Eleanor Norton

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, last night, hundreds of people filled Lisner Auditorium in a rare tribute to one of America's leading educators, Gladys M. Stern. Gladys Stern has been headmistress of Georgetown Day School for 21 of her 42 years at the school. This year, she will retire leaving an extraordinary legacy. Georgetown Day was the first private school in the District of Columbia to be integrated in a city which in virtually every respect was a Jim Crow replica of the deep South. Gladys came to the school in 1961 as an assistant director after spending her time volunteering in a variety of capacities. Glayds--as she is fondly called by students and peers alike--took on the task of building a new high school at Georgetown Day, embracing the challenge with enthusiasm that became her signature. She counts the successful completion of that project as her most fulfilling accomplishment. In 1975, Gladys was named headmistress of Georgetown Day at a time when most private schools around the country were run by men. Stressing the values of high academic standards, respect for the individual, and diversity, Gladys soon became a model educator, not for the District alone, but for the Nation itself. To her students, the real beneficiaries of her legacy, she will always be known as just plain, ``Gladys.'' Gladys M. Stern, a Washington institution in her own right, was celebrated last night by students whose names are unfamiliar and by others with the most familiar names in Washington--Art Buchwald, Judith Viorst, Frank Mankiewicz, Judith Martin (Miss Manners) and Sam Gilliam, among others. I am pleased to submit the brief words of tribute that I offered into the Record as well: The word is out that Gladys has gotten tired of being an institution. So she is retiring so that she can go back to being a person again. Actually, Gladys is a person with such an extraordinary persona that she has survived being institutionalized by and sometimes at GDS. Tonight she must wonder whether she can survive being ritualized. The most uncomfortable experience is hearing people say great things about you in public to your face. Uncomfortable yes, Gladys, but I hope that the gentle lady will not be heard to object. Speaking of gentle ladies, education has become one of the hottest topics in the 104th Congress. I think I know why. This is the Congress that discovered the deficit and then discovered that talk about education is cheap. So there's a lot of it. We'd be much better off if we talked about individual school. You don't have to be the mother of a GDS lifer to think that GDS would be counted in that number Gladys Stern is a major reason why. So Gladys, all I can say about all these wonderful things they are saying about you tonight is ``Believe it.'' Denial will get you nowhere. I'm going to see just how much you can stand. Tonight is not the end of the endless tribute. Tomorrow I will place a tribute to you in the nation's official record, The Congressional Record. No, this is not to get back at Newt and the boys, it's the only way I have to tell the world what a first class educator and world class human being you are. You'll just have to suffer through it Gladys. Mazel tov.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I want to particularly thank the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] for his great kindness in yielding me some of his time this evening. I had wanted this time to speak on liberty, justice, and an independent judiciary. I come forward because I believe it is my obligation to do so, not as a lawyer, although I happen to be a lawyer, not as a law professor, although I am still a law professor because I continue to teach a seminar at Georgetown Law Center, but as a Member of Congress. I am moved to come forward this evening because of recent attacks on the judiciary. Those attacks cannot be answered by the judiciary and they have come from this branch. I come forward this evening to make a plea to my colleagues that the cynicism toward Government which has infected the executive branch and the legislative branch, as Americans regard us, stops at the courthouse door. Recently, from the legislative branch and the executive branch, there have been troubling signals that we may be willing to pull the judiciary into the polarized politics of the 104th Congress and the Presidential campaign. I agree with the dean of the Fordham University Law School, John Furick, who has said, and may I quote him, We are at a juncture where we all need to step back, including our President, Congress, governor and mayor, and here he means the governor and mayor of New York, and consider what is at stake when we make our judiciary part of the politics of the present day. I want to cite two cases that have drawn us into this controversy. They are decisions where I profoundly disagree with what results the courts have reached. One involves Judge Harold Baer. This is the case where the judge initially found that there was an unlawful search and seizure. He threw out the evidence because he found that the police had searched the car when they saw bags being loaded into the car and men running away. And most of us wondered what in the world the judge could be talking about when he said it was reasonable for black men to run away from the cops in this upper Manhattan neighborhood. Thank you very much. As a Member who represents many African Americans, I can tell you that we do not expect people to run away from cops upon seeing them. New evidence came forward, and the judge reversed himself. Before that happened, Mr. Dole allowed as how the judge should be impeached because of his initial decision while it was still pending, mind you, and the President stopped short of that but himself criticized the judge very profoundly while the matter was still pending. This already has had an effect upon the court. The lawyer for the defense himself, and I want to quote his statement, said to the judge in court, asking him to recuse himself, again, I am quoting, Never before have the President of the United States, the Speaker of the House, 140 Members of Congress and a Presidential candidate sat in on a case and said that a Federal judge should be impeached or resign. The defense lawyer then called upon Judge Baer to recuse himself entirely from the case saying, and I am quoting, It would appear you may have been influenced by outside forces. Thus, when the judge heard new evidence, heard evidence that corroborated the initial evidence of the policemen involved, the defense lawyer said, there is still the appearance of impropriety and you should recuse yourself. I am not sure that the judge can ever get that stain off of himself, although it is clear that there was enough evidence before, frankly, and certainly afterward. There is a second case from New York where I also disagree with the judge. That was one in which Governor Pataki, himself a lawyer, I believe also Mayor Giuliani called for the removal of a criminal court judge. His name was Lauren Duckman. Judge Duckman had lowered the bail of a suspect allowing the suspect to get out of prison and the suspect proceeded to kill his former girlfriend and it was harassment of his former girlfriend that got him in jail in the first place. I do not think I need to tell anybody who knows me in this body where I stand on that case. The governor said that if the State commission did not remove this judge within 60 days, then he would ask the State Senate to begin removal proceedings. Judges are often attacked and as public officials should be open to caustic attack, but I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, I have seldom, if ever, seen these kinds of attacks come from the top of the Government. I am here this evening to say, stop it. Stop it. This is an attack upon our system of Government. It is difficult for judges to respond. To his credit, from the top of the judiciary, the Chief Judge, the Chief Justice, Mr. Rehnquist, has in his own way responded, in a speech at the American University Law School. He responded in very lawyer-like fashion, referring to precedent, particularly the impeachment in 1805 of Justice Samuel Chase because of the way he handled three cases. The Senate, however, refused to convict and convictions must take place in the Senate. Mr. Rehnquist noted the precedent and its viability for more than 200 years, for almost 200 years, and indicated he thought that precedent should stand. He also cited the infamous case of President Franklin Roosevelt who attempted but failed to pack the Supreme Court with extra justices when he thought, frankly, that the Republic was going to fall because the New Deal programs designed to save us from a catastrophic depression were put in jeopardy by the response of the judiciary. Even given the seriousness of those cases and the seriousness of the Baer case and the Duckman case which I have just alluded to, there is no case so serious that it is worth the attacks we have recently seen. I believe Mr. Dole has pulled back. I believe President Clinton has pulled back. I am here to say, let us all pull back. Judges must be subject to the same kind of criticism that other public servants are, except that restraint is necessary because, unlike the executive and unlike the legislature, the courts must be entirely independent, free from outside influence. And that depends upon the way we, especially we in public office, behave. Justice Breyer was in Russia in 1992 and sat in on a meeting between President Yeltsin and 500 Russian judges. And the justices reports that Mr. Yeltsin said to the 500 Russian justices, there are going to be changes made in the judiciary in Russia. For one thing, the prosecutor is not always going to win. The prosecutor always wins; indeed, the parliament always wins in totalitarian regimes. I do not speak as Justice Rehnquist did as a judge. I have no desire to be a judge. I speak as a legislator. Understanding that the Judiciary is dependent upon the self-imposed restraint that this body and the Executive has almost always exercised for more than 200 years, the system demands restraint by us. Otherwise the judiciary itself is undermined, but, much more importantly, our Democratic form of government is undermined. That is exactly what Alexander Hamilton said in a terse, but piercing, statement, and I quote Hamilton: There is no liberty, he said, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive power. Are we going to go back to Henry VII, when it is said he ruled his law with his judges? We can have very little to do with judges except insofar as the President and the Senate participate in their appointment. One commentator recently has written that the recent controversy about these cases, and I am quoting, should have dispelled any lingering doubt that the Judiciary and the nominating process for judges are destined to be entangled in partisan politics this election year possibly in a way not seen before, end quote. Oh no, let us not pierce the separation of powers during the 104th Congress. We have polarized the country and this body enough. We push the envelope way too far when we draw judges and courts into our partisan disputes. It is fair game to criticize decisions, it is fair game to criticize judges. It takes judgment to know when to stop. It takes discipline in this body and in the Executive to know when to stop. This is a part of our history that is most revered. It begins before our forbears came to these shores. It took hundreds of years in England for the parliament to wrest its own superiority from the king. That was the beginning of English democracy. But the judges were still subservient to the parliament, so the parliament got greater democracy by pulling power from the monarch, but had no intention whatsoever of creating an independent judiciary initially. It took those who framed our Constitution to truly develop the notion of an independent, totally untainted, totally nonpartisan judiciary. The Founders therefore took the British legacy, which included parliamentary supremacy, several steps further. The British had no written constitution. The Framers insisted upon a written constitution. But in order for the Constitution to matter, to guard the new Nation and its processes and its citizens, somebody had to be in charge of interpreting it. That was the role of an independent judiciary, and in order to make sure that liberty was guarded, nobody could tamper with the judges whose job it was to interpret the Constitution and the rights that flow from it. So, as one commentator has said, if, meaning if the judges, were not entirely independent, and I am quoting, the Constitution's promise of a government of limited powers could be broken with utter impunity. The Founders thus rendered Federal jusges independent of the political departments not only with respect to their tenure and salary, but, more importantly, in their source of judicial authority. It is this additional step, inconceivable in England, that made the American Constitution truly revolutionary. Without the judges there untouched and untouchable, the whole thing known as American democracy, the whole thing known as our former government, collapses in your laps. What has kept if from collapsing thus far? Amazingly, self-restraint. Self-restraint in this body and in the other body, self-restraint of the Executive; that is all that has done it. That is what separates us from the juntas and the banana republics and the totalitarian regimes. Separation of powers is not a cliche, but it is a very ambiguous concept. What in the world does separation of powers truly mean? When you consider the supremacy of the legislature in our form of government, what separation of powers means is certainly not absolute. We, or the Senate, confirms judges. The President appoints judges, so clearly they do not spring from somebody's forehead. They are, in fact, touched by us initially. At the other end they can be removed only by impeachment, and we cannot reduce their compensation. One writer has said that there is a twilight zone in between. You can appoint them, you can confirm them, and you can remove them for high crimes and misdemeanors, which is why Mr. Dole's comment was totally out of order, because whatever these judges had done did not amount to high crime, it amounted to a wrong decision. If you can bring them in, and you can put them out with lots of safeguards attached to both ends, what can you do in between, the so- called twilight zone? A lot, and not very much. Public servants, whether they serve on the bench in the executive or in the Congress, are subject to public criticism and public scrutiny. But we are all different. We are different from the Executive, we are different from the judiciary. But the Executive and the legislature are much more alike than the judiciary is like either of us. This is not a civic lesson, my colleagues. This is a warning from one of your Members. It is up to us to raise this point. It is up to us to signal that we do not mean to cross over the line to pierce the wall of separation of powers. That is not our intent, I do not believe it is the intent of any Member of this body, I do not believe it is the indent of the President of the United States, but I do believe that in the heat of argument it is very easy to do. Step back, step back. The courts have been utterly principled on the separation of powers. The courts have defended our separate power. The courts have consistently, using the speech and debate clause, prevented any interference with out deliberations and have given the most liberal interpretation to the speech and debate clause, coining even the principle of legislative independence. Each branch is coequal, but we are very different, and those differences must be respected or the 104th Congress will go down not only as the most calamitous, boisterous, raucous Congress, but as a Congress that lost respect for our form of government and helped to bring shame upon it. That is not the intent of any Member of this body. I go very far and thought I should leave you with some examples of just how far I go when it comes to allowing, indeed encouraging, criticism of the judiciary. On March 18, 1986, Senator Charles Grassley, a Republican of Iowa, mailed a questionnaire to article 3 judges, and it makes some of them very uncomfortable; does not make me uncomfortable. Lots of controversy about it. He asked them about their workloads, he asked them to fill out a questionnaire. These are sitting judges, they are article 3 judges. Everybody got it except the Supreme Court Justices. They were supposed to talk about their workloads, the use of law clerks and their outside teaching activities, their travel to conferences. I found most of it pretty mundane. What had not happened before is a sitting Member sending a questionnaire to judges. Look, we get the money, we appropriate money. I do not know we cannot know something about the way in which courts operate. Some of the questions might have made some people uncomfortable; for example including does your court have a procedure for certifying opinions for publication? Or a motion of a party? Some have suggested that court policies regarding the publication of opinion and withdrawal of published opinions foster a number of problems, including an unfairness to litigants, a loss of judicial accountability and uncertainty about Presidential status and actual judicial economy. What is your view of these suggestions? Are you involved in extracurricular activities such as teaching, lecturing, writing law review articles and making public opinions? If so, how much time do you spend on these activities, including preparation and travel? Some people would say, hey, it is an independent judiciary. You are in the Congress. When you ask them questions, people may think you are trying to intimidate them. I do not think so. I think that if we are appropriating article 3 courts every year that we have a right to know something about their activities. I leave a very large space for criticism and inquiry. Mr. Dole and Mr. Clinton have had an exchange. Mr. Dole has criticized the ABA. I profoundly disagree with that. Just because you do not like the fact that some liberal judges have escaped, have gotten through, the scrutiny of the ABA because all this was a dupe, frankly, is to tell us about competence. I do not know why you want to throw the ABA out because it does not stop judges at the courthouse door if they happen not to meet your ideological tests. Nevertheless, Mr. Dole has made an issue of the ABA. He has also made an issue of President Clinton's nominees. He has said that, and he used their caustic language, that it was a bunch of liberal judges and that they disregard the law, and he said some pretty excoriating things. ``A startling number of Mr. Clinton's lower court appointees have demonstrated an outright hostility to law enforcement.'' Fair criticism. I do not agree with it, but fair criticism. In return, Mr. Clinton has said that 67 of his appointees have received the highest rating of the ABA, compared to 52 percent of George Bush's nominees, 53 percent of Ronald Reagan's, and 57 percent of Jimmy Carter's; so he says, ``Look, this is all about qualifications. So far my judges are the highest qualified. That is all you can look at.'' Moreover, he said Mr. Dole voted for 182 out of 185 of his nominees. Mr. Dole responds, ``Hey, I voted for them because of your prerogative. You cannot pin those judges on me.'' They can go back and forth like this during the entire presidential campaign and not offend me at all, not offend the separation of powers, not offend an independent judiciary. But when you call for impeachment of a judge, you send a chill through every judge in the United States. When you say you had better start impeachment proceedings, you who are an independent commission, or we the Governor, or we the legislature are going to do it, you send a chill. Neither of those chills is deserved. Both of those chills the entire system of government that is the United States. Mr. Speaker, judges are controversial for a very important reason. That is because, as de Tocqueville said, ``Hardly any question arises in the United States that is not resolved sooner or later in a judicial question.'' If that was true in the 19th century, imagine how much more true it is today. Yes, this is a high stakes game. Yes, judges in our system of government have much more power than judges generally have. But yes, we can tolerate it. We know where to stop. We love this system, and the last thing any Member wants to do is to destroy it. The principle of separation of powers, of an independent judiciary, of limited government, and of constitutional government are more important than Judge Baer's decision in the New York City case, are more important than Judge Duckman's decision in the case of the woman who was murdered. Yes, judges are human and they will make mistakes, and some of them will be profound, and some others of them will be outrageous. But we will not throw away 200 years of a magnificent constitutional system because two judges make a mistake. We will not do this. This Member comes to the floor to announce that she believes she is speaking for Members of the House and Senate and the President of the United States when she says we will not do this. We will carry on the 1996 campaign with a lot more vigor and raunchiness than I would like, but it is going to happen. It is going to be a nasty, ugly campaign. So be it. That can happen between the two branches, and in a Presidential campaign. I do not like it. There is nothing illegal about it. There is nothing about it that risks our system of government. If we must punch each other out, as we have all during the 104th Congress, so be it. I ask my colleagues only one thing: As we go at one another, just leave the judges and the courts out of it. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone].

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the hard work of the able gentleman from California, and I appreciate very much his yielding time to me. Outrageously, this bill revisits and denies choice for women in the Armed Forces who have made the choice to serve their country. There is a tag line on the end of a Republican ad on television attacking the President for his gas tax proposal. I say, what is sauce for the goose should be sauce for Republicans. We get lots of lip service on children, for example, with disproportionate cuts; on families with disproportionate cuts. Now what we get for military women is patriotism and abandonment overseas if they happen to need an abortion. Imagine. A woman in the armed service, in Bosnia, or Haiti, who needs an abortion. Are we prepared to guarantee a safe abortion in those countries or in any one of the trouble spots in which women now serve their country? What are we going to do if a woman ends up dead or injured because an abortion was performed in a Third World country where safe abortions are unavailable? Does a woman lose her constitutional right to pay American medical personnel to perform a legal procedure simply by singing up for the armed services? Join the armed service and lose your constitutional rights. That ought to be the tag line on the next commercial. Mr. Chairman, words of patriotism are nice, but women in the armed services want actions that speak louder than words, to quote my distinguished colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today I have introduced the District of Columbia Pension Liability Funding Reform Act of 1996. This bill is indispensable to the District's return from insolvency. As long as 10 percent of the District's operating budget must pay for pensions, the District cannot revive. This bill is the fraternal twin, or complement, to the D.C. Economic Recovery Act (H.R. 3244) which I introduced last month. Together, these bills provide the most pragmatic approach available at this time for obtaining revenue. Both are critically important to restoring solvency by 1999 and enabling the District to achieve a balanced budget as contemplated by the Financial Authority legislation. The D.C. Pension Liability Funding Reform Act provides the missing congressional piece of the city's financial puzzle. The huge pension liability passed on at home rule by Congress has been a huge and definitive part of the city's financial problems for 16 years. It is time that Congress also becomes a part of the solution. There has long been bipartisan agreement that the District's pension liability is congressional liability and that the Congress must contribute more. This bill challenges Congress to play a significant role for the first time since home rule in helping the District to eliminate the pension liability that Congress alone created. Because Congress has required the District to balance its budget in 4 years, this is the appropriate time for Congress to begin to pay its fair share of contributions to help eliminate this crushing liability. A precedent for raising the Federal contribution was established this year in the President's fiscal year 1997 budget when the administration proposed increasing the Federal contribution to $104 million from its current level of only $52 million. Like the administration's recommendation, the Federal contribution in my bill recognizes that reducing the liability that Congress created is very different from providing direct revenue to the District--the action Congress has repeatedly refused to take until the District does more to downsize and reform its operations. None of the funds my bill will authorize go toward operating the District government. Rather, the bill requires the D.C. government, residents, employees and retirees alike to make significant sacrifices to reduce the pension liability that has become a stone around the city's neck. Congress instituted pension plans for the District's police officers and firefighters in 1916, for teachers in 1920, and for judges in 1970 but never funded the plans. Instead, Congress paid the pensions of individuals as they retired. In 1979, Congress passed the District of Columbia Retirement Reform Act and transferred all the unfunded pension liability associated with these plans--all $2 billion that had accumulated-- from the Federal Government to the District of Columbia. The annual pension payments required of the District by the Federal Government were to be made on the same pay-as-you-go basis as Congress employed, with payments each year covering only that year's benefit payments. Thus, the District has fully funded all the pensions under its control from the day the city was handed this liability. Stated another way, there has been no new unfunded liability of these pensions on the District's watch. Since fiscal year 1980, however, the $2 billion unfunded liability has never been funded but instead has increased to $5 billion. Most of the increase is interest on the original unfunded liability that accumulated under Federal management. The transfer of this liability is an amazing case study in Federal fiscal irresponsibility. It is one of those rare instances in U.S. history when the Federal Government has off-loaded its indebtedness to an American city. The unfunded pension liability has grown from an unfair burden to a crippling threat to the economic viability of the District of Columbia. The District, struggling to survive with a sharply declining taxpayer and revenue base and the continuing responsibility for State, municipal, and county functions, cannot recover without systematic relief from the unfunded pension liability created and passed on to the city by Congress. The legislation I am introducing today will provide that relief by significantly reducing the District's annual retirement plan contribution by 43 percent. The consequence of this one change will be to reduce the District's annual pension contribution from about $321 million today to a flat rate of $185 million, which will remain constant for 40 years. This change is accomplished by allocating to the Federal Government 80 percent of the accrued actuarial liability as of October 1, 1979 for services rendered by employees hired prior to home rule but who continued to work for the District government. As of now, the Federal Government has assumed no responsibility whatsoever for pension rights accrued by these employees while the District was under Federal management. The contribution will prefund the cost of the benefits of active employees as they are earned, and will liquidate the District's reduced and much more equitable share of the unfunded pension liability that accrued before home rule. This change will bring critical relief to the District's deficit and allow the District desperately needed breathing room in its budget. By no means does the bill simply require only the Federal Government to increase it share of the responsibility for the liability. Current and future retirees will receive only one cost of living adjustment per year rather than two, and the rate of contribution from employees will increase from 7 to 8 percent of their annual wages. The unions and retirees deserve credit for having negotiated these sacrifices. In return, the Federal Government will increase its annual pension contribution from a virtually token payment of $52 million to a flat rate of $295 million per year. This payment will also be extended over 40 years to liquidate the recalculated amount of the Federal Government's share of the unfunded pension liability. These are painful prescriptions, especially for the employees and retirees, but as they have already recognized, these sacrifices are absolutely necessary. If the District is to reach the goal of a balanced budget by the end of fiscal year 1999, and sustain that performance, it is necessary that the burden be shared. These reforms will implement a plan that is the result of years of intensive work from the time I came to Congress in 1991 by Members of Congress and their staffs in bipartisanship, representatives from the affected employee groups, retirees, the Council, the Mayor's office, the District of Columbia Retirement Board, the Congressional Research Service, and the General Accounting Office. I deeply appreciate all of the cooperation and support they have given to this endeavor. The evaluation of this bill reflects their thoughtful contributions. This plan is the most practical from among numerous alternatives we have developed and discarded. It is impossible to overemphasize the importance of this legislation to the fiscal health and stability of the District. Under the current District of Columbia Retirement Act, upon reaching the year 2004, the Federal Government's annual payments cease, and the 1979 law requires the amount the District contributes to nearly double in order to cover both accruing pension obligations and interest payments on unfunded obligations. The unfunded pension liability will have reached $7.7 billion with the District solely responsible for this debt. This result would be catastrophic, crushing the District financially and wiping out its capacity to ensure future pension benefits for covered beneficiaries. To complement my bill, the Mayor and the city council are developing local legislation that will create a third tier within the retirement system to cover new hires who will be provided with an adequate but modified and less costly benefit plan. Experts here in Congress are now assisting the city by reviewing and advising on two bills now pending before the city council. I feel fully justified in asking my colleagues to support this legislation now because it is designed to help the District with a problem which is not of its making, but a financial burden created solely by Congress. Corrective action is not only fair. It is quite simply indispensable.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, the Capital of the United States is in serious disrepair, and I mean a lot more than potholes. It is trying to recover by downsizing a loan as no insolvent city has ever done. There is Federal responsibility here, including the unfunded pension liability that is taking 10 percent of our budget, and that is entirely my colleagues' responsibility. The time has come to act now. We are a hemorrhaging population. We want to revive the District the old-fashioned way, by keeping and attracting middle-income residents here. Please support my Federal tax cut bill for the District of Columbia; support H.R. 3244. My colleagues should assume their share of the responsibility for the Capital of the United States.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, we tried welfare reform without jobs. Do we want to put these same people to work without enough pay to live on? All the welfare reform in the world will not do what a raise in the minimum wage will do. One hundred thousand kids would come out of poverty the day we lift the minimum wage. No bureaucrats, no training, just a small hike in the minimum wage. Not 1 cent added to the deficit. Why should we subsidize employers with food stamps and other benefits in order to allow them to pay less than a minimum wage? Reduce dependency on Government by increasing the responsibility of employers to pay a minimum wage.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me, and I thank him for his leadership and his tribute to Ron Brown. Seven Americans, seven public servants, went down on that fated plane in Bosnia. One of them was Ronald H. Brown. He was my friend of 30 years and my constituent. This was the city in which he was born, it is the city where he lived out his life, it was the city where he became known as both a public man and a public servant. Many of us will remember him also as a family man. The most poignant photograph of Ron is the one with his twin grandsons. What Ron meant to his son Michael and his daughter Tracy is itself a model for how to be a parent in these days when so many have lost that art. Yet, this most busy of men was a wonderful parent to his children. Ron will be remembered as a breaker of barriers on one hand, and as an extraordinary innovator on the other. He broke barriers that no man or woman before him had even attempted. This was, I have to say, my colleagues, a black man who simply did not know his place and refused to accept the notion that there was one for him. So when it came time to resurrect the Democratic Party, it was Ron Brown who stepped forward and said not ``Not me,'' but ``It must be me.'' When he went to the Commerce Department he said not ``How do you do this job?'' but ``I will do this job in a way it has never been done before.'' So after he broke the barriers, he did something much more important. He was a pioneer in turning around each of those institutions. It was Ron Brown who engineered the comeback of the Democratic Party in 1992, and it was Ron Brown who perfected the art of diplomacy, of commercial diplomacy at the Commerce Department. Either one of these breakthroughs, either one of these pioneering efforts, would have left Ron's name written in the book of American history. He wrote new pages wherever he went. He wrote them in part because he had it all. He was an extraordinarily talented man, and because he understood the expanse of his talents, he gave it all. Ron exemplified the best of our country, the American spirit of optimism, the refusal to recognize any limits. May our country also make that same refusal.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, the Washington Post front page story this morning is an urgent action alert for this Congress ``In Threadbare D.C., Hopes Wear Thin.'' This Congress, which claims constitutional responsibility for the Capitol of the United States, bears a heavy responsibility for the decline and fall of the District, at least this year: the shutdown of the Government, the holdup in the appropriation, the cuts before a plan was in place against the recommendation of your own control board. On April 15, I introduced the D.C. Economic Recovery Act, to give a tax break to D.C. residents, to stop the hemorrhage of taxpayers out of this city. The Washington Times calls it, in a headline in its editorial, ``A Serious Plan for What Ails the District.'' Save the Capitol of the United States before it is too late. It is, I remind you what you always tell me, your constitutional responsibility.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing the District of Columbia Economic Recovery Act [DCERA], a bill to provide a Federal tax reduction to the residents of the District of Columbia. The bill comes at a time when the city's financial viability is in peril. The Constitution obligates the Congress to maintain the Capital of the United States. The DCERA will allow Congress to do so without direct aid, by encouraging middle income residents to remain and to move to the District. Last February, the Washington Post reported that the District has already lost more residents in the 1990's than in the entire decade of the 1980's. The District's tax base is declining so rapidly that it is doubtful that it will gain the ability to support itself, notwithstanding even the most dramatic reduction in the size of its government. In 1993, for example, only 9,838 D.C. residents or 3.4 percent of the tax filers were solidly middle income in the $75,000 to $100,000 range, while 65 percent had incomes of $30,000 or less. Ominously, 11.5 percent of D.C. tax filers had an income between $50,000 and $100,000, compared with almost 20 percent nationally. The bill seeks to accomplish the goal of replenishing middle income residents and families through a Federal tax discount. The tax is progressive because it has large initial exemptions ($15,000 for single filers, $25,000 for single heads of household, and $30,000 for married joint filers); the mortgage interest deduction and the charitable giving deductions are retained; and a uniform tax rate of 15 percent is applied in a progressive fashion up the income scale. Only bona fide District residents can qualify for this special rate and only on their D.C. sourced income. The bill defines a bona fide resident as one who has maintained his or her place of abode in the District, been physically present in such a place of abode for at least 183 days of the taxable year, and has paid District of Columbia income taxes. Naturally, District residents who work in the metropolitan region will also benefit from the tax deduction. The metropolitan region is defined by the Federal Government's ``Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area.'' The bill exempts capital gains, so long as they are District investments by bona fide District residents. This provision is meant to stimulate investment in D.C. businesses and other economic development. In come from Social Security and from the qualified pension plans of bona fide D.C. residents are considered D.C. sourced and thus eligible for the tax reduction. Investment income on activity within the District will also qualify for the special tax rate. In short, income from outside the District or the region will not get the benefit of the DCERA. The provisions of the bill restricting the tax reduction to D.C. residents on their D.C. sourced income are designed to prevent speculators and wealthy people from taking advantage of the bill or turning the District into a tax haven. A freeze on property taxes is an additional safeguard that I am seeking from the city council. Some Members will question why the District should receive a Federal tax reduction that is not available to other jurisdictions. This unique bill is being considered only because of the unique responsibility of the Congress for the Capital of the United States and because a grave financial crisis threatens the District's viability as a city. The District has no State to help support it, and therefore lacks any additional sources for a long-term revenue stream or other necessary ongoing relief. The District is the only city without a State to recycle revenue from wealthier areas; the only city that pays for State, county, and municipal functions; and the only city prevented by Congress from taxing commuters who use city services. As a result, the District is a financial orphan without a State to bear State costs, such as Medicaid and prisons, and without access to the other aid that States regularly give to their troubled big cities. Because none of the usual remedies is available to the District, a tax cutting approach to stem the hemorrhage of taxpayers holds virtually the only promise. As this House is well aware, the District is in a state of fiscal insolvency and cannot borrow from Wall Street, but only from the U.S. Treasury. A Control Board was appointed nearly a year ago and is working to downsize the Government (10,000 jobs by 1999--5,600 jobs already eliminated), control spending, and return the District to financial solvency. When New York, Philadelphia, and Cleveland became insolvent, State aid and State takeover of city functions were critical to the recovery of those cities. That possibility does not exist presently for the District, the only city in the United States without a State. As a result, there is little prospect that the city can become self-supporting without extraordinary measures. In the absence of state aid, this Federal tax reduction is the only remedy that has the potential in this Congress to allow the District to recover from its insolvency. I believe that this approach could also serve as a model for States which want to encourage taxpayers to remain in large cities, by reducing State income taxes for city residents; but, of course, only Congress can provide such a remedy for the District. The value of a tax reduction is in the encouragement it gives to residents to remain in a city with many problems, paying high city taxes, maintaining the schools and other services, and otherwise halting decline because of increased taxpayer presence. The District is the only jurisdiction that flies the American flag where residents pay Federal income taxes, but do not have full representation in the House and have no representation in the Senate. The four territories pay no Federal income tax at all, while the District is second per capita in the payment of Federal income taxes. This bill will not give the District full equity in this regard--D.C. residents would continue to pay Federal taxes without full congressional representation and full self-government. The District seeks only sufficient tax relief to help sustain itself through income from its own residents--as most jurisdictions do--in the absence of other viable alternatives. I believe that the District of Columbia Economic Recovery Act fits the tax cutting mood of the country and of both parties and the administration. I ask the Members of this House to join me in our efforts to save the District of Columbia through this bill.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina for her leadership in organizing this special order and much deserved tribute. Ron Brown was my constituent and my friend, so that last week I had one of the saddest weeks of my tenure as the Congresswoman from the District of Columbia. I was, of course, at Dover where the bodies of 33 Americans came home, and then on another evening at the Metropolitan Baptist Church to speak in tribute to Ron Brown, and finally at the funeral at the National Cathedral, where there was an outpouring of people from all over the world. May I first read the names of all seven of my constituents who perished on that flight. Ronald H. Brown, Secretary of Commerce; Adam M. Darling, confidential assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Commerce; Gail E. Dobert, acting director of the Office of Business Liaison; Carol L. Hamilton, whose parents I know very well, press secretary to Secretary Brown; Catherine E. Hoffman, special assistant to Secretary Brown; William Morton, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Trade; and Lawrence M. Payne, special assistant, Office of Domestic Operations. For all of my seven constituents there is still great grief and feeling in the District of Columbia. Ron Brown had been a friend for 30 years. When he and I were both young and his wife Alma and I were in a club in New York called Liaison, and Michael and Tracy were born to them, and Johnny and Catherine were born to my husband and me, Michael now has a wife, Tammy, and one of the saddest things to see is Ron with these two babies, these twin sons who were his grandsons. Ron was a wonderful family man. His son, as was said at the funeral, was his best friend. Ron was a man of extraordinary determination, energy, and ability. Seldom has one American put together so many of the traits necessary for success in public life. As both policy spokesman and politician, Ron Brown excelled, bringing his party back to life again and helping Democrats win; without whom the President said we would not have won the Presidency in 1992. Yet this was a fund raiser extraordinaire on the one hand, a coalition builder on the other. Any one of those would have been much. I thank the New Yorker magazine for its comment on Ron in an article called ``The Fixer as Statesman.'' Somehow, this article tries to put together the two parts of this man that so often are seen as not going together. The statesman, of course, is the commercial diplomat that Ron Brown became, and the fixer is the man who fixed the Commerce Department and the man who fixed the Democratic Party. The comment by Sean Willents calls Ron silky, shrewd, and supremely self-confident. I do think, Madam Leader, that they capture this man we knew so well. They say he was not a plaster saint. Would he abhor being remembered in that way? And they call him wordly and capable. They remember that Ron began in the Civil rights movement. So many who have achieved in this country today never would have gotten the chance to showcase their talents were it not for the civil rights movement. Having seen what he could do, because of the opportunity the movement afforded him as the vice president of the Urban League, ultimately Ron then went on to become a top staffer in the Committee on the Judiciary of the Senate and leader of his party, where he was essentially its titular head for between 1988 and 1992, articulating policies, bringing people together, preparing the way. He took the job at the Commerce Department, which was regarded as nothing so much as a bureaucracy, and reinvented it into the kind of department European and Asian countries have long had, a Department that is aggressive in going out and selling the country and the country's business. Finally, let me say of Ron Brown what is so important to to many. Ron simply saw and understood himself to have no limits. I am not sure all of us understand what an achievement that is in country where so many still feel bound by race, even if in fact if they would fly they are not bound by race. Ron said let me try to fly, and then he soared. The great tragedy is that had Ron not been killed, there in no limit to where he might have flown. He simply refused to have an assigned place as a black man. He looked around him, saw other places, and went wherever his talent and energy could go, and they took him very far. I said at the Metropolitan Baptist Church that to many, race is what they believe holds them back. To Ron, race was a contest that you ran and won. With that spirit, so many youngsters caught in ghetto environments today might find the role model for the 1990's. For my city, the city where Ron was born, the city where he lived when he died, I have asked my constituents not to mourn for Ron. Remember Ron was the happy warrior. I have said to my constituents living in this troubled city, this seriously troubled city because of its financial crisis, to remember Ron as the man who looked to impossible missions and made them possible. It is possible for Ron's birthplace, for the place where Ron lived, to bloom again, as Ron always looked to see what was possible and then went forward. I have said to those I represent: Don't mourn for Ron, try to be like Ron. Ron came, Ron saw, Ron conquered. So can we. I appreciate the time that has been offered me.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, as this body is aware, it has imposed a Control Board on the District of Columbia, which has become insolvent. The only reason there are not more cities in this category, of course, is because most cities have States. Nevertheless, New York, Philadelphia, and Cleveland, long before the District became insolvent, themselves became insolvent and had control boards. Control boards, of course, are necessary, because insolvent cities cannot borrow. One of the first things such cities need to do is to downsize their governments. That is exactly what is happening in the District of Columbia as I speak. The fact is, however, that every other city that has become insolvent had a dual strategy or they never would have become solvent. The State provided either some direct aid, as in the case of Philadelphia, or a takeover of functions and aid, as in the case of New York City. The District is a unique entity, and I have proposed a unique bill, the only alternative I can see, that provides any realistic way to counter the serious problems of the capital of the United States. The unique fact about this city, of course, to face first and foremost, is that it has no State to help it in any way. The Congress, which, of course, has an obligation to help it with a payment in lieu of taxes, because we cannot build on the best land in the District, has not raised the District's Federal payment in 5 years. Now, costs have gone up enormously in 5 years, so that means that the Federal payment is taking a loss every year that it is not raised. Congress, if anything, made it worse this year by shutting down the Government for a week and by delaying the full Federal payment for 6 months, just digging the hole deeper. The Congress says the District cannot impose a commuter tax, even though 2 million people come in here using our facilities and walk out everyday without leaving a thin dime to support the city. If you look at no State to help us, no Federal payment increase in 5 years, no commuter tax, you end up with no way out. It is the obligation of this body, that has constitutional responsibility for the capital of the United States and for every responsible person in this city, to think through how the recovery in fact is going to take place. Step one is in place. The District is going to reduce its work force by 10,000 people in the next 4 years. That is a 25-percent reduction in its own city government work force. I challenge any Member to show me any government that has had that kind of reduction in so short a period of time. Indeed, the District is halfway there, because of the 10,000 positions that will go, it already has eliminated more than 5,000 of them. And yet this year, before half of the fiscal year was over, the District was down $100 million. You do not get out of insolvency that way. So yesterday on Tax Day, I introduced the District of Columbia Economic Recovery Act. It adopts the approach that Members on both sides of the aisle want the Congress to adopt, tax cuts for the District of Columbia, rather than direct aid; tax cuts in order to encourage middle income residents who live here now to remain, and others to come. In other words, the city would be able to support itself the old- fashioned way, because there would be enough middle-income taxpayers to pay for what needs to be paid for. There would be a flat 15 percent rate that would have a progressive effect on the income scale, giving substantial Federal tax reductions to D.C. taxpayers. By the way, there is much to learn from my bill, I think, for the States. If you want to keep folks in New York, Newark, Chicago, and Los Angeles, perhaps the States should try reducing State income tax on taxpayers that remain in those cities, rather than allowing those cities to become what everybody knows they are becoming as I speak, and that is basket cases. You cannot afford to have the proud capital of your country become a basket case. You are going to pay one way or another. Let us pay for it by letting D.C. residents keep their own money. There also would be capital gains exemption for D.C. residents who invest in the District of Columbia. Yes, this is a unique remedy for a uniquely handicapped city. Read this morning's Washington Times editorial, ``A Serious Plan for What Ails the District.''

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, Tuesday, April 16, 1996, marks the 25th anniversary of the Gay and Lesbian Activist Alliance [GLAA]. GLAA is the oldest consistently active lesbian and gay political and civil rights organization in the United States. I am proud to represent GLAA in Congress and to count its members among my friends. Since its founding in 1971, GLAA has remained a nonpartisan organization and a consistent force advocating the civil and political rights of the lesbian and gay people in Washington, DC, and across the Nation. GLAA has played a pivotal role in establishing a ban on discrimination against lesbian and gay public schoolteachers in Washington, DC, the first in the Nation. Its efforts helped lead to the passage of DC's Human Rights Act, the founding of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the reform of the District's sodomy statute, and the enactment of DC's domestic partnership law. GLAA's work with elected officials in Washington, DC, has resulted in more effective AIDS prevention programs targeted to the public schools, to the prisons, to the homeless, and to underserved populations in the Nation's Capital. The alliance's tireless advocacy on behalf of persons living with AIDS increased local funding for AIDS services and programs. I hope my fellow Members will join me in congratulating the Gay and Lesbian Activist Alliance on its 25th anniversary. I wish them every success in their future endeavors.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, this is taxpayers day. I have introduced a bill to make this tax reduction day for D.C. residents. I expect to have leadership support for the D.C. Economic Recovery Act, and I expect support and will seek support from my side of the aisle as well. There are six reasons why this House should support this bill. One, the District is insolvent with no other revenue stream in sight. Two, Congress has constitutional responsibility for this city, and no other, as this body constantly reminds me. Three, this is the only city prevented by Congress from taxing commuters who use city services. Four, this is the only city that pays for State, county, and municipal functions. Five, this is the only city with no State to recycle income from wealthier areas. Six, this is the only city that pays Federal income taxes. We are second per capita in the United States without voting representation in the Congress. These are six good reasons to support the D.C. Economic Recovery Act.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, this special order on women, wages, and jobs comes during Women's History Month, but more pertinently it comes because finally the issue of declining wages in our country has made it onto the national agenda. The underlying discontent that has been there for two decades have come forward, and we see it in the Republican primaries. It is interesting that at least since the early 1980's many of us have been pointing to this un-American phenomenon where the stock market does well and people do poorly. Somehow or other it never caught on. There has been some attention paid to it as it affects men because the manufacturing sector has been so decimated as jobs have moved offshore. Now that the country is beginning to recognize that something different is happening, it is important that we look at all of those of whom something different is happening, and that is why I choose to raise it in relation to women. As a former chair of the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, I have long had an interest in discrimination against women. More is at work here than simple discrimination, however. What is at work here is the nature of our economy itself, some historic changes that are underway that reflect upon the kinds of jobs that are being produced and who gets those jobs. The effect is felt in the widest gap in incomes we have seen since we have been keeping these records. We need to look at how this phenomenon affects women in particular because with the change in the economy there have been the greatest changes in women in the work force. I want to point to a bill I have introduced, the Fair Pay Act, which in its own way is to the 1990's or seeks to be to the 1990's what the Equal Pay Act was to the 1960's. This body in 1963 passed the Equal Pay Act in order to close the wage gap between men and women, and the Equal Pay Act has done a very good job for its limited mandate. Essentially, it was to look at people doing the same job and being paid differently for it. Some progress has been made, partly because of the Equal Pay Act, so that we have gone from about a 62-percent gap now to something like a 71-percent gap. That is the good news until we hear the bad news. The bad news is that the closing of the gap itself reflects an alarming decrease in male wages as well as the new presence of highly educated women or highly skilled women in entry-level positions only. In other words, the average woman is just where she was. The average woman is experiencing what the average man is, stagnant or declining wages. But at entry levels, highly educated women like doctors and lawyers make the same as men, although those women have a gap that develops within their profession after the entry level. I am this evening interested in the average woman, the silent worker out there every day. The Fair Pay Act is directed specifically to her and to part of what she is experiencing. The Fair Pay Act simply says if you are doing comparable work you ought to get paid the same. The Fair Pay Act says if you are an emergency services operator, that is a female-dominated profession, you should not be paid less than if you are a fire dispatcher, that is a male-dominated profession. Under the Fair Pay Act if you are a social worker, you would not earn less than a probation officer simply because you are a woman and he happens to be a man. Should not the market set the rates? That is precisely what the Fair Pay Act tries to do, even as the Equal Pay Act intervened in order to have the market set the rates. Too often the habits of employers over the decades have built in distortions to the market. Women and minorities paid the price in reduced wages. I want to emphasize that the Fair Pay Act that is H.R. 1507, would not, in fact, intervene into normal market processes, and that has been the problem people thought they saw in comparable worth work. My bill would allow the extraction only of the discrimination factor, and the burden would be on the plaintiff, on the woman, as is always the case in discrimination cases, to show that the difference in wage she is experiencing is because of discrimination and not because of unbiased market factors. I offer that this evening for inspection as one approach to the problem I raise in women and jobs. I want to move to another remedy as well. We are finally beginning to talk about raising the minimum wage. Here is a subject covered with my mythology. If we are going to talk about women workers, we must talk about the minimum wage. Indeed, if we are going to talk seriously about welfare reform, we must talk about the minimum wage. Who are we talking about when we talk about a minimum wage worker? Some Americans would say, well, I think you are talking about a bunch of teenagers working at McDonald's. The typical minimum wage worker is a white woman over 20 years of age, likely to live in the South, who has not had the opportunity to attend college and who works in a retail trade, agriculture, or service job. That is who the minimum wage worker is. She is your wife and you daughter. She is your aunt and your young friend who has just graduated from high school. Most minimum wage workers are women; 5.75 million women are paid between $4.25 and $5 per hour. That means 17 percent of all hourly paid female workers earn the minimum age and only the minimum wage. Most female minimum wage workers are not teenagers. They are adults. And when we say women are earning the minimum wage, we are talking about almost certainly the guardians of poor children. Often, most often, these minimum wage workers are women who are raising the poor children. Now, Mr. Speaker, I am not here talking about the favorite subject of this body, deficit reduction. The minimum wage will add not 1 cent to the United States deficit. What it will do is take 300,000 children immediately out of poverty, 58 percent, almost 60 percent, of minimum wage workers are women. Nearly half of full-time jobs, and the statistics will show that many, if not most, of the others wished they could get full-time jobs, but of part-time minimum wage jobs 15 percent are black, 44 percent of minimum wage workers are Hispanic. What would we do, what would I have us do? Simply to raise the minimum wage to $5.15 per hour. Is there anybody in this body who would think that is too much for them to earn or too much for anyone they know to earn, too much for any constituent of theirs to earn? It would not have to come in one fell swoop. It could go to $4.70 an hour by July 5 this year and to $5.15 an hour by July 1, 1997. Understand who we are talking about when we say the minimum wage worker. We are talking about the traditional way in which we have set a marker of what it means to be an American below which you shall not be forced to work. We are talking about a person who works typically 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, and earns $8,840. The impact of lifting the minimum wage would be that immediately 300,000 people, I want to correct what I said before, 300,000 people would be lifted out of poverty; 100,000 would be children. Only one-third of those affected by such an increase would be teenagers, because almost 70 percent of minimum wage workers are 20 years old or older. They are adults going out to work every day with less than a poverty wage. That is who they are. Since 1979, we have found that 97 percent of the Nation's increase in wealth has gone to the wealthiest 20 percent. The remaining 3-percent increase in wealth is left to the other 97 percent of the Nation's workers, and who has taken the brunt are those at the very bottom. The value of the minimum wage has dropped 30 percent, my colleagues, since 1979. I want to put this graphically to you. I want us to face who we are talking about. Let us look at a family of four and consider what would happen if the sole earner is a minimum wage worker above the poverty line. The current poverty line for a family of four is $15,600. Now, if that family of four has one worker earning the minimum wage, $4.25 an hour, working full time the year around, about $8,500 a year, that worker would receive a tax credit, thanks to legislation passed by this body, if we do not cut it terribly much, and there are proposals to cut it, but today that worker would receive a tax credit of $3,400 under the 1996 provisions of the earned income tax credit. That worker is so poor, that worker, single wage earner in a family of four, that she could collect food stamps worth $3,516. She would nevertheless still pay $650 in payroll taxes after qualifying for benefits and paying her payroll taxes. This family ends up $834 below the poverty line. This is America, my friends. We cannot continue to send people to work every day, working hard, working in work you do not want to do and I do not want to do, and have them come home below the poverty line. That is dangerous. You are hearing the rumblings of it out there in the Republican primaries. Answer the call now. In every State there will be large percentages that will benefit from an increase in the minimum wage. In my own city, a fairly small percentage, 7.8 percent, would benefit, and as I look at what would happen in some of the States, I am simply amazed. Idaho, almost 14 percent of the workers would benefit. In Louisiana, almost 20 percent of the workers would benefit. In Michigan, 10.5 percent; in Mississippi, 17 percent of the workers would benefit. In North Dakota, 18.2 percent of the workers would benefit. I see my good friend and colleague from Georgia, Representative McKinney, here. In Georgia, 11.9 percent of the workers would benefit. Very substantial percentages all across the United States, regardless of sex, regardless of your preconceptions about the place, regardless of whether you think of it as a poor State or a rich State, you have substantial proportions of the population that would immediately benefit from a raise from the minimum wage, not 1 cent added to the deficit, a sharing of income of the kind that has been typical in the United States that as companies become more prosperous there is a greater sharing of the profits with the workers. That is what has not been happening. That is why we are having a growing income gap. The number of African-Americans who would benefit is important to note. Seventeen percent of all hourly paid African-American workers are minimum wage workers, and most of these low-wage workers are female. Twenty-one percent of all hourly paid Latino workers are minimum wage workers. And Latino women are especially likely to be paid very low wages; 25 percent of hourly paid Latino women earn at the minimum wage. Now, I want to examine the critique of an increase in the minimum wage that is most often made, and that is that you reduce job opportunities. The answer is that that is not the case. I refer to nearly two dozen independent studies that have found that the last two increases in the minimum wage had a insignificant effect on employment. The Nobel Laureate economist Robert Solow recently told the New York Times that the evidence of job loss is weak, and I am quoting him, ``The fact that the evidence is week suggest that the impact on jobs is small.'' Prof. Richard Freeman of Harvard said the following: At the level of the minimum wage in the late 1980's, moderate legislative increases did not reduce employment and were, if anything, associated with higher employment in some locales. We remember the 1980's, do we not, when there was a plethora of minimum wage jobs breaking out all over in this country? Minimum wage seems not to do what the conventional wisdom tells us. Kind of look at the facts. We have got to look at the studies. There is also the myth that the blow will be to small businesses. First of all, 90 percent of workers in small business already earn more than the current minimum wage. Do not think that people in small businesses are simply looking for the cheapest labor they can find. They are looking for the best labor they can find. They have got to have people who give them the biggest bang for the buck. In any case, the law does not apply to businesses that do not have annual sales in excess of 4500,000 or employees that participate in interstate commerce. You have got to be in that category even to be covered. That means that many small businesses are simply not affected by the minimum wage at all. Ninety percent of workers in small businesses earn more than the current minimum wage. Indeed, half of minimum wage workers work in firms with more than 100 employees. That is cheating workers. What this means is, we are giving a break to moderate and larger employers, because we are allowing them to hire people at minimum wage and keep more of the profit for themselves and they pass that on to us, ladies and gentlemen, because those people qualify for supplemental welfare, those people qualify for the supplemental benefits, food stamps and the rest. So go right ahead the way you are doing it, because what is means you are doing when you are allowing people to pay the present minimum wage is your are subsidizing that employer yourself. That is us, we, the taxpayers. That is us, we, the taxpayers. Let them pay for the labor. Business is doing well. President Clinton has had an extraordinary effect on the stock market because of the way in which he has reduced the deficit. That is one of the factors that is yielding large gains in the stock market. Where are those gains reflected in the pay envelope of the minimum wage worker? Why should the taxpayers subsidize that worker with food stamps or other supplements, rather than have the employer, who has profited from that worker pay? Let that employer pay. This line is stark enough so that even without it being a big poster, I think I will make my point that a higher minimum wage does not cost jobs. This is the job level in 1991. This is the job level in 1996 since the last minimum wage increase. What we are seeing is there has been an extraordinary rise in jobs. By the way, many of these are part-time, temporary, low-wage jobs. Whatever happened to the notion that if you raise the minimum wage, you will not make jobs? This is what has not been proved. This is the myth that is helping to sustain the minimum wage. This is the myth that means the taxpayers are supplementing people who should be paid for their labor by the companies, almost all of them larger companies, or certainly medium-sized companies at least for whom they work. Let me take a pause now, because I am very pleased to see that the gentlewoman from Georgia has come to the floor. I am very pleased to welcome the gentlewoman from Georgia, who always does her homework, and who has joined me in this special order. I yield to the gentlewoman from Georgia, Representative Cynthia McKinney.

Ms. NORTON. I want to thank the gentlewoman not only for those very kind remarks, and coming from her they are treasured, but also for that very compelling statement. I very much appreciate her coming forward, particularly this late in the evening. But we have got to use what opportunities we have in order to make these important points at this critical time. Let me continue then. What has happened to women? The gentlewoman from Georgia indicated that women were in fact beginning to improve, and that is true. But women have now been caught in the same spiral that has dragged men's wages down, and that is why we have really got to step up and take notice. Until the 1970's women came into the work force drawn there by rising real wages. In order words, they came into the work force because they could earn more money and they were drawn to the work force by virtue of the lure of greater income. Since the 1970's, there has been sluggish wage growth. Still they come. They come because they must. They come even though the wage gap for them, for the average one of them, is not closing. Now, it is very interesting, in the 1980's we did see a rather precipitous narrowing of the wage gap. It is not altogether clear why, but we do know this, that 50 percent of the gap remains unexplained. We believe that possible explanations may be occupational segregation, women's jobs versus men's jobs, you are in a woman's occupation. That has typically had low-wage discrimination. Women having secondary rather than primary jobs, internal labor market influences. In any case, the figures tell you about the creation of a whole new work force in our lifetime. In the 1950's, 30 percent of the work force was women. Today, 45 percent of the work force is women. In other words, we have come to the point where half of the people who go to work every day are men and half of the people who go to work every day are women. Yet the reward of wages is simply not there for the average woman. Indeed, if we look at where women are employed, the lower the earnings, the greater percentage of women in that occupation. That is whether they are making goods or performing services. Why are women working? I can tell you this much, they must be working, because there is no other choice, because half of all married women with children under 3 are in the labor force. Few women, unless they are highly educated and making a lot of money, and that is rather few, are going to go to work if they have a child under 3. In the 1970's, it was not half of all married women, it was a quarter. That means we have doubled. They are there because they have to be there. They are there because they are single head of household, or they are there because one wage earner cannot do it any longer in a family of two wage earners. Women are to the new service economy what men were to the economy of the Industrial Revolution. Let us face it. That is what women are. We have fueled the new economy with women. Except in a very real sense, they look exactly like the male industrial workers, low paid, poor benefits of the 19th century. The conversion is itself remarkable. The conversion I speak of is in the economy itself, which has prepared the way to accept women workers. In the 1960's three-quarters of all the nonfarm job creation was in services. That is a lot. But by the 1970's, 80 percent of all the nonfarm job creation was in services. By the 1980's, 100 percent of all the net job growth was in the services. Four out of every five women work in a service job. What do I mean by a service job? Because what I mean by a service job is in fact or tells in fact the story of declining and low wages. A service job for a woman is a fast-food job. It is a job in a department store. It is a job as a health aide. It is a job as an insurance company clerk. It is a job in residential day care. It is a job as a beautician. It is a job as a clerical. The next time you go into the department store, look at that woman. Look at her closely, and you will know what I mean. Mr. Speaker, the interesting thing is that historically, women tended to be in school and hospital jobs. There are proportionally few workers there because there are so many other workers in these other service jobs now that they have overwhelmed these school workers and the hospital workers, but watch out. The school workers and the hospital workers very often were teachers and nurses, and those are relatively high-paid women's jobs, compared with health aides, insurance company clerks, fast-food clerks and department store clerks. These are honorable jobs. These are often good jobs. They just do not pay well. They do not pay what they are worth. Listen to your constituents. They are hurting. They are hurting because they are not earning what they are worth. We have the only answer, is to get a greater sharing of the benefits of the labor with those who perform the labor. That is the American way, and unless it works that way, you get a disgruntled working class. There is no getting around it. You cannot continue to have a democratic society with a greater and greater share of the wages going to the top and almost none going to those at the bottom. Now, do we have a situation where the money simply isn't there, that is the problem? That, my friends, is not the problem. You need only open your paper and look at what the stock market is doing, and you will see that the money is there. If anything, downsizing should have resulted in workers who were there getting paid more. It did not. That is why many companies are taking a second look at downsizing, because they have done it on the cheap. They have done it at the expense of workers and have not, in fact, increased productivity, have not done it the old-fashioned way, the American way. Mr. Speaker women have become the indispensable new workers who are fodder for the new economy. The last time the country needed the kind of labor supply we have gotten from women in the last two decades were, No. 1, at the time of the great immigration from Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century and No. 2, at the time the black workers in the South left and came North. Today, instead of asking workers to come from Europe or Asia to the United States, and of course there are many immigrants who come, instead what we are saying is, look at your own household and send a worker out for the new economy. If you are going to send a worker out for the new economy from your own household, then should not that new worker be paid what that new worker is worth? Listen to your constituents now. Hear the cry. I say to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, listen to your own primary. I never thought I would live to see a Republican sound like a labor Democrat, but I think that is what I heard Pat Buchanan sounding like. Now, that is not his tradition, and that is not the way he has run his political life, but I do think he heard something out there. We all better listen to it. Whenever we have listened, we have found a remedy. This is not susceptible to yesterday's ideology or even tomorrow's. This is a new problem in the United States. When wages are low, the economy is bad. When wages are high, the economy is good. What is this new phenomenon? The economy is good and wages are low. Should not work that way. Mr. Speaker, one of the things we can do, if it is working that way, is to look at the minimum wage, which has simply lost its value, and say pay people a little more to work. If you do not, you discourage work and then, of course, my friends get up on the House floor and say why do they not work? If it does not pay to work, how can we expect people to work? This is America. This is America at the turn of the century. This is a country that must not send people to work only to have them come home poor. That is what is happening. Economists tell us that there are a number of explanations for the low wages of women in particular. Typically, we are told that a reason for these low wages is crowding or concentration in traditional women's occupations. There may be some of that, but recent studies look to other answers. There was crowding in men's occupations. They had low skills, and yet in manufacturing, they had high wages. Why? My friends, the economists say it was because they were unionized. When the company would not share the profits, men went out and unionized. Women have not done that, and that may be part of the reason the economists tell us that they have not been able to extract a fair share of the profit of their labor from their employers. We are also told that a reason is low capital investment in the industries in which women work. Even though we may not find the real answer any time soon, we need to look for a remedy very soon. We cannot allow the United States to become a place where you develop a permanent working class or, God forbid, what appear to be the case in many of the inner cities, a permentnt lumpenproletariat, people who never move up. Those would be the homeless, the people who are chronically or constantly unemployed. A greater and greater proportion of our population falls into this category. This has never been that kind of European-class society. It has been a society where, however poor you were, you could look forward to being better off than your father. You may have been poor, but not as poor as he was. So there was steady progress, and a man could live to see a man who picked cotton live to see his son or daughter go to college. Today, people go to college on college loans and come back home to live because they cannot afford to strike out on their own, the way their parents did. Mr. Speaker, this is a new America. This is not our America. We do not have all the answers to this America, but we do know this. Surely one of the answers, not maybe, but one of the answers surely is to give back at least some of the value to the minimum wage. It will have an effect, not only on those low-income workers, but it will have something of a ripple effect on those who are nearly as badly off, and you will not know the difference. You will not know it in the deficit. The businesses is question will hardly know it, because a few cents from their profit will go to their workers instead. Who among us would wish for any less? Mr. Speaker, I recognize that the notion of the minimum wage, or for matter, my Fair Pay Act, are matters that have tended to divide Republican from Democrat, but it was in a Republican primary that one heard this cry first, and it was a Republican candidate that has tried to respond to it. He has responded to it in ways which many, not only in his own party but in mine, simply cannot agree. But he has heard something real. This body must hear something real. It is there. Do not deny it. Do not tell low-paid workers who go to work every day that something will happen if you only wait for the economy to fit my paradigm, whether it is your flat-tax paradigm, your national sales tax paradigm or, for that matter, paradigms from my side of the aisle, such as stimulation paradigms. People need hope and relief now. The minimum wage is traditional to American life. Even on the other side of the aisle, few say we should abolish it. There are some, but few. If we put to a vote today to abolish the minimum wage, I believe those of us who say keep it would prevail. The real question is, are you going to keep it at a level that is worthy of the name minimum wage? So far, we have not, and we are going to pay very severe consequences if we do not. Among other things, any welfare reform bill we pass will come back to hit us in the face because the people on welfare will come back to claim other benefits because they will not be able to earn enough to pay the rent and to put food on the table. So I come forward this evening to talk about women's wages in particular, and that is not because I think the problem of men's wages is any better. In fact, it is worse. Men have fallen out of the labor force at an astounding rate because of the decline in the manufacturing sector. Men have experienced an extraordinary reduction in their annual wages over the last quarter of a century. Mr. Speaker, I have come to the floor this evening to talk about women because I do not intend for women to be lost in this debate. Because if you do not speak up for women, they surely will be lost in this debate. The Women's Caucus found them lost in the health debate before we spoke up, as we did today when we introduced the Women's Health Equity Act. Before we spoke up about breast cancer and osteoporosis and, for that matter, clinical trials for women with heart disease, before we spoke up, they got lost in the health debate. We do not intend them to be lost now that the country has heard some voices that say we work every day and it is getting worse. I come to the floor this evening to say I hear you and I believe that many on both sides of this body hear. They heard it on the other side in their primary. We hear it on this side, as well. Doing something about it through the minimum wage, as a first step, is a good-faith way to say we hear you. We are going to respond not in a radical departure from what we have always done, but in the tradition that we have always used, in an increase in the minimum wage that will give you a small raise in your pay envelope. Remember that these minimum-wage workers pay the same social security taxes that the rich do, and the difference in the impact on their pay envelopes is gargantuan. They need a break. They need a raise. Many of them are women, and the majority, the great majority, of those who earn the minimum wage are women, and they are the people who take care of your children. They are the people of the next generation. Hear them. Receive them. Respond and remedy.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include therein extraneous material on the subject of my special order.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me, and for his kind remarks. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the chairman of the committee, the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Gilchrest, as well as the ranking member, the gentleman from Ohio, Jim Traficant, for their leadership on House Concurrent Resolution 146, the Special Olympics torch relay bill. This body rarely authorizes the use of the Capitol Grounds for staging special events. The 11th annual torch relay for the D.C. Special Olympics is a worthy exception. This event, organized by more than 650 Federal and local law enforcement agencies in the District, is a special part of the opening ceremony for the D.C. Special Olympics at Gallaudet University. This year I am pleased that Coolidge High School in my district is also providing playing fields for some of the events. The law enforcement torch relay raises both funds and awareness for D.C. Special Olympics. More than 2,400 officers follow the lighted torch through the District. This outpouring is a fitting tribute to the D.C. Special Olympics, and to the 2,200 local Special Olympians in 17 events. I applaud the Downtown Jaycees who started the Special Olympics in 1969, Eunice Shriver, the founder, the law enforcement officers who will participate, and especially, this year's Special Olympians.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, ``Leave it alone.'' That is what the majority of Americans are saying. If we allow this issue to rise from the dead, it will kill people. There is one reason to prefer this ban: Criminals prefer assault weapons. That is their weapon of choice in killing cops, one-third of whom are killed by assault weapons. That is their weapon of choice. It is 8 times more likely to be used in a crime. The difference between this ban and a pitiful substitute provision of the majority is interesting to note. The ban has brought an 18-percent decrease in the use of these weapons. The majority wants us to use mandatory prison terms, after killing a cop, after killing individuals, then put them in jail for as long as you can keep them. The ban says, ``Get the guns before they get us.'' Do not leave it until after-the-fact remedies. Get them now. They are trying to get us even as I speak.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, if the comic Letterman were to name the 10 most unlikely events this year, 1 of them might be that the Presidential primary in any part of the United States would be canceled for lack of funds. I am here to tell you that this morning's Post tells us that, and I am quoting, ``Cuts may mean no presidential primary in D.C.'' The lack, Mr. Speaker, is for money in the form of a payment due the District of Columbia, which the Congress is holding up, in the amount of $250 million or more. As a result, the District faces the possibility of a payless payday at the end of this month, and the end of its primary for May 7. As Members may know, this money is being held up not because of matters germane to the District of Columbia, but because of a national fight over whether or not vouchers should be funded for private and religious schools. I am here to say this morning, Mr. Speaker, that if you want to debate vouchers, an important national issue, do it on your own time and on your own bill; do not take the Capitol of the United States down with you. This body is fiddling while D.C. residents are burning. The body shut down the District of Columbia on one occasion. Now you want to cancel democracy in the Capital of the United States by not bringing forward the payment due the District in lieu of taxes? How low can we go? What will it take to wake us up? Mr. Speaker, I hasten to add that though I am on the ballot in this primary, I do not mind if this primary is shuttled over, if my own primary is put over to another date, because I am unopposed, so I do not have anything personally to lose, although I must tell the Members that there are minor officials that are on this ballot that do have something to lose. Of course, the President is not opposed in his own party, either. But would not the shame of the country be to have a headline, and we know it would be one, to the effect ``Election in Nation's Capitol Canceled Because Congress Holds Up the Appropriation?'' Come, now. The Washington Post this morning tells us that this is happening for good and sufficient reasons, lack of funds. ``Although he has accelerated layoffs, canceled the planned purchase of new polling places, eliminated mailings to voters, and reduced the temporary staff hired to run elections, Fremaux * * *,'' that is the head of the election board, `` * * * said he is still far short. The only place to turn,'' his letter said, ``is the elections themselves.'' This is an agency known as one of the most efficient in the District of Columbia. They have already made sizable cuts. They are going down to $369,000 in cuts. They have made $239,000 very rapidly. But the rest requires, obviously, local legislation and the following of personnel rules. We are today, at 2:15, to have the fourth cloture vote on the D.C. appropriation in the Senate of the United States, the fourth. Each time there has been a cloture vote on whether to pass our appropriation, it has gotten fewer votes than it got the last time. Somebody is playing games, here. But the folks who are suffering are not represented by anybody in this body except me, so I have to come before this body to say that the CR that is due out Friday simply must contain the District of Columbia, or you will have to suffer the consequences. You will have to suffer the embarrassment. My constituents and I have already suffered the pain. Congress is fond of saying that it is acting in the District with less democracy than other jurisdictions because ``It is the Capital of the United States, and it is our responsibility.'' When is the Congress going to perform like it recognized that it has a responsibility? The residents I represent are second per capita in taxes paid to the Federal Treasury, and yet have no voting representation in this body, and no representation whatsoever in the Senate. Put yourself in their position, when the money being held up is their money, not this body's money, money owed them for taxes. If this is everybody's city, which is why the Congress says it exercises jurisdiction over it, then it is time for the Congress of the United States to act like it.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce a bill to name the U.S. district courts and circuit court of appeals building for the District of Columbia Circuit after the late chief judge E. Barrett Prettyman. I am very pleased that the Chair of the District of Columbia Subcommittee is an original cosponsor. Senator John Warner has introduced an identical bill in the Senate. Judge Prettyman was born in Virginia, where he graduated from Randolph-Macon College in Ashland. He then graduated from Georgetown University School of Law. Judge Prettyman served on the Federal bench for 26 years. He was the chief judge of the U.S. Circuit Court from 1953 to 1960. He was widely regarded as one of America's leading legal scholars and a pioneer for judicial reform. He sought the advice of his colleagues to better understand the issues to help improve the efficiency of the judiciary. He also testified many times before Congress as a strong advocate for increasing the number of judges on the District's juvenile court. As a jurist, Judge Prettyman was known for his centrist positions and his thorough opinions. His most notable opinion concluded that the State Department had the authority to bar U.S. citizens from entering certain areas of the world. He wrote: ``While travel is a right, it can be restrained like any other right.'' The Supreme Court ultimately upheld the decision. Judge Prettyman also championed the cause of the indigent. At Georgetown University, he established a program where lawyers were trained to better assist indigent defendants. Naming the courts after Judge Prettyman would be a fitting tribute to an outstanding jurist and legal scholar. I strongly urge my colleagues to support this measure.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, education is the motherhood and apple pie of Congress, yet the divergent ideology on education is punishing 80,000 schoolchildren in the Nation's Capital. Six months into the appropriation year, a third of the District's Federal payment is still here, yes, it is still here, and the District is going to run out of money at the end of the month. The issue is not the District but whether tuition should go to private and religious schools. We passed it here with a compromise. There is very little money involved, yet nationally of course there is a proposal to cut a billion dollars and a million kids from the title I education and disadvantaged program. The House is free to argue the point. It is a fair point to argue, as to whether vouchers should obtain or whether we should cut large amounts of money from public schoolchildren. I ask my colleagues, however, to care about the District's schoolchildren and about the survival of the Nation's Capital itself. Do not allow us to run out of money at the end of March because money you owe us is stuck here.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. I thank the gentlewoman from New York [Mrs. Maloney] for her kind words. I especially thank her for her leadership in calling our attention and summoning us to the floor this evening in celebration of Women's History Month and of International Women's Day on Friday. We are obligated, Mr. Speaker, I believe, to use these occasions not just as opportunities to talk. We need, I think, to use them to re- energize ourselves about issues that are important to us that can be solved and that, at least in the 104th Congress, have been stalled. There is still time to keep the 104th Congress from being known as the unfeminist Congress or the antifeminist Congress where the losses will be recorded by history over the wins. More than 30 years after women's consciousness took hold in this country, I continue to believe on either side of the aisle that is where Members want to be. Yet if we look closely, we will find what I call take-backs, because they certainly aren't give-backs, losses from where we had come and where we must head. I am very appreciative that so many Members have signed onto the omnibus bill to carry out the seven U.S. commitments at the Beijing conference and that so many have signed onto the individual bills sponsored by individual Members. This tradition now in the House from among women especially of combining women's legislation into a single bill has the advantage of focusing us on where the greatest need is and offering Members and the public an opportunity to see what we must do and what legislation is most pressing at a given moment in time. I am pleased that in this country we celebrate International Women's Day, as well. There must be solidarity among women across the world. In every country, women occupy the second place, not the equal place, even in this country where women have made tremendous strides for more than 30 years. We take note of those strides, even as we note also that there is real backsliding today and that women simply must halt it, must reestablish the momentum that is associated with women's rights in this country. Only 33 years ago, we got the first women's rights legislation in the 20th century, the Equal Pay Act. As a former chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, I have seen in great detail how the law has worked to the advantage of women in the United States. I note that the law has had less, a lesser effect in other countries, because the law is not as often associated with vehicles to bring progress. Yet, we are grateful for what has happened with affirmative action, with title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, with the interpretation of courts. We are still living in the period when the courts for the first time have indicated that the 14th amendment requirement of equal protection of the law applies to women. If you were alive in the 1960's, you lived to see or were a part of a country that for the first time indicated that women had to be treated equally under law. We are still living, therefore, in a breakthrough era for women in this country. There have been big, big take-backs in this Congress. Some of the worst have been in an area that is most vital to women, their personal reproductive rights. I mourn what we have done in the area of abortion. I can only mourn it. I will not chronicle it, because it is a long list, indeed. I regret that women in the military lose the protection of their country if they become pregnant and desire to have an abortion at the hand of the 104th Congress. Surely we must regret it, as well, for women who are serving their country. I regret that women in prisons at the hand of the 104th Congress, may not have an abortion unless they have funds to pay for it. I regret the withholding of funds for international family planning, which has virtually destroyed those programs. I regret the criminalizing of partial birth abortions and what a huge step that measures from where we had come on choice. I regret the proposal that the States no longer provide Medicaid for victims of rape and incest. These seem to me to be unusually cruel provisions, and I hope they are an indication in this Women's History month that no right acquired is permanent without permanent vigilance. These are rights we will reacquire, but surely International Women's Day and Women's History Month must energize us so that we are not left at the end of the 104th Congress with less than we came in with. Included in the omnibus bill is one of my bills, the Fair Pay Act. This bill could not be more germane today. Indeed, I invite Members to note that on March 13, I am conducting a special order on women's wages. There has been a focus on angry white men and, indeed, on angry men because of what has happened to men's wages in an era when manufacturing has shifted offshore, where men are increasingly outside of the labor force, and where women are at work not only because many desire to work, but because they are either critical to the family income or the only family income. We would do well then, as well, to focus on what has happened to the income of women. We note with pride that there is a narrowing of the gap in wages between men and women until we look closely at how that gap has narrowed. We find that the gap has narrowed largely for professional women and women who are highly skilled, at the entry level, and at the entry level only. As we go up the ranks, the gap widens and reappears, and we note that the average woman is right where she was. A very large part of the gap has narrowed because men have fallen, not because women have risen, because men have lost income, because men are outside of the labor force. Women do not want to narrow the gap in that way. It is interesting to note that the Equal Pay Act itself, which requires that women doing the same or similar work be paid the same as men, does not allow an employer to equalize men and women's wages by bringing down men's wages. So if one goes into a business and finds that there is unequal pay of men and women doing the same job, the employer has to bring up the pay of women, rather than bring down the pay of men. Mr. Speaker, I say to my colleagues, the way in which women have gained over the last 30 years has been in very large part because the pay of men has come down, not by operation of law but by operation of the economy. What that means for the average woman in the work force is that the gap is right where it was and that the Equal Pay Act has done just about all it can do. The rest will require a sharper remedy. In my Fair Pay Act, I offer that sharper remedy where a woman doing comparable work would have to be paid the same as a man doing comparable work. The burden would be on the woman to demonstrate that the difference in wage between her and the man is due to discrimination and not to ordinary market forces. That is a heavy burden. But the burden of proving discrimination is always on the complainant, and here it must be on the complainant as well. My colleagues will note that the fact that the woman has to establish that the wage differences between herself and a man doing comparable work is because of discriminations and not because of market forces means that my bill will not interfere with the ordinary operation of the market. I discuss my bill only as the one I know best and as one of the many excellent bills in our omnibus bill. While there is still time, while the 104th Congress is still making history, I call upon my colleagues to make sure that it does not make negative history; to make sure that women and men and families will not remember the 104th for take-backs but for gains; to make sure that the 104th has something positive to say to American families about half of the family, or in the very many instances, the family itself that has a wage earner that is a woman. Even where there has been consensus among us on women's issues, we often have not made the progress that I believe all of us surely intended, for example, on domestic violence. There is a consensus on both sides of the aisle that this ancient issue finally is ripe for mitigation and elimination. While indeed we were able to get an appropriation that is respectable, the fact is that all of us who have worked hard on this issue are saddened that we have not made the great leap forward, that this most basic of issues requires. So in this Women's History Month and the year 1996, the year of the 104th Congress, may we leave it with more to celebrate than we find on March 8, International Women's Day. May we remember that we have days only for issues or almost only or largely for issues that need special exposure because of special problems that obtain that we, therefore, dedicate this International Woman's Day to women all over the world and to the forward gains and momentum promised in Beijing and our own country. We who are Members of this body use this day and this month to move forward women's issues at a time when we still can make the 104th Congress truly memorable and truly bipartisan on women's issues. I very much thank the gentlewoman for her leadership and for yielding to me.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, the majority is pursuing a contradictory strategy. Everything they have hinged on eliminating the deficit, but an increase in the deficit would be the first result of default. The official position of the United States of America today is under threat of default. Moody's has certainly recorded it that way, because it has returned the threat itself. The shutdown strategy will not work this time. The only way to hang something on the debt limit bill is to get an agreement in advance from the President, yet I see no meetings occurring. Moody's action shows that the delay alone can be costly, and worse, dangerous. If we mean to balance the budget, if your purpose is to eliminate the deficit, let us start by taking away the threat of default.

Ms. NORTON

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, since 1859, the Washington Aqueduct has provided Washington, DC, and the metropolitan region with safe drinking water. Each and every day, 24 hours each day, the Aqueduct collects, treats, and transports water to the District, Arlington County, Falls Church, the Pentagon, National Airport, and Arlington Cemetery. The Army Corps of Engineers owns and operates the Aqueduct on behalf of the Department of the Army and in fiscal year 1994 alone, delivered 67 billion gallons of water to Aqueduct customers--60 percent of that amount to the District of Columbia. In his February 1, 1996 report, The Washington Aqueduct: Financing and Ownership Study, Secretary of the Army Togo West reports that throughout its history, the Aqueduct has been continually upgraded and improved to meet changing regulations and new technology. The Secretary, however, admits that Aqueduct facilities currently are ``in need of modernization to meet future drinking water and water quality.'' Evolving Safe Water Drinking Act standards in fact require upgrading Aqueduct facilities. Last November, Virginia Senator John Warner, chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure, included a provision in both the Water Resources Development Act (S. 640) and the Safe Drinking Water Act (S. 1316) which authorizes the Army Corps of Engineers to borrow the funds from the Treasury necessary for improving the Washington Aqueduct. This loan would have to be repaid by the Aqueduct's customers and, as such, the Congressional Budget Office scores it as no cost to the Federal government. The measure I introduce today is identical to Senator Warner's legislation. This bill will provide a financial mechanism for the repairs so that the hundreds of millions of dollars for the work do not result in exorbitant hikes in water rates. Under current rules, any needed capital improvements at the Aqueduct must be paid for in advance by District consumers and consumers in Arlington County and the city of Falls Church. In response to more stringent water quality requirements being implemented nationally by the EPA, substantial costly improvements of $200-$500 million will be necessary at the Aqueduct over the next 10-15 years. Affordable water rates can be maintained only if payments are spread out over an extended period of time. This bill will ensure the long term future of the Aqueduct at reasonable consumer rates. I urge my colleagues to support this important measure granting the Corps of Engineers the authority to provide vital improvements to the Aqueduct and ensuring safe drinking water for all of those served by this facility.