Mel Watt

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds just to respond to the gentleman and thank him for his eloquent endorsement of the amendment that I will be offering. Because if he, in fact, believes that these are personal rights and that property rights should be on the exact same footing, our amendment would place them on the exact same footing with other civil rights. I expect that the gentleman will be supporting my amendment and making his eloquent statement in support of it again. I appreciate the gentleman agreeing to do that. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen).

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 additional minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert). (Mr. BOEHLERT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I was sitting in my office not intending to participate in this debate and really got incensed. I sat there, and I wondered, what must the American people be thinking is going on here? What must my Republican colleagues be thinking? Do they think the American people are stupid? What are they doing? It is obvious that their leadership does not support the minimum wage increase, and they are trying to kill the minimum wage increase by loading it up with an irresponsible tax cut that benefits the richest people in America. Are we stupid? Do they think we are stupid? That is exactly what is going on here. The President has said, I will veto this bill. We cannot stand here on the floor and say, hey, we are being bipartisan. There is no bipartisanship here. All we are trying to do is get a wage increase for people in America who need it and want it. All they are trying to do is kill that minimum wage increase. They will try anything and everything to accomplish that objective. We should not sit here and pretend that we are doing something being bipartisan. There is nobody being bipartisan in this House. If they were being bipartisan, they would separate these two bills, let them be voted up or down, give us the opportunity to offer amendments on both bills, and let the House work its will. That is all we are asking for in this equation. It is quite obvious that the Republicans are not going to give it to us and not going to give the opportunity to the American people to have a wage increase.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I offer amendment No. 3.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, my amendment deals solely with title II, the products liability part of the bill, a part of the bill which I would point out to my colleagues has no limitation to small businesses and is a complete usurpation of State law on products liability. It preempts all State law in this area to the extent that State laws are inconsistent with title II. I would point out to my colleagues that this is absolutely contrary to everything that my Republican colleagues say that they stand for. They tell us day after day after day that they believe in States' rights; they believe in moving government closer to the people, sending it back to the local level. This runs absolutely counter to that stated proposition. They have had to go out of their way to justify doing it, and I want to read specifically how they have done it. They have said products liability cases fall under the commerce clause of the United States. This is what they say in the findings leading into title II. ``Although damage awards in product liability actions may encourage the production of safer products, they may also have a direct effect on interstate commerce.'' They go on to say, ``Some of the rules of law governing product liability actions are inconsistent within and among the States, resulting in differences in State laws that may be inequitable with respect to plaintiffs and defendants and may impose burdens on interstate commerce.'' They go on to say, ``Under clause 3 of Section 8 of article I of the United States Constitution, it is the constitutional role of the Federal Government to remove barriers to interstate commerce.'' These are their findings, and in the purpose of this section, this is what they say and I am quoting, ``The purposes of this title, based on the powers of the United States under clause 3 of Section 8 of article I of the United States Constitution, are to promote the free flow of goods and services and lessen the burdens on interstate commerce.'' They have tried to take over this area of the law because they say there is a compelling Federal Government interest under the interstate commerce clause, but, Mr. Chairman, beware because then we get to the end of the bill. What do they say at the end of the bill? Despite this compelling Federal interest, they then say, ``The district courts of the United States,'' the Federal courts, ``shall not,'' shall not, shall not, Mr. Chairman, ``have jurisdiction under'' the commerce clause of the Constitution. So Big Brother is saying to the States, we know how to say what the law ought to be in this area, but Big Brother is also saying to the States and to the individual people, despite the compelling Federal interest that we have at the Federal level, we are not going to give access to the Federal courts to litigate these cases. Is there not something sinister and outrageous and unfair about that? All my amendment would do is say to them, if there is a compelling Federal reason for doing this, and I do not believe there is, but if there is, as they say there is, at least we ought to allow the citizens of our country to come to the Federal court to talk about and litigate about this supposed Federal remedy that we are giving to them under the statute. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I am delighted and I want to express my absolute delight that despite the fact that they have fought this amendment all the way through the committee process, they have finally come to the light that if there is a Federal right here involved, there ought to at least be access to the Federal courts and I express my appreciation to the gentleman from California (Mr. Rogan).

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, sometimes we get lost in the technicalities of these legal bills. But we should start with the proposition that our liability laws in this country actually reflect the values of our country that personal responsibility and corporate responsibility are at the top of what we value in this country. So a question of who has responsibility for paying for a person's injuries boils down to a question of who has responsibility for causing those injuries. That is the whole basis of our liability law in this country. In this case, what this bill does is it says that, even if a manufacturer is responsible for the injury of a worker and the worker has absolutely no responsibility after 18 years, that worker is just dead out of luck. That is what this bill says. Regardless of how egregious the conduct in designing the equipment is of the manufacturer, how reckless they are, we are going to shift the responsibility for paying for the injury to an innocent party. That is completely contrary to our whole concept in this country of personal and corporate responsibility. That is the first objection I have to this bill. The second objection is that, in addition to undercutting the rights of employees and consumers in that substantial way inconsistent with public policy, we are saying to employers and to insurance carriers that even if they pay for that cost, they cannot even go back and make a claim against the negligent or reckless manufacturer who did nothing to take this equipment out of the stream of commerce. So whether my colleagues support the consumer, whether they support the employee, whether they support the insurance carrier, whether they support the employer, what they have done is shifted the cost to them, even though they had nothing to do with causing the injury. The cost has been taken away and the responsibility is taken away from the very corporate citizen and individuals on which the responsibility should be imposed, based on our public policy rationales.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, some of us do not have the modification. I am sure the committee has it, but I just came on the floor.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would continue to yield just for an afterthought. Because on the Martin Luther King holiday, we had a wonderful tribute in Charlotte in which I read part of Lincoln's words to the backdrop of our Charlotte symphony orchestra; and during the reading, they were showing on a television screen kind of excerpts from the sit-ins, and later that night as I was taking my mother home, she said, You know, I saw your brother in those clips that they were showing. I said, You saw my brother? What do you mean you saw my brother? It turned out that my oldest brother, who was about the same age as Franklin McCain, was a student at Johnson C. Smith University and participated in the original sit-ins in Charlotte, and he was right in the front of the sit-in clippings that were shown on that evening. I certainly never thought of my brother as a hero of sorts. But it is amazing the heroic steps that people like my colleague and Franklin McCain and even my brother took in those trying times. And we of the younger generation that have a little bit more hair than the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis) thank him so much for everything that he did.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. John Lewis), and what I thought I would like to do in tribute to this Black History Month celebration and in tribute to the wonderful four gentlemen who sat in at the Greensboro lunch counter is to read some excerpts from a publication called ``Weary Feet, Rested Souls.'' Before I do that, I just find it so ironic that we could be here in the chamber with people like the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis) and kind of take for granted that he is our friend and our colleague and never really think of him as a hero, yet understand how heroic the things that he did to make our being here possible, how historic and heroic those things are. I feel much the same way about my good friend Franklin McCain. Franklin McCain and I have been good friends for a long time. I did not know him when he was one of the four participants at the Woolworth sit- ins in Greensboro, North Carolina; but not long after I moved back to Charlotte in 1970-71, I met Franklin McCain. We turned out to be in the same fraternity, and our friendship has grown. His wife and my wife both worked in the school system there in Charlotte. We never think of Franklin McCain as a hero either, but we know that the things that he and the three colleagues of his who started the sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, did were heroic, and we pay tribute to him. And I would like to do it in this way, by reading some excerpts. On February 1, 1960, after a late-night discussion, four black freshmen from North Carolina A&T University decided to try to get served in the sprawling Woolworth store. A half hour before it closed, they bought a few small items then sat down at the counter and waited. One asked for a cup of coffee. There was no violence, no arrest, no media, and no service. When the store closed, they got up and walked out, peacefully, just like the gentleman from Georgia described earlier in his comments. Just as the somber-faced foursome left the building, a Greensboro News and Record photographer took the only surviving photograph of this historic event. The first three of these four had been members of the NAACP youth group in Greensboro, which had been active since the 1940s. On the left was David Richmond, wearing a beret. Next to him was the person that I now know as a friend and colleague, not as a hero or a superhero, next to him was Franklin McCain, the tallest of the group. And Franklin I would characterize as a gentle giant. He is about 6-4, 6-5, but he is about as nice a guy as a person would ever want to meet. He would not harm a fly. Wearing a soldier's cap, Ezell Blair, Jr., was carrying a paper bag in one hand. And Joseph McNeil from Wilmington, North Carolina, wore a white coat. From the beginning, the Greensboro sit-ins electrified those who looked for a way to demonstrate discontent with segregation outside the courtroom. The following day, on February 2, 23 men and women, mostly from North Carolina A&T University, visited the Woolworth's store with similar results to the day before. The next day the sit-ins had filled 63 of the 66 seats at the counter. Dr. George Simkins, a former constituent of mine until they changed my congressional district and again a person who I never think of as a hero but as a wonderful person and constituent now, was the President of the Greensboro NAACP and he called on CORE for advice about how to keep the campaign going. With CORE's help and the media spotlight, news of the sit-ins spread like concentric ripples on a still pond. Floyd McKissick, who later headed CORE, led sit-ins in Durham on February 8. ``CORE has been on the front page of every newspaper in North Carolina for 2 days'' exulted an organizer traveling to colleges and high schools in Greensboro, Raleigh, Chapel Hill, and High Point. Lincoln's birthday brought the first demonstrations in South Carolina, led by 100 students in Rock Hill. The next day, CORE led a sit-in in Tallahassee, Florida. By the end of March, the sit-ins had spread to 69 southern cities. Woolworth's national sales showed a 9 percent drop from the previous March as a result of the boycott and the commotion caused by the sit-ins. These efforts produced the first wave of agreements to integrate not just Woolworth's itself but all the main downtown stores. By July, Greensboro and 27 other border State cities had adopted integration in some form. By spring 1961, 140 had come around. Pledges to desegregate hardly brought calm to Greensboro. In spring of 1963, more than a thousand protesters led by North Carolina A&T student council president Jesse Jackson, again a person that we know and respect but never think of as a hero, marched each night, raising the arrest totals to more than 900. On May 19, CORE president James Farmer held a march of 2,000 to the Greensboro Rehab Center, then serving as a makeshift jail. Swayed by these massive turnouts and boycott of Greensboro businesses, the city agreed to a bi-racial commission and marches were suspended. Greensboro was slow to implement changes, however, prompting 500 exuberant students to occupy the area in front of city hall. The following week, 50 Greensboro restaurants, motels, and theaters abolished the color line in exchange for an end to street demonstrations. I bring this to a conclusion with this kind of fitting note. Woolworth's closed its doors here in Greensboro in 1993. The final meal at the counter was attended by all four original protesters, and the management reverted to its 1960 menu prices as a ``tribute'' to the four of them. Today plans are afoot for a three-floor museum created by a nonprofit group called Sit-in Movement, Inc. A portion of the counter, now shaped like four successive horseshoes, ringed with turquoise and pink vinyl seats, will remain on street level in the back. Portions of the original counter are in the Greensboro Historical Museum as part of an exhibit, but one section of the original remains in the store. Outside on the sidewalk are bronze footprints of the four original protesters, people that we never think of as heroes but who laid the groundwork for us to be able to sit at lunch counters and share, in an integrated setting, food and camaraderie and in a special way pave the way for us to be here as Members of this body and pave the way for me to be here as the representative of the part of Greensboro North Carolina where these sit-ins commenced 40 years ago today. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis) for leading this special order. And more so, I thank him and Franklin McCain and people that we never think of as heroes for the heroic actions and steps that they took to make it possible for us to be here and make this tribute today.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I supported the Financial Services Modernization bill (H.R. 10) when it was considered in the Housing Banking and Financial Services Committee and in the full House. I felt good about supporting the bill because the House Banking Committee had worked on a bipartisan basis to develop a consensus bill which was supported by the industry, federal regulators and many community and consumer groups. That bill overwhelmingly passed the House on July 1, 1999 by a vote of 343 to 86. Unfortunately, the bipartisan deliberations and efforts which characterized the consideration of H.R. 10 in the House did not continue when the House-Senate Conference Committee on Financial Services Modernization convened. The Chairmen's print, which was used as the base text for consideration by the Conference Committee, was drafted by the three Republican Chairmen of the Committees of jurisdiction with no input from the Democratic conferees. The conferees were then given a very limited period of time to review the lengthy document before having to begin the amendment process. During the amendment process, consideration was abruptly terminated and some of the most important provisions of the bill (the CRA provisions) were brokered behind closed doors in the middle of the night. This important, complex and historic legislation should have been the subject of thoughtful, bipartisan review and input. Instead, the process was hijacked and corrupted by a few senior Republican members. An unacceptable process, while objectionable, is not sufficient reason to oppose legislation designed to achieve important public policy objectives, if the flawed process results in a satisfactory substantives product. Unfortunately, the terrible, partisan process which was followed in this Conference resulted in serious substantive flaws. Some of these flaws include the following: (1) The bill needs a section stating the public policy purposes the bill is designed to achieve. In at least nine instances \1\ the bill makes reference to the ``purposed of the Act.'' Unfortunately, the ``purposes'' section contained in the bill which passed the House was stripped from the conference bill and no ``purposes'' section was inserted to replace it. The failure to include a statement of the congressional purposes for enacting the bill is, in my opinion, a huge error, leaves the bill's references to ``the purposes of the Act'' irrational and could lead to much conjecture and possible litigation about what, in fact, we intended to achieve. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ Section 103(a)(3)(A): the factors the Federal Reserve shall use to determine whether an activity is financial in nature or incidental to a financial activity. Section 103(a)(5)(A): the factors the Federal Reserve shall use to impose regulations on financial activities. Section 103(a)(7)(A): the factors the Federal Reserve and the Treasury may use to impose regulations on merchant banking activities. Section 103(m)(3): the factors the Federal Reserve may use to impose on the conduct or activities of a financial holding company or any affiliate of that company. Section 114(a)(1)(A: the factors the OCC may use to impose regulations on the relationships or transactions between a national bank and a subsidiary of a national bank. Section 114(b)(2)(A): the factors the Federal Reserve may use to impose regulations on the relationships or transactions between a depository institution subsidiary of a bank holding company and any affiliate of the depository institution and between a State member and a subsidiary of a bank. Section 114(b)(42)(A): the standards of review for the Federal Reserve to impose regulations on the relationships or transactions between a foreign bank in the United States and any affiliate of the foreign bank in the United States. Section 114(c)(1)(A): the factors the FDIC may use to impose regulations on the relationships or transactions between a State nonmember bank and a subsidiary of the State nonmember bank. Section 121(b)(3): the factors the Treasury may use to determine whether an activity is financial in nature or incidental to a financial activity. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- (2) The privacy provisions in the bill are not strong enough. While the legislation will give consumers the right to ``opt-out'' of having their financial information disclosed to unaffiliated third parties, I do not believe this privacy provision goes far enough to safeguard the privacy of customers. It also leaves a huge loophole in the definition of ``unaffiliated third party.'' Because the legislation will eliminate the firewalls that have existed since 1933 between banks, insurance companies and securities firms, the newly formed financial services conglomerates sanctioned by the bill will be able to exchange information on their customers freely. While most of the businesses operating in this new frontier will use this ability to share information reasonably, some will not. The few who do not could yield privacy horror stories that could ultimately result in a public demand for much greater privacy protections. Financial services modernization should not come at the expense of consumers' rights to control the details of their private personal and financial life and the financial services industry should exercise these new rights carefully. Otherwise, this bill will not be the final chapter written on this point. (3) The bill's provisions which impose continuing reporting requirements on community groups which are parties to CRA agreements with banks are offensive and unprecedented. I am disappointed that my Republican colleagues who repeatedly talk about eliminating the era of ``big government'' are now on the other side of this issue. This bill expands the reach of federal banking regulators and the Federal Reserve by obligating them to police CRA contracts between banks and community groups despite the fact that the regulators have no regulatory authority over community groups and these contracts involve no government money. While Senator Phil Gramm has characterized community groups who enter into these agreements as ``extortionists,'' no bank has come forward to complain about a CRA agreement and the ``sunshine'' requirements in the conference bill are, therefore, a solution in search of a problem. Even worse, the reporting provisions impose burdensome paperwork requirements on community groups which are unfair and will be a heavy disincentive to the groups to participate in efforts to force banks to comply with the CRA or to help achieve the intended results of the CRA. (4) The bill lengthens the time between CRA examinations for some banks. The CRA paperwork requirements for small banks with assets less than $250 million were already streamlined in 1995. Relaxing the current practice of CRA examinations, which occur approximately every two years, could reduce the effectiveness of the CRA because federal banking regulators will be allowed to go up to five years before checking to ensure that some banks are abiding by their CRA obligations. My Republican colleagues need to be reminded that the CRA has served a very important purpose by expanding access to credit and capital in all communities and that the CRA is not an affirmative action program. Rather the CRA benefits small businesses, farmers and people who live in low and moderate income communities throughout America, not just in minority communities. Congress should be working to strengthen and expand the CRA, not to diminish its effectiveness. Despite my concerns about the process and about the substantive provisions in the conference bill, I continue to believe that financial services modernization is important and necessary. While all the concerns I have expressed are legitimate and important, and certainly result in a bill which is less meritorious than it could and should be, in my judgment they do not outweigh the need for the bill or warrant a ``no'' vote. Congress has waited too long to catch up with what is already occurring in the marketplace. Except for the concerns outlined above and several others of lesser significance, I believe the conference bill provides a good framework to eliminate barriers between the various industries in the financial market and still maintain sufficient safeguards to protect the safety and soundness of our banking system. This framework does not exist now, yet the regulators and businesses are breaking through the barriers without a uniform set of rules. A framework is needed and this bill provides it. While some of my colleagues who support this bill will call the bill a great bill and some who oppose it will call it a terrible bill, in my opinion, both of these positions are exaggerated. From my perspective, like most bills we consider, this one is either a good bill which contains some bad provisions or a bad bill which contains some good provisions. In the seven years I have served in Congress I have not yet seen a perfect bill. This one is no exception. I have had to learn ``not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.'' I believe this is a good bill that contains some bad provisions and does not include some provisions I desired to have included. However, despite its flaws and imperfections, it represents a step forward and, on balance, deserves to be supported.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I do not want to diminish the value of this bill by getting sidetracked onto this side issue. But even that language would be better than the language that we have in this bill. The only point I want to make is that I hope the sponsors of this bill and the draftspeople, as the bill goes forward in the process with the Senate, take a close look at what we are doing here and consider altering the way we are doing it. But again, I do not want anything to diminish the value of this bill. It is a very important bill. We ought to acknowledge it. The President has suggested that we do it simply by saying the United States Government formally acknowledges, et cetera. But again we cannot do it on the suspension calendar, anyway. I just wanted to make sure that some deliberation about how we do this gets put out.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this bill. The bill was considered in the Subcommittee on the Constitution, we worked on it, and I raised one concern during the deliberations in the subcommittee that I want to raise again on the floor, not to diminish the importance of the bill but to express concern about how we are doing this. There are a number of things that we could direct the President to apologize for that have happened in the history of our country. This will be the first time that we will have gone on record as directing the President of the United States to make a formal apology for some historical event. Now, apologies have been made and this is one where it would be justified. There is no question about it. But I am concerned about the precedent that we establish by the last provision in the bill which directs the President, it says the President shall on behalf of the United States Government formally acknowledge that these events during World War II represented a fundamental injustice against Italian Americans. I think that is a wrong precedent to establish. It is not something that would impel me to vote against this bill or to lobby against it because it is a wonderful bill, but I do encourage my colleagues as we go forward in the process to correct that language, because otherwise the President of the United States is going to be out there every week apologizing for something or acknowledging some injustice. I am not sure that we want to start that precedent in our country, regardless of how terrible the incidents are that we are acknowledging.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York for yielding me the time. Madam Speaker, for the last 4 years, there are probably few people in this body who have spent more time on this issue and on this bill than I have. I have read every bill and every draft from front to back over and over again and studied the provisions. There are some problems with the bill that came out of the conference bill. In many respects, it is not as good a bill as the bill we passed out of the House. But for every problem in the bill, there are also some good things in the bill. So, on balance, I have decided that this is a bill that is worthy of support. We should continue to work on the problems that exist with the bill. We should address those problems dealing with privacy, reporting under the CRA requirements, and other provisions that I think are lacking. But on balance, we should vote for the bill, and, therefore, I rise in support of the bill.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the conference report on fiscal year 2000 appropriations bill for the District of Columbia and the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. Let me first say that the process by which this bill came to the floor is very troubling. We are here today voting on a conference report for fiscal year 2000 for Labor-HHS and Education when the bill was never considered or voted on by the House of Representatives. This unheard of procedure has not provided sufficient time for debate and consideration of amendments to allow us to participate in the process. Bypassing the normal procedures has shut Members out of having any opportunity to assist in crafting and improving this bill. I am also troubled by some of the funding levels included in this bill. This bill makes funding cuts to programs which are vital to the well being of many American families. The people most hurt by this bill are the very people who need our assistance and support the most. This bill would cut funding by over $1 billion to social service programs for the elderly and low-income Americans; would not provide funding to immunize over 300,000 children against childhood diseases; and would cut funding for over 5,000 teachers who provide educational assistance to disadvantaged children. Perhaps my biggest concern with this bill is that it does not include emergency assistance for those people in the eastern part of my state who are suffering from the floods of Hurricane Floyd. Thousands of people in North Carolina are still dealing with the aftermath of the floods. Entire towns have been destroyed, thousands have lost their homes, and many farmers have lost all of their crops and livestock. While this bill includes over $2 billion in emergency spending, it cuts out the $508 million in emergency assistance for agricultural damaged caused by Hurricane Floyd. This assistance would have been a start in providing people in North Carolina with the opportunity to begin to rebuild and recover. This bill represents an opportunity lost. I urge my colleagues to oppose the conference report.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the bill not because I do not support the objective of trying to cut back on drugs and illegal drug activity in this country, but because I am concerned that we are giving the President and the administration far, far too much authority and subjecting them to far, far too little review. The notion that we in this Congress can oversee the designation of who is designated a drug kingpin effectively is just nonsense. We do not have the ability to do that. The appropriate place to do that is not in the Congress of the United States. The appropriate place to do that is in the courts of the United States. This provision, which denies any judicial review to the determinations made by the administration under this bill, is just un- American. I mean, I have never seen the ability of the President to take and block assets of people who are living in this country and then say in a law the determinations, identifications, findings, and designations made pursuant to section 4 and subsection (b) of this section shall not be subject to judicial review. That is what the courts are for. We are not saying that there should not be a designation. But if the designation is wrong, the people have to have the right to the court.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, let me say at the outset that I intend to vote for this resolution. I do not have any problem at all with encouraging the President to send legislation over here on this issue. I think it is important for us to do that. But this is the second nonbinding resolution that this House has passed on this issue. And to the extent that we are engaging in pointing the finger of blame at somebody else for not passing or moving legislation forward to address the concerns and devastation in North Carolina, I think we are playing politics with this resolution. I would be less than honest if I did not express my concern that this resolution has more to do with politics than it has to do with achieving some objective of really helping the people in North Carolina. It must be strange to the people in eastern North Carolina to see us come to the floor with a resolution that does not have one dime in it, does not even suggest a dollar amount to help them, and then suggest to them that somehow this is the President's fault that we are not moving forward to try to address their needs. I have no problem with encouraging the President to submit a bill, but as the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price) has indicated, there is no requirement or precedent or necessity for anybody external to this body, the President or anybody else, to come forward with a solution to the problems that face our State. I want to encourage my colleagues to vote ``yes,'' but I want to be honest about the practical impact of this at the same time.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the bill and in support of my colleagues from North Carolina and their statements about the devastation and lack of attention that this bill pays to North Carolina's flood situation.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule and in opposition to the bill in its current form and want to make several points. First of all, this is the whip notice for today. It says we are getting out of session this afternoon between 3 and 4 o'clock. Two amendments, very important amendments, were offered to the Committee on Rules which the Committee on Rules chose not to make in order, we presume because we do not have time to debate the issues that were to be debated related to this bill. One of those amendments is an amendment that would have been offered by myself in conjunction with the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu) and several other Members of this House which in effect walks a line between the bill as it is currently structured and the substitute as it is proposed. There are some of us who really do not have any problem with parts of this bill as it is drawn. We ought to be encouraging palliative care and pain relief, but we ought to be doing it in such a way that it is explicitly clear that we are not preempting States' laws. That is what our amendment would have done. But apparently the Committee on Rules decided that that kind of balanced approach to this debate was not something that this House ought to entertain. We ought to either have it all on the one hand or have a complete substitute on the other hand. That should not have happened and it certainly should not have happened on a day that the House is recessing at 3 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon. The second amendment that was offered is one that is of equal importance, because a number of us through the years have had severe problems with the disparity in sentencing between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. Under this bill, a physician can prescribe cocaine for the purposes of alleviating pain. It is a schedule 2 drug under the Controlled Substances Act. But if that physician prescribes crack, a form of cocaine, and if the opponents of this bill are correct that that would subject the physician to a criminal penalty if he prescribed powder cocaine for the relief of pain, it would subject him to one- tenth of the penalty that it would subject the physician to if he prescribed crack cocaine, a derivative of the same product, we should at least equalize the penalties if we are going to penalize physicians even if there were some rationale for doing it out in the community which we do not believe there is and which has resulted in disparate imprisonment between poor people and rich people, poor people being typically people who take crack cocaine and rich people being people who take powder cocaine, the only distinction rationally that you could even argue. There is no reason that we ought to penalize a physician disproportionately under this bill. Now, there is something wrong with my colleagues saying one day that we believe in States' rights and the next day saying we are going to preempt Oregon's State law. That is what my amendment would have done. It would have protected Oregon's law in one simple phrase, the simple phrase being ``except in compliance with applicable State or Federal laws.'' This whole law could have applied. If the objective is to increase the use of palliative care and encourage pain relief, then we should not be here debating about whether to overrule a State's law. Unlike the physician who came to the floor who may be very skilled in his knowledge of medicine, I want to direct his attention to amendment 10 to the Constitution. It says that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited to the States are reserved to the States respectively or to the people. The people have the right to pass a statute in Oregon and have that statute honored and we should honor it here on this floor of the House.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for yielding me this time. Like the gentleman from New York (Mr. Meeks), it is hard for me to understand why this war continues. I have both Ethiopian and Eritrean residents who live in my congressional district; and when I talk to them, it is uncle against uncle, brother against brother, sister against sister, and yet the fighting continues. And superficially it seems like just a family feud, but the devastation and the deaths and the tragedy goes on and on. So I want to rise in support of this resolution and applaud the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell) for bringing the resolution to the floor in hopes that this could be some added incentive for these two nations to resolve their differences.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I will try to be brief because I know there are a number of amendments that need to be offered and very important amendments. But this one is critically important to me for several reasons. First of all, before I came to Congress, before I even really followed politics closely, during the Ronald Reagan presidency, I followed from a distance the debate that was going on at the national level about the role that the Federal Government should play in education. That debate has been going on consistently for a good while. During those years, we actually came to a resolution of what the Federal Government's role should be in education, identifying what national standards should be and trying to get kids who are performing below a national standard up to what we should expect as a Nation to be the minimum standard. At that point, Republicans, as I recall, were consistently arguing that we should have a specific definition of what the Federal Government's role in education would be. Over time, actually the country came to such a consensus that the Federal Government's role should be carefully defined and the Federal Government dollars should be restricted to fulfilling that role. One of those roles is to make sure that kids who are performing below the Federal level standard get brought up to that standard. I do not think we can separate the debate on this amendment from that larger question about what the Federal Government's role in education should be. Because if we abandon the definition that we have given for the Federal Government's role and start to block grant money to the local governments to make their own dispositions, then the next step beyond that is to ask, well, what is the Federal Government's role again? Why should we be involved at all in education? Why would we be collecting money, bringing it to the Federal level, and sending it back to the State level without a definition of what our role at the Federal level is and without helping to fulfill the Federal objective? I think that is really what this amendment is all about. We have defined as a Federal role helping people who are underachieving. Poor people, poor kids are underachieving disproportionate to other children in the system. Therefore, we have elected under Title I and other similar programs to devote a disproportionate part of the Federal dollar to address that particular issue. To the extent that one steps away from that formula, then one is stepping away from the definition that we have given to the Federal role. I think it is important to keep in mind what the Federal Government's role in education is that we have, through a process of debate and discussion over time, coalesced behind. This amendment furthers that purpose. Now, I would not have supported cutting back from 75 to 50. I certainly would not support cutting back from 50 to 40. I guess the next step next week is going to be cutting from 40 to 0. Then we are going to start another whole debate, I project; and that debate will be, well, okay, now we are using the Federal Government as a pass-through, so why should we have any role for the Federal Government at all? I support the Federal Government's defined limited role in education and this amendment furthering that objective.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. LaFalce) for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to instruct. I came to this issue about 2\1/2\ or 3 years ago when I became the ranking member of the Immigration and Claims Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee and found that most of the decisions that we are making on an immigration basis for this country are being made on very, very subjective criteria. If we are going to have a policy of checking people who come in and go out of the country and monitoring that, it seems to me that we have got to have an objective way of doing that, and we cannot say to the folks on the Mexican border we are going to have one system and say to the folks on the Canadian border that we are going to have a completely different system. So if we are going to have a system, it has got to apply all around the borders to all of the entry and exit points. And it seemed it me that that was the only way we were going to get this kind of subjective, I am going to single them out because they look a different way and stop their car because they look a different color, and have a consistent set of principles that apply to all of our border entry and exit places. So I kind of got on this agenda trying to come up with a set of consistent criteria that applied everywhere. While I am not wedded to the entry-exit control system that is in place, whatever system we put in place, if it is going to be effective, cannot be selectively applied using one standard at the Mexican border and another standard at the Canadian border. It is exactly what the gentleman from New York (Mr. Houghton) indicated that I think is troubling about this. He would like to have, and some people would like to have, and I should not attribute motives to him because I know his motives are always good, but there are people who would like to have a completely different set of rules applicable to the Canadian border than are in application at the Mexican border. You simply cannot do that and have a rational system of immigration in this country.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I submit the document titled, ``Trends and Achievements of Community-based Development Organizations from 1994 to 1998.'' For printing in the Congressional Record.