George Miller

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Unless you live up or down the coastline from the bay.

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

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I say to the Members of the House it is time now for some candor about the meeting you had with Rupert Murdoch and its relationship to your book deal. The Congress of which you said you were the Speaker of the entire Congress, not just of the Republicans, deserves some answers about what took place at that meeting and what you knew about the progression of your negotiations with Rupert Murdoch's company for your book contract. I think it also raises a question about whether or not public officials ought to be allowed to engage in contracts for private gain while they are doing the public's business. To suggest that this meeting was only a courtesy visit or one of 30 visits that took place during that day is to mislead the public. The oldest game in this town is to have a lobbyist, a lawyer, or a special interest do you a favor and then a couple of days later ask one of their representatives that they might arrange a courtesy visit to come by. What they are doing in that visit is not courtesy; what they are doing is cementing the relation between the favor that was previously done and suggestions of actions or business that they have before the Congress that they want you to be aware of. We ought to know for the record what the facts were.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlemen yield?

Mr. MILLER of California. I thank the gentleman. I think that is an important point. The point is now the Republican Members of this Congress are forewarned. We took that route once, we took an economic plan on the back of a cocktail napkin, called the Laffer curve, and reduced those cuts in taxes to the wealthiest people in this country, and dramatically slashed some of the spending on the domestic side but not on the military side. Once again, that is an echo we are hearing in this Congress. And the result was a trillion dollars' worth of debt. The result was interest payments of $300 billion, $400 billion a year, that will be paid for by every American family, paid for by all of our children. Many of us voted against that plan. But the way it was presented to this Congress was that you had to vote that day, there could not be any hearings, you had to vote for the substitute, take it or leave it. There was no time to tell the American people what was done. There was no time to debate it on this floor. The Congress took it, unfortunately, and a trillion dollars later in red ink, hundreds of billions of dollars in interest payments that could have gone covering back to the people or could have been used for productivity in this country or for social progress was denied because of that kind of snap decision, the same kind of snap decisions we have seen around here that have been recanted within 1 hour, 2 hours, 12 hours, on the theory that everything has to be done immediately. Now they are saying that they have got to rush this, they cannot let the people take a look at it because it will break their political momentum. What is more important: the economic momentum of this Nation, or the political momentum of the Speaker of the House? I think it is the economic momentum of this Nation. We see time and again economists, chairmen of the Federal Reserve, saying, ``Be careful what you do here because if you do it wrong and don't think it through, interest rates are going to go up.'' Everybody believes if interest rates continue to go up one more time or two more times, that the economic recovery is then choked off. And then we can look forward to the auto worker being laid off, the aircraft manufacturer being laid off, the rail people being laid off, and once again there goes the Federal deficit, but that is not what these people are saying. They do not want to listen to this. They do not want to have these points of view aired in public. This is supposed to be the most open time, the most open Congress. But yet we find out there is no time for debate, there is no time for the public's view. I say, you can't have it both ways. You cannot be the most open Congress. You cannot pass sunshine laws and then tell the American people to keep out. Mr. Speaker, we owe them more. We owe them more dignity and more respect for their intelligence.

Mr. MILLER of California. If the gentleman will yield, I want to thank the gentlewoman for her remarks and point out she makes a very important point. There is more than one way to a balanced budget, and there are those who believe that the way to a balanced budget is simply to cut until you have arrived at that point by doing away with many, many programs of the Federal Government. There are others who believe you should tax and you should cut. Others believe, as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board told the Senate yesterday, that if you simply adjust the inflation factor by a point or have to make those cuts. There are all of these options available, but I think the gentlewoman makes an interesting point. Some of the options have different ramifications for different people. If, as the Republican plan anticipates there is a tax cut, both capital gains and some kind of middle-income tax cut, it may very well be that when middle-income Americans look at that option they may say forget the tax cut, make the down payment on the deficit. Keep the interest rate on my adjustable home loan down, keep the interest rate on my child's student loan down, and make sure that I can pay off my credit card debt, because if you are going to give me back a $1.25 a day, then why not just make sure that the interest rates are lower because I will lose more than that in 1 month if the Federal Reserve raises the interest rates and my home mortgage goes up. We ought to let the American people decide which course they want to take. A lot of people have come up to me, as hungry as they are for tax relief, and say geez, if you could really make an additional dent in the deficit beyond what you did over the $500 billion or $600 billion that have already been made, I am for that, and I will forgo the tax cut because I want to make sure that the interest rates are low, that we can continue to create jobs, that my business can continue to thrive. That is what we are asking for. We are saying to the Republicans, let the American public participate and choose how they would like to meet this obligation to get rid of this horrendous deficit. But that is unfortunately what they are not going to allow, and I think the gentlewoman makes incredibly important points that every segment of our society has got to be able to examine this and say, ``How does this affect me?'' What we know is when we play fair with the American people and you give them the knowledge, these are people who are willing to sacrifice as long as they know that everyone else is. As we have seen in the natural disasters that are besetting my State, neighbors are helping neighbors, communities. We saw it all up and down the Mississippi River 2 years ago. This is a great country. Why do we not treat them like great people and invite them into the debate and have the Speaker of the House put the options on Internet and let the people choose and inform themselves? And then we will have to make the tough decisions that will flow from that kind of participation in this democratic system.

Mr. MILLER of California. I thank the gentleman for his comments. I want to say that over the last couple of years, time and again we heard Members of the other party, the Republican Party, take the well and talk about the arrogant Congress. I find it rather interesting now that as the Republicans get ready to present to the Congress a balanced budget amendment, a constitutional amendment to balance the budget, that they seek to deny our constituents the kind of information so they can make an informed decision about whether or not they want us to vote for or against the balanced budget amendment. I find it rather interesting as you quoted the majority leader, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Armey] saying that if the public knew the cuts that would be necessary, that their knees would buckle, or our knees would buckle. I really find it interesting when it comes from individuals that profess a great belief in democracy, that herald governments that turn toward democracy, we have spent billions of dollars to spread democracy throughout the world at a time when the Speaker of the House, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr Gingrich] says that he is going to put every bill on the Internet so that the American people will have greater access, be able to make decisions, but what he is not going to put on the Internet are the ramifications of the bill. He is going to tell people that we are going to balance the budget by the year 2002 but, like President Nixon who had a secret plan to end the war, only after people vote or after that becomes a law, he will then display what is necessary to meet the balanced budget. That is arrogance. That is the height of arrogance. Because the balanced budget amendment, unlike a lot of other legislation that we deal with on the floor of the Congress that the various sessions does not affect one particular part of American society or some narrow special interest group, it affects every citizen in this country, because of the ramifications. We have seen proposals where different people from the right or from the left have suggested what would or would not take place under a balanced budget. Every segment of our society is impacted, from our national security to the security of our retirement systems, to the education of our children, to our ability to meet the natural disasters that beset my State at this very moment. Everybody has a stake in this debate. But it is the intention of the leadership of this House to preclude everybody from participating in this debate. What should be done is they should spread upon the ledger those cuts that are necessary to meet the target of a balanced budget in the year 2002, and they should be required to do that now so that there is truth-in-budgeting, so there is full disclosure, so that the public interest is protected, and the people who live in the greatest democracy on the face of the Earth will have an opportunity to exercise those rights under that democracy, and that is to pick up the phone, or the pen or pencil, and call their Member of Congress and say, ``I like this, I don't like this, change this, change that.'' That is about the empowerment of people. Internet is about. If you put nothing more on the Internet than a piece of legislation that says the budget shall be balanced by the year 2002, you have told the people nothing. You have told them nothing. You have not told them whether or not you are going to gradually make those exchanges over that 7-year period of time or whether you are going to run to the political necessity of doing it in the last 2 of 3 years, where the impact is much greater and people are not able to prepare for it. If we give this country notice and if we give them a plan, clearly a balanced budget is within our grasp. But if we do not do that, then in fact we cannot expect to reach that star target. So what we are talking about here is very fundamental notions, fundamental notions about the arrogance of the leadership of this Congress as to whether or not they will fully inform people about the hypocrisy of the leadership of this Congress that says whether or not they want to, they want to truly let people know what is going on inside the halls of Congress or whether they want to hide it from them, and right now what they are engaged in is one of the great coverups. They will not tell us what they are going to do because apparently they do not have the courage of their convictions. They have the courage of their bumper stickers, they have the courage of their campaign slogans. They simply do not have the courage of their convictions to look the American people in the eye and say these are the ramifications, this is what is required to engage in a balanced budget by this time. I also think that they give the American people far too little credit for their willingness to participate, because we know there is an overwhelming desire among the American people to see us get our financial house in order. But we ought to invite them in as partners, we ought to recognize their dignity and intelligence and make them, if you will, partners in this process. For the Republicans to suggest that we are going to take it on a whim and a promise is the height of arrogance, and I want to thank the gentleman for raising this point at this time. I hope that they will yield to the will of the American people and not to the politics of the majority in this Congress.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, Members of the House, as a Member of this House on the Democratic side of the aisle who for 20 years never brought a bill to the floor under a closed rule, I am sure that I speak with credibility that this change is supposed to be about opening up this debate, and in fact that has not happened. The test is not whether this is more open than what we did on opening day. The test is whether or not this rule is open or closed, and this rule is, in fact, closed. What is your fear of having an open rule on congressional reform? That we would overreform the House of Representatives? Hard to conceived of that. What is your fear of having an open rule when you in fact have the votes to beat down any amendment that you do not like? What is your fear, that we would overreform? I do not think so. Your fear is we would offer what is not in here. The point is this: It is what you do not put in these rules that disturbs us and disturbs the American public, and that is breaking the link between lawyers, lobbyists, money, and legislators, ending the gifts that can be given to legislators and recognizing when the freshman Members took the oath here today, they were given a voting card, not a right to receive gifts to NFL games, to lunches and to dinners.