Mel Watt

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. He is not managing the bill. The gentleman from New York [Mr. Lazio] is managing the bill.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, one of the concerns I expressed, and the gentleman should know this, I understand that what the gentleman is suggesting is that they should take the children to work with them when they are doing this volunteer work. One of the serious concerns that we have raised is that there is no liability protection if somebody gets hurt, and that is going to double that concern, because not only can the parent then get hurt and not have coverage, but the child can also get hurt.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, what is magic about exempting 20 percent? Suppose it happens to be 30 or 40 percent in a particular housing project? Is there something magic or special about 20 percent?

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment of the gentleman from Illinois. I think I have made my feelings about this issue of mandated voluntarism well known in the committee. I hope that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will take this debate seriously and understand exactly how paternalistic this provision is. There are no parallels that I have been able to find in any other Federal Government laws. This is not a work requirement. Work implies compensation. This is a volunteer mandate. If you are to live in public housing, you are mandated to volunteer, if that is not inconsistent, 8 hours of work per month, 8 hours of voluntarism. There is not another parallel in the Federal law. We do not require recipients of the benefits of introductions for homeownership to volunteer their time. We do not require anybody to volunteer their time without being compensated for it. There are no parallels to this except an experiment that we had many, many years ago that we should be ashamed of. As we have previously talked about, local public housing agencies are being mandated to administer, organize, and run these volunteer programs. The total cost to local public housing agencies, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, will be $35 million per year. That is $35 million per year that local housing authorities could spend on other housing needs. They must now hire somebody to run these programs. My colleagues on the committee and the proponents of this bill have failed to address the liability issues associated with this provision. If I am an elderly person and I am mandated to go, a poor person, and I am mandated to go out and volunteer time, I am cutting grass in the public square, a piece of glass flies up and cuts me on the leg. Guess what this bill says? It says the housing authority has no liability. Nobody has any liability other than the person that we sent out there and mandated that they do this work. So there is no provision for what happens if somebody gets hurt. We should not be doing this, Mr. Chairman. I know it sounds like a good idea, as we sit in our ivory towers and we try to make it sound like these people who live in public housing are irresponsible and trifling and do not want to do anything, but that is inconsistent with my experience. The public housing residents are already voluntarily, they do not have to be mandated, they are voluntarily, many of them, keeping up their communities, going to community watch meetings, going to various meetings that they must go to to try to make their lives better. And here we are mandating that they volunteer. This is a mandated requirement. There is no parallel. I ask my colleagues to take this provision from the bill and pass the amendment of the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Jackson].

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, let me make it clear that the unfunded mandate rules are neither Republican nor Democrat. They are bipartisan. Every single one of us has gone home and heard our local governments and our State governments say, do not pass along a mandate on us and then not give us the money to comply with it. The Congressional Budget Office says the combination of sections 105 and 106 of this bill will cost local governments, public housing authorities, an additional $65 million a year. The threshold is $50 million under the law. We are $15 million over the threshold. We can take this provision out, the bill can proceed. It is not going to be the end of this public housing bill. But we do not need to pass an unfunded mandate down to our local governments if we are going to be true to the philosophies that we have said we believe in.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me just clarify what is at issue here. It is not whether we support or do not support the underlying provision in the bill. I have made it clear from day one that I do not support this volunteer requirement. I do not know how you can require somebody to volunteer without compensation. This is not about whether I support or do not support that concept. This is about the rules of the House that we adopted and the law that is in place that says we cannot pass an unfunded mandate down to local governments and not pay for that mandate. The Congressional Budget Office says that section 105 will cost local public housing authorities $35 million a year. The Congressional Budget Office says section 106 will cost local housing authorities an additional $30 million a year. That is a total of $65 million in additional costs that we are passing along. The argument seems to be, well, these are not local governments, but if anybody believes that a local housing authority is not a part of the local government, they ought to read the definition on page 17 of this bill. It says that a local housing authority is anyone that is authorized under this act to engage in or assist in the development or operation of low income housing by any State, county, municipality or other governmental body or public entity. If that does not make the local housing authority a part of the local government, I do not know what does.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, let me take issue with that. Why does the gentleman from Iowa have the right to close? It is my point of order.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy].

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts, [Mr. Frank].

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds. Let me make two points. This is not whether this is a Republican bill or a Democratic bill or a Republican amendment. The unfunded mandates requirement applies to both parties. It applies to this Congress. This is the integrity of our House that is at stake. No. 2, this notion that a public housing authority is not a local government is just defied by the very definitions in the bill itself on page 17, which says that a local housing authority is one authorized by State law to administer choice-based housing. That is a State entity.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

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

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity for yielding me the time. I want to make it clear what this debate tomorrow will not be about, because it really has surprised me what the general debate has tried to posture as an issue. We worked very hard in the Committee on Banking and Financial Services to try to make this a better bill. And what this debate will not be about is a choice between whether we are in favor of reform or the status quo. The bill itself can be improved. And to posture this bill as the only version of reform that anybody can support and the alternative is that we are supporting the status quo is just a very, very, very bad thing to do, and I hope my colleagues on the other side will not do it. Second, this debate is not about flexibility because, while all of us support more flexibility for local housing authorities, time after time after time in this bill we are taking away flexibility from local housing authorities by mandating that they do a number of different things, not the least of which is to require occupants in public housing to volunteer. Now, how we require somebody to volunteer and call it volunteerism, I simply do not understand. What this debate is about is how the Republicans would like to posture the poorest people in this country against those who are also working poor or the near poor, as I will call them, because that is the dilemma that this bill will put all of us in. What they want to do is to put more and more working poor in public housing, and that will be at the expense of the most poor people in this country and will deprive them of housing. And we are providing no funds for any additional housing under this bill. This is a paternalistic, inflexible, so-called reform bill. I ask my colleagues to oppose it if it is not amended in this process.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts for yielding time for the purposes of debate on the rule for this bill. Mr. Speaker, the bill is on the floor today because it is April 15, and there are some Members of this body who want to try to take political advantage of the fact that people are feeling like they paid too much taxes. That is perhaps a worthy political objective. But we have to debate whether this bill is a reasonable substantive objective. It is on that point that I rise. I would say to the Speaker that I would rise here today in opposition to a constitutional amendment that required a two-thirds vote on any issue, whether it was a taxing issue or any other issue that we might be considering, because it is my position, and I believe it is supported by historical fact, that a two-thirds vote is counter- democratic. It is counter the very essence of our democracy, which says that it is the majority which should rule in this country. I want to call my colleagues' attention to two quotations from our Founding Fathers. First, Alexander Hamilton, who said, ``The fundamental maxim of a Republican government requires that the sense of the majority shall prevail.'' And then James Madison, who said: It has been said that more than a majority ought to have been required for a quorum and in particular cases, if not in all, more than a majority for a decision. In all cases where justice or the general good might require new laws to be passed or active measures to be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule. The power would be transferred to the minority. That is what this constitutional amendment is about. It does not have to do with taxes. It has to do with the balance of individuals related to each other and the power of individual Members of this House of Representatives as they relate to each other. Why should we give more power to one group of people who support a proposition than we give to other people? That is fundamentally out of kilter with the majority rules concept, and I submit that while we are engaging in this pageantry for tax day, we ought to be engaging in some preservation, we ought to be paying attention to the constitutional framework in which this proposed constitutional amendment is playing itself out and protecting the concept of majority rule, which is so near and dear to our constitutional principles in this country.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I just want to make clear that that is what the gentleman is doing here, because there is no definition in this bill, and the problem we are raising is, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Barton] is not going to be around every time this gets litigated in a court of law to be able to explain to the court what this constitutional amendment means.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I would inquire of the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Barton], does the gentleman profess to be able to tell us what a constitutional amendment means himself as opposed to trying to clarify the language that he professes to be able to pull out of his own notes? I suppose we are going to do this in a court of law?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding time to me for the purpose of debating the bill. Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot of discussion today about the fact or the alleged fact that the supporters of this bill are trying to do the public taxpayers a favor. I want to take issue with that. I want to do it in two different ways. First of all, I want to say to my colleagues, and individuals who may be listening to this argument also, that in 1952 corporate income taxes contributed 32 percent of the Federal revenue. By 1992, corporate income taxes contributed a total of 9 percent of the total Federal revenue. During that period of time when corporate income taxes were becoming a smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller part of the Federal budget, many, many loopholes were put into our tax laws that provide substantial corporate tax benefits to corporations. Now, if this amendment passes, if this constitutional amendment passes, those loopholes that are currently in the law will require a two-thirds majority of this House to be removed from the law. So if there is any individual taxpayer in America, any person in America who thinks that this bill is about protecting individual taxpayers, they had better think again. What it is really about is protecting corporate tax interests who have already seen their percentage of the Federal revenues decreased over the last 40 years from 32 percent of our revenues down to 9 percent. Who was it that picked up the burden of that corporate tax reduction? It was individuals. So anybody who is suffering under the impression that this is for the benefit of individual taxpayers, dissuade yourself of that notion. It is just simply not the case. The second point I want to make on this has to do with the constitutional framework in which we operate, the concept of majority rule. Every 10 years we are required by law to take a census of the number of people in this country, and by constitutional law, to redistrict the entire Congress of the United States for election purposes. The reason for that redistribution, and in that process some States that have gained population gain representatives, some States that have lost population over the last 10 years lose representatives, but the reason we go through that process is to assure that every single person in the United States has equal representation in this House of Representatives. Every single district in America is supposed to represent approximately the same number of people. The reason we do that is because we believe in the whole concept of majority rule. Every single Member of this body who comes in here representing equal constituencies, on almost every single item with the exception of four or five things that were delineated in the original Constitution of the United States, has an equal vote. Mr. Speaker, what these cavalier gentlemen would like to do is to upset that balance, to say to the American people that their vote is less important unless they are in the minority or majority, depending on which side they happen to be on. Any time we require something other than a majority vote in this House, we are diminishing the value of somebody's vote out there in the public. I want to dissuade all of my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, and the American people, that this is not about taxation. This is about the equal representation that all of us fought so hard for and that our ancestors fought so hard to protect, the whole theory of democratic rule. My colleagues on the other side are going to get up and tell us we are trying to protect the American people. What they are doing is protecting their corporate interests. We have seen it over the last 40 years, a reduction in the amount corporations contribute to support the Government, and what they are doing is diminishing the right of every single individual voter in this country by saying, oh, no, your vote is not as important as somebody else's vote in this body. I have risen on the floor of this House to oppose every single constitutional amendment that they have proposed. They keep saying that they are conservatives. What is conservatism but to uphold the Constitution of our United States? This new conservative majority has proposed 118 constitutional amendments in the last 2 years. This new conservative majority brought four constitutional amendments to the floor of the House last year. That is an average of four times more than any Congress in the last 10 years. They would have us believe that this is about upholding some constitutional conservative principle. Defending the Constitution as it is written is the conservative notion, Mr. Speaker. I think we should reject this amendment and stand up for the power of individual citizens in this country.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I do not think my colleague, the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher], could have set the table any better for my comments, because I, too, am here today to speak on behalf of the American people, and some of the principles for which the American people fought many years ago in the establishment of this country. This is a first for me. This is my third term in Congress. I am in my 5th year. I have never, ever requested an hour to address my colleagues or anyone in a special order. But I come today with such a firm belief that what we are about to do in this House on tomorrow, the issue that we are about to consider, which would require a two-thirds vote in this House for the passage of a bill which had the effect of increasing taxes, is so inconsistent with every single principle that is near and dear to me, and should be near and dear to the American people, that I asked for this time today. The American people will probably remember this debate from a year ago. On April 15, 1996, the Republican leadership brought a bill to this body that was essentially identical to this bill. It would have required a two-thirds majority to increase taxes. That bill was resoundingly defeated, bipartisanly defeated, and so one wonders initially, why would the bill be back again tomorrow, on April 15, 1997, a bill that lost 243 to 177 last time? Why would it be back again? Mr. Speaker, my Republican colleagues I believe are trying to convince the public that they are doing something that is in their interest, and on tax day they are trying to fan some flames and get some political benefits. But the American people should not be fooled by this. Mr. Speaker, my colleagues tomorrow who bring this bill will say, we bring it to do a favor for the American people. We bring it as a conservative initiative to counteract those liberals who would raise taxes on the American people. I want to reflect back, at the outset of my comments, to comments made by President Abraham Lincoln on February 27, 1860. This is what he said. I am quoting him directly: But you say you are conservative, imminently conservative, while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by our fathers who framed the government under which we live, while you, with one accord, reject and scalp and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what the substitute shall be. You are divided on new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and renouncing the old policy of the fathers of our country. Amending the Constitution of the United States, Mr. Speaker, is not a conservative notion. It is a revolutionary, a radical notion, and I keep wondering why it is under those circumstances that over and over and over again this new majority, which calls itself a majority of conservatives, brings time after time after time again proposed amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America, in unprecedented numbers. During the last term of Congress there were 118 constitutional amendments proposed; various permutations, combinations, proposed to this body by this new conservative majority, calling themselves conservatives, attacking the very document which is the basis on which we operate our Government. In the last Congress we voted on four amendments to the Constitution, the balanced budget amendment, the term limits amendment, the flag desecration amendment, the supermajority for tax increases amendment, the same proposal that will be before the House again tomorrow. Mr. Speaker, four proposed amendments to the Constitution may not sound like a dramatic number, but 118 proposed amendments were introduced in this body, the great, great, great, great majority of them by my colleagues calling themselves the new conservative majority; in the 104th Congress, the last Congress, proposed amendments 10 times more than any of the prior 10 Congresses, this conservative new majority. Over the last 10 years, the average number of constitutional amendments introduced and voted on in the House was 1. Look back through our whole history in this country and look at the number of times our basic framework of our democracy has been amended, and here we are again tomorrow with a new constitutional amendment attacking the framework under which our Government and our country operates. Mr. Speaker, I come with a passion about this issue. I have told my colleagues in this body many times that I believe on constitutional issues I may be the most conservative, maybe the only conservative in this body. I think it is revolutionary to propose a constitutional amendment. It is not conservative. My colleagues can tell me over and over and over again how conservative they are, but it is not a conservative notion to amend the Constitution of the United States. Yet, over and over again during the last Congress and in this Congress, starting anew, there are a bunch of cavalier Members who believe that they have a better idea about how our country ought to operate than the Founding Fathers of our Nation, whose ideas have stood the test of time; a bunch of radicals calling themselves conservatives, and saying, we have a better idea about how to run this country. Those are the kinds of people that my colleague, the gentleman from California, was talking about, who are supporting not ordinary citizens who believe in the Constitution under which we operate, but they are supporting a different notion. Why do I choose this proposed constitutional amendment to come and address? Mr. Speaker, I believe this is the most basic attack on our Constitution of any that were proposed during the last Congress, and any that will be proposed during this Congress. It goes at the very heart of our democracy. Our democracy is based on majority rule, one person, one vote; every single individual in this country is equally weighted. And to come with a constitutional amendment which says require a two-thirds majority diminishes the value of somebody's vote and enhances the value of somebody else's vote. It is counterdemocratic. Mr. Speaker, the essence of democracy is majority rule. Lord knows, I have been in a minority my entire life. I have no objection to being in a minority. What I have objection to is some supermajority requirement, because I understand that our democracy is based on majority rule. Why is majority rule so basic? Go back to our Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton, in The Federalist Papers, here is what he said: ``The fundamental maxim of republican government requires that the sense of the majority should prevail.'' That is Alexander Hamilton, majority rule is the basis of our democracy. We litigated for years and years to establish the requirement that each person's vote out in the populace should be equally weighted in the selection of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives. In the cases of Gray versus Sanders and Wesberry versus Sanders, the U.S. Supreme Court specifically articulated that every single individual has an equivalent right to select the Members of this body. Here is what the court said in Westbury versus Sanders: We hold that, construed in its historical context, the command of Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution that representatives be chosen by the people of the several States means that, as nearly as practicable, one man's vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another's. To say that a vote is worth more in one district than in another district would not only run counter to our fundamental ideas of democratic government, it would cast aside the principle of a House of Representatives elected by the people, a principle tenaciously fought for and established at the Constitutional Convention. We spent in 1990 almost $3 billion, and in the year 2000 we will spend another $4 to $5 billion to count every citizen in the United States and reapportion our Government, because we believe in the principle of one person, one vote. We do not count and do a census just for the heck of it. It is the basis of our democracy. It is the basis on which the membership of this House of Representatives is constituted. We will spend $4 billion in support of that proposition in the year 2000. And guess what? After that census is taken, in order to ensure that one person one vote is appropriately applied, the whole system of districts, congressional districts throughout the country will be reordered. Some States will lose representatives because they have lost population in proportion to other States. Some States will gain population. There will have to be a redrawing of congressional lines all across this country, because we believe in the principle of one person one vote. It is the basis of majority rule. It is the basis of a democracy. Now, what happens then when a constitutional amendment is offered that requires a two-thirds vote? What you have said to the American people is, oh, no, we understand that you have the right to be equally represented in the selection of your Representatives, but your Representatives do not have the right to be equally represented in their voting on this issue. That, my friends, is the reason that the number of places in the U.S. Constitution requiring anything other than a majority vote is severely limited, limited to only four instances, four instances: Ratification or consent to a treaty, that is our relationship with an external entity, somebody external to our country so we require a higher level of support for that kind of endeavor; conviction in impeachment trials or expulsion of Members, our relationships internally in this body, we require a higher constitutional requirement; to override a Presidential veto, we require a higher than majority vote because that has to do with the balance of power between the various branches of the Government, and that is the way our Founding Fathers set it up; or passing a constitutional amendment. That ought to tell us something about what our Founding Fathers thought about willy-nilly, based-on-popularity polls, based on the issue of the day or the thought-of-the-moment thought about amending the Constitution. That ought to tell us something about how serious they were about it. Yet this new conservative majority would have us believe that they are somehow being conservative, attacking the very document that is the basis of our democratic society. We do not even require a supermajority, anything other than a majority in this House to declare war. Would anybody submit to me that a declaration of war is less important than raising somebody's taxes? Mr. Speaker, this is a counterdemocratic movement that is being proposed, and it is being brought out here tomorrow onto this floor on April 15, just like it was on April 15 a year ago, not for any substantive purposes but for political purposes. Well, what do some of our Founding Fathers have to say about this majority rule or supermajority requirement? Listen, if you would, to Alexander Hamilton again, when he debated at the convention this whole notion that there ought to be something other than a majority vote to decide issues. Here is what he said: What at first sight may seem a remedy is in reality a poison. To give a minority a negative upon the majority, which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision, is in its tendency to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser. Its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure and caprice of an insignificant, turbulent or corrupt junta. He called them a junta. Hey, that is a revolutionary term. It is a revolutionary term. He went on to say, This interruption of regular deliberations in decisions of a respectable majority would lead to tedious delays, continual negotiation and intrigue, contemptible compromises of the public good. Mr. Speaker, those are not my words. Those are Alexander Hamilton's words on the founding of this country about this same kind of notion that is coming to the floor of the House of Representatives tomorrow. Well, was Alexander Hamilton alone in his contempt for this requirement of something other than majority rule? No, he was not. What about James Madison in The Federalist Papers? It has been said, and I am quoting, It has been said that more than a majority ought to have been required for a quorum and in particular cases, if not in all, more than a majority of a quorum for a decision. In all cases where justice or the general good might require new laws to be passed or active measures to be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule, the power would be transferred to the minority. Were the defense privilege limited to particular cases, an interested minority might take advantage of it to screen themselves from equitable sacrifices to the general will or in particular emergencies to extort unreasonable indulgences. Those are the words of James Madison on the founding of our country. They are not my words. And yet my colleagues would have us believe that this two-thirds supermajority to raise taxes is just, we are protecting the people of the United States. Well, which people of the United States are they protecting? Which people are they protecting? I submit that they are not protecting any of us. Because if we truly believe in democracy, then we truly believe in the rule of the majority. And if we need to raise taxes or lower taxes or declare war or take any action that is not already specified in the Constitution as requiring a higher than a majority vote, then we ought be able to do it based on majority rule. I did not come here to talk about raising taxes or lowering taxes. This is not about the issue that underlies this. This is about the document that is the fabric and basis of our democracy. It is about majority rule. It is about standing up for every single person to have the same right that every other person in this country enjoys. It is about every single representative, each one of us, representing an equivalent number of people in the scheme of our Government, not having his or her vote in this House of Representatives diminished in any measure. So it is not about taxes. That is not the issue at all. It is about the Constitution of the United States of America. It is about the principles that underlie majority rule and democracy in our country. Mr. Speaker, this proposal that will come to us tomorrow is not even well drafted. I could not believe that I could pick up a document that proposes to amend the Constitution of the United States and find some of the language that I found in this bill. It says, ``In order to pass a tax increase, you got to have a two-thirds vote if the tax increase is something more than `de minimis'.'' Who knows what de minimis means? There is not a person in this body who knows what de minimis is. There is no such word in the Constitution of the United States as we speak today. There has never been any definition of what that means. So this constitutional amendment, this proposed constitutional amendment, were it to pass, would pass that authority to decide what the word ``de minimis'' means to the judicial branch of our government, interrupting, unbalancing the balance of power that has been established between the legislative body and the judicial branch of the Government. The wording somehow was pulled out of the air for the purposes of this moment so that we could get it to the floor of the House of Representatives on April 15 because everybody is going to be worried about paying their taxes tomorrow. That is the only reason this bill is coming to the floor tomorrow because my colleagues want the American people to think about this in an emotional fashion. They do not care about the merits of the bill. They do not care that 200 years from now they will have interrupted the most cherished notion of majority rule that our country is based on. They just want to make some political points on April 15, and they think that is the day to make them because people will be incensed about having to pay taxes. And they are going to come here tomorrow and tell the American people that they are trying to do a favor for the American people. I want to spend just a minute or two, I am not going to take the entire time I have, but I do want to take a few more minutes just to alert my colleagues that this is not about protecting the American people. Understand that in 1952, corporate income taxes constituted 32 percent of all Federal revenue. By 1992, corporate taxes represented 9 percent of Federal revenue. Let me repeat that. In 1952, corporate taxes constituted 32 percent of the Federal revenue. By 1992, corporate taxes constituted only 9 percent of Federal revenue. During that time, we gave major tax breaks to trans, multinational corporations. They can set prices on an intercompany basis, sales and elect whatever country they wanted to pay taxes in. And nobody ever collects any taxes in the United States, so we built in an incentive for them to take our jobs abroad to other places. Represents $12 billion in tax subsidies a year. Pass this constitutional amendment in order to undue that corporate tax welfare; it would take a two-thirds vote. Do my colleagues really think this is about protecting the American people? This is about imposing more of the burden on the American people. I am not going to go through all the corporate loopholes and subsidies that we provide to corporations, but it should tell us something, that if over a 40-year period the percentage of income that the Federal Government gets from corporations went down from 32 percent of income to 9 percent of the income, that somebody had to pick up that difference. Now we are here, my colleagues, telling us that they are conservatives in this body, willing to undermine the basic principle that individual citizens and rights that individual citizens have in this country to have their vote equally counted and equally represented, with a piece of legislation that would require a two- thirds vote now to get rid of any of those corporate tax subsidies. We could not even go after them. Could not do it. So tell me, my colleagues, whether this is about protecting the individual. Is this about protecting individual citizens of this country? My friends, it is not. What protects individual citizens of this country is being equally valued, being able to cast a vote and know that my vote counts as much as my colleague's vote and my colleague's vote counts as much as the next person's vote. We go to great pains every 10 years to do a census because we value that notion. We value majority rule. We value one person, one vote, and we should resist as a people any attempt to undermine the value that we place on that notion of majority rule. That is the essence of our democracy. Mr. Speaker, you may have gathered by now that I feel strongly about this piece of legislation. Not because it has anything to do with taxes. I have been on this floor many times since I have been in this body speaking against proposed amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Were this a two-thirds majority requirement to reduce taxes, I would oppose it. Were it a two-thirds majority requirement to declare war, I would oppose it. Were it a two-thirds majority requirement to declare a war on poverty or to rescind a war on poverty, I would oppose it. I cannot think of any single thing that I could want a two-thirds majority in this House to have to make law that is not already in the Constitution of the United States. And the reason I feel so strongly about that is because I believe that our country is founded on the notion that we all are equal. The value of our votes are equal, and the value of our Representatives in this body ought to be equal. This proposed constitutional amendment would end that in this instance. I call on my colleagues to consider the value that our Founding Fathers placed on majority rule. They debated it at length. They did not want a dictatorship. They did not want the value of the wealthy to be greater than the value of the poor. They did not want the value of a person in California to be less than the value of a person in North Carolina. All they wanted was equality. That is all I want. I urge my colleagues to defeat this proposed constitutional amendment, to preserve and respect the Constitution of the United States.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend from Virginia for yielding me this time to debate this issue. Mr. Speaker, I had the fortune of being born and reared in a house that adjoined the churchyard of the Mount Olive Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, NC, the church that I happen to be still a member of, and grew up with a full understanding of what the Ten Commandments said and trying to honor those Commandments. Imagine the surprise yesterday when I received a phone call and had a message waiting for me when I arrived in Washington saying that somebody wanted to talk to me about a resolution that was coming to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in support of the Ten Commandments. I thought surely this must be a mistake. I thought the Ten Commandments were to be supported or not supported in a religious context, not in the Halls of the Congress of the United States. Imagine my surprise this morning when I pulled out this and found it to be the calendar for the day. One item. No business yesterday on the floor of the House, no business today with the exception of one item; no business tomorrow with the exception of 3 congratulatory bills, congratulating people for something; no business the next day in the House. I thought maybe this is April Fool's that we are doing on the American people this week, but this is not April. I am a member of the Committee on the Judiciary. Until I got the call yesterday from a constituent saying there is something coming on the floor of the House about the Ten Commandments, we had seen no sight of this resolution, no debate in the Committee on the Judiciary, no debate in any committee. I guess I should not be surprised, however, because I got the statistics last week that showed that we are only up to 25 bills on the floor of the House this session as compared to 175 or thereabouts at this time of the session 2 years ago. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves for parading this resolution out here as if it was some kind of serious business. This is not about whether you support freedom of religion or not. If you support freedom of religion, then you would really be supporting the right of every American citizen to either be religious or not be religious, support one religion or the other; you would not be bringing a resolution here supporting just one form of religion. There are people in our country who have no allegiance to the Ten Commandments. And yet, here we are, all of the issues that we have as a country pressing upon us, debating whether we ought to support the Ten Commandments or not. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves, and we ought to vote this resolution down. It should never have been here in the first place.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, we are not debating that. I was not here then. I probably would have voted against it if I had been here because I would have thought that it was a significant alteration. But that is not what we are here to talk about today. I did not go back and vote then. I was not even a Member of Congress then.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I suspect the gentleman is getting ready to ask me about some amendment.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.