George Miller

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Let me reclaim my time, and I have a great deal of respect for the gentleman. That is not what this is about. This is about the excesses where a State and its population reach a consensus and whether or not you are going to provide a tool in this legislation so that people can obstruct that and obstruct it on the fallacy that somehow they have some value in their property that is there because of what they do as opposed to the billions of dollars in subsidy that flow down that canal every year from Shasta Dam down to Tulare Lake. The fact of the matter is they do not have those rights, and my concern is we are now about to put the taxpayer of this country on the hook based upon very narrow interests that have rights under their contracts and now they are trying to bootstrap those into additional rights. I would hope we would oppose the amendment for that purpose.

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

Mr. MILLER of California. I appreciate the remarks. I think he makes a good point. I appreciate that this is in contract law, but let us remember what we are talking about. In parts of Arizona, and a good portion of California, we are talking about people who have received hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies from the Federal taxpayers, in some cases to grow subsidized crops. Kind of an insanity. These same people have spent millions and millions of dollars to prevent any change from taking place in the reclamation law in this Congress. Finally, 2 years ago, we were able to defeat that effort and pass reclamation reform. These are the same people now who are suing the Government, suing the State, suing everybody to hold onto their rights, and what is their allegation? Their allegation is everything we want to do is in violation of their contractual rights. They have a compensatory action if in fact they can show it is a violation of their rights. But basically what these people have done is sought to delay the implementation of any reforms in the California water system. Just as recently as a couple of months ago where all of the cities got together, all of the environmental groups got together, many of the agricultural groups got together, all of the economic community in our State said that we have to change the way that we allocate and use water in the State of California. We have the same handful of people that got this amendment inserted into this provision of law saying they did not want to go along. No matter how good we think it is for the welfare of California, no matter how important they said it was because they said they would lower the bond ratings of the State of California if we could not reallocate our resources, we have some obstructionists there that think that what they had as a contractual right to a limited subsidy is now a God-given right and now what they want to do is under this amendment make that an entitlement. They want to make that subsidy an entitlement that we cannot in any way change whether it is because of drought, whether it is because of population, whether it is because of changing economic circumstances in that State. The fact was this land was not worth spitting on until the Federal Government came along and plowed billions of dollars of taxpayers' money, and we would just like to be repaid. Then they can do whatever they want with the land.

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

Mr. MILLER of California. I think that those of us who would now understand and appreciate the historic relationships in multi-State compacts, especially those of you who are from the upper reaches of the Colorado, you are now laying over the top of reclamation law, law that has been on the books since 1902, you are laying over the top of that a whole series of actions that conceivably people can come in and ask for compensation when in fact what they are getting from the Government is a huge amount of subsidies and rights that basically have a genesis in contractual relationships. Water usage is changing so dramatically in Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Nevada, we have gone from 70 percent of the people in Nevada now use 10 percent of the water, but 70 percent of the water goes to 10 percent of the people. Those equations are changing. They just changed in Utah by a vote of the people, but now the question of whether that can be carried out and the implementation of that is drawn into question by this amendment. I would hope that at some point we could just strike the reclamation law.

Mr. MILLER of California. That is exactly the question, because the Bureau of Reclamation administers that the Reclamation Act guides many of the contractors to that compact. As the gentlewoman knows, in Arizona we have contractors who are going bankrupt, we are trying to reallocate water, and there are people who had expectations but really cannot afford the water. The question is now, are we creating a compensatory act by not giving them the water and giving it to the city of Tucson or to the city of Phoenix? That is exactly the problem. I worry about ulterior motives here in the inclusion of the Reclamation Act because I do not know why it would be included when these are contractual relations except that I understand there are a number of people who are very unhappy with the reforms that were passed overwhelmingly on a bipartisan basis in the last Congress and signed by President Bush that would now like to roll back those reforms where we have just entered into an agreement between the State of California, the municipalities, the environmental organizations, and the farm organizations about the usage of water. Some people would like to see that undone.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. I do so mainly in one very specific case, and that is, the amendment as it is currently written includes the act of June 17, 1902, and all properly known as the Reclamation Act. This is an act written in 1902 where the Federal Government engaged in massive subsidies to landowners throughout the West to help settle the West and bring the lands into productive capacity by extending water subsidies to them. In the State of California, the Federal Government has spent some $8 or $9 billion building canals and shipping water from the far north to the south, and the same is true in Arizona and elsewhere. What this amendment would now do is take what we basically have, which are contract rights with the growers, and say ``if you sought to amend those, that could be adjudged as a taking.'' These people have a right to subsidize water based upon a contract, but now what you are doing is taking a contract and turning it into an entitlement. You are taking a contract which says and gives us the right to withhold water from those people in years of drought, as we have in California, over the last 6 or 7 years to say ``We are going to hold back 30 percent of the water for next year, or for the health and safety of the State, for drinking water supplies to metropolitan areas.'' Now, what you are saying is if this is a diminution of 10 percent of your land, which clearly it is, you have a right to compensation and to a taking. You are withdrawing the rights of the Federal Government and the right, more importantly, of the people of the State of California to manage the water supply within their State, because you are taking a contract, even if you shorten the contract, and in the new law we just said we want to go from 40-year contracts to 20-year contracts so we can manage the water supplies in the State of California on a more contemporary basis, in light of our population growth, the change in our economy and the need for water in our cities and suburbs for economic growth. If we took that 20-year contract and made it a 10-year contract, that would somehow be a taking in the next law when that contract runs out. I think we have an unintended consequence here that locks us in, not only to billions of dollars in subsidies, but also locks us into a situation where we are now elevating what is a basic contract, and at the end of the contract, ``You have no right to that, we can do with the water what we want,'' but that was the agreement, now elevating that into a taking if we do not extend the water. The reason that is so important is that we have areas in the West where we have massive competition between agricultural interests and the urban interests, in Utah, in Colorado, in Arizona, and in California. What this law does is locks these contracts in now under the provisions of taking. I would like to ask the author of the amendment, the gentleman from Louisiana, what is his understanding of this act as it pertains to the Reclamation Act of 1902? Because as I read it, if we change the level of the subsidy, if we change the contract's terms, if we withhold water because of the drought or we reallocate water from the agricultural interests to the urban interests or from the urban interests to the agricultural interests, that those people all have a right to a taking under this provision, if the value of their land is diminished by 10 percent.

Mr. MILLER of California. Yes.

Mr. MILLER of California. Let me reclaim my time and then see if the gentleman can answer. The agency, in this case the Bureau of Reclamation, tells people that they cannot have 30 percent of their water supply or in a dire drier year, they can only have 30 percent, they lose 70 percent, the use of their land in dry land farming is gone.

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

Mr. MILLER of California. Without being argumentative, that sounds exactly contrary to what the gentleman just told me, because all of the water delivered under the Reclamation Act is delivered by virtue of contract. We If that contract is not renewed, you have no rights. It sounds to me that we are bootstrapping people who now have a contractual right into a position that if that contract is not renewed, that somehow you have a takings, because the land is not worth upkus.

Mr. MILLER of California. Can the gentleman or the gentleman from Louisiana explain to me why, then, the Reclamation Act is included as one of the laws under this provision?

Mr. MILLER of California. Can I ask the gentleman another question. Again the runoff from these lands cause duck hunters and others a great deal of consternation because of the impact it has had on the water fowl. If it goes to the quality of the water in those wetlands, in protected wetlands or in private wetlands, is it covered under your provision?

Mr. MILLER of California. In this case the toxic runoff, the reason it was stopped at one point, and it may have to be stopped again in the future, is because of its threat to the water quality in the San Francisco Bay delta.

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

Mr. MILLER of California. Let me ask in another case. We have a situation where irrigated lands, where water is brought to those lands under contract, and in some instances we have had to tell growers in the past, and very likely are going to have to tell them in the future, that they cannot irrigate of some of their lands because of toxic runoffs that have caused problems, both with the environment and with health. If we tell those growers that they cannot irrigate those lands under that water, are we under the purview of the gentleman's bill?

Mr. MILLER of California. Currently the growers have a 40-year contract. If the Government, and the new term was changed from 20 years or 10 years, and the banks decide that you do not have a bankable interest, as some growers speculate the banks would say, is that a diminution of the property values?

Mr. MILLER of California. I yield to the gentlewoman from Colorado.

Mr. MILLER of California. I find it very suspect that this law is now included when it is so narrowly drafted and the rights are handed out based only on contract.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman in the well is, according to the Los Angeles Times, that California loses a billion dollars in school lunch money that would go to directly buy means for young children in our schools who need it or they risk being hungry every day--a billion dollars. The Republicans want to talk about how they are cutting the bureaucracy in Washington. The School Lunch Program is run in the States. It is run by local people, local school districts, and the billion dollars comes out of the lunches of children. The article goes on to say that the billion dollars comes out of the pocket of working parents who have their children in family day care, because those children will now lose the $3 a day so we are talking about 30,000 day care centers in California that will lose this money, and that means that they will simply have to drop out and parents will not be able to afford day care. We are talking an additional $60 a month for day care. That is where the billion dollars is. That is the loss of California. That is the truth outside the beltway.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, there was great celebration by the Republicans on the 50th day of their Contract With America of the first 100 days that they had programmed to rewrite the Federal Government and its rules and regulations. Yet on the 51st and 52d day we found out what this contract was really about. It was a contract on the elderly and the children of this Nation, between the actions taken in the Committee on Education and Labor and the actions taken in the Committee on Appropriations. We saw in the Committee on Appropriations in the rescissions bill to cut money out of existing programs, 63 percent of all the cuts affect low-income Americans, children, and seniors. These same people are only responsible for 12 percent of the discretionary spending within the budget. That means three times the amount is being cut from these programs for elderly housing, to help elderly people pay their heating bills, and nutrition for our children, and the most vulnerable, and that is pregnant women at risk of giving birth to a low-birth-weight child and a newborn child born at low birth weight that needs nutritional help at the first moments of life. That is what the Contract With America has become, a Contract on America's children. In this morning's Washington Post, Louis Sullivan, the Secretary of HHS under President Bush, writes an article about the importance of the Women, Infants, and Children Program. This is a program that has now been in existence 20 years. It may be the most successful program in the world in combatig low-birth-weight babies, premature births, and the results that fllow from those two events. This has been our insurance policy to protect the taxpayers against the hundreds of thousands of dollars that a premature birth of a low- birth-weight baby will cost those taxpayers in the first few days and weeks of life. This has been a program that has reduced the incidence of low-birth-weight births by some 33 percent among the participants in that program. This is a program that does that for about $1.50 a day, and this is a program that the Gingrich Republicans and the Committee on Education and Labor lockstep voted to cut the money from last week. So as we move into the second 50 days of the contract, we see a much meaner, a much more callous approach to the children of this Nation. What is at stake here? What is at stake here is the ability of thousands of women who have been medically certified to be at nutritional risk and at risk of giving birth to a low-birth-weight baby of having a successful pregnancy. What these cuts mean, and the cuts in the Committee on Appropriations last week, is that this year 100,000 pregnant women and newborn infants will not be allowed to participate in this program that has had dramatic success in helping the brain development of these children, in helping carry these fetuses to term, and having healthy pregnancies. That is what the Republicans' contract wants to do. That is what Speaker Gingrich instructed the Committee on Education and Labor to do. Many of those Republicans privately were saying they hate to do this, this should not be done, they know it is wrong, but this is what the contract calls for. They have a greater allegiance to the contract, a public relations stunt drawn up by a pollster, than they do to America's children and to the pregnant women of this country that run the risk of having a pregnancy go wrong and to have to suffer all that that means. What we are trying to assure with the Women, Infants, and Children Program is that these pregnant women will have the same joy I had at the birth of my two sons, the same joy that I had at the birth of my granddaughter; a healthy pregnancy and the kind of care that a woman needs before she delivers that birth, so that she can experience that joy, so that family can have that, and not have to experience the sadness of having a low-birth- [[Page H2312]] weight baby and the critical care that must be delivered in the intensive care and the neonatal intensive care units of our hospitals around this country. Yet we see that those are the ones that the Ginrich Republicans have focused in on like a laser. They went immediately to those programs to cut that out. Out of the child nutrition programs and the WIC programs, we see over $7 billion over the next 5 years being taken out of those programs. This year we see $25 million directly taken out of the Women, Infants, and Children Program. Surely--surely the voters of America, the Republicans of America, do not believe that the first efforts in trying to balance the budget should be on the backs of these poor children, of these women at risk in their pregnancies, and of these newborn infants that are struggling, struggling to hold on to life, because we were not able to give them the attention during the pregnancy that we should have. Surely that is not what this is all about. Nor should it be allowed to stand. People should call their Members of Congress and tell them that they want this 20-year program of success maintained. We are talking about $1.50 a day during the term of that pregnancy. That should not be on the chopping block out of humanity and out of caring for these children and for these pregnant women.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, the so-called welfare reform legislation developed by Republicans fails to address the single most urgent need for ending the current welfare system: putting people to work. The Republicans have walked away from their early commitment to work as a key component of welfare reform. In the Contract With America, half of the welfare caseload would have been required to work by 2003. And the contract promised nearly $10 billion to pay for the new work requirement programs; the pending Republican bill has no money, and no work programs to speak of. In fact, as the New Republic points out, the great model program in Michigan by Republican leaders would authorize activities like checking a book out of a library as constituting work activity. The Democratic leadership of the House, together with the Clinton administration, has endorsed a much tougher policy that would require recipients to accept work and training, and would require States to provide welfare recipients with a plan for moving from dependence to self-sufficiency. Only in such a way will we end not only welfare, but poverty, too. By contrast, the Republican legislation promises only to throw people off welfare, whether or not any effort has been made to prepare them for self-sufficiency. The Republican scheme will mean millions of former welfare recipients without jobs, without homes and without any way to provide for their children. It will mean even more homelessness and huge additional costs for local communities and property taxpayers who will have to support this army of the impoverished through local general assistance programs. In short, the Republican plan is not to end poverty, but to throw people off welfare. That will solve neither their problems, nor ours. We cannot allow the Republican plan to masquerade as welfare reform. [From the New Republic, March 13, 1995] Workfare Wimp-Out (By Mickey Kaus) Call me naive, but I almost believed House Republicans when they pledged in their ``contract'' to reform welfare through ``a tough two-years-and-out provision with work requirements.'' Making welfare recipients work, after all, is wildly popular (if it weren't, it wouldn't be in the contract). Newt Gingrich's political action committee once even listed ``workforce'' as one of the ``Optimistic Positive Governing Words'' it recommended to fellow revolutionaries. I figured Gingrich himself had talked so much about the need for a ``mandatory requirement of work for everybody'' that he might embarrassed to admit he didn't mean it. I underestimated him. House Republicans unveiled their welfare reform plan on February 10. Most welfare-watchers expected the new bill to dilute somewhat the contract's work provisions. But few expected the abject abandonment of any credible attempt to require work. Yet that's more or less what Representative Clay Shaw, the lead Republican on welfare reform, announced. The new GOP bill, which has cleared Shaw's subcommittee, is not only weaker on the work issue than President Clinton's welfare proposal, it is in some respects weaker than the current welfare law Republicans deride. It's certainly a long way from the Contract with America. The contract would have required work by those who had received welfare ``for at least twenty-four months.'' Work meant ``an average of not fewer than thirty-five hours per week.'' No funny business. By 2003, 50 percent of the welfare caseload (which currently consists of more than 5 million households) would be working. The rationale behind these provisions was obvious: if potential welfare recipients (mainly young women) knew they were really going to have to work after two years, they might think twice before doing the things (mainly becoming single mothers) that put them on welfare in the first place. But Republican governors, it turns out, don't like work requirements much--in part because putting a welfare mother to work costs money (an extra $6,000, over and above the cost of benefits, to pay for supervisors and day care, according to the Congressional Budget Office). Why raise state taxes to make welfare recipients perform community-service work--annoying public employee unions in the process--when you can do what Michigan's Republican Governor John Engler does: cycle recipients through inexpensive education and ``job search'' programs while claiming to be a great reformer? Engler's inflated reputation was recently punctured by journalist David Whitman (see ``Compleat Engler,'' TNR February 6). But that didn't stop him from leading the charge to gut the contract's work requirements when House Republicans decided, after the election, to negotiate with GOP governors over replacing the federal welfare program with a ``block grant'' to the states. Engler's mission was successful. Look first at the numbers. The bill unveiled by Shaw requires that, in 1996, states place 2 percent of the welfare caseload ``in work activities.'' The requirement rises to 20 percent--not the contract's 50 percent--by 2003. In meeting this requirement, governors could count the 6 percent of recipients who already work at least part-time. Another 5 percent are already required to work by a 1988 reform law now in effect (which the Republican bill would repeal). That makes 11 percent already working. With a little creative bookkeeping--say, by counting all those who work, even for a few days, over the course of a year--most governors could meet the 20 percent ``work activity'' standard without doing anything they're not already doing. But creative bookkeeping won't be necessary, because the Shaw bill lets the states decide what a ``work activity'' is. It needn't be actual work. Under the bill, a governor could declare, as Engler has, that checking a book out of a library counts as a ``work activity.'' Leafing through the want ads might also qualify, or circulating a resume or attending a ``self-esteem'' class. Republicans criticized President Clinton's ill-fated two- years-and-work plan because it only would have required approximately 500,000 recipients, or about 10 percent of the caseload, to be in a work program by 2003. But at least in Clinton's plan those 500,000 people would really have to be working. (An additional 900,000 or so would be in education and training programs.) The House Republicans say they will put ``at least 1 million cash welfare recipients in work programs by 2003,'' but the ``work'' could be completely phony. Workfake, you might call it. It is all the more likely to be fake because the Shaw bill provides no money to make it real. The Contract with America, in a fit of honesty, earmarked $9.9 billion to pay for its work programs. The new bill contain no new funds. It does retain language that seems to requires states to make recipients work--sorry, ``engage in work activities''--after two years. But GOP aids admit this provision is ``mostly rhetoric'' not meant to be obeyed. There are no penalties for states that ignore it. (If it were obeyed, a lot more than 20 percent of the caseload would wind up ``working.'') House Republicans don't even try very hard to pretend they haven't caved on the work issue. It was the price, they argue, of getting the governors to agree to a stingy ``block grant,'' and to accept the contract's cutoff of aid to young unwed mothers. Priorities! Bizarrely, the Newtoids sacrificed the popular parts of the contract (``make 'em work'') to save the unpopular parts (``cut 'em off''). It was too much even for some conservatives. Robert Rector, the Heritage Foundation's welfare expert, called the Shaw work provisions a ``major embarrassment,'' Jack Kemp issued a statement warning that Republicans were squandering welfare reform in the pursuit of a decentralized ``funding mechanism.'' Shaw now says he will try to shore up the work provisions-- specifying what counts as a ``work activity,'' for example. But it may be difficult to convince the governors to endorse a major tightening--after all, the chief virtue of Shaw's bill, for them, was that it let them weasel out of the contract's work requirements. It also may be too late. The premise of the GOP's new state-based welfare bill is that the nation's governors are reformist tigers who need only to be unlashed by the bureaucrats in Washington. But the governors have now shown their hand, and it's obvious to all that they have no appetite for radical reform especially reform based on work. Instead, they have with great effort turned the contract's ambitious plan into a bill that allows them to preserve the status quo. Even the controversial cutoff of young unwed mothers may be mainly an accounting trick. (States can simply pay the benefits out of their ``own'' funds.) The Republicans' welfare reform is looking less like a menace and more like a fraud.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Madam Speaker, the Contract With America was just read to us. And it is rather incredible that in the provision dealing with welfare reform, the Republicans have no requirement in their bill either that the States provide the ability of people on welfare to go from welfare to work, but providing job opportunities, job training, or employment or that a person who is on welfare not have to do something in the way of work to receive that check. That was pointed out by the minority leader, the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Gephardt] the other day in a press conference that what the Democrats want to do is move somebody from welfare to work, but the Republicans and the Governors have no requirement that people go to work. I am delighted to read today in the press that the subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Shaw] is now considering whether or not the Republicans will try to define a work condition in their bill realizing that what the American taxpayers want is people to go to work for the assistance they receive and what welfare recipients want is a job, not a check. So I wish the Republicans well. If they cannot come up with one, maybe they can adopt the Democratic substitute that will move people from welfare to work.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I rise in strong support of the Gibbons-McDermott substitute to extend the 25-percent deduction to employees who are not eligible to participate in employer-sponsored health plans. I noted with interest yesterday that the Republicans on the Committee on Ways and Means are looking for a definition of work. Well, they have to understand that that is what millions of Americans do every day when they get up out of bed; they go to work. Millions of Americans go to work and work every day, but they are not able to provide health insurance for themselves or for their family. What the McDermott bill would do is to say that those workers are every bit as noble as self-employed individuals. This would make sure that we would have equity and fairness in providing the deduction so that people who take it upon themselves to go out and try to provide health insurance for themselves would get the same deductions as the self-employed individual. When you find the definition of work, you will find there are millions of Americans that do it every day, and they ought to be extended the same dignity that you give to self-employed individuals.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.