Mel Watt

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman would yield further, would the gentleman be able to direct me to the provision which is the redundant provision? Also, would the gentleman tell me whether there is any way that we could temporarily pull this particular part out for those of us who have a strong commitment to continuing the Voters Rights Act? [[Page H 12232]]

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, the gentleman has handed me a section which is section 207 of the Voting Rights Act, which appears to direct the Census Bureau to do exactly the same thing that this particular section directs the Census Bureau to do. So why is it necessary to repeal this provision? We are not accomplishing anything by repealing it if, in fact, the same requirement is imposed on the Census Bureau somewhere else.

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, with due respect to both of those valuable people, they are not from States that are covered by the Voting Rights Act, and this has a particular significance to us in States which are substantially covered by the Voting Rights Act that it may not have to someone in Illinois.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, it appears to me that I have been handed just a summary of what this particular bill does, which is repeal this particular section, rather than having been handed some duplicative provision, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Clinger] has indicated. I would have to say to the gentleman that unless I can be satisfied that there is, in fact, in place a provision in the law, I will have to vote against the bill.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me and giving me the honor of closing this debate. Mr. Speaker, this debate is really not unlike everything else that is going on in this House, because without the instruction to the conferees and compliance with this instruction, basically what we are saying to the conferees and to our Nation is that money is the only thing of value in this country, and we have been saying it ever since this session of Congress began. If you do not make a lot of money, if you are not rich, then you have no value. We have said it over and over and over again. This bill simply fits right into that pattern. If you, as the chairman of our committee has indicated, make a lot of money for throwing a baseball, then you are a lot more valuable than a person who sits at home and nurtures her children and provides the sustenance of life for our community, but you do not have any economic value, and that is what this underlying bill says, and that is what this Congress has been saying to America ever since this session of Congress convened. Mr. Speaker, that is basically what we are here arguing about. So if Members believe, Mr. Speaker, I would say to my colleagues, that the underlying value of a human being is based on the wealth that they have, the amount of money that they have, then they ought to vote against this motion to instruct the conferees. But if Members think my mother's love, sitting at home and nurturing me and serving our community and having compassion for me has some value, then they ought to vote for this motion to instruct. Please join me, and say to America that there is something of value in this country other than money.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, the Speaker of this House has indicated that he wants Medicare to die on the vine. That is his quote. [[Page H 11591]] I do not want Medicare to die on the vine. I want it to live and to continue to provide health care and security to our older Americans. The Speaker and the Republicans have been saying for weeks now that what they were trying to do was to save Medicare. We told you that was not their purpose. Now the truth is out. They never wanted Medicare. They never wanted Medicare in 1965. And now they want it to die on the vine. We have got to fight to keep it living and serving our senior citizens. We cannot let Medicare die on the vine.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong opposition to H.R. 2425, the Medicare Preservation Act, which proposes to cut Medicare by $270 billion over 7 years. These drastic cuts are the largest cuts ever proposed for the Medicare Program and will have a devastating impact on 999,000 North Carolinians who rely on Medicare to help pay for their Medical bills. These cuts in Medicare are real. More than $2 billion will be lost in the 10 counties in my congressional district. The average Medicare beneficiary in North Carolina will see their out-of-pocket costs increase by an average of $2,400 in 2002. How can we expect senior citizens who have worked and paid taxes all their lives and now live on fixed-incomes to afford the additional out-of-pocket costs associated with this cut? This Medicare plan will raise the average premium for North Carolinians by $18 per year and it may even force many of them to give up their doctor. Those are not choices, those are mandates. The cuts in Medicare are greatly magnified by the proposal to cut Medicaid by $182 billion over 7 years. The impact on North Carolina will be severe. Eight States including North Carolina will bear almost half of the $182 billion in Medicaid cuts. North Carolina will lost $8.5 billion over 7 years. This proposal, which we will consider on the House floor next week, amounts to a 40 percent overall cut from what North Carolina would receive under current levels. This is not shared sacrifice. This is an assault on the people of North Carolina. These cuts will be difficult to justify to over 490,000 children in North Carolina who are on Medicaid. While proposing these drastic cuts to Medicare, Republicans also want to provide a $245 billion tax cut which is designed to disproportionately benefit the rich. In order to pay for the tax cut, Republicans are cutting Medicare by three times the amount that is necessary to keep the Medicare Trust Fund solvent through the year 2002. While I agree with some of my colleagues who argue that we need to balance the budget, I do not agree with those who argue that we can balance the budget and give a tax beak to the rich. The first priority of Congress should be to balance the budget and eliminate the Federal deficit, not cut Medicare to pay for a tax cut. We simply cannot afford to finance a tax cut on the backs of the elderly and the poor. This bill punishes and jeopardizes the health of our most vulnerable children, the elderly and the poor. This bill does nor save Medicare, it dismantles it. I urge all my colleagues to reject this shameful bill and to support the Gibbons-Dingell Substitute.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to the scam on the senior citizens of America.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I want to assure the gentleman, whose integrity and honesty has preceded me in this body. I have heard about the gentleman's integrity, and I have never suggested that the motivation 10 years ago, or whenever this was put into the law, was a racist motivation. However, the impact of this law has been very, very, very substantially racist in its impact. To defend a provision in the law 10 years later, based on knowledge that the gentleman did or did not have 10 years ago, is something that I would hope that the gentleman would not do. I agree that 10 years ago the gentleman did not have knowledge about crack. But the information that has been submitted to the Committee on the Judiciary now suggests that the gentleman happened to have been wrong about a lot of the assumptions that the gentleman was making; that this drug was more addictive than powder cocaine. Both of those drugs are addictive. And, Mr. Speaker, to the extent that the drug is accompanied by violence or other surrounding things, they are socioeconomic things, and the Sentencing Commission's recommendations would take where there was violence or enhancing the penalty where children were involved. So notwithstanding the fact that your motives were good 10 years ago, the fact is that now hindsight is a lot better than foresight. And I am not questioning the gentleman's foresight. I am questioning the gentleman's motivation in putting this into the law at the time he did. But we now know better, and we should not just stand up [[Page H 10261]] and say, OK, we made a mistake 10 years ago, so let us prolong the mistake and make it again.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I want to be measured in my response, because this is an issue that is of utmost importance because it deals with fairness. And some of our perceptions of fairness are different than other folks' perception of fairness. But I just want to appeal to my colleagues, and anybody who is listening, to understand what we are talking about. Five grams. That is what I have got in my hand here. That will get you 5 years in prison. Take this and multiply it times 100 of powder cocaine and you still will not get 5 years in prison. This is 5 grams. Now, if anybody can say to me that that is fair, whether you live on the white side of town or the black side of town, on this side of the tracks or that side of the tracks, if the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Barr] can stand up with a straight face and say that that is fair, if he can sleep with himself at night, that is fine. I do not have a problem with that. But my colleagues ought to know that my constituents do not think that that is fair. It is not about being soft on crime. It is not about condoning drugs. It is not about wanting drugs in our communities. It is about being able to look our children in the face and say: There is fairness in our system of justice. There is fairness in our laws. That is what this debate is about. My colleagues can say that it is about let us study it again until next year. They can say it is about trying to protect us from ourselves in our communities, and we do not know what is good for our own communities. They can stand up and lecture us about what is good in our communities. They can say that it ain't about race. They can say that we ought to make the judgment today, based on what we thought was the case 10 years ago when this law was passed. But they ought not be able to go home tonight and look at themselves in the mirror and say that that is fair, because they know it ain't. The American people know that it is not. And the people who gathered out here on this Mall several days ago know that it is not fair. My colleagues are asking them to have respect for a system of justice that they know, and we know, and they know is not fair. When they do not have respect for that system of justice, we cannot be responsible for them. My colleagues want us to be responsible, and we try to be responsible. But in order to be responsible, my friends, we must have equity and fairness in the system. So, I do not want to belabor this. My friends can pass the buck. They can say we will deal with it next year. But the reason we set up the Sentencing Commission and gave them this authority was to come back with tough decisions and recommendations just like this. And when we draw it back into the political process and politicize these issues of fairness, that we tried to take the politics out of, so that we can go back and say I was tough on crime, I was tough on drugs, my colleagues have got to understand that there is an issue of fairness that everybody knows exists. And if they are not fair, it is going to come back to bite them and they can count on it.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Some of my best friends do live in South Carolina.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would say to the gentleman that I am from North Carolina. We take those distinctions pretty seriously in my part of the country.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Yes, I am, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman from Texas for yielding me this time to debate on the rule. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule. I am opposed to the rule because the rule does not give sufficient time to debate this important issue. Of course, I guess I should not be surprised, if we are talking about debating the Medicare bill for 1 or 2 or 3 hours tomorrow, that we are giving only a small amount of time to this issue. But I do think that my colleagues need to understand what this debate is about and why it is important. I start by making reference to 2 days ago. Two things significant happened 2 days ago. First of all, the President of the United States addressed this Nation about the Issue of race relations in this country. Here is what he said, part of what he said: And blacks are right to think something is terribly wrong when African-American men are many more times likely to be victims of homicide than any other group in this country; when there are more African-American men in our corrections system than in our colleges; when almost one in three African-American men in their twenties are either in jail, on parole, or otherwise under the supervision of the criminal system. Nearly one in three, and that is a disproportionate percentage in comparison to the percentage of blacks who use drugs in our society. Now, I would like for every white person here in America to take a moment to think how he or she would feel if one in three white men were in similar circumstances. We are at a dire position in this country insofar as the number of black men incarcerated or in the prison system is concerned. On the same day, on Monday, 1 million black men stood up and came to this Nation's Capitol and said we want to take responsibility for our families and our communities and what is going on in our communities, and all we are asking from this Congress is fairness. This is an introspective look at ourselves, and all we want is fairness. Now, there is not anybody going to come on this floor today--we heard Ms. Pryce say when she talked about the rule, we have heard everybody who gets up on this floor today on this issue--who is going to submit that the disparity that exists in the sentencing between crack cocaine and powder cocaine is a fair disparity. There is nobody who is going to come in here and argue that. So what this issue is about, as the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Moran] has indicated, is fairness. It is about fairness. Crack cocaine and powder cocaine are two forms of the same drug. They are cocaine. Crack cocaine is 30 minutes of baking of powder cocaine. That is all it is. You put it in an oven and it comes out the other end crack cocaine. Yet 5 grams of crack cocaine will get you a mandatory minimum penalty, whereas 500 grams of powder cocaine will get you a similar penalty. If somebody is convicted of selling $225 worth of crack cocaine, they get the same penalty as somebody get who sells $50,000 worth of powder cocaine. Crack cocaine is the only drug that we have subject to a mandatory minimum sentence. Now, I am not going to stand here and argue that crack cocaine is not a serious drug, but it is no more serious than heroin. There is no mandatory minimum for heroin. It is no more serious than LSD. There is no mandatory minimum for LSD. Methamphetamines, you name it, there is no other drug that has a mandatory minimum. And yet we have singled out crack cocaine for a 5-year mandatory minimum. Why? I do not know. They said because it was a dangerous drug. But is not heroin a dangerous drug? Is not powdered cocaine a dangerous drug? Is not LSD a dangerous drug? So how could we discriminate in that way? What is the impact of that discrimination? Poor young kids who can only afford crack go to jail. Rich young kids who can afford powder cocaine go home and sleep in their own beds at night. Then people ask, why is one in three black persons, who happen to be the poorest people, in jail, when that is not the case for white young people? Why are there more black teenagers or college age kids in jail than there are in college? This is a fairness issue, my friends, and this bill does not even put any time limitation for the Sentencing Commission to report back. I tried to correct that by offering an amendment, and the Committee on Rules said no, we will not even let you put a time limitation. We are going to discuss this to death. Let the Sentencing Commission go back and study it for 10 years so we do not have to deal with it in the Congress of the United States. That is what this is all about. Justice delayed is justice denied, and we are delaying and denying justice to the very people who need it in our society.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, it is quite obvious from the last vote that the Members of this body wish to have this matter studied further and have a recommendation made back by the Sentencing Commission. But there is an oversight in this bill and the motion to recommit simply would correct that oversight. That oversight is to specify a date by which the Sentencing Commission would report back to the Congress. The motion to recommit would simply set March 1, 1996, as that date. The gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Scott] is a co-offeror of this motion to recommit and I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I thank the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Scott]. Mr. Speaker, this is really not a controversial motion to recommit. All it does is specify the date by which the Sentencing Commission is to report back to this Congress. The gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum], the chairman of the subcommittee, conceded during the general debate on this bill that he thought there was a date specified in the bill by which we would expect the Sentencing Commission to report back. In fact, there is no date specified in this bill as to when the Sentencing Commission will report back. The Sentencing Commission has already studied this issue at some length. Everybody knows that there is a major unfairness and disparity in the sentencing, and we need to correct that disparity as quickly as we can possibly correct it if there is going to be any faith in our justice system. I would ask my colleagues to support the motion to recommit for that purpose.

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, that is the point I am asserting to this body. I do not argue with the facts that were available 10 years ago or whenever it occurred. Len Bias had just died. There were a lot of facts that would have justified our making that assumption. But two wrongs, as my mama used to tell me, do not make a right; and we can correct that wrong now if we will do it. If we will have the courage to do what is just now, not 10 years ago.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman there is absolutely nothing in this bill that says the Sentencing Commission must report back by next May. The Sentencing Commission might report back by next May on some other issue, but there is no requirement in this bill that requires it.

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Chairman, I guess I have to eat my words now, because I thought nobody was going to come to this floor and say that what we are doing is fair. The gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Bryant] has said it and he said it with a straight face. I just find that absolutely unbelievable. Mr. Chairman, my colleagues have to understand what is going on here. Crack cocaine and powder cocaine are both cocaine. Crack cocaine happens to be used by poor people who are predominantly black people because it is cheap. Powder cocaine happens to be used by white people who happen to be richer, and as a consequence, you get this disparity in the application of the law. Mr. Chairman, I said in an earlier debate here on the floor, I made a mistake; I said that it is 30 minutes to get from powder cocaine to crack cocaine. I was corrected. It is actually 10 minutes. I am told that if you put a tablespoon of baking soda with powder cocaine and you put it in a microwave and bake it for 10 minutes, that converts it to crack cocaine. You cannot get to crack cocaine without going through powder cocaine. So how we can justify a greater penalty for crack cocaine than for powder cocaine I just simply do not understand. So, then you presume that if somebody has 5 grams of crack cocaine, they are dealing in cocaine. Five hundred grams of powder cocaine is necessary before you get to that same presumption. Five grams of crack cocaine [[Page H 10267]] produces 10 doses. Five hundred grams of powder cocaine produces 5,000 doses. Five grams of crack costs $225. Five hundred grams of powder cocaine costs $50,000. So what do we end up with? The rich guys have to have $50,000 worth of this substance, 500 grams of it, to even think about getting the same sentence that the poor person has. The gentleman says that is fair? There is no way that we can assert to the American people that that is fair. There is no way that I can assert to my community, to the black community, to the black residents that live throughout America and who live in my congressional district that that is fair. If I cannot assert to them that the laws are fair, then I cannot assert to them that they have to abide by them. Fairness is the basis of every law, or should be. Mr. Chairman, we cannot say to black people in the country, you deserve to go to jail for something that white people do not go to jail for. It is unfair, it is outrageous, it is despicable, that we would sit here on this floor of Congress, 2 days after the President has talked about fairness, 2 days after a milion people have come here and begged for fairness, and we say, let us go do business as usual, let us keep this in effect while we study it some more. We have been studying this issue for a long, long time, and it is time for us to deal with it and deal with it in a way that is fair to the American people and to our communities.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, it has come to my attention that I was not listed as being recorded on rollcall vote No. 685 on Thursday, September 21, despite the fact that I was here and put my card in the voting machine. I ask that this fact be noted in the Record, and that it be indicated that had I been present and recorded, I would have voted ``yes.''