Major Owens

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor Maria Otto--whose work has greatly enriched the profession of child care. She has touched the lives of hundreds of children, parents, and aspiring day care providers. Her dedication and compassion have rendered her a worthy candidate to entrust the care of our most precious--the children. Furthermore, her competence has rendered her fit to train the future day care provider of the Nation. Maria Otto is an outstanding and caring citizen who deserves recognition as a great Point of Light for all Americans. In 1967, Mrs. Otto began her career in family day care as a family day care provider. In this capacity, she was responsible for the care and development of more than 200 children, under the sponsorship of the Wake-Eden Center in the Bronx. Maria Otto continued her career as a family day care specialist-trainer in 1986 when she joined the staff of Child Care, Inc. Here she assumed the challenging task of training hundreds of New York City family day care providers. Mr. Speaker, as commissioner of the New York City Community Development Agency responsible for the Community Action Program and the Headstart Program I had the honor of launching the Nation's largest family day care program utilizing unspent funds from the Headstart budget. Since that time family day care has expanded and improved steadily. As a New York State senator I participated in several successful efforts to achieve greater statewide recognition and support for family day care as an effective option for child care. At each step of the way Maria Otto was one of the leaders of the great grassroots army of family day care advocates. Throughout her career, Mrs. Otto has worked tirelessly to improve the professional status and recognition of thousands of family day care providers in New York City and State, and across the Nation. She organized the first Family Day Care Provider Associations in New York City and State, and is the founder of the current Family Day Care Citywide Association. As one of the cofounders of the National Association for Family Day Care, Mrs. Otto also assisted in organizing providers in Pennsylvania and many other states. Nationally recognized as one of the earliest experts in the field of family day care, Maria Otto served as a member of Governor Cuomo's Commission on Child Care. In recognition of her exceptional professional achievement on behalf of children, Maria Otto is a recipient of the New York State 1993 Decade of the Child Award. It is apparent that Mrs. Otto welcomes some continuity in her life. She is a current resident of the Bronx, NY, where she was born, living in the same house for 68 years. The daughter of immigrants from the Virgin Islands who arrived and settled in the Bronx in 1920, Mrs. Otto is a graduate of Jane Adams High School. She holds an A.A. degree from the College of New Rochelle-Bronx campus. Maria Otto's consistency is not only evident in her place of residence. She has consistently served the children in her care, their parents and her protegees exceptionally well. Mrs. Otto is as dedicated and committed today as she was decades ago when she first embarked on a career so vital to the American working family. Without a doubt, her work has led to the professional and respectful character of the modern family day care profession. It is an honor to salute Maria Otto as a Point of Light who continues to brighten lives for all to cherish.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this murder of Medicaid. Mr. Speaker, we must defeat this bill and stop the murder of Medicaid. Today Medicaid guarantees 9 million children and adults with disabilities the health and related services they need to lead healthy, productive, and independent lives. That guarantee is wiped out by this legislation. Each State would decide whether and the extent to which they provide services to persons with disabilities. The savage, $165 billion cut this bill imposes on the program makes it certain that hundreds of thousands of persons with disabilities will lose all coverage and millions more will lose some of the health services and benefits they now receive. Many persons with severe disabilities who are now living independently in the community will be forced back into institutions and isolation. The impact these cuts will have on families is severe. Consider Dee and Zack Klyman of Nevada. They have adopted three children with severe disabilities, Michael, Markeeta, and Shiniri. Each of these children was disabled as a result of abuse and neglect; the Klymans took them in and gave them a loving home. Medicaid now pays for all of the extensive medical services these children need. On their own, the Klymans could not afford these services. If the Republican butchery of Medicaid succeeds, the well-being of this family will be threatened. How will they cope with the thousands of dollars of medical bills their children generate every month? Will the family survive? What will happen to these three children? The States cannot be trusted to take care of the people with disabilities that they refused to care for before Medicaid was created. We must stop this destruction of service to people with disabilities. We must stop this murder of Medicaid. We must defeat this monstrous legislation.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, it is 11 a.m., almost, on November 17, 1995, and the American people are confronted with the last dirty details of a barbaric plot to murder Medicaid. Medicaid and Medicare are 30 years old. The plot is on to destroy 30 years of compassionate policy which promotes the general welfare. Yes, there is some phony, used car salesmen language in the bill which talks about eligibility for pregnant women and children, but why trade an entitlement for Medicaid for some phony talk about eligibility administered by the States? It was the States that gave us the sick and ill with no protection before, and now we cannot trust the States to take it up after the entitlement is gone. American voters, put your common sense to work. Do not trade an entitlement for some used car salesman language about maybe the States will enforce some kind of eligibility and keep health care. We do not want to go backward 30 years. We have Medicaid entitlement now. Let us keep the Medicaid entitlement.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, does the gentleman have an announcement from the Senate or the President? I cannot yield at this point. I will yield in a few minutes. Republican extremism is being ratcheted upwards at a time when there is no war; no real crisis. A catastrophe is being manufactured. Earlier speakers have said it. I don't want to be redundant and repeat it. This is a planned crisis. It is a manufactured catastrophe. It is not the President who is being blackmailed, not the President being pushed into the corner, it is the American people who are being blackmailed by the policies that are going forward in this continuing resolution and the debt ceiling legislation. Mr. Speaker, the American people are being blackmailed. The children and the students are being black-mailed. There is no concern being shown here about education. Not only is there no compassion for the elderly, there is no compassion for the sick. There is no common sense which says we should continue to invest in education. It is a situation which is very serious. As I said before, Mr. Speaker, in the days before Republican extremism, education was a unifying force, even more so than defense. It was an issue that brought us together. We should return to that. We should remember Republican Ronald Reagan and his pleas that we are a nation at risk and we need to take some unusual measures to turn that around. We ought to remember the pleas of George Bush when he issued America 2000 and said that he wanted to become the education president. We should remember that President Clinton was at that conference in Virginia where President Bush set forth the goals, the six goals for American education. We ought to appreciate the fact that President Clinton has continued the basic policies of President Bush. The Republicans have chosen in this extremist budget to cut the Goals 2000 legislation. Cut the funding for it. One of the backbones of American Federal education assistance is the title I program. The Republican extremists have chosen to cut title I by $1.1 billion. That is about one-seventh of the total amount. If the American people are out in their local school district or in their city and town and want to figure out what these big numbers mean, take the amount of money that they are receiving for title I programs, of title I funding, and reduce it by one-seventh and they will know what the cut of $1.1 billion in title I programs for next year, they will know what that means for their particular city and town, for their education unit at the local level. So, Mr. Speaker, they have made cuts which are reducing the investment in education at a time when we need the investment more than ever before. Good schools are a great investment. They are the kind of investment that Americans had the good sense to make a long time ago and they are still very important. The philosophy of Rush Limbaugh that if an individual does not make it in American society it means something is wrong with them and nobody should worry about them is a philosophy that needs to be rejected. We should not applaud a Rush Limbaugh who says if a person's mother is sick, they will not go out on the street and beg somebody to help them, so why do they ask the government to help them. The government is a society. A government is a complex mechanism that has been made over the years, over the centuries, and a lot of people have made contributions to this process of making American civilization what it is. In the Vietnam war, which we still say is important, regardless of what we think of the specifics or the objectives or whether it should have gone on so long, American policy said the Vietnam war was important. American policy went forward to the tune of 57,000 American lives and numerous others who were wounded and in various ways suffered as a result of that war. Forty percent of the bodies that came home from Vietnam were minorities. Forty percent of the bodies were minorities. Many of them were from these same big cities that we claim are wasting our money because they want more money for health care, they want more money for education. Forty percent. In all the wars that have ever been fought, who comes out to give the dead soldiers' families millions of dollars? Does Rush Limbaugh deserve to make millions because of some special endowment from God while the soldiers who died to make the country great do not deserve anything? Does Rush Limbaugh deserve more than the inventors who created radio, television? Does Rush Limbaugh deserve more than the offspring of some of scientists and researchers who make it possible for us to have the technology which makes cable television and television and all these communication media possible and cheaper? Does Rush Limbaugh deserve more than the person out there who does not have the money to buy a frequency in order to be able to own one of these cable stations? [[Page H 12177]] Is there any American who deserves so much more by right of God than another that our society should show no compassion and no concern for those who cannot make it? Society does owe it to itself to develop the abilities and definitely the capacity of everybody. Make an investment in education. Society should do that. The illogical rationalization, the excuse that the Republicans keep using that they want to make people suffer now in order to have posterity, not have the burden of a debt, they are so compassionate for posterity, for the unborn, for the people who come in 10, 20 years from now, and yet they show no compassion for those living breathing souls that are here right now. Compassion has to be a concern at all times, as I said before. When you stop and think about the fact that all that we have discovered in the past few decades about the rest of the universe, about the solar system, about the Moon, we have not gone to Mars, but we have sent exploratory ships that have been able to take samplings of the atmosphere of Mars. With the samplings that have been taken of the gases that exist out there in the universe, we have concluded that nowhere in the universe is there any other human life, there can be no life similar to the life here on Earth. It is very possible with all of these planets and all the new expansive universe that is being discovered, that there are no other human beings, nothing like a human being. In this whole vast universe there is nothing out there that has a heart, nothing out there that can dream, nothing like human beings that we stop and we think that with all these people in China and all these people who are producing and in underdeveloped countries and all the population explosion in South America that there are too many human beings on the face of the Earth. If you were to stop and think about the universe, there are too few of us. We ought to look at every human being as being sacred. Everything that breathes, that is human, has a heart and a soul is sacred. Everything that breathes has a heart and soul is an opportunity for us in terms of if you develop that soul and that heart properly, it will reinvest in the Earth and in our societies on Earth and we will be able to gain from it. Instead, we have no compassion and we have no common sense, so we do not invest in people first. We have the Rush Limbaughs of the world laughing at programs that seek to help people who need help. The Rush Limbaughs of the world make fun of senior citizens who have to eat dog food. We have the Rush Limbaughs of the world who think slavery is a great joke. That the greatest crime ever created in history is a joke; 232 years of American slavery is funny. We have that kind of prevailing attitude. That jester becomes the counselor and therapist, for great amounts of money, who support a party that has control of the Congress, the House of Representatives, and the Senate. All of this is going on in America. Look with common sense and ask yourself the question, how can we get out of it. Let us start by making an investment in education. Stop and think about all the kind of cuts that have been made in education. Let me refresh your memory. Overall, the Republican budget cuts in education cut domestic spending. Republican budget cuts cut domestic spending overall by only 4 percent. But when it comes to education, the appropriations bills related to education, they cut the budget by 16 percent, almost $4 billion to be more exact, 3.9 some billion, but almost $4 billion is cut in education. When you go onto job training and other programs related to workers, it is 24 percent. The Republican extremists have declared war on students, on education, and on workers. Workers who were trained in this transition economy to become more productive, workers who drive the great consumer market that makes it possible for us to have prosperity, they are under attack. The greatest cuts are aimed at them. We have increases in the defense budget, we may have increases even in the CIA budget. We have no way of knowing. We certainly do not have the proper cuts in the CIA budget. As I said before, of these cuts, 1 billion or 17 percent are aimed at title I. Title I is the biggest Federal program for elementary and secondary school assistance. Title I goes to practically 98 percent of the school districts in America. So we are cutting title I, a small portion of the budget, 98 percent of the school districts of America at a time when they need more help than ever before in education. We have eliminated in the same budget the summer youth employment program. The summer youth employment program provides jobs for 600,000 youth across the country. School systems will tell you it is very important in terms of the work that they do to have those jobs available for their students during the summer. This House had some alternatives. The Republican majority is not operating in the dark. The Congressional Black Caucus put forward a budget which, like the Republican plan, proposed to eliminate the deficit over 7 years. We did not agree with 7 years. We think that, if you are going to balance the budget, you should take 10 years or longer, but 10 years is reasonable. But we had to do it in 7 years in order to be allowed to bring it, in order to gain access to the floor. We were told you cannot bring a budget unless you balance the budget in 7 years. We balanced the budget in 7 years. We did not cut Medicare. We did not cut Medicaid. We increased education by 25 percent, and we still had a balanced budget. The President has proposed to increase education. Education is one of the few areas that the President proposes to increase the budget at. The President has the support of the business community. The article that appeared in Washington Outlook had a title which said, ``Will Republicans Make Clinton the Education President?'' This article is about the support that President Clinton is getting from businessmen, from the heads of corporations on this education budget. They are saying to the President, we would like for the President to forge ahead on Goals 2000. We would like not to turn back the clock on educational reform. We want to continue what Ronald Reagan started. We want to continue what George Bush advanced. We are all together on this, the corporate executives who make decisions about life and death of America every day in terms of production, in terms of the way we use our resources, they want education to be funded. Many of them are supporting National Education Funding Day on November 18. They understand the good sense of bringing to the attention the fact that education is a top priority. If we cannot read the polls and we do not understand what happened in Virginia, what did Democrats in Virginia do, they made education their primary concern. Identification was no secret. It was a weapon out there on the table, and they ran on an education platform and they pulled a Stalingrad. They showed that the invincible war machine of the Republicans can be defeated. What do these education cuts mean in terms of my home State of New York? Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Diaz-Balart].

Mr. OWENS. No, Mr. Speaker, I will not yield.

Mr. OWENS. I thank the gentleman very much. He has made a very compact, well-focused statement which would make it unnecessary for me to say a great deal of what I was going to say. The American people have shown consistently over the years that education is a high priority. It is interesting now that I think it is clear that health care is the first priority but education is a close parallel, almost the second priority, almost a parallel priority of the American people. So education should not be forgotten in this great debate. Education Funding Support Day, November 15, day after tomorrow, is designed to have the American people reinforce what they have already shown in the polls. They keep stating over and over again, in poll after poll, that education is a high priority. Yet the public officials who make the decisions keep cutting education. At the city level in New York, over the last few years, we have lost $2 billion. New York is a system which serves a million students. We have lost $2 billion over the last 5 years in education funding at a time when more children have come into the system. The State has now cut the State aid for New York City a great deal, and, of course, at the Federal level we had $4 billion of cuts recently proposed by the Republican budget. Republican extremism and recklessness is being ratcheted upward at a time when there is no war, no real crisis; a catastrophe is being manufactured. It is not the President who is being blackmailed, as we have heard over and over again. It is the American people who are being blackmailed. The children are being blackmailed. The students are being blackmailed. Let us pause for a moment to reconsider what is happening. I hope the Republicans will join the Democrats in supporting National Education Funding Support Day and try to refocus on the bipartisan effort we have made over the years on education. In the days before Republican extremism, education was a unifying issue, even more so than defense. I have seen many votes on the floor of this house where a greater proportion of the body voted for education than voted for defense, which was also a unifying issue. But we had more votes on education bills. Many of the authorizing bills for education on this floor have received almost unanimous approval. We have gone through a process at the committee level where at the committee level there was a great debate, in the conferences there was a great debate. In fact, some of our conferences have gone on for several weeks. Many committee markups have gone on for days. So we have had great debates on education, with each side, of course, offering varied opinions, and there are some differences. In the end, both Republicans and Democrats came together on education, and we need to try to get back to that. We could assert ourselves in the next few days and reach some kind of agreement to communicate to the President that both parties agree that we should rescind that $4 billion in education cuts and deal with making cuts somewhere else to facilitate moving matters forward. In the days before Republican extremism. Education was a unifying issue, even more so than defense. Under Republican Reagan, under Republican Bush, we had major steps taken toward the offering of guidance by the Federal Government in the area of education. Education reform was taken on by the Federal Government as a major responsibility. Republican Ronald Reagan had the commission to publish the report, ``A Nation at Risk,'' and he launched the effort. Bush followed with America 2000 and the six goals that were set forth at the Governors' conference in Virginia. President Clinton attended that conference, where the Governors set forth the six goals for education, and President Clinton has steadfastly enforced those goals. President Clinton has taken America 2000 that was put forward by Bush and launched Education 2000, which, in many ways, has the same basic foundation. So we have a continuation of bipartisan support for education. On November 15, day after tomorrow, we want to reemphasize that and let the American people know that we continue to have this major goal of pushing education forward as a bipartisan concern. Republican extremism wrecked the bipartisan support for education this time. This is at a time, unfortunately, where education is needed more than ever before. As I have said many times before, our economy, our society is at a critical transition period. Our society is now in a period where the economy is booming, Wall Street is booming, the stock market is booming, profits are higher than they have been for a long, long time. And yet, on the other hand, people are losing jobs through downsizing and streamlining. The American wages have suffered a dramatic decline over the last two decades, the last 20 years. So we are in a transition period, a period unlike any that we have ever experienced before. It is necessary more than ever that we step forward with a new investment in education. Not less should be invested in education, but we should be investing more in education. We should invest more at this particular period because we are making a transition where education and greater training will be needed. You know, I think last night, whenever this GOPAC celebration was held, I heard it this morning on C-SPAN, Rush Limbaugh kept saying that if you cannot make it in America, it is your fault; you know, nobody should ask for help. If you cannot make it in America, it is really your fault. It is very strange that Rush Limbaugh, a talk show host who is dependent on the airwaves, radio and television, which are a Government, you know, they are government-facilitated outlets, you know, he would not be a millionaire and a superstar if there were no FCC, if there were no Federal Communications Commission, a Government body which regulates and helps to nurture the whole broadcast industry from its inception to the present. He would not be there. Rush Limbaugh should send a ``thank you'' letter to the FCC every day. The U.S. Navy helped perfect radio and helped perfect the kind of things that made it necessary for radio to move from radio to television, the orderly transition, the development of a whole industry. The broadcast industry was not charged any money every time they used the airwaves. Yet the broadcast industry was not unlimited, not every American could gain access to the broadcast industry, not every American could be a talk show host, because the broadcast airwaves are owned by certain companies. There are a limited number. If we did not have a Government which regulated that limited number, then you would have chaos and nobody would be able to have signals that got through. [[Page H 12173]] So, you know, the FCC, the U.S. Navy, the space program, and all of the Government research that went on with radar and various defense industries that made it possible to develop, you know, the compact kind of technology that allows you to have transistors and to do the marvelous things we do with television sets and with radio and all the things that facilitate cable television and all the things that are going on now which make people like Rush Limbaugh rich, all of them are maintained by a society and a Government that, if it did not exist and did not carry out these functions, the opportunity would not be there for Rush Limbaugh and his kind. The illogical rationalization that is going on, the monstrous excuse that Republican extremists are making is that we need to inflict these cruel and unusual budget cuts, these measures which go after everything from Medicare, Medicaid, to education, we need to inflict these measures on the elderly, on children and on students in order to save future children from debts. Men and women who have no compassion for living, breathing Americans want us to believe that they have great compassion for the children of the future, they have compassion for posterity. They want to trade the compassion of today that requires a few sacrifices by the rich for the cheap abstract compassion of the distant future, have compassion for posterity, have compassion for the children of the future, but do not have compassion for the living, breathing, elderly who are sick and need health care today, do not have compassion for the students who want an opportunity to get through school, to have decent lunches so that they are not hungry and can learn, the students who want to get through college on Pell grants and student loans; do not have any compassion for them. Let us think about the children of the future, the children to come, not the children of today; let us think about the students of the future, students to come, not the children of today. Compassion is a concern, and it is one concern we should always bear in mind. We should always be concerned with compassion. I think compassion might be interpreted as a willingness to share the benefits of society with everybody in the society because we recognize that all human life is sacred. Merely by being born, all human beings deserve compassion. Medicare and Medicaid are expressions of compassion, very important expressions of compassion. The elderly and the children probably deserve the most compassion in our society. So compassion is important. Compassion is a basic value of the American majority. I think most people in America have compassion. They want their Government to reflect a concern with compassion. They want their decisionmakers, their congressmen as well as their State legislators and their local legislators to always move in ways that show that they care about people. The great majority of the American people are caring people. There is a caring majority out there, and the caring majority has reflected its sentiments. They have aroused themselves, and they are being felt in the public opinion polls. They are showing through the polls that they do not care for this extremism. They want it stopped. It is not consistent with American compassion. It is not consistent with the caring majority. But while I am very concerned about compassion, I am talking about education today, and education is an investment. It is not a matter of compassion. Support for education programs does not represent compassion. Support for education programs represents a commonsense investment in the future of America. Support for education means you care about young people being able to get an opportunity so they can help themselves. You care about young people being able to get an opportunity so they will keep our economy going. If young people are not out there working in our economy, they will not produce the taxes that we need, they will not produce the money to fund the social security fund. It is working young people in the American economy who make the economy go. I read in the Wall Street Journal today that China is leaping forward at a far more rapid rate than anybody ever predicted. China, China, when I was in school, I remember in the geography books always that phrase, ``China is a backward country.'' The implication was that Chinese are backward people; inevitably China will always be at the bottom of the heap; all those people there, they gave the impression that they will never do anything but trip all over themselves and cause chaos and China will never be a force in the world. Well, now, China may be bidding to become the third largest economy in the world merely by the fact that they exist, a billion people. You know, a billion people just selling things back and forth to each other creates quite an economy. The Chinese suddenly have leaped into the export market. This Wall Street Journal article said the Chinese may surpass the Japanese in terms of exports to America soon and that the Chinese are seeking to protect their position in the world through the GATT treaty. They know that, as they become more and more of an export power, they are going to be the victims of attempts at restrictions of trade from China, so they are getting ready. The article continued to say it surprised everybody because the Chinese are not a high technology society in the same sense as Japan or West Germany, France, a lot of the other industrialized societies. China is leaping forward partially because of its tremendous organization of the one greatest resource it does have, and the greatest resource the Chinese have is people. Human beings are their greatest resources. Whatever you may say about the totalitarian government of China, they have invested in education. They know that good schools are a great investment. They have made an investment in education. They have human beings who are well organized and who, despite the fact that they may have a technological disadvantage, are able to produce a great deal because of the fact that they are well-organized, well-trained, well-focused. So the Chinese, who were called backwards when I was in the third grade, are going to leap forward as a major world economy, and they are going to dislocate children in our economy. The children in our economy who are going to be adults, if they do not have a great deal of training, they cannot stay way ahead of the Chinese in technology, and they lose, because our policies are such that most of what is being exported from China to America is being financed by American companies. The Chinese are getting rich off of the American Fortune 500 corporations, who make contracts for them to make goods at very low cost that they then bring back to our economy and sell. So pretty soon we are going to wipe out this great consumer market that we have created over the years by having fair policies, by having strong labor unions, by having a situation that generated a massive number of people who have a lot of money, enough money to be able to buy consumer products in large quantities. We are destroying the great engine that has driven the free world economy for the last 50 years. We are going to destroy American consumers by not educating them properly and by having trade policies that allow our economy to be invaded by a country that has seen the benefits of educating their population and taken advantage of all the loopholes in the international trade policies. In the midst of the storm that is going to rage for the next few days, I hope no more than a few days, but maybe weeks, we would like for there to be one dry spot. We would like for there to be one shaft of bipartisan light. We would like for education to return to be understood to be the core of our prosperity. Education must remain at the core of our prosperity. We must understand that education is at the core of our prosperity. We must act that way. We must understand that education is the most practical investment that we can make in America. We cannot afford to go forward and continue the bipartisan bickering and smother everything. Let us return at least to an understanding that health care, the American people have ranked health care as one of those top priorities, and education has been ranked as [[Page H 12174]] another tomorrow priority, almost equal to health care. So in the next few days, I hope that the President and the Republican-controlled Congress will stop and think seriously about what is going on and say that, look, health care should come first, education should come second, and then let us take a look at everything else if you want to balance the budget. And let us get off this extreme drive, this extreme, dogmatic notion that you have to balance the budget in 7 years. Those who want to balance the budget, we ought to be able to reason with them and say 10 years instead of 7 years, and maybe we should lock in the law so there could be no reneging on that 10 years. But 10 years to balance the budget would be a better approach, a less extreme approach. It would not require that we throw education overboard as an investment. It would not require that we throw large numbers of senior citizens overboard in their life and death situations day-in and day- out. We do not have to do things in an extreme and mean way. We could do it in a more rational way over a longer period of time and achieve the same objective. So we are at a critical moment in the life of American democracy. We are at a critical moment, and I think that the proclamation of National Education Funding Support Day by an organization which I helped to fund, the National Commission for African-American Education, took the lead in proclaiming that November 15 would be National Education Funding Support Day. November 15 happens to be in the middle of American Education Week, so we are following a tradition. A lot of different school boards and school systems around the country have open school week during this time. So it is an appropriate time to try to link up with what is happening in education in the localities with what is happening in Washington. The Federal Government is responsible for only a small portion of the total American education budget. We only supply about 7 percent. It went up as high as 8 percent at one time. But we only supply about 7 percent of the total education budget. Local governments and State governments supply the rest. And it is probably going to be much that same way for a long time. I really think the Federal Government should be more involved. We should be more like the other industrialized nations. All other industrialized nations have a greater participation in education by their central governments than the United States of America. China has a greater participation, and they have taken advantage of the use of education to turn their population into an asset. All other nations, the nations of Asia, the Asian rim that is bursting with economic activity, a great investment has been made by Singapore. A great investment has been made by Taiwan. When I was in Taiwan you saw students going to school at all hours of the night. Their schools operated around the clock. They had computers that they were using to train students. Those computers got no rest. They had shifts of students who were going to school around the clock to take advantage of the equipment and the space that they had. They understood the value of investment in education. We should lower our voices and get our senses together and look at the world with practical eyes. We want compassion, but in addition to compassion, there is just common sense and survival that is at stake here. Education is a matter of survival. Education has to be moved up to a place in the national security pantheon. Education may be far more important than weapon systems that we are spending great amounts of money on. Expenditures for education would be far more productive than further expenditures on the Seawolf submarine. Expenditures for education would be much more productive than expenditures we are undertaking for the F- 22 fighter plane manufactured in Speaker Gingrich's district in Marietta, GA. They would certainly be far more productive than the CIA expenditures that we continue. We continue to expend at least $28 billion for the CIA. That is the conservative figure, because we do not know the real figure. At least $28 billion per year is being spent for the CIA. That is a great waste. Some of that money is being wasted. If you just cut the CIA by 10 percent a year, $2.8 billion for the next 5 years, you would generate a great amount of money that could be applied to education. Education is suffering. You can balance the budget and not hurt your scheme of things by just taking the money from the defunct, dangerous CIA, and moving it over to education. The CIA is a dangerous institution. I thought it was very interesting that a great deal of furor was generated by the Secretary of Energy. Mrs. O'Leary, a great deal of furor was generated when it was found that she had misspent money on a study which studied the media, newspapers and journalists, and studied how they covered her agency. I agree, it is a great waste of money. I agree that she certainly should be chastised. I agree that certainly some steps should be taken to deal with the people who came up with that bright idea. However, I found it very interesting that immediately there was a loud cry for her dismissal. Yet the CIA found a slush fund just a few months ago, the CIA found a slush fund, a petty cash fund that nobody knew about, of $1.5 billion, at least. I am told by somebody who knows that it was more than that. They could not tell me exactly how much. A petty cash fund of $1.5 billion was discovered at the CIA, and the director of the CIA said that he did not know about it. It has existed for some time because it takes time to build up a petty cash slush fund that nobody is really accountable for of $1.5 billion. And yet nobody called for any dismissal of anybody. I did not hear anybody say the CIA director ought to be fired. I did not hear anybody say that some top people at the CIA, at least the bookkeeper, ought to be fired. I do not know if anybody got fired as a result of the discovery of a $1.5 billion-plus slush fund. That is surprising, and it is something the American people with their common sense ought to take a close look at. Where is the money being wasted in our government? The money we need to invest in education, where is it? I can find it for you. I can find it for you. $1.5 billion in the CIA slush fund, we are off to a good beginning. A little while before that we discovered that the CIA had in process the building of a building which cost almost $400 million. A building, a facility, is being constructed near the Dulles Airport by the CIA, and nobody knew about it. The members of the Intelligence Committee on Oversight here in the House of Representatives said they did not know about it. The Members of the Committee on Oversight in the Senate said they did not know about it. How do you construct a $400 million building, $370 million-some to be exact, how do you construct a building that costs that much money near Dulles Airport and nobody in the government who has oversight responsibility for the CIA knows about it? And when you find that kind of mistake, why do they not call for somebody to be fired? Who got fired? Who got fired? We recall that Aldrich Ames was discovered to be a Soviet agent. Aldrich Ames was not a small guy down the line. Aldrich Ames was in charge of the American espionage operation in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. He was in charge. He had an interesting history. His father had been in the CIA before, and he had risen through the ranks, although people always wondered about the fact he was not very bright. They wondered about the fact that he did drink too much. They wondered about the fact he broke various rules. He used the CIA safe houses for fornication regularly. He got away with all this. Then he had a lavish lifestyle. And the CIA makes a good salary. They are not secret. I think that you can find out what the salaries of most CIA agents are, but you cannot find out what the expense accounts are. At any rate, the expense account plus the salary of Aldrich Ames could not have supported his standard of living. He drove expensive cars, he lived in elaborate houses, he seemed to have all the money he needed all the time. All of this went on for over 10 years. Agents died who were in the employ of the CIA. Information was compromised. [[Page H 12175]] Recently the CIA in its damage control mode has released a few more facts about the damage done by Aldrich Ames. We now hear that information fed to three presidents through the channels that Aldrich Ames was responsible for was compromised information; that much of the Reagan buildup and much of the Bush buildup of defense was guided by information the Soviet Union was feeding through its bogus agents working for the United States into our decisionmaking process. Yet, when Aldrich Ames was discovered, nobody called for the firing of the CIA Director. When the investigation was conducted and the internal report was issued, the director of the CIA at that time did not recommend the firing of a single person. It is true there was a great outcry and he finally had to resign, the Director of the CIA at that time walked away, but there was no outcry in the press, there was no outcry in Congress, for the firing of anybody. This is the kind of America we are into. Ladies and gentlemen in America with their common sense, look under their magnifying glass of just plain common sense at what is going on here. What is going on here is we are about to have a great showdown on the budget and the appropriations process. We are about to have a showdown. And yet we have all these outrageous situations that exist, and they are not on the table for discussion. Nobody is discussing cuts in the CIA. Nobody is discussing cuts of the F-22 fighter plane that nobody needs. Nobody is discussing the B-2 bomber, which the President and Secretary of Defense say we do not need. The Joint Chiefs of Staff say we do not need the B-2 bomber. Everybody says we do not need it. Yet the Republican controlled Congress has the B-2 bomber in this great budget they are trying to cut in order to make it safe for future posterity, not to have debts. Look at all this through the eyes of ordinary, common sense Americans. Look at it through the eyes of Hans Christian Anderson's little boy in ``The Emperor Who Had No Clothes.'' The emperor was naked, but the whole society was willing to go along and say the emperor was wonderfully dressed. Only one with the innocent eyes of a child, with the common sense of a child, pointed and said ``Hey, the emperor is naked.'' There are a lot of institutions that are spending a lot of their taxpayers' dollars that are naked. They do not deserve the money. We do need the money in education. We do need the money in health care. We need the money in Medicaid and we need the money in Medicare. Mr. Speaker, what I am saying is that for a moment let us pause and try to get back on track with education. Let us start with education to get back on track. Let us do what we have done for the last 10 years, have a bipartisan approach to education. Education Funding Support Day, on November 15, day after tomorrow, is a time for getting together and returning to a focus on education as something that brings us together, as an issue and a program that we very much need. Sometime the camera is going to catch the exhibits, and I would like to make sure the camera does catch the exhibits tonight. Education Funding Support Day is November 15. We are asking parents, community leaders, union leaders, church leaders, everybody to do something out there at your school. Go to the nearest public school. We do not have to have a central direction for this or wait for flyers or wait for posters. We do not have to wait for anything. It is like the National Night Out Against Crime. Everybody is familiar with the National Night Out Against Crime. On a Tuesday night in August everybody comes out all over the country that night to show they are not afraid to come out to things, to let them know we control the streets and we are, as a society, dedicated to the proposition that we will fight crime. We will fight crime across the board, universal, at every level. Now, Mr. Speaker, It so happens that since we have begun the National Night Out Against Crime, crime has going down dramatically. There are a lot of reasons we might cite, but one of the basic reasons, I think, it that a unified concern about crime has led to a consistent set of measures, a watchdog approach by the people that make the institutions that are related to crime and the criminal justice system function better. I expect that a National Education Funding Support Day will get the same result. Mr. Speaker, the result will be that we will follow up on the public opinion polls that show consistently that the public supports education as a No. 1 priority for government expenditures. The polls keep showing it over and over again, but the decision-makers, at every level, keeping ignoring it. They keep ignoring the fact the public wants us to spend more money on education. It is time we stop that. So we should go out to nearest public school and at our nearest public school we should do something positive for education. Let the fact that people are doing it all over New York City, all over New York State, all over the country, in Washington, DC, everywhere, at the same time, let that send a message to the decision-makers here in Congress, the Republican controlled Congress, the Democrats, who sometimes do not have enough enthusiasm for education also. Let it send a message to the Governors, who are cutting education programs. Let it send a message to Governor Pataki of New York, who has made dramatic cuts in education and is proposing more cuts. Let it send a message to Mayor Giuliani, who is making cuts in New York City in education programs. And all he say as an answer to the problem is he wants to control the board of education, control the school system from city hall. And at the same time he is making these cuts and gives the impression there will be some kind of magic, that city hall is operating at so much less money that they can somehow do a different kind of job. Well, how can they deal with the problem that existed in the New York City schools at the beginning of the school year? Mr. Speaker, 8,000 youngsters in high school and nowhere to sit when school opened. Forty in a class now in most of New York City elementary schools. Forty in a class. Equipment systems in disrepair, where they exists, and most schools have never had science equipment. Ninety percent of the schools have never had a decent computer program. On and on it goes in New York City, and most of the other big cities, in terms of education funding. Across the country most school boards could use more money, where those that are in good shape understand they need more funding and support for improvement. Those that are falling apart, such as the big city systems, desperately need more help. And the small amount the Federal Government contributes is a small proportion, but the Federal Government sets a tone. When we make cuts in Washington, it gives credence to the cuts that are made at the State level and a new impetus for cuts to be made at the city and local level. So we need to stop and think about what we are doing, Mr. Speaker. If we, in the midst of this crisis that has been manufactured, lower our voices and stop and reconsider, we might find that education is an issue that can bring us together. We need therapy. I think Rush Limbaugh last night at the GOPAC meeting was on the right track. He was not cracking as many jokes as he usually cracks. He stepped from the role of being the Speaker's jester to being the Speaker's therapist. And for a moment there, I thought he might be one of the Speaker's new candidates for office, because here is the man who provides the function of comic relief coming to the rescue to calm down the Republican extremist supporters in the room because they have witnessed the uprising of common sense in American public opinion. Mr. Speaker, Amercian public opinion is expressing a commonsense approach to this budget crisis that has greatly frightened the Republican extremists. I know they pretend to be stalwartly forging ahead, but they understand the implications of the polls. I think they understand what happened last week in the election process. There was several election contests over the country which were clear barometers of what the American people, the voters, the taxpayers, think of the Republican extremist policies. There were [[Page H 12176]] clear indications that the American people reject the Republican extremist policies. My father gave me an odd name, Mr. Speaker. My name is Major not by accident. My father was a frustrated militarist. He wanted to be a soldier. He wanted to be a soldier in World War I and he was too young. They would not accept him. World War II came along and he had too many children and they would not accept him in World War II. So he took it out on me by naming me Major. But he was an interesting individual. He only went to the sixth grade in school, but he could work all kinds of mathematics problems. He read all the time. We could not afford many books. We could not afford magazines like Life magazine, for example. I do recall Life magazine always being in the house because I had an aunt who worked for rich people and she would always bring Life magazines home, and my father would always be urging her to stop bringing just back issues but to quickly liberate from the people she was working for, to get him the magazines faster so he could follow what was going on. He read the newspaper every day and he used to particularly read the parts about the war, as World War II progressed. I was very young but I used to watch him and listen to him as he watched the arrows in the various charts that appeared in the newspaper. They used to have maps and charts and the maps would show the movement of Hitler's army across Europe. And at one time the arrow was always going forward. The invincible German army was moving forward. Always the arrows were jumping forward. And suddenly one day I came home and found a big smile on my father's face and he pointed to the arrows and he said they stopped Hitler's army at Stalingrad. They stopped Hitler's army at Stalingrad. Stalingrad became the turning point in World War II. Not that the Russian soldiers or the Russian army was so superior to the men and women who invaded on D-Day and pushed the fight across Europe, but it was the turning point because psychologically it let the world know that Hitler's army was not invincible. The German war machine was not invincible. Last week, Mr. Speaker, on election day, we found that the Republican juggernaut, the blitzkrieg that started in November 1994, is not invincible. It ought to give pause to a lot of people. Common sense should tell us that the overwhelming rejection of Republican policies in Virginia and in Mississippi and Kentucky and a few other places means that the American people have awakened. They are rising up against extremism. Extremism is foreign to American compassion. It is foreign to the caring majority philosophy. Extremism cannot survive. It cannot exist, and that is being demonstrated. So we should begin to think about how we can retreat from extremism. We should stop the ratcheting up of extremism, the recklessness that is going on. We should stop and pause and begin to look at a way to turn around.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, we are at a critical moment in the life of the American democracy. I think it would be helpful if we lower our voices and come together on an issue which unites us. Education is that issue. On this Wednesday, the day after tomorrow, National Education Funding Support Day has been proclaimed. It is important to note at this point that education has always been an issue that has received bipartisan support. Education is an investment. It has always been recognized by both Democrats and Republicans as an investment. Only this year has Republican extremism and recklessness led to a division that has critically injured the support for education in the Congress. On our National Education Funding Support Day, we hope that we can reach out to both sides, both Republicans and Democrats. We hope that we can get the American people to understand what is at stake in the Federal support for education. I think to have something now which leads us to lower our voices and come together would be a good thing. Despite all of the heated rhetoric of the next few days, and despite the fact that there are real issues on the table and very important decisions to be made, I think it would be good if we sort out something that we can agree on, and education is the one thing in the past that we have agreed on. It is time for some effort to calm the waters. Like the gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder], I happened to hear part of the GOPAC celebration. It was on C-SPAN this morning. I could not avoid it. It was on a respectable media outlet, and I heard part of Rush Limbaugh's speech to the GOPAC audience here in Washington. He was addressing a crowd of people who seemed to need at this time some therapy, so Rush the jester, he is the Speaker's jester, became Rush the therapist. It was very interesting to watch how he was calming the fears of the GOPAC crowd that the American people have misunderstood them. He kept telling them do not be anxious, do not be bitter; the American people are going to understand you sooner or later. The fact that the Republican extremism policies have taken a great plunge in the polls, a Wall Street Journal poll shows that more than 60 percent want the President to veto the Republican budget, and more than 70 percent are against the Medicare cuts, has led to some serious soul- searching among Republicans. So Rush Limbaugh was there spreading his arms to calm down Republican fears. I thought that was very interesting. Everybody needs something at this point to calm them down, and certainly to come together on an issue like education I think would have a calming influence.

Mr. OWENS. I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time I have remaining?

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to conclude by saying, God bless the common sense of the American people. God bless the common sense of the American people as reflected in the current polls. God bless the common sense of the American people as reflected in the elections last week. God bless the common sense of the American people because it has brought us through a lot of manufactured crises as well as real crises. This is a manufactured crisis. We do not need to be as mean and extreme as the Republican majority in this House insists on being. We can go forward and we can begin to go forward by supporting education again as a bipartisan effort. Education should be a priority for both Republicans and Democrats. God bless the American people. God bless their common sense.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay homage to Margaret Ross, who on August 31, 1995, ended her 32-year career with the New York City Board of Education. She is an individual who selflessly dedicated her life to children and parents. Throughout her professional career as a social worker, supervisor, and administrator she has been viewed by all whose lives she has touched as a knowledgeable, fair, and caring person. Margaret Ross is an outstanding citizen and deserves to be recognized as a great ``point-of-light'' for all Americans. This longtime resident of Crown Heights, NY, in central Brooklyn, Ms. Ross is involved in many activities that contribute to the betterment of the community. She is a current member and past president of the Sterling Place Civic Association; a member of the Sterling Community Revitalization Corp.; a member of the Medgar Evers College Community Council; a member of the Brooklyn Women's Political Caucus; executive member of Thurgood Marshall Democratic Club; and an elected official of the Democratic Party serving as State committeewoman of the 43d assembly district. Ms. Ross serves as an executive member of the Coalition for Community Empowerment which was founded by Congressman Major Owens and is the leading policy setting organization for the African-American community in Brooklyn. Margaret Ross' dedication transcends professional, personal, and religious domains. Realizing her knowledge, skill, and compassion early in life, Ms. Ross utilized her talent to empathize with people in need. Upon graduating from undergraduate school, she worked as a caseworker in the Department of Welfare. For a short time thereafter, Margaret Ross worked as a psychiatric social worker in Kings County Hospital and then joined the Bureau of Child Guidance of the New York City Board of Education. Subsequently, she became a supervisor of school social workers and 6 years ago, chairperson of the committee on special education in district 13. In an effort to embrace her fellow professionals and to further develop her craft, Margaret Ross is also an active member of the National Association of Social Workers. Currently, she serves on the executive committee of the political action committee. Margaret Ross joined Delta Sigma Theta Sorority at Morgan State University and has continued her affiliation with the Brooklyn alumnae chapter to the present day. She currently serves on the social action committee of the Brooklyn chapter. Ms. Ross began her service to her community and church early in life. She patterned herself after her mother, Alice Debnam, who was a prominent member of Concord Baptist Church. Widowed in her early 1940's, Mrs. Debnam kept Margaret and her two sisters centered with strong religious values and an emphasis on education and a work ethic. After attending Public School 44 and Girls High School in Brooklyn, Margaret Ross received her bachelor of arts degree from Morgan State University. This led her to Howard University where she received a master of social work degree. Subsequently, she attended Brooklyn College for a master's degree in administration and supervision. Margaret Ross is married to Kenneth Ross of Trinidad and Tobago; and they have one daughter, Joann. Ms. Ross is the aunt of Assemblyman Roger Green. Along with her sisters Theopia Green and Ruth [[Page E 2150]] Gray, Ms. Ross will continue in the family tradition of service and commitment to the community. It is unfortunate for the children of district 13 that Ms. Ross no longer lends her special touch to the New York City Board of Education. As she becomes accustomed to a well-deserved retirement, it is certain, however, that she will continue in some capacity as an inspiration to colleagues, parents, children, and staff. Her professional know-how and her sharp political savvy have in no way lessened her personal warmth and caring. In the 11th Congressional District she is appreciated as a great pillar of dedication and empowerment. Margaret Ross is a ``point- of-light'' providing a bright and glowing inspiration for all to follow.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I have great respect for the commitment of the gentleman from Wisconsin to education. I am a bit shocked that he has allowed himself to be used to make this kind of presentation. What the American people fear most is Federal interference in education. Here is a situation where the children of the District of Columbia will be made guinea pigs of the radical right. You will have a private plantation system developed where without any kind of accountability, experimentation will be run out of the Speaker's office. It is the worst kind of situation where Federal money is going to be used in a very partisan way to set some precedents that then will be used for the rest of the country. The precedent with respect to vouchers has been discussed a great deal. We have discussed vouchers. We have gone through that. The American people rejected vouchers for private schools. To come through the back door in this way, using the power of the Speaker's office and holding out carrots for a District which is desperate for funds, is the wrong way to do it. The American people will not tolerate it. I hope we will withdraw this amendment.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, the budget and appropriation process is behind schedule. I think that it has seldom been as far behind as it is now. But, as we all know, it is moving, and the critical high point is about to arrive. The negotiations between the Democratic President and the Republican-controlled Congress will mark the high point of this whole process. Already there have been preliminary negotiations, I understand, at the White House; and we are beginning to enter that process. I think it is important at this point to take stock of where we are and to have the American people understand their vital role in this process. I would like to, first, congratulate the American people, because the polls show that American common sense is again on target. American common sense, despite all the confusion, the double talk, the contradictions, the obfuscation, the diversions, despite it all, the American people understand basically what is going on; and their common sense has prevailed, and we have to listen to it. According to the Wall Street Journal, 61 percent of the people want the President to veto the Republican budget. Yes, the Republican budget produced by this House of Representatives and the Senate, both controlled by Republican majorities, 61 percent of the American people, according to the Wall Street Journal, want the President to veto that budget. Thirty-two percent said it is OK. Seventy-three percent of the American people prefer smaller Medicare and education cuts, and they prefer a 10-year budget, according to the Wall Street Journal. Seventy-three percent prefer a 10-year budget and smaller cuts. Only 22 percent would go with a 7-year budget and the deep cuts that are proposed by the Republican majority. Common sense is on target. Congratulations, American people, congratulations to democracy. When the decisionmakers and the people who are locked into the closets of Washington lose their way and cannot understand the obvious, the American people can bring them back to reality. Yes, the American people are on target right now, but I fear, as we move closer and closer to the climactic point of this whole process of budget and appropriations that there is going to be more attempt to confuse the American people. There will be more obfuscation and more diversions thrown at the American people. So we have to be careful. Contradictions will be rampant. There will be a refusal to acknowledge certain things, like they will not acknowledge the horrible truth about taxes in America. I believe we should have a tax cut. I believe American individuals and families, certainly those making $50,000 or less, must have a tax cut. It is only fair, because they have been swindled, they have been swindled since 1943 by having the great shift in the proportion of the revenue burden borne by individuals and families versus corporations. That is my chart that always bring because there is no truth more fundamental, no truth more important than the truth of this chart, which shows how the tax burden shifted from American corporations to American individuals and families. Herein lies the solution to the problem of the deficit, herein, lies the solution to the problem of a balanced budget, and herein lies the solution to the problem of giving some relief to the American people who have borne such high taxes for so many years. There might have been a justification during the era when we were fighting the cold war. So the American people made sacrifices. They bore the high taxes. The cold war is over now. There is no reason to continue, and there certainly is no reason why you had the shift which is so dramatic from the corporate world bearing the great portion of the tax burden to a situation now where the corporate world bears a very tiny portion of it and individuals and families are forced to bear most of it. I will come back to that, but that is one of those acknowledgments, one of the pieces of truth that both the White House and the Republican-controlled Congress refuse to acknowledge. We are going to have negotiations at the White House, and I certainly support my Democratic President. I am glad that you have the President there instead of a Republican President. We are [[Page H 11742]] going to have a little more balance, but I worry about it. I recall several years ago when negotiations took place at the White House between the Republican President, George Bush, and the Democratic Congress, at that time I also worried, because the same phenomenon was under way, where corporations were still getting away with murder. Corporations were still being allowed to pay less and less taxes. Democrats will have to take responsibility for that. I remember at that time I wrote a rap poem which started: In that great white D.C. mansion there's a meeting of the mob. And the question on the table is which beggars will they rob. There's a meeting of the mob. Now I'll never get a job. I wrote that from the point of view of the average person out there who deserves to have at least an economy which is producing jobs and an economy which is not going to take away too great a portion of his wages after he is able to get a job and make some wages. So this contradiction will not be discussed at the White House at great length. They are going to just give in to the phenomenon which exists, give in to corporations, and that is most unfortunate. We cannot let them do that. I think if the American people understood what is going on in a better way, that common sense out there, that common sense which makes our democracy work among the people, that common sense would be communicated up the ladder to both the Members of the Republican- controlled Congress and the President and his staff in the White House. There is a refusal to acknowledge the great income gap that exists in America right now, that is getting greater, the gap between those who are richest and those who are poorest, has never been larger. We are at the top of the countries in the world in terms of income gap. We used to be in the middle. Great Britain had a greater income gap between the very rich and the very poor. Now it is in America. Democratic America now has the greatest gap between the very rich and the very poor. We have to acknowledge that. If we acknowledge that, then at the White House they would be discussing an increase in the minimum wage. The Republican-controlled Congress says, ``We will not discuss an increase in the minimum wage. We will not increase the minimum wage even one penny.'' That is what they have said. They will not discuss it because we want to bring the wages of American workers down to the level of the cheapest labor in the world. The labor in Mexico is cheap but it is even cheaper in Bangladesh. We want to make our workers come down to that level so our products will become competitive. What they mean is so our profits will skyrocket even more than they are now. We are making the highest profits in the history of Wall Street, in the history of American corporations. They are doing very well, but they want to go down, wages to go down even lower so that they can make even bigger profits. That is a contradiction. That is a problem that they will not acknowledge on one side of the table at the White House. The President is on record that he is willing to raise the minimum wage, but not the Republican-controlled Congress. They will not acknowledge the fact that all of this talk about giving block grants to the States and having the States take over programs, especially the programs that are for the poor, that that has a big contradiction built into it. It is not sound at all. They imply that certain States, like my home State of New York, are wasteful States, that we spend too much money on Medicare and Medicaid, and yet the facts are that New York State as a State consistently pays more into the Federal Treasury in terms of Federal taxes than any other State in the Union. In 1994, we paid in almost $19 billion more than we got back from the Federal Government. It went as high as $23 billion 1 year, what New York State was paying into the Treasury, $23 billion more than we were getting back. On the other hand, the States of the South all pay less into the Federal Treasury than they get back. They get back more from the Federal Government than they pay in, all of the States of the South, except Texas, and the difference is they paid a little bit more in 1994. They paid a little bit more in than they got back. But $68 billion more was received from the Federal Government by the southern States than they paid in. It is the Northeast States, it is the Great Lakes States, those are the States that are paying more in. If you want to have block grants, if you want to push these programs down to the State level, you are going to hurt, you are going to hurt the southern States. You are going to hurt the poorest States. If you gave New York all of its money and said, ``Look, you take care of yourself,'' we would have in New York $19 billion more than we have now. Nineteen billion more would be available to take care of the problems of New York State if they did not have to go to the Federal Government. You know, that kind of contradiction is built into all of this talk about States being given the priority to run programs, all of this criticism of States like New York State that has a higher expenditure for Medicare and Medicaid. We spend our money taking care of people. You know, what do the other States spend their money on? What is wrong? What is more noble than taking care of the health of people? That is another acknowledgment that needs to take place if these discussions are going to go on at the White House. They ought to come back to the American people's level. They ought to come back to the common sense level. They ought to acknowledge that there are generous, giving States and ungrateful, receiving States. Because those Representatives of the ungrateful, receiving States are always up talking about how horrible it is that you have so much money being spent on Medicare and Medicaid in places like New York, they do not acknowledge the fact that they are getting more money from the Federal Government than they paid in on a consistent basis. There is also a refusal, and this is a very costly refusal, a refusal by one side of the table, the Republican-controlled Congress side of the table, to recognize education as a priority investment, and to give education top priority. Again, there is a contradiction here, because we just had today on the floor an amendment related to giving certain additional funds to the District of Columbia for certain items related to education that the Speaker finds very pleasant and thinks, in his own commonsense opinion, a good idea, and we were going to add money to the D.C. budget for that purpose while, at the same time, the almost $4 billion in cuts in education by the Federal Government, when you take away the D.C. portion of that cut, it means that D.C. has lost a tremendous amount of money as a result of actions taken by the Speaker and his Republican-controlled Congress. They are taking away far more than they are giving. It is like the slaves used to have to live under abominable conditions all year long. They had the worst possible housing, they had to wear flax shirts that scratched, they could not sleep in decent beds, they were fed the worst kind of food. At Christmas time the master always made sure everybody got as much as they wanted to eat. You could eat ham on Christmas day, and people rejoiced and they loved the master all year around sometimes because of what he did for them on Christmas. So there is an attempt in this D.C. budget that the Speaker has proposed for education to create Christmas time in D.C. and let everybody be grateful for some extra money that is going to be dropped in there while they cut the basics away from the education aid that comes from the Federal Government. So for education, health care, and other vital programs, we need to act here in Washington in a way which puts us in touch with the common sense out there in the rest of America. The rest of America is on course. We in Washington do not seem to get it. We are caught up in our own rhetoric. We are confused by all the entanglements, and we just do not understand what the basic American people understand. The budget and the appropriations process goes forward. The Senate and the House Appropriations Committees are now going to finalize a budget that [[Page H 11743]] they both agree on. In both the Senate budget and the House budget, there are horrible cuts to very vital programs. There is not much that can be done. That process is in motion, and if the two reach some kind of agreement on the basis of what they both have, the results will still be horrible, because they both have passed budgets and appropriations and the reconciliation package that, in the final analysis, cannot be salvaged. There is no salvaging of the budget between the Senate and the House for Medicaid. Medicaid as an entitlement is taken away. It is no longer there in the House-passed reconciliation bill. They did not do Medicaid the honor of having Medicaid be put in a separate bill so we could vote on Medicaid by itself and discuss the various aspects of what is being lost through these budget cuts. They would not give Medicaid that honor. They had Medicaid treated with great contempt. After all, Medicaid is a program for poor people. They had the worst of contempt for Medicaid, so they just folded Medicaid into the reconciliation bill. Medicaid does not even get a discussion, but the cuts in Medicaid are horrendous, $180 billion, more than $180 billion over a 7-year period. That is a greater percentage cut in Medicaid than the $270 billion cut in Medicare. The percentage cut in Medicaid is greater than the cut in Medicare. Who is getting cut? Mr. Speaker, the budget appropriation process goes forward. The good news is that the American people are on target. The common sense in America will redeem that situation if common sense is allowed to prevail, if common sense is not subjected to a lot of manipulation, a lot of confusion between now and the time the budget is finally decided during the negotiation process between the White House and the Republican-controlled Congress. Common sense says that the Republican budget should be rejected. Again, 61 percent want the President to veto the Republican budget. Thirty-two percent are willing to live with it. Again, among the American people, common sense says that 73 percent of Americans prefer smaller Medicare and education cuts and a 10-year budget. In other words, they say balance the budget over a 10-year period. Do not do it over a 7-year period, because that means that you have to throw certain groups of people overboard, deny them vitally needed services, and create a mean America, an extreme America that does not have to exist. They have come to that conclusion. At the time when Washington, when in Washington both Democrats and Republicans are wavering and nobody can see a clear path on a 10-year budget course, we once had that proposed by the President, then it became 9 years, 8 years, there was a lot of seesawing back and forth. The American people said, ``Look, what makes sense is to have a balanced budget, and if you do it in 10 years, that is good enough, because you can do it then without inflicting great amounts of pain and suffering on large amounts of people.'' Why destroy the fabric of the Nation in an attempt to get the budget under control, if you can get it under control over a longer period without inflicting all of the destruction and pain? Why deliberately dismantle the New Deal, the Great Society programs which large numbers of people benefit from, and they have not been heard from in terms of their not wanting to have these programs continued. They want Medicaid to continue. They want Medicare to continue. They want the small Federal investment in education to continue. Federal investment in education is not that great. So why have that 7 percent of the total education budget for the whole country, why have that cut back? You know, most of the education funds spent in this Nation are supplied by the States and by local governments. The Federal Government only provides 7 percent of the total. About $360 billion- plus is spent on education in all forms. For the last years the figures are available, $360 billion-plus, and of that amount 7 percent only are expenditures that were Federal. So it is the other two levels of government that bear the education burden. The Federal Government bears a portion of it that is vital, however. It is very critical that there be some kind of research and development in education, very critical that there be guidance in terms of standards. It is very critical that what the States themselves would find very inefficient to do, because one State having to bear the burden of educational research means that you have a budget for research that is out of proportion with the total budget. Why do that when you can have the benefit of the economies of scale and have education research, since we all are Americans? We all are living in the same society and the same economy, basically. Why can you not have research with respect to how to improve our schools, how to teach better, how to make better use of our facilities, how to use new educational technology, equipment, why can you not have that done on a national basis by a Department of Education, and have all of the benefits of that research and development shared? That is common sense again, and we do not want to divert from that common sense. So we will have a situation where the commonsense approach that the American people have shown will be under attack, under assault. They will be trying to confuse the issue, trying to manipulate opinions, and the contradictions will be rampant. The contradictions, things that just do not make sense, keep coming out of Washington. Things that just do not make sense are proposed by the Republican-controlled majority. It does not make sense that you have cut education by almost $4 billion, the Federal aid to education, and when you cut Federal aid to education, you are cutting Federal aid to Washington, DC. It does not make sense to cut that so drastically and then come back in a D.C. appropriations bill, District of Columbia appropriations bill, and offer $45 million for vouchers for poor children in the D.C. public schools. You are taking away some money that they had for lunches, you are taking away the money or part of the money they had for title 1 programs, you have taken away part of the money they had for Head Start programs, you have taken away Aid to Families with Dependent Children, so poor children may not have decent clothes or a decent place to stay. You have taken all of that away. Now your are proposing here on the floor to spend $45 million just for vouchers for children in the District of Columbia. You are going to start a voucher system so that children can go to private schools, instead of improving the public schools, and you are going to do that using a special approach which is totally out of sync with the rest of what the education laws are doing. You are going to do that without using the Department of Education? You are going to do that in a way which would allow the worst kind of intrusion into education by the government? Government at any level should not have partisan interference with education. We work very hard to try to keep partisan interference with education at a minimum. But here the Federal Government is feared most of all. We went for years without having the Federal Government have any role in elementary and secondary education, because the American people did not want dominance by the Federal Government on education matters. I have always said this fear on education matters is an unfounded fear, because the tiny portion of the education funds provided by the Federal Government will never place it in a position to dominate education. If we are only providing 7 percent of the funds and the States and local governments are providing the rest of it, how can we come in and dominate education with only 7 percent of the funds? Even if you move that up to 25 percent, and I think it ought to go that way, I think we ought to have the Federal Government participating in the education process in the United States of America to the point where they are at least bearing 25 percent of the cost. If we went up to 25 percent of the cost, then State and local governments control 75 percent of the revenue and the funding, and they would have control of the decisionmaking. Any democracy, if you have 75 percent of the control, then you are in control. Nobody can take 25 percent and come in and dominate how our schools are run. [[Page H 11744]] But if you have a program as the Speaker is proposing here in Washington, where they are going to set up their own private foundation with Government money and the Government money is flowing as a piece of largess from the Speaker, the master of the plantation will provide for Christmas some special goodies, and the master of the plantation wants to sit back and talk about his schools in the District of Columbia, his students in the District of Columbia and what they are doing and play games with it in a way which constitutes dramatic Federal interference into local school activities. That may lead to a lot of good. Christmastime was better than nothing. To be treated like animals all year long, given the least in food, clothing, and shelter, was the lot of the slaves for 232 years. They had to live that way. But if 1 day a year the master decided at least to give some decent food and let them take the day off to eat well and to be free to have a little fun, then Christmas stood out. We do not want that kind of situation in the funding of American schools. I do not see why the D.C. schools have to be a plantation, run by a benevolent Speaker, to have a situation where he can reach in and play with the resources, using Federal money, and dictate the degree to which students go to private schools, can use the powerful office of the Speaker to attract private money. There is a whole lot of interference there, which may be good, but, in the final analysis, will take away the decisionmaking and will set precedents that will be poisonous throughout the whole of America in terms of local school control all over the Nation. So that is one of those contradictions. That is one of the kinds of things you have to sort out. There were people who came to the floor and said, ``Should I vote for that Christmas gift on the plantation approach to D.C. schools? Should I make sure that some handful of kids get some benefits? Or should I vote for the principles of not having Federal interference to play with the schools in the District of Columbia?'' It was not an easy decision, because when the Speaker hands out a possible Christmas gift of $45 million, it is kind of a hard gift to turn down. It is hard to say to the children of the District of Columbia, you cannot have this gift, because, in the long run, it is going to poison the whole Federal relationship with local governments. This will be a precedent that will certainly lead downhill. Every powerful politician in the Congress, in Washington, will want at some time to play with the education budget in order to be able to have his own plantation and give out Christmas gifts as he sees fit. That is not the way to go. It is dangerous. Despite the fact is passed the House today, I hope that wisdom will prevail and we will never see the Christmas gift approach to Washington schools, turning them into a plantation, take place. That is a contradiction you ought to take a hard look at. Take a hard look at the details, American people, with all your common sense. I leave it up to you to evaluate that and see it for what it is worth. Let me give you another example of the kind of contradictions you have to live with. In the great White House negotiations on the budget, neither side is going to be truthful about the waste of more than $28 billion by the Central Intelligence Agency. The budget of the CIA, an intelligence operation of the United States, is admittedly $28 billion or more. Nobody knows that secret figure. Who can tell it? The few people who know it are sworn not to tell it. So the $28 billion that goes into the CIA is supported by both parties. Along with some colleagues, I brought a bill to the floor which would cut the CIA budget by 10 percent over a 5-year period. Now, over a 5- year period, if you got 10 percent of $28 billion, you would get $2.8 billion per year over a 5-year period. That is not bad in terms of funds that could be transferred to education. You are cutting education specifically by $3.8 billion, almost $4 billion. You are cutting job training programs. You are cutting the Summer Youth Employment Program. With a $2.8 billion cut from the CIA budget, and it still would have 90 percent of its budget, we only cut it by 10 percent a year, if you got that $2.8 billion from the CIA budget, you would have some way to give money back to some of these vitally needed programs that have been cut. It is as simple as that. But the CIA budget will not be touched. We brought the motion to the floor. We had the amendment on the floor to cut it by 10 percent. The first year, we got 57 votes. The last time we brought it up, we got 54 votes. We are going in the opposite direction. Why do Democrats and Republicans all want to keep a CIA funded at the level of $28 billion when the cold war is over and half of the role of the CIA was to spy on the Soviet Union? And they missed out on that because they did not predict the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since we brought our bills to the floor, there have been some recent developments in the CIA that even more justify the fact that the CIA is a great waste of the taxpayers' money. I am not saying to cut it out completely, but you could streamline and downsize the CIA, probably by cutting the budget in half. Because it is obvious that half of the people there are nothing but fumblers and bunglers, old boys in the network, who have a good time. They use the safe houses for illicit sex. They run up expense accounts that nobody can really control. They come up with slush funds. Recently, it was announced they had a slush fund, a petty cash fund, that was more than $1.5 billion. Can you imagine a petty cash fund in an agency for more than $1.5 billion, and the head of the agency does not know about the petty cash fund? Nobody in authority. The Director of the CIA stated he did not know that there was a petty cash fund of $1.5 billion or more. They do not give figures exactly, but I know from good sources it was at least $1.5 billion. Nobody knew about it. The President did not know. We have got two intelligence committees, one in the House and one in the Senate. Whenever you talk about cutting the CIA budgets, they always have spokesmen from those committees come forward and talk about the great work the CIA is doing and they need every penny. Here is a slush fund out there nobody knew about. The CIA also built a building for $370-some million near the Dulles Airport. They had a building going up under construction, and the Federal Government did not know who was constructing it. The intelligence committees here in Congress did not know that the CIA was constructing that building. How can you construct a building which costs $370 million near the Dulles Airport, and it be invisible? I suppose that may be an example of how wonderful the CIA is, how masterful their work is. They can construct a building for $370 million and you not know it is there, that takes real skill. I do not know whether it is espionage skill or skill in manipulating, but it takes some kind of skill to have a building that costs $370 million constructed near the Dulles Airport, and it be invisible to the members of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the President and the people who should know about it. So what I am saying is that while this great budget cut is going forward, while we are trying to balance the budget, while we are saying that we want to bring the Federal Government under control, we want to streamline the Government, while we are saying that the Medicare Program must make sacrifices to the tune of $270 billion, while we are saying we have to take away the Medicaid entitlement and Medicaid has to make a sacrifice to the tune of $180 billion, while we are saying we can have no more Summer Youth Employment Program, while we are doing all these horrendous things to streamline the budget and balance the budget in 7 years, we are still willing to keep funding the CIA at the same level. We are still willing to keep tying up taxpayer money in an enterprise that has discredited itself. We will not even cut it 10 percent, let alone one-half. Of course, you all know the Aldrich Ames story. I conclude finally with the CIA and the Aldrich Ames story. The last time we had our amendment on the floor, an amendment which called for cutting the CIA by 10 percent, the Aldrich Ames story was out [[Page H 11745]] there. We knew that Aldrich Ames, a key figure, a key person in the CIA, responsible for counterespionage or espionage with Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, was a spy for the Soviet Union. That was a fact that had been let out there. The CIA probably would have wanted to keep it secret, but circumstances were such that it could not be kept secret. Ames used safe houses for elicit sex. He was a drunkard. I am sure his petty cash vouchers were never correct. Everything you can imagine, Aldrich Ames did it for years and years in the CIA. Yet they kept pushing him upstairs. They kept promoting Aldrich Ames. He got away with so much, he decided to go for broke, and he was on the Soviet Union's payroll for millions of dollars. Aldrich Ames is still arrogantly challenging the CIA. Aldrich Ames still has not told everything. But the Inspector General of the CIA has conducted an investigation, and the recent conclusion, it is not a secret, it is in the papers, the conclusion is that Aldrich Ames not only caused the death of more than 10 agents in the employ of the United States, not only caused the death of all those people, but he also had a system which was passing on false information up the ladder. Even when the supervisors in the CIA became suspicious of the information that they were getting, they passed it on anyhow, as high as the Secretary of Defense and the President. They let the information go through without saying there is a problem here, or there might be a problem here. The supervisors and the whole old-boy network within the CIA was contaminated to the point where they were knowingly passing on false information to all the Presidents in the past 10 years. That was going on while Aldrich Ames was in charge of spying on Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. This is known. Yet we have in the budget an untouchable item. The negotiations at the White House will go forward and say yes, we can get rid of the Summer Youth Employment Program, 32,000 youngsters in New York City, all the big city across the country, where we have thousands of youngsters who get summer employment from the program. We can get rid of that, but must keep every dime in the CIA. These contradictions are what the American people need to know about, so you can keep your focus. You are right. You are on track when you say that the President should veto the Republican budget and when you say we should not cut Medicare and Medicaid so drastically; when you say we should spread the budget cuts out for a 10-year period and balance it over a 10-year period instead of 7 years. You are on target. American people, you are on target. Congratulations, democracy. Do not let anybody turn you around. Keep remembering the CIA and that kind of waste. Keep remembering the D.C. Christmas present, the D.C. plantation Christmas present that comes from the Speaker at a party that has cut education across the country by almost $4 billion. I have one more example, and then I will stop giving examples of contradictions that are running rampant. The final example I give you is an example taken from the Washington Post magazine. This magazine, October 29 of this year, the Washington Post. I give you the documented source. You can get a copy of this, there is no problem. Rush Limbaugh does not have to put his researchers to work to put this out. If Rush Limbaugh wants his researchers to check out the Washington Post, he has enough to do that, and he can do that. But this is a story of monumental waste that every taxpayer should be indignant about. Monumental waste. And yet it took place in the defense budget. The defense budget is being increased, Mr. Speaker. Over a 7-year period the defense budget will go up. The defense budget will be increased at a time when there is no more evil empire in the Soviet Union, at a time when we can certainly close down most of our overseas bases, at a time when we do not need any more Seawolf submarines, do not need any more high cost nuclear aircraft carriers, at a time when star wars is ridiculous. We are going to continue funding some of those same items. So the contradiction, the greatest contradiction is in the insistence by the Republican controlled majority in the Congress that we continue to build up the defense budget. A sad portion of that contradiction is that the Democrats in Congress and the White House do not challenge that assumption. Democrats have not proposed, as a party, that we cut the defense budget. Oh, yes, the Congressional Black Caucus proposed deep cuts in wasteful defense expenditures, but Democrats will not touch it and Republicans want to increase it drastically. That contradiction the American people should bear in mind. They should keep their commonsense head on. Mr. Speaker, listen to this. According to the report in the Washington Post, October 29, 1995, the magazine section, the Pentagon spent $3 billion on a stealth bomber that was never built. Pentagon spent $3 billion on a stealth bomber that was never built. Now, $3 billion would almost keep the education programs, 70 education programs. Education programs were cut drastically. Some were zeroed out. The overall cost was $3.8 billion in cuts, to be exact. $3.8 billion. If we just got back $3 billion from the waste in the Pentagon on this stealth bomber, we would be way ahead of the game in terms of funding education programs that are vitally needed. So understand the relationship, the refusal of the White House, the refusal of the Republican controlled Congress to talk about the waste in defense, which generates suffering and pain in the rest of the budget and it prevents us from investing in vitally needed programs like education and job training. Mr. Speaker, we vitally need education programs and we vitally need job training programs. We cannot do that if we continue to waste money like this. We spent $3 billion to build a stealth bomber and it was never built. Here is the additional information that the American people need to know. We may have to spend $2 billion more in order to get it finally canceled. Listen. We have already spent $3 billion on a stealth bomber that was never built, never flew, but we may have to spend $2 billion more because the companies that were supposed to build this bomber are now suing the Government and stating that the taxpayers owe them another $2 billion. This is going on right here in Washington, DC at a time when Medicare is being cut drastically, at a time when Medicaid is being cut, at a time when education is being cut by almost $4 billion. Mr. Speaker, listen to this. I read from the Washington Post magazine: It looks like something out of a sci-fi movie. A flying triangle, 37 feet long and 70 feet wide. A plane that does not have wings but it is one big wing. It is sitting in a huge hangar in a defense plant in Fort Worth propped up on a makeshift trailer. Bill Plumley, the man who saved it from the scrap heap, stands on his tiptoes, reaches up to the plane's lightweight underbelly, he sticks his right had into its innards, he taps on the landing gear and he says, `It is all plastic', he says with a smile. That makes sense. After all, this is a model. This is a model plane. It is a full-sized mock-up constructed to test whether all the parts would fit together. But now it is all that remains of the United States Navy's A-12 Avenger''. This is what the stealth bomber was called, the A-12 Avenger. A plane that has never flown and never will. It is a procurement fiasco that has already cost the American taxpayers more than $3 billion and is quite likely to cost them $2 billion more. The A-12 was killed in 1991, smothered in its cradle by Dick Cheney, who was then Secretary of Defense. Cheney was angry that the plane was at least a billion dollars over budget and a year behind schedule. He was angry because those were the facts, but he was also angry because the Navy and its contractors had concealed from him until after he testified to Congress the fact--they told him the A-12 project was proceeding just fine. In other words, the Secretary of Defense came to Congress and testified the A-12 is on schedule and it is not exceeding its cost, and shortly after that he discovered that not only was it not on schedule, it was a year behind schedule and it was at least a billion dollars over the projected cost. Inevitably, because this is America, the A-12 has spawned a lawsuit. The Secretary of Defense killed it. He said, [[Page H 11746]] no, we will not go further. I will not waste any more of the taxpayers' money. This project is over. We have spent $3 billion, the plane is not here, it does not fly, it is continually mounting in overrun costs, it is canceled. But he found he could not do that. The company sued. It is a gargantuan and seemingly endless case, described in various newspaper accounts as the largest claim ever filed against the Federal Government and the most expensive lawsuit ever. In other words, the American taxpayers have paid out already $3 billion and now these suits will cost them another $2 billion, these lawsuits that the companies are bringing. At issue is a huge sum of money. The Navy wants the contractors to return $1.35 billion of the money that they have already received for the plane that they never built. All this has happened and no one has gone to jail yet. Only in America could this happen and no one ever go to jail. Even in Europe the head of NATO was recently told he is under investigation and probably will be indicted for some crooked things he did in terms of procurement of weapons. But in America nobody has been indicted; nobody is being investigated for wasting $1.35 billion. Mr. Speaker, the contractors now have the nerve to say not only did they not build the plane and wasted the taxpayers' money, but they want the taxpayers to pay $1.6 billion more. Nobody expects this case to end any time soon, and one attorney for the contractors said it could drag on until the year 2007. The government could lose this case merely because the Secretary of Defense eagerly took responsibility and said I will not let this swindle of the American taxpayers go on any longer. He took action quickly and hastily, and they say he had no authority to take that action. Somebody else was supposed to make that decision. And that is the basis of a court suit that will rob the American people probably of another $2 billion. Mr. Speaker, the taxpayers have spend $3 billion on a plane that cannot fly. Three billion dollars. Three billion dollars is the cost of all the cuts in education except a few. We could take that $3 billion and restore most of the cuts in education programs. $1.1 billion has been cut from title I programs. Title I programs go all across the country to schools where poor children exist. Three hundred million dollars has been cut from Head Start programs all across the country. The only time Head Start has been cut since its existence. President Nixon funded Head Start with an increase, President Bush increased Head Start, President Reagan increased Head Start and President Carter increased Head Start. We have never cut Head Start since it came into existence. Now we have cut Head Start, but we will continue to pour money down the drain on this weapon system we have already decided to cancel. And in this reconciliation package, which is summarized here, the one place where there are increases in the budget is in the defense budget. Great increases take place here in defense. Mr. Speaker, the American people are on target. Remember what I said in the beginning. The American people said the President should veto this budget. He should veto the budget that contains these increases. He should veto this budget that contains all these increases for defense while cutting education, while cutting Medicare, while cutting Medicaid. Sixty-one percent of the American people said veto the budget. Seventy-three percent of the American people say we prefer smaller Medicare and education cuts, and we prefer smaller Medicare and education cuts, and we prefer a balanced budget over a 10-year period. Common sense is on target. The contradictions are what we have to watch in order for the American people to maintain their common sense and in order for the American people to understand they are right and people are wrong here in Washington; that the Republican-controlled Congress is wrong. The Republican-controlled Congress is dangerously wrong. The American people are right and the Republicans are wrong. The American people should keep their heads on. They should not let all these contradictions I just talked about confuse them. Mr. Speaker, another thing the American people have to worry about, and the reason why they are right and the Republicans are wrong here, is because the Republicans refuse to acknowledge basic facts like the ones exhibited by this chart. They refuse to acknowledge the horrible truth about taxes in America. The horrible truth about taxes in America is that families and individuals have been grossly swindled. And I cannot say this too often, because nobody else in Washington is willing to say it. Here is the answer. Yes, we need a tax cut. The American people need a tax cut. Families below $50,000 deserve a tax cut. They should have a tax cut. I think the President's proposal for a tax cut is on target. The gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Gephardt's proposals for a tax cut is on target. When we combine the two, we can get a sensible tax cut that takes care of trying to correct a wrong that has been done to the American people. The red line here is corporate America's share of the tax burden. The blue line here is the share of the tax burden borne by individuals and families. In 1943, the first year for these two charts, individuals and families were paying only 27.1 percent of the total tax burden. If Rush Limbaugh and his various researchers want to check these figures out, these figures come from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. They can go to the Congressional Budget Office. These are not the kind of figures that there is any controversy about. These figures are all hard figures. In 1943 27.1 percent of the tax burden was borne by the families and individuals, while 39.8 percent, almost 40 percent of the tax burden was borne by corporations. Corporations, where they are making the greatest amount of money now. Individuals are making less money. Wages have gone down but corporations are making more. At that time they were bearing more of the burden. We had a great change take place in 1983 when Ronald Reagan first proposed his trickle-down theories. It was not just Ronald Reagan by himself. He had to have some cooperation by the Democratically- controlled Committee on Ways and Means. So the burden for this one is borne by all of the Washington decisionmakers. It shot up from 27.1 percent in 1943 to 48.1 percent of the tax burden being borne by individuals and families in 1983, 40 years later. 48.1 percent of the tax burden while corporations dropped all the way from 39.8 percent of the tax burden to 6.2 percent. Mr. Speaker, the American people should listen and let their common sense go to work. They should let their common sense look at these figures. There is no common sense in Washington. Somehow it all gets clouded. There are a lot of factors that go into motion here which make it impossible for Democrats to see this chart and makes it impossible for the Republicans to see this chart. There are obvious answers that jump out at us from this chart. Are things better now in 1995 than they were in 1983? Yes, they are slightly better. Individuals and families are paying 43.7 percent of the tax burden, instead of 48.1 percent of the tax burden. So individuals are paying a little less than they were before. Corporations are paying 11.2 percent of the tax burden instead of 6.2 percent, which was the low point they achieved under Ronald Reagan's trickle-down theory. There has been an adjustment. It is a little bit better. But look at the discrepancy here. We still have 48.7 percent of the tax burden being borne by families and individuals, while 11.2 percent is borne by corporations. Do Members want to balance the budget? Do Members want to lower the deficit. Do Members want to give a tax cut all at the same time? We do not need to use magic. Magic is not necessary. Cut the defense budget that is wasteful that I was talking about before and we get rid of the corporation loopholes. Mr. Speaker, no Democrat wants to be caught raising taxes. No Republican wants to raise taxes. We can raise this figure here, the share of the revenue that is contributed by corporations can be raised without increases taxes. What we do is close the tax loopholes. [[Page H 11747]] Close the tax loopholes which allow foreign corporations, American corporations with foreign operations, to pay less taxes than corporations in this country totally. Corporations who have all their operations in this country and give all their jobs and business to American workers and pour it into the American economy, they do not get the same benefits as corporations who have foreign operations. Mr. Speaker, if we just eliminated that loophole, we would raise this figure a little bit. If we eliminated the subsidies that go to corporations for advertising products in foreign markets, we would raise it a little bit more. In our Congressional Black Caucus alternative budget we eliminated enough loopholes to raise the revenues of the corporations up to 16 percent. If we raise it up to 16 percent and we cut the defense budget, the waste in the defense budget, we can end up with a balanced budget and we do not cut Medicare and Medicaid 1 cent. We could end up with a balanced budget and not cut education. Instead of cutting education, education was one area where we increased the budget by 25 percent. In the Congressional Black Caucus alternative budget, education was increased by 25 percent. Mr. Speaker, education is an investment that America needs to make. It is an investment that the Federal Government needs to make, and we gave it the highest priority. We can do that and still balance the budget and eliminate the deficit and give a tax cut, but we have to deal with the corporate tax loopholes. We have deal with the swindle, the great swindle down from 39.8 percent to 11.2 percent. We do not have to be geniuses. Any sophomore in high school could do the figures and see, calculate the percentages and see what this figure is. It got as low as 6.2 percent. The scandal was so great, until there was an agreement that we had to do something about this figure. Corporations were paying in 1983 as little as 6.2 percent of the total tax burden, and individuals were all the way up to 48.1 percent. What am I talking about? I am saying that there are facts and circumstances which the negotiators at the table who are going to decide on the budget that is going to set the course for America for a long time to come will not even acknowledge. They will not acknowledge this chart provides the key to balancing the budget, ending the deficit, and giving a tax cut. They will not acknowledge that a great swindle took place. So, Mr. Speaker, I present it to you. The American people have common sense who show in the polls that they know what is happening. I say to the American people, ``You be the judge. You be the judge of what ought to be happening here in Washington.'' This is a truth that must be acknowledged. Another truth that must be acknowledged is the fact of the income gap. Those people who are lucky enough to have a job, the only way that they can get more income is if we lower the taxes. They deserve a tax cut. Families and individuals making $50,000 or less must get a tax cut. I am in agreement with the President and the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Gephardt] on the kind of tax cut that we ought to have. Mr. Speaker, we lower this figure so that the income of these people would be increased. That is justice, to bring down the tax here. It would be justice if we brought them up here, so that we do not increase the deficit at the same time. The minimum wage would not cost the American people anything. Taxpayers do not pay a penny in terms of minimum wage increases. It means that we pay a decent wage to people in corporations and private businesses. The government sector also would have to pay additional money, although there are almost no government jobs still that are paying minimum wage. They are already above the minimum wage. Mr. Speaker, the minimum wage is low, $4.25 an hour. The President and the Democrats in Congress have proposed to increase this $4.25 an hour by 90 cents over a 2-year period; 45 cents 1 year and 45 cents another year. That is the least we can do to deal with a situation which has steadily grown worse. As the minimum wage has stagnated and stood still, the earning power of these families has gone down. So, we have a situation now where what workers make at the minimum wage pays for far less than it used to. The minimum wage as a percent of the average nonsupervisory wage has dropped from 52 percent in 1960, to a current low of 37.7 percent. In other words, people in supervisory positions, executive positions, as a percent of wages, minimum wage earners are making 37.7 percent where they used to make about half as much as what the bosses made. The gap in the income is great and it must be attended to. This is the 57th anniversary for the minimum wage. It was started October 24, 1938. American workers were guaranteed 25 cents an hour wage to protect them from exploitation and to be sure that their work was fairly compensated. We need to increase the minimum wage. Nobody wants to deal with the truth of the income gap and increase minimum wage. Mr. Speaker, nobody wants to deal with the truth or the fact that as they move all of these programs, like Aid to Families with Dependent Children, like the school lunch program, like portions of Medicare, programs are being pushed down, education programs, to the State and local level. They are saying that the State and local level can handle them better and they are saying that Washington is wasteful. But in America, many States would not have these programs at all if they had to pay for them alone. Franklin Roosevelt knew what he was doing. He was not naive. Lyndon Johnson knew what he was doing. He was not naive. They understood when they created the New Deal programs that we had a situation where the wealth of the East and Northeast would be translated and go to the poorer States. Mr. Speaker, let me wind up by saying my message is that Americans are on track. Their common sense, the way they read the situation in Washington, is the one that is correct. Mr. Speaker, I say to Americans, ``Do not allow anybody to confuse you. Maintain your common sense. America needs your common sense in order to get through this budget crisis.''

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, it is my great privilege and pleasure to take note of an eminent constituent and model American who should serve as a great ``point-of-light'' for all--Mrs. Natalie Helene Jacobs Cave. After over 50 years of exemplary Federal service to America's veterans, Mrs. Cave is retiring. For 50 years, Mrs. Cave practices her profession as a certified social worker, beginning with a stint from 1945 to 1948 as a case worker at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Tuskegee, AL. It was here she met her future husband, Dr. Vernal G. Cave. In 1948, she transferred to what became the New York Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, where she continued as a case worker. A year later, she and Dr. Cave, a noted dermatologist, married and settled in Brooklyn, NY, where they still reside. In 1959, she was promoted to assistant chief of social work and was put in charge of the department's outpatient service. For the past 14 years she has been chief of social service work. Mrs. Cave holds membership in a number of professional organizations, including the National Association of Social Workers, the National Association of Black Social Workers, the Society of Hospital Social Work Directors, and the National Social Welfare Forum. In addition, Mrs. Cave has led an active extracurricular life. Among other positions in the auxiliary of the National Medical Association, she was its national president, 1975-76. Her community activities include membership on the advisory board of the Public Affairs Committee, the Brooklyn Chapter of Links, Inc., the YWCA, the NAACP, the Kings County Medical Society Auxiliary, the Provident Medical Society Auxiliary, the American Medical Association Auxiliary, and the Black Community Council of Crown Heights. She is an active archousa of the Sigma Phi Pi fraternity, trustee of the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, board member of the United Nations Association of the USA, and an active and devoted member of various other social and civic organizations. She recalls her attendance at the 1963 march on Washington for civil rights as a pivotal event in her quest for social justice. This daughter of a Baptist minister, Rev. Frank Jacobs, and a school teacher, Mrs. Natalie Taylor Jacobs, was born in Norfolk, VA. Her parents instilled in her a belief in education, a love for people and a philosophy of purposeful living to help others. Mrs. Cave devoted her life to these concepts. She received her early education at the Alabama State Teachers College Laboratory School and in the public schools of Bridgeport, CT. In 1943, Helene graduated with honors from the preeminent Bennett College, commonly referred to as, ``the Vasser of the South,'' located in Greensboro, NC. Interested in helping people, she continued her formal education and graduated in 1944 with a master's degree in social work from the Atlanta University School of Social Work and pursued additional advance education courses at the University of Michigan School of Social Work. The family creed of devoting their lives to the enhancement of others is echoed by Mrs. Cave's two sisters and her brother. All three are former government administrators in people-oriented agencies. Mrs. Marie Jacobs Jones was employed by the Social Security Administration in Columbus, OH. Mr. Taylor Jacobs recently retired as manager of the Kalamazoo, MI Social Security office. Mrs. Frankie Jacobs Gillette served as division chief of the community service administration, region IX in San Francisco, CA. Mr. Speaker, it is important to note that, along with her husband, Vernal, Helene Cave has always found time, despite her busy professional schedule, to contribute to the building of a stronger civic and empowerment infrastructure for the central Brooklyn community. The Caves have consistently supported elected officials who are advocates of greater citizen participation in decisionmaking. Leaders who refuse to compromise with oppression are always guaranteed the support of Vernal and Helene Cave. In administering to needs of our Nation's veterans and those of society at large, this gracious and empathetic lady was contributed admirably to making this a better world. It is, therefore, my great honor to bring to your attention a life of great accomplishment. I celebrate the much-deserved retirement of Mrs. Natalie Helene J. Cave, a person who, without reservation, deserves to be honored as a ``point- of-light'' for all Americans.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor Joseph Francois, an individual who has tirelessly dedicated his life to making our society better. This individual is directly responsible for community enhancement efforts that impact education, social/human services and health care. His vision, sincerity and competence have resulted in the writing of winning grant proposals and valuable research studies that empower the community. Mr. Joseph Francois is a great ``Point-of- Light'' whose work must not go unappreciated or unnoticed. Since 1978, Mr. Francois has been chief executive officer of the Brownsville Community Development Corporation. He is also the project director of the Brownsville Multi-Service Family Health Center, responsible for the overall management of a comprehensive health facility. He is responsible for proposal writing, financial and budgetary conditions of the corporation, and is in the process of developing an alcoholism outpatient clinic and halfway house. Joseph Francois is also planning the creation of a birthing center. Throughout the years, Joseph Francois has worked diligently in top positions that he found to be beneficial to his community. He was personnel director of the New York City Board of Education, Community School District No. 23. As such, he was responsible for the employment of all pedagogical and administrative staff necessary for the operation of elementary and junior high schools in district No. 23. Mr. Francois served as a program analyst, responsible to the New York State Minority Leader for the analysis and evaluation of problems facing New York City and State. Recent publications on which he served as chief analyst included ``Study of Men's Shelter,'' and a study of anti-poverty programs entitled ``Serving the Poor,'' which was nominated for an award for outstanding legislative research and was jointly recommended by the then city council president, Carol Bellamy. Mr. Francois also served as director of operations for Wildcat Service Corporation in New York City where he was responsible for the overall management of more than 350 employees. His primary area of expertise is evident by his effort in creating the first health group in the city where community and hospital leaders jointly planned to coordinate health needs for the community with a private hospital in Brooklyn. There he acted in the capacity of chairman of the board. In 1969, this group was known as the Brownsville Brookdale Health Coalition. Mr. Francois was affiliated with the Mayor's Organization Task Force for Comprehensive Health Planning. He also headed the Anti- Poverty Program for Brownsville which planned and devised programs which assisted the community in receiving grants from the National Institute for Mental Health [NIMH] to run demographic studies relevant to community needs. He is a past member of the New York City Council Against Poverty. Mr. Speaker, Joseph Francois is truly a ``Renaissance Man'' whose interests and deeds extend to all critical areas of community survival and development. Mr. Francois has never hesitated to speak out and fight against political abuse and corruption. In 1982, Joseph Francois personally drove nonstop from New York City to Albany to deliver legal briefs to the New York State Court of Appeals in the case where the Kings County political machine plotted to rob congressional candidate Major Owens of a Democratic Party primary election victory. His heroic ride to meet the filing deadline resulted in the declaration by the State's highest court that Major Owens was unquestionably the winner of that 1982 election. Along with Mr. Francois' dedication to his community, in addition to his traditional educational achievements, he completed 4 years of theological training and was ordained a Deacon by the Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens. Married and a resident of Brooklyn, NY, Joseph Francois' distinguished life marks one of dedication to community, to God, and to family. Undoubtedly, his input in New York State legislative policy, outstanding research, and effective design of programs have improved the overall quality of life for many children, men, women, and families. Joseph Francois is a great ``Point-of-Light,'' not only for the people of his New York community, but for all of the people of America.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to two provisions in this mean-spirited attack on educational opportunity and on the lowest paid workers in America, the people who are covered by the Service Contract Act. There is no need to go after the workers in the Service Contract Act. it does not have anything to do with increasing revenues for this country. It will not cost us anything in tax expenditures; however, it may cost a great deal in food stamps and unemployment insurance if we end the service contract and lower the wages of the lowest paid workers in the country. Wage determinations under the Service Contract Act in 30 cities come out to $6.07 per hour for janitors, $5.42 for food service workers, $5.59 for guards. Why are we going after these lowest paid workers in America? Why is the mean-spirited attack on workers continuing through the Reconciliation Act? It does not save any money. It will cost us money in the end. We will also lose money by not investing more in education in America. Educational opportunity is an investment. It is not an expenditure. We need to widen the amount of money available in discretionary programs so that we can restore many of the cuts made in education. We want to restore the cuts in title I. We want to restore the summer youth employment grant. We also want to make certain that the job training programs which are defunded have money restored. If we extend this attempt to balance the budget over a 10-year period instead of a 7-year period, we can gain back many of the dollars that are needed to restore these educational cuts in the budget. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to this mean-spirited attack on educational opportunity in America and on the lowest paid workers in America. Education has become a matter of individual economic survival in this country. You cannot succeed, you cannot earn enough to support a family, you cannot achieve the American dream, without postsecondary education. Americans understand this and they now make enormous sacrifices to obtain access to the halls of higher education, working extra hours, taking second jobs, scrimping, saving, and, inevitably, assume crushing debt burdens. Instead of honoring the determination and the responsibility of these Americans, today this House is about to make their struggle that much harder, piling on aid cuts of more than $10 billion. Many families will not be able to afford cuts of these magnitude. More importantly, no family should be asked to shoulder this additional burden. There is no high purpose behind all this; the only reason we are savaging these programs is to free up money for the Republican tax cut payoff. This bill also wages a parallel assault on elementary and secondary education and job training, threatening both the availability and the quality of educational and training opportunities for millions of American children. The dramatic reduction in permissible discretionary spending that would be imposed by this bill between now and the year 2002 will savage Federal assistance for elementary and secondary education. The Labor-HHS-Education appropriations legislation passed by the House earlier this year offers just a preview of the carnage to come. The title I program, which supports tutoring and remedial educational services for low-income children and others who are falling behind in school, is cut by $1.1 billion, or 17 percent, throwing 1.1 million educationally disadvantaged students out of the program. The Safe and Drug-Free School Program, which provides support to nearly every school district in the country for drug abuse education programming and antiviolence activities, is slashed by 60 percent, eliminating services to 23 million schoolchildren. Cuts in funding for the Adult Education Act will deny services to 125,000 illiterate adults next year. Cuts in Head Start will toss nearly 50,000 preschool children out of that acclaimed program. Support for training for disadvantaged youth is cut in half and the entire summer youth employment program is eliminated, denying 600,000 young people job and education opportunities next summer. These draconian reductions, I emphasize, are just the beginning; this is just the first year, the first cinching of the garotte on educational funding imposed by this legislation. More than $36 billion will be bled from educational programs over the next 7 years. The debate today is not about deficit reduction and balancing the budget. The issue is how we go about reaching the balanced budget and what programs should be given priority for funding. Earlier this year, the Congressional Black Caucus put forward a budget proposal which, like the Republican plan, balanced the budget over 7 years. We did not cut Federal support for education by one dime. Indeed, we nearly doubled spending for education, training, and other human investment programs. We expanded and improved educational opportunity in America and, at the same time, eliminated the deficit, balanced the Federal budget, and provided a tax cut to working families as well. It is not necessary to attack education in order to achieve the professed goals of the majority. But attack education is what this legislation does, virtually and violently. Key Federal investments in education which make the American dream possible for all of our citizens are blotted out. Key Federal investments in education which make the American dream possible for all our citizens are blotted out. Key Federal investments in education which make our economy thrive are extinguished. This legislation does not provide for the future of our children and youth--it destroys it. I oppose the repeal of the Service Contract Act because it is nothing more than an assault on the standard of living of some of the hardest working men and women in our Nation; and it is an assault which will deprive workers and their families of a fair wage, health insurance, and pension protections for their senior years. The Service Contract Act has enjoyed bipartisan support since it was enacted in 1965 and amended in 1972. The law has been virtually without controversy because it protects some of our most exploited and victimized workers in our Nation. Today, 30 years later, the Service Contract Act continues to protect almost 1 million workers--most of whom are minority and female workers in low-wage occupations. For example, service contract workers include cooks, bakers, cashiers, mess attendants, cleaners, custodians, janitors, housekeeping aides, window washers, trash collectors, mechanics, clerks, small equipment mechanics, cafeteria workers, food preparation workers, machinery and furniture repair workers, landscapers, keypunchers, and laundry workers, to name but a few. The single largest occupation covered by the Service Contract Act is janitor, porter, cleaner which, in 1986, accounted for 18 percent of the total SCA-covered work force. The other largest categories are housekeeping aid, security guard, mess attendant, and food service worker. These occupations are ones in which the employment of women, African-Americans, and Hispanics predominates. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of all employed janitors, porters, and cleaners, 34 percent are women, 24 percent are African-American, and 11 percent are Hispanic. In housekeeping occupations--performed outside private homes--84 percent of such workers are women, 31 percent are African- Americans, and 13 percent are Hispanic. The food preparation and service occupations also consist of high proportions of women and minorities. Fifty-seven percent of these jobs are held by women; 12 percent are held by African-Americans, and 13 percent are held by Hispanic workers. Thus, the repeal of the Service Contract Act will injure, in particular, low-wage workers and primarily women, African- Americans, and Hispanic workers. Repeal of the SCA would shred the safety net, as modest as it is, for these service contract workers, many of whom earn a very modest wage even with the Service Contract Act. For example, janitors in Atlanta, GA, receive $12,730 under the Service Contract Act. In St. Louis, MO, janitors make $12,860 annually and in a high-wage area like Boston, janitors make $17,200 annually. When the Federal poverty line of $14,754 for a family of four is considered, it is clear that even with the protections of the Service Contract Act, workers still need the protection of the act. One of the myths about the Service Contract Act is that it no longer protects low-wage employees, but rather protects high technology professional and managerial employees. But the act contains numerous exemptions for many types of service contracts under which so-called high technology, high wage workers are employed. There are three major categories of highly skilled and highly compensated workers who Congress specifically excluded from the Service Contract Act when it amended the law in 1976 including professional employees, executive employees, and administrative employees. Another major category of high technology workers who have been exempted from coverage includes technicians who repair and maintain computers, scientific and medical equipment, and office and business machines when those services are provided by the manufacturer. The wage determinations issued under the Service Contract Act are not inflationary. In 30 cities, SCA wages averaged $6.07 for janitors, $5.42 for food service workers, and $5.59 for guards. Even in a high- cost metropolitan area such as Washington, DC, the prevailing wage for SCA-covered janitors is $6.35 per hour--plus $.91 per hour in benefit contributions. In Boston, janitors receive $8.60 per hour; in Memphis, janitors receive $5.60 per hour; and in Salt Lake City, janitors receive $5.85 per hour. Thus, despite the act's protection, even those earnings are quite modest. Without SCA coverage, the work force of low- skilled, predominantly minority and female workers, would quickly drop to $4.25 per hour under the pressure of the procurement system. In summary, the Service Contract Act has allowed workers to earn a living wage. It has enabled millions of workers to enjoy the benefits of fair wages and fringe benefits such as health insurance and a pension typically unavailable in this industry. Also, many service contractors on Federal service contract jobs maintain jointly administered labor-management training programs. Many workers have participated in these training programs and have been allowed to improve their job skills and move up the economic ladder. Improved job skills for many who might otherwise have little or no job training has benefited all service contract workers and it also has benefited their employers and the Federal Government--the ultimate consumer of their services. It is for all these reasons that I oppose repeal of the Service Contract Act.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes to point out that we have worked out some language for this bill which I hope we will all reach agreement on, but let us not call the regulations dumb. In 1991 alone, more than 50 baler accidents among employees were reported nationwide. Although minors at that time were prohibited, as they are now, by law from operating balers and compactors, there have been very serious injuries. A minor working in a supermarket had his arms severely crushed when he reached into a baler to remove a catsup bottle. A minor was seriously injured when his hand was caught in a baler. He broke several fingers and underwent surgery to install pins in the knuckles. A 17-year-old worker in Pennsylvania was killed when he reached into a baler to free some jammed paper. A 13-year-old minor was killed when he became caught in a paper compactor. At the time the injury occurred, he was stuffing cardboard boxes into the baler. This is not a dumb regulation. We are going to make some changes. We are not dealing with a dumb regulation. Lives were saved by this regulation, I assure you.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Andrews]. (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OWENS. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.

Mr. OWENS. Reclaiming my time, I think the gentleman reinforces my point. We had a regulation which dealt with a serious problem which currently deals mostly with the old balers. In this bill, we are saying we want only the new balers to operate when this law is going to be adapted from that new condition and new standards by ANSI. The gentleman is saying what I am saying. It is not a dumb law. This applies now because we have new machines under new standards. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Hoyer].

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Peterson].

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California [Mrs. Woolsey], and reclaiming my time, I would like to note at this point that another of my colleagues intended to be here but could not make it. The gentleman from Puerto Rico Carlos Romero-Barcelo, another Member of the [[Page H 10713]] Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities, also would like to submit his statement for the Record. Mr. Speaker, I think we should understand the difficulty with the minimum wage and the ability to achieve a bipartisan consensus on taking this very simple step that has been proposed. We are proposing we increase the minimum wage by a mere 90 cents over a 2-year period in a two-step operation. We want to increase it by 45 cents one year and 45 cents another year. A mere 90 cents increase. We will still be behind the inflation curve but that very meager effort is being opposed by the Republican majority in this House. A statement has been made by the Republican majority that they will not entertain even 1 cent, even a 1 cent increase in the minimum wage. The Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities, as pointed out before by my colleague from California, will not hold hearings to even discuss the matter of raising the minimum wage. Mr. Speaker, what is the problem? Let us go back to the chart. These simple bars tell a great story about what is happening in America. These simple bars here tell a greater story about how power is being used to shape the American economy and to keep a large percentage of Americans in poverty and another large group of Americans in a state of perpetual insecurity. This is a story of greed and power. A story of greed and power. The power resides in the corporations. Corporations are able to manipulate economy. Corporations are able to manipulate contributions to Congressmen and all other levels of political officials. Corporations are able to lobby endlessly and get a swindle situation like the one we see here, where in 1943 corporations were paying 39.8 percent of the taxes, and in 1983 it went down as low as 6.2 percent under Ronald Reagan's regime, and in 1995 we still have a situation where they are only paying 11.2 percent while individuals and families are paying 43.7 percent. The power of the corporation is such that the corporations have sent down an edict as powerful as any totalitarian dictator that we do not want the minimum wage increased. Corporate power has said that, and the servants of corporate power, the Republican majority in this House, have said we will not entertain an increase in the minimum wage by even 1 cent. Mr. Speaker, they want to have the lowest possible wage rates. They want to have a class of people that are paid the lowest amount of moneys in order to be competitive with the global marketplace. They want to have our workers slowly be pushed down to the level of the poorest people in Bangladesh or down to the level of the prisoners in China. Prisoners in China are forced to work for almost nothing. At least Bangladesh people get some kind of wages. They want that kind of condition. They want the Mexican phenomenon to begin to operate here, where we begin to measure our wage rates against the wage rates across the board order in Mexico. And right away, every time we talk about wage increases, they say, well, we are getting further and further away from being able to be competitive with the Mexican labor market. Today is the 57th anniversary of the date the minimum wage first took effect in this country. On October 24, 1938. I was only 2 years old. American employees were first guaranteed a minimum wage of 25 cents an hour to protect them from exploitation and ensure that their work would be fairly compensated. Six years ago President Bush signed into law the last increase in the minimum wage. That increase was 90 cents over 2 years and enjoyed a broad bipartisan support in the Congress. The vote in this House of Representatives was 382 to 37. Only 37 Members of the House of Representatives voted against that increase in the minimum wage which took place under the Bush administration just 6 years ago. I was here. I remember that very well. This year the real value of the minimum wage is at its lowest level since the early 1950's. While an increase in the minimum wage is clearly long overdue, and although we have a proposal from President Clinton to increase the minimum wage to $5.15 per hour over a 2-year period, there is no sign of that bipartisan effort that characterized the last increase. The proposal has languished here in Congress while the leadership has refused to even schedule hearings. In fact, even the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities, which has jurisdiction over the bill, will not hold a hearing on the issue. How times have changed. How times have changed from the date when only 37 Members of the House of Representatives voted against an increase in the minimum wage to a time now where only a little more than half the Democrats in the House of Representatives are cosponsors of the minimum wage increase bill. There is a bill, Mr. Speaker, and the primary sponsor is the Minority Leader, Mr. Gephardt. The President has endorsed the bill, yet only a little more than half the Democrats in the House of Representatives have signed onto that bill as cosponsors. Is it any wonder that the Republicans who are in the majority treat the effort with contempt if we cannot get most of the Democrats in the House to get on board. If ever there was a clear issue which defined the differences between the two parties it ought to be an increase in the minimum wage. What is wrong with the Democrats who propose to represent the working people? Why can we not unite and fight for an increase in the minimum wage? A chief argument against raising the minimum wage among both economists and some politicians, Democrats as well as Republicans, is the fear of job losses. The threat is that employers will dismiss thousands of workers on the grounds they lack the skills to be worth more than the minimum wage. Nearly all of these estimates of job losses have shrunk as the research has taken place. Every time we have increased the minimum wage this argument has been made that we are going to decrease the number of jobs available because the employers will choose to employ fewer people. Every time that argument is made there have been studies done, and studies on top of studies, and they all conclude that it does not happen. There is a need for workers out there and they do not get thrown aside or laid off as a result of increases in the minimum wage. Mr. Speaker, earlier this month 101 eminent economists effectively challenged this theory. These are economists whose lives it is to study the economy, all aspects of it, including minimum wage. They issued a strong and unprecedented call for an increase in the Federal minimum wage to help raise the living standards of families who rely on incomes of low-wage workers. These diverse and respected economists, including three recipients of the Nobel Prize in economics, and seven past presidents of the American Economics Association, endorsed President Clinton's proposed two-step 90-cent increase in the minimum wage. Mr. Speaker, these economists noted that recent studies found that the last several increases in the minimum wage had ``Negligible or small'' effects on employment. A Nobel Prize laureate Robert Solow has said, ``The fact that the evidence on job loss is weak suggests that the impact on jobs is small.'' However, for some reason the leadership in this Congress seems obsessed with gutting the wages of hard working Americans. American citizens should ask their Congressmen, ask their Congressmen why he disagrees with 100 of the leading economists in the country. Why he disagrees with Nobel Prize winning economists that we need a minimum wage increase in this country. They should ask their Congressman. He may be a Democrat. Ask him, too. Mr. Speaker, we have seen the Republican leadership attempt to destroy wages in other ways. In the construction industry they are seeking to repeal the Davis-Bacon Act. The Davis-Bacon Act requires that all jobs that are federally funded construction jobs must have a situation where the prevailing wages in that area are paid. I have looked very closely at what that means and I find in many States the prevailing wage level is quite low, and yet there is this tremendous drive to destroy the Davis-Bacon Act and not allow it to pay the prevailing wages in a given area. [[Page H 10714]] There have been some efforts now to compromise that. People who wanted to destroy Davis-Bacon are willing to reconsider. After all, Davis-Bacon was primarily a Republican conceived act, both Davis and Bacon were Republicans. This is an act which very much helps middle class people. The people who are in those jobs in construction are middle class people. When they can find the jobs and are paid, they end up being a part of our basic middle class. So we have begun to get some kind of compromise on the Davis-Bacon Act. The same people are insisting that the companion act, the Service Contract Act, which says that in situations where the Federal Government is involved, janitors and other service employees of that kind, also must be paid prevailing wages. Efforts are still underway to destroy the wages that are undergirded and supported by the Service Contract Act. Janitors and other service employees of that kind are involved here. Janitors at Federal facilities, who are working full time, are often paid wages which are below the poverty level. Working for Federal facilities they are paid wages below the poverty level. Yet the Republican leadership in this Congress believes that janitors are making too much money as a result of the Service Contract Act. Who cares about working people? Who cares about families? They talk about $500 per child tax credit. Are they really sincere if they will not provide a decent wage for the average working person out there and allow them to earn enough money to be able to qualify for that tax credit? Most of them will file taxes but will not be able to get a tax credit because they are making such small amounts of money on minimum wage, less than $9,000 for a family of four. They will not have to pay any taxes. They will not be able to take advantage of a tax credit. Mr. Speaker, let us bring all the people up as far as possible through the long-term, time honored device of paying a decent wage. Let us make work pay. We have just destroyed much of the welfare program. We have just taken away the entitlement for young children. Poor children, since the beginning of the New Deal, have been guaranteed that if their family qualifies, if they are really poor, if they are means tested and found to be really poor, they qualify for Aid to Families with Dependent Children. That is an entitlement. It is a right. Everybody who meets it is supposed to get it. They get it at different levels in different States, but the States do it and the Federal Government stands behind them. No matter how much money is needed in a given year, the Federal Government will make certain that the money is available, because it is an entitlement. That entitlement for poor children has been taken away. There is still an entitlement, by the way. Social Security provides an entitlement for the children of deceased members of Social Security. People who were enrolled in Social Security, their children are eligible if they should die, and they are eligible at much higher rates. Fortunately, the Social Security Act does provide a more humane face and it provides it even without a means test. Let us not let them destroy the Social Security provision which takes care of orphans; yet, it is gone for those who are not fortunate enough to be covered by Social Security. In another demonstration of their utter disdain for working people, the Republican reconciliation bill proposes to obliterate, greatly reduce, the earned income tax credit. The earned income tax credit provides much-needed tax relief for working families, those working poor. Here is where some of the people earning those minimum wages are given some benefits and some incentives by their government to keep working. If you are earning minimum wage, and you have a family of four, or even a family of three, under present qualifications even no children under some circumstances, you are able to collect additional money as a result of your having earned money. The earned income tax credit rewards those who are working. It is a small amount of money, but it is important and it adds up to quite a bit proportionately when you are poor. But now the Republicans will not stand for that. Do not reward the working poor. Do not be consistent. They say they want to help families. We have heard long speeches tonight about helping families by providing a $500 tax credit. Why are they providing a $500 tax credit for those who are earning enough money to be able to qualify for a tax credit, while they refuse to provide help for those who are much poorer, but also working and in a lower bracket, needing some help through the earned income tax credit? Why are they getting rid of the earned income tax credit and providing a tax credit for people at a higher level? I am not against a tax credit for people with children at a higher level. That is one of those tax cuts that ought to be given. When we get at much higher levels and we are dealing with capital gains being treated as if capital gains were some kind of privilege, versus wages, we have a higher rate of taxes on wages, people's sweat that go to work every day. The amount of money they earn through wages is very low and we tax those at a higher rate than capital gains, where nobody sweats. They are gains made on investments. Why should capital gains be in a different category? And when you put capital gains on the table, we are rewarding the richest people. Who owns the property? Five percent of the people in America own 90 percent of the wealth in this country. So capital gains rewards that 5 percent, or the top 20 percent. The tax decrease that is being proposed by the Republican majority is a tax decrease for the rich. We need a tax decrease. Families and individuals, rich or poor, deserve a better break than they have been getting under this construct here where corporations have been allowed to get off the hook, not bear their share of the burden, in order to pay for the fact that they are paying so little. This was done under the Democrats. We cannot blame the Republicans solely for this. Ronald Reagan, with his trickle-down economics, accelerated it. It got to the worst point under Ronald Reagan in 1983, when corporations went as low as 6.2 percent of the tax burden. And notice, as the corporations dropped low, individuals have to make up the difference. Always the individual taxes rise when the corporations' taxes drop. The highest points of individual and family taxes was 48.1 percent in 1983, at the same time that the corporations reached their lowest point of 6.2 percent. This is where the deficit started too. A combination of the 6.2 percent and the 48.1 percent was not great enough to pay for the Government's expenses, so we were borrowing more money. Here is where the deficit started under Ronald Reagan where the deficit leaped geometrically in terms of its increase, and the problem we are trying to correct with the deficit-reduction policies now took off with a vengeance following this kind of situation where corporations were allowed to swindle the American people. This swindle should not be allowed to go on. Here is the atmosphere that dictates that there shall be no increase in the minimum wage. These corporations in 1995 are making higher profits than ever before. They are booming. Technology, science, the peace of the world that all of us helped to make. The peace of the world that young men went off and died for in Vietnam and Korea, on the Normandy beaches. Everybody contributed to what is happening in the world today. The technology and the science that American taxpayers paid for, a large base of it was paid for in Government research and military research, radar, computerization, a number of things that are really driving this economy and allowing corporations to make great amounts of money. All of that is being taken advantage of by the corporate sector and they are not sharing it. The taxes are still too high for individuals and families. At the same time, these corporations are laying off people and not only will they refuse to pay an increase in the minimum wage, those who have jobs are less and less secure. I grew up in a family which was very poor. My father, I think he was a genius but he only had a sixth grade education. I think he was a genius, because with his sixth grade education, [[Page H 10715]] any problem that I took home in my math book, those word problems that most kids could not work in school, my father never failed to solve those problems. He did that until I reached algebra, where the X's and the Y's confused him. He could not deal with that. The basic intelligence was there. My father was very intelligent. My father was hard-working. He was a heavy drinker of Coca-Colas and RC Colas and Dr. Peppers. That is all he drank; nothing stronger. My father always had a garden, no matter where we lived. Memphis was a big city, a big city in the South, there are always places where we could have a garden and he always grew things. But my father never made anything more than the minimum wage. There was never a time when he was working that he made more than the minimum wage. The minimum wage was quite low at that time, but we were happy with the minimum wage as long as he had a job. Our fear was always that he was going to get laid off. We were struggling to make do on the minimum wage. My mother, who was smarter than my father, my mother knew the price of pinto beans in those little packages, and the northern beans, neck bones and spaghetti on Sundays. She could take a budget, a minimum wage budget, and feed us effectively. I never went hungry when my father had a job. But there were oftentimes that he was laid off at the factory. Oftentimes. And there were times when they were on strike, and those were times we feared. The minimum wage, as low as it was, was a Godsend. We had security as long as he had the job. We could survive on the minimum wage. But so many Americans right now who are earning above the minimum wage, as a result of this corporate greed atmosphere, the corporate greed era that we are in now, they are insecure about how long they are going to keep their jobs. Many of them were making much higher hourly wages and have been forced to take less. Many of them are changing jobs and are forced to start a whole new career as a result of the kinds of dislocations taking place in this era where the corporations are driving the economy, and they are doing it in a spirit of greed. Far more extreme measures are being taken than need to be taken. The case for increasing the minimum wage is abundantly clear within this situation. It is a tiny step. It is a microactivity that would help individuals and families a great deal, but there will be no great dislocation in the economy. The case for increasing the minimum wage is abundantly clear and the overwhelming majority of Americans agree. This is not something that the economists, the Nobel prize winners only understand. It is a general, common sense understanding. The minimum wage that was increased 6 years ago, as inflation as moved on and costs have increased, is obsolete and the purchasing power is far less than it was in 1955. We need an increase. Eighty percent of the American people support an increase in the minimum wage. It is said that politicians are always responsive to their constituencies. Well, here is where the corporate dictators have said, ``No, we do not want an increase,'' and the Republicans in the majority here, and a large number of Democrats also, are saying, ``We will listen to the corporate dictators. We will not listen to the American people, our constituency.'' Eighty percent of the people support an increase in the minimum wage. That is a sizable portion of the people in every congressional district who support an increase in the minimum wage. We heard a lot of talk on the House floor about surveys that have been done about taxes. Why not ask the American people and the people in your district what they think of the minimum wage. Should we increase it by a mere 45 cents this year and 45 cents a year later? Ninety cents? Why not ask the question of your constituents and hear what they have to say, Members of Congress and Members of the Senate. Ask the question and listen to the American people. Opinion polls tell us that 80 percent of the people want an increase in the minimum wage. The people recognize that there is something wrong when a full-time worker making the minimum wage earns $8,500, far below the poverty level for a family of four, which as I said before is $14,754. Consider these facts: The average minimum wage earner brings in at least half of the family's income. One-third of minimum wage earners are the sole breadwinners in their families. Over 4 million American workers are paid the minimum wage at this point. There is some notion of: Who works for the minimum wage anymore? That is too low. Over 4 million American workers are still working for the minimum wage, as low as it is. No union goes out to bargain for the minimum wage, of course. They are far above minimum wage. But the minimum wage is a bargaining tool for all levels of workers. Because when you have that as a floor, it allows the bargaining process to move upwards. As long as the minimum wage is stagnant, all other wages are going to be stagnant too, and they are. Two-thirds of the minimum wage earners are adults. There is this notion that only kids are earning minimum wage, and who cares whether kids earn 90 cents an hour more or not? What difference does it make? They are kids. They are in a family where somebody else is the breadwinner or head of the household. Let us not pay kids minimum wage. Two out of three minimum wage earners are adults. Almost three-fifths of the minimum wage earners are women, including many women who are the heads of their households, single parents. The minimum wage was originally enacted to help provide workers with a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. In today's economy, $8,500 a year falls way short of the mark of providing a fair day's work for a fair day's pay, or a fair year's work for a fair year's pay. We have proposed an increase from $4.25 to $5.15. Like the adjustment to the minimum wage enacted 6 years ago, this 90-cent increase is phased in over a 2-year period. Contrary to claims of opponents, most economists agree that a modest increase such as this will have no significant effect on job creation. This is an issue of simple fairness. Workers deserve to be compensated for their efforts. Everybody deserves to be compensated for their effort at a reasonable level. Why can we not pay workers a mere $5.15 an hour? In this corporate era, the corporations dictate what happens in the economy. They dictate who wins and who loses. The corporations create a situation where taxpayers are footing a disproportionate share of the tax burden. Corporations decide the policies in this Congress. They write the bills for the Republican majority. Corporations are going along with a balanced budget scenario, but they are not going to make any sacrifices. If corporations were cut as much as the social programs, they would be contributing $124 billion over a 7-year period, would be the cuts in corporate welfare and corporate loopholes, et cetera, but that is not the case. These same corporations have chief executive officers who make enormous salaries, some above $20 million a year, salaries and other compensation reach more than $20 million a year for the corporate chief executive officers of many corporations. So many earn more than $1 million a year that bills have been proposed. Even the President supported at one time a bill which would limit the deduction in terms of business expenses. The salary of a chief executive would be limited in that business deduction situation when the corporate taxes are filed to no more than $1 million a year. After $1 million a year, the corporation would not be able to take the compensation for the chief executive officer off the taxes. That has, of course, not passed. But when you compare the chief executive officers in America, in our economy, with the chief executive officers in Japan, which is a high- technology, booming economy like ours, or in Germany, another high- technology, booming economy, or most of the other industrialized nations, the compensation for chief executives is far below the compensation for chief executives in the United States. Japanese tycoons at the head of huge corporations make as little as $300,000 [[Page H 10716]] a year--$300,000 to $500,000 a year is close to an average for some of the largest corporations in Japan. Even when you add in other parts of the compensation package, I assure you that they do not have anything like the compensation of the chief executive officers of American corporations. In this economy of greed, where the corporations dictate the policies, they cannot allow a simple 90-cent increase in the minimum wage while the chief executives walk off with millions. There is growing income inequality in this country that has been documented. Recent studies have shown that we have shifted place with Great Britain. Where the differences between the very rich and the very poor where once the greatest in Britain, now it is greatest in the United States. It if far worse in the United States than in any other place. The rich are far richer than the poor in this country for the first time in history. There is a growing income inequality. In this atmosphere of corporate greed, after-tax profits are the highest that they have been in 25 years. But corporate America is not sharing the bounty with the average workers who help to produce it. The after-tax rate of return to capital investment in 1994 was 7.5 percent. By comparison, it averaged just 3.8 percent between 1952 and 1979. These higher profits have not been reinvested in the economy. They claim that higher profits always lead to reinvestment. They have not been reinvested in the economy. Investment as a share of output, investment as a share of profit, has declined, instead of increased. Nor have these higher profits been returned to workers. Since 1989, average real wages for most of the work force have either remained stagnant or declined. The hourly wage of the median male worker has declined 1 percent per year since 1989. The gap between the wealthiest and poorest Americans is the widest it has been since the Census Bureau began collecting income statistics in 1947: 44.6 percent of U.S. income is controlled by the top 20 percent of the wealthiest American families. The bottom 20 percent earn just 4.4 percent of national income. According to the Census Bureau, since 1980 the income of the top 20 percent of families has risen 16 percent over inflation. The income of the bottom 20 percent has fallen 7 percent below inflation in this period. In this era where the corporations are dictating the policies here in Congress, the corporations have perpetuated a great swindle and refused to let up. They will continue to swindle. In the reconciliation bill that will be on the floor starting tomorrow, you will find nothing done to correct this great injustice. Corporations have been cut, I understand, by about $6 billion in corporate welfare. But, in other ways, they have put back money which equals that $6 billion. So corporations will end up with a zero cut in corporate welfare after the reconciliation bill is passed in this House. Corporations benefit greatly by all of the activities in the overall American economy. They do not just go off and make the money by themselves. There is a whole complex economy that supports them. There are the American consumers that support them. There is the Federal deposit insurance of the banks that helps to hold up the economy. At a time when corporate leaders and banking leaders nearly wrecked the economy with the savings and loan swindle, it was the American taxpayer who had to step in to the tune of more than $300 billion to bail out the failing banks in order to keep the whole financial scheme of the economy from collapsing. So we are all in this together when it comes to making America work. But when it comes to sharing the results of the benefits of our overall society, corporations want it all for themselves. They will not even allow a 90-cent increase in the minimum wage. The ratio of average hourly pay of men in the top 10 percent of wage earners to those at the bottom 10 percent is 5.6 in the United States. In other words, the top 10 percent of people in our economy make 5.6 more than the bottom 10 percent. That means for every $10 that you make, the top people make almost 6 times that amount. In Germany, the ratio is only 2.7. In France the ratio is 3.2, in Japan the ratio is 2.8, in Britain the ratio is 3.4. But here in the United States the ratio of the earners at the top is 5.6, almost 6 times the earnings of the people at the bottom. Some of the highest paid chief executive officers in America are also the Nation's biggest job killers. The CEO of IBM earned $4.6 million last year. He has laid off 122,000 workers since 1992. The CEO of AT&T earned $3.5 million last year. He has laid off 83,000 workers since 1992. The CEO of General Motors earned $3.4 million last year. He has laid off 74,000 workers since 1992. Some $122.5 billion of the Republican tax cut will go to Americans who are earning $100,000 or more. They will not help the people who need the minimum wage increase. Nearly all the Republican spending cuts are directed at the people who need the minimum wage increase. The Republican spending cuts are directed at low- and middle-income Americans, denying them access to quality health care, affordable housing and the opportunity to pursue the American dream through education. Here is the photo, the snapshot of America, the kind of America that is now being dominated and dictated to by corporate greed. Three Nobel Prize winners who are backing the minimum wage increase are Kenneth J. Arrow of Stanford University, Lawrence R. Klein of the University of Pennsylvania, and James Tobin of Yale. Many other former presidents of the American Economics Association also back the increase in the minimum wage. They put out a simple statement. I will not read the entire statement. I will enter into the Record the statement of support for a minimum wage increase by the 100 top American economists. Along with the statement, of course, will go the actual names of those 100 economists who are responsible for this statement of support for minimum wage increase. Mr. Speaker, the document is as follows: Statement of Support for a Minimum Wage Increase As economists who are concerned about the erosion in the living standards of households dependent on the earnings of low-wage workers, we believe that the federal minimum wage should be increased. The reasons underlying this conclusion include: After adjusting for inflation, the value of the minimum wage is at its second lowest annual level since 1955. The purchasing power of the minimum wage is 26 percent below its average level during the 1970s. Since the early 1970s, the benefits of economic growth have been unevenly distributed among workers. Raising the minimum wage would help ameliorate this trend. The positive effects of the minimum wage are not felt solely by low-income households, but minimum wage workers are overrepresented in poor and moderate-income households. In setting the value of the minimum wage, it is of course appropriate to assess potential adverse effects. On balance, however, the evidence from recent economic studies of the effects of increases in federal and state minimum wages at the end of the 1980s and in the early 1990s--as well as updates of the traditional time-series studies--suggests that the employment effects were negligible or small. Economic studies of the effects of the minimum wage on inflation suggest that a higher minimum wage would affect prices negligibly. Most policies to boost the incomes of low-wage workers have both positive and negative features. And excessive reliance on any one policy is likely to create distortions. The minimum wage is an important component of the set of policies to help low-wage workers. It has key advantages, including that it produces positive work incentives and is administratively simple. For these and other reasons, such as its exceptionally low value today, there should be greater reliance on the minimum wage to support the earnings of low- wage workers. We believe that the federal minimum wage can be increased by a moderate amount without significantly jeopardizing employment opportunities. A minimum wage increase would provide a much-needed boost in the incomes of many low- and moderate-income households. Specifically, the proposed increase in the minimum wage of 90 cents over a two-year period falls within the range of alternatives where the overall effects on the labor market, affected workers, and the economy would be positive. Signatories to Economists Statement of Support for a Minimum Wage Increase Aaron, Henry--Brookings Institution. Abramovitz, Moses--Stanford University. Allen, Steven G.--North Carolina State University. Altonji, Joseph G.--Northwestern University. Applebaum, Eileen--Economic Policy Institute. [[Page H 10717]] Arrow, Kenneth J.--Stanford University. Bartik, Timothy J.--Upjohn Intitute. Bator, Francis M.--Harvard University. Bergmann, Barbara--American University. Blanchard, Olivier--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Blanchflower, David--Dartmouth College. Blank, Rebecca--Northwestern University. Bluestone, Barry--University of Massachusetts Boston. Bosworth, Barry--Brookings Institution. Briggs, Vernon M.--Cornell University. Brown, Clair--University of California at Berkeley. Browne, Robert S.--Howard University. Burtless, Gary--Brookings Institution. Burton, John--Rutgers University. Chimerine, Lawrence--Economic Strategy Institute. Danziger, Sheldon--University of Michigan. Darity, William Jr.--University of North Carolina. DeFreitas, Gregory--Hofstra University. Diamond, Peter A.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Duncan, Greg J.--Northwestern University. Ehrenberg, Ronald A.--Cornell University. Eisner, Robert--Northwestern University. Ferguson, Ronald F.--Harvard University. Faux, Jeff--Economic Policy Institute. Galbraith, James K.--University of Texas at Austin. Galbraith, John Kenneth--Harvard University. Garfinkel, Irv--Columbia University. Gibbons, Robert--Stanford University. Glickman, Norman--Rutgers University. Gordon, David M.--New School for Social Research. Gordon, Robert J.--Northwestern University. Gramlich, Edward--University of Michigan. Gray, Wayne--Clark University. Harrison, Bennett--Harvard University. Hartmann, Heidi--Institute for Women's Policy Research. Haveman, Robert H.--University of Wisconsin. Heibroner, Robert--New School for Social Research. Hirsch, Barry T.--Florida State University. Hirschman, Albert O.--Princeton University. Hollister, Robinson G.--Swarthmore College. Holzer, Harry J.--Michigan State University. Howell, David R.--New School for Social Research. Hurley, John--Jackson State University. Jacoby, Sanford M.--University of California at Los Angeles. Kahn, Alfred E.--Cornell University. Kamerman, Sheila B.--Columbia University. Katz, Harry C.--Cornell University. Katz, Lawrence--Harvard University. Klein, Lawrence R.--University of Pennsylvania. Kleiner, Morris M.--University of Minnesota. Kochan, Thomas A.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lang, Kevin--Boston University. Lester, Richard A.--Princeton University. Levy, Frank--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindbloom, Charles E.--Yale University. Madden, Janice F.--University of Pennsylvania. Mangum, Garth--University of Utah. Margo, Robert--Vanderbilt University. Markusen, Ann--Rutgers University. Marshall, Ray--University of Texas at Austin. Medoff, James L.--Harvard University. Meyer, Bruce--Northwestern University. Minsky, Hyman P.--Bard College. Mishel, Lawrence--Economic Policy Institute. Montgomery, Edward B.--University of Maryland. Murnane, Richard J.--Harvard University. Musgrave, Peggy B.--University of California at Santa Cruz. Musgrave Richard A.--University of California at Santa Cruz. Nichols, Donald--University of Wisconsin. Ooms, Van Doorn--Committee for Economic Development. Osterman, Paul--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Packer, Arnold--Johns Hopkins University. Papadimitriou, Dimitri B.--Jerome Levy Economics Institute. Perry, George L.--Brookings Institution. Peterson, Wallace C.--University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Pfeifer, Karen--Smith College. Piore, Michael--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Polenske, Karen--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Quinn, Joseph--Boston College. Reich, Michael--University of California at Berkeley. Reynolds, Lloyd G.--Yale University. Scherer, F.M.--Harvard University. Schor, Juliet B.--Harvard University. Shaikh, Anwar--Jerome Levy Economics Institute. Smeeding, Tim--Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Smolensky, Eugene--University of California at Berkeley. Stromsdorfer, Ernst W.--Washington State University. Summers, Anita A.--University of Pennsylvania. Summers, Robert--University of Pennsylvania. Tobin, James--Yale University. Vickrey, William--Columbia University. Voos, Paula B.--University of Wisconsin. Vroman, Wayne--Urban Institute. Watts, Harold--Columbia University. Whalen, Charles J.--Jerome Levy Economics Institute. Wolff, Edward--New York University.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin on a note of agreement tonight. The previous speakers have talked about the great need for the [[Page H 10712]] American middle class, and I will include the working class, to have a tax cut. They are 100 percent right. We need a tax cut for families and individuals. The way to get the tax cut for families and individuals, and at the same time not increase the deficit and balance the budget, all in one, is to take a look at this chart, the discrepancies here, why the taxes have greatly increased on individuals since 1943 and greatly decreased on corporations. The red is the corporation, the blue is families and individuals. In 1943, corporations were paying 39.8 percent of the total tax burden, 39.8 percent, while individuals and families were paying 27.1 percent. Now, in 1995, individuals and families are paying 43.7 percent, and corporation are paying 11.2 percent. At one point it went haywire and it was even a worse ratio. Individuals and families were paying 48.1 percent in 1983 under Ronald Reagan and corporations went down as low as 6.2 percent. I would like to begin on a note of agreement, that the gentlemen who were here before exclaiming that we need a tax cut, I agree, we need a tax cut for families and for individuals. You can have that tax cut and still balance the budget if you will deal with this inequity. The corporations should be paying a greater percentage of the overall tax burden. We should get rid of corporate welfare. The loopholes, a recent study shows that if the cuts you made on individuals and poor people, the percentage cut that was made in the Republican budget, if that same percentage cut was applied to corporations, corporations would be losing $124 billion over a 7-year period, if it were just equal in the application of the cuts and you cut corporate welfare as much as you cut low income programs. I hope we will bear in mind that Democrats and Republicans should agree that families and individuals are due for a tax cut. They should have it, and they can have it, and you can have it without increasing the deficit and you can have it even with a balanced budget. We do not have to rush the balanced budget in 7 years; we can do it in 10 years and not make devastating draconian cuts. Just balance the tax burden and you can balanced the budget and do it without a deficit. I agree with my colleagues, every American family ought to be angry at this kind of ratio, where the swindle has taken place, corporations have gone down, down, down in their portion of the tax burden, while individuals have gone up. It is appropriate that we begin this discussion, I think, on the day where we are, I hope, celebrating, a will use the word celebrating, the anniversary of the institution of the first minimum wage law. Today, 57 years ago, the first minimum wage law was passed. Twenty-five cents per hour was set as the minimum wage, the first passed in this Nation. Today we have gone from 25 cents an hour to $4.25 an hour, and according to leading economists, including Nobel Prize winning economists, we are in worse shape in terms of the relative value, the purchasing power of that $4.25 an hour. It is down almost as low as it was, or lower, than it was in 1955. The purchasing power is at an all- time low. It is time to increase the minimum wage. If you want to help working class families, then one of the first things we should do is increase the minimum wage, because even under the minimum wage, a family wage earner, working full-time, a 40-hour week, will earn less than $9,000. A family of four needs about $14,000 in this Nation not to plunge into poverty. But if you earn every working day of the year, earn the minimum wage, you will be way below that $14,000. So there are a number of problems that would be solved if we were just to move forward with an increase in the minimum wage. There are reasons why that is not a bipartisan policy anymore, and we are going to talk about that. I will be joined today by a number of my colleagues. We are going to talk about the anniversary of the minimum wage and the implications of it, where does it fit into the whole scheme of the budget reconciliation, into the whole insistence we must have a tax cut at the same time. Are we going to make draconian cuts in Medicare and Medicaid and cut school lunches? Where does it all fit in here? Where does it fit with welfare reform where they say people should go to work? One Governor was recently quoted and saying people do not need job training, they need alarm clocks. Get them up and there is work out there. There is very little work out there in some places. An article in the New York Times today on the front page talks about the great Michigan experiment where the Governor of Michigan proclaimed he solved the welfare problem and put people to work. What they found is people have been put to work and remained on welfare because they are going to work making minimum wage and not making enough to live on. They still need help from the government. So you are going to replace a long cycle of people being on welfare who were not working with a new kind of person who is working and also on welfare, because the minimum wage is not high enough to allow them to take care of a family and meet basic needs. Joining me immediately is my colleague on the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities. She knows quite a bit about all this. She has been on welfare and knows all about the minimum wage, and I am proud to have here join me today, the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Woolsey]. (Ms. WOOLSEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend here remarks.)

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Maryland, and I congratulate her on this very important special order. Mr. Speaker, as the chairman of the House subcommittee committee on select education and civil rights, and I served in that capacity for 6 years, I was proud to introduce the Domestic Violence and Family Services Act in both 1988 and 1992. We reauthorized this Domestic Violence and Family Services Act. This act funds a variety of prevention programs which are designed to promote the swift identification of domestic violence. It also provides critical operating support needed to sustain a national network of temporary shelters for the victims of domestic violence. Mr. Speaker, these programs need greater Federal support. Family violence shelters must turn away three out of every four women who seek assistance due to insufficient space. The [[Page H 10723]] House has voted to free funding. I guess we should be grateful that they are not cutting the funding of these programs, but they voted to freeze funding for domestic violence programs at last year's levels, ignoring the enormous need for greater Federal assistance. We do not have any great Federal bureaucracy in this area, but the Federal Government's participation is very important. Federal Government sets the tone, it sets the pace, it provides leadership in this critical area, and I think that leadership is needed more than ever. Temporary shelters are just that. They are temporary. We need a more enduring, a more effective response to the crisis of family violence in order to do that. We have to invest in programs and enact policies which will enhance the economic well-being of women. No woman should be forced to remain with an abusive partner in order to feed her kids or because she needs a roof over her head. No woman should be forced to put her physical survival in jeopardy for the sake of assuring her economic survival. Mr. Speaker, this Congress has taken a buzzsaw to Federal programs which support the economic well-being of women and children. Job services, training services are being cut by 20 percent. Low-income housing is being slashed by $3 billion. The safety net guarantee of AFDC payments for women with children, who are unable to find work, has been stripped away. A woman who flees an abusive husband will no longer be able to count on temporary income support while she tries to get back on her feet. Minimum wage is important for women. Congress must also invest in women's economic well-being by increasing the minimum wage. Sixty-six percent of minimum wage workers are women. In all of these areas the Federal Government's leadership is very much needed. The pace is set by the Federal Government, the tone is set by the Federal Government. We must not neglect our duties in this area. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman and congratulate her for her leadership in this critical area.