Maxine Waters

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. I do not know.

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise to a question of the privileges of the House, and I offer a resolution (H. Res. 296) pursuant to clause 2 of rule IX. Parliamentary Inquiry

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 2 of rule IX, I hereby give notice of my intention to offer a resolution which raises a question of the privileges of the House. The form of the resolution is as follows: Whereas, a contested election contest has been pending between Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez and Mr. Robert Dornan since December 26, 1997; and Whereas the Task Force on the Contested Election in the 46th District of California has only met on February 26, 1997 and October 24, 1997 in Washington, D.C., and on April 19, 1997 in Orange County, California; and Whereas the allegations made by Mr. Robert Dornan have been largely found to be without merit: charges of improper voting from a business rather than a residence address; underage voting; double voting; and charges of unusually large number of individuals voting from the same address. It was found that voting from the same address included a Marines barracks and the domicile of nuns, that business addresses were legal residences for the individuals, including the zoo keeper of the Santa Ana zoo, that duplicate voting was by different individuals and those accused of underage voting were of age; and Whereas the Committee on House Oversight has issued unprecedented subpoenas to the Immigration and Naturalization Service to compare their records with Orange County voter registration records, the first time in any election in the history of the United States that the INS has been asked by Congress to verify the citizenship of voters; and Whereas the INS has complied with the Committee's request and, at the Committee's request, has been doing a manual check of its paper files and providing worksheets containing supplemental information on that manual check to the Committee on House Oversight for over 5 months; and Whereas some Members of the House Oversight Committee are now seeking a duplicate and dilatory review of materials already in the Committee's possession by the Secretary of State of California; and Whereas the Task Force on the Contested Election in the 46th District of California and the Committee have been reviewing these materials and has all the information it needs regarding who voted in the 46th District and all the information it needs to make judgments concerning those votes; and Whereas the Committee on House Oversight has after over 9 months of review and investigation failed to present credible evidence to change the outcome of the election of Congresswoman Sanchez and is pursuing never ending and unsubstantiated areas of review; and Whereas, Contestant Robert Dornan has not shown or provided credible evidence that the outcome of the election is other than Congresswoman Sanchez's election to the Congress; and Whereas, the Committee on House Oversight should complete its review of this matter and bring this contest to an end and now therefore be it; Resolved, that unless the Committee on House Oversight has sooner reported a recommendation for its final disposition, the contest in the 46th District of California is dismissed upon the expiration of October 31, 1997.

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would continue to yield, what is the ratio to administrators?

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would again yield, that is what I thought.

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I would ask the gentleman how much his school district spends on its children in his district per student.

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Moran substitute. Today we are witnessing perhaps the grossest abuse of power that many of us have ever seen or will ever see. I remember a movie that I saw, ``To Kill a Mockingbird,'' and the moral and the lesson of that movie was never to use one's strength and power against the vulnerable, or do not just run over the powerless, do not take advantage of those who cannot fight back. Today Washington, DC, is that mockingbird. The gentlewoman from the District of Columbia [Ms. Norton]) the Delegate here, does not have a vote. They do not have representation over in the Senate. But we are not only disregarding that fact, we are disregarding the fact that we have a finance control board controlled by and run by conservative economists, a city council, a mayor, those people who are elected to do the work at the local level. We have 62 riders in this bill that we are trying to defend against with this amendment; 62 riders that talk about everything from how many people can be the security for the Mayor, or whether or not one can have a lease for helicopters, on and on and on. And the most egregious part of this is that you would shove vouchers down the throats of the District of Columbia, despite the fact that over 80 percent of the people voted against vouchers in this District. Do my colleagues care about education? Many of the people on the other side of the aisle want to get rid of the Department of Education. Where would these people, when many people from communities around this world wanted choice through busing and they stood up and they said, ``No, we will not allow you that choice, to open up the District's line so you can have your children go to any of the schools they would choose.'' I tell my colleagues, we have to support this amendment. We have to support it because it is the only right thing to do.

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of H.R. 1317 to reauthorize the Eximbank. As a member of the Committee on Banking and Financial Services, I want to congratulate the gentleman from Delaware [Mr. Castle], the chairman of the Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy, and the gentleman from New York [Mr. Flake] for their work on this important bill. The Eximbank provides low-interest rate direct loans, export credit insurance, and loan guarantees to finance the purchase of U.S. goods internationally. There have been some criticisms today of the Bank. I share in some of those criticisms. There are those who would believe that somehow I want to do away with the Bank. If we ask a lot of people, their first thought is the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Maxine Waters] is not going to support it, because too many big businesses receive the benefit from it. Not true. Yes; I am concerned that too much of this goes to big businesses, but I am also concerned that we have the kind of dollars to support American firms that will make them competitive in the international market. Therefore, I want to expand this to more small businesses. I want to pay some attention to Africa, I want to make sure we make it what it should be. I do not want to get rid of this money. I do not want to do away with this opportunity. There have been some important reforms that have been put into the legislation by the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] and others to make sure that labor is represented on the advisory board, to make sure that we have recommendations about how we can increase projects in Africa. I think we have some opportunities here. I do not think we should just sit back and say, well, it is all right. It has not done everything we would like it to do. I think we should say, let us take this opportunity to provide subsidies, to provide credit, to provide loan guarantees, to be more competitive in the international market, to create jobs, to do all of those things. But let us not just sit back and criticize it and say the big firms are getting it all. I want some of the firms in my district to be involved, and I am going to make sure they are. I am going to make sure I pay attention to it.

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I came to the floor because I wanted to make sure that any attempts to try and answer for the gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Hilliard] or to describe what he may or may not have done be characterized in a way that would not indict him without his having an opportunity to deal with this issue. He is not here. As chairperson of the Congressional Black Caucus, I pay special attention, of course, to those members of the Caucus. I wish that they always be represented in the right way, and whenever there appears to be a problem unfolding, I want to make sure that we do everything that we can to see to it that they are handled with respect. Mr. Speaker, I have talked with the gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Bachus] about this, and I am convinced that he simply, in the interests of his constituents in the State of Alabama, is simply attempting to have some questions answered that have been raised by people in Alabama. I respect that. I do wish, however, that this issue not become something that is debated on the floor while in fact there is a complaint now pending in the Ethics Committee. Normally, if there is a complaint, it would be handled in the body that is constructed to handle these kinds of concerns. It is a little bit unusual to talk about some protracted debate either in committee or on the floor. I would hope that something happens between now and next week that would cause this to be not only deposited as it is in the Ethics Committee, but discussed there. I suppose we could end up discussing these kinds of concerns ad nauseam. As I reviewed, kind of, the record over a period of time about travel, I guess there have been some questions from time to time about travel to Cuba, even at one point to Vietnam and other places, where I think we have some restrictions or sanctions, but it has not occupied the committee or the House. If there is a complaint filed, it is taken up there. So let me just say that I rise today on behalf of the gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Hilliard], to say that certainly he has not had the opportunity to have his say; that he has responded to some inquiries that have been made in an unofficial way, I think, by the State Department. The State Department has made it clear they are not investigating him. They simply have almost a perfunctory duty to raise some questions about travel to certain areas where there may be some restrictions. As far as we know, the gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Hilliard] has done nothing wrong. He is not in violation of anything. Even when sometimes it appears that there is travel to restricted places, there are ways and waivers which allow for travel if they do not violate certain things, like the use of passports, money transactions. So based on what I know, I am convinced that the gentleman from Alabama's actions are honorable and that he has not in any way violated any laws or the responsibilities and trust that are placed in him by virtue of his being a Member of Congress. So I wanted to be here today to say that I respect the gentleman's concern. I do think that there is some continued discussion that can take place about how to proceed with this, and with that I would happily be involved with the gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Hilliard] next week to see how we can move this in a fashion that we can all feel good about.

Ms. WATERS. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, not that I am the legal adviser on this, but if I were to advise him, now that a complaint has been filed with the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, I would confine my explanations to the body that is taking a look at the issue, should they decide to do that, and I would wait to see how they were going to handle it, rather than trying to come to the floor and present a defense when he has not really been charged with anything, or to provide an explanation that may complicate proceedings that may be underway or may get underway. So I wish that we would not take his lack of a response to the gentleman's request as an unwillingness to discuss it; but rather, now, I think he is put in a position where he has to make some decisions about what is the appropriate response and in what manner that will be done.

Ms. WATERS. I yield to the gentleman from Alabama.

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, today I want to speak in support of the Mollohan-Fox amendment to restore funding to the Legal Services Corporation. If this amendment is not accepted, the Legal Services Corporation will suffer a devastating blow. As currently written, this bill provides only $141 million for the Legal Services Corporation. This amount is 50 percent less than the $283 million appropriated last year and $199 million less than the request of the administration. I want to stop for a moment and thank the Representatives from the other side of the aisle, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox], the gentleman from New York [Mr. Forbes], the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Upton], and others for joining in this bipartisan effort to do the right thing for poor people and working people. As my colleagues know, we could use our power any way that we would like in this House. We could be good public policymakers, concerned about all of our constituents, not just the rich, not just the well off, or we can be bullies. We can be bullies who use our power and put our foot on the backs and the necks of working people and poor people; we could do that any time, and that is what we are doing on this Legal Services Corporation funding. We are literally getting rid of them by taking away 50 percent of the funding. Who are these people? First of all, we should take all of these Legal Services attorneys and give them some awards. We should award them for working in the dinky offices across America for less money than attorneys normally make, for going into neighborhoods and representing people when their own lives sometimes are at risk. We should award them for going into the public housing projects, to the barrios, and into the rural areas where no one else will go, to represent working people and poor people. I want to tell you about a case that I encountered in 1978 as a member of the California Legislature. I will never forget Ms. Willa T. Moore. She was a homeowner. It was just a little house in South Central Los Angeles, but she received a bill. She knew she had paid her taxes. She was not familiar with the 1911 Assessment Act. This is the assessment for new street lighting that is done by the city. They kept sending her the bill, she disregarded it, she thought the people downtown made a mistake. She paid her taxes. Well, let me tell you, they started to foreclose on her house because she failed to pay the 1911 assessment tax bill that was sent to her because of the lighting district that had been put in. I worked with Legal Services Corporation to get Ms. Moore's house back. I did not stop until we made sure that that house was not taken. Without Legal Services, I would not have been able to assist Ms. Moore. But let me tell you something else that was going on at that time. We had contractors who went out and knocked on doors. They said, ``Let me put a new roof on your house. Let me put a burglar alarm system in. Let me expand and put a new room or porch on your house.'' They carried the paper from a well-known S&L, and the people signed up. They had to put their deeds up in order to get the credit from the S&L working with the contractor. The contractor signed up senior citizens, working people, poor people. They oftentimes would come and put the scaffolding up to start the job, but they would go on to the next person. They had blocks of people who they had signed up to do work for, putting on new roofs, new porches, burglar alarms, you name it. They would start, but somehow they would not get around to finishing the job. But the payment book came from the S&L, because the contractor had the relationship to the S&L, and the people's payment book came, they had to make the payment, but no contractor. The S&L said to the people, ``That is your business, to go after the contractor. You signed on the dotted line. We have the deed to your house. If you do not pay us, your house now belongs to us.'' I worked for 2 years with the Legal Services Corporation to do all kinds of new disclosure, to get rid of some of the practices of the S&L. I went to contractors who had collected those deeds and I made them give me the deeds back of senior citizens who had nobody to advocate for them. I walked the streets with the Legal Services Corporation representatives and attorneys, one by one, collecting those deeds back of senior citizens, of working people who had no other legal representation. Do not do this to poor people. We are bigger than that. We are better than that. We could put our feet on the back of these people and take away the ability to have just a little representation, or we can be kind public policymakers who look out for people who have nobody else to look out for them. I beg Members to support the amendment.

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Kolbe] just gave us a preview of his speech on Fast Track. I do not know what he knows about the WTO. I have just spent the last year dealing with the WTO on one of those issues that he just alluded to, the one that had to do with the European Union. In our country, we have the opportunity to go to the meetings, we can go to committee meetings, we can come to this Congress, we can go to school boards and our state legislatures. We do not know who is making the decisions at the WTO. We do not know who is on the panel. Nobody is going to send us a notice. Nobody is going to give us a telephone call. We do not have the opportunity to give our point of view. I want to tell my colleagues, they just made a decision that is going to cause the drug lords in the Caribbean to take over where the banana trade has been knocked out by the WTO, and we are going to see dope and those drugs in the districts that we represent in America. Support this. At least we can get a report on what they are doing, what they are supposed to do. And perhaps we can all get educated about the WTO so that we will not go down the line that we apparently are going down to allow them to make decisions about this country and our laws.

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I offer Amendment No. 55.

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I think it is about time that we stop the use of inflammatory language around this very personal issue. I think it is time that we talk about this issue at least in ways that we can respect everybody that is involved. I think it is time that we talk about what real violence is. Real violence is a woman who has to do time in the Federal prison who comes in drug-addicted, HIV-infected, pregnant, the 6 percent of them who come in that way and who say, I don't believe I have the right to force the kind of violence on this child that I am confronted with for this child. I believe it is time that these women have some choice. We talk about how much we love these children, but what happens to them? What happens to these children that are born unwanted, to HIV- infected women, to drug-infected women? What happens to these children? We do not know what happens to them. They go out somewhere, into maybe foster care. These are the children that are doomed to poverty, doomed to the inability to have a decent life. And so that is not our choice. It is the choice of the woman who finds herself in this unfortunate predicament. I would ask for support for the Norton amendment and I would not be influenced by the kind of language that does not really speak to the issue but simply inflames on this issue.

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Ms. WATERS. I thank the gentlewoman.

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, is the gentlewoman aware of the arguments that have been made by some of our friends on the other side of the aisle who have said over and over again, we cannot stop the use of drugs through interdiction, that we must decrease the demand, and while that argument has been made, we find that there is not a willingness to do what it takes to decrease the demand. These drug courts are proven to be successful, and I appreciate the fact that the gentlewoman who chairs this subcommittee agrees with me. If, in fact, they are successful; if, in fact, we have the documentation to prove that they are successful; if, in fact, we are decreasing demand, are we not through these drug courts doing what those on the other side of the aisle have indicated we must do? Is that not the gentlewoman's understanding about what they have been saying in terms of decreasing the demand?

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, would the gentleman agree that the information that is available about the Drug Courts show the success rate that I indicated in my presentation to the House?

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I offer this amendment to change the funding of the Drug Courts Program from $30 to $60 million, a program which has already proven to be a tremendous success in reducing recidivism rates and encouraging rehabilitation for nonviolent first time drug offenders. What are Drug Courts? What do they do? Drug Courts programs interview and assess selected nonviolent drug offenders and match qualified candidates with the appropriate level of treatment, whether it is in an outpatient or residential program or narcotics anonymous or alcoholics anonymous meetings. All participants undergo mandatory drug testing throughout their treatment. Drug Court programs also coordinate the drug addiction programs with other rehabilitation programs, including vocational training and job placement services, so that a successful graduate of the program is prepared to contribute to society. Successful Drug Court programs emphasize rehabilitation for one time, nonviolent drug offenders, and as a result reduce the need for new prison construction and the attendant costs. The Drug Courts Program was funded at $30 million in fiscal year 1997. The President requested $75 million for the Drug Courts Program, an increase of $45 million. Unfortunately, the committee chose to fund the Drug Courts Program at last year's level of $30 million. At the same time, the amount proposed for State prison grants is $517.5 million, which is $30 million more than provided in fiscal year 1997. This amendment would simply maintain the current funding to the State prison grant program at the same level as last year. The amendment would shift the proposed $30 million increase for the State prison grant program to the Drug Courts Program. Preliminary data has shown that Drug Courts have saved the taxpayers money by spending less than $2,500 annually per offender. The Drug Courts Program saves the $20,000 to $50,000 annual cost of incarcerating drug using offenders. Successful Drug Court programs reduced the need to build more prison cells with the capital cost of up to $80,000 per sell. Drug Courts have already been shown to work, even though they are relatively recent. The American University Drug Court Clearinghouse studied the effect of Drug Court programs and found over 70 percent of the 30,000 offenders placed in Drug Court programs in the past seven years either successfully completed or are currently enrolled in Drug Court programs. That means 70 percent of all of those offenders are turning their lives around and contributing to society as productive citizens. Society gains, nonviolent first time drug offenders contribute, and we target our focus of incarceration on the really serious violent habitual offenders. Drug Courts not only save taxpayer money on new prison construction, they free up jail space for these violent and habitual offenders. Drug Courts are an appropriate response to the crisis in our courts and judicial system where we have been pursuing a one-size-fits-all approach to the epidemic of drugs. The American Bar Association Journal described Los Angeles's successful Drug Court Program, which handles defendants from my district in south-central Los Angeles. Drug Courts defendants in Los Angeles get 12 to 14 months of treatment, including drug tests five times a week for at least the first 6 months. A defendant must test clean for 6 straight months before graduation. Defendants who are expelled from the program must face their original charges, like any other defendant. But the success rate in Los Angeles is nearly 45 percent. In fact, of the court's 120 graduates since 1995, less than 10 percent have been rearrested on any felony charge. That is compared to a 70 percent recidivism rate for most drug offenders. We need to use our dollars well. We have been overincarcerating those first time, nonviolent offenders that can be rehabilitated instead of targeting the drug kingpins who have been shipping drugs into our communities and using murder and corruption to protect their narco profits. The Congressional Black Caucus has made the fight against drugs our No. 1 priority. Mr. Chairman, we have had a lot of rhetoric about dealing with the problem of drugs in our society, a lot of public relation efforts, a lot of just say no. And when we have the opportunity to really do something about drugs, I wonder what we are thinking when, in fact, we do not do something like increase the funding for Drug Courts, who have shown, who have proven, that they can turn these drug traffickers around, these first time offenders around. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support this very common sense amendment and expand the very successful Drug Courts programs nationwide.

Ms. WATERS

Ms. WATERS. Mr. Chairman, I rise to add my voice of support for the Mollohan-Shays amendment. I think it is very important for us to examine the question of the census and the count that we do to ensure the constitutional mandate of an accurate census count. Why would we be involved in a debate about whether or not we count or want to count all Americans? Why would we be in a debate about whether or not we would use the best method to do that? I certainly do not understand why anybody would want to deny the most accurate count as mandated by the Constitution of the United States. It is no question that this is constitutional, that we can use this statistical method that has been used in the past. The Department of Justice, under Presidents Carter, Bush, and Clinton, have all concluded and it has been confirmed by our court system, that we can use sampling as a way of ensuring an accurate count. Why do we need to use sampling? Because 10 percent of the count was wrong in 1990, an error rate of 26 million people who were either missed, counted twice, or counted in the wrong place. So it is very important that we do not repeat what happened in 1990, but we use statistical sampling so that we can get that accurate count that is mandated. Then it is a civil rights issue. The undercount is unfair to some groups because some groups are missed more than others. The African- Americans are 7 times as likely to be missed as whites, and it showed in the undercount in 1990, the highest ever recorded of people missed or miscounted. Equal representation is extremely important for African- Americans because it is a civil rights issue. If in fact we are undercounted, we are not counted, we will not be able to exercise our rights under the law. Three separate panels that were convened by the National Academy of Sciences recommended the use of sampling to supplement their traditional counting. Some may have concluded that this is a political question, that there are those who believe that if we do an accurate count, we are going to get those people in the cities, those people in the rural communities that some would rather not have counted. I just cannot imagine anybody that would conclude it is in the best interest of America to have anybody not counted. We know that in the final analysis, if we are about the business of justice, freedom, and equality, if we are about the business of wanting equal representation for all of our people, if we truly want to do the job that the Constitution mandates, we will do everything that we can to ensure an accurate count. One can only do that with sampling.