the time of birth and not suffer all of these tragedies for the family, for the child, and eventually the expenses for the taxpayer. But what are we doing now after 20 years of treating this population, we have now decided that we are going to turn our backs on this population and cut the funding to this most vulnerable, vulnerable group of people in our society, and something that is clearly preventable with a matter of a few dollars a week, because what has a few dollars a week done? What it does is it provides for medical screening for the pregnant mother. At that time we try to tell them, do not engage in the use of alcohol, do not smoke during pregnancy because it can have a dramatic impact and unfortunately a bad impact on the fetus and the baby when it is born, and we also try to get them to understand nutrition. And in that light, we provide for them high-protein foods, foods high in iron and other supplements that we know can have a very dramatic impact on the likelihood that this nutritional risk that the woman suffers from can be reversed and we can have a healthy pregnancy at the outset. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder].

Mr. MILLER of California. I thank the gentlewoman. And we both had the honor to chair the Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families in previous Congresses. It is interesting that they try to portray to the public that there essentially will be no cuts in these programs affecting the children, what have you, and yet they are also telling everybody that they cut all this money out so they can afford a tax cut to the wealthiest 1 percent of the people in the country. If there are no savings and no cuts, how do you pay for the tax cut? They say that they pay for the tax cut by the savings that they have made. You serve on the Committee on Armed Services. If you were to say to Congressman Cunningham, who serves, I believe, on the Committee on Armed Services with you. And he says this is not a cut, we are simply reducing the growth in spending. If you were to tell him that you were going to take the armed services down to current services to maintain this current fighting force next year and the year after, taking into account inflation and mission growth and all the other things that are taking place, and you told him that you were going to take away the money that would allow that, would he say, ``That is a cut'' or would he say, ``That is not so bad; it is slowing the growth''?

Mr. MILLER of California. The gentlewoman is exactly right, because the fact of the matter is that if you take the cuts in school lunch programs, you are talking roughly about 2 million children that would have been served over that period of time, those 5 years, that simply will not be served because the programs will not have the money. The notion is to suggest, again, that somehow local school districts will make up that money. The fact is that money. And in our State they have been taking money from the School Lunch Program to do other things with. That is why we have a National School Lunch Program, because we knew that the politics was the most difficult at the local level and moneys were diverted to other purposes.

Mr. MILLER of California. The gentlewoman is quite correct. What we found out, unfortunately, is that, this never ceases to amaze me, but we do have very upstanding members of our communities and corporate members of our community who are fully prepared to rip off the taxpayers. And what we found at one point was that a number of formula companies were charging very excessive rates for the formula for the newborn infants in this program, so we went to a program of bidding and making them compete on a national basis for these contracts and it dramatically lowered the cost of the formula about a billion dollars. And that was able to be plowed back into extending the number of infants that can be served. Interestingly enough, in the bill that we will be considering, although this was a proposal by, I believe, the now chairman of the committee, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Goodling], that we tried to make sure that this bidding would continue and that amendment was rejected in the committee. So now we have the ability to see people negotiate contracts and, as I said, unfortunately, one of the sad things in our job from time to time is that we find out that there are professional people, well- educated people, and a lot of other people, who are fully prepared to rip the Federal Government off for their own narrow gains. And now the likelihood of that happening again is substantially increased and the loss of these savings and the loss of nutrition to the newborn infants and the babies.

Mr. MILLER of California. The gentlewoman is quite correct. There has been very few, if any, complaints about the management of this program. The WIC program is essentially run at the local level. We simply reimburse the States for the formula and for the food that they provide for the pregnant women and for the newborn infants. It is run by State WIC directors and local WIC people in the counties that come together for this purpose. And there is unanimity. People like the way the program is being run now. And that is why the Congress, even during the Reagan years and the Bush years, there has been a steady trend toward full participation, 100 percent participation in WIC, because both Republicans and Democrats and Governors and Senators and Congresspeople and local county health directors and medical directors, they all like the say this program is running. Now, we are using the issue of a block grant so we can slice the funding. It is a ruse, it is camouflage to cover up what is actually going on. It is interesting in the Committee on Education and Labor, the Republicans selected five witnesses. They selected the witnesses. I do not think we were allowed to have a witness from the Democratic side; maybe one. And all five witnesses said, ``Leave the program alone. Leave it alone.'' The only problems we have had in this program is from time to time when people from the private sector have come in and ripped the program off with stale meals and old meals, bad food, mislabeled commodities, phony formula. Those kinds of problems; not from the public sector but, from people from the private sector who are trying to rip the program off and make ill-gotten gains at the expense of the children.

Mr. MILLER of California. The word ingrate comes to mind.

Mr. MILLER of California. I thank the gentlewoman for joining me in these remarks and raising these points. The point is that when we look at the rescission bill that we will vote on on Wednesday, the cuts come from low-income housing, from elderly housing, low-income energy assistance. We are taking from the poorest people in this country to provide the disaster assistance so we can provide a tax cut. It just does not make sense and it does not add up. It sounds like Mexico. It sounds like those folks would not go for it over there.

Mr. MILLER of California. I thank the gentlewoman for joining me and, again, for all of her involvement in these issues. I would just like to say now that it has been pretty well established that the Republican budget cuts and the welfare reform are prepared to turn their back on the issues of prevention with respect to disabled children and preventing these pregnancies that are high risk that we have identified. We know before the fact, we know that we can go out and change the course of these pregnancies. But yet somehow we are not going to dedicate those funds. And Wednesday we will be voting to cut 100,000 women, pregnant women, pregnancies that are started. They do not know budget rescissions or balanced budgets or fiscal years. The pregnancies are launched, and yet we know if we can get there early, we can change the outcome of this pregnancy. One hundred thousand women will not be served this fiscal year because of these cutbacks. And that is what I mean by cutting the most vulnerable. But now let us move on to the next stage of the Republican plan. They have already decided they are not going to make the maximum effort to prevent a birth defect from taking place or prevent a low-birth-weight baby from being born or to prevent mental retardation or physical disabilities that occur for a whole host of reasons. They are not going to make that effort. But now what we find out is that they come back years later. And when we see low-income families, one of the facts about disabilities, mental disabilities and physical disabilities and birth defects, is they know no socioeconomic bounds. You can be living behind a gated community in a country club and you can have the sadness of the visitation of a birth defect come to your family. And you can struggle with this child and to work out and to create a life for the child and a community within your family, and a family setting for that child, or you can be the poorest person in town. It can happen. But what we see now is that they are going to take 225,000 children who are severely disabled, either mentally or physically, and they are going to take them off of the Supplemental Security Income Fund that was created to try and help these most disabled children. And they are going to take these children off because they believe that somehow some parents may be coaching their children to act like they are retarded, to act like they have learning disabilities, to act like they have mental disabilities so they can get $400 a month. I am sure somewhere out there some place there are parents who do this. But let us assume it is 10 percent. It is 10 percent of the parents, so it is 25,000 children. That still leaves you with 200,000 children who are medically certified as severely disabled children. They are off the rolls. This low-income family now gets no fiscal help for the taking care of this child. Assume it is 20 percent. You have 175,000 children out there who come from low-income families, because you only get the 400 a month if you are very poor. You must be among the poorest to get the maximum payment. You are off of the rolls. So if your child has cerebral palsy, you are off of the rolls. If your child has other complications, such as the 6-year-old Jennifer Cox, who suffered from a congenital bowel malformation requiring a colostomy, and eye problems and lacks peripheral vision causing her to run into the walls. At 6, she is not yet toilet trained. But if you are the family trying to take care of your child with all of these problems, we are going to say we are not going to help you anymore, even if happen, because we are going to provide for a tax cut. Or Kendra Whalen who is 2 who suffers from a very rare growth condition in which one arm is twice as long as the other arm which means it causes her to lose her balance, motor impairment, spinal curvature and has lost lung volume because of this. Kendra is off the rolls if this goes through. And it goes on and on. To Mosha Smith who is 10 months old, requires a shunt in the back of her head to drain the cerebral spinal fluid from her brain into her abdominal cavity. She suffers partial paralysis of the legs, bowel and bladder and a condition that requires frequent catheterization. The family is struggling to take care of these children in their family settings. They love these children. And yet somehow what we are saying to these families is the Government cannot help you a little bit. And what is the help for? What is the help for after the child has been medically certified to suffer these disabilities of retardation, of physical impairments? A documentation that requires the person from Social Security to talk to child care providers; to talk to physicians; if they are school age, to talk to the school personnel; to talk to neighbors and playmates to make sure that this, in fact, this person is disabled to the extent to which it has been represented. If you are so fortunate to get this help so you can keep your child home, so you can keep your child out of an institution, so you can provide your child some semblance of a normal family life and a normal childhood experience, be they infant or school age, what are you doing with this money that you are getting? In some cases you are probably having the child's clothing altered, so instead of buttons it can be velcro because the child may not be able to button their clothes. You may be paying utility bills because a child at home may be on a respirator for 24 hours a day. You may have it to buy or rent a backup generator, because you worry that the loss of electricity for the child who is on the respirator. You worry about your ability for communication devices, so if something goes wrong you will be able to communicate to people. What about all the telephone calls you have to make? You are a low- income person with a severely disabled child in your home. You are making phone calls to medical providers, pharmacists, to social services, to schools. We are not going to help you out with that. How about specially trained child care? You are trying to work. You are low income and you are trying to work, but most child care centers will not take these children. They are not equipped or trained. And if you do find a place for your child, it is much more expensive. But the Government is not going to help you anymore. Respite care. The taking care of these children is a 24-hour-a-day job. Husband and wife work it out together. They juggle their jobs. Most often what happens is one of them gives up income so that they can take care of the child. So you pay for respite care. What is respite care? It is a chance to have the child taken care of for 5 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours. Maybe a big thrill, overnight so you and your spouse can spend the evening together. That would be the big thrill. Twenty-four hours of respite care. The Government helps you pay for that now. No longer, when you have a severely disabled child. What about transportation? Additional transportation if the child is an older child? I mentioned adaptive clothing, the special laundry. The diapers for a teenage child that is uncontinent. You have to go through that for all those years. Adaptive toys. All of the repairs for the equipment that you have for your child. That is what the $400 a month goes for and that is what is going to be cut off in the welfare reform bill for these most severely disabled children. We cannot really be doing this in the name of humanity. We cannot be doing this because it is good for the children. We are simply doing this because the Republicans are on the march to round up money so that they can provide a tax cut, as we said, to some of the wealthiest people and corporations in this country. I am sure that each of those people who earn over $100,000, $150,000, $200,000, if they knew where this money was coming from would probably say, ``Why do you not take care of the children? Why do you not help out this family? Why do you not help these families who are financially poor and now have to deal with the problems of a disabled child in their family?'' I am sure that is what those people would say. But, apparently, the politicians whose represent them cannot get that message that that kind of cut is not necessary. This is not a cut about fraud and abuse. This is a cut about gathering up money that some people think that maybe families should not have. Now, you could get the money if you can show that but for that money, your child would not have to be institutionalized. So if you have the threat of losing your child into an institution, away from your home, even though you want to take care of it, even though it may be less expensive, that is what you would have to show. What about all the time and the effort and the money that these families put into these children already before they ever get to the Government for help? We have had hearings after hearings on these children and these families and what you see is a very loving child, a Down's syndrome child, a child with cerebral palsy, and a very loving family. But in this day and age, to hold that family together economically is very difficult with both people working. And if you are low-income, it is almost impossible. So what do you do? You risk losing your child. You risk having to give up your child, because you cannot get the money so that you can give up some hours of work to stay home with that child. And so, therefore, you must show that the child must be institutionalized. Somehow that does not seem to be fair. That does not seem to be fair in terms of putting families into that situation and I do not think it should be done. If there is some allegation of fraud, if there is some belief that out there somewhere, some parent is coaching their child, then why do we not make it a crime? It is a fraud. Well, it is crime. Do what you want to do. And the one random sampling of over 600 of these cases, I believe, in 13 cases, no case did they find coaching. And in 10 or 13 cases they thought maybe that potentially there could be some coaching. And I think 10 kids were taken off, but that comes nowhere near the whole population or 5 percent or 2 percent of this population. And that is why we have to ask whether or not this is really where we want to cut the budget to these most vulnerable families and these most vulnerable children. We have had a history of commitment to these children. We have had a history of commitment to these children because we realized their situation. We have recognized the stress, the pain, the financial burden that this places on a family. And we have said we will try to help you where that help is necessary. And now we are saying we are going to withdraw that kind of support. I do not think that that is going to go over well in this country. I do not think that the people believe that that has a higher priority than a tax cut. I think that they believe that that is one of the missions of Government, to see that these families can stay together. To see that children are not taken away from their parents who love them, but are not able to care for them for the want of a couple of hundred dollars a month. And finally, let me say this. That should a family have to give up their child, and should a family be unable to care for that child, and if because of those special circumstances that child becomes eligible for adoption, cutting SSI makes the adoption of that child much more difficult. Because today, the adoptive families could get some financial help for taking a child with special needs, reaching out to a child with disabilities and saying, ``We will make this child a part of our family, but we don't have the financial wherewithal.'' So it is a better deal for the Government. A child gets a loving family. provision. So now a family that wants to adopt this child with special needs is denied the opportunity. The child is denied the opportunity, so now the child is in foster care. High-cost foster care, because foster care for children with special needs is very expensive, very difficult to come by. So I want somebody to explain to me, when you get all done cutting the WIC program, the school lunch program, and the SSI benefits for disabled children, and the adoption benefits for disabled children, I want people to explain to me how the children are better off when the Contract With America is done. The children of this Nation are the first victims of the Contract With American. I guess these Republicans grew up hearing, ``Women and children first.'' They thought that meant to throw them out of the life boat. It meant to put them in the life boat first. It means to save the women and children. And yet, what do we see? We see that the contract now takes away prenatal care. It takes away health care for pregnancies because of nutritional risks. It takes away the care for a newborn infant because of nutritional risk and brain development; those first hours that are so important for the development of that child. And now we see later in life, when this family and child is in need of more help because of the birth defects that they suffered, because of the disabilities that they suffered, once again the Federal Government is walking away. So, clearly, I guess the policy is women and children first during the contract; that they will be sacrificed first in the contract's period on America's children and on America's women.

Mr. MILLER of California. We would like this to be family based and nutrition based and health based for the children of this country.

Mr. MILLER of California. I think it is very unfortunate that we see the situation where before the election, when we had the Northridge earthquake in California, again on a bipartisan basis, people believed that that was an national emergency and you should not cut other program to pay for that. I happen to have a little different view. I believe we should privatize the disaster system. We cannot have the ``Disaster of the Month'' here draining the Treasury. And I would have hoped that we would have done that with this California aid bill. The gentleman from Illinois, Congressman Durbin, had a proposal in to do that and then we would have a rainy day fund and an earthquake fund or hurricane fund so that we would build that money up so that we could pay it out. But that was not done, so now as we are halfway through taking care of people who were devastated in the earthquake, people who still cannot enter their houses or businesses or the universities because of the earthquake damage, all of a sudden we have decided it is no longer a national emergency and it is going to have to be paid for and the way to pay for it is to cut summer jobs for children, to cut drug-free schools and to cut the weatherization program to pay for the California aid. And at the same time, the California Governor wants to give the same amount of money back to the taxpayers of California for a tax cut. So you are telling people in our State of Colorado, or New Mexico, or Maine, or Texas, you have to cut all of your programs to pay for the California aid, but the people in California are going to get a tax cut. I think that is a little hard to sell. And I think that the Governor is doing a little bit of putting the pea under the walnut shell and seeing whether or not Congress can follow it. Apparently, the Republicans have lost the pea and they have decided they are going to go ahead and give them the money and he can give the tax cut and people all over the country will have those programs cut. It doesn't make any sense. I honestly believe, and said this during the Midwest flood crisis, that we have got to develop another means of this so that we do not reach out on an ad hoc basis when we have these horrible, horrible disasters that this country, given its geographic size, is never going to be immune from, no matter what we do.

Mr. MILLER of California. I just talked to my wife this morning and the sandbags are out. We are about this far from----

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, the Republican tax plan announced yesterday takes us back to the days of yesteryear, when 130 of the 250 largest corporations in America paid no income taxes in spite of having profits of $72 billion prior to 1986; 130 of these corporations paid no taxes in 1 or more years. The Republicans are repealing the alternative minimum tax for corporations and, once again, these corporations will not have an obligation to the people of this country. As they shift the jobs overseas, they will pay no taxes in America. Prior to 1986, Burlington Industries paid no taxes in 2 out of 4 years; Burlington Northern, 2 out of 4 years; Adolph Coors, 1 out of 5 years; Lockheed, 4 out of 5 years; Mitchell Energy, 4 out of 5 years; General Dynamics, 4 out of 5 years; the Grumman Corp., 4 out of 5 years paid no taxes, yet they earned $72 billion. Do Members want to know why middle-income taxpayers are paying more taxes? Because the Republicans are going to let the American corporations 130 companies that beat the tax system in at least 1 year between 1981 and 1985 [Out of a sample of 250 corporations] Company Number of no-tax years Aetna Life & Casualty.................................................1 Air Products and Chemicals............................................1 American Cyanamid Co..................................................3 American Standard.....................................................2 AMP...................................................................1 Anheuser-Busch........................................................1 Archer Daniels Midland Co.............................................1 Armstrong World Industries............................................1 Ashland Oil...........................................................3 AT&T..................................................................2 AZP Group (Arizona Pub. Serv.)........................................1 Bankers Trust.........................................................3 Barnett Banks of Florida..............................................1 Baxter Travenol Laboratories..........................................1 Boeing Co.............................................................4 Borden................................................................1 Burlington Industries.................................................2 Burlington Northern...................................................2 Carolina Power & Light Co.............................................2 Carpenter Technology Corp.............................................1 Centex Corp...........................................................3 Central and South West Corp...........................................2 Champion International Corp...........................................3 Citizens and Southern Ga. Corp........................................2 Cleveland Electric Illum. Co..........................................1 Combined International Corp...........................................1 Comerica..............................................................4 Commonwealth Edison Co................................................1 Continental Telecom...................................................1 Coors (Adolph) Co.....................................................1 Corning Glass Works...................................................2 CSX Corp..............................................................2 Cubic Corp............................................................1 Dun & Bradstreet Corp.................................................2 DuPont................................................................3 Englehard Corp........................................................2 Federal Paper Board Co................................................3 First Executive Corp..................................................2 First Interstate Bancorp..............................................2 First Union Corp......................................................1 Foster Wheeler Corp...................................................1 FPL Group (Fla. Power & Light)........................................1 General Dynamics......................................................4 General Electric......................................................3 General Mills.........................................................3 General Public Utilities Corp.........................................1 Georgia-Pacific Corp..................................................2 Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.............................................1 Grace (W.R.) & Co.....................................................2 Great Northern Nekoosa................................................3 Greyhound Corp........................................................5 Grumman Corp..........................................................4 Gulf States Utilities Co..............................................1 Gulf+Western Industries...............................................1 Harris Bankcorp.......................................................1 Harris Corp...........................................................2 Harsco Corp...........................................................1 Hewlett-Packard Co....................................................1 HNG InterNorth........................................................1 Hormel (Geo. A.) & Co.................................................1 Household International...............................................1 Houston Industries....................................................1 IC Industries.........................................................1 Illinois Power Co.....................................................1 International Multifoods..............................................2 International Paper Co................................................2 Internat'l Minerals & Chemical........................................2 Jim Walter Corp.......................................................2 Leaseway Transportation Corp..........................................2 Lockheed Corp.........................................................4 MAPCO.................................................................1 Martin Marietta Corp..................................................2 McDonnell Douglas Corp................................................1 Media General.........................................................1 Mellon Bank Corp......................................................1 Middle South Utilities................................................4 Mitchell Energy & Dev. Corp...........................................4 Mobil Corp............................................................1 Morgan (J.P.) & Co....................................................1 M/A-COM...............................................................2 Niagara Mohawk Power Corp.............................................2 Northern Indiana PSC..................................................2 Northern States Power Co..............................................2 Northrop Corp.........................................................2 Ohio Edison Co........................................................2 Overseas Shipholding Group............................................2 Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp..........................................1 Owens-Illinois........................................................1 Pacific Gas and Electric Co...........................................1 Pacific Lighting Corp.................................................2 PacifiCorp (Pac. Power & Light).......................................1 Panhandle Eastern Corp................................................4 Pennsylvania Power & Light Co.........................................2 Pennzoil Co...........................................................1 Pepsico...............................................................3 Philadelphia Electric Co..............................................2 Phillips Petroleum Co.................................................1 Piedmont Aviation.....................................................2 Pittway Corp..........................................................1 Prime Computer........................................................1 RCA...................................................................2 Rockwell International................................................1 Rohm and Haas.........................................................1 Senta Fe South'n Pacific Corp.........................................2 SCM Corp..............................................................1 Scott Paper Co........................................................2 Sears, Roebuck & Co...................................................1 Singer Co.............................................................3 Southeast Banking Corp................................................2 Southern California Edison Co.........................................1 Southwest Airlines Co.................................................2 Sperry Corp...........................................................1 Sun Chemical Corp.....................................................2 Sundstrand Corp.......................................................2 Tektronix.............................................................2 Tenneco...............................................................2 Texaco................................................................3 Transamerica Corp.....................................................4 Tribune Co............................................................2 TRW...................................................................1 Tyson Foods...........................................................3 Union Camp Corp.......................................................4 Union Electric........................................................2 Unocal Corp...........................................................1 USG Corp. (U.S. Gypsum)...............................................1 U.S. Bancorp..........................................................3 Westinghouse Electric Corp............................................2 Westvaco Corp.........................................................1 Weyerhaeuser Co.......................................................2 Xerox.................................................................3

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, earlier this morning in the 1- minutes, several Members of the Republican Party came down and asked why Democrats were saying they are so harsh on children and why this would be true when in fact they have not hurt children at all in the rescissions and the budget cuts that they have already made and in the welfare bills and the nutrition bills that are coming to this House in the next couple of weeks. The fact is when we analyze the Republicans' welfare bill, the Republicans' rescission bill, the Republicans' nutrition and school lunch bill, the Republicans' child care bill, and what we see is a systematic assault on children, and especially poor children in this Nation. In the rescission bill that will be coming to the floor of the House next week, $25 million has been cut by the Republicans for the Women, Infants and Children Program. This means about 100,000 pregnant women and newborn infants will not be served this fiscal year. These are women and newborn infants who have been medically certified to be at high risk of having a pregnancy that is not normal or pregnancy that might not be carried to term or the birth of an infant that will be low birth weight and run a much, medical care at the time of birth. These are some of the most expensive babies born in America today. And yet for a few dollars a week with the Women, Infants and Children Program, we can dramatically reverse these pregnancies and the birth weight of the newborn infants and their lives there ever after. Because some 40 percent of these low birth weight babies with the complications that many of them encounter at that time come back to us in the need of special education, of therapies and other programs to help them. But this is preventable with the Women, Infants and Children Program. Yet at the earliest stages of life, when children are struggling to thrive and survive, when women are struggling to provide a normal pregnancy, a full-term pregnancy, resulting in a healthy baby, we see $25 million taken out of this bipartisan program that has received universal praise and success in every study conducted. Whether in the universities, whether by government, whether by foundations, all of them praise the success in changing the outcome of these pregnancies. When you consider in this country that 60 percent of all of the pregnancies in this country are unwanted, unintended, and that half of those are resolved by abortion, and now we put into the equation the likelihood of giving birth to a low birth weight baby with all of these complications, we create much more trauma around birth and the expectation of the birth of a child than there should be for these families. But the Republican budget cuts this program. In the new nutrition program, $7 billion cut from what it would take to maintain the children currently on the program in the next 5 years. In my district, the Mount Diablo School District, that is about half a million dollars. Fewer lunches for fewer children or smaller lunches. The Richmond School District, the same kind of choices. The State of California, $1 billion in nutrition that goes to low-income working families and to poor families to feed their children. The Food Stamp Program, same families, yet getting another cut, trying to provide nutrition for their children. The day care feeding program, family day care, where working parents leave their children for the hours they are at work, the nutrition program is being cut, raising the price of day care $15 a week, maybe $60 a month for people who are not working for all that high wages, trying to provide child care for their children. The fact we see drug-free schools, programs started by Nancy Reagan, she was in town this last week testifying about the drug activity, and yet that program is being cut. Summer youth employment: The greatest determinant of keeping children out of problems when they are adolescents and young people is to provide them employment, job experience, work experience. Half of the money for this program in most communities is put up by the private sector. That program is being zeroed out. So you can see why the Republicans are so nervous about being anti- child, because on the facts, on the language of their bills, on the numbers of their cuts, and the impact on these programs, children are going to be hurt. This is not an abstract notion, ladies and gentlemen; these are the facts of the bills that will be coming to the floor this next week.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, in 1993, the Ethics Committee explicitly cautioned Speaker Gingrich to avoid using congressional resources in conjunction with his course on American civilization. He rejected that advice and promoted the course from the House floor. Now that he is being challenged on that he is trying to use the Constitution to defend his speech on the House floor. The Speaker cannot have it both ways. The same Speaker that barred the gentlewoman from Florida, Congresswoman Carrie Meek, from discussing the Speaker's book deal on the House floor is now saying that a Member can say virtually anything on the House floor because it is protected speech under the Constitution. Speaker Gingrich said yesterday in his press conference: ``It is totally legitimate for a Member of Congress to stand up on the floor of the House and say virtually anything. Nothing the Ethics Committee advises can supersede the constitutional provisions of speech and debate.'' The speech and debate clause of article I of the Constitution, however, is solely designed to protect Members of Congress from being questioned in any other place, meaning that a Member cannot be prosecuted or held liable for anything he or she says on the House floor. We all know the House has rules that explicitly forbid Members of Congress from doing this, as the Speaker was advised by the Ethics Committee in promoting his book.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, yes, they can file a lawsuit today, but what we are finding out about derivatives is as this instrument spins around the world and its consequences, this is like peeling an onion. The fact is this law may become law before people realize the extent to which they have been damaged. A lot of these investments are very indirect investments. They join pools. State laws require it. We are talking about the money of school boards.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, in the California example, people who really had very little say over the investment of their money, school districts, water districts, sewer districts, citizen boards, without this kind of experience, and they were indirectly part of this arrangement and now they want to unravel that and assert their rights, we ought to let time for that to happen. This is like the early days of the S&L scandal. There are a lot of people that do not know today that they are going to be affected by this because something else that goes wrong in the market triggers the vulnerability into this investment pool fund or instrument that looks safe today or looks safe 3 months from now, but may not turn out to be safe a year from now.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. I understand that. I commend the gentleman. I think this is a very important discussion. This discussion has been delayed too long on the issue the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Tauzin] has raised. But why is the reclamation act struck into this legislation? We are talking about a very narrow act for a very narrow group of people.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Porter-Farr-Ehlers amendment. I think it a well-reasoned amendment, for reasons my colleagues from New York just reiterated. It is also very fiscally responsible for those of us who are concerned about the Federal Treasury and potential raid on the Treasury that the underlying legislation holds out. It is also a good amendment because it keeps in place what happens in most instances under the current laws, and under the current laws the matters between the enforcement of the Endangered Species Act, more importantly the enforcement with the Clean Water Act is a matter of negotiations between the landowner and the local agency and the Federal Government about how that land shall be developed or not be developed, and to bring it into compliance with the purposes of both the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act. We are all well aware, you cannot serve in the Congress of the United States and not be aware that we have had enforcement of these laws that defies common sense, that we have had enforcement of these laws that is about the arrogance of an agency. We have had enforcement over these laws and decisions rendered in many instances where there simply is a mismatch between the landowner and the agency, but this legislation comes in and says we will treat all situations as if that is the normal course of doing business under the law. In fact, it is not, because the point is that there are thousands and thousands where they have to comply with Clean Water, comply with Endangered Species, and we negotiate it out. Now your suggestion is the landowners can simply cross their arms and say, ``Pay me.'' That does not really help us in terms of the development that people want to see take place in their cities and their towns, and it means that we will have to reconsider projects because simply agencies will start to run out of money to comply with that act should they want to continue to go forward with those projects. What we really ought to be doing, and over the last year, unfortunately, we were not able to do that, but I guess with the new majority, we will; the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Tauzin], myself, and the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Hayes] and others have worked on an amendment to change procedures within the Clean Water Act to get people timely decisions. Most of the people I have been engaged in in the enforcement of the Endangered Species Act, what they want is a decision. They would like to have a decision, because time is money in their business, and then they would know what to do. But these agencies drag them out and drag them out. But that goes to the underlying acts, especially with respect to Clean Water and how to make sure we can even up the negotiating positions of those parties. But to come in at the end with the Tauzin amendment and suggest that in each and every case the issue is whether there is a taking or not is not so at all, because the vast majority of these cases, whether they are very large developments or small developments, have to do with negotiations between the landowner and the various entities pursuing or participating in the development plan for that piece of land. And for that reason, I think we should strongly support the Porter- Farr-Ehlers amendment, and then get on, as a number of other people have suggested, get on with the reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act, with the reauthorization of the Clean Water Act, where many of us believe that structural changes have got to be made in that and definitional changes have got to be made in that, and we now have lands that the Clean Water Act is applied to and definitions of wetlands that leave us all speechless as to how that could have ever been the intent of the Congress. I think in a number of instances it was not the intent of Congress. Those are the actions that have got to be taken to straighten out and preserve the environmental balance and the protection and the need for communities and landowners to be able to use and to develop their lands as they see fit. So I would hope that we would take the Porter-Farr amendment as a stopgap approach to the rewrite of that legislation in your committee, Mr. Chairman.

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