Eleanor Norton

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding me this time. I come to the floor because I am amazed by the nature of this debate. It is amazingly subdued when we consider the historic basis upon which we are proceeding. It is almost a historical debate, because the expansion of NATO may surely come to be as important as the creation of NATO itself. Yet, this is being handled in an hour's worth of debate as just another matter coming before the House of Representatives at the end of a long day. I have three concerns; domestic, the commitment of troops and burden- sharing. I have to measure everything we do on this floor against the Democratic sacrifices that are being agreed to by us all in the name of deficit reduction. On the matter of burdensharing, this bill does not pass that test. I would feel much better about what we are doing here in this discussion and debate if in fact we had come to some agreement about burdensharing, a word that is virtually empty of content and meaning. I would have thought that the pressures of deficit reduction could produce some progress on burdensharing. There has been little. Instead, we see burden expansion. But perhaps I am most concerned about article 5 of the treaty itself, and whether in fact this means that there may be the commitment of troops to central Europe as a result of this expansion. That is an issue of primary importance in a country which seems unwilling to commit troops for very much anymore. I really wonder whether or not we really mean, in a place where there has been much disagreement about Bosnia, where there has been great trouble throughout the United States, that we are now right in the middle of that. Mr. Chairman, we fell into this expansion. It developed influenced by the last campaign. There has been little debate in this country. The American people do not recognize that they may right now, as this bill is passed, be committing troops, if need be, to central Europe. I can be convinced, and I will come to the floor this evening to say as yet no one has even tried to convince me or the American people that this historic commitment should be expanded this day, in June 1997.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, each year the U.S. Small Business Administration [SBA] celebrates Small Business Week by honoring outstanding men and women as Small business Persons of the Year. The winners of this award are judged based on staying power, growth in number of employees, increase in sales and/or unit volume, current and past financial reports, innovativeness of product or service, response to adversity and evidence of contributions to community-related projects. The Small Business Person of the Year for 1997 is Deryl McKissack, President and CEO of McKissack and McKissack of Washington, DC. Mr. Speaker, Deryl McKissack is a DC resident and graduate of Howard University who, in 1990, opened the Washington Office of McKissack and McKissack, the oldest minority-owned architectural/engineering firm in the Nation with $1,000, exceptional skills, determination, and a dream. In 1995 the company was certified in SBA's 8(a) Program and has won two 8(a) contracts totaling $9.5 million. Mr. Speaker, today this business woman has over 35 full-time employees with an estimated revenue of $7 million for the coming fiscal year. Her client list now includes the U.S. Department of Labor, the Department of the Treasury, the Washington Convention Center, NationsBank, Georgetown University, Howard University, Morgan State University, and Coppin State College. The firm is a leader in program management engagements and is working on three separate contracts at the historic Treasury building in downtown D.C. Ms. McKissack has encountered closed doors and stiff competition. She overcame these obstacles with a strong commitment to excellence, a determination to outperform her competitors, emphasis on delivering outstanding work on schedule and within budget and ensuring that client's needs are met. Ms. McKissack supports a number of charitable organizations and serves the community in other ways including the DC Public Schools' Task Force on Education, Infrastructure for the 21st Century, and the Architectural Review Board. Mr. Speaker, I ask that this body join me in saluting Deryl McKissack, SBA's Small Business Person of the Year for 1997 for the Washington Metropolitan Area and celebrating the contributions of the small business community to this Nation's economic health.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I very much thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. As a recipient of the largesse of this resolution, I come to the floor this afternoon to thank especially the gentleman from California [Mr. Lewis], the gentleman from New York [Mr. Lazio], the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy], the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Stokes], the gentleman from New York [Mr. Flake], the Speaker and the minority leader for their initiative on this wonderful idea. I have very special thanks to give to the gentleman from California [Mr. Lewis], however, for it is not only a wonderful idea, it was his bright idea, and I think it a bright idea not only, may I say, because my district will be the first recipient of this generosity of Members but because in a very real sense, the spirit of Hershey, of which he spoke so eloquently, may have found its best mode of expression. We have every right to ask, what in the world is the spirit of Hershey? How can one make the good feelings of that weekend live and last? It is very difficult to do. We do not often meet like that. We cannot meet like that very often. But we will be meeting like that on June 5. We will be meeting like that, making Hershey live in a way that I think we all have been searching for. Partisanship is natural to the process of the House of Representatives and necessary to the process here. We represent different districts and different points of view. We come together as we do on many bills. But the fact is that bipartisanship on some issues is an absolute necessity. Surely if there is to be bipartisanship on any issue, it is the future of the capital of the United States. To be sure, this Congress holds the capital in its hands because of its unique constitutional responsibility and because it has to vote for a small amount for the capital every year. But when the House builds its own house in the District, it reaches out to the people I represent in a way that is especially appreciated. The gentleman from California [Mr. Lewis] has said this will be the house that Congress built. It will certainly be the house that the House built. It will be remembered that way, and it will be built in the Anacostia community, named for the river my colleagues have to cross to reach there, named for the place where many of the poorest Washingtonians live. Those who will receive the generosity of the House during this initiative were there when it was announced by the Speaker. The HUD Secretary is on board, both sides of the aisle are on board and, of course, we are doing it through Habitat for Humanity which has done many good works in the District and which, of course, is the natural leader of this work here in the District. May I thank the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Manzullo] who had spent numerous hours trying to find an appropriate project. We had found one and then we tossed that one out and another one was tossed out, and here comes the gentleman from California [Mr. Lewis] with just the right project. The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Manzullo, and the gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson, who had been working together after Hershey will be working on this project as well. This project has a larger goal: that by the year 2000, fully two- thirds of the American people will own their own home. We have done wonderfully in this country since World War II in encouraging and in achieving home ownership by Americans. What this project metaphorically says is that we are in this for everybody. To show that we are in it for everybody, we are building a house for the poorest Americans and we are going to carry this concept everywhere. We are going to ask Members to take the concept back to their own districts. My colleagues will find that the Habitat habit is catching. When they see that colleagues are helping to build a house in their district, they are going to say, ``Me, too,'' to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Lazio], they are going to say to the gentleman from California [Mr. Lewis], ``We want one here. We want Habitat to come here and do what you did in the District of Columbia.'' My colleagues are going to start something in the District and it is going to spread. It is going to spread its good feeling, it is going to spread to the housing industry, and it is going to help make affordable housing something other than an oxymoron. Thanks for helping in the District. Make sure that it is your district next.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California [Mr. Lewis] not only for his kind words here this afternoon, but for this effort, this idea that so many have embraced and, may I say, for the collegiality and generosity he has shown the District of Columbia ever since I have been in the Congress.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, Maurice Sorrell, a native Washingtonian, has been involved in photography in the D.C. area since the early 1950's. His interest in this medium was piqued as he observed his uncles, both amateur photographers, taking pictures of his parents. In 1947, determined to develop his skills, Mr. Sorrell enrolled in a 3-year photography course at the Department of Agriculture Graduate School which he completed in 2 years. Mr. Speaker, in 1957, Mr. Sorrell was hired by the Pentagon as a photographer. As a result of discrimination, however, he was only permitted to work in the dark room. Maurice Sorrell left the Pentagon to work full-time as a freelance photographer and also worked as a photographer for the Johnson Publishing Co. Mr. Sorrell served as a mentor, colleague, and friend to the Exposure Group--the African American Photographers Association, Inc. in Washington, DC. Mr. Speaker, Maurice Sorrell's photographs of black events graced the pages of the Washington Afro-American Newspaper. In 1961, through the efforts of the late Art Carter, publisher of the Afro-American Newspaper, and the late Louis Lautier, a national congressional correspondent, Mr. Sorrell was the first black photographer to gain admittance to the prestigious White House News Photographers Association. Mr. Sorrell traveled to more than 24 countries including 14 countries in Africa. He shot the World Series as well as NFL sporting events. He photographed inmates on death row and in the gas chamber at a Federal prison in North Carolina. He traveled aboard Air Force One and covered six Presidents. Maurice Sorrell traveled throughout the South with Lady Bird Johnson taking pictures of ``poverty.'' He covered the march to Selma, AL. He was in Memphis, TN, covering the garbage worker's strike when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. It was Maurice Sorrell who took the first group photograph of the Congressional Black Caucus. Mr. Speaker, I ask that this body join me in a salute to this photographer, this historian and the magnificent sum of his accomplishments.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, the constituents, the tourists of my colleagues come every year. If they go anywhere near Pennsylvania Avenue they will find a traffic catastrophe. The heart of downtown is closed to the public because the White House area is no longer open to traffic. Senators and Representatives from this region today have written the President asking that the Treasury, the Secret Service, and the District of Columbia sit down to work out a plan to reopen Pennsylvania Avenue. That plan must be consistent with the Secret Service concerns about the safety of the White House complex. We are fully cognizant of that. But this region is No. 2 in the Nation in lost time to commuters and No. 1 in economic losses to commuters because of that lost time. Many Members know what this is about because they come into town in the morning to a closed Pennsylvania Avenue and all the traffic problems that have been brought. Open Pennsylvania Avenue gradually, consistent with the President's safety.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, come tomorrow, we will be celebrating the 16th annual National Peace Officers Memorial Day, and the President of the United States is going to be here on the west front. I am sure, regardless of party, many of us are going to be out there to honor slain police officers. It is the culmination of National Police Week, and I come to the floor this afternoon to encourage my colleagues to do something more than mourn slain police officers. I have sponsored the Officer Brian Gibson Tax-Free Pension Equity Act of 1997. This is a bill that has almost no fiscal consequences, but it would allow the families of officers killed in the line of duty to receive survivor benefits tax-free. We already allow officers who retire on disability to receive their benefits tax-free. Surely we would want to this year erase the disparate treatment between officers who still live, but are disabled, and survivors of officers who have been killed in the line of duty. Is this small deed merely honorific, or is it necessary? I got the idea, Mr. Speaker, when Officer Brian Gibson was killed a few months ago. I learned that this officer was only 28 years old and had left infants behind. Then, right after that, two more officers were killed. Each had young children, ages 5, 3 months, 3 years. Each of them had been on the police force only a few years; 3 years, 4 years. Even though a slain police officer gets generous treatment because he gets a larger percentage of his pension than he would otherwise get, even getting half of the pension you have earned when you have only been on the force 4 or 5 years is not going to pay the mortgage, it is not going to put the kids through college. There is going to be a lot of rhetoric tomorrow, as there has been all week, about our officers who have given up their lives to protect us, and well there might be, because in a real sense going out on these streets today is going to war. This is not cops and robbers. It used to be that. They had a gun, you had a gun. Indeed, our police were able to take care of what needed to be done. Today, as we saw in the shootout in California a few weeks ago, they have outgunned our police officers, or, as in the District in recent weeks, they are so brazen as to engage in execution or assassination of police officers. What do we say to a young widow? If you go to three funerals in a row, as I have, and you cry and talk about how sorry you are, then what are you going to do? One of the things I am going to do, I assure the Members, with another bill that I have written, is to get the Federal police officers outside of these Government buildings so they give some aid to the D.C. police, who then can go into the high crime areas and perhaps protect policemen like Officer Brian Gibson who was not protected, as he was in the District by himself and alone in a police car. If Members want to do something besides talk about it, besides mourn about it, let us think of these families and take this bill, which has de minimis cost. I do not think it would even register. I have every reason to believe it would not. I have done some preliminary checking. Let us move forward and say we are going to do something this 16th Annual National Police Officers Memorial Day. We are not going to come up with remedies that do not work. We will not divide over who is for gun control or who is not for gun control. We are going to lay down our weapons. Our weapons are our debating points. We are going to come together on the proposition that when a police officer goes out here with his life on the line, and when he gives it for his community, at the very least we are going to stand up on this Congress and we are going to say, we are going to take care of your family. We assure you, we are going to take care of your family. Since we do not pay for police officers but we do tax them, we promise that as we do not tax officers who retire on disability, we will not tax your wife and your children who are left here by themselves. We will pull back, with almost no cost to this extraordinarily rich Government, and say, this is our contribution to the family that has been left behind. It is a small, I concede, a small point and a small bill, but for that very reason I think we would want to mark National Police Week this week with this bill that of course is supported by Members. It is bipartisan, and I urge support from both sides of the aisle.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor this afternoon on a particularly happy occasion. I am pleased to see my good friend and colleague, the gentleman from California [Mr. Lewis], from the other side of the aisle here as well, because I think we come to talk virtually in unison about the same subject. We have just come from a press conference involving Democrats and Republicans to kick off National Home Ownership Week. I want to thank the gentleman from California [Mr. Lewis] for deciding to do so with a wonderful initiative here in the District. The idea, let me be quick to say, is the idea of Representative Jerry Lewis, who has come forward with an idea that is likely to win favor throughout the country and to be copied throughout the country. Instead of just celebrating National Home Ownership Week with a lot of rhetoric on the floor, true to form, Representative Lewis would have us do something to indicate our commitment, our continuing commitment, to the proposition that every family in the United States deserves its own home in which to live. So, in early June, Members of the House will help to build a house in the Capital of the United States. I expect Members to rush back to their districts this year and next to try to carry out the idea of the gentleman from California [Mr. Lewis] all over this country. If the spirit of Hershey is alive anywhere, it will be alive, and I believe the date is June 6, when I urge Members from both sides of the aisle to follow the lead of Mr. Lewis and come to the southeast section of Washington and help us build the house that Congress built. If Hershey is alive, it will be alive on June 6. If Philadelphia, where the President and where President Bush as well came forward to promote voluntarism, if voluntarism that they promoted is alive as well, it will be alive in June with this action, which should inspire similar action around the country. Habitat for Humanity is where the expertise is. Here we have also an indication of how an organization can inspire Members to work together from both sides of the aisle, because when you have Representative Newt Gingrich and former President Carter working hard always for Habitat and bringing that partnership to Washington, we see bipartisanship at its best. Habitat for Humanity has quietly been doing this work all over the District of Columbia and all over the country for a very long time, but its meaning is especially deep when Habitat decides to build a house with Members of Congress doing the building, hammering the nails. Posters and shirts with a wonderful design by Vanessa Compos, a fourth grader at a public school in the District, Hyde Elementary School, will be worn on that day, and this poster will be shown all over the United States. In the resolution sponsored by Mr. Lewis, there is an important line, among many, ``Whereas, the United States is the first country in the world to make owning a home a reality for a vast majority of families, however, more than a third of the families in the United States are not homeowners.'' Think about how marvelous it is that the average family does own its own home. And when you think about how far we have come, it becomes unthinkable to leave out a minority of families in rural and urban areas who have not yet been able to afford a home. Affordable housing is not an oxymoron; it is something that this Congress on both sides of the aisle, together with the private sector, know we can make a reality. It is remarkable what we have done. We cannot slide back to where youngsters now wonder if they too can have the kind of home ownership that their parents have. We know they can. When the Congress of the United States moves forward to make the point, even metaphorically, we send a powerful message. I want to thank the gentleman from California [Mr. Lewis] as well for reminding us at the press conference that the District of Columbia is one of the Congress' five priorities, not simply building homes, but rebuilding the city itself. It is my hometown, but it is your Capital. The Control Board, together with the city, are making incredible progress starting from the ground to build up. The way to build up for the average family is for Congress to go forward on June 6 offering to do what all of us can do who work together. I thank the gentleman from California [Mr. Lewis].

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Woolsey] for the way in which she has worked to put welfare reform back on the 105th Congress' map and to leave no stone unturned and to put on notice this Congress that reform of the welfare system has yet to come. ``If at first you do not succeed,'' the cliche goes. Well, we have not succeeded and what we are going to do is try harder. The welfare reform bill needs reform. The only question is when are we going to do it. The flaws that are revealing themselves are already legion. Congress has taken a wait for the crisis attitude. That is of course the way we do business in a number of areas. When it comes to children, particularly given all the pro-family rhetoric that adorns this hall every day, one would think that we must move before the crisis. The gentlewoman from California, who is cochairing with me a task force to introduce an omnibus bill of reforms, has given an indication of the kinds of bills the omnibus bill will contain. Rather than repeat more about those bills, let me give other examples as well. Let us do first things first. The President has offered forth 10,000 jobs he controls in his executive agencies for welfare recipients. It is Congress' move now. What will we do? I have a bill that I have introduced on March 12 that would encourage every Member to offer a full-time job in her office to a welfare recipient. In order to accommodate this, the House would increase staff allotments by one, but not our budget. Many Members could then hire a welfare recipient. They might not otherwise be able to do so, especially Members who come from districts that are broadly spaced through rural areas or large States. But if we said to the Member, or if the Member knows that she has the money but needs the staff member, at no cost to the government, we could do our part. I do not see how in the world we can continue to monitor welfare reform if we do not step up the way the President has. We must lead by example. If we mean it, we have to do it first. I expect that the omnibus bill will contain a number of correctives. Let me give examples. I will be introducing an anti-displacement bill. There is a perverse effect here, Mr. Speaker. What we are finding is that people who have gone out and gotten their own low-paying jobs are being displaced by welfare recipients. If that is not a perverse effect, I do not know what is. Two similarly situated youngsters in the District of Columbia gets pregnant at 16. One goes and finds her own job in the hotel industry and the other sits at home. Maybe she sits at home because she does not have a babysitter, maybe she does it for other reasons. But the fact is there is an incentive for employers to hire the young woman who went out and got her own job, so the employer displaces the woman who went out and got it herself. We cannot have that. It is not what anybody intended. I will be introducing an anti-displacement bill so that similarly situated people will not feel that I have to go get on welfare in order to get a job; that is the way to do it. The message is go out and get your own job, and only if you cannot get one should you be on welfare at all. Mr. Speaker, I have a bill that pertains to the District of Columbia, which does not have a State but has a State quota which it cannot possibly meet. By 2002 every State has to have 50 percent of all its families in work or work activities. The State of New York or the State of California or the State of Wyoming, for that matter, will gather them from all over the State. No other State has to gather that whole 50 percent from a central city. It cannot be done. My bill would give the District no preference. It would simply say that using a formula, which we extract from what other inner cities have done, we say that the District has to fill that number and not a number that is given to an entire State. I will be introducing a bill to exempt relative caretakers from the 20 percent rule. Twenty percent of cost can be exempted from work activity. Surely we do not mean to say that a grandmother has to go out and find a job. These are effects that are beginning to come through. These are reforms that need to be done. I expect to do so.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today I have introduced a bill that is of importance to every Member of this House if they have constituents who come to visit this city. It is called the District of Columbia Police Coordination Act of 1997. What it does is very straightforward. It would make mandatory cooperative agreements between the Metropolitan Police Department and the Federal agencies so that they would have to come to terms with sending agency personnel to patrol areas around their own Federal buildings, donating or sharing equipment and supplies, sharing radio frequencies, and streamlining the process of arresting suspects. The U.S. attorney would be the coordinator. This is so straightforward, why is it not happening already? We have got thousands of police, we have got 30 police forces in Washington, DC, and they all operate as private police forces. No coordination goes on. And so the hard-pressed District police, faced with violent crime, are duplicating efforts that could be going on downtown. My bill seeks to introduce rationality and cost efficiency into a totally uncoordinated, very inefficient, and wasteful use of Federal police power. We send many of our Federal law enforcement officers to the state-of- the-art facility at Brunswick, GA. Then we come back and capture them inside Federal buildings. One of the officers told me that in this day, when we are concerned about security, a Federal police officer in a Federal building, if he sees a van, a suspicious looking van outside a Federal building, does not have the authority to go outside and ask that van to move along. We need to empower these police to do police work. There is already good coordination between the Park Police, which has jurisdiction all over the whole city, but there are multiple police forces, such as the Government Printing Office police force, the Naval Observatory, the Federal Protection Service for the Federal buildings, the Library of Congress. The list goes on, and it is very long. Most of these officers are unable to make arrests except in the building or in the immediate environs of the building. Most do not even patrol the block around their Federal agency. Worse, on the few occasions in which they do intervene into unlawful activity, many call 911 to get a District police officer as if they were a regular citizen. Instead, they are people with arrest powers. I am talking about people who carry guns and cannot come outdoors to play with the thugs. My bill says, hey, you get more money than the D.C. police, you get better pensions, you face a whole lot less crime. Come out here where the real crime is. When the high crime rates went up in the District, there was a lot of blame to go around and a lot of it belonged to the District. Always, the District gets stinging criticism. Criticism of our own local police or death penalty rhetoric is not going to do anything to assist our police on the streets today, right now. Federal law enforcement officers should not be left underperforming when--by the way, they desperately want to perform because they lack the authority to render service commensurate with their police power and their arrest authority. There is ample precedent for my bill. In 1992, this body passed my bill that freed the Capitol Police to go beyond the few blocks around the Capitol, and so they now patrol the high crime Capitol Hill area. This body understood immediately that we should not be training cops at the level we do and then failing to get the highest and best use of them. This is a period when we are losing policemen as if they were fighting wars. The high crime areas will always be patrolled by our own District police; but surely in the middle of town, thousands of police officers assigned to Federal agencies, who carry guns, who have police power, ought to be freed up to use that police power. We are requiring greater efficiency from police these days. We are not responding simply to the call for more money. The call for greater efficiency is paying off. We see it in the large cities where crime rates have tumbled down. They can tumble down in this city, too. We are doing saturated arrests, and the crime rates have come down remarkably. How long can our police keep it up if we do not get help from police who are perfectly willing to, indeed, help? I appreciate that many of those uniformed police came to stand with me this morning in a press conference. I ask the Congress and this House to pass my police coordination bill and help me get rid of crime in the District of Columbia.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today, I am introducing a bill that will introduce rationality and cost efficiency into the almost totally uncoordinated, extraordinarily inefficient and wasteful use of Federal agency police power in Washington, DC. My bill will free 30 or more Federal law enforcement agencies to give direct assistance to the Metropolitan Police Department [MPD] and will get a much increased bang for the Federal buck as well as additional police protection for District residents, commuters, and tourists. The point of my bill is the highest and best use of their valuable police powers. Few are aware of the great number of overlapping Federal law enforcement agencies in the District. A CRS survey that I requested shows that there are at least 30 agencies with the authority to arrest and to carry firearms. Many of these agencies get state-of-the-art training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center [FLETC] in Brunswick, GA, considered the best police training facility in the country. The MPD does not receive this superior level of training because the District cannot afford to send our officers to the Georgia facility. Yet the MPD is left to respond to calls for assistance not only from residents but also from the Federal officers while responding to one of the highest crime cities in the country without their assistance. Examples of Federal law enforcement agencies that would be affected are Federal Protection Services, Library of Congress Police, U.S. Park Police, Government Printing Office Police, Naval Observatory and Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Despite often excellent training, these and other Federal law enforcement agencies are pitifully constrained in their ability to utilize this costly training. The Federal taxpayer is getting very little protection at a very high price because the Federal law enforcement agencies are treated essentially as private police forces. Most of these officers are unable to make arrests except in the building or on the immediate grounds. Most do not patrol in the immediate vicinity surrounding their agencies, but leave that job to the overburdened MPD. On the few occasions when they do intervene in an unlawful activity, many can only call 911 as if they were citizens without arrest powers. By phone, they inform the MPD of the crime that may be occurring within sight of the agency because Federal agencies and the MPD do not share the same radio frequencies. To its credit, Park Police Officers in Rock Creek Park overcame the obstacle by simply loaning their counterpart officers in the MPD a police radio and vice versa. Federal officers who do make an occasional arrest merely hand over the suspect to the MPD and do not do any of the paperwork, leaving the MPD with hours of processing that keep officers off the streets. Although they work in the same city, there is little, if any, routine sharing and donation of equipment between Federal agencies and the MPD at a time when the President has called on Federal agencies to help the District. What little coordination that is done comes on an ad hoc basis, without any central entity or authority to coordinate agency efforts. Therefore, today I am introducing the District of Columbia Police Coordination Act of 1997. The bill directs Federal law enforcement agencies to enter into cooperative agreements with the MPD to assist the department in crime prevention and law enforcement activities in the District. Matters that must be included in these agreements include sending agency personnel on patrol in areas immediately surrounding their respective agencies, sharing and donating equipment and supplies, sharing radio frequencies, and streamlining the processing of suspects. The U.S. attorney will act as the coordination entity for purposes of implementing the bill. Federal police officers usually earn more than D.C. police, have access to better training, have better benefits and working conditions, yet perform almost none of the services that the MPD officers perform. The District has had to cut other vital services to raise the number of officers while Federal officers are treated like high-priced night watchmen. Yet high crime rates and police assassinations are quick to get the attention of Congress. Stinging criticism of the MPD and death penalty rhetoric will do nothing to assist D.C. police officers. Federal law enforcement officers should not be left underperforming only because they lack the authority to render service commensurate with their police power and arrest authority. I have had success with a similar bill. In 1992 Congress passed Public Law 102-397, my bill that now allows the Capitol Police to patrol an area three times greater than previously. Instead of patrolling only adjacent to the Capitol grounds, where there is virtually no crime, the Capitol Police now patrol the neighborhood. Under my bill, Federal law enforcement agencies would accomplish the same results through cooperative agreements that take into account their own agency needs, assist the MPD officers in avoiding duplicate actions, and coordinate their work for maximum efficiency. I believe most Members of the House and Senate would be alarmed that Federal tax dollars contribute so little to the protection of areas around Federal facilities and want a more cost-efficient system. The Congress came to this same conclusion when it reacted to crime in the Capitol Hill neighborhood by freeing its own Capitol Police to patrol beyond the immediate area of the Capitol. The District of Columbia Police Coordination Act of 1997 will give the Congress the opportunity to apply the same approach to Federal law enforcement officers assigned to other Federal facilities.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California [Mrs. Tauscher].

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlewoman from Connecticut [Mrs. Johnson] for her work with me as co-chair of the Caucus and for helping to organize this very important special order which has gone so well with its great variety. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Sanchez].

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her remarks. Mr. Speaker, it is no accident that we have focused on women's health. This is the 20th anniversary of the women's congressional caucus. In those 20 years we have probably had our greatest success by focusing on women's health. So we come forward this evening in order to press again this issue. The women's caucus and women members and other members have essentially over the past 20 years made what can only be called great discoveries when it comes to neglected women's health issues. The inclusion of women in clinical trials, for example, was a historic step forward. During the 105th Congress the congressional women's caucus is going to have a legislative agenda which we will be publicizing in the next several weeks. The reason for that legislative agenda is to measure ourselves and to measure this Congress against real goals. Had we not done that, then the gains we have made, for example with respect to women's conditions like osteoporosis or cervical cancer, simply could not have been made. When we began to work on research in cervical cancer, for example, it was a dreaded disease. Once you got it, nobody knew what to do about it, and now half the cases can be caught and cured. We might well get the most out of this special order if we could get the agreement of the House and the Senate to pass what I can only call an easy bill. That would be the Mammography Quality Standards Reauthorization Act, or H.R. 1289, that has, of course, been mentioned in this special order this evening, but I mention it as we close out the evening because it is a fitting bill to be the first significant bill affecting women, women's health, passed this year. It is simply a reauthorization of a bill that would assure that mammograms are performed under safe circumstances and conditions. It is fitting also because we have just gone through the storm with the doubt and uncertainty that was there over mammography for women in their forties that has been cleared up. We now know that women in their forties should have mammograms at least every other year, if not every year. We come forward this evening, therefore, to remind ourselves not only of what we have accomplished in 20 years bringing women's concerns to the House, but to vigilantly keep ourselves focused on what is yet to be done.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his great generosity in yielding to me. First, in light of some unavoidable scheduling difficulties, I will be brief, but I believe I had to come forward, because, Mr. Speaker, I was in the nonviolent army of Jim Farmer, and if I may say so, in the nonviolent army where one of the commanders was the gentleman who has the remaining period, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Lewis]. He and I, because we were in that army, needed to come forward to pay tribute to a man who, as the gentleman from Georgia has said, many in America do not know, but who everybody knew in the 1960's when he led the nonviolent marches, and encouraged Americans to remain nonviolent in the face of what might otherwise have been temptations into violence. The name of James Farmer is, indeed, a name that will go down in history as one of the great civil rights leaders of the 20th century. James fought the brutality of racism through nonviolent means, making him one of the Nation's most recognizable and influential black leaders in the 1960's. In 1942, Jim Farmer and several Christian pacifists founded the Congress of Racial Equality with the goal of using nonviolent Gandhian tactics to challenge American racism. Under his leadership, the Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE as it became called, began a campaign of sit-ins which successfully ended discrimination in two Chicago restaurants in 1947. Later he would be appointed the executive director of CORE, and in 1961 his group would initiate the famous freedom rides throughout the Deep South. The gentleman from Georgia will tell you all about those rides. Like Martin Luther King, Jr., Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, and other courageous black men of the early civil rights movement, Jim Farmer was no stranger to the danger of organizing nonviolent demonstrations in the tumultuous South of the 1960's. Jim Farmer literally put his life on the line more than once in the struggle for civil rights. In 1963, outside the town of Plaquemine, LA, a mob of State troopers hunted for him after he organized nonviolent demonstrations. He said and I am quoting him: ``I was meant to die that night, they were kicking open doors, beating up blacks in the streets, interrogating them with electric cattle prods.'' And remarkably, Jim made his escape by playing dead in the back of a hearse which carried him along back roads out of town. This articulate and charismatic leader continued to spread the method of nonviolent demonstrations throughout the country. Under his direction, CORE organized voter registration and civil protests like the 1964 demonstration at the New York World's Fair to protest black conditions in that city. In 1966, Jim Farmer resigned from CORE and a leadership role and went on to continue his work in civil rights in other ways. As president of the Center for Community Action, he championed adult literacy. His service with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare was noteworthy for programs increasing black employment in the agency under President Richard Nixon. Later he would direct the Council on Minority Planning and Strategy here in Washington. The gentleman from Georgia, several other Members of Congress and I have written the President to ask that the Medal of Freedom be awarded to this great American who was among the class of the great civil rights leaders of the 1960's. He is, Mr. Speaker, today blind. He has lost the use of both of his legs. And yet with the indomitable determination for which he was known in his younger years, he continues as a distinguished professor of history and American studies at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, VA. This is a very distinguished American. He helped originate the nonviolent approach that saved our country from race war. One of the originators of this approach among the young people, I must say, Mr. Speaker, was the gentleman from Georgia, who perhaps more than any man in America suffered physically for his commitment to nonviolence. But he would be the first to note his gratitude to a man who was his senior and the leader of us all because we were young whippersnappers learning from the likes of Jim Farmer. Few if any countries have solved so serious a problem, so deep a problem as American racism nonviolently. Martin Luther King, Jr., was not the only apostle of nonviolent resistance and peaceful approaches to breaking down racial barriers. He is only the best known. One of the very best known of course continues to serve in this Congress, and that is the gentleman from Georgia. But the fact is that in these days, when we decry violence in our country, we would do well to look to the leadership of those who were willing to die for nonviolent change. The moment of civil rights triumph may be a distant memory to some. After all, we are a generation removed, but certain ideas never lose their currency and one of those ideas is equality. Another of those ideas is racial harmony. And Jim Farmer stood proudly for both and would stand proudly for both today. The President of the United States, Mr. Speaker, has said that race relations is one of the priorities of his second term and well it might be. Mr. Speaker, we ought to be worried about race relations in our country today, so many of us are comfortable, the smaller the group. The fact is that when the gentleman from Georgia and I were young troops in the nonviolent armies of the South, I think it fair to say that there was greater communication often across racial lines than there is today. We are not nostalgic about the past, but there are some parts of the past that I would like to recall. One way to recall and to pay a debt the country owes is for President Clinton to award the Medal of Freedom to an American hero, a man who suffered for it, a man who stood on principle and a man who taught America that its gravest social problem could be solved and could be solved nonviolently. The life of Jim Farmer recalls us to first principles, brotherhood and sisterhood, if you will, racial equality and racial and ethnic harmony. These are great American principles. They have had their ups and they have had their downs, but they are and must remain with us in perpetuity. I thank the gentleman from Georgia for his great generosity in yielding to me.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, Monday the Supreme Court let stand a title IX ruling requiring Brown University to give equal treatment to men and women in sports. This was not an affirmative action case. It was an old-fashioned deliberate discrimination case, even though affirmative action would have been justified given the exclusion of women from sports for decades. It did not come a moment too soon. This is the 25th anniversary of title XI. It did not come a moment too soon because everybody jumped and cheered for our women athletes at the Atlanta Olympics. It is now time for Congress to undo the damage it did last year when it erased all State compliance funds for title IX, for the injury was not to female athletes alone but to all school programs for girls, including our attempts to increase girls in math and science. This is not about men versus women. It is not a zero sum game. Equal treatment for men and women is win-win, Mr. Speaker.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, on May 26, 1995, in response to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, the Office of Personnel Management [OPM] transmitted to Congress the Federal Employees Emergency Leave Transfer Act of 1995. With jury selection just begun in the Oklahoma City trial, it is time to pass this bill that would enhance the use of transfers of leave to assist Federal employees who are adversely affected by disasters or emergencies as declared by the President. I am reintroducing the bill today as we mark the anniversary month of the bombing in Oklahoma City. The bill was passed by the Senate and House last year and failed to go to conference because of opposition to an unrelated amendment attached in the House. In 1988, Congress authorized a 5-year test of voluntary leave transfer and leave bank programs within Federal agencies. These programs were designed to help employees faced with a medical or family emergency who had already exhausted all available leave. In 1994, the House Post Office and Civil Service Committee's Subcommittee on Compensation and Employee Benefits held a hearing on the programs, which documented their success. Legislation I authored making them permanent was subsequently enacted. Current leave transfer law limits, in some situations, the transfer of donated leave from one agency to another. Current law also requires that donated leave be used only for personal or family medical emergencies, and that employees exhaust all personal leave balances before qualifying for leave donations. In the wake of the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April 1995, affected employees were excused from duty without being required to use their available leave. This was made possible by OPM's efforts to coordinate agencies' existing leave transfer programs. It became apparent from this experience that such situations would be better handled by establishing in law the necessary authority for special leave transfer programs to address needs created by Presidentially declared disasters and emergencies. Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee first introduced OPM's proposal, S. 868, on June 21, 1995. The bill was approved by the committee, without amendment, on August 10, 1995. It passed the Senate by unanimous consent on October 19, 1995. The Congressional Budget Office determined that S. 868 would not affect direct spending or receipts, and that any administrative costs resulting from its implementation would be minimal. S. 868 was referred to the House Subcommittee on Civil Service which did not hold hearings on the measure, but referred the bill to the full House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. The full committee attached several other measures, including the Veterans Preference bill, to S. 868, and the House subsequently passed the bill as amended. The Senate, however, failed to consider the bill as amended and it did not become law. The bill I introduce today is identical to S. 868. It requires that in the event of a major disaster or emergency, the President would have the authority to direct OPM to create a special leave transfer program for affected Federal employees. Employees need not be facing a medical emergency to qualify, they would need the leave because of the adverse effects of the disaster or emergency. The bill would allow agency approved recipients to use donated leave without having to first exhaust their own accumulated leave. It would allow employees in any executive agency to donate leave for transfer to affected employees in the same agency or other agencies. It would also allow agency leave banks to donate leave to any emergency leave transfer program established under this act. OPM would be permitted to establish rules for the operation of this special program. The Federal Employees Emergency Leave Transfer Act enjoys the support not only of OPM but of the Federal employee organizations, has no budgetary impact, and has not been controversial. I urge my colleagues to support this important bill.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, the bill I introduce today broadens the rights of Federal employees and other Americans by amending the Federal Tort Claims Act. The need for this bill has been demonstrated in the aftermath of the tragic and needless accident which killed Secretary Ron Brown and 34 other Americans when their plane, piloted by the U.S. Air Force, crashed into a Croatian mountainside on April 3, 1996. I introduce this bill this month in memory of the Americans who died in Croatia to allow fair compensation to their relatives for their irretrievable losses and to deter similar accidents in the future. News reports and constituent calls to my office have made clear the need for this bill. Some victims' families have faced financial hardship, in some instances, due to the minimal Government benefit payments. If a private plane had been responsible for this accident, the victims' families would have been entitled to recover no less than $75,000, and if willful misconduct were shown, the amount recoverable would have been unlimited. The bill I introduce today increases the damages available to the victims of tragedies caused by the Federal Government and covers accidents occurring on or after April 3, 1996. My bill will not unfairly open the United States to lawsuits by increasing its exposure in large numbers of accidents. The bill is limited to accidents in which the burden would be on the plaintiff to prove gross negligence, which the record shows to be a small number. The official Air Force investigation found three independent causes, any one of which, had it not existed, would have prevented the accident. Surely, in the unusual circumstances of gross and preventable negligence, the country has an obligation to do more than mourn the victims and offer minimal damages. My bill addresses two problems. The first affects only Federal employees. Under current law, the sole source of recovery for an injured Federal employee is the Federal Employees Compensation Act [FECA]. The act provides compensation benefits to U.S. employees for disabilities due to personal injury incurred while working. Although the FECA applies to injuries that occur here in this country and those that occur overseas, a Federal employee cannot sue for gross negligence. And if that Federal employee dies and has no dependents, the recoverable damages under FECA are practically nonexistent. My bill remedies this by allowing Federal employees to sue the United States for gross negligence, notwithstanding any compensation they would receive under the Federal Employees Compensation Act. My bill addresses a second problem as well. This problem is that nonfederal employees who are injured overseas have no right of recovery against the Federal Government. Currently, under the Federal Tort Claims Act [FTCA], an individual may bring a tort suit against the Federal Government for injuries caused by the negligent or wrongful act or omission of any Federal employee acting within the scope of his employment. Under the FTCA, an individual has 2 years to present a claim to the Federal agency involved, and if the agency denies the claim, then that person has the right to sue in Federal district court. Although this right exists for people who are injured in the United States, the individual who is injured overseas has absolutely no right of recovery under the Federal Tort Claims Act for the negligent conduct of the Federal Government. My bill remedies this problem by providing a cause of action. The accident in Croatia pointed up in the most tragic way the need for this bill. The Air Force Accident Investigation Board revealed raw negligence from takeoff to landing. The Board found that the command gave authorization to fly certain procedures that had not been reviewed and properly approved, that the aircrew made errors in planning and executing the flight, that the approach to the airport was improperly designed, and that inadequate training was a substantially contributing factor. As a result of the investigation, 2 officers were disciplined under article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice--the most serious form of military punishment short of a court-martial--2 received letters of reprimand, and actions were taken against 12 others. We owe the families of those left behind after last year's accident in Croatia more than our continuing sympathy. We owe them just compensation and assurance that Federal tort law will deter such tragedies in the future. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I am very grateful to my distinguished colleague, Representative Don Manzullo, for his generous and thoughtful attention to the District and to Emancipation Day and for his consistent assistance to District residents in this annual observance. We also very much appreciate the work of DC Reading is Fundamental in this educational event. Our thanks go as well to Mr. Arnold Goldstein, superintendent of the National Park Service, and to other Park Service officials and employees for their cooperation in helping us celebrate this commemorative event, just as the Park Service has been consistently helpful to the District in so many other ways. It is 135 years after the emancipation of slaves in the District, yet we continue to celebrate the emancipation of 3,100 District slaves. Emancipation in the District was of further importance because it was the first such action and culminated in the general emancipation of slaves in the United States. If I may, this day has importance for my family as well, because Richard Holmes, my great-grandfather, was in the District that day. Our family does not claim him as a run-away slave hero, because Richard Holmes simply walked off a Virginia plantation one day and laid down roots in the District. I can only imagine what this day must have meant to him. The abolitionist movement in the District was especially strong. Abolitionists regarded slavery in the capital of the United States a national shame. Regrettably that expression was to continue to apply to other forms of denial of basic rights unbecoming to the capital of the free world. The District was a bastion of lawful racial discrimination and did not integrate its schools until the Supreme Court struck down illegal segregation in 1954. In 1997, the District remains the only jurisdiction where Americans pay taxes without full representation in Congress and the only jurisdiction, including the four territories, whose laws can be overturned at the whim of Congress. Still, we are pleased today to note that when President Lincoln ended slavery here, nine months before the Emancipation Proclamation, the District led the country out of the most serious form of oppression any nation can impose. Our country would have been even better off had it followed the pattern laid out in the District of Columbia Emancipation Act because emancipation in the District did not involve war; slave owners were compensated and former slaves were allowed to emigrate and were themselves compensated, although at a lesser amount. We continue to celebrate April 16th as District of Columbia Emancipation Day in the city, but surely not out of nostalgia or false comparison of ourselves to those who lived under slavery in the last century. I am very pleased about the participation of District of Columbia Reading is Fundamental. The involvement of DC Reading is Fundamental focuses us on today's problems and priorities, a worthy way to respect the memory of those who had no way to overcome such problems. The value of noting District of Columbia Emancipation Day is not history for its own sake, despite that worthy objective, but history to inspire our re-energized efforts to eliminate today's problems. Slavery is not one of them. Children who cannot read is a problem. Good schools where children function at grade level and improving high school graduation rates are where we must focus in 1997. Reducing crime, building strong family units, helping welfare recipients find work, reforming the District government, rebuilding our city--these are the issues of today. The 3,100 District of Columbia residents who were emancipated by Abraham Lincoln on April 16, 1862, probably could not read and probably would have given everything to acquire that skill. In their memory, we commemorate their emancipation day and pledge to do all we can to emancipate ourselves from the problems of today and to accept the challenges of tomorrow.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. The gentleman is quite welcome. Mr. Speaker, may I add that my Fair Pay Act is an amendment to the Equal Pay Act, and not a separate act. One of the things it does is to add race and national origin to the Equal Pay Act. Mr. Speaker, I can see that there may be fewer jobs were the stereotyping about race and national origin happens to the extent that it happens to women, because low-paid jobs tend to be passed on from one ethnic group to another. But there certainly are some jobs, and those jobs should be reached under the Equal Pay Act, and they would be reached under the Fair Pay Act. I would like to address any concern about the way the Fair Pay Act might affect the market system. Not only are the safeguards I mentioned before there, that the burden is on the woman, the plaintiff, that she must show that the cause of the disparity is in fact gender and not some legitimate cause inherent in the market. But there is another reason to believe that comparable pay would not have a disruptive effect on our economy. A number of States, more than half a dozen, have done comparable-pay studies that affected their own State work forces, and some of them have indeed used those studies in order to raise the pay of women doing comparable jobs with men. So once again, the States have experienced and have shown that comparable pay can work. This remedy should be applied to others, as well. Mr. Speaker, I am also associated with the Families First Fair Pay Initiative, which involves some additions that are perhaps less clear cut than my own but which I fully embrace. On Pay Inequity Day tomorrow, I think we would do well to take notice of these smaller steps, which I believe need to be taken at the earliest time. One is simply better enforcement of the Equal Pay Act itself. The Equal Pay Act was transferred to the EEOC when I chaired that agency. In the beginning we brought many equal pay cases. I am concerned, as a prior chair of the agency, that during the 1980's there were very few equal pay cases brought at all and that even now there are too few relative to the amount of discrimination we know is out there. Mr. Speaker, I call upon the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to concentrate far more on Equal Pay Act cases, and I believe that this body needs to facilitate that effort by adding stronger penalties for violation of the Equal Pay Act. The EEOC and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance in the Labor Department need additional resources. One of the reasons I believe that there has been less enforcement of the Equal Pay Act is because the EEOC now has very complicated additional responsibilities, including the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, a very important recent addition to our law, relatively recent addition, and because of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, where we restored the strength of some of the equal opportunity laws after a Supreme Court decision. When all of this is piled onto an agency that has suffered as the EEOC has in the last several years, you may get some neglect of important statutes. There has been neglect of the Equal Pay Act. We must, in fact, at a time when the American family cannot do without the woman's wage, get our bearings and get back to basics with the Equal Pay Act. In addition, while the Fair Pay Act is pending, there is something that employers can do right now without this body moving. As an interim and transition step, I believe that there should be voluntary employer guidelines drawn up by the Secretary of Labor so an employer can know without having to go through a process itself, whether, in fact, he is doing women a disservice by paying women less than the job should require. An employer has a right to say, is the wage here what one might expect for the skill and effort and responsibility required in this job? The employer may not mean to discriminate. The Labor Department could do women and employers a service by, in fact, drawing voluntary guidelines, absolutely no sanctions attached to them, that would act to inform employers, that would act as an educational device so that employers who wanted to do the right thing would have some guidance as to what the right thing to do in fact was. The Families First fair pay initiative cannot stop with women in the work force. The average woman out here is building a bad pension portfolio for herself. She is doing so in part because she is earning so little. The average woman makes less than $14,000 a year. For a moment, by the way, Mr. Speaker, stop and think what that means for her children. What it means, if she is to have any money left over for having worked at all, is that she is probably leaving her children catch as catch can, and we certainly are doing nothing about that. There needs to be a special order, and I will initiate one in the future, on child care. With so little money, the agony and the frustration that women face as they go to work every day is one of the great untold stories of America. In a real sense I wonder why women are not insisting that their story be told. I have my own theory. Mr. Speaker, my theory is that women are raised to do the best that they can, to work night and day, not to respect any hours, to hustle from one part of their responsibilities to another. They think it is simply natural to get up in the morning and put your kids on the school bus and get out yourself and keep dialing home after school to make sure that your kids are there and run home and put the food on and read to the kids. They think this is natural. It is not natural, and it is not healthy for families or for women or for children. But at the very least we ought to make sure that this frustration does not come to rest in a woman's retirement years, with a pension that is too little to support her. Mr. Speaker, most of the poor aged by far are women. They live on Social Security. One might think that, now that we have women in the work force in a more systematic fashion, perhaps that would no longer be the case. With the baby boom generation hitting us and with salaries still at such a low level, that expectation will not turn out to be the case, and there are some things we can do about that. We can expand the access of women workers to pensions and to the retirement vehicles that are out there. These include 401(k) plans and small business retirement plans and IRA's. We can require that equitable survivor benefit options be available. So, for example, that either surviving spouse would in fact be entitled with two-thirds of the benefit received while both were alive. That is equity, Mr. Speaker. We could provide that divorcing spouses share equally in each other's pensions. Remember, both are working and they ought to share equally in each other's pensions unless a court decides that that should not be the case. We could enact legislation that prevented one spouse's participation in a pension plan. I am sorry. We could prevent one spouse's participation in a pension plan from limiting the other spouse's ability to make deductible IRA contributions. The pension area has received even less focus than the employment problems I spoke of because women who have too little voice as they work find that that voice grows softer and softer in its impact the older they get. As we approach Pay Inequity Day, Mr. Speaker, we should take note of the fact that this body to its credit moved in a way that helped women in particular in the last session, the 104th Congress, even without a remedy addressed to women. Some of our best remedies, dare I say most of our best remedies, are gender neutral. They include the Earned Income Tax Credit and the minimum wage, even though both assist women far more than men. For the minimum wage, 60 percent of the workers are women. When we passed the minimum wage last session, 300,000 people were immediately lifted out of poverty; 100,000 of them were children. We finally got over the false data that was used to show that somehow, if you increased minimum wage, you would basically help teenagers and do nothing for adults. Only one-third of those affected by the increase were teenagers. Almost 70 percent of the minimum wage workers are 20 years or older. And, as I indicated, the majority of them are women. These are adults who go out here to earn a poverty wage every day. And this issue becomes more and more important as we look at the new welfare work force. We are still trying to figure out how these people on a minimum wage are going to be able to earn a living. Imagine what would have occurred if we had not passed the minimum wage last year. Mr. Speaker, I want to take special note of the fact that among those in our society already excluded, particularly people of color, the minimum wage has had the most important effect. Seventeen percent of all hourly paid African-American workers are minimum wage workers, and of course most of these low wage workers are female. Now, that is 17 percent, even though African-Americans are something like 12 percent of the population. Twenty-one percent of all hourly paid Latino workers are minimum wage workers, and 25 percent of paid Latino women earn the minimum wage. Therefore, if our concern is with eliminating disparities among people of color and white people, we should be aware that remedies like simply raising the minimum wage in an orderly and systematic fashion is one of the most effective things we could do. There is a lot of concern and interest in getting women to go back home and in fact not work. Let me be clear. The women's movement of which I consider myself a part does not now and never has had the position that women should go out to work. Remember when the women's movement started. That was at a time when it was considered heretical for women to work. Therefore, women stepped up to the plate and said, wait a minute, is that not a choice I should make--because that was the background and the backdrop of women's work. There are some who claim that we do not want women to stay at home. What we want is what women did not have when we said women should be able to go to work and what they should have now. And that is the right to make the choice with or without sacrifice as to what to do with their lives, a choice to be made by them and their families. Mr. Speaker, if we really mean that choice to be a real choice, of course, we would do what every industrialized country in the world does. And that is at least provide some aid through some sort of child care system for women who want to go out and work, but we do not do that. That has not kept women from going to work. What it has meant is women have gone to work with some sacrifice to their children. There is a reason women are working. You can bet your bottom dollar that there is a reason why half of all married women with children under 3 are in the labor force, and that is not because all of them have gone to law school and decided that they want to try out their law degrees. These are the minimum-wage women I was talking about or women just above them. These are the $14,000-a-year women that have no other choice and would not leave their children if they had any other choice. Even if they have husband, and remember that the number of women who are raising children by themselves has doubled since 1970, remember that these women are working because this work simply must be done to earn a living. In 1970, a quarter of all women worked. Now we are up to half. I am sorry, that figure was not correct. It was a quarter of all married women were working. And now it is half of all married women. What we, I think, have been reluctant to face, Mr. Speaker, is that women have become to the service economy what the men of the 19th and early 20th century were to the industrial economy. Like the male industrial workers, women are the low-paid workers with no benefits of the 20th century. If you look at who does not have pensions, if you look at who does not have health insurance, it is full-time women workers, and it is the plethora of women, the majority of women, who are part time workers or the majority of part-time workers who are women; and many of the part- time workers in this country tend to be women. The temporary workers tend to be women. And I don't think I need to say to this body what their benefit and wage levels are. Indeed, increasingly we see employers breaking jobs up to make them part-time and temporary precisely to avoid paying benefits. There is going to come a time, Mr. Speaker, when women come upon this body and the other body to rectify this matter. It is time that we moved on our own to address this tragic frustration of the American family, because remember what these women are doing. I have spoken of low-pay jobs for women. I have spoken of minimum- wage jobs for women. What kind of jobs do I mean? I mean the fast-food jobs; I mean the health aide jobs; I mean the insurance clerk jobs; I mean the residential day-care jobs; I mean the beautician jobs; I mean the hospital worker jobs. Women predominate in these low-paid occupations, and yet they have families, they live the same kinds of lives, have the same kinds of needs that other families have. So on tomorrow, Pay Equity Day, we need to return to the equal pay and comparable pay issues. There is a reason why our focus is scattered, but we have got to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Women have many, many concerns. It is perfectly appropriate for women to reach to those many concerns. None is more important today, Mr. Speaker, than assuring that when a woman goes out to work, she at least brings home what she is worth. That is what the Fair Pay Act is trying to achieve. The frustration of having to go to work, for many women with small children is great enough, but having to go to work and then hardly bringing home enough to pay the baby-sitter or the child care center, which may or may not be accredited, that is a frustration we should ask no American family to endure. At the very least, we should be moving to begin to rectify a problem that is going to take years to remedy. There was a time, Mr. Speaker, when pay equity issues were classic women issues. Times have changed, Mr. Speaker. The pay equity issue has become one of the paramount family issues. This, I submit, is not only because of the growth, the alarming growth, if you will, of female- headed families; this is because in America today it takes two to tango in the workplace to bring home enough money for the family. It is wrong to send women out in order to help with family income and then not to make sure that the woman brings home what her skill effort and responsibility on the job would indicate she deserves. Mr. Speaker, some of us have been very vocal to young women, saying to them that what they must do is to get the requisite education. I am very blunt about it to my own constituents. I have a program called D.C. Students in the Capitol so I get to talk with them every legislative day. I ask their teachers and parents to bring them in classes to the Capitol, telling them that 20 million people come to visit the Capitol or visit Washington every year, and if you are born here and raised here, surely you ought to come. And then I ask them, as I talk with them, to give me a promise, and I ask them that each raise her hand if she or he can promise me that she will stay in school at least until they have finished high school, and invariably they raise their hands. And I am very blunt with the boys, and I am very blunt with the girls. I talk to the boys about crime, and I talk to the girls about pregnancy, and I say I am going to check up on you to make sure that you do what you promise to do. I do not want to be put in the position of sounding like a hypocrite of saying stay in school to the young girls so that you can come out here and make whatever an employer wants to pay you. I want to be able to say stay in school so you can come out and earn what you are worth. For that reason, I ask that on tomorrow everybody think about pay and equity, because that is the day on which, remember, we are only in April, on which women earn as much as men have earned the entire prior year. I ask my colleagues to sign on to the Fair Pay Act. We had 52 cosponsors last year. Senator Harkin has introduced the bill in the Senate already. I have over 20 cosponsors. I invite the cosponsorship of all of my colleagues.

Ms. NORTON. I am pleased to yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts. cpi adjustment

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, all over the country today, women are preparing for tomorrow, for they have been alerted by women's organizations and others that tomorrow is a day for commemoration, it can hardly be for celebration, because it is pay inequity day, the day on which women earn what a man earned during the previous year. I want to devote my time this afternoon to discussing some issues which I think will astonish many. I want to acknowledge that the gentlewoman from Texas [Ms. Jaction-Lee] wished to participate in this Special Order and was unable to do so. Interestingly, pay equity was one of the great issues of the 1960's and 1970's. What has happened to the issue? Why do we not hear it discussed as much? Have we in fact finally remedied pay inequality between men and women? One of the things that happened, Mr. Speaker, I think, is that women represent such a broad and diversified group that women have in fact balkanized and diversified their agenda so that in a very real sense it is very difficult to indicate what matters most to women. This afternoon I want to bring us back to basics, because what we are certain of is that a most dramatic structural change has occurred in the United States and in the American family. The housewife has virtually disappeared from the American landscape, and I am going to say to you, Mr. Speaker, that is not because there are not millions of women who would prefer to stay at home with their children, and I think frankly would be better off staying at home with their children, as would their children be better off, but during the past couple of decades, the fact is that the American standard of living has been going down, wages have stagnated and in fact decreased, so women are out there because they have to be out there, and this quite apart from the millions of women who want to be out there in order to reach their full potential in the workplace. It is time that we put pay equity back on the American agenda if we mean what we say about the American family. The very reason that these women have gone to work in the first place is the American family and the pressures to keep the American standard of living where it was. Even so the average tow-parent family is not where that family was in the 1950's and 1960's, even with two people working. We have not been able to keep family income at the level we experienced in the post- World War II period. I have a special interest in this issue because I am a former chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where I raised the issue of pay equity for the first time during the Carter administration. But, Mr. Speaker, this is not an issue for government officials and expert lawyers; it has now become a grassroots issue as American women struggle out to work every day and, working year-round, have only been able to bring themselves to the point where they are worth 72 cents for every dollar earned by a man. In case we think that this concern of working women is confined to a small group, let me offer these figures: 40 percent of all working women have children under 18. In two-parent families, 66 percent of women work. The number of female-headed households has doubled since 1970. We are dealing with a structural change in American society. We cannot run from it, but we certainly have hidden from it. Today I introduced a bill that begins to deal with that part of the problem that may come from discrimination. I have done so because of my concern about the gap, which is closing, ironically enough. I am very pleased that the gap appears to have gradually closed. We are 72 cents on the man's dollar, but more than a decade before that we were 62 cents on the man's dollar. But when I looked behind these figures, Mr. Speaker, I found that while there had been some progress, most of it had nothing to do with the average woman. The gap has, indeed, not closed at all for many women because the figures we are using measure women against the decline in men's wages. Therefore, we have been able to catch up to men in large part, in very significant part, because men's wages have declined so dramatically over the last couple of decades. That is not what we had in mind when we indicated we wanted to close the gap. Indeed, the Equal Pay Act that it was my great privilege to enforce has a requirement which I think drives home the fact that decline in men's wages simply is not the way to measure progress for women. When an employer finds in enforcement the Equal Pay Act that women and men doing the same job are not paid equally, the Congress has not left the employer the option to lower the man's wage. The employer must raise the woman's wage. This has not happened in this regard; many men are not in the work force at all, and others have found they could not make the kind of living their fathers did. We know there are many causes for this decline in male wages, including the export of manufacturing jobs, particularly union manufacturing jobs which afforded a man in the 1950's and 1960's an income even though his educational level might have been low. Those jobs have fled offshore in very significant numbers. Another significant reason that the gap has closed is because there are a small group of women who in fact have attained higher skills. They tend to be professional women and highly skilled women, and at least at the entry level those women earn the same wages as men. Unfortunately, as they go up the job ladder, the disparities begin to appear again. This much is clear; that the American family can no longer afford to have the woman wage earner lose $420,000 over a lifetime because of wage inequality. This much is true; that the country cannot afford to have women lose $100 billion in wages each year because of wage discrimination. Is there nothing we can do about this problem? We can certainly do something about the problem insofar as it results from discrimination. Let me make clear, Mr. Speaker, that not all of this problem results from discrimination, but it is surely the case that some of it does. That is why today I have introduced the Fair Pay Act, a bill which takes up where the Equal Pay Act left off. The Equal Pay Act says if a man and woman are working side by side or are in the same workplace, you cannot pay the woman one thing and the man something more. That still goes on in America. The Equal Pay Act, the first of the great civil rights statutes of the 1960's to be passed, goes after that kind of discrimination. The problem is that we need an Equal Pay Act for the 1990's, even as the Equal Pay Act was the great equalizer of the 1960's. The Equal Pay Act of the 1990's, I submit, would be the Fair Pay Act. It would go at what turns out to be the root problem of the disparities between men and women today. Mr. Speaker, that disparity comes from the fact that a man and a woman, doing comparable work, can be paid differently. Some of the examples are quite astounding. Today, emergency services operators are mostly women. Fire dispatchers are mostly men. Gender and gender alone has effected the wage disparities. If you are an emergency service operator, a female-dominated occupation, you are going to make less than a fire dispatcher. Mr. Speaker, there are far fewer fires to dispatch people to than there are emergencies. If you look at the skill, effort, and responsibility of these two jobs, it would be very difficult to make the case that emergency services operators need less in skill or in responsibility or effort than a fire dispatcher. Why are these two groups paid differently? They are paid differently because of gender, I would submit, and not because of differences in the job. These two jobs are not the very same, but they are in fact comparable. They should be paid comparably. Let me give another example, Mr. Speaker. Two people graduate from junior college at the same time. The man and the woman in the same graduating class get married shortly after their graduation. Each now has a college degree, or at least a two-year associate degree. She goes to be a social worker, he goes to be a probation officer. Guess who gets paid the most money? Probation officers make more than social workers. I would defy the Members, Mr. Speaker, to show me the difference between these two occupations in skill, effort, and responsibility. I submit that there is none, except that historically social workers have been women and probation officers have been men. What would I have us do about this problem? Let me first assure the Members that I would not have us interfere with the market system. I would have us extract only the discrimination from the wage, and the way we would do that is the same way we do it under the Equal Pay Act. The Equal Pay Act is where the categories of skill, effort, and responsibility were first laid out. Even if the market allows an employer to in fact hire a woman to do the same job as a man, the Equal Pay Act says you cannot do it. So if the reason that your cadre of women workers earns less than your cadre of men workers doing the same job is that the women are willing to work for less, the statute says you have violated the law even though the market has provided you with women who are willing to work for less, and you must raise their wage to meet the wage of the men. Mr. Speaker, how this would work in the case of the Fair Pay Act is very similar. The burden would be on the woman, as it is under the Equal Pay Act, to show that the reason she is paid less as an emergency services operator than her employer pays fire dispatchers is discrimination based on gender, not in fact legitimate market factors. The burden is on her. If she cannot meet that burden, then she would not prevail under the Fair Pay Act.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today I reintroduce the Fair Pay Act [FPA], a bill that would require employers to pay equal wages to employees in comparable jobs in an effort to remedy the pay inequities which women continue to endure. I introduce the bill today, the day before Pay Inequity Day, because that is the day on which women finally earn what men earned in the previous calendar year. I have introduced this legislation each Congress with increasing support in both the House and the Senate, and I hope to have even more support in the 105th Congress. The bill already has 25 original cosponsors. American families are becoming more and more dependent on women's wages. Today, 40 percent of all working women have children under 18. In two-parent families, 66 percent of the women work, and the number of female-headed households has more than doubled since 1970. Although most American families today must rely heavily on women's wages, women continue to earn less than their male counterparts with comparable qualifications. Women complete more schooling than men but earn only 72 cents for each dollar earned by men. Although the wage gap has slowly narrowed over the years, much of the gap is not closing for women at all but is due to the decline in men's wages. Much of the rest of the progress can be traced to earnings of a small group of professional or highly skilled women. The average woman has seen little if any progress. Over her lifetime, a woman loses over $420,000 due to pay inequity, and collectively, women--and therefore often their families--lose more than $100 billion in wages each year because of wage discrimination. The Equal Pay Act (EPA) was passed in 1963, and by focusing on pay disparities where men and women were doing the same (or similar) jobs, its enforcement has helped narrow the wage gap between men and women. The Fair Pay Act takes the Equal Pay Act one step further and seeks to confront the pay disparity problem of the 1990's the way the EPA confronted the equal pay problem in the 1960's. The FPA recognizes that if men and women are doing comparable work, they should be paid the same. If you are an emergency services operator, a female-dominated profession, for example, you should not be paid less than a fire dispatcher, a male-dominated profession, simply because you are a woman and he happens to be a man. If you are a social worker, a traditionally female occupation, you should not earn less than a probation officer simply because you are a woman. The FPA, like the EPA, will not tamper with the market system. As with the EPA, the burden will be on the plaintiff to prove discrimination. She must show that the reason for the disparity between herself and a man doing comparable work in her workplace is sex--or race--discrimination, not legitimate market factors. As women's employment becomes an increasingly significant factor in the diminishing real dollar income of American families, fair pay between the sexes for comparable employees escalates in importance. This new paycheck frontier must be conquered for women and their families. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, the important work of the District of Columbia Commission for Women is worthy of particular attention during this month, Women's History Month. The District of Columbia Commission for Women has ably served the people of the District for the past 30 years. The commission's mandate is to identify issues and problems specifically affecting women in the Nation's Capital and to recommend solutions to the Mayor. The commission achieved permanent status in 1978 when it was adopted by the city council. As cochair of the Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues, I applaud the exceptional work the District of Columbia Commission for Women does on behalf of the women of the District. The commission is a valuable resource and clearinghouse for women's concerns. Remarkably, the commission operates solely on a volunteer basis, with a small staff and no budget. Nonetheless, the commission carries out the responsibilities of both city and State as the District's representative to the National Association of Commissions for Women. Recent accomplishments credited to the District of Columbia Commission for Women include establishing the District of Columbia Women's Hall of Fame, creating the Sewall-Belmont House exhibit on African-American Suffragettes and publishing self-help guides for District women. For these reasons and others, I commend the District of Columbia Commission for Women for its outstanding contribution to the women of the District.