Bernie Sanders

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, let me pick up on a point that the gentleman has made. In 1980 in real dollars PILT payments were $180 million. Today they are $113 million. It is the communities and the children and the citizens of those communities who are suffering. I just wanted to reiterate that point.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Michigan for yielding the balance of his time to me, and I hate to disagree with my good friend, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Regula] especially since we are going to do a colloquy in a few moments. But bottom line is the program that we are talking about here is corporate welfare. That is what the Fossil Energy Research and Development Program is, and that is not just my opinion. I remind the Members that it was the 1997 budget resolution of the Republican party which said, and I want to repeat this: The Department of Energy has spent billions of dollars on research and development since the oil crisis of 1973 triggered this activity. Returns on this investment have not been cost effective, particularly for applied research and development which industry has ample incentive to undertake. Some of this activity is simply corporate welfare for the oil, gas and utility industry. Mr. Chairman, let me quote from the Congressional Budget Office: In the area of fossil research and development, commercial firms already spend a great deal of money to develop new technologies. The major new technologies for enhanced oil recovery, for example, have come from private industry, not

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, this bipartisan amendment which is being introduced by the gentleman from New Hampshire [Mr. Bass] and myself does two important things that most Members of this body agree with. First, it deals with the very serious problem of underfunded mandates, of forcing citizens in close to 2,000 counties in all 50 States to pay more in local property taxes than they should be paying because the Federal Government has fallen very far behind in its payment in lieu of taxes on federally owned lands. This amendment addresses this problem by increasing payments in lieu of taxes by $19 million, from $113.5 million to $132.5 million. Mr. Chairman, I should add here that this amount is exactly the amount authorized for fiscal year 1995, when Congress passed the reauthorization for PILT in 1994. In other words, this amendment provides what the Congress promised cities and towns all over this country 3 years ago that we should be doing. We made a commitment, we should honor that commitment, and that is what this amendment does. Mr. Chairman, the PILT program was established to address the fact that the Federal Government does not pay taxes on its own land. These Federal lands can include national forests, national parks, fish and wildlife refuges, and land owned by the Bureau of Land Management. Like property taxes, PILT payments are used to pay the school budgets, law enforcement, and other municipal expenses. Communities all over this country are upset by the lack of fairness that they are receiving from the Federal Government, which is why this amendment is endorsed by the National Association of Counties. Mr. Chairman, despite an increase that was granted 3 years ago in the PILT authorization levels, the actual appropriations have been kept nearly level, resulting in a revenue shortfall to local communities in real terms. For fiscal year 1997, for example, local governments will receive only 60 to 70 percent of the payment level which was set in the authorization. This amendment would begin to address this unfunded mandate by increasing the payment in lieu of taxes program to where it was in real terms 10 years ago. The formula by which payments in lieu of taxes are made is a complicated one, and each property is treated somewhat differently, but on average, on average, if this amendment passes, each local government would see a 17-percent increase in PILT money, and that is a significant advantage to thousands of communities all over this country. Mr. Chairman, we have heard a great deal of discussion recently about evolution and our concerns for local communities and local government. It is high time that the Federal Government accepted its responsibility to do right by local communities. Mr. Chairman, the $47.5 million that we are using for these purposes, in other words, deficit reduction and increasing PILT payments to local communities all over America, would be transferred from the Fossil Energy Research and Development Program. According to the report of the fiscal year 1997 budget resolution which passed the House last year, the Republican resolution, and let me quote from that, and I quote: The Department of Energy has spent billions of dollars on research and development since the oil crisis in 1973 triggered this activity. Returns on this investment have not been cost effective, particularly for applied research and development which industry has ample incentive to undertake. Some of this activity is simply corporate welfare for the oil, gas and utility industries. Much of it duplicates what the industry is already doing. Some has gone to fund technologies in which the market has low interest. Mr. Chairman, these are not my words. These are the words from the report of the fiscal year 1997 budget resolution produced by the leadership of the Republican party. But obviously it is not only Republicans or conservatives who feel this way; progressives agree. Public Citizen has this to say about the Fossil Energy Research and Development Program, and I quote: Fossil energy programs have received over $15 billion in Federal funding since 1974. The fossil energy industry is prosperous and mature, and it is not deserving of a continuing large share of taxpayer support. Mr. Chairman, the bottom line is, progressives and conservatives support this concept. I would urge Members from both sides of the aisle to vote for it.

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

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank my Republican colleague and my Democratic colleague for their indulgence. This is an important debate and I very much appreciate their allowing it to go forward. Mr. Chairman, the amendment that I have offered is simple, and I would hope would be supported by all, especially those people concerned about the deficit and those people concerned about national priorities. What this amendment does is cut the intelligence budget by 5 percent from the level authorized for fiscal year 1997 while still protecting the CIA retirement and disability funds. Mr. Chairman, although the amount authorized by this bill is classified, there are various press reports which have indicated that funding for all the intelligence activities is currently about $30 billion, which means that this amendment would cut approximately $1.5 billion from the intelligence agencies. Mr. Chairman, in my opinion, this debate is about a number of key factors: No. 1, our sense of national priorities. Is it appropriate to increase funding for an already bloated intelligence budget at exactly the same time as we propose painful cuts for senior citizens in Medicare, for low-income people in Medicaid, for others in housing, for kids, for the environment? How appropriate is it to say that we will cut $1.5 billion in home health care for seniors but not cut $1.5 billion for an intelligence budget which, in my view and in the view of many, already has too much money. Mr. Chairman, if we are serious about deficit reduction, we cannot only go after working people and low-income people, we also have to have the courage to go after the intelligence community. Mr. Chairman, let me be frank that, for whatever reasons, despite the end of the cold war, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union and international communism, the intelligence community has not experienced the kind of appropriate cuts that had been made with many other agencies, including the Department of Defense. Mr. Chairman, in 1996 the U.S. Senate, led by Senators Hank Brown and Warren Rudman, completed a report on the efficacy and appropriateness of the activities of the U.S. intelligence community in the post-cold war global environment. Let me read a brief portion from that report, which is commonly referred to as the 1996 Aspin-Brown Commission Report. They say, and I quote: In general, from 1980 until the present, intelligence grew at a faster rate than defense when defense spending was going up and decreased at a slower rate when defense spending was going down. As a result, intelligence funding Now this is 1990-- is now at a level 80 percent above where it was in 1980, while defense overall, other than intelligence, is now 4 percent below its 1980 level. Mr. Chairman, the Congress has asked almost every agency to examine its budget and make appropriate cuts as we try to move toward a balanced budget. It is appropriate, now that the cold war is over, to ask the intelligence community to do that as well. Mr. Chairman, in recent years a number of our allies have made public their intelligence budget, something I think we should do, but that is not for this debate. But let me tell what you we have learned from some of those countries who have made public their intelligence budgets. In the United Kingdom, our strong ally, under a conservative government, intelligence spending was reduced from 957 million pounds in 1993 down to 701 million pounds in 1997. That is Great Britain. Canada also reduced its intelligence budget. They understood that the cold war is over. They had other priorities. I think we might want to learn something from our allies. Mr. Chairman, not only do we have to look at our priorities and what our allies are doing; we have got do ask the simple question, are we getting good value for money that we are spending on intelligence? I would argue that there is a wide cross-section of opinion from the left and the right that says no, that the intelligence budgets are inefficient and wasteful, that they can be cut without loss of value in terms of the needs of the American people. Mr. Chairman, what I would like to do now is not give you my opinion but to quote various newspapers, totally public reports, nothing secret or nothing confidential here, and tell you what some of the newspapers are reporting. The New York Times front page, May 16, 1996, and I quote: In a complete collapse of accountability, the government agency that builds spy satellites accumulated about $4 billion in uncounted secret money, nearly twice the amount previously reported to Congress, intelligence officials acknowledged today.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, essentially, the amendment as recorded called for a 10-percent reduction in the intelligence agencies; and I would like to change that to a 5 percent reduction. I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be allowed to be 5 percent rather than 10 percent.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum] very much, because this is an important debate and one that I am going to ask for another unanimous consent that I had discussed previously. Modification to Amendment No. 1 Offered by Mr. Sanders

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I offer amendment No. 1. Mr. Chairman, I was in a markup and was of the understanding that the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers] would be offering his first. I ask unanimous consent to return to title I and that my amendment be allowed to proceed in order.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, what NRO did was to lose track of $4 billion, an amount roughly equal to the annual budgets for the FBI and the State Department combined. They lost the money. John Nelson, appointed last year as the National Reconnaissance Office's top financial manager and given the task of cleaning up the problem, said in an interview published today in a special edition of Defense Week that the secret agency had gone, and I quote the gentleman, ``a fundamental financial meltdown,'' an excerpt from the article in the New York Times. Let me further quote from the New York Times, same article: The reconnaissance office found itself in trouble in 1994 for constructing what several Senators called a stealth building. The Senate Intelligence Committee protested that the agency had built itself a headquarters outside Washington costing more than $300 million, without disclosing the building's true cost and size. That is the New York Times. According to another newspaper, the New York Daily News, December 16, 1996, and I quote, page 27, editorial: Two huge threats are looming before the U.S. intelligence community as national security advisor Anthony Lake prepares to become director of central intelligence. The first is a Marine reserve sergeant out in San Diego. Armed with a personal computer and a network of contacts around the world, Eric Nelson has developed and E-mail system that consistently beat the Defense Intelligence Agency's reporting on terrorism, chemical and biological warfare, political profiles, background on hot spots, nuclear weapons, international crime and political analysis. ``He really covers the ground,'' says Marine Colonel G.I. Wilson at the Pentagon. ``And best of all, he is quick. His secret is that he only uses open, i.e., unclassified sources. He has been immensely successful. All the armed services use him.'' This is a guy on his own, an ex-marine. ``Nelson's threat to the $40 billion intelligence community? His operating cost is about $20 a month.'' Twenty dollars a month and he is doing work that the intelligence community is not able to do. And on and on it goes. Last, let me quote from another article in the New York Times, March 3, 1997: ``Breaking with its past, the CIA has severed its ties to roughly 100 foreign agents, about half of them in Latin America, whose value as informers was outweighed by their acts of murder, assassination, torture, terrorism and other crimes, Government officials said today.'' The New York Times continues: ``The agency found that the violence and corruption of scores of those informers were so bad, and the quality of the information they provided comparatively so marginal, that they were not worth the tens of thousands they were paid annually.'' The article continues, ``The Latin American division of the CIA's clandestine service proved to be one of the most riddled with foreign agents who are killers and torturers, that the agency has violent men on its payroll,'' et cetera, et cetera. Mr. Chairman, I would ask that the Members say no to the intelligence communities and support the Sanders amendment lowering it by 5 percent.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. I speak in strong support of the rule which allows for a number of serious amendments. I think the main point that I would make, as we proceed in this discussion, is that it is imperative for the U.S. Congress to get its priorities straight. There are proposals that we are going to be debating here within the next couple of weeks which call for massive cuts in Medicare, massive cuts in veterans programs; we have experienced major cuts in housing, programs for our kids. And it seems to me that those Members who are concerned about national priorities, those Members who are concerned about deficit reduction have also got to take a hard look at the intelligence budget. It is wrong to say to the elderly, we are going to cut home care service to you; say to low income people, we are going to cut back on Medicaid for you; allow a situation to continue by which we have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world; and then say, well, despite the fact that the cold war is over, despite the fact that the Soviet Union does not exist, that international communism is basically dead, that despite all of that, we can allocate more money to the intelligence community despite the fact that the record shows that in area after area after area, the intelligence community has been extraordinarily wasteful and not costeffective. I would remind Members that last year the New York Times reported, and I quote, May 16, 1996, In a complete collapse of accountability, the government agency that builds spy satellites accumulated about $4 billion in uncounted secret money, nearly twice the amount previously reported to Congress, intelligence officials acknowledged today. And the article continues: To put the $4 billion in perspective, the National Reconnaissance Office, what the National Reconnaissance Office did was to lose a sum of money roughly equal to the annual budgets for the FBI and the State Department combined. John Nelson, appointed last year as the reconnaissance office's's top financial manager and given the task of cleaning up the program, said in an interview published today in a special edition of Defense Week that the secret agency had undergone, and I quote, a fundamental financial meltdown. End of quote. Let us get our priorities straight. We cannot cut for the kids. We cannot cut for the elderly. We cannot cut for the homeless, and in fact even make over the years significant cuts in military spending and then say to the intelligence community, hey, we treat you differently than any other aspect of government. I rise in support of the rule because it enables us to have a serious debate on a major issue.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I think everybody knows what is going on in America economically. The people on the top have never had it so good. The middle class is shrinking, and most working people are struggling hard to make a living. Given that reality, look at the absurdity of this Republican tax proposal. Instead of helping working people and the middle class, 58 percent of the benefits go to the upper 5 percent. After giving out all of those tax breaks, they necessitate $115 billion cuts in Medicare, which in my State of Vermont will be a $75 million cut over a 5-year period, which will mean deteriorating health care services for our senior citizens. Huge tax breaks for the rich, significant cuts in health care for our senior citizens. The bottom 40 percent of wage earners get no cuts at all. What an absurd proposal. Let us defeat it.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, at a time when some American corporations commonly use large-scale layoffs in order to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in profits on the stock market, demand give-backs in order to pit American workers in competition with cheap, unprotected foreign workers, and invest overseas to escape health, safety, and environmental standards here at home, we do not believe that the United States Government should be rewarding such shortsighted companies with billions of dollars in federal contracts vis-a-vis companies that are good corporate citizens here at home and overseas. Instead, we should be using the purchasing power of the Federal Government to reward socially responsible and environmentally responsible companies. Every year the U.S. Government buys more than $200 billion in goods and services, ranging from weapons systems to cleaning supplies, making it the largest customer in the American marketplace. This purchasing power needs to be harnessed--through targeted procurement preferences-- and used as an engine of progress and as a powerful source of marketplace leverage to reward exemplary corporate behavior in the bottom line. The economist Adam Smith recognized that free markets, left to their own devices, do not deal with matters of economic justice and social equity, let alone environmental sustainability. In that vein, our Federal Government should also be doing more than just trying to save a buck. Uncle Sam should be an enlightened consumer and encourage more of the business community to practice good corporate citizenship. Just as with the individual citizen, the good corporate citizen should be expected to act ethically and should be rewarded accordingly in the marketplace. That means not only acting responsibly as a company in producing goods and services, but also responding to the needs and interests of host communities as well as employees and customers. This approach is far from revolutionary because companies of all sizes and sectors have realized that good conduct can result in long-term profitability. That is why more than 100 U.S. companies have already adopted codes of conduct to govern their internal operations and external affairs. My colleagues, Congressmen Evans, Filner, Lipinski, and Lewis join me today in introducing legislation to give a substantial preference, when bidding on Federal contracts, to companies that adopt and enforce a corporate code of conduct and open their operations to outside monitoring of compliance. In other words, priority will go to companies which provide a safe and healthy workplace, avoid racial or gender discrimination, comply with laws that ensure fair competition, and uphold a responsible environmental record at home and in their overseas operations. Specifically, our bill--the Good Corporate Citizenship and Federal Procurement Incentives Act--does the following: Requires the director of each Federal agency to establish procedures to give a preference to contracting with companies that have adopted and are enforcing codes of conduct; Requires that corporate codes of conduct build upon the workplace code of conduct recently agreed upon by the Apparel Industry Partnership as well as the model business principles developed and announced in 1995 after lengthy White House consultations with business leaders, public interest groups, and concerned individuals; Ensures that all employees are well informed about the specific provisions of the corporate code of conduct adopted by their employing company; Establishes an annual Federal interagency review, a public petition process, and public hearings to be spearheaded by the U.S. Department of Commerce to investigate and determine whether companies that have been awarded preferences are, in fact, complying with and enforcing their corporate codes of conduct; Allows any person or organization--including independent monitors-- with pertinent factual information to file a petition and request a public hearing on evidence that a company that has received or is receiving a procurement preference is not in compliance with its own corporate code of conduct; and Authorizes Federal agencies to take into account when extending trade mission support, OPIC/EX-IM Bank assistance and other taxpayer-financed benefits and to withdraw, suspend, or limit procurement preferences awarded on a contract or company basis or both as a result of investigations and public hearing(s) in which it is determined that a company is not enforcing its corporate code of conduct. The decisions of Federal agencies in this regard would also be subject to judicial review. Mr. Speaker, this is very timely and ground-breaking legislation to give a significant preference in the awarding of more than $200 billion in Federal contracts to U.S. companies that practice good corporate citizenship day in and day out.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, let us put this bill into the context of what is happening in America today. Everybody knows what is happening. The richest people are becoming richer, the middle class is being squeezed, and most of the new jobs being created are low-wage jobs. Given that context, what sense is it that we have legislation under which 58 percent of the benefits go to the top 5 percent, corporations see a reduction in their tax burden, while the bottom 40 percent of income earners see no benefits at all? In other words, we have got this thing completely backwards. We are helping those people who do not need help, and we are not helping those people who are in desperate need of help. Furthermore, under this legislation, Medicare will be cut $115 billion over a 5-year period. The Vermont Association of Hospitals estimates that will be a $75 million cut from hospitals, rural hospitals all over America who will be hurt, meaning there will be lower quality health care for our senior citizens. Tax breaks for the rich and the people who do not need it, cuts in Medicare and a reduction in the quality of health care for our senior citizens, those people who do need help, I urge a ``no'' vote on this absurd piece of legislation.

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

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of a bill which I introduced today, with Mr. Lipinski of Illinois and Mr. McGovern of Massachusetts as original cosponsors. This bill would require the Export-Import Bank of the United States, when selecting among firms to provide financial assistance, to give preference to any firm which has shown a commitment to reinvestment and job creation in the United States. Mr. Speaker, this bill gets at, I believe the heart of the issue of the relationship between the U.S. Government, the taxpayers of this country and corporate America. Mr. Speaker, let me tell you a little bit about some of the companies which have received financial assistance from the Export-Import Bank in recent years--and you tell me whether these are really the best companies that the middle income people of this country should be subsidizing. According to information from Ex-IM, among the top 25 companies which receive assistance from Ex-Im are Boeing, General Electric, and AT&T. Let's take a brief look at these companies and see whether these really are the types of companies that the American taxpayers should be rewarding. In terms of employment, in 1990 Boeing had 155,900 employees. In 1996, it had 103,600 employees--a decline of 52,300 jobs during that period. In other words, it laid off \1/3\ of its workforce, despite being the top recipient of Ex-Im aid. Mr. Speaker, General Electric is the number two recipient of Ex-Im aid. In 1975 GE had 667,000 American workers. Twenty years later, it had 398,000, a decline of 269,000 jobs. General Electric CEO Jack Welch, is well known for his ruthlessness in moving GE jobs to anyplace in the world where he can get cheap labor--Mexico, China, and other poor Third World countries. Is this really the type of company we want to be rewarding with taxpayer subsidies? Downsizing American workers has been at the core of the Jack Welch philosophy at GE, and Ex-Im is actually providing millions of dollars in support of this company. As for AT&T, in 1995 AT&T laid off 40,000 workers. Interestingly enough, reports show that in that same year, AT&T provided its CEO, Robert Allen, with $15 million in options plus a $11 million grant. My point, Mr. Speaker, is that the entire approach of Ex-Im in terms of job creation is too narrow. They approach the idea of ``jobs through exports'' on a project-by-project basis, and ignore the totality of what the company is doing. My bill is quite simple. This bill would simply require the Export- Import Bank to look at the totality of the situation. And if there is a company that is showing a commitment to job creation and reinvestment in the United States, then that company should receive preference for assistance. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums], my friend and colleague.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens].

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

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Chairman, this bill provides for $268 billion in defense spending for fiscal year 1998, $2.6 billion more than was requested by President Clinton. My amendment provides for an across-the-board 5 percent cut in overall defense spending as authorized by this bill. It will cut $13.4 billion. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is about national priorities and is the only amendment that has been allowed on the floor which calls for a cut in military spending. The bottom line that we are discussing here is pretty simple. At a time when the cold war is over, when the Soviet Union no longer exists, when we are militarily outspending all of our so-called enemies by huge amounts, we do not need to continue spending this kind of money for the military. We do not need to fund the military at almost the same level it was at the heart of the cold war. Mr. Chairman, when we talk about U.S. military spending, we must also put it in the context of the current world situation. While we are now spending $264 billion, our NATO allies are also spending over $200 billion. Combined, we and our allies are spending close to $500 billion on the military. How much are our so-called enemies spending? Cuba, $300 million; Libya, $1.4 billion; Syria, $1.8 billion; North Korea, $2.4 billion; Iraq, $2.7 billion; Iran, $3.4 billion; China, I do not know that China is an enemy, I gather they are going to get MFN status, they are spending $32 billion. I do not believe that Russia is also our enemy, being that we are heavily funding them, but they are spending $82 billion, just to mention. What all of this means is that the United States alone is spending many times more than all of our so-called enemies combined, and if we add NATO into the equation, the numbers become absurd. Cuba, Libya, Syria, North Korea, Iraq, and Iran combined spend $12 billion a year on the military, while we are proposing in this budget $268 billion, more than 20 times the combined spending of all of these so-called enemies. Further, this budget does not include the tens of billions we spend on the intelligence budget. Mr. Chairman, the question that all of us must ask is when is enough enough? Yes, all of us want the United States to have the strongest military in the world, but when we spend so much on defense, we are adding to a very large national debt and are terribly ignoring the pressing domestic needs that tens and tens of millions of Americans are facing, needs which are getting worse. Let us get our priorities straight. Mr. Chairman, when we spend this much money on the military, we have to cut Medicare by $115 billion. That is wrong. When we spend this much money on the military, we are asked to cut veterans' benefits, veterans' health care over the next 5 years by $5 billion. So we are spending money on B-2 bombers and star wars, and we say, ``Thank you,'' to the men and women who served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. ``We don't care about you; we're worried about B-2 bombers and star wars.'' That is wrong. When we spend this much money on the military, we are cutting back $13 billion on Medicaid for hospitals that serve the poorest people in America. Yes, let us spend a $100 billion dollars defending Europe, but when someone is poor, they need to go into a hospital, Uncle Sam is not there for them. And when we spend this much money on the military, drastic cut backs take place in housing and other important needs. There are some people on this Congress who are proposing cuts in Social Security. Yes, more money for B-2 bombers; cutbacks in Social Security. Millions of American families, thousands in the State of Vermont, cannot afford to send their kids to college. We spend $30 billion for higher education, and we are proposing $268 billion for the military. In my view those priorities are absolutely wrong. Mr. Chairman, this is a great Nation, but our priorities are wrong. People on the other side and on this side talk about balancing the budget. Well, do my colleagues know what? Military spending has something to do with the deficit, too. So I hope that our deficit hawks who talk about the $5 trillion debt will come on board and say, no, if we are serious about moving toward a balanced budget, we have got to cut military spending. Mr. Chairman, bottom line is priorities, we are spending too much. Let us cut military spending by 5 percent and still retain by far the strongest military on earth. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California [Mr. Filner].

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Oregon [Mr. DeFazio].

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The previous speaker said real money and real people, so let me tell my colleagues about real money and real people. While we outspent our so-called enemies 20-to-1, 22 percent of the children in this country live in poverty. We have the highest rate of poverty in the industrialized world, and yet we spend the money on B-2 bombers and star wars and other exotic weapons systems that are not needed today. Real money, real people. Millions of families in America cannot afford to send their kids to college. The gentleman said $300 million on education; he forgot to say that was at the local level. Local property taxes, State taxes, $30 billion at the Federal level, 8 times more on the military than we spend on education. That is absurd. Real money, real people. Tens of millions of Americans have no health insurance. They do not know what to do when they get sick, and they are saying, yes, let us take care of the people back home, rather than spending $100 billion a year defending Europe and Asia. Real money, real people. Real money, real people. Why did my colleagues on the other side cut veterans' programs? They are the people who defended this country. Now they are 70 and 80 and they are dying at VA hospitals. We have cut back on health care for veterans, and yet we have money for exotic weapons systems that we do not need. Bottom line, Mr. Chairman, we want the strongest military in the world, we have the strongest military in the world, but let us get our priorities straight. Let us talk about health care, education, protect our seniors, protect our veterans, and let us do the right thing and pass, pass, pass this amendment.

Mr. SANDERS

Mr. SANDERS. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, while the recent changes in the rule announced by the gentleman from New York [Mr. Solomon] certainly improve the bill, and I will strongly be supporting the Dellums amendment, among others, it is my view that when we are dealing with a $268 billion authorization, an authorization which ultimately determines the priorities of this country, that every Member of this body who has thought about this issue has a right to have their amendment offered on the floor of the House and debated on the floor of the House. In a fundamental way, today we are discussing the priorities of this Nation. We are talking about spending tens and tens of billions of dollars on weapons systems that many experts think we do not need while at the same time Members of Congress want to cut back on Medicare, want to cut back on Medicaid, while we continue to have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world, while people are sleeping on the street, while millions of families cannot afford to send their kids to college. Mr. Speaker, what we are talking about today are national priorities. Do we put more money into B-2 bombers and less money into health care for our senior citizens? More money into submarines and not adequately fund education or health care for the people? Those are issues of enormous consequence. Every Member of this body should have a right to participate in that debate.