Major Owens

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, there is a state of emergency with respect to decisionmaking right here in this capital right now, and there are large numbers who do not recognize the fact that there is a state of emergency. We are faced with an unprecedented situation. Government is about to make a dramatic change, and most people, most groups who are going to be victimized by this dramatic change, do not quite seem to understand that there is no miracle in the offing, nothing will save us from the kind of decisionmaking that is taking place now which will result in some devastating cuts in program that benefit large numbers of the American people. There is a state of emergency, and we should understand that there is a state of emergency. Those who do not understand that we are caught up in extremism, driven by the radical right, public policy is being driven toward a dangerous cliff. We are going to go over that cliff if we do not summon our forces and begin to fight back and understand the kind of problem we face. To approach extremism and to try to combat extremism with moderation is to guarantee defeat. We must summon up the same kind of intensity that is being summoned against us. We must defend ourselves with the same kind of intensity. Let us take a look at the budget making process that is now begun. We have already passed the House of Representatives budget. The ruling majority, the Republicans, have passed a budget already. The Senate has passed a budget, and the Senate and House budgets do not differ dramatically. There are draconian cuts in both budgets. Granted, the Senate's wisdom seems to be to move much slower than the House budget, and that is under negotiation now, the House budget versus the Senate budget, two Republican majorities negotiating with each other. But there is extremism in both. Never before in the history of the country, this Nation has never seen before such drastic changes being pushed over such a short period of time. There is a document that was issued by the Republican majority in the House called ``Cutting Government,'' and I have it in my hand. Cutting Government was issued, and it is an indication of what was passed in the Republican majority's budget in the House of Representatives. Cutting Government summarizes extreme changes that are being proposed, extreme, and the sooner we all understand it, the better we will be able to marshal some kind of appropriate defense. Let me just read the first paragraph of the Cutting Government document. It reads as follows: ``The House committee on the budget proposes to terminate, block grant or privatize three Cabinet departments, 284 programs, 69 [[Page H 6148]] commissions, 13 agencies, and privatize three commercial activities in our 1996 budget resolution.'' That is the opening statement of the document, Cutting Government, from the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Unprecedented. Where else in the history of the Nation have we seen a Congress propose such drastic, reckless changes in such a short period of time, to cut 284 programs, to eliminate three Cabinet departments? Sixty-nine commissions are to be eliminated, 13 agencies to be eliminated, all in a 2-year period--really it is 1 year because a budget is a 1-year document. It is hoped that once they accomplish this, you know, that this is the worst possible scenario, that next year there would not be another budget which will make additional draconian cuts. I do not know what else there will be left to cut in such an extreme matter. They have set out a pattern which I assume will be followed next year, and I assume the pattern will be followed for the next 7 years because there is a 7-year budget that has been proposed. These are extreme measures, you know. They do not like to hear the word ``extreme'' around here. They do not like to have recognized exactly what is happening. These extreme measures are camouflaged under talk that makes it appear that this is all a matter of fiscal responsibility, that we are going to save the Government from bankruptcy. These extreme measures will hurt a great deal. They will hurt people in my district; they will hurt people right across the country. These are extreme measures and represent war being declared on certain categories of people in our society. They do not like to hear class warfare. The Republicans are quick to respond to any notion of an attack on the working class. This is an attack on the working poor, it is an attack on the working middle class, it is an attack on people who are not working and poor. That is class warfare; it is clearly an attack. You know, it is a blitzkrieg; that is a German word related to World War II that nobody wants to hear either. I am not implying that the Republicans are Fascists or Nazis. It is a figure of speech that I use when I say that they have launched a blitzkrieg because of the rapidity with which they are moving, and the destructive nature, the all- encompassing destructive nature, of the budget process that has been launched by the Republicans: 284 programs to be eliminated, 3 Cabinet departments to be eliminated, 69 commissions to be eliminated, 13 agencies to be eliminated; if this is not a blitzkrieg, then what is a blitzkrieg? You know, if this is not devastation that goes deep and is quite thorough, and to do it all within one budget over a 2-year period, 7 year period, to move that rapidly; if that is not a blitzkrieg, if that figure of speech is not appropriate, I do not know what figure of speech would be appropriate. On the other hand there are people who say we should not use such harsh language, that we are overdoing it when we talk about the fact that we are faced with an unprecedented situation in our history. We should respond in a more genteel terms. We should be civil in the face of uncivil actions that are uncivilly perpetrated against us. We should ignore the Speaker of the House when the Speaker of the House states that politics is war without blood. The Speaker of the House says politics is war without blood. He has proceeded to set a tone in the House which runs parallel to that statement. It has been pretty clear that we have been pursuing business here in a manner which very much resembles war. War requires enemies. War requires losers. I do not think that we define what happens here in the Congress, or here in Washington in the past, as being war without blood. We have defined it as being a contest between two responsible parties. Whether they agree or not, at least we did not consider that there must be ultimate losers, casualties. We did not put it in terms that made it appear that, you know, the Nation is going to suffer, a large segment is going to suffer, as a result of one group trampling over another. I said before we have been engaged in what I would consider to be a noble contest between two political parties. The contest is to determine who can provide the best possible government or what compromise will result--will result because you have two competing parties who both have the goal of improving the Government, of promoting the general welfare, of establishing an environment where people can pursue happiness in the easiest possible way with the least amount of impediments. I assume that a noble contest is what we were talking about, and the tone of our deliberations in the House and the tone of the deliberation of the Government in Washington are affected by the fact that many of the leaders in the past have considered us to be engaged in a noble contest to determine how best we can improve our Government to keep the great American experiment going forward and getting better all the time. But Speaker Gingrich has defined what is happening here as war without blood, and the attack launched by the budget process is a blitzkrieg, it is a war, it is scorched-earth warfare when you eliminate three Cabinet departments, you eliminate 284 programs, you eliminate 69 commissions, 13 agencies, and you privatize three major commercial activities all in a very short period of time. That is war, and, if we do not recognize, if the opposition, the Democrats, loyal opposition, does not recognize it, then they are doomed to failure. The great majority of the American people are going to be impacted, and the majority will be hurt, an elite group in the minority will benefit greatly from this blitzkrieg. They will be the winners. The majority of Americans will be hurt. They are going to be hurt, and we are going to have to hide our heads in shame if we do not offer a better defense. We may lose; after all, the Republicans have the numbers in the Senate, they have the numbers they need in the House of Representatives. We may lose, but at least we ought to rally ourselves and not fool ourselves about what we are confronted with and make an appropriate response. You know, to take another analogy from World War II, my father, who gave me the name ``Major,'' so you know he must have been interested in war and soldiering a great deal; he followed events in World War II very closely in the newspaper and magazines. He only had an eighth- grade education, so he did not read scholarly journals, but I think he was as smart as anybody I ever met. He followed it very closely, and he explained to me at one point the tragedy of the blitzkrieg launched by Hitler against Poland and how they had these Panzer tanks. Hitler and his army mechanized, modernized, moving toward Warsaw, and the Polish sent the cavalry out to meet him. Poland sent men on horses, beautifully trained horses, beautifully trained riders, the old glory of the aristocracy riding with him. They sent horses out to meet tanks, and that is the danger that I see developing here, is that we are allowing ourselves to be lulled to sleep by some kind of gas or some kind of noxious fumes. Something is affecting us in ways which are inexplicable. We do not understand what we are up against. We are ready to send beautiful horses out to meet tanks, murderous tanks. On the one hand we say, well, you have the Republicans propose this reckless budget, extreme budget. They cannot get away with that. But the Republicans in the House control the votes, have enough votes to do it. The Republicans in the Senate have enough votes to do it. That is on the one hand. On the other hand you say, well, you got a Democratic President. A Democratic President will not let him get away with that, but recently the Democratic President says that he is in favor of moving in the same direction, not just moving toward a balanced budget, and wisely so. He makes a difference, that we will do it in 10 years, but the only difference that he proposes, that the cuts be a little less drastic, that the blitzkrieg be joined, not opposed, you know. That is on the one hand, the other hand, and you know there is just no other hand if the President, the Democrat who has the power to veto--all expecting the veto of the President to put a check on extremism; the veto of the President will slow down this blitzkrieg. The veto of the President will [[Page H 6149]] force a halt to the rapid movement toward the cliff, the dangerous cliff that our public policy is moving toward. The veto of the President would make it necessary to negotiate. There will be no unconditional surrender, but a negotiation which would at least preserve some of what is under attack here. But the President has said that he will join the rapid movement, and the only difference is he wants to slow it down or he wants to spread it out. That is the only difference. The President wants to balance the budget, and he refuses to talk about the one item that we know one could use to balance the budget in 7 years or in 10 years. You could balance the budget; we have proven that. The Congressional Black Caucus budget, which was introduced here on the floor here, said, if you insist on balancing the budget, we think it is very unwise to try and do it in 7 years, but whether you do it in 7 or 10 years, the way to balance the budget without forcing the draconian cuts in Medicare, the draconian cuts in Medicaid, the terrible cuts in education, without cutting the throat of the effort to improve education, which is so vital to our society, without those drastic moves you could still balance the budget if you would raise the percentage of the tax burden which is borne by the corporations. You could raise the percentage of the tax burden borne by the corporations, and there would be very little pain out there because the corporations are making tremendous amounts of money in our society at this point. Our economy is booming. Part of our economy is booming. The Wall Street economy where investments are made and the profits of corporations are up; that side of the economy is booming. There is another side of the economy, or another economy totally at this point which I call the job economy which has no relationship between the--there is no relationship between the booming Wall Street economy and the job economy. The job economy is suffering from less and less unemployment in certain places is quite high. Underemployment is rampant all over the country. People are working for less. When they have the good fortune to find a job and have a job, they are working for less, even in the ranks of middle management. They are working for much less. The downsizing, the streamlining, has driven down the quality of life and the standard of living of large numbers of middle- class people who seemed quite safe before in our economy. The very industries which would drive the need for people in an information economy, an information-driven economy, that industry is automating so fast, streamlining its communications technologies and its computerization that large numbers of employees who were needed before are not needed now, or they can take portions of their operations overseas for cheaper and cheaper labor, and the cheap labor is not necessarily only the children in Bangladesh who make sneakers and who are forced to work long hours. Cheap labor sometimes are computer specialists, people who are programing computers in India and who are college graduates or from Eastern Europe who are college graduates, and they work for half of what the computer specialists or the computer programmers would make here in this country. So there are many ways in which our industries, American industries, can earn huge profits without improving the job situation. So we need a program to correct that. We need to deal with how Americans are going to protect their standard of living the way the Japanese protect their standard of living, the way the Germans protect their standard of living. We need a program. Before we get to a comprehensive program to do that, one obvious step we should take is to take advantage of the fact that our corporations are making a lot of money. The profits are up very high, and yet they are paying less of a tax burden than families and individuals. In 1943, and I have a chart here which shows this, the Congressional Budget Office uses the same statistics. I think this chart came out of one of their documents, the Office of Management and Budget, nobody disputes the fact that these are facts. In 1943, 39.8 percent, of the tax burden, the revenue that runs our Government, came from corporations, corporate income taxes. In 1943, 39.8 percent almost 40 percent. At the same time, in 1943, 27 percent of the tax burden, the revenues that run the country, came from individuals and families. I have repeated these facts several times here in this Chamber. You cannot repeat it too much, because at some time the American people have to wake up; at some time they have to realize they have a good reason to be angry. At some point they have to know where to direct their anger appropriately. The anger should be directed at the sellout that has taken place in this Congress, in this city, Washington, since 1943. The tax burden that is borne by the corporations dropped all the way from 39.8 percent, almost 40 percent, to 8 percent in 1982, 8 percent. It went all the way down from 40 percent to 8 percent in 1982. Now, how did that happen, while at the same time the individual share of the tax burden went from 27 percent in 1943 to 48 percent in 1982? And in 1995 we are looking at a situation where the individual taxes, individual and family income taxes, are still at 43.7 percent in terms of the total amount of revenue raised to run the country, while the corporate share is down still, not quite as low as it was under Ronald Reagan in 1982, not at 8 percent, but it is at 11 percent. Eleven percent. Now, if you want to balance the budget, then I was waiting for the President to say, ``Let's balance the budget by closing the corporate loopholes, by getting rid of the corporate welfare, by restoring a balance in the tax burden. Let's do it over 8 years.'' You could balance the budget and meet that need, if we consider that to be such a great need, without cutting Medicare 1 cent, without cutting Medicaid. Medicare and Medicaid should go back to where Hillary Clinton placed them. In her health plan we were going to make cuts in health care, but we were going to make them in the context of a plan which would provide better health care for all Americans, and, most of all, would cover all Americans. Within the context of that kind of plan, we were also going to be able to slow the rate of the rise in the cost of health care, which is what is being talked about now. The cuts being proposed now are being proposed without any discussion of providing health care to all Americans who are uncovered, or without any discussion of how health care can be improved. What am I talking about? I am saying that on the one hand, the Republicans in the House and the Senate propose to recklessly balance the budget by making cuts that are going to make large numbers of Americans suffer, by making cuts that are going to leave a mark on our infrastructure, our social infrastructure as well as our physical infrastructure, that will make it very difficult to overcome in future years. All of this is being done very rapidly, and nothing seems to be in place to stop it. The Republicans are moving rapidly, and the President now has joined the flow in the same direction, instead of being the opposition force, the one remaining opposition force we could rely on, the veto of the President. I projected on the floor of the House a few weeks ago that we would have a situation where the President would stand between the American majority, the caring majority of Americans who are going to be hurt by these cuts, he would stand between them and the Republican blitzkrieg, and force the issue by vetoing the appropriations bill. He cannot veto the budget. That will be decided in the next few days probably by the House and Senate, and the budget will be there. But the budget only sets the upper limits as to how each Committee on Appropriations can operate. The appropriations bills, one by one, go to the President. The President can veto them. The power to override the vetoes does not reside in either House, I do not believe. The Senate could override the vetoes and the House could not. The Democrats have enough coherence, unity, enough strength left to be able to assist the President in the veto process. Then negotiations would be forced. You have to have negotiations. We all remember the famous negotiations at the White House when we had gridlock [[Page H 6150]] with George Bush. George Bush, facing a democratically controlled House of Representatives and Senate, they had to negotiate a settlement. Each side had to give and take, and you had a balance coming out that nobody was really that happy with, but at least it did not wreck the country overnight. It was not extremism of the kind we are faced with here.So if we do not have the hope that the President will stand against the blitzkrieg of the Republicans, then what do we have? All we have left is a possibility that the American people can be mobilized and public opinion can be so focused and so determined and communicated in such a forceful way that the President will wake up and change his course. Our hope is we can have the executive branch of Government stand firm against these draconian, disastrous cuts that will drive our Nation over the cliff into an abyss that will be very difficult to get out of. Let me just go into a little more detail, because people still do not believe that we are in a crisis. Nobody seems to understand what is in plain English. This is not so subtle. There is nothing hidden. It is all quite out in the open. There is no conspiracy. Republicans cannot be accused of a conspiracy. It is right out there in the open. Everybody has a copy of this list, ``Cutting Government.'' Departments to be eliminated: The Department of Commerce, the Department of Education, the Department of Energy. They are to be eliminated. That is the Republican proposal. I understand the Senate only proposes to eliminate the Department of Commerce. We can be hopeful in the negotiations between the Senate and the House that we are going to save, if not all three of these departments, at least two of them. But that is a fact now. It is a very hard fact. One-half of the legislative process, one-half of the legislative branch of Government, is on record already to want to eliminate the Department of Commerce, the Department of Education, and the Department of Energy. They want to eliminate 13 agencies. I invite anybody who wants to go along with me to take out a pencil and write it down. If you do not have the list, I will give it all to you in detail. Details sometimes are very important. Maybe the details will awaken the American people to the fact we have a crisis. We have a state of emergency in decision making. The decisions that are going to be made in the next few months in Washington are going to leave us in a situation that will create massive amounts of pain and suffering. The decisions that are made are going to be very difficult to undo in the next few years. Something must be done to rally the American people, the public opinion, and communicate that to the executive branch, that they have to stand against this blitzkrieg that is going to make for so much pain and suffering. Agencies eliminated, 13. The Economic Development Administration, the Travel and Tourism Administration, International Trade Administration, Minority Business Development Administration, Maritime Administration, Federal Transit Administration, Agency for Health Care Policy Research, Corporation for National and Community Service, which was created by the National Community Service Act just 2 years ago, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will be phased out over 3 years, Administrative Conference of United States, Legal Services Corporation, which has provided legal services for poor people since Lyndon Johnson created the Legal Services Program during the Great Society years in the 1960's. That is going to be wiped out completely, eliminated like all the other agencies that I have just named. The State Justice Institute, the Office of Technology Assessment. All eliminated. Maybe this is too high up for most of you who are listening. You cannot comprehend what it means, because these are big agencies still. They are pretty big. Maybe you want to go to another level and let's talk about the 284 programs to be eliminated. The Housing Investment Guarantee Program, USDA's Strategic Space Plan, FMF, loans to Greece and Turkey, assistance to Eastern Europe and Russia, East-West Center, North-South Center, Office of the American Workplace, the SBA Tree Planting Program, DOT's Minority Resource Development Program, highway demonstration projects, mass transit operating assistance, Air Traffic Control Revitalization Act. There is an article today on the front page of one of the magazines that asks is the Government doing all they can to protect us in the sky when we are flying? Their answer is no, the Government is not. We are going to eliminate a portion of the effort to make it safer for us to travel by air. The National Highway Institute, the Office of Physical Fitness and Sports. Under Ronald Reagan I think we had a fitness program that was launched that has been quoted over and over again as having reaped great gains in terms of improvements in health and the movement in the direction which would lessen the cost of health care by having a more fit population. There is an assumption that any small program, because it is small, is undesirable. Some of the programs I am reading here are small, and they are deemed to be automatically undesirable and unproductive because they are small. There is nothing rational about that. That is totally irrational. I do not say that some of this reasoning does not come from the administration. The White House, the executive branch, started looking at everything small and deciding that we would consolidate. But every time they consolidate by bringing them together, one office under one umbrella, they would eliminate some of the funding, which means that consolidation was really a way to cut out some of the programs. It is like saying that fingers on your hand are undesirable and no good, unproductive, because they are smaller than the hand. We would be better off if we had just one lump here, consolidation. Let's consolidate all this stuff, and you have it all in one lump, and that is a great improvement automatically. Well, the animals on the earth that do not have the kind of finger separation and these smaller items here are not able to compete at all with the manual dexterity of the species homo sapiens. God knew what he was doing, and can we not follow the example? We make the assumption because the fingers are smaller than the hand, we would rather consolidate it in order to improve it. Many of these small programs are far more effective and far more beneficial than large programs. The cost benefits ratio for what we pay for these small programs as taxpayers, we get a far greater benefit out of them than you get from some of the better known, larger programs that are being protected, of course. The VISTA Program, volunteers in this country, originally created to sort of parallel the Peace Corps, where you would have volunteers in this country. Senior Volunteer Corps, Retired Senior Volunteer Corps, the Foster Grandparent Program, Senior Companion Program, Senior Demonstration Program, these programs are being eliminated because they are very small. They are very tiny, but they are very beneficial and nobody ever argues at any hearing or markup that the programs do not work. They just are small, and they are going to be eliminated because they happen to be too small. Goals 2000, State and local education programs. Goals 2000 national programs, Goals 2000, parental assistance, small efforts in the Department of Education that represent a great deal of time, energy, brainpower, devotion, patience, Goals 2000 resulted from a long effort that began under Ronald Reagan when he commissioned a group to study the state of American education, public education. They came back with a report entitled ``A Nation at Risk.'' ``A Nation at Risk'' said that we are at risk in the modern world of not being able to compete globally with our competitors in trade, not being able to in technology or the use of technology match our competitors and produce the kind of products, the quality of products at the cost level necessary to be able to maintain our leadership in the world. Goals 2000 is a result of a long process begun then. First, ``A Nation at Risk'' report was issued by Ronald Reagan, and then George Bush came along and issued a position statement [[Page H 6151]] called American 2000. President Bush called a summit of Governors in Virginia, and the Governors decided to establish a six-point program, six goals for education. These are very, very energetic, knowledgeable people who participated in this process. More important than anything else, they were elected by the American people. They participated in the process together. It was not to the credit of President Bush, it was not the White House handing down something from Olympia and expecting all the States to comply. There was instead a participation of all existing Governors, including Governor Bill Clinton. So when Governor Bill Clinton became President, he was in a position to follow through. There was continuity from a Republican President to a Democratic President on the all- important matter of education. Yes, the emphasis was different in terms of the great emphasis on vouchers and privatization of education that was written into the American 2000 program by President Bush and Secretary Alexander. That emphasis was not there in Goals 2000. But much of what was in America 2000 under George Bush was retained in Goals 2000, especially the standard setting. There was agreement, Republican and Democrats all Governors, that you need to have some standards set. You need to have standards set with respect to the kind of curriculum, the quality of curriculum, the purpose and goals of curriculum. You need to have standards set in terms of how you were going to assess the performance of students, and they did not decide this among the Governors but in the Education and Labor Committee. We introduced a third set of standards called opportunity to learn standards that in addition to standards for curriculum and standards for the assessment of the performance of students, tests, there also should be standards for opportunity to learn, all the young people in the States given an opportunity to learn. All of these standards were set and would be voluntary. No State would have to do anything. The State has an option. The State would not have to accept the standards. The State would not have to accept standards for curriculum, standards for opportunity to learn. It is all voluntary, but even that, by the way, has been quite successful. There has been a national math curriculum issue, a national arts curriculum issue. The curriculum standards have moved forward. There is a national history curriculum in the works now, a lot of controversy about it, but it is moving forward. And for the first time the effort to improve American schools is on a systematic upward, forward, progressive path. But now we are going to eliminate that effort. The heart of the effort will be eliminated in this budget that eliminates 284 programs. Education is a particular target. If you recall, when I read the names of the departments to be eliminated, education was one of the departments, one of the three departments proposed by the Republicans in the House to be eliminated. That alone, when a civilized nation in 1995, given where the world is, how complicated it is, how competitive it is, when a civilized nation decides it wants to eliminate its Department of Education, then you have a state of emergency right there, even if it did no further damage. If no other reckless proposals were made, that alone is enough for the American people to understand that something is seriously wrong here in Washington. How can any civilized nation say it does not want to provide some kind of direction and some kind of effort to influence the way education is undertaken in the whole nation. We have a situation where local and state governments are primarily responsible for education. They always have been. There was an editorial in The Hill last week where one of the Members of the Education and Labor Committee argued that we have spent more and more on education, and education has gotten worse; and the Federal Government, therefore, should get out of the business of education. We spend more on education, but the money has come from the States and the local levels, and the States and the local governments have been in charge. Local school boards and the States have been in charge of education. They have the power, $360 to $380 billion. That is a lot of money spent on education last year. But only about 7 percent of that was Federal money. The rest of it came from the States and the localities. So 93 percent of the dollars, the cost is covered by State and local government. They have 93 percent of the power. The Federal Government is a small bit player in education. The largest program, the chapter 1 program, is a $7 billion program out of that total of $360 to $380 billion. So the Federal Government cannot be blamed if we have spent more money on education and got poor results because it has been a bit player, a tiny player. Its influence is at this point quite minimal. I think it would be very appropriate, highly desirable if the Federal Government's role in education increased to about 25 percent and the federal funding for education moved in the same way. If we were funding 25 percent of the total education budget of the country and we had 25 percent of the decisionmaking power, education would still be very much under the control of local governments, local school boards and the states. It would still be 75 percent. Anybody who has 75 percent of the power is in control. The Federal Government would have some influence and that is all it has ever had, a tiny amount of influence. So if education is in trouble, things have gone wrong, it is not because the Federal Government has had a major role and it is the cause. The Federal Government has come to this situation very late in the history of this nation. State governments have always been in control. Even this tiny effort now would be wiped out in the pending budget. Education for disadvantaged concentration grants, wiped out; education for disadvantaged targeted grants wiped out; impact aid, wiped out; education infrastructure, small program which was to begin the process of providing some help to have poor local school boards to remove asbestos or lead where it is a problem and make schools more healthy in areas where they do not have the money and will never be able to raise the money to do it so that kids would go to safe schools or schools that are not so life threatening as lead poisoning and asbestos are to young children, that is eliminated. Magnet schools assistance, eliminated; drop out prevention demonstrations, eliminated; bilingual education instruction services, eliminated; Gallaudet University will not be eliminated but they must combine four programs into one. National Institutes for the Deaf combined three programs into one. This is small efforts for people with disabilities, and they are squeezed also. The Eisenhower Leadership Program, the minority teacher recruitment, minority science improvement, innovative projects for community service, these are all tiny programs, but they have gone and assumed that because they are so tiny they are undesirable, unproductive and must be eliminated. Federal TRIO programs are tampered with, five programs are eliminated: National Science Scholars, National Academy of Science, Space and Technology, Teacher Corps. I am not reading them all. I am just reading a few of those on the list. Harris fellowships, Javits fellowships, graduate assistance in areas of national need. These are all graduate programs that will be fashioned by members of the Education and Labor Committee in response to longstanding needs. They are tiny programs, but they meet specific kinds of needs that have been identified for more aid in certain areas. Science is one of those areas. We need more aid for students who are studying, minority students studying science. Javits fellowships were a different kind of effort to aid minority students, not minority students, but students in general. Graduate assistance in areas of national need says it exactly as it is, areas of national need identified, public health people, people who could work with children with disabilities, various areas where you identify national need, there was an effort to target the funding. All of that eliminated. Too small. Nobody has ever said it does not work, they just said, it must go. Howard University academic program, Howard University endowment [[Page H 6152]] program, elimination. We are talking about wiping out the Howard University academic program, Howard university research, Howard University Hospital, Howard University Clinical Center, Howard University construction, all that wiped out, about $110 million wiped out of Howard University's budget, which wipes out Howard University, because Howard University is the only federally funded university for primarily, it was created primarily, after the Civil War, for the newly freed slaves. But it serves students of all colors, races and creeds now, but it is federally funded primarily. It does receive funds from some other sources, but only tiny amounts. So when you take away federal funds from Howard University, you are saying we are wiping out Howard University. That is a serious action. That is certainly a state of emergency for Howard University, a state of emergency for education. Star Schools, eliminated; Ready to Learn Television, the whole area of technology, the use of mass media to improve education, to lower the cost of education, all of that discussed for many years in the Education and Labor Committee, the old Education and Labor Committee, which is now called the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities, the representatives that you elect, the representatives that you send here who are placed on authorizing committees labor to get the best wisdom in the country through hearings, through reading papers. Staff organizes legislation, and we created these programs in response to real needs. But now the power is in the Committee on the Budget and the Committee on Appropriations to wipe all this out, and it proceeded to destroy it. When I use the word blitzkrieg or scorched earth, it is quite appropriate. This is very thorough. This is very devastating, very destructive. It is public policy decisionmaking, but it is as deadly as knives and guns are on a smaller level. What is being done to our society, the torture and the maiming of our society is incomprehensible to most people. We do not think in those terms. One of the problems with the species Homo sapiens is that they are very physical. Species Homo sapiens only reacts to what it can see and feel, what our senses can identify. The cognitive process is more difficult to comprehend than we allow, and we allow it to be fooled and manipulated and misused by people who understand the cognitive processes better, who understand futurism and how to project and create new systems. And they understand the result of the systems that they create. They talk about a balanced budget amendment, but what they are doing is presenting a situation or creating a situation and an environment which will be hostile to social programs and sets up a situation which allows them to squeeze the social programs that they do not want out of existence. Granted, another group could do that, and squeeze the defense programs and some of the undesirable programs that are being funded out of existence also, but the process is in the control of those who want to go after the programs that benefit the great majority of the American people. These people who are doing the squeezing, this list of programs to be eliminated and destroyed, which I will discontinue reading at this point, this list is promulgated by people who know very well what they are doing, and have targeted people programs, programs that do benefit the working poor, the working middle class, the poor who have no jobs, and large numbers of the upper middle class will also be hit. The professional classes will also be hit. The government workers, they are going after their pensions, and going to squeeze those. They know what they are doing. It is not by accident. Nothing has happened by accident. It is clearly understood what the process is. When they decide to do something in the opposite direction, which is clearly going to cost a lot of money, but they want to do it, they can be very reckless about doing it, very open. Mr. Speaker, I think that the discussion on the budget and the discussion on appropriations and the discussion about where the country is going with respect to fiscal responsibility, what the danger of bankruptcy might be, that discussion ought to be divided into two parts: before the B-2 bomber vote that took place last week, and after the B-2 bomber vote. The B-2 bomber is a defining point in this whole discussion. The funding for the B-2 bomber, the authorizing of the funding for the B-2 bomber, was on the floor. There was an amendment to eliminate the funding for the B-2 bomber. What is the B-2 bomber? It is a dream machine for people who want to sneak into areas through a stealth process with a bomber and drop bombs. It was originally conceived to go into the Soviet Union during a nuclear war and drop bombs on selected targets, and it would do this during a nuclear war by using the state-of-the-art stealth technology. It would not be observed. It could sneak in there and do it. With the whole world exploding around us, we would send this bomber in there and it would finish off targets in the Soviet Union. We say we still need it. It is under production already. The item on the floor was whether or not they should add additional B-2 bombers. The cost was about $30 billion, when we add the production costs and operations costs. The figure of $30 billion sticks out. We are talking about $30 billion in the budget. Mr. Speaker, I am saying the discussion before and after the B-2 bomber tells us a great deal, because there were large numbers of people who insisted that they came here to cut government, to get government off the backs of people, to make government more effective and more efficient. There was a discussion on the floor of the B-2 bomber costing $30 billion. Thirty billion dollars can buy a lot of hospital beds, it can buy a lot of school lunches. Thirty billion dollars can build beautiful new schools where there are unsafe schools with asbestos and lead poisoning. Thirty billion dollars can accomplish a great deal in our society in any of the areas of need. However, $30 billion was on the floor, and the deliberation was shall we go ahead with this madness and keep this $30 billion in the budget, or shall we be reasonable and sincere and show that we are honest about wanting to improve the efficiency of government, about wanting to save the Nation from bankruptcy, about wanting to keep our children from having to bear the burden of paying the debt we build up. All the rhetoric that has come around the balanced budget and the need to move forward to make these draconian cuts was on the table. The B-2 bomber, the Pentagon says they do not need it. The Secretary of Defense said ``We do not need the B-2 bomber.'' Nobody in the military wants the B-2 bomber. The President does not want the B-2 bomber. The people who are the experts, people who have to fight the wars, say ``We do not need a B-2 bomber.'' Yet, $30 billion is on the table that we can realize and regain to do other things with, to go toward helping the deficit, to keep our children from having to pay these gigantic debts in the future. All of the rhetoric could be realized. All of the things promised in the rhetoric could be realized to a great degree with $30 billion on the floor. The military does not want it, the Air Force does not want it, the Secretary of Defense does not want it; yet, the majority of the people on the floor of the House of Representatives voted to keep the $30 billion in the budget for the B-2 bomber. Before the B-2 you might have said ``Some of these people are really sincere, especially the freshmen.'' The freshmen came with their eyes popping with sincerity, bright with sincerity. They said ``We do not care what it is, if it is wasteful, we will eliminate it.'' Here is an example on the floor, a concrete physical example, a $30 billion example of what you can do to help eliminate waste, make government more effective and efficient, and reduce the deficit. All the objectives can be met to the tune of $30 billion on the floor. Yet, the vote was that the majority says ``No, we will keep the B-2 bomber,'' for whatever reasons. I do not stand here to impugn the motives of my colleagues, and Congressmen are not in the business of explaining the votes of other Congress persons. They can explain their own [[Page H 6153]] vote, but I think you ought to call up each one who voted to keep the B-2 bomber to explain ``What is the magic, what is it that we cannot see through simple, ordinary logic?'' There may be some special kind of reasoning and logic, or some deep- seated wisdom that the people who voted to keep this $30 billion monster in the budget have that the rest of us do not have. Let them explain. I see no rush to explain by many who voted. Of course, there were people who argued on the floor that we need to give our troops the very best, and the stealth bomber would help make it safer for our fliers, et cetera, et cetera. The fliers do not say that. The experts in the military do not say that. The generals do not say that. The Secretary of Defense does not say that. They all gave these arguments, running counter to the people we trust and pay to run our defense. Therefore, let the B-2 bomber be the deciding point in terms of determining the integrity and the consistency, the truthfulness of anybody who stands on this floor and calls for budget cuts. Let that be the determining, defining moment. It is worthy of saying ``Before the B-2 I saw you this way. After the B-2 you are exposed.'' Across the B-2, across the spectrum, there are some other B-2 bomber types of votes. We are voting to keep in the F-22, a fighter plane that is the most sophisticated fighter plane ever conceived. It is not needed, also. There are many others. Then we are going to be considering very soon a reorganization of the agricultural bill, continuation of agricultural welfare. Here you have very dishonest discussions about to shape up, similar to the B-2 in terms of the rhetoric is in one place and the action is in another. If we want to eliminate welfare as we have known it, if we want to change welfare and eliminate welfare as we know it, then let us eliminate agricultural welfare as we know it. From New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, there are thousands, millions of people who would love to go to Kansas and be able to enjoy the benefits that Kansas farmers enjoy from the taxpayers. They get $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 checks each year of doing nothing. They get checks for not plowing the soil, for not growing grain. The checks are without question. They do not have to prove that they are poor. If you go in any city and say that you are desperately poor, you have no other means to feed your children, then you have to fill out forms. You have to have an audit of your expenses. Somebody has to investigate you before you get a penny. The average welfare check for Aid to Dependent Children recipients, for a family of three, is about $300 a month across the Nation, it being much lower in certain places, like Mississippi, and higher in places like New York. However, the average check is $300 a month for a family of three. Yet, you have to fill out numerous forms, be investigated, and establish the fact that you really need it. There is a means test. There is no means testing for farmers. There is no means testing. The rich farmers will get the same check that the poor farmers get. There is no means testing. Yes, true, when Franklin Roosevelt first established the program there were poor farmers in the Nation, and it served the purpose. That is no longer the case. We have rich farmers as well as poor farmers getting this welfare. My time is up, Mr. Speaker, but my point is we are on the verge of a major catastrophe here in Washington. A state of emergency exists. All of America should wake up, particularly the caring majority, the large majority of people who are going to have a great deal of pain and suffering generated for them as a result of these terrible decisions that are being made here. I hope people understand that in the final analysis, the war that is raging is for us to win. We are still a majority. We are not beggars. We are not in a situation where we have no arms to fight back with. We are still a majority. The caring majority can rally its forces and still prevail. We have to understand first that we are in a state of emergency, that we are threatened, before we rally, but we can and we shall overcome.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I rise to salute the 36 students and their teachers from Clara Barton High School whose efforts represent a Point- of-Light for all Americans. Brooklyn and the 11th Congressional District are particularly proud of the team from Clara Barton High School who won the New York State Championship and finished fourth among the 50 States in the ``We the People . . . the Citizens and the Constitution'' competition. The team of students and their teachers at Clara Barton High School competed against some of the best, brightest, and wealthiest students from New York State to secure the State championship. They further persevered in the national ``We the People'' competition--a debate- style mock congressional hearing which judges students' knowledge and critical understanding of the Bill of Rights. In preparation for the competition, students undertook an intensive study of the Bill of Rights. At the competition, students were required to take a position on current constitutional issues and to defend their position elaborately. Located in the heart of the Crown Heights neighborhood, it is evident that the students from Clara Barton are quite capable of overcoming many feats amid an environment too often characterized by doubt, negative peer pressure, and modest economic means. They fought against a problem-ridden education system and achieved excellence for themselves and their community. The names of the victorious students are: Carl Abbot, Afaf Abdur Rahman, Maatra Akbar, Jasmine Ali, LaToya Andrews, Lourdes Baez, Alesha Bovell, Faithlyn Brown, Eva Gordon, Kevin Grant, Quincy Grigsby, Chevonne Hall, Kevin Johnson, Zulema Jones, Charmaine King, Marsha Lewis, Rosevelie Marquez, Dwayne Mason, Antoinette McKenzie, Dameon Ming, Cynthia Morales, David Morisset, Sheila Morisset, Cecil Orji, Felix Pacheco, Gary Pagan, Sherita Perry, Carline Petit, Travis Sampson, Karen Sanchez, Crystal Sheard, Kestia St. Juste, Stacy Taitt, Kaydean West, Arnise Williams, and Vaughn Wilson. The tireless efforts of many adults also contributed to the victory of the Clara Barton students. Their coaches were Mr. Leo Casey and Ms. Randi Weingarten. Also, for the past 5 years Mrs. Florence Smith served as a special liaison to the Clara Barton team from the office of Congressman Major Owens. The MLK Commission chaired by Mrs. Lorrelle Henry provided moral, spiritual, and financial support for the team. Many additional friends including Judge Thomas R. Jones adopted the team and became cosponsors. With the war on our children's future being waged by the Republicans in Washington and in Albany, NY; and with the advanced technical skills that will be needed in the workplace in the year 2000, it is becoming clear that minority and working class children face a very troubling future. To fight these destructive forces we must make new efforts to teach our children how important a good education is to their future. We must do more to reward our children when they exhibit academic excellence. The exceptional performance of the Clara Barton champions in a nationwide competition once again proves that the Bell Curve theory of racial inferiority is a big lie. The team at Clara Barton High School represents a magnificent Point- of-Light and serves as an inspiring success story for all young people and all of America.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to close on an upbeat note. America has a great future. The civilization of the Western world has a great future. Science and technology now drive wealth in the world. The more educated people we have, the more we build on the base of science and technology, the faster the wealth will increase. The great injustice is that only a few people share in the benefits of this science and technology. It was created by people whose names we never know, by people whose names we do know, but they never derive any direct wealth from it, and we have built on it. A lot of science and technology has been created by the American taxpayers. Many of the investments that are being made so profitably now on Wall Street related to the telecommunications industry, the computer industries, those were built upon research and development done by the military using the money of the American taxpayers. All of us have a stake in this wealth that is being created by science and technology. The future of the world lies in this direction. If we focus on education and increase the number of educated people in the country, we can generate enough wealth to be able to meet all of the needs of all Americans. [[Page H6042]] If we use new revenue techniques, more creative techniques for getting revenue, so we derive the revenue from the areas where the greatest increases in wealth are taking place, then we can always meet all of the needs of all Americans without pain and suffering. I think we can look forward to the future and not see a doomsday scenario of inevitable, ongoing deficits forever and ever, or suffering by the American people as a result of trying to reduce the deficit.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I just want to go back to the corporations' swindle in terms of their reduction of their share of the tax burden over the years, and mention that if you change the way you tax investments, income from investments, and the way you tax capital gains, which they are always trying to change, of course the Republicans want to lessen the rate on these items. The Bible says man shall earn his living by the sweat of his brow. Those people who really sweat to earn their living, they are charged the highest rate. They are taxed at a higher rate than people who never sweat. They make investments, they sell and buy items, and they make enormous profits, and that income is taxed at a much lower rate than the income earned by the guy out there is the plant who goes to work every day. Why? What is the justification? There is no justification, except that the people who make the investments and who have the greatest gains from capital gains, they have the power. They have the power, and public policy allows them to be taxed at a rate which is much smaller than the rate of the person who works hour by hour for wages. The wage earner has seen his taxes go up tremendously over the last 12 years. They do not call it taxes, as in the payroll taxes, the Medicare. There are various ways in which the take-home pay of the wage earners has been drastically reduced, at the same time we have had all these various programs to subsidize and to help increase the income of people who earn their income from investments and from sales or capital gains. Enormous amounts of money can be realized by changing the way we tax the capital gains.

Mr. OWENS. Again, the burden that was borne by corporations in 1943 was 39.8 percent of the total tax burden. The burden that corporations have, the portion of the tax burden that corporations bear now is only 11 percent. Individuals started in 1943 about 27 percent, and now individuals are paying 44 percent of the tax burden. That is a fact that I cannot emphasize too much. I think Mr. DeFazio has said before that one way you can gain a large amount of revenue, I do not have the actual figures before me, but they were all listed in the Congressional Black Caucus budget, we listed specifically where we would find the money, which added up to almost $600 billion over a 7-year period, $600 billion that would have come from such items as one mentioned by Mr. DeFazio, if you change the way you tax foreign corporations, if you change, just make a change from a tax credit that you utilize at one point and make it a tax deduction, you gain enormous amounts of money. If you close a lot of various loopholes that have been made over the years, the oil depletion allowance is still there, it has been there forever. There are numerous loopholes that have been developed because the corporations have literally owned the Ways and Means Committee and the Ways and Means Committee, whether Democrat or Republican, has had the same approach of being the servant of corporations. So down, down, down has gone their portion of the tax burden, while the individual's portion has gone up.

Mr. OWENS. Well, New York City has a long tradition of having education available at the higher education level for great masses of students. New York City has been the place where large numbers of immigrants have come in and found opportunity. Our City University was established at the height of the Depression, so we were able to maintain City University during the Depression, and now we are saying we cannot do it. We have to increase the tuition cost. First of all, for years there was no tuition at all, and then we imposed tuition, and now we have to increase the tuition cost because we are getting less aid from the Federal Government and less aid from the State government. So at a time when the society is far more complex than ever before, at a time when we are stating clearly that any person who does not have a high education is at great risk in terms of being able to be employed for most of his life, and on the other hand those that do have higher education, statistics and studies have shown they cannot be employed, they put back in the economy, they give back to the government through the payment of income taxes and they are more productive citizens. All of those things are highly desirable. Yet in the Republican budget they go so far, not only do they make it more difficult for college students by adding to the burden of their college loans, they eliminated the Department of Education totally. The elimination of the Department of Education means you have no coordinated approach to education and a situation every day where education becomes more important. I would like to backtrack for just a minute to make a comment on Medicaid. Very little is being said about Medicaid because it is assumed that Medicaid is for the poorest people in the country. Therefore, Medicaid has no political clout. We are just going to dump them overboard. The Republicans are proposing to take away the entitlement to Medicaid. Entitlement means that everybody who gets sick, who is eligible because they do have to pass a means test and they have to be income eligible. That person is guaranteed to have assistance from the government on health care once they qualify. To take away that entitlement means that if people get sick near the end of the budget cycle they will be told by the State that there is no more money. Medicaid is being cut more drastically than Medicare, and Medicaid is not just a program for the poorest families. Two-thirds of the Medicaid funding goes to the elderly and to the disabled. Many people who start out as middle class citizens when they get ill and are ill over a period of time, they are forced to spend so much money until they end up in nursing homes, and those nursing homes are paid for by Medicaid. The largest percentage of Medicaid funds are going to nursing homes. So we are not, I hope that the voters in general frown on creating a second class health care system for poor families, but you are not just hitting poor families in that second class health care system. You are hitting people who will become, that they will drop out of the middle class and become nursing home patients, and Medicaid will have to pay that bill.

Mr. OWENS. I want to linger for a moment on the B-2 bomber, the cost of building the B-2 bombers. I think is a $31 billion price tag over a 5-year period. Now, the B-2 bomber, the Air Force said we do not want it, we do not need it, it actually is counterproductive because it will mean funds will be spent for an item that we do not need and they will be taken away from many items we do need. So the Air Force says that. The Joint Chiefs of Staff says that we do not need it. We do not need it. We do not want it. The Secretary of Defense: We do not need it, we do not want it. It is not in the President's budget. He does not need it and he does not want it. I am sorry, but I think every voter out there ought to ask their Congressman, did you vote to continue the funding for the B-2 bomber? If you did vote to continue the funding for the B-2 bomber, in light of the fact that all of the experts, all of the military, everybody says we do not want it, we do not need it, it is a waste, then you have no right to talk about waste in Government ever again. You have no right. That was a perfect example. Why would anybody vote for the B-2 bomber? It is the worst kind of pork. It is the pork from the military industrial complex, the people have been absorbing much too much of our budget over the last 20 years. It is pork, pork, pork. It will generate a profit for the people who manufacture the bomber. It will generate a profit for the stockholders who will have invested in that corporation. It will generate some jobs for some workers. But you could create three times as many jobs for $31 billion in the civilian sector if you choose to spend the money to create jobs than you can create by building B-2 bombers.

Mr. OWENS. Could the gentleman just linger for a minute on Mexico. I hope that, again, every American voter ought to be angry. There is good reason to be angry. But we ought to focus and direct our anger in ways which are more effective and at the real source of the problem. I said before we ought to be angry at the fact that corporations have gotten away with so much over the last 30 years, and certainly they have dropped all the way down to now paying 11 percent of the tax burden while individuals and families are paying 44 percent of the tax burden. That is enough to be angry about. But Mexico in particular, it ought to make us turn red, all of us, with anger, because we first have NAFTA, a situation which was created by a sweeping change in public policy, that created a situation which was even under the best circumstances going to hurt the American workers. It was designed to make the rich get richer, to have the corporations have every advantage in terms of export, import, exploitation of cheap labor in Mexico. All of it was designed to help those same people that the Republican tax cut is going to help. On top of the inevitability of it hurting working people comes an additional burden of us having to bail out the Mexican economy to the tune of $20 billion. It is enough by itself for you to be angry at the Government. When I say government, I do not mean just President Clinton, I mean also the leadership of the House and the Senate, and all of those great majority of the Members of Congress who went along with NAFTA and GATT. You ought to be angry, you ought to talk to them about the mistakes that they have made, and they have to reverse those mistakes. They have to now focus on an economy which is going to promote the general welfare of America. [[Page H6039]] The Japanese are being criticized for their protectionist trade policies, their closed society. The Japanese protects its middle class society. It almost has no poverty class as a result of the fact it takes the necessary actions to guarantee everybody is going to be able to make a living. So be it. Let the United States also. As voters we can demand a series of public policy decisions which lead to the protection of our way of life, of our standard of living, and we can make contributions to the rest of the world in terms of holding up that model. Unfortunately, we have let the situation deteriorate to the point where we are headed rapidly to the bottom in terms of the standard of living of our workers, while Germany has the highest standard of living in the world. And I am not criticizing that. The German worker gets 6 weeks vacation, family and medical leave off with pay. They have very high wages. I am not criticizing them for that. It could happen here, if we had a different set of public policies and took control of our Government. Every person who votes has an opportunity to have an impact on this public policy. America, we should stop sitting by as spectators while the Committee on Ways and Means and the White House and NAFTA, GATT, and all these other institutions weigh down upon us and force our standard of living down.

Mr. OWENS. What is important for the American people to understand, and you ought to listen carefully and ought to demand from your Congressman an explanation as to why this is happening, why are you giving these tax breaks to the rich? Why are you continuing the trickle-down theories of Reaganomics? Ronald Reagan's explanation, he had an explanation, and he gave it, and it has been proven to be totally wrong, that if you will give the appropriate tax cuts and tax breaks to the rich and to the corporations, their investments will create activities which will in turn create jobs. The investment activities, will create jobs. It is obvious, the empirical evidence showed it did not happen under Reagomics. It will not happen now either. We have wealth being accumulated in this country at unprecedented rates. The very rich are getting rich faster. Wall Street is booming. Yet no new jobs are being created. The jobs are going the other way. You have a jobs economy over here and a Wall Street economy over here, and there is no relationship between the two, because as they invest more money they can buy more automated equipment or take their operations overseas and manipulate in many, many different ways to make additional money off their investments without creating jobs. They are downsizing the jobs, they are streamlining, they are doing all kinds of things where they have no bargaining power. We are all going to end up being suburban peasants or urban serfs, who have no choice almost, because of the tremendous power of these corporations. The power we have as voters in this democracy is to demand that we begin to reverse this by forcing those who are making the wealth to pay more into the general funds that are needed in order to promote the general welfare and provide for the public sector investments that are beginning to drive the economy in a different direction.

Mr. OWENS. I want to congratulate the gentleman for holding this special order in response to the latest developments with respect to the endorsement of the balanced budget concept by the President and your present discussion of taxes, of revenue. I hope that we are going to have much more of this kind of discussion and invite the American people to take a very close look at revenue measures to produce revenues and taxes. We have an era, certainly in the Democratic Party, and maybe the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders], as an Independent, does, too. By not talking enough about taxes, we leave that to other people, and we have a situation where, when bills were related to the revenue taxes have come to the floor of the House, it has always been from the Ways and Means Committee, and the rule always was that you could not make a single amendment. They always came, and you voted it up or you vote it down. So the Ways and Means Committee has been in charge of tax policy for the Congress for the last 20 to 30 years, and they are responsible for something which the American people ought to take a very close look at, and that is the great swindle of the American taxpayer by reducing the amount of the tax burden borne by the corporate sector, reducing it drastically, from almost 40 percent, 39.8 percent in 1943, down to 8 percent in 1980, and then presently it is 11 percent even after President Clinton has taken steps to get it back up. So you look at that on the one hand. They reduce the corporate income taxes, and the individual taxes have gone up from 27 percent in 1943 to the present 44 percent in 1995. So there has been a great swindle in terms of reducing the revenue, the portion of the revenue burden borne by the corporate sector and raising the portion borne by the individual. While we are on the subject of balanced budget, let us invite all of America to take a very hard look at the way we derive our revenues.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce the Boxing Safety, Retirement, and Retraining Act of 1995. This bill would create a Government corporation that would oversee the boxing industry, ensure that healthy working conditions exist, and eliminate the widespread corruption and exploitation that runs rampant within the sport. The bill places special emphasis on assuring the health and safety of boxers. Boxers are never privileged individuals. They primarily are minorities from disadvantaged areas, easily susceptible to the unscrupulous business practices of boxing promoters. Traditionally, minority youth have viewed a boxing career as a way to leave behind a life of poverty and gain wealth and stability for themselves and their families. Often these men have no other hope. They are poorly educated and face an inhospitable job market. Boxing promoters exploit the dreams of young boxers by promising lucrative careers. Once boxers enter the business, they surrender all control over their careers. They are used like property for the financial gain of others. The industry is controlled by a few organizations, manipulated like puppets by a small number of immensely powerful promoters. In this equation, the boxer is powerless. He must play by their rules or not play at all. If he complains, he is not allowed to fight. If he speaks publicly about negative conditions, he faces banishment and an end to his financial support. If he wants to fight in title matches, he must sign contracts rife with clauses that direct money to the promoter's family and friends. This situation becomes especially problematic when the boxer has little education, might not speak English, and has no other financial resources. The boxing industry might say that it is being unfairly singled out because the Government does not directly regulate any other professional sport. But the reason we do not directly regulate other sports is because we do not need to; they have proven over time that they can manage their own affairs. Through players' unions, most professional athletes have recourse against unfavorable working conditions. Golfers, bowlers, and baseball, football, and basketball players, all have an avenue that prevents them from being exploited. Boxers have none. This bill is not the first attempt by Congress to get involved in an industry that cannot monitor itself. When working conditions became intolerable, the Federal Government stepped in and formed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration [OSHA]. When financial transactions became suspect, the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] was created. When some States proved to be irresponsible on civil rights issues, the Federal Government initiated the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The boxing industry has had over 100 years to get its act together, and it has failed. It is time for Congress to get involved. Only a handful of States conduct oversight over boxing, and only a few of those do it effectively. Too often, State agencies have been co- opted by those with a financial interest in the sport. My bill would create an unbiased board whose members would be unable to reap monetary reward from the industry while serving. The board would be comprised of neurological specialists, average citizens, and a representative from the boxing world. The board's members would be given the responsibility of establishing minimum standards to which States must adhere. States with effective agencies would be able to maintain autonomy, but states with little or no oversight would be forced to improve. Without this bill, the unconscionable practices of this sport will continue. Oversight responsibility will continue to be left to those individuals who have proven that greed is their motivating force. Unsuspecting minority youth will still be exploited. Boxers will never be able to voice objections to working conditions. And an elite group of promoters will keep becoming very, very rich. I am in no way asking for a ban of the sport, just some oversight. Amateur boxing programs in neighborhoods have been successful in getting young people off the street and giving them confidence. It is the professional arena where the problems lie. For the sake of the young men involved and fostering the integrity of the sport, I urge my colleagues to pass this legislation.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, we have just returned from recess, but prior to that we completed a part of a very long process. Most people do not realize it was merely the beginning. The budget and the appropriations process begins with the passage of the budget. The House of Representatives and the Senate have passed the budget, and they will soon reach agreement on that budget. Most people do not realize the President has no veto power over the budget. That budget does forward without the President having a chance to veto it. He must react to the individual appropriations bills now that will be generated under the guidance of that budget. In other words, the budget sets the overall ceiling for each one of the areas, and the Committee on Appropriations now can go forward to make expenditures, increasing some programs, decreasing some, eliminating some, putting in new programs. That is all up to the Committee on Appropriations. However, Mr. Speaker, I think it is safe to say that we can expect, with this well-coordinated majority in power presently, that most of the recommendations made by the Committee on the Budget will probably be included in the appropriations process. The Committee on Appropriations will follow through on most of the recommendations. Therefore, we have a good idea of what the pattern is going to be in terms of the kind of expenditures that are going to be made by this Congress, or the kind of appropriations that are going to be proposed by this Congress. Each one of the appropriations bills, however, can be vetoed by the President. The public should realize that, that the appropriations bills have to go to the President. Once the Senate and the House have acted and both have agreed in a conference on a bill, it goes to the President, and the President can veto it. The public should understand that, that the budget process has just begun. The Committee on the Budget sets the ceiling. The Committee on Appropriations follows through. The President can veto what each Committee on Appropriations sends to him. If the President vetoes an appropriations bill, it will then come back to the House and Senate, and the possibility of an override, Mr. Speaker, I would say is very slim. I think there are enough people in the House to support the President, to prevent the overriding of a veto of the President. At this moment I am pretty sure there are. Of course, we lose some every day, but even with a few more causalities and a few more Benedict Arnolds deserting the Democratic Party and going over to the Republican Party, we still will have enough to prevent the override of a veto of an outrageous appropriations bill. Most of these appropriation bills will be outrageous, because we know they will follow the pattern of the budget. We will have outrageous bills which propose to eliminate the Department of Education. No other industrialized nation in the civilized world thinks it can function without a department of education. At a time lime this, when we are at a great disadvantage competitively if we do not have the most skilled population, the best educated population we can get, we are proposing to eliminate the Department of Education. There are numerous other outrageous items in the budget proposals that will be followed through in the appropriations bills, and the President will have to veto them. Once the House and Senate fail to override a veto, then what happens? I think we are on a course where, by the time we reach September 30, end of this budget year--September 30 ends this budget year--it becomes necessary to have continuing resolutions. If the Government is to continue functioning, we have to have passed continuing resolutions in order to keep the Government going forward at the same rate of expenditure that it had before. That is the critical point. If there is deadlock or gridlock, deadlock, however we want to put it, between the President and the Republican-controlled Congress, then where do we go from there? Will the Government have to shut down, as it did for a couple of days under President Bush, because the Republican- controlled House refuses to pass a continuing resolution, or the Republican-controlled House and Senate together refuse to pass a continuing resolution? We will have a gridlock. We will have a set of negotiations which will go forward between the President and the Republican-controlled Congress. I say all this because I think it is very important for the American people to understand that the budget process has just begun. It has begun, and [[Page H5615]] prospects for a gridlock, prospects for a long-term set of negotiations, are obviously there. I think as we go forward in this process, I would urge that everybody not just read the mainstream papers, not just depend on the network televisions. The usual means of communications have chosen to ignore some of the alternatives and options and possibilities that there are in terms of this budget and appropriations process. We are into a budget and appropriations process which is driven by the Republican-controlled House. They have dictated that no budget could be brought to this floor and considered unless it showed a balanced budget by the year 2002. In other words, any group or any Congressperson who wanted to at least have the opportunity to bring his idea, his proposal to the floor, had to come within the constraints that were set by the ruling Republicans here on the House floor. You had to show a balanced budget by the year 2002, which meant that an artificial crisis was created. You have an artificial situation where you must make drastic cuts in order to be able to present a balanced budget by the year 2002. I am happy to say that the Congressional Black Caucus accepted that challenge, and you would not know it by reading the regular papers or checking network news or even CNN. Nobody bothered to pick up on the fact that there was a Congressional Black Caucus budget on the floor of the House of Representatives and it was balanced. It was balanced by the year 2002, and it had some money left over in the year 2002. What were the basic principles of this balanced budget? We balanced the budget and we did not cut Medicare by one cent; not one cent was cut from Medicare. We balanced the budget and we did not cut Medicaid by one cent; not one cent was cut from Medicaid. We balanced the budget and we increased the education budget by 25 percent. Not only did we not engage in any foolhardy, stupid, and ridiculous proposals that the Department of Education should be totally eliminated, we proposed to increase the Department of Education budget by 25 percent. Specific programs under the Department of Education are vital to the health and welfare of America. The Department of Education, we feel, should be given priority in this budget. We have given priority to the Department of Defense and the defense function for the last 30 years. It has always been defense, defense and to some degree we will have to admit that we did that successfully so. We outspent the Soviet Union. Probably we spent more money for defense, in fact I would wager we spent far more than we needed to. We enriched a lot of people with products, by paying for products that we did not really need. We paid much too much for a lot of products, defense weapon systems, et cetera. Nevertheless, it succeeded. We outspent the Soviet Union. They had their military-industrial complex spending money on weapons, ignoring the needs of the people. We had our military-industrial complex. Since we happened to be the richest Nation in the world, we could outspend them and they caved in first, so we won that cold war. Nevertheless, we continued to spend money on defense. So in the Congressional Black Caucus budget, there are two basic principles. One is to cut the expenditures for defense, and if you do it over a 10-year period instead of a 7-year period, you can certainly do it and satisfy every hawkish person in the country, because over a 10-year period you can make cuts that definitely no one could argue threaten the security of the Nation. You can make those cuts. We make the cuts over a 7-year period, and that helps to balance the budget. We do one other thing that also is a basic principle of the budget that should not be ignored. We invite everybody to take a look at the other principle that the Congressional Black Caucus pursued. That principle was to close the corporate loopholes and get rid of corporate welfare. See, we operate primarily in this country on two sets of taxes. Revenue to run the Government, taxes that you pay, comes from two basic sources. One is from family income taxes, income taxes levied on families and individuals. That is one source of revenue that keeps our Government going. The other source of revenue that keeps our Government going are the taxes we levy on corporations, corporations or businesses. In the history of our country, the pattern has been at the beginning that the burden of taxes was equally divided between the taxes that were levied on individuals and the taxes that were levied on corporations. Something went radically wrong in 1943, and in 1943 the corporations began to pay less of the tax burden than families. Since 1943, there has been a drastic drop in the amount of money paid by corporations, a drastic drop from 39.8 percent in 1943 to as low as 8 percent in 1982; as low as 8 percent, from 39.8 percent to 8 percent. Now the corporations are paying only 11.2 percent of the total tax burden. Understand what I am saying. We have drastically reduced the corporation taxes, the income taxes paid by corporations. You might well understand that if you reduce the taxes paid by corporations, somebody has to take up the slack, so what has happened? The taxes on individuals and families have dramatically gone up. From 1943, when individuals and families paid only 27 percent of the total tax burden--understand individuals and families were paying 27 percent, corporations were paying 39.8 percent, almost 40 percent-- individuals and families not are paying, in 1995, 43.7 percent of the tax burden. We went from 27.1 percent to 43.7 percent. Almost 44 percent of the tax burden is now being paid by individuals and families. If you raise the corporate taxes by closing the corporate loopholes, take away the corporate welfare, we are subsidizing corporations by letting them enjoy the benefits of our great Nation without them paying their fair share. We are taking more money from families and less money from businesses. There are some who say, well, businesses create jobs and we need to let them pay less taxes so they can create more jobs. That might have been true 50 years ago when you had businesses that created jobs. But you will find that the same businesses that are making the greatest amount of money now, the most prosperous businesses, are creating the least amount of jobs. We have a boom going now on Wall Street. There is a boom going. People are getting rich faster than ever before. Those who have money are making more than ever before, yet they are cutting the amount of jobs that their industries utilize. You have downsizing, streamlining, all kinds of terms being applied to it, but in the end it means cutting jobs of workers. You also have tremendous investments. These groups make a lot of money and they can go anywhere in the world and make tremendous investments overseas in search of the cheapest labor markets possible. Jobs are being taken away from workers here at home because they have automation. These same corporations can make money when they invest, they automate, computerize. They do not need as many people as before, so an investment in a business, investment in an industry does not automatically yield a certain number of jobs. The job economy is over here, and the economy that is making money, the profit economy, the Wall Street economy, is in another place. The correlation, the relationship between booming industries in America and increases in employment, increases in wages, there is no correlation anymore. There is no relationship anymore. It is a matter of the sector which has the capital gets more, the sector which is dependent upon wages gets less, and the taxes being paid by these two are totally out of sync with their prosperity. Individuals are making less money, families are making less money, and yet families and individuals are paying more taxes than they were 50 years ago. The burden of the taxes, the tax burden, is greater now on individuals and families, and the burden on corporations is lower than it has ever been. It is lower now than ever before, but they are the ones making the greatest amounts of money. Here is the basic situation we are confronted with. As we go forward in [[Page H5616]] this appropriations and budget-making process, are we going to look at the obvious? I am reading from a chart that was taken from a document, the President's budget has it, I think, the Congressional Budget Office has it. Everybody in Washington knows what these figures show. Nobody disputes the accuracy of this chart, which shows the dramatic rise of family income taxes while corporation income taxes were rapidly dropping. Nobody disputes the accuracy of this. Everybody in Washington talks about corporate welfare and corporate loopholes, corporate tax loopholes. This is on everybody's mouth, but when it comes time on the floor to take action, nobody wants to talk about it. Certainly the Committee on Ways and Means does not want to talk about it. The Committee on Ways and Means has been under the domination of corporations for the last 50 years at least. Certainly in 1943 when you saw a dramatic change, when you saw corporations move from paying almost 40 percent of the tax burden to 1982 when they paid 8 percent, then you know something dramatic happened. The Committee on Ways and Means was taken over by the corporations, and they have been greedier and greedier as time has gone on. They were so greedy until they went down to just paying 8 percent of the total burden in 1982. This is what we are up against as we go into a budget gridlock, a budget deadlock. The President is our only hope against these draconian cuts. If you want to save Medicare, then it is the President who will have to stand fast against the Republican-controlled Congress, House and Senate. They are going to cut Medicare. They have made it quite clear. They are going to cut Medicare. Whatever language you may hear to the contrary, it is a cut. Medicare is going to be cut. They say they are going to save it from bankruptcy. We can unite together and find a way to save Medicare and any other institution of government from bankruptcy without making draconian cuts. There was a plan that was put forward last year by the President that was ridiculed. The President had a health care plan, and there were many other plans. I was a part of the single-payer coalition, caucus, here. We put forth a plan. There were many plans to make health care more efficient, spend less money on health care in the context of a plan which guaranteed that there would be better health care for all Americans, and at the same time bring down the cost. We could have brought down the cost of health care over a period of time, utilizing reforms that did not cause a great deal of suffering. People will suffer greatly. There is no way you can cut Medicare drastically and expect people not to suffer. Something has to give. The doctors may not give on their salaries, their fees, the hospitals may not give on theirs, so the patients will suffer. In some way or another the squeeze will come on the patients. The patients will suffer. They are going to cut Medicaid, also. Medicaid will be subjected to even greater cuts than Medicare. Medicare is supposed to have the middle-class, elderly constituency. Everybody is rallying to the defense of Medicare. Nobody wants to talk about Medicaid because that is for poor people. They really do not have much political clout, so very few people want to defend them. In truth, however, Medicaid and Medicare are very much inextricably interwoven. You cannot cut Medicaid without hurting the middle class. You cannot cut Medicaid without hurting the elderly. Most people who are elderly, who get sick for long periods of time and have to go to nursing homes, end up spending all of their available income and having to move from Medicare to Medicaid. Large amounts of people who are in the middle class when they get ill, after a long-term illness they end up being eligible for Medicaid. As a matter of fact, at least 40 percent of the funds spent for Medicaid are not spent on poor children or poor women or poor people in big cities. They are spent on nursing home recipients, many of whom were not poor before they went into the nursing home. Medicaid cuts will greatly hurt everybody, not just the poor. I am interested in maintaining Medicaid at the present level, because I do not think the poor should be hurt. Unfortunately, most people do not want to go to bat for and defend the poor. The poor are Americans. They contribute to the greatness of this country as well as everybody else. We should not engage in the kind of elite selection that the majority party in the House is engaging in. I call them the oppressive elite minority. You have the oppressive elite minority wanting to create a government, wanting to create public policies which only serve a small group of people. They want to make the budget and the appropriations process safe for a handful of people who do not want the nuisance of paying a few more taxes, or do not want the nuisance of paying the taxes they pay now. They want a tax cut. Here is the way the battle shapes up. I do not want to confuse anybody. What I am saying, to recapitulate and sum up, the basic principles of the Congressional Black Caucus budget, which have been ignored by the media, ignored by the Members of Congress, ignored by the leadership, should be examined by the American people. The public should take a look at these basic principles. Principle No. 1 is we can cut defense over a 10-year period. Principle No. 2 is we can close the corporate loopholes, end corporate welfare, and you will thus generate revenue which will help to balance the budget. In the Congressional Black Caucus budget, we raise the revenue from its present level of 11.2 percent to about 16 percent. The percentage of the overall tax burden is raised from 11.2 percent to about 16 percent, a little less than 16 percent. The percentage of the overall tax burden being paid by families and individuals is presently 43 percent. If the corporations are raised from 11 percent of the total tax burden to about 16 percent of the total tax burden, they are still far below the tax burden percentage that is being paid by families and individuals. Let us balance the budget, ladies and gentlemen. As I said before, you can do it in 7 years, you can do it in 10 years. It will be easier for everybody if we do it in 10 years, but let us balance the budget by raising the percentage paid by the corporations, raise their percentage of the tax burden. Some people are talking about a flat tax. Some people are now talking in the high places in the House of Representatives about a consumption tax, similar I guess to the European value-added tax. In the Congressional Black Caucus budget, we make a recommendation that I think should be followed and I hope the President will listen. Let us create a tax commission. We have a base closings commission that was necessary in order to take base closings out of politics and put them into a process whereby experts would look at them more objectively and come back with decisions, make recommendations to the Congress and the Congress would act. The Congress will have the last word either way. But I think the American people deserve to have an objective analysis and examination and review of the tax situation in America. The revenue-generating situation, what is it? Why do corporations pay so much less now than they did in 1943? Why did we drop from 39.8 percent for corporations in 1943 to 11.2 percent now? Why? And if we want to balance the budget, how do we raise it back up? If we are going to have a flat tax, are you talking about a flat tax just for families and individuals, or are you talking about a flat tax which also includes corporations? That may not be a bad idea. A flat tax, everybody pays the same percentage, including the corporation. But already those who are talking about a flat tax are beginning to find some tricks which will let corporations off the hook. If you have a flat tax that is unconditional, a flat tax with no exemptions, a flat tax that is going to go forward and not to corporations the same that they do to individuals, then you have a fair flat tax. But in no way do the proponents of a flat tax intend to have a flat tax across the board. They have no intention of taxing corporations at the same level that they tax families. Here is the issue. end the long monstrous swindle of the American taxpayers. We have a monstrous swindle that has gone on and on and on. If people are angry, they have a good reason to be angry. Taxpayers should be angry about bearing a grater portion of the burden year after year while the corporations in America have borne less and less of a burden year after year. It is time to get angry. Those who are angry, it is time to find out why you are angry. It is time to find out how to be angry in a more intelligent way. We are angry at the Government generally. We are angry at the parties, both parties, we are angry generally. Let us be more specific in our anger. Be angry at the people who reduced the corporation portion of the tax burden from 39.8 percent to 8 percent, and now to 11 percent. Be angry and ask the question, how are you going to rectify this? As we go toward a balanced budget, what are we going to do to close the corporate tax loopholes and to end the corporate welfare here in Washington? Let us start a movement to balance the tax burden. Let us balance the tax burden and then we can balance the budget. Balance the tax burden, balance the budget at the same time. The way you balance a budget in America is balance the tax burden, have corporations pay a higher percentage of the tax burden. At the same time, you can afford to drop the percentage of taxes paid by families and individuals. We can have a tax cut. I am in favor of a tax cut. In the Congressional Black Caucus Budget, there was a tax cut. But the tax cut begins with individuals who are making the least amount of money. It is a tax cut for everybody, but it benefits the people who are making the least amount of money, the wage earners, as well as the rich. We should have a tax cut. American taxpayers have borne an enormous tax burden in order to fight the cold war. It is time for them to have some relief. It is time for the American taxpayers to have a real peace dividend. A real peace dividend would give back some of the money and reduce the percentage that families and individuals are paying in order to win the cold war. We have to do it, we say, to win the cold war. It is won. It is over. Let us now reduce the tax burden on individuals. At the same time, if you raise the taxes on corporations, you can balance the budget. You do not have to create any more of a deficit. Over a 10-year period, with a minimum of pain and suffering and dislocation, we can balance the budget. We can cut the waste in defense, and we can close the corporate tax loopholes and end corporate welfare. It is a simple formula. If you are confused by the complications of arguing and debating the budget, reduce it to three simple principles: Let us balance the budget by balancing the tax burden. In order to balance the tax burden, you have to close the corporate loopholes, raise the amount of taxes paid by corporations, then you can lower the taxes paid by families and individuals, and at the same time there will be no deficit. Do it in a 10-year span of time. If you do it in a 10-year span of time, instead of 7 years, you will not create so much pain and suffering. You will create very little dislocation in our economy. Why have the Republicans who control the House of Representatives insisted that there must be a 7-year balancing of the budget? We have gone for many, many years without balancing the budget, but now in 7 years, by the year 2002, they insist we must balance the budget. Why? Because they want to create an atmosphere of desperation. They want to create a crisis atmosphere. It is an artificially created crisis. It does not exist. America is not in some desperate situation. We are not at war. Our economy is not collapsing. There is no reason to take desperate measures in a situation that is not desperate. But by creating an artificial crisis, creating a desperate situation, a situation that seems to be desperate, they want to maximize power. It is a grab for power. The problem is power. Most Americans would like to see a situation where we have a government which has two parties, three parties, whatever number of parties, and each party is engaged in a contest, in a contest to determine who can create the best government for the American people, how can we have the best functioning society. We would like to see that kind of spirit motivating both parties. Most Americans would like to see that. They are not interested in who has the power, or who has the casualties. They are not interested in making war. But that is the situation we find ourselves in. I hope that every American will understand, every citizen, every voter will understand that you have been plunged into a war whether you like it or not. Last week the Speaker of the House, Speaker Gingrich in a forum at the Library of Congress made the statement that we all knew was a motivating factor in what has been happening here on the floor of the House and in Washington in general. He came right out and said, politics is war without blood. Politics is war without blood. Speaker Gingrich said that at a forum and I do not want to misquote the Speaker, he is a very powerful person, he is the second most powerful person probably in the country, third in line for succession to the Presidency. I would not want to misquote Speaker Gingrich. I am going to read from Roll Call, I got the information from Roll Call, which says that Speaker Gingrich even quoted a political leader not previously known to be one of his influences. ``War is politics with blood. Politics is war without blood,'' said the Speaker. He cited the late Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung. Mao Tse-tung operated out of a totally different environment. He was in a desperate environment where people were starving, all kinds of dislocations in the economy. There was no economy in China. Chaos reigned. So Mao Tse- tung could say that politics is war without blood. I think it is most unfortunate that the Speaker of this House, in America, would say that politics is war without blood. It sets a whole different tone. We would like to believe that we have a more civil environment to conduct our politics in. I would like to think that politics is not war without blood. Politics is a contest, a noble contest among contending parties to see who can reach the goal best, who can contribute most to the cause, and the cause in this case is the cause of an America that is here for everybody. We want to promote the general welfare. Politics is to promote the general welfare. Politics is to secure the Nation. Politics is to do it all by spending the least amount of money and having the most efficient and most effective government. We want to engage in a contest among the parties. We want to engage in a contest between individuals, between caucuses, a contest, a serious contest. But to say that politics is war without blood is to set a whole different tone and to lay out an agenda which every American has to respond to. If politics is war without blood, then there have to be casualties. There is more concern about destroying people and destroying ideas and destroying than there is about serving the cause. The cause of America is probably the most noble and majestic cause of any governmental undertaking anywhere in the world ever. That cause can be best served by having everybody assume that they are in a contest that is a contest with no real losers. When we have a better government, we are all winners, Republicans and Democrats. When we have a more efficient government, we are all winners, Republicans and Democrats. But if you are preoccupied with power, power is the major preoccupation, than politics becomes war without blood. What is war all about? The way it has been defined by those we cannot ignore, we cannot ignore the fact that the Speaker has declared war. If the Speaker has declared war, the American people cannot sit still and ignore it. We did not want this to happen, we did not will it, we are not interested in it, but we are now engaged in situation where war has been declared. Politics is war without blood. Every American voter has to consider themselves a soldier. Every American voter can no longer be a spectator, a citizen spectator. You cannot sit by and watch when people are running the Government who consider politics to be war without blood. [[Page H5618]] A lot of extreme things have been proposed. We have said extremism is the problem here in this Congress. It is extreme to say that you are going to save money by taking away lunches from poor children. At the same time you say you are going to increase the defense budget for star wars, to build glowing pebbles in the sky, you are going to increase the budget for that and take away lunches from poor children. That is extreme. That is barbaric. That kind of extreme action, extreme behavior can exist of course in a context of war. If you are really at war, then you are doing those things for reasons that have nothing to do with improving the Government, the efficiency and effectiveness of Government. There is another objective. War is about destruction, war is about gaining power. War is about wiping out your opposition. War has to have enemies. War cannot look forward to a victory that everybody can be proud of. The elite oppressive minority. There is an elite oppressive minority, and I have said this before, there is an elite oppressive minority in charge here in Congress now, and they want an America which serves only a small group of Americans. They are at war with a caring majority. The majority of Americans are people who care about other Americans. First of all, they are people who care about themselves and they need the benefits of our great democracy, they need the benefits of our great economy. The majority of Americans know that we are the richest Nation that ever existed on the face of the Earth, and that this was not created by a handful of people. All the scientist that have ever lived made a contribution to the kind of high-technology society that we know enjoy. The fact that Wall Street firms are making billions of dollars and they are doing it with a minimum amount of workers means that computerization, miniaturization, a whole lot of electronic devices that were developed during World War II have been put to use in the civilian sector, in the business sector. It was the U.S. Government, the taxpayers, who developed radar, who developed computers, who developed many of the kinds of advances that now are driving the industries that are making the greatest amount of money. They are the ones that we should give credit to. Our American taxpayers should have a percentage of the profits. It is science and technology that is driving our economy now. Science and technology are driving the profits of our corporations. Everybody participated in that process of creating a technologically strong America. Everybody participated in the war effort, which made America safe from tyranny, Nazi tyranny in World War II. All of the soldiers who went and died on D-day, on Iwo Jima, all of those who participated in the effort in the defense industries, everybody who made America safe, created an atmosphere of order and law which would enable our businesses to benefit from science and technology without the interference of disruption and chaos. So everybody has a part, everybody has a role in the building of America, everybody should share in America. That is the caring majority, and the elite minority have said we do not want to share with the caring majority. I yield to the gentleman for a comment.

Mr. OWENS. I thank the gentleman. I think that his bill along with a number of other items that have been introduced by the progressive caucus begin to deal in detail with the steps that have to be taken to reverse this imbalance, this gigantic imbalance where corporations are paying only 11 percent of the tax burden while individuals are paying almost 44 percent of the tax burden. We are proceeding to deal with that in legislation. What I am trying to do is awaken the American people out there to the fact that nothing is going to happen of great significance on this matter unless the President hears from them, unless the leaders of Congress hear from them, because we are going to have a deadlock, we are going to have a situation where we trust the President was going to veto these draconian budget cuts that will be played out in the appropriations bill process. We are going to have a gridlock come September 30 and the Government will be brought to a standstill, and the only way to get out of it is negotiations between the White House and the Republican-controlled Congress. When that happens, the President needs to hear from the American people, hear from them now about the unfairness, the fact that the tax burden is unbalanced, is leading to a situation where, if you attempt to balance the budget without balancing the tax burden, you make for a great deal of suffering by the great majority of the American people, and the President has to be our protector in this respect.

Mr. OWENS. Would the gentleman please repeat that? Who is not paying any taxes? Who is paying zero taxes?

Mr. OWENS. And the industries are making the same amount of money or more than they did before.

Mr. OWENS. I thank the gentleman. I would like to say, it cannot be emphasized too much, that the gigantic Department of Defense budget can certainly be cut in ways that do not immediately hurt workers. If you want to pursue a public policy designed to minimize hurting workers, it is possible to do that. Our overseas bases that are not employing American workers, are costing tremendous amounts of money, a little less than $100 billion, money being spent on overseas bases in NATO, et cetera, we could certainly begin to even downsize drastically there and not hurt jobs and bases in local communities where the economy is affected by the bases. There are ways to do that over a 10-year period which would minimize the pain and suffering. If you accept as policy that defense conversion should create jobs, you can certainly cut defense in a way which creates jobs at the same time, have a conversion where you use the money in ways that create jobs, and this has been all explained and was presented in the Congressional Black Caucus budgets by the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums] who is a former chairman of the House Committee on Armed Services. To conclude, what I am saying is that we are in the beginning of a budget and appropriations process, the most important activity that takes place in Washington, the most important activity that takes place in our Government anywhere in the United States. This budget process will determine what our priorities are, how we are going to spend the money of the American taxpayers over the next year or so. It will probably set up a pattern which will continue over the next 5 to 7 years. So it is very important. Everybody should understand the process is just beginning. Understand that the President cannot veto the budget when the Senate and House agree on the budget; the President does not have the power to veto that budget. The President will have the power to veto the appropriations bills that come out of the budget. We hope the President is going to veto most of those appropriations bills. Those that have the draconian tax cuts, those that have the ridiculous measures like the elimination of the Department of Education, we expect the President to hasten to veto. We do not expect either the House or Senate to have the power to override the veto. Therefore, we are going to have gridlock and the President is going to have to negotiate, our Democratic President will have to negotiate with a Republican-controlled Senate and House. You should know this and understand that as a citizen you cannot sit and be a spectator. Get ready to be a soldier. There is a war underway. The budget and appropriations process is a major battle of the war that has been declared by Speaker Gingrich. Speaker Gingrich said politics is war without blood. Anybody who does not hear that statement and react is doomed to failure. If we do not gear up for a war, in order to defend Medicare you have to wage a war, in order to defend Medicaid you have to have a war, in order to defend school lunches we have to wage a war. In order to keep housing for homeless you have to wage a war. Every citizen has to be a soldier in this war. It is a war against the majority; the majority of our people will be hurt by these cuts. The majority of our people will be hurt by this crisis that has been artificially created. Can the elite minority win a war against the caring majority? That is the basic question. In America we are a democracy; we cannot accuse anybody of having subverted our democracy. The people in our House of Representatives got there through a democratic process, the people elected them. Yes, it is true only 38 percent of the people came out to vote for Members of the House of Representatives, and the Republicans got a little more than half of that 38 percent. Therefore we did not have an overwhelming mandate. But it does not matter in our democracy; whoever gets the most votes wins. They are in power. How far will this go? Now that they have revealed that they are going to make war on the majority, the elite minority in order to preserve their privilege, in order to have a situation where the rich can get rich faster, the elite minority in order to have the rich not have to put up with the nuisance of a few more taxes, the elite minority in order to have the power to go into the courts and limit any suit to $250,000 no matter how serious your injury and situation might be, protecting against the elite minority and protecting the corporations, are we going to continue with a situation where the elite minority protects corporations from bearing their fair share of the tax burden? Are corporations going to get away with paying 11 percent of the tax burden while individuals pay 44 percent? Are we as a majority going to allow the elite minority to do that to us? How long are we going to suffer that? How long are we going to let it go on? That is the question. Can the elite minority win a war against the caring majority? Can the elite minority prevail in a democracy? Can the majority be stampeded into voting against their own interests? In a democracy can the majority be stampeded into voting against their own interests? In November 1996, and in 6 months before that, are we going to be discussing the budget? Are we going to discuss the tax burden and the fact that corporations are paying so much less of the tax burden than they should be paying while individuals and families are paying so much more of the tax burden than they should be paying? Will that be on the agenda? No; we will probably be discussing diversionary issues. The elite minority will use their power to control the media, and they have launched billions of dollars for this process. They will use their power to control the media to divert the eyes of the minority in discussions of affirmative action, into discussions of abortion, into discussions of prayer in the school, into discussions of a number of items that are important, but they are not at the center of what is going to happen in this society or determine what is going to happen in this society in the next 10 years. They are diversionary, gut, emotional issues that are going to be used to stampede the majority into voting for a prospect with respect to the finances and the budget and the appropriations that favors the elite minority. I hope that every citizen will understand the Speaker has made it quite clear that we are in a war. Politics is not what it should be. I think politics, as I said before, should be a noble contest between parties that want to reach the same goal, parties that are interested in promoting the same causes. Politics should be a situation where all America wins. There are no losers in a political process which is conceived of as a noble contest to improve America, as a noble contest to have everybody come out better than they were before. Every citizen should understand that we are in a war that you did not declare. It is not a contest anymore because the Speaker has said so. It is war without blood. We are in a war without blood. War means that casualties have to be taken. War means destruction, war means inevitable enemies. We are not going to be able to deal with each other much longer except as enemies. Every American understands this and understands we are still a free people and still a democracy. You can use [[Page H5620]] your Bill of Rights, you can demonstrate, you can sign petitions, you can get in touch with your congressman, you can do a whole lot of things and not sit still and watch the war make you a victim. Do not be a victim; be a soldier. I am happy to point out in closing in New York City we have several different regions, battlefields. We have a battlefield that is being commanded by General Pataki in the State government; we have a battlefield that is being commanded by General Giuliani in the city government. The people of New York City are under attack by generals in this war who all share the same philosophy as the Speaker. The elite minority is in charge of the city hall in New York City. The elite minority is in charge of the Governor's Mansion in Albany, the capital of New York. So we are under attack from three different battle scenes, three different generals are pressing a campaign down upon the people. The majority are under attack. I am pleased to announce that I attended a press conference yesterday by a group called the Same Boat Coalition, little groups that have gotten together more than 100 strong who want to fight back, and I give you this example because it has to happen all over America. Unless you understand what is going on, unless you say I am going to fight for myself, unless you understand I want to be a citizen soldier, there is a war, and I am going to either be the victim or I am going to be a soldier, and we must get up and become soldiers, then you will not be able to overcome what is about to happen. So I congratulate the Same Boat Coalition and I close with a statement from their mission statement. The Same Boat Coalition is primarily designed to fight the cuts at the New York City and New York State level. But the New York City and New York State cuts are being driven by the cuts in Washington. Medicaid is a major problem, and the cuts in Medicaid are being invited by the mayor of New York City. He said make more cuts because when the Federal Government cuts the city has to spend less. The Governor said make more cuts in Medicaid; we will be happy to spend less; make more cuts in Medicare. Our hospitals are in danger. There is talk of selling the hospitals in order to make ends meet. All kinds of draconian measures are under way and it started here in Washington, the tone was set here. This is a war declared here and they have generals who are waging the battle against the people at every level. So the Same Boat Coalition, this group of more than 100 organizations have issued the following mission statement, and I will read partially from it. The Same Boat Coalition Mission Statement The United States is at a crossroads. This generation must choose the future course of our society--whether toward greater social justice, enfranchisement and well-being for all, or toward a more oppressive and distressed society with material, cultural and spiritual impoverishment for all but a wealthy few--and escalating pandemic of illness and violence. At all three levels of government, the quality of life is under assault. Confronted by this challenge, we have come together on the following principles: Everyone has a right to an adequate standard of living, including a decent job and income security, sufficient food, safe and affordable housing, access to quality education and health care, and a sound environment. Our tax dollars, collected equitably and distributed fairly, would enable these rights to be realized. In our society, so rich in natural, human and capital resources, we reject as baseless the logic of scarcity. Our society cannot flourish while many among us lack the basic necessities. All but the wealthiest of us are vulnerable to loss of employment and to costly illness or injury. Entitlements to food, shelter, health care and other basic necessities are essential protections that must remain public priorities, never to be stripped away. Ours is an interdependent, democratic society, where each of us is secure only so long as the liberty and well-being of all of us are protected. In innumerable ways, we are all in the same boat. We oppose restrictions of our most basic freedoms, the destruction of hard-won safeguards to ensure equal access, and the exclusion of immigrants from our national vision. Governments must be held responsible for protecting and promoting the fundamental human rights, dignity, personal security and welfare of all. We are a diverse coalition of individuals and organizations, including students, trade unionists and other working people, unemployed, social workers, religious groups, health workers, teachers and professors, community developers, environmentalists, legal services workers, small business people, advocates, people all of all ages, races, ethnicities and religions, lesbian, gay and straight, people with disabilities, mothers, fathers and children. In the face of wide-ranging attacks on these principles, we are united in a struggle to take back our city, our state and our country. In closing, Mr. Speaker, I want to go back to my beginning. We are at the beginning of a process, of a budget and appropriations process, which is the most important process undertaken in our Government each year. The Speaker of the House of Representatives has stated that politics is war without blood. It is important that every American understand that, and come out to participate in the war that is going to decide your fate. You must know what is in the budget, you must insist that the budget can be balanced. The budget can be balanced in 10 years without hardships, without suffering if you balance the tax burden. If you balance the tax burden and have corporations pay as much as families pay, balance the tax burden and you can balance the budget.

Mr. OWENS

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

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I rise to salute, local 259 UAW Union President Sam Meyers whose life represents a Point-of-Light for all Americans. Brooklyn and the 11th Congressional District are particularly grateful to Sam Meyers for his early and visionary sponsorship of the Brooklyn Coalition for Community Empowerment. For over 50 years, Sam Meyers has carried the UAW vision of social justice and militant trade unionism in his union and political life. He began his journey in the trade union movement in 1940 as a sheet metal worker at Brewster Aircraft and as a member of UAW, local 365. Soon after, he was elected shop steward, a position he held until 1943 when he joined the Army Air Corps. The Air Corps later assigned him to an orientation team whose purpose was to educate the troops about the U.S. war effort to destroy fascism. In 1958 Sam led the successful fight to oust a leadership that had become too far removed from the membership, and to bring his brand of militant and democratic trade unionism to local 259. From the time of his election as president of local 259 in 1958 to the present, Brother Meyers' passionate vision, leadership and tough bargaining have won strong membership support and involvement. Surrounded by a committed staff that mirrored the Rainbow Coalition, a strong, diverse, and well educated shop steward system was developed. The creative use of strikes, family and community support and solidarity picket lines helped win for local 259 members higher wages, generous welfare and pension benefits, security for their families, a nationally recognized mental health and occupational safety program, and dignity as industrial workers. Sam led aggressive organizing campaigns, not only among the auto dealers, local 259's primary jurisdiction, but among low-wage factory workers who were predominantly women. Long before it became Government policy, the union under its president's leadership pursued affirmative action programs to bring people of color and women into union leadership. Local 259 has been a recognized force in: the civil rights movement, the fight for affirmative action, the continuing struggle against racism; launching the careers and election of progressive forces to public office, including Congress members Major Owens, Charles Rangel, former Governor Mario Cuomo and former Mayor David Dinkins, and challenging reactionary leadership and regressive social policies promoted in Congress and from the offices of New York's Governor and the mayor of the city of New York; The struggle for full employment, a guaranteed annual income, anti-scab and labor reform legislation, universal single payer health care, decent and affordable housing, and rigorously enforced occupational safety and health standards. Sam served on the board of advocates for Children of New York, and helped to train parents and community activists in adapting union grievance procedures as a model for school based child advocacy. He initiated the first worksite child advocacy training program for parent members. He brought the union into a partnership with the NYS Division for Youth and Advocates for Children to create an auto mechanic training program for youths released from DFY facilities. In the late 1960's Sam was a cofounder of the New York Labor Committee Against the War in Vietnam, and challenged those in high labor positions on their support for the war. In the early 1970's Brother Meyers helped bring national attention through congressional hearings to the impact of plant closings and runaway shops, as part of corporate America's wanton disregard of its workers at home and abroad. There followed over two decades of the union's commitment to international labor solidarity. Local 259 championed the forces of liberation and democracy in South Africa, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Haiti. Scores of labor leaders fighting against oppression throughout the globe have found safe haven, support, and solidarity at Local 259 UAW. Sam has treasured being an active member of the International UAW. Steeped in the UAW tradition, the union under Brother Meyers' leadership linked members' struggles in Local 259 shops and factories to the struggle for social justice and human rights everywhere. In recognition of Sam's contributions to the UAW, he was appointed and served on the Commission for the Future of the UAW, meeting with regional representatives throughout the country. At a recent UAW convention, Sam was selected to nominate Owen Bieber for president. Sam's proudest legacy is the next generation of social visionaries and militant trade unionists whom he has trained and nurtured to assume the leadership of this great UAW local. Sam Meyers represents a magnificent Point-of-Light and serves as an inspiring role model for all Americans.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New York [Ms. Velazquez]. (Ms. VELAZQUEZ asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Waters].

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida [Ms. Brown].

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Texas [Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson]. (Ms. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Ford]. (Mr. FORD asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia [Ms. Norton]. (Ms. NORTON asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Engel]. (Mr. ENGEL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)