Charlie Rangel

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) to give him an opportunity at least to respond to the accusations made by the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Weller).

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. As I have pointed out earlier, there comes a time that we should be talking about legislation that does not just pass the House, but is signed into law. What we have done is to recognize that there is an inequity that exists when certain couples pay more taxes than they would pay if they were not married, and that is why we double the standard deduction to take care of this inequity. We too would like to give more dramatic tax cuts, but not just to give $200 billion out at a time, but to take a look and to see that the tax cuts are targeted, that they are fair and that they are equitable, but at the same time that we have fulfilled our responsibility to the Social Security, the Medicare system, and that we pay down some part of our Federal debt. This is so important when we think of the trillions of dollars that we are still in debt and the billions of dollars that we pay every year in interest. Mr. Speaker, it would just seem to me that if we could come together and compromise, to make certain we take care of the problem without trying to make political statements, that the House of Representatives will be in better shape not as Republicans, not Democrats, but as lawmakers that are able to say that in the House, the people govern. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I would like to join with the speaker that was in the well and hope that the leadership of the House could come together with some type of package to present to the President that could be signed into law that would include a decent affordable drug package. There is an opportunity to do this. I also agree with the gentleman that the present Tax Code is in the shape that most tax writers, as well as other Members of Congress, should be ashamed of. The majority has been there for over half a dozen years. They talk a lot about pulling it up by the roots; but obviously, like with Social Security and Medicare, they have not been able to get enough discipline on their side to do anything about it. But that does not mean that something as important as a tax cut should be handled in the manner in which they are handling it. I think that we should try to do it in a bipartisan way, not to do it in a piecemeal way, to agree to the cuts we are going to have, and to allow the other bills that we are talking about, whether they are the minimum wage bill, whether they are the Patients' Bill of Rights bill, whether it is pension bills, not just try to stack up on each and every decent piece of legislation a tax cut. I think there is plenty of room for us to work together on, so that at the end of the day we can say in a bipartisan way that we have come to a meeting of the mind. There will be enough for us to debate at the polls come November, but certainly on these important tax issues, we should have to agree that whether it is the Republican majority today, or the Democratic majority next year, we cannot get anything done unless we work together in a bipartisan way. Neither one of us will enjoy the substantial margins that would allow us just to work our will. We are going to have to work in a bipartisan way if we are going to get any progress now or next year, so why not begin to think about working together this year. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett), a distinguished member of the Committee on Ways and Means.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin), a distinguished member of the Committee on Ways and Means. (Mr. CARDIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Neal), a distinguished member of the Committee on Ways and Means.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin), the senior member of the Committee on Ways and Means. (Mr. LEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I wish we did not characterize the actions of the President of the United States. I thought that the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means was about to discuss tax policy with us, but he was not discussing principle, he was discussing politics. He was talking about the budgetary policies of the President and Vice President Gore. I think we should be reminded that the only reason that we can even deal with reforming and providing equity for some of these tax provisions is that because of the Clinton-Gore budget policies we are now able to think in terms of surpluses instead of just deficits. I would like to remind my colleague, too, that not one Republican ever voted for the Clinton-Gore 1993 budget. And when the vote was tied in the Senate, it took the Vice President to split that tie. Now, when it comes to whether we are doing this thing in an irresponsible way, I used to think that that is what the Republicans were trying to do. When they had this $792 billion tax cut, they did not talk about paying down the national debt, they did not talk about our responsibility to Social Security, they did not talk about Medicare or affordable prescription drugs for our aged, and I, at that time, thought it would be irresponsible for them to move forward and just get enough political votes to pass a bill. I have changed my mind. It really is not irresponsible. It may be political. But I have discovered that my Republican friends do not ask for these irresponsible cuts until first they find out that the President is going to veto it, and only then do they come out with not tax law but they come out with political statements. Whether we are talking about the minimum wage bill, the Patients' Bill of Rights, affordable prescription drugs, or whether we are talking about pension benefits, we can rest assured that when we Democrats try to work with them to remove the inequity to make the tax system more simple so that people can find it easier to file, they will find some way to entice the President to veto the bill. Do they come back and ask to override the veto? Never, never, never, never. All they want to say in Philadelphia is that they passed the bill and the President vetoed it. I hope that the American people realize that the Congress, as any business or any family, before we just deal with revenue losers, we ought to take a look at the total package and the total responsibility. I am so pleased that the President is willing to give my Republican friends a second chance by reconsidering getting a decent, affordable press description drug bill, and then he would consider reviewing once again the bill that they have sponsored in terms of removing the marriage penalty. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott), a distinguished member of the Committee on Ways and Means. (Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm). (Mr. STENHOLM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor).

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to engage the gentlewoman from Ohio. When I make the remark on behalf of the minority that we would like to see Social Security and Medicare taken care of and the gentlewoman asked the rhetorical question, where have I been. We in the minority, we on the Democratic side do not really believe it is taken care of when the gentlewoman says that the Republican plan is to do something next year. I mean the Republicans have been in the majority now for half a dozen years, and they have not come close to sharing with us where we are going to go to pull the Tax Code up by the roots, to reform Social Security and privatize it, to reform the Medicare system. So what I am saying is that our Republican colleagues are pretty good on supporting the ideas we come up with, but in terms of the record, if what they are saying is that they have taken care of Social Security, the rest of the country does not know it.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I would like to strike that from the Record. This is the second time you have been fair. Mr. Speaker, this gives us an opportunity to take a problem that we recognize as a serious problem of equity, and that is if two people filing separately can get a better tax break than someone that is married, then it is not the fair thing to do. Why have we not taken care of this a long time ago? Why did we not follow former Congresswoman Barbara Kennelly from Connecticut as she led the fight to do it? One of the reasons was that it is difficult to be equitable when you do not have the funds to do it. To talk about 3 or 4 years ago patching up something that the Tax Code was really unfair about and paying $100 billion in lost revenue was something unheard of. But now that the Clinton-Gore team's economic policy has clicked in and we find every day an increase in the revenue that we expect, it makes a lot of sense that we can come together, Republicans and Democrats, and see what we can do to repair an inequity in the law. That is the problem. We do not come together, we do not discuss anything, and the Republican majority is so bent on making political statements that they are not concerned at all with what the President signs. All they are concerned with is that they are able to pass the bill in the House. They learned a lot from their mistakes in the past, and that is putting together these tremendous irresponsible tax cuts of some $800 billion without even thinking about our Social Security system; paying down the national debt; repairing Medicare; and one of the things we are so concerned about, and that is allowing our older people who have access to health care but do not have access to the money to pay for the prescription drugs that are so important for their health. All we are saying is why can we not deal with the Government's budget the way we do our own? We just cannot take the irresponsible, close-to- $1 trillion tax cut, and cut it up and say we are going to deliver it in small pieces. No. What we should do is to find out have we taken care of Social Security, are we working together to deal with the Medicare problem, do we have some kind of a bill that we can assure the people of the United States that, when we leave here, there would be an affordable drug program? Are we paying down the national debt? Then are we doing the things that we are sent here to Congress to do? Already we have passed close to $500 billion in tax cuts. All at one time? Oh, no. The public relations divisions of the Republican Party have taken care of that. It does not come out of the tax writing committee; it comes out of the Speaker's office, out of the Committee on Rules. But if you want to talk about the Patients' Bill of Rights, they talk about tax cuts; you want to talk about minimum wage, they talk about tax cuts; you want to talk reforming pensions, they talk about tax cuts. So here we are with the marriage penalty, both of us wanting to bring equity, but they enlarged the tax bracket for the 15 percent bracket, which causes us to lose another $100 billion in revenues and, worse than that, after 10 years, there is an explosion of the revenues that we lose. Should we give a tax cut? Yes, but not in these pieces that we come here with. We should have a comprehensive program that would do all of the things that we wanted to do. Why is it that every time our Republican colleagues steal a good idea from us, every time we agree with our colleagues that we should be working together, they have to pile on it an irresponsible tax cut to such an extent that it promises a veto. So here we are again. We have a substitute, by any standard, that is fair. No one can challenge that what we do is take care of the inequity as it relates to the penalty. In addition to that, we make certain that we make adjustments in the alternative minimum tax so that no one loses a benefit that is in the lower income, unlike the Republican bill. We make certain with the tax credits, the refundable tax credits, that the lower income people get a better break with that. So we do not concentrate, as our Republican colleagues do, on those that God has already blessed and they are still trying to give them additional fiscal blessings through the tax system. Let us try to work together, not as Republican leaderships with Democrat minorities, but as representatives that truly represent the interests of the people of this country. When we do this, we will see that the President will join in and we will not have just House-passed bills, but we will have bills that will be accepted by the Senate and signed into law by the President of the United States. The President has said, if you want to deal with this subject, put the drug issue as relates to affordable prescription drugs on your calendar, deal with it in a real way, the way we are going to do it, and we can do business.

Mr. RANGEL. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I do not want to spoil the reputation of the chairman of the Committee on Rules by complimenting him on this floor too often, but it is strange and unusual that we would get a fair and equitable rule like this, and I would just like to rise to the occasion to compliment him.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, and I will not object.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. RANGEL. The gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) has been working on some points that deal with this point of order, and I would like to hear from her, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Chairman, it was my understanding that the gentleman from Florida was part of an agreement that would allow our farmers to export their products to Cuba. Mr. Chairman, while it is true that the agreement was supposed to be done in conference and not on the floor, I thought I could facilitate what he was a party to by merely removing any restrictions that our farmers would have to allow them to sell their products. Knowing his disdain for communism and his support, I assume, to try to eliminate this form of lack of democracy in Cuba, it was the feeling of the House that we could attempt to derail the communism that existed in China, North Korea, in North Vietnam. I just felt that if we have such compassion about trying to instill democracy all across Asia, we should have just as much concern about the nearness and proximity to my friend's home State, Florida. I thought that since the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Diaz-Balart) was party to the agreement that this would allow us at least to do publicly on the House floor what so many said was going to be done privately in conference.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, as one of the founders of the Congressional Glaucoma Caucus, I want to praise the work of a far-seeing business firm, the Pharmacia Corporation which encouraged and supported the formation of the Friends of the Congressional Glaucoma Caucus Foundation. The Congressional Glaucoma Caucus is a bipartisan group that grew out of discussions with several of my House colleagues. We recognized that there was a need to provide our constituents with free screenings for glaucoma, a devastating disease that robs a person of his or her sight. There is no cure for glaucoma-- but it can be prevented if caught early enough. Unfortunately, many of our fellow Americans who are at highest risk for glaucoma are also unable to easily avail themselves of the latest in medical testing. We formed the Congressional Glaucoma Caucus to bring important information and preventive screenings to constituents in our own districts. The idea has gained great momentum. There are now 40 members of the Congressional Glaucoma Caucus and we have already held screenings in Florida, Illinois, New York, Tennessee, and Washington, DC. Hundreds of Americans have been referred for follow-up care of possible glaucoma or other acuity problems; hundreds of others have gone home from our screenings reassured that their eyes are healthy. In this effort we have had much help. The Friends of the Congressional Glaucoma Caucus Foundation was founded to bring together physicians, blindness prevention groups; industry spokespeople and others interested in this cause. The Foundation has done yeoman work in setting up the screenings and ensuring that they run smoothly and for that the members of the Caucus are profoundly grateful. A great deal of thanks is owed to the ophthalmologists and their staffs who have volunteered to conduct the actual screenings. And we owe the Pharmacia Corporation a debt of gratitude for its generous educational grant to the Friends of the Congressional Glaucoma Caucus Foundation. Their support has been vital, and has meant that not one penny of anyone's tax dollars have been spent on this noble effort. This is truly a wonderful thing, and I commend everyone involved.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, young Elian Gonzalez finally got back home to Cuba with his dad. I really think that this young man has, more than any one thing in recent history, caused the American people to focus on Cuba. I think the worst indictment that I can make about the deals that are being cut in the Committee on Appropriations is that most Americans really do not care, they do not care about Cuba, and anybody that wants to cut a deal, cut a deal, if it does not pass in the House, it will pass in the conference. What arrogance, our foreign policy, our trade policy is going to be because half a dozen people got together and decided what makes them feel good. They are going to determine who the dictators are and how foreign nationals are being treated. What happened to the old-fashioned way where we used to have hearings, we used to have witnesses, we used to have votes on the floor? I have never heard a deal being bragged about so openly. But, fortunately, this little Elian has been able to show America that some people are more concerned by the passionate dislike of who runs Cuba than what is in the best interest of the United States of America, what is in the best interest of our farmers, what is in the best interest of our trade, and they can cut a deal. If I had known this, why would I work so hard on permanent trade relations with China? I would have gone to the Committee on Appropriations and picked half a dozen people. The way to do these things is go to the Committee on Appropriations and say, hey, can we cut a deal? Let us send some food and technology to these Communist Chinese, forgetting what kind of government they have, and run it out to conference if they do not like what happens in the House. We cannot say that we have such passion in our heart that we distort what this institution is about. Today if we do it for Cuba, who is going to pick the next country that we have a dislike for? And it is insulting to say that Americans cannot travel to Cuba. Americans should be able to travel any place that we want because we are the best ambassadors ever for this great country. And I refuse to believe that Castro and those little Communists can influence us. The truth of the matter is we should be influencing them with our American flag, with our know-how, with our productivity and being able to say we are not afraid of their incompetent government. But if my colleagues think the way to do it is to cut a deal and say, do not talk to anybody, do not trade with anybody, use food, use medicine as a tool to show how much we dislike their form of government, how many forms of government do we dislike where deals are cut? The Communists in North Korea? The Communists in Vietnam? The Communists in Red China? No deals are being cut for those Communists. But we have to have a special deal, our farmers have to suffer, our exporters have to suffer, our tourism has to suffer, and Americans have the indignation to know that they are not trusted because a handful of people want to cut a deal and restrict the President of the United States from being able to determine who visits what. Well, I hope this deal thing is not that contagious. I hope it is contained. I hope that maybe the other House does not allow this thing to spread over there to say that we will vote on this rule because we know ahead of time what the law is going to be. Shame.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, it just seems to me that, whether one is Republican or Democrat, that we all have at least the same concern for our older Americans who, as they get older, more susceptible to illness and pain, we have done a pretty good job with Medicare and giving older people access to doctors and to hospitals. Even initially those people who did not like the program would have to admit that it has really removed a lot of pain for some deserving Americans. Now, we reach the point in saying, what good is access to health care if after the doctors prescribed the medicine to keep one well, that one cannot afford to do it. Well, it was easy for us to say that we had to establish priorities. We always had the Communist threat. We always had to invest in defense. But now when everybody agrees that, no matter who takes the credit for it, we have an opportunity really, not to pick and choose which are the winners and losers among the older people, but to be able to say we thank them for the investments that they have made in this great Republic. They are aged, but they are not forgotten; and that we trust them enough that we will take some of this surplus and make them whole so that they will never have to worry about not paying their rent or their mortgage or getting the foods that they need because they had to pay for their medicine. It seems to me that it may be that the majority, from a technical point of view, may be correct. But I think the American people would know or should know that the majority holds in its hands this evening the ability to waive that point of order and to say that they are prepared to do what is right, what is moral, and what is in their power to do. I just hope that the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) would be sensitive enough to at least consider at this point in time waiving the point of order so that we can give a better deal to those older people who deserve it.