Charlie Rangel

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Let me thank my friend, the gentleman, for his support, even though it is limited. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Lewis], a member of our committee.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Arizona.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Lewis].

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in opposition to H.R. 2646, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, let me join with the leadership of the House in stressing how important it is that we allow our young people to get access to a decent education as soon as we can. Mr. Speaker, when we dream about the economic opportunities that will be had for Americans, and those people that we intend to trade with in all parts of the world, one thing we take for granted is that academically our young people will be able to get the training in order to participate in what is going to be for history a revolutionary and exciting time. Yet, we go to that bargaining table with 1.6 million people in jail. God knows, I believe if you violate the law, justice should take a hand and you should be removed from society. But why is this number of people continuing to explode? Why is it that 80 percent of the crimes are not violent? Why are they all drug-related? Why are all of the people in jail illiterate, unemployable? Why do they all seem to be coming from communities where the school system has failed? The answer has to be because it is out of these communities that there is no hope, there are no dreams, there are no opportunities. Life really does not mean that much, and jail is no real, serious threat. So now our country finds the U.S. Congress interfering with local schools by suggesting that we need more prisons than we need schools. It is sad, but that is how it is going to be recorded. Local and State governments are involved in prison-making, not making students prepared in order to get a decent education. Even our great President targeted colleges, and we are now trying to find some bridge to go from before school to be prepared for college. So I can see how Mr. Coverdell could respond to a tax initiative and say, let us make more money available for people to just spend, if they can find some reason to spend that money on a child before they go to college. I think that we cannot even call it an educational bill, because soon we will see that there is no education attached to this. It is bad tax law, because soon we will see that if we are looking for simplification, tell me what a taxpayer is going to have to put on the sheet in order to justify that they spent this money that they had in a tax-free account on education? We are going to have to look long and hard to find any education in this bill, but we do not have to look long and hard to find a tax break in this bill. Let us get to something that the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Archer] and I are working on now in a bipartisan way, the restructuring of the internal revenue system. Prior to pulling it up by its roots, we will restructure it. It is going to cost some money to restructure the Internal Revenue Service. Any decent American politician that wants to get reelected had better prepare some kind of way to get a good knock in there against the Internal Revenue Service. It is going to be good this year, and it will be better next year. So in order to restructure it, we need some money. We have come up with the money, at least the majority have, to pay for that. So I was surprised in asking the question, how are we going to pay for the education savings account? Guess what, we are going to use the same money. No, do not tell me we cannot use the same money to pay for two things, if it is the same amount of money. We are Ways and Means, we know that much. Which one do we want to fund out of this one source of money, Coverdell, or the restructuring of the IRS? We do not know, but we will spend the money on the first bill that reaches the President's desk and he signs. Let me tell the Members this, if they are for paying for the restructuring of the Internal Revenue Service, Members have to strike down Coverdell, because if we pass Coverdell and the money is spent for Coverdell, we have no money for Internal Revenue Service. But I assume this technical point will be explained by the majority, since they able to do that well. Let me say that what I am trying to do with my bill, which we will have an opportunity to vote for or against, is to allow the local school districts to recognize, in areas where they are failing, that they need some help. If they can successfully bring the private sector in and form a partnership in a special academy, where the curriculum is not just set by educators but by the business people, who know the skills that are going to be necessary to hire these people, we will be able with this very same money to allow them to issue bonds to rebuild the schools, to get the equipment. But under Coverdell, all we will be able to do is say that somebody that had the disposable income of up to $2,500, or a friend of theirs that may want to give a gift to the child and put it in to deposit it tax-free, will be able to withdraw this for tutors, for babysitters, for taxicabs, for movies, for anything that they think is necessary to make that child happy. Remember, the burden will be on the IRS, if we are able to find the money to restructure it, to prove that the money was used for an educational experience. Talk about a horror story, we are now about to hear it from Members that understand what is in this bill. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to say that the gentlewoman really did explain this bill in a very accurate way, in that I just wish I could better understand that if one puts the money in an account and one can spend the interest on that account and one does it for their child and their grandchild and the bill is going to sunset in 5 years, my God, how much interest will ever be there for them to spend? Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes and 30 seconds to the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Roemer].

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Etheridge], an educator as well as a legislator.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pascrell].

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida [Mrs. Thurman], a member of the Committee on Ways and Means.

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, let me thank the majority floor manager, the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Nussle], for creating an atmosphere in discussing this issue, not one against the other, but in all recognizing that what we are talking about is education. This country is going to be just as strong as the level of that superior education that we are going to be able to maintain in order to have, if we are going to maintain our ability to be competitive. We cannot continue the way we are going. We can cannot ignore that we are putting a lot of people in jail that have no access to education. We cannot ignore the fact that we have to improve this public school system. I guess at best that we are saying that as we compete for limited funds, where do you want to give the priority? No matter how much we say that those funds belong to the taxpayer, we have a very complicated system in the bill before us in order to get that money in any way to improve the quality of education. Basically, what we are saying is parents know best. If they have the disposable income, let them save and we will be able to take the interest and do some things that, one way or the other, would be supportive of education. My approach is entirely different. My approach says, where is the problem and how can we fix it? My approach says, let us get away from the bureaucracy and doing things like we used to do and bring in people that ultimately have to say who they need to work for them if they are going to be effective and productive. Those are the people that are hiring the people, not just graduates, but hopefully graduates that can produce something. If these local communities that are in trouble, and it is described that they are, and you all do not have to be poor, but if you come from communities where you find students who are not making it, they make application and go into partnership with these business people, set the criteria for the curriculum, if the teachers cannot teach it, they help them to teach it and based on existing law, expand the opportunity so that bonds can be issued where the interest rates will be subsidized by credits and we can rebuild these schools, we can retrain these teachers, we can produce not only those who get diplomas, but produce kids who will be able to get jobs. It just seems to me that no matter how much we have to support the private sector, and no one should have anything against it, that we should not be able to take the limited resources to do that until we are certain that there is a public school system there that American kids who do not have the choices, so many of whom ended up in this Congress, would at least be able to say, we have a strong public school system. I am not asking that the labor leaders or that the politicians dictate what is going to be taught in these schools. I am asking that the partnership be with those entrepreneurs who know what they need to be competitive with foreign trade partners and we cannot do it alone. It seems to me it is bipartisan. The Speaker, no one more than he helped to get this concept in the bill. The President yielded to make certain that it was there. The chairman of the committee, so we do have $400 million there that can be leveraged. But if we were able to take the resources that we are talking about now that can be used only by families who do have the disposable income and to be able to say, let us have something that is good expanded, I suggest to my colleagues, it would be a higher priority.

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

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Levin], a 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 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Green]. (Mr. GREEN 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 Massachusetts [Mr. Tierney].

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

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Cardin], coauthor of the restructuring of the IRS bill that we are trying to protect the funding.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, on behalf of myself and Mr. Stark, Mr. Cardin, Mr. Lewis of Georgia, and Mr. Becerra, I am today introducing legislation to give equitable treatment to the Nation's safetynet hospitals, the hospitals which serve a disproportionate share of the Nation's uninsured and low income. Our bill carves out disproportionate share hospital [DSH] payments from the amount we give HMO's and pays those DSH funds directly to DSH hospitals when managed care company patients use a DSH hospital. This legislation completes a process well-started in the Balanced Budget Act. In the just-enacted Balanced Budget Act, we carved out from what we pay HMO's the amount attributable to the cost of graduate medical education [GME] and provided that, when an HMO's patient actually uses a GME hospital, that hospital will be directly reimbursed by Medicare for its extra GME expenses. This provision corrects a serious problem facing our Nation's teaching and research hospitals: HMO's get paid as if they use these hospitals, but in many--but not all--cases, HMO's avoid these more expensive hospitals. The carve out will prevent windfalls to HMO's and permit the GME hospitals to compete fairly for HMO patients. The same logic that supported the GME carve out supports the DSH carve out. Though the Senate Finance and Commerce Committees' bills provided for both a DSH carve out and a GME carve out, the DSH carve out was dropped from the final BBA. There is no logic to not applying the same principle to DSH payments. Our Nation's safetynet hospitals desperately need these extra payments--and HMO's which do not use DSH hospitals do not deserve the extra amount. For example, as data from 1995 show, the Nation's public hospitals in over 100 of America's largest metropolitan areas are among the key safetynet hospitals. These hospitals make up only about 2 percent of all the Nation's hospitals, yet they provide more than 20 percent of all uncompensated care and they rely on Medicare and Medicaid to fund more than half of that uncompensated care. in 1995, 67 of these safetynet hospitals reported incurring $5.8 billion in uncompensated care costs--defined as bad debt and charity care--an average of over $86 million per hospital. For these institutions, bad debt and charity care represented 25 percent of their total gross charges. These safetynet hospitals have the worst total margins--that is, ``profits''--in the hospital industry. Overall, hospital margins from Medicare payments are at record highs and this fact justified the Medicare payment update freeze and reductions which were included in the Balanced Budget Act. But the Prospective Payment Assessment Commission estimates that in 1997 the Nation's major teaching hospitals, who also tend to be DSH hospitals, will have the lowest total margins of any hospital category: 3.9 percent--a thin and shrinking margin that will surely turn negative in the next economic downturn. The enactment of this legislation could help improve these margins and preserve the more than 800 hospitals who are receiving DSH payments. Providing a DSH carve out will also help these hospitals compete equally for managed care patients. Failing to provide a carve out serves as an incentive to managed care plans not to use these more expensive hospitals. A recent White Paper from the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems entitled ``Preserving America's Safety Net Hospitals'' explains why the DSH carve out should be legislated: ``The current methodology for distributing Direct Graduate Medical Education, Indirect Medical Education, and DSH payments is seriously flawed in the Medicare managed care context. For Medicare patients enrolled in managed care, these supplemental payments are incorporated into the average adjusted per capita cost [AAPCC] which is the capitation payment made to managed care plans. The plans do not necessarily pass these payments along to the hospitals which incur the costs that justify the payments. In fact, some plans receive the payments and do not even contract with such hospitals. As Medicare increases the use of capitated risk contracting, the amount of DGME, IME, and DSH funds that go to teaching hospitals will diminish considerably unless this payment policy is changed. In essence, payments intended to support the costs of teaching or low income care are being diverted from the hospitals that provide the care to managed care plans that are not fulfilling this mission. For this reason, the GME and DSH payments must be carved out of the AAPCC rate and made directly to the hospitals that incur those costs.'' I am pleased to report that the Hospital Association of New York State [HANYS] and the Greater New York Hospital Association [GNYHA] have announced their support for this bill. I hope that other hospital associations around the Nation will quickly join in urging passage of this bill. The carve out for graduate medical education was wisely included in the Balanced Budget Act. It is logical, appropriate, and important that we complete the work and carve out the DSH payments.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to strongly urge my colleagues to support H.R. 282, a bill that would designate the U.S. Post Office Building located at 153 East 110th Street in my district in New York, as the Oscar Garcia Rivera Post Office Building. Mr. Oscar Garcia Rivera was the first Puerto Rican to be elected to public office in the continental United States. On March 7, 1937, he made history by becoming assemblyman of the 14th Congressional District, in the State of New York, which at that time was Harlem. Oscar Rivera was a true leader who was committed to improving the lives of those who resided in his community. He was committed to protecting the rights of manual laborers and encouraged workers to organize themselves into active unions. However, his many contributions did not stop there. He went on to introduce a bill guaranteeing safeguards against unemployment which was enacted into law in February 1939. He defended minimum wage laws, fought for regulated hours of labor, and worked to establish tariff agreements. Oscar Garcia Rivera was a man of many talents. His vision of helping others to lead a better and more prosperous life, began as a young man who established the Association of Puerto Rican and Hispanic Employees within the U.S. Postal Service where he was employed, and continued throughout his entire adult life until his passing in 1969. Mr. Speaker, I am honored and proud to be a part of this legislation honoring this outstanding and renowned individual. The life of Oscar Rivera is an inspiration not only to New York State and the Puerto Rican community, but to all people whose lives were touched in some way by his vision. Let us salute him and pay tribute to him in this way.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall vote number 500, I was recorded as ``yes''; however, my vote should have been recorded as a ``no'' vote.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, not long ago, I was honored to present to Herbert and Sylvia Woods an award as New York State's Parents of the Year. The owners of Harlem's world-renowned Sylvia's Restaurant had earned the accolade as a married couple who had raised four children and had been blessed by many grandchildren. I said then that the Woods' had demonstrated what life is truly about: nurturing, educating, and inculcating in their children the values that had allowed them to carry on successfully in their own lives. But in addition, the Woods', who came from the humblest of backgrounds in South Carolina, have made a huge mark in the world of business, building a small family-owned restaurant in Harlem into a national operation in the culinary industry--restaurants in several cities and a line of bottled spices. Recently reporter Michel Marriott chronicled their story in an article in the New York Times. That inspirational story of hard work, perseverance, and determination follows for the edification of my colleagues. [From the New York Times, Sept. 3, 1997] Queen of Soul Food Taking ``Down Home'' On the Road (By Michel Marriott) The scene on the broad, cracked sidewalk outside Sylvia's Restaurant in Harlem looked like the opening of a department store sale, as tourists from around the world, in sneakers, shorts and T-shirts, along with other diners in waiting, some in their Sunday best, anticipated the moment when they could surge inside. When the door opened at 12:30 P.M., about 100 customers pressed forward, eager for fried chicken, salmon croquettes, collard greens, candied yams, black-eyed peas and the live music of Sylvia's Sunday gospel brunch. For those for whom soul food has literal meaning, the weekly four-hour feast, in which hundreds gather, was a reaffirming evocation of down home. For other toe-tapping diners, it was a plateful of black culture, a taste of church suppers, backyard cookouts and old-fashioned, black hospitality. The only thing missing was the queen of soul food herself, the owner, Sylvia Woods. Mrs. Woods doesn't work on Sundays anymore. After 35 years of 15- and 16-hour days to establish her restaurant, on Lenox Avenue near 127th Street, as a temple of black Southern dining up north, Mrs. Woods, 71, and her husband, 72 Herbert, are taking it a little easier. They may need the energy: from modest beginnings in rural South Carolina, they are on the cusp of national success. Mrs. Woods's mother mortgaged the family farm so that her daughter, than a waitress, and son-in-law, then a cabdriver, could open the restaurant in 1962. But now, investors led by the J.P. Morgan Community Development Corporation are helping to take the Woodses' vision of a cozy place to break cornbread and transplant it across the country. Mrs. Woods, a round-faced women with outsize eyeglasses and a generous smile, finds that prospect pleasing. ``We've come such a long ways, but in a sense it feels like it was just yesterday,'' Mrs. Woods said, with her husband at her side. ``I put my life in this restaurant.'' Her regulars enjoy the couple's success. ``I have watched their development,'' said Percy Sutton, a leading Harlem businessman and former Manhattan Borough President. `I know of no two more deserving and gracious people than the two of them. I am deliriously happy for them.'' The expansion began in February, when the first Sylvia's branch opened in downtown Atlanta. Others are planned for Brooklyn, St. Louis and Baltimore. Another arm of this food empire is being masterminded by their eldest son, Van DeWard Woods, 52: a Sylvia's line of bottled spices, sauces, dressings and canned seasoned beans, greens and peas--with Mrs. Woods's smiling face on the front. The products are appearing on the shelves of specialty shops and supermarkets chains in New York and nationally, including D'Agostino, Pathmark and A.&P./Food Emporium. The Woodses are at the leading edge of a new interest in soul food. This fall, 20th Century Fox is set to release the feature film ``Soul Food,'' a sentimental homage. The cuisine, born on slave plantations and relying heavily on cast-off cuts of meat, fried foods, gravies and spices, is being reimagined, often for diet-conscious customers, at popular restaurants like George's in Los Angeles and the Soul Cafe and Motown Cafe in midtown Manhattan. In recent years, Mrs. Woods has given a nod to the calorie- conscious by offering a few items on her menu that are baked and grilled, not fried. She also seasons her collard greens with smoked turkey, rather than the traditional ham hocks, after some customers asked if they could get their greens sans pig. Even with these accommodations, it's still the same restaurant that has become world renowned. Its very walls pronounce its fame. The central element of the decor, which Mrs. Woods describes as ``comfortable, decent and clean,'' are photographs of many notable visitors. The former Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Jack Kemp, Labor Secretary Alexis Herman, the media mogul Quincy Jones and the actor Denzel Washington in the role of just another diner are among scores of those whose pictures are on display in the three cobbled-together rooms that make up Sylvia's. Winnie Mandela dined there three times. Diana Ross asked for seconds of Sylvia's Sassy Rice. Muhammad Ali used to roam along the steam tables fetching his own biscuits. Spike Lee filmed a scene of his 1991 film, ``Jungle Fever'' in a corner of the restaurant now memorialized with a huge autographed poster for the movie. It has long been a favorite haunt for uptown's power elite. Mr. Sutton remembered how over the years he held meetings at Sylvia's with figures like Robert F. Kennedy and Jesse Jackson. But whenever one of her customers asks Mrs. Woods who was the most famous star to dine there, she responds with a rhetorical question and then answers it. ``Who's the most famous star to come into the restaurant?'' she asks warmly. ``You.'' Mrs. Woods says the success of their $3 million-a-year restaurant is due as much to its unshakable sense of Southern hospitality as to the food itself. ``You got to make people feel like they're at home,'' Mrs. Woods said. ``You got to make people feel like you appreciate them. That love and affection and caring will carry you where money can never carry.'' If she is not going over menus and day-to-day details in her closet of an office--``Sylvia's Room'' is burned into the door--she is minding the steam tables or ``talking up customers'' in a voice from her South Carolina roots. ``I walks the floor,'' Mrs. Woods explained. ``If a person is not eating the food, I want to know why. `Well, I'm not hungry,' I say, uh-uh, you have to bring it better than that. You wouldn't come in here, if you wasn't hungry.'' Her accessibility, says Anthony Bowman, who operates a Harlem-based tour company, has helped make her ``an icon.'' ``Most people who have gone there have at least once seen Sylvia,'' Mr. Bowman said: ``She gives the place an identifiable face.'' The couple say they are determined to maintain the personal touch in their new branches. So, soft-spoken Herbert Woods, with his broad, gentle face, slides behind the steering wheel of their 1988 Rolls-Royce Silver Spur and drives with his wife 14 hours--nonstop--from their home in Mount Vernon, N.Y., to look in at the Atlanta restaurant, which is owned by their daughter Bedelia Woods, 49. ``We prefer to drive,'' Mrs. Woods said. ``I don't mind flying, but I prefer not for both of us to fly together,'' Mr. Woods noted. ``Just in case.'' Mrs. Woods disagreed, ``If we go, we go together.'' Their visit doesn't mean they don't have confidence in their daughter or their other three children and the five grandchildren who work in the family business. But Mom and Dad's ``guidance'' is always helpful, they note. None of Mrs. Woods's success surprises Vicky Johnson, the Belgian war bride of Andrew Johnson the black entrepreneur who gave Mrs. Woods her first job in Harlem, as a waitress in his Harlem luncheonette. ``She was a hard worker,'' Mrs. Johnson, 69, recalled by telephone from her home in Summit, N.Y. ``I worked side by side with her. She wanted to get somewhere. Believe you me, nobody gave her nothing. She earned it.'' Mrs. Woods was reared by her mother, Julia Pressley, on their 35-acre farm in Hemingway, S.C., a patchwork of small farms with more wagons than cars when she was growing up. Her father died two days before she was born, Mrs. Woods said, a victim of gassing during World War I. ``I've never seen his face, not even a photo.'' While picking beans for extra money for the family, she said, she met Herbert Woods. His mother had died, and he was being raised by his step-father in Hemingway. She was 11, and he was 12. By their early teens, both recalled, they were falling in love. Their affection was so strong, Mr. Woods said, that when she went to New York with her mother, who worked as a domestic to buy more farmland back home, he joined the Navy. He thought that as a sailor he might sail to Brooklyn and see his sweetheart, he said. ``As close as I got was Norfolk, Va,'' Mr. Woods said with a soundless chuckle. He soon found himself in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and World War II as a cook on light cruisers and transports. ``When I was in the Navy, that's all you could be,'' he said of the era's segregated armed forces. Eventually, they married and moved to Harlem. He drove a cab; she worked for the Johnsons. In 1961, Mr. Johnson, who owned three restaurants, turned to Sylvia Woods when his plans to build an upstate resort for blacks overextended him financially. ``He wanted me to buy the restaurant from him to raise some money,'' Mrs. Woods recalled. ``I said: `Johnson, are you crazy? You know I don't have any money.' '' But the mortgage from Mrs. Woods' mother provided the down payment on the $20,000 price for the restaurant, the start of an empire now worth $20 million. In 1988, Mrs. Woods bought the upstate resort to prevent Mrs. Johnson, by then a widow and in financial trouble, from losing it on the auction block. Looking back to the early days, Mrs. Woods recalled, ``It was really a struggle.'' But her success, she assured a visitor, was part of ``God's plan.'' She paused and folded her hands. ``God is so good to me that I truly, truly know that He would not bring me this far and leave me alone,'' she said. ``No.''

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member of the committee, the subcommittee chairman, the members of the committee and the entire committee for considering this great honor we pay to one of our own who was in Government. The reason I am so close to this is because I come from that same community that the late Ron Brown did come from, and it just makes you feel more of an American when you can see someone soar with the eagles and able to perform for our great Nation, and you remembered him from the streets of Lennox Avenue in Harlem, remembered him as a kid in a hotel where his dad was the manager of that hotel, and I, of course, served as a desk clerk there. I remember him going to school, working late in law school at night, and at the same time, fighting for people's rights with the Urban League. To see him succeed and still not lose any of the grace that he had when he was a younger man and to move up even further to become our great Secretary of Commerce, I think it honors not just the people from the Harlem that I come from, but those communities throughout this great Nation of ours that have so little hope for themselves that vicariously they can see that any American, regardless of his or her background or their color, that our country would not be able to clamp the personality, the pride, and the distinguishing features that he had to make our Nation even greater. So we have already passed this bill, and it was not worked on by the other side. I do hope that we are successful this time, that we all can persuade the Senate to basically do the right thing.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this ban on needle exchange only because, and I underline, only because it takes away the discretion from the Secretary of HHS. I think it is an indictment of a failed antidrug policy in this country that this august body has to even consider the exchange of needles with people who have problems that we are not even attacking why these hopeless people believe that drugs is the only answer they have to a better life. I truly believe that starting off on this path, I do not see any different when we know the number of addicts that die because of overdoses and impure drugs, why some do-gooder will not be saying, why do we not give them purified drugs or something where they will be protected under doctor's advice, and already we have people running off talking about legalization and giving up what they call a fight that we have not had it. But because I do not know and I do not think anyone in this House knows exactly how many lives are lost because of contaminated needles, I am prepared to leave it up to the Secretary of Health and Human Services and not make that political judgment myself. Preferential Motion Offered by Mr. Miller of California

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, today, I, along with Congressman Bill Coyne, Congressman Steny Hoyer, Congressman Henry Waxman, and Congressman Bob Matsui, have introduced legislation to reform the Internal Revenue Service. My cosponsors have worked long and hard on this legislation, as has our Treasury Secretary, Bob Rubin. It is with the administration's strong commitment to the IRS Improvement Act of 1997 that I am honored to be the lead sponsor of the bill. My personal thanks go to Bill Coyne and Bob Matsui for their successive roles in representing the House Democrats on the National Commission on Restructuring the IRS. I also look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues from the Government Operation and Reform and Appropriations Committees who have jurisdiction over important titles of this bill. The Internal Revenue Service Improvement Act of 1997 will make many very significant changes both to the way the IRS operates and the Department of the Treasury oversees the IRS. The beneficiaries of this bill should and will be the American public. Taxpayers expect and deserve a tax administration system that is efficient and well-managed, fair and responsive in its dealings with the public, and staffed by employees who are well-trained and accountable for their actions. The IRS Improvement Act of 1997 is designed to achieve these goals. The bill institutionalizes the Administration's newly established IRS Management Board and planned IRS Advisory Board as permanent features of the tax law. The Management Board will provide for continued, high- level Government oversight of the IRS, under the direction of the Treasury Department. The Advisory Board will provide for timely and expert advice from the private sector on the fundamental strategic and management direction of the IRS. Under the bill, the IRS Commissioner would be given a fixed, 5-year term. This will provide not only continuity of direction for the IRS, but also require a long-term commitment from the person charged with administering our tax laws. The President, as required by the Constitution, would continue to appoint the Commissioner as the head of the IRS. The bill makes major improvements in the area of electronic tax return filing. The time has come for the IRS to promote aggressively the benefits of electronic filing, and for the Congress to eliminate statutory obstacles to making electronic filing the norm rather than the exception. The bill provides the Treasury Department and the IRS with the ability to put together and hire at the IRS one of the best management teams in the country. Highly skilled, top talent would be able to join the IRS at pay levels commensurate with experience and expertise. Performance-based incentive pay arrangements and a new demonstration management systems could be set up at the IRS, as ways to insure that management goals are net, to hold employees accountable, and to reward quality service. Finally, the bill provides mechanisms for giving IRS employees the educational and technical training they so desperately seek. The IRS work force is a dedicated and talented group of Federal employees, and they too want to see the IRS improved. They are willing to do their part, but they need the tools--the tools of modern technology, education, and training--which the bill provides. There is much about which everyone can agree, in our mutual efforts to improve the IRS. We all recognize that the current IRS needs to be improved. Our challenge must be to fix the IRS--and this must be done in a truly bipartisan manner. It is important that no one play politics and this effort by bashing the IRS. We have given the IRS one of the most difficult and important--and thankless--jobs in Government. The IRS deserves our support, constructive criticism, and attention to reform--not our wrath, since we too are to blame. I look forward to working with all the Members of Congress in enactment of the IRS Improvement Act. I ask for your support.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I say this to the gentleman from Virginia; I was the original sponsor of the initial enterprise and empowerment zones, and also the latest bill which expands them. While it was not included in the Republican bill, it is in the bipartisan bill. As the gentleman well knows, communities have to file and show their proposals before they are selected by HUD. It makes a lot of sense that those enterprise communities who have done more than have a plan, but demonstrated a success with those plans, should be given priority as we move forward in the next round of selecting the new empowerment zones and the additional enterprise communities.

Mr. RANGEL

Mr. RANGEL. I would just hope that, with all the good work that my colleague has done for this country throughout his life, that he would not want to be recorded in the Congressional Record as having been the person that, for whatever reason, has caused this Congress not to commemorate the life of this great American.