Dave Weldon

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I have looked into this.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Has to include mental health.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I would be willing to accept that if the gentleman from Michigan will define ``health'' in terms of the physical health of the woman. Now the Supreme Court has decided----

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Chairman, we have heard a lot of emotional rhetoric today that quite frankly has added little to the discussion of the real issues before us. I want to return the attention of the debate to the bill. What is the Working Families Flexibility Act, and how would it impact regular Americans who go to work every day, pay taxes, and are torn between work and family? There are two questions that must be asked: Will this bill give employees flexibility to spend more time with their families? Does the bill ensure that the decision over whether to take compensatory time or overtime pay rests with the employee? What we are about today is giving private sector employees the same right to work flexible hours that Federal, State, and local government workers have enjoyed for more than a decade. Most Government workers I have talked to like and want this type of flexibility, and it is wrong to deny private sector employees these same rights. Specifically, the bill before us states that employers are allowed to offer their employee a choice of receiving overtime compensation--for every hour worked over 40 hours in a 7-day period--in the form of 1\1/ 2\ hours of paid time off or 1\1/2\ hours of cash wages. Back in 1938, a Federal labor law was put in place that requires employers to pay overtime pay with no option for giving flexible compensatory time instead. When this was put in place--59 years ago-- most families had a parent who worked away from home and another who stayed at home. Today, in 60 percent of homes, both spouses work away from home. This is up by over 36 percent in just the past 25 years. With more and more parents working outside of the home, survey after survey of American workers shows that Americans are increasingly torn between work and home and a more flexible work schedule is their top priority. Why should we continue to deny private sector workers the flexibility they want and need? The Working Families Flexibility Act is about allowing parents to choose to spend more time with their children. Too often our society places too much value on money and too little on relationships with a spouse and children. Too many families around us are falling apart. Too many families want to spend more time with their children, but are denied this right because of a 60-year-old outdated law. Opponents of the bill have raised the question of whether the decision on whether or not to take compensatory time or overtime pay rests with the employee. I agree fully that this decision must rest with the employee. The bill before us has many provisions that guarantee that this decision rests with the employee alone, not the employer. In fact, the Working Families Flexibility Act offers private sector employees more protections than Government workers have today. The bill makes it illegal for an employer to pressure employees to take compensatory time rather than overtime pay. Any employer who coerces, requires, or even attempts to pressure an employee to take compensatory time rather than overtime pay is subject to penalties which include double the amount in wages owed plus attorneys fees and cost. Also, civil and criminal penalties apply. The fact that civil and criminal penalties apply is guarantee enough to ensure that employees are the ones making this decision. Finally, I must say that I am disappointed that the loudest opposition to this bill has come from Washington labor leaders. I'm afraid that in their attempt to stir anti-Republican sentiment and scare the American worker, it is the American worker who is struggling to balance time between work and family that will suffer without passage of this bill. Additionally, I would point out that the bill before us specifically protects collective bargaining agreements. Those governed by such agreements are free to set their own collective bargaining arrangements. Clearly the Working Families Flexibility Act provides employees with the type of flexibility they want and it is clear that there are plenty of protections to ensure that this decision rests with the employee alone.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, this country is in a time of need. What our constituents need is a budget that will stay balanced. It is our obligation to provide that for them. Mr. Speaker, the President has proposed a budget that does not offer what we have been striving for. The Congressional Budget Office has revealed that this plan would leave an unsettled deficit of at least $69 billion by the year 2002. Additionally, his Medicare proposal does not keep the Medicare plan in balance for 10 years as he has proposed. Furthermore, his savings in Medicare essentially amount to a shell game, moving expenses from part A to part B, out of the Medicare plan into the general revenue which comes out of general withholding of all taxpayers. Mr. Speaker, it is imperative that the President send us an honest balanced budget, additionally that he send us a plan that will truly achieve solvency for the Medicare plan so that our seniors will be able to have the health care that they need.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, it is only fitting that I should rise now, the Representative from the home State of the alligator, to address a particular area of our economy that I would like to set aside as not eligible for taxation, and that is the Internet. Specifically, I have filed a bill today entitled the Tax-Free Internet Act of 1997. This legislation amends the Internal Revenue Code to declare that fees for Internet access and other online services are not and shall not be subject to Federal taxation. Furthermore, the bill would prevent any Federal department from using its funds to study the revenue potential of Internet taxation. I believe that this legislation is a strong statement in support of the free and unfettered development of this industry. My bill has already been endorsed by several online services and Internet service providers. America Online, one of the Nation's most widely used Internet-related service providers, said, and I quote, ``We commend your leadership in authoring and sponsoring the Tax-Free Internet Act of 1997. AOL strongly supports your policy efforts. Any new tax could threaten the continued growth of this global medium.'' The President of Erol's online service adds, ``This legislation is a very positive development, and I give it my full support.'' Mr. Speaker, we must not allow this budding industry to be smothered by Federal taxation. A few of the States, including my own State of Florida, have already initiated legislation to exempt the Internet and online service access fees from State and local taxes. We on the Federal level should do likewise. As the United States Internet Providers Association says of my bill: ``We support the efforts of all informed policymakers to protect technology innovation and the growth of the industry through sound legislation. This is a step in the right direction.'' Mr. Speaker, let us here resolve not to interfere with the technological phenomenon which has done so much to inform and educate so many millions of Americans. Let us restrain the reach of government so as not to smother the vitality and creativity that characterize this new frontier in communications.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I submit for the Record a copy of the Ten Commandments that I think will enhance our ability to conduct this debate in a civil manner. The debate today is over how far the hand of government will stretch to remove religious symbols from the public square. Will our courts and Federal Government continue the battle to remove all religious symbols from the public square? Are the Ten Commandments so offensive that they call us not to murder, not to steal, not to commit adultery and to be truthful that we must remove them? They also call us to remember that we are accountable to someone other than ourselves, they call us to live lives of civility and respect to others. Is it so offensive to let people see the Ten Commandments? Let us support the resolution and the right of Judge Moore to hang the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. He should have the same rights as the Supreme Court of the United States. Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record a copy of the Ten Commandments: the ten commandments [From Exodus 20:1-17] And God spoke all these words: ``I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. ``You shall have no other gods before me. ``You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. ``You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. ``Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. ``Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. ``You shall not murder. ``You shall not commit adultery. ``You shall not steal. ``You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. ``You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.''

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time, and I rise in support of the rule and in support of the legislation introduced by the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Smith]. Mr. Speaker, I think there has been a certain amount of confusion introduced regarding the real debate that we are discussing here. The legislation of the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Smith] actually increases the amount of money for family planning and makes it available earlier. It simply places some restrictions in there that are consistent with the Mexico City restrictions, restrictions that do not allow organizations that actively promote abortion services to have access to the funds. One of the organizations that the President of the United States would like to distribute this money to, the International Planned Parenthood Federation, has a Vision 2000 document that they have made available, and I do not know if my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have read this thing, but not only do they want to promote the availability of abortion services, they actually want to work to advocate the overturning of existing law in these countries that do not make abortion available. I do not think it is wise use of the U.S. taxpayers' dollars to take taxpayers' money to go and give it to an organization that is going to essentially lobby to have abortion laws overturned in foreign countries. I have people in my district who have trouble making ends meet. I have people in my district who have no health insurance. We shouldn't be taking their tax dollars and giving it to an organization that is pursuing this kind of an agenda. So we have a very reasonable rule here and a very reasonable bill that it supports, that says you can have even more family planning money but we are just not going to give it to these certain groups that pursue this certain radical, left-wing, pro-abortion agenda. Mr. Speaker, I highly encourage all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support the rule and to support the legislation.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me, and I rise in opposition to House Resolution 36, which is the resolution supported by the President, and urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on that and to vote ``yes'' on House Resolution 581, the resolution introduced by the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Smith]. Both of these bills, the bill supported by the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Smith] and the one supported by the President, will release funds for family planning. So what is the debate about? It is about one simple issue. Will U.S. tax dollars go to organizations that encourage or provide abortions as a means of birth control? In spite of the rhetoric, this is the issue before us. To those who support the President's plan, I would ask, why are you against language that says that none of these funds can be used to perform abortions as a means of birth control; do you find abortion an acceptable means of birth control? Why do you oppose language that would stipulate that these funds cannot be used to violate the laws of any foreign country with respect to abortion? Do you support using tax dollars, U.S. tax dollars to subvert the abortion laws of foreign countries? Those who vote ``yes'' on President Clinton's bill are voting to give tax dollars to organizations that promote or provide abortion as a means of birth control. Those who vote ``no'' on President Clinton's bill and ``yes'' on Mr. Smith's bill are saying, U.S. tax dollars can go for family planning but they cannot go to organizations that promote abortion as an acceptable means of birth control. To spend tax dollars on international family planning is an issue for debate. However, taking money out of the pockets of hard-working Americans to pay for abortions overseas is totally unacceptable. Again, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the President's plan and vote ``yes'' on the plan of [Mr. Smith].

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Holmes Regional Medical Center which recently received the American Hospital Association's prestigious NOVA award on January 27, 1997. Holmes Regional Medical Center is very deserving of this great honor for its strong commitment to providing quality health care to needy residents in Brevard County, FL. Through its HOPE program, Holmes serves the needy in our community whose medical needs might otherwise go untreated. HOPE serves as a model program for hospitals across the United States. Holmes is one of only five recipients across the United States and the only recipient from the State of Florida that received this year's NOVA award. Those who have dedicated themselves to ensuring HOPE's success deserve this honor for their commitment to increasing community health, expanding services, managing limited resources, and building community trust among the residents of Brevard County, FL. HOPE's medical expertise and compassionate care are commendable. Their concern for and commitment to the welfare of the most needy in our community is apparent in their focus on health, outreach, prevention, and education. This is especially evident in HOPE's practice of providing free medical treatment to those without health insurance, Medicare, or other health care coverage. In addition to serving more than 5,000 adults a year, HOPE meets the needs of over 500 children on a daily basis. This is highly commendable and should be an example to all. As a physician who has treated some of these same patient needs in our community, I know HOPE's unique approach in bringing various community agencies together to establish a multi-agency program for children with disabilities has had a powerful impact on our community. The program teaches and encourages intervention, and provides support to parents with children with disabilities by providing them with expert knowledge and services from community specialists. This is just one example of how HOPE is serving our community. HOPE's commitment to serving and providing quality, low-cost, compassionate care to the needy is inspiring. We, in Brevard County, are grateful for the way in which Holmes Regional Medical Center's HOPE program has served the people of our county. HOPE has brought true hope to many of our friends and neighbors.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this legislation. I am pleased that the bill provides the full amount requested by the President for NASA's human space flight programs. This will allow the functions at Kennedy Space Center, the launch site for all human space flight, to be fully funded at the budget requested by the President. This will ensure the safe operation of our Nation's space shuttle fleet. The overall NASA budget is $13.7 billion, just $100 million under the President's budget request. The $100 million reduction comes in the science, aeronautics, and technology account, and will have no adverse impact on the operations of our space shuttle fleet or Kennedy Space Center. This funding is important for the future of our Nation. We are the world's leader in space and we are moving forward with the next step in this leadership, the space station. We already have over 100,000 pounds of hardware ready for launch. This Congress has soundly rejected efforts to eliminate the space station. The VA/HUD/Independent Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee recognizes clearly that NASA has already done a significant amount of voluntary downsizing, and it can truly serve as a model for other parts of the Federal Government as we reduce the size and scope of Government. However, NASA can take no further cuts in this year's budget. The committee recognized this and provide an amount nearly the President's budget request. Our children and grandchildren will thank you for supporting NASA and supporting their future. The bill also contains provisions that would allow NASA to offer buyouts to NASA employees. This is important as some additional downsizing may take place at NASA centers around the country. I was pleased to support the inclusion of this provision, which should make the transition easier for NASA employees. Finally, the bill includes language that urges the VA to move forward with the outpatient clinic in Brevard County, FL. For nearly a decade and one-half, veterans in this part of Florida have been promised a medical facility and after all these years have nothing to show for it but broken promises. That has changed, earlier this year the Congress passed and the President signed into law an authorization and appropriation of $25 million for the construction of an outpatient clinic in Brevard. In a letter to me dated July 17, 1996, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jesse Brown committed to me and the veterans of Florida that he would award a design contract by the end of September. He has yet to do this, and the bill before us includes language directing the Secretary to move forward expeditiously with this clinic. I am pleased that the bill includes this direction and hopefully it will encourage the Secretary to act quickly. The money has been available for nearly 5 months, and it's past time to get moving.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following for the Record. Harsh Details Shift Tenor of Abortion Fight From the moment the medical paper arrived anonymously at the offices of the National Right to Life Committee three years ago, antiabortion activists knew they had been handed a powerful weapon. The eight-page, double-spaced document described in precise, straightforward language an abortion procedure sometimes used during the second half of pregnancy, at 20 weeks and beyond. A copy of a medical paper that had been delivered at a recent seminar, it was written by an Ohio doctor who had performed the procedure hundreds of times. It provide what abortion foes had long believed was crucial in turning public opinion their way: a graphic description of one type of abortion they felt would offend many, perhaps most, Americans. In this procedure, the doctor delivered the body of the fetus--feet first and sometimes still alive--into the birth canal before collapsing the skull so that the head could be drawn through the opening of the uterus. The medical world called the procedure ``intact dilation and evacuation,'' but antiabortion activists soon coined a new name for it: ``partial-birth'' abortion. The activists believed that publicizing the details of the procedure would fuel a national debate, pull many abortion rights liberals to their side and prompt Congress for the first time to ban a specific abortion procedure. They were right. President Clinton vetoed the legislation last April. But Congress is gearing up to vote on it again before adjourning at the end of next week. Although proponents of the ban believe they may have the necessary two-thirds vote in the House to override the veto, they acknowledge they still are at least a dozen short in the Senate. Ongoing efforts to enact the ban have been aided by the considerable weight of leading Catholic clerics, who visited members of Congress last week to lobby for an override, and whose followers have deluged Capitol Hill with millions of postcards. The issue also has played a role in the presidential campaign. Robert J. Dole, the Republican nominee who supports a constitutional amendment banning nearly all abortions, has said that Clinton's veto ``pushed the limits of decency too far.'' Ten days ago, he told an audience of Catholics, ``whether you're pro-life or pro-choice, there is one thing everyone can agree on: Partial-birth abortion is wrong.'' Whatever the bill's ultimate fate, the clash over late-term abortions will be remembered as a benchmark in the decades- old abortion debate. It has forced members of Congress and the general public to confront what happens during abortion--and most people find such details grisly, no matter what surgical method is used. It also has ignited a discussion of the ethical justifications for abortions performed when a pregnancy is more than half over. Such procedures--of which the procedure banned by the legislation is only one of several--make up only 1.3 percent of the 1.3 million abortions done in the United States each year, but they provoke ambivalence and discomfort even among abortion rights supporters. ``This legislation has so mobilized pro-lifers, that the effect of it . . . will strengthen them for a very long time,'' said Helen Alvare, spokeswoman for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. ``For years, the best we've been able to do in Congress is preserve some funding restrictions. To get from that into the question of abortion itself was a huge leap.'' Those on the other side of the debate view the bill's success in Congress as an ominous precedent, and suggest that, if it were law, abortion opponents would try to expand or broadly interpret the ban to cover other kinds of abortions. ``This is the first time Congress has ever attempted to regulate the practice of medicine and abortion,'' said Kathryn Kolbert, vice president of the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy in New York, an abortion rights group. Said Lewis Koplik, a New Mexico physician who performs late-stage abortions using a different method: ``They don't want less than 1 percent of abortions stopped. . . .They want all abortions stopped.'' estimates and anecdotes There are no reliable statistics on how many abortions are done each year using the technique that would be banned. Nor is there much information about the women who undergo the procedure or about the condition of the fetuses they carry. As a result, both sides of the debate have selectively used estimates and anecdotes to support their positions. The National Abortion Federation, an organization of abortion providers, believes 400 to 600 cases of ``intact D&E,'' as the procedure is often called, may be done each year. The National Right to Life Committee, which supports the ban, believes it may be several thousand. Similarly, there are no reliable estimates on how many American doctors use the technique. Interviews with abortion providers suggest that they are fewer than 20, and perhaps fewer than 10. Opponents of the ban, including President Clinton, have used patients and data drawn chiefly from the practice of one abortion doctor to portray the procedure as an extremely rare one, used almost exclusively in cases where a woman discovers that her pregnancy threatens her own life or that the fetus is severely deformed. They also have implied that in some cases, it is the only abortion technique that can safely be used. Interviews with physicians, as well as information gleaned from published documents and congressional testimony, paint a different picture of these late-term abortions. It is possible--and maybe even likely--that the majority of these abortions are performed on normal fetuses, not on fetuses suffering genetic or developmental abnormalities. Furthermore, in most cases where the procedure is used, the physical health of the woman whose pregnancy is being terminated is not in jeopardy. In virtually all cases, there are alternative ways to perform the abortion safely, through perhaps not as safely as when intact D&E is used. Instead, the ``typical'' patients tend to be young, low- income women, often poorly educated or naive, whose reasons for waiting so long to end their pregnancies are rarely medical. Only in the small subgroup of women whose abortions are done extremely late-in the last one-third of gestation-- are most of the fetuses malformed, and most of the pregnancies initially desired. But if abortion rights advocates have painted a misleading picture of intact D&E, so have proponents of banning the procedure. Much of their campaign has led people to believe that normal, viable fetuses are regularly being aborted very late in pregnancy--in the eighth or ninth month--using this technique. ``Virtually every pro-choice American and every pro-life American agrees that aborting a child in the eighth or ninth month the way a partial-birth abortion does is wrong,'' House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said in supporting a veto override on ``Meet the Press'' Sunday. Most fetuses aborted by the ``intact D&E'' method are less than 24 weeks gestation; the number done later, when the chances of viability are greater, is very small. There is no clear-cut moment in pregnancy when a fetus becomes ``viable,'' or capable of surviving outside the womb. Of infants born at 24 weeks gestation, about one-third survive; at 23 weeks, fewer than one-quarter. Most abortion providers will not perform abortions of any type on a normal fetus, carried by a healthy woman, beyond the 24th week of pregnancy; many practitioners set the boundary even earlier. Antiabortion groups also have cited the fact that the fetus, in some cases, is still alive when part of its body is outside the womb during the procedure. ``The difference between the partial-birth abortion procedure and homicide is a mere three inches,'' Rep. Charles T. Canady (R-Fla.) said last year. Proponents also have argued that fetuses may suffer pain during the procedure. The usual alternative to intact D&E is ``dismemberment D&E,'' in which the fetal limbs are pulled off the body in utero, sometimes while the fetus is still alive. Proponents of the ``partial-birth'' abortion ban have not made clear why intact D&E should be outlawed, while ``dismemberment D&E''-- used to abort a fetus of similar age while still inside the uterus--is not. And, if the fetus has sensation--which is far from certain--then arguably dismemberment D&E is the more painful procedure. What's indisputable is that public discussion of this method of ending pregnancy has thrown a spotlight on the anguish and ambivalence that lurks below many--if not all-- abortions. It has forced doctors, patients and the public to face the ``livingness'' of the fetus in a way that abortion techniques used early in pregnancy do not. visual imagery Abortion opponents have always relied on visual imagery. They have carried posters depicting the tiny feet of aborted fetuses, and jars with the fetuses themselves. A 1986 antiabortion film, ``The Silent Scream,'' showed an ultrasound image of the supposed agony of a 12-week fetus being aborted. But it was not until they provided drawings of the intact D&E procedure that were descriptive enough to make the point, but not so graphic they couldn't appear in the mass media, that they reached a wider audience. Within weeks of Martin Haskell's description of the intact D&E procedure at a 1992 National Abortion Federation seminar in Dallas, his paper had been sent to the National Right to Life Committee, said its legislative director, Douglas Johnson. The committee took Haskell's paper, along with some rough sketches of the procedure that had appeared in an antiabortion publication, to an artist who produced more sophisticated drawings. These were circulated within the antiabortion community. ``I was horrified that such a procedure existed,'' said Canady, who was sent a copy of the paper and later introduced the ban. ``It occurred to me that this was something the American people would overwhelmingly oppose if they were aware of it.'' In 1993, Haskell said in interviews in two medical publications that he had discovered the procedure by accident, and had performed it more than 700 times. In most cases, he said, the abortions were not done because of a birth defect or a severe maternal illness. Haskell is no longer granting interviews, ``given the harassment he's under,'' said his lawyer, Kolbert. The issue landed on Capitol Hill as Congress was debating the 1993 Freedom of Choice Act, a bill that would have prohibited many state restrictions on abortion. Canady argued that the bill would prevent states from banning even late- term abortion techniques, like the procedure described by Haskell, and offered an amendment banning the intact D&E method. But abortion rights supporters had long outnumbered abortion foes in Congress, and Canady's amendment failed by a narrow margin. A procedural fight kept the bill from ever coming up for a vote. With Republican victories in the 1994 elections, however, more than 40 new antiabortion legislators arrived on Capitol Hill, and the abortion balance changed. And proponents of the ``partial-birth'' abortion ban believed their chances for a major antiabortion victory were further enhanced by the distastefulness of the late-term procedure. Antiabortion leaders correctly suspected the issue could split the abortion rights opposition. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), who traditionally had voted for abortion rights, called the procedure ``as close to infanticide as anything I have come upon in our judiciary.'' Previously dependable abortion rights supporters like House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) and Rep. Susan Molinari (R-N.Y.), similarly decided to support the ban. It passed 286 to 129 in the House, and 54 to 44 in the Senate. The emotion that marked the congressional debate has accompanied the issue into the presidential campaign. Dole has pledged that, as president, he would sign the ban on ``partial-birth'' abortion. He has attacked Clinton's veto, charging it represented his lack of ``moral vision.'' Clinton has countercharged that his decision was based on defending the health of women whose babies were seriously deformed. ``I fail to see why [Dole's] moral position is superior to the one that I took,'' he said. Polls suggest that, while Americans generally support a women's right to an abortion, there is also considerable support for the ban on the ``partial-birth'' procedure. Respondents to a Gallup Poll last July were asked if they would favor ``a law which would make it illegal to perform a specific abortion procedure conducted in the last six months of pregnancy known as a `partial-birth abortion,' except in cases necessary to save the life of the mother.'' Seventy-one percent said yes. Supporters of the ban argue that public opinion is shifting as they continue to place advertisements describing the procedure in newspapers and on television. Among the ads is one from a new group of 300 physicians, including former surgeon general C. Everett Koop, which argues that the procedure is never medically necessary. The quest for public support has shaped strategies on both sides. Abortion opponents focus on the fetus and on the medical details of the procedure. Abortion rights supporters emphasize the rights and health of women and portray the proposed ban as an unwarranted government invasion of privacy. shaping strategies A contentious subtext in this war of images has been the question of why women seek late-term abortions. ``The anti-choice community has done a very good job at painting a picture of a woman who has an abortion as frivolous, irresponsible, one who engages in sex without responsibility,'' said Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. She and others cited an advertisement run by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops listing examples of reasons a woman could use to obtain a ``partial-birth'' abortion if the legislation made an exception to preserve the health of the mother. The list included such examples as ``won't fit into prom dress,'' ``hates being fat'', and ``can't afford a baby and a new car.'' But the women who have spoken out publicly about their experiences with the procedure have told a different story. ``We are not women popping up in the eighth month saying, `I don't think I'll be a mom,' '' Claudia Ades told a congressional hearing last November. Ades said she learned from a sonogram when she was 26 weeks pregnant that her fetus had a severely malformed brain and numerous other serious defects. ``These were desperately wanted children, where something went terribly wrong,'' she said. In a recent interview, Ades said she and her husband, Richard, who live in Los Angeles, ``begged for . . . someone that could fix my baby's brain or the hole in his heart,'' but were told their child had no chance of survival. She opted for abortion, she said, because she believed her fetus was in pain. Four different doctors told her intact D&E was the safest way, Ades said. ``We knew other options existed,'' including a Caesarean section, ``but they were not considered as safe, as healthy or as appropriate for us. . . . What bothers me is that we have to defend what we did. We believe it was such a humane thing.'' Johnson, of the National Right to Life Committee, and others argue that even in the case of severe developmental defects like the Ades fetus, the baby should be allowed to be born. ``The premise that in some cases it is necessary to kill the baby to complete a delivery . . . there are no such cases,'' he said. Clinton said he would have signed the legislation if it had included an exception for women who faced serious health risks without the procedure. But foes of such an exception argued that it ``would gut the bill,'' in Johnson's words. While the immediate future of the abortion debate clearly hangs on the November elections, it seems likely that this will not be the last time Congress focuses on a specific procedure. Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), a leading abortion opponent in the House, said after the House approved the ban late last year that antiabortion lawmakers ``would begin to focus on the methods and declare them to be illegal.'' For abortion rights supporters, that is a daunting prospect. ``There is no abortion procedure when described that is aesthetically comforting, whether at six weeks or 32 weeks,'' said Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice. ``This is exactly the kind of abortion issue that people don't want to think about. . . . They want women to be able to have this option in such extreme and terrible circumstances, but they know it's not pretty. It has to happen, but it shouldn't be in the newspaper.'' viability and the law The normal length of human gestation is 266 days, or 38 weeks. This is roughly 40 weeks from a women's last menstrual period. Pregnancy is often divided into three parts, or ``trimesters.'' Both legally and medically, however, this division has little meaning. For one thing, there is little precise agreement about when one trimester ends and another begins. Some authorities describe the first trimester as going through the end of the 12th week of gestation. Others say the 13th week. Often the third trimester is defined as beginning after 24 weeks of fetal development. Nevertheless, the trimester concept--and particularly the division between the second and third ones--commonly arises in discussion of late-stage abortion. Contrary to a widely held public impression, third- trimester abortion is not outlawed in the United States. The landmark Supreme Court decisions, Roe v. Wade abortion on demand up until the time of fetal ``viability.'' After that point, states can limit a women's access to abortion. The court did not specify when viability begins. In Doe v. Bolton the court ruled that abortion could be performed after fetal viability if the operating physician judged the procedure necessary to protect the life or health of the woman. ``Health'' was broadly defined. ``Medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factos--physical, emotional psychological familial and the women's age--relevant to the well-being of the patient.'' the court wrote. ``All these factors may relate to health. This allows the attending physician the room he needs to make his best medical judgment.'' Because of this definition, life-threatening conditions need not exist in order for a women to get a third-trimester abortion. For most of the century, however, viability was confined to the third trimester because neonatal intensive care medicine was unable to keep fetuses younger than that alive. This is not longer the case. In an article published in the journal Pediatrics in 1991, physicians reported the experience of 1,765 infants born with a very low birth weight at seven hospitals. About 20 percent of those babies were considered to be at 25 weeks' gestation or less. Of those that had completed 23 weeks' development, 23 percent survived. At 24 weeks 34 percent survived. None of those infants was yet in the third trimester.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and I rise in strong support of this veto override. And I want to address one very important issue in this debate. I remember reading the original American Medical News article back in 1993 when it came across my desk, when I was still practicing medicine, describing this procedure. And the people on the other side keep talking about these particular cases where we may, on an emotional basis, be able to justify doing such a gruesome procedure, but those doctors, Haskell and McMahon, admitted that in 85 percent of the cases these were in perfectly normal, healthy babies. Partially delivering the baby, arms and legs moving, putting a scissors in the back of the head and then sucking the brains out in a perfectly normal healthy baby, 58 percent of the cases. In the 15 percent of cases where there was birth defects, the majority of them were nonlethal birth defects, cleft lip, cleft palate. What kind of a nation are we, what kind of people are we where we would allow this procedure to be done on not only a healthy baby but a baby that simply has a cleft lip and a cleft palate? Where is our soul? Mr. Speaker, I personally believe that when the President vetoed this bill, it was the most cynical and despicable thing that he has ever done in his 4 years in the White House. I urge all my colleagues to vote in support of this veto override.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and I rise in strong support of this legislation. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Sensenbrenner], and as well in particular, the chairman of the full committee, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Walker], who I know has been working on this issue for more than a year now. This is good legislation. It is going to be very, very helpful to our emerging commercial space industries to help them to be more competitive in future years. In particular we have an emerging situation in my district where the Florida Spaceport Authority is now less than 1 year away from its first commercial space launch. It has been a very slow process in getting the appropriate regulatory authority from the Office of Commercial Space Transportation, allowing them to be able to proceed in this. Fortunately, it appears as though the appropriate regulations will be coming forward. And I know that this legislation will be helping our commercial space industry in Florida and Spaceport Florida to be competitive in the future. I also want to commend the chairman for including in this legislation language that will enable the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to more easily shift critical NASA employees over to the emerging shuttle contractor positions to thus ensure the continued safe operation of our space shuttle. Our space shuttle, as most are aware, went off yesterday morning flawlessly. Indeed every time it launches it is on the news. It is the pride of our Nation. In order to continue in the future as we change the management structure of the shuttle program, that the program continues to function in an efficient but as well in a perfectly safe way, we need to make sure that the critical personnel who are now in civil service positions shift over to the contractor positions and that there is no inappropriate obstacle in existing Federal law to stand in the way of the continued safe operation of the shuttle. So, in closing, I just want to congratulate the chairman and take this moment to congratulate him on the legacy that he is leaving our Nation, for his hard work on behalf of science, space and technology, and say that I know he will be very much missed in the future by myself and many of us on the committee.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Chairman, as a U.S. Army veteran myself, I rise in strong support of H.R. 3308, the United States Armed Forces Protection Act. This bill takes important steps to ensure the protection of our troops overseas. While it may not go as far as some of us would like, it makes considerable progress to ensure that we protect the interests of those who risk their lives by putting on the uniform of the U.S. military. We remember what happened earlier in the Clinton administration, in Somalia, where our United States troops had to rely on U.N. forces for backup. It cost 19 of our men and women in uniform their lives. I will not allow their lives to be forgotten. I will continue aggressively to ensure that our men and women in uniform do not have to rely on the United Nations for backup that may or may not come. H.R. 3308 extends proper protection to the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces, who have been sent to serve in U.N. peacekeeping operations. In particular, the bill prohibits U.S. service members form performing duties under the administrative or tactical control of foreign officers, unless the President certifies to the Congress that such command relationships serve the national security interest of the United States. The bill also directs the President to submit to the Congress first, the national security interest that will be advanced by their mission; second, the size, composition, and involvement of the U.S. forces; third, the command and control relationship of involved U.S. forces and the U.N. command structure, and fourth the exit strategy for U.S. forces. It also requires that members of the armed forces be informed of their unit's mission and their chain of command in any operation to which their unit has been assigned. I also fully support provision which will ensure that our men and women in uniform are not required to wear the insignia of the United Nations or any other foreign entity. I have cosponsored legislation that would protect our men and women from this, and am pleased to support it here today. Finally, I would add that this is the fourth time this Congress has had this issue under consideration. Unfortunately, President Clinton has rejected this proposal before. Perhaps he will change his mind on it and sign the bill this time.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 123. Our country has a historic tradition of receiving immigrants from all around the world. H.R. 123 builds on that tradition and binds us together through the use of English as a common language. Over the past 20 years the Federal Government has increased the number of languages in which it publishes documents and conducts official duties. This has led to a de facto multilanguage policy which is very expensive for the taxpayer. H.R. 123 declares English to be the official language of the United States Government and serves to unit us even more as a Nation. All of us would agree that knowing English is a key to success in the United States. A 1994 study of Southeast Asian refugees in Texas showed that those who knew English earned more than 20 times the annual income of those who did not speak English. Knowing English will open a broad range of opportunities that would otherwise be unattainable. This bill fosters and encourages everyone to learn English. Encouraging immigrants to learn English is the compassionate thing to do and this bill does that. Mr. Speaker, one of the biggest reasons why I am rising in support of this bill is because it is what my mother would want me to do. She passed away in 1991, but she was born to Italian American immigrants and spoke Italian as her first language. She always taught me that this move towards multilingualism in the United States was bad and divisive. On my way over here I was speaking to another Member who told me his high school now conducts official proceedings in two different languages. I think that is wrong. I think the language that binds us together is English, and my mother was right. I encourage everyone to support the rule and to support the bill. Mr. Speaker. As a cosponsor of H.R. 123, The English Language Empowerment Act, I rise in strong support of this bill. We are proud of our Nation's ability to assimilate people from around the world into one cohesive society. The purpose of H.R. 123 is to build upon our Nation's historic tradition as a melting pot of diverse cultures from around the world, and to bind us together through the use of English as a common language. This bill establishes a much needed uniform Government language policy, promotes assimilation, saves taxpayers money, and empowers immigrants to realize the American Dream for themselves. This bill is needed because currently the Federal Government does not have a uniform national language policy on publishing documents or conducting its business. Whether documents are published in a foreign language depends in large part upon which particular Federal statute is involved. In addition, over the past 20 years the Federal Government has increased the official duties it performs in other languages resulting in a very costly de facto multi-language policy. This bill corrects this piecemeal approach by establishing English as the official language of the United States Government and requires the Government to conduct all its official business in English. H.R. 123 will not only establish a uniform national language policy for the Government, but it will promote assimilation of immigrants, rather than isolation and separation. The current policy fails to encourage recent immigrants to learn English. The failure to encourage immigrants to earn English may be the easy thing to do, but it is not the compassionate thing to do. The compassionate thing to do is to encourage immigrants to learn English. A firm grasp of the English language is a key to succeeding in America. Learning English not only helps immigrants assimilate, it is the key to having the opportunity to realize the American Dream. Studies show that people who learn English earn more for their families, and confirm that the ability to speak English can make the difference between a low-wage job and a high-wage managerial, professional, or technical job. In 1994, the Texas Office of Immigration and Refugee Affairs publicized a study of Southeast Asian refugees in Texas. The study showed that individuals proficient in English earned more than 20 times the annual income of those who did not speak English. H.R. 123 empowers each new generation of immigrants the opportunity to realize the American dream. Nothing in this bill would in any way limit the ability to individuals to speak their native tongue. This bill simply limits official Government business to the English language. Not only does this bill benefit the immigrant, it also benefits the taxpayer. There are hundreds of languages spoken in the United States. According to the GAO, The Federal Government already prints many documents in foreign languages including Spanish, Portuguese, French, Chinese, German, Italian, Russian, and others. For American taxpayers the question is where does the printing of these documents in foreign languages stop? This bill ensures that all Americans can count on one language for Government action, polices, documents and proceedings. In conclusion, I support H.R. 123 because it helps recent immigrants by opening up to them a land of opportunity. It will stop the trend towards the separation and isolation. It will encourage assimilation. In supporting this bill I stand with 86 percent of Americans and 81 percent of immigrants who want to make English the official language of the United States.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding the time to me. I would like to echo his comment that this is a red letter day. As a practicing physician in the past, I have seen firsthand the consequences of people not having health insurance and how they will often let minor illnesses go for extended periods of time until they become a serious complication and ultimately lead to greater costs than what they would have been otherwise. I have also seen the consequences of people being excluded from health insurance because of a preexisting medical illness and the consequences of job lock that that can sometimes cause. I honestly looked on with horror and amazement when the Clinton administration put forward their health care plan, which essentially constituted a major power grab of the Federal Government of a huge sector of our economy, a Federal Government that does not have a track record of running things efficiently or better. I felt so strongly that it was possible to introduce reforms that would go a long way to deal with the problems of the high cost of health insurance and the problems of lack of portability of coverage as well as the problem of preexisting illness exclusion. I felt it was really honestly possible to produce a piece of legislation that would take our system which is the best health care system in this country and make modifications in it that would help so many people who do not have health insurance get insurance. Is this a perfect bill? No. But we should never make the perfect the enemy of the good. There are provisions that some of my other colleagues have talked about that were left out of this bill that need to be considered in future legislation. But let us remember this bill addresses portability. It addresses preexisting illness exclusions. It addresses problems of waste, fraud and abuse. It has small business deductibility, tax deduction allowed for long-term care for our seniors. This is a good bill. It is accomplishing these things without a Government takeover of the health care. I urge all my colleagues to support the rule and support the conference report.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman for yielding, and it has been a pleasure for me to be here and advocate for the people in my district, who have been calling out for welfare reform for many years. Mr. Chairman, they know that the current welfare system is broken. The people in my district know that the rate of poverty has not decreased since welfare has been enacted. The average stay on welfare is 13 years, and today illegitimacy rates among many welfare families approach 50 percent. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the bill, and strong support of this rule. H.R. 734 will truly finally end welfare as we know it. It did not take a Republican Congress to end welfare as we know it. This bill makes welfare a helping hand, not a lifetime handout. It places 5-year limits on collecting AFDC benefits. For hardship cases States can exempt 20 percent of their case load from the 5-year limit, and able-bodied people must work after 2 years or lose their benefits. It cuts taxpayer financed welfare for noncitizens and felons. It returns power and flexibility to the States. It ends numerous redundancies within the welfare system by giving block grants to the States and rewards States for moving families from welfare to work. It seeks to halt the rising illegitimacy rates. Moms are encouraged for the first time to identify the father or risk losing benefits by as much as 25 percent. It increases efforts to make deadbeat dads pay child support. And these, of course, are men who father children but then have shirked their financial responsibility for caring for them. It gives cash rewards to the top five States who make the most successful improvement in reducing illegitimacy. As we know, fatherlessness is linked to high juvenile crime rates, high drug abuse rates, and declining educational performance. Support the rule and support the bill. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 3734 the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. This historic welfare reform bill will end welfare as we know it. During the past 30 years, taxpayers have spent $5 trillion on failed welfare programs. What kind of return have the taxpayers received on their investment? The rate of poverty has not decreased at all. Furthermore, the average length of stay on welfare is 13 years. Today's illegitimacy rate among welfare families is almost 50 percent and crime continues to run rampant. Current programs have encouraged dependency, trapped people in unsafe housing, and saddled the poor with rules that are antiwork and antifamily. Clearly, those trapped in poverty and the taxpayers deserve better. This bill overhauls our broken welfare system. This plan makes sure welfare is not a way of life; stresses work not welfare; stops welfare to felons and most noncitizens; restores power and flexibility to the States; and offers States incentives to halt the rise in illegitimacy. By imposing a 5-year lifetime limit for collecting AFDC, this bill guarantees that welfare is a helping hand, not a lifetime handout. Recognizing the need for helping true hardship cases, States would be allowed to exempt up to 20 percent of their caseload from the 5-year limit. In addition, H.R. 3734 for the first time ever requires able bodied welfare recipients to work for their benefits. Those who can work must do so within 2 years or lose benefits. States will be required to have at least 50 percent of their welfare recipients working by 2002. To help families make the transition from welfare to work, the legislation provides $4.5 billion more than current law for child care. Under this bill future entrants into this country will no longer be eligible for most welfare programs during their first 5 years in the United States. Felons will not be eligible for welfare benefits, and State and local jails will be given incentives to report felons who are skirting the rules and receiving welfare benefits. Our current system has proven that the one-size-fits-all welfare system does not work. H.R. 3734 will give more power and flexibility to the States by ending the entitlement status of numerous welfare programs by block granting the money to the States. No longer will States spend countless hours filling out the required bureaucratic forms hoping to receive a waiver from Washington to implement their welfare program. States will also be rewarded for moving families from welfare to work. Finally, this bill addresses the problem of illegitimacy in several ways. H.R. 3734 authorizes a cash reward for the five States most successful in reducing illegitimacy. It also strengthens child support enforcement provisions and requires States to reduce assistance by 25 percent to individuals who do not cooperate in establishing paternity. Lastly, this bill mandates an appropriation grant of $50 million annually to fund abstinence education programs combating teenage pregnancy and illegitimacy. The sad state of our current welfare system and the cycles of poverty and hopelessness it perpetuates are of great concern to me. I believe this bill goes to the heart of reforming the welfare system by encouraging and helping individuals in need become responsible for themselves and their family. I wholeheartedly support this bill because it makes welfare a helping hand in times of trouble, not a hand out that becomes a way of life. I truly believe that this reform will give taxpayers a better return on their investment in helping those in need.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Working Families Flexibility Act. This bill allows private sector employees to have the same opportunities to work flexible hours that Federal, State, and local government workers have enjoyed for more than a decade. Most government workers I have talked to like and want this type of flexibility, and it is wrong to deny private sector employees these same rights. Back in 1938, when the current law was put in place most families had a parent who worked and another who stayed at home. Today, in 60 percent of homes, both spouses work. This is up by over 36 percent in just the past 25 years. It is wrong to deny private sector workers the flexibility they want and need. This bill is about allowing parents to choose to spend more time with their children. Opponents of the bill have raised false claims that the bill does not protect employees. The bill before us offers private sector employees more protections than government workers have today. If the worker protection provisions are inadequate, why did not the opponents of the bill impose more protections for government workers when they were in the majority. The bill has built-in protections for employees. It is at the employee's discretion whether to take comp time or overtime pay. The employee decides. Also, the bill makes it illegal for an employer to pressure employees to take comp time rather than overtime pay. Any employer who engages in such pressure or forces an employee to take comp time rather than overtime pay is subject to penalties which include double the amount in wages owed plus attorneys fees and cost. Also, civil and criminal penalties apply. Clearly workers are protected. Let us stop denying private sector employees the same privileges that government workers have today. Let us support equality. Let us support the bill. Mr. Chairman, in closing, I would like to quote from Bill Clinton when he said, ``You can choose money in the bank or time on the clock. With more Americans working more hours, simply spending more time with the family can be a dream.'' President Bill Clinton, June 24, 1996.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of the bill before us. As a veteran and a practicing physician, I understand firsthand the needs of veterans in underserved areas. The veterans in east-central Florida have suffered for over a decade and a half for lack of adequate veterans medical facilities. Last year this Congress set us on a sound road toward meeting these needs by providing $25 million to meet the outpatient needs of these veterans. H.R. 3118 includes provisions that will allow the VA to contract with local hospitals to meet the inpatient needs of veterans who have sacrificed for our great Nation. Last year, I introduced legislation that would allow the VA to contract in this manner. The bill before us includes similar provisions and I appreciate the chairman for his support of this concept. This bill will allow veterans in underserved areas, like east-central Florida to receive VA medical care right in their own communities. This is what veterans in my district have been telling me they want and I'm pleased to see it before us. Let's pass this bill. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support for H.R. 3118, the Veterans Health Care Eligibility Reform Act. This bill is long overdue and it will ensure that we fulfill our commitments to our veterans. I would like to focus on one particular element of this bill that is very important to the veterans in my district. It was more than 14 years ago that a veterans hospital was first proposed for east-central Florida. Since that time, more politics has been played over this hospital than one can recount. While politicians have enjoyed their sport, the veterans in Brevard and surrounding counties have suffered for lack of adequate veterans medical facilities. Earlier this year the Congress took the right step by providing $25 million for an outpatient clinic. The VA has informed me that this outpatient clinic will meet at least 80 percent of the health care needs of area veterans. This is a good first step in meeting these veteran's needs. I was also pleased that in a letter to me dated July 17, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs committed to issuing a contract for design work by September 1996. The verdict on a hospital for Brevard County is still out. There are some who have suggested holding up the construction of a veterans outpatient clinic and instead holding out for a full hospital. Anyone remotely familiar with the history of the Brevard medical facility recognizes that this would be playing Russian roulette with the lives of veterans and would likely see the possibility of even an outpatient clinic slip away. Earlier this year the veterans of east-central Florida received an authorization for a $25 million outpatient clinic, and Congress and the President already set aside the $25 million needed to fully construct this clinic. While an outpatient clinic may not meet 100 percent of the needs, it will meet 80 percent of the needs and it will do so in less than 2 years. Any delay in moving forward with this clinic may see this money and clinic disappear like the hopes that these veterans have seen fade away so many times before. As a physician who has been put in the unfortunate position of having to refer veterans across the State to a veterans hospital, I understand how critical it is that veterans have access to inpatient care in our own community. That is why I introduced H.R. 2798, the Veterans Health Care Management and Contracting Flexibility Act of 1995. This bill will allow the VA to enter into contracts with local hospitals to meet the inpatient health care needs of area veterans. In other words, while the verdict is still out on Brevard's VA hospital, veterans will be able to receive inpatient care at local hospitals rather than being shipped hours away from home and family. This in no way rules out the possibility of a VA hospital in the future, but it ensures that regardless of what happens, veterans will not continue to suffer for lack of adequate facilities. I am pleased that the provisions of my bill have been incorporated into H.R. 3118. Quite frankly, broad contracting authority should have been permitted years ago. It was wrong to allow veterans to suffer while politicians played. The outpatient clinic and the inpatient contracting will ensure that veterans in east-central Florida have access to health care facilities. I will continue to work with veterans throughout our community to ensure that their health care needs are met. I am pleased to be a part of our constructive effort to ensure that we follow through on our promises to those who have given of themselves to protect our liberty.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from California for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Worker Right to Know Act, which is title IV of the campaign finance bill we are now considering. In doing so, Mr. Chairman, I must take issue with the suggestion from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that it is Republicans who have politicized the issue of compulsory union dues. After all, it was at a special convention of the AFL-CIO that the union announced that it would impose a special assessment on every union member to fund the union's election-year political campaign, a campaign in which the union made its intentions clear, to attack Republican Members of Congress. Also at the convention, the leadership announced its endorsement of the Clinton-Gore reelection campaign. So here you have the Washington union bosses taking more money out of the pockets of union members without any input from the rank and file for the explicit purpose of funding the President's reelection campaign and attacking House Republicans, all of this when recent polling shows that nearly half of union members vote Republican. It has also been suggested by my colleagues on the other side that Republican interest in compulsory union dues is nothing more than a recent political response to the AFL-CIO's transparent attempt to buy the November elections. Unfortunately, such assertions ignore the facts. The fact of the matter is that since 1985, congressional Republicans have introduced more than 20 separate pieces of legislation aimed at providing workers with greater control over their union dues. So let us be clear on this point, it is Washington union bosses and their supporters in the Democrat Party that have recently politicized the issue of compulsory union dues and Republicans who have been working for years to give employees a greater say in how their dues are spent. We may disagree on the policy, but American workers deserve our honesty with regard to politics. I urge my colleagues to support the Worker Right to Know Act.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I rise in strong support of the Ganske amendment. I commend the gentleman from Iowa for bringing this issue forward. I know that many breakthroughs that have helped many of my patients in the past could possibly not have accrued to their benefit if doctors were out there patenting procedures. I think it is wrong for them to be doing that. I wholeheartedly commend the gentleman.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me. I did take the time to meet with some of the Legal Services Corporation representatives in my congressional district to discuss this issue last year after we debated it at some length. I did hear about some of the good things they do representing people who are being unfairly evicted from their housing, helping out the poor. But I did get them to acknowledge that there are Legal Services Corporation lawyers in some localities, unfortunately it was not in mine, that engage in what I would call public advocacy to basically thwart the will of the people. And we have heard examples from the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton] and some of my other colleagues of some of the horrendous cases where the people of the United States want welfare reform, and Legal Services Corporation lawyers are fighting welfare reform in some localities. We heard about Megan's law that gives parents the ability to be notified when sex offenders are moving into their neighborhood. We hear about Legal Services Corporation attorneys advocating against this legislation. I have in front of me a whole list after list of examples of where Legal Services Corporation attorneys are engaging in left-wing liberal advocacy and in many cases going exactly against the will of the people. I guess a great example here is we voted 432 to 0 requiring that criminals give restitution to victims if they have the ability to do so, and, lo and behold, what happens immediately. Now what we are doing, I say to my colleagues, in this body, the people in my district, the majority of the people in my district, have trouble making ends meet. At the end of the month, when they have paid the rent and they have paid the bill, they do not have much money left. They do not like the amount of money that is coming out of their paycheck with taxes. What we are doing is taking taxpayer dollars and applying it to this sort of thing, and I think it is wrong. Oppose this amendment.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of H.R. 3437 the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. This historic welfare reform bill will end welfare as we know it. During the past 30 years, taxpayers have spent $5 trillion on failed welfare programs. What kind of return have the taxpayers received on their investment? The rate of poverty has not decreased at all. Furthermore, the average length of stay on welfare is 13 years. Today's illegitimacy rate among welfare families is almost 50 percent and crime continues to run rampant. Current programs have encouraged dependency, trapped people in unsafe housing, and saddled the poor with rules that are anti-work and anti-family. Clearly, those trapped in poverty and the taxpayers deserve better. This bill overhauls our broken welfare system. This plan makes sure welfare is not a way of life; stresses work not welfare; stops welfare to noncitizens and felons; restores power and flexibility to the States; and seeks to half the rise in illegitimacy. By imposing a 5-year lifetime limit for collecting AFDC, this bill guarantees that welfare is a helping hand, not a lifetime handout. Recognizing the need for helping true hardship cases, States would be allowed to exempt up to 20 percent of their caseload from the 5-year limit. In addition, H.R. 3437 for the first time ever requires able bodied welfare recipients to work for their benefits. Those who can work must do so within 2 years or lose benefits. States will be required to have at least 50 percent of their welfare recipients working by 2002. To help families make the transition from welfare to work, the legislation provides $4.5 billion more than current law for child care to help parents who work. Under this bill noncitizens will no longer be eligible for the major welfare programs. Felons will not be eligible for welfare benefits and State and local jails will be given incentives to report felons who are skirting the rules and receiving welfare benefits. Our current system has proven that the one-size-fits-all welfare system does not work. H.R. 3437 will give more power and flexibility to the States by ending the entitlement status of numerous welfare programs by block granting the money to the states. No longer will States spend countless hours filling out the required bureaucratic forms hoping to receive a waiver from Washington to implement their welfare program. States will also be rewarded for moving families from welfare to work. Finally and most importantly, this bill addresses illegitimacy by allowing States to limit cash benefits for teen mothers. States will be allowed to set family caps that would stop the practice of increasing welfare payments for every additional child a recipient has while on welfare. States can also stop payment to unmarried teens and make them conditional on the mother staying in school and living with an adult. This legislation seeks to reverse the increase in illegitimacy by also increasing efforts to establish paternity and crack down on deadbeat dads. The sad state of our current welfare system and the cycles of poverty and hopelessness it perpetuates are of great concern to me. I believe this bill goes to the heart of reforming the welfare system by encouraging and helping individuals in need become responsible for themselves and their family. I wholeheartedly support this bill become it makes welfare a helping hand in times of trouble, not a handout that becomes a way of life. I truly believe that this reform will give taxpayers a better return on their investment in helping those in need. Mr. de la GARZA. Mr. Chairman, House Democrats and Republicans, Senate Democrats and Republicans, and President Clinton share a common goal--all agree that welfare reform is urgently needed. Reform is needed not only for the recipients of welfare, who many times are trapped in a cycle of poverty from which they cannot escape, but also for the American taxpayers who deserve a better return on their investment in our future. Over the last year, the food stamp provisions in the various welfare reform proposals have come to look very much alike. We have reached agreement on dozens of provisions. Yet, there continues to be serious policy differences on several key issues. We must resolve these differences so that we will have real welfare reform that works for both low income families and American taxpayers. We want congressional passage of a bill that the President will sign. Determining food stamp reform in the context of budget reconciliation causes us to loose sight of the people the Food Stamp Program is intended to serve. We must remember that our goal is to reform welfare in order to move people toward self-sufficiency. Reform by itself is a hollow word. Reform for reform's sake is meaningless. We aren't OMB, CBO, or GAO. We can't work in the vacuum of numbers only. We cannot let the bureaucrats with the green eye shades determine what path reform will take. We are Members of Congress. It is our responsibility to put faces with these numbers. We must interject the human element into the process in order to ensure that real need is addressed in welfare reform. We must ensure that our children and the aged and disabled are not left unprotected. We must remember that a dollar spent now can actually result in saving thousands of dollars later, if we help produce a future taxpaying citizen. We must determine the policy that will move people toward self- sufficiency. This must be a policy-driven bill, not one that is driven by empty, faceless numbers that are wrong as many times as they are right. Our constituents don't want a handout. They want jobs. They want economic development. They want the American dream. These are the people we must help. These are the people for whom we must redesign these programs to help them achieve their desire of becoming successful citizens. We are particularly concerned that this bill will jeopardize the nutritional status of millions of poor families because of a basic misunderstanding of how the program works. The perception is that this program is out of control, that hundreds of thousands of families are added to the food stamp rolls every month. The reality is something very different. Over the last year and a half, as the economy has improved, food stamp participation has actually dropped by over 1 million people. This vital program is clearly filling a very real need. If the need isn't there, the program doesn't continue to expand, but if the need is there, the program is there to meet it. The block grant provisions in H.R. 3734 sets funding at levels well below that necessary to feed hungry families in times of recessions or if food prices increase. The total loss of food stamp funding to States that choose the block grant will be over $2.5 billion. If block grants had been chosen by all States in 1990, the Food Stamp Program would have served 8.3 million fewer children. Castle-Tanner does not include the block grant authority. To assure adequate nutrition and the good health of our poor families, the calculation of food stamp benefits must take into account extremely high housing expenses. H.R. 3734 limits this calculation, leaving poor families with children who pay more than half of their income for housing with less money to buy food. This provision alone will reduce benefits to these families by over $4 billion over 6 years, resulting in more hungry children. Castle-Tanner does not include this harsh limitation. We all want people on welfare to be self-sufficient--they want to be self-sufficient. But, the way to help people become self-sufficient is not to deny them food stamps after 4 months. Eighty percent of the able-bodied recipients between the ages of 18 and 50 receive food stamps on a temporary basis already, they leave the program within a year. H.R. 3734 will simply kick 700,000 people off the program each month, without a helping hand to find a job. What these people need most is the opportunity to work--job training, or a job slot. Castle- Tanner will give them that helping hand if they are unable to find work on their own after 6 months. The Castle-Tanner alternative achieves significant deficit reduction. The food stamp provisions save $20 billion over a 6-year period. The majority's bill last year was intended to achieve $16 billion over 7 years. Castle-Tanner goes well beyond that level of savings, and yet we have been accused of not supporting welfare reform. The American people are not mean-spirited. They do not want children to be poor and hungry. We must remember that we are reforming the programs that impact the most vulnerable of our constituents. We must remember the faces of the poor and hungry of our Nation. Let the record show that the minority strongly supports welfare reform, but not at the cost the Nation's poor families and children, not at the cost of the Nation's future.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding time to me, and I rise in support of H.R. 3734, the Republican welfare reform bill. In my opinion, Madam Chairman, our reform bill is a very good start. I think further reforms will probably be needed in the future to ultimately get the Federal Government out of the business of trying to help the poor, because the Federal Government is completely incompetent and incapable of helping the poor. Indeed, I feel that the current system is almost criminal, and the victims are children. That point was very vividly driven home to me when I had the opportunity a few years ago to meet a businessman in my district who had recently relocated from Oklahoma. I remember him describing to me how he had taken part in a program in Oklahoma where he went into the inner city in Oklahoma and took part in a program where they would read books to these young children ages 5, 6, and 7, you can help improve their reading scores. We all know how important reading is to overall academic performance. He told me a story that totally amazed me. When he first started taking part in the program he would frequently ask these kids what they wanted to be and what they wanted to do when they grew up. A fairly high percentage of them said they wanted to be on welfare and they wanted to collect a check. Contrary to what most children learn when they are growing up, that they want to either become a fireman or a policeman or a mother or a daddy and work, these kids had actually learned that they did not want to work. It has been said by many people, kids will frequently model what you do and not what you say. The current system, I think all we need to do is go into our inner cities and see what is going on: The high crime rates, the high drug abuse rates that are very, very closely linked to our welfare system and the high incidence of fatherlessness. I believe that the Federal Government is completely incapable of helping these people, contrary to all the claims that are made by people on the other side of the aisle. My colleague from California made a comment about making sure children are alive, well-fed, and healthy. We are certainly making sure they are alive in the current system, but we are certainly making sure they are not healthy. There is a tremendous spiritual poverty that goes with the current system, and I believe our bill, H.R. 3734, which has some serious work requirements and seriously tries to address the terrible issue of illegitimacy, is a good bill. It is a good start on dealing with the welfare disaster that currently exists today. I encourage all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support the bill, and the President of the United States to do what he said he was going to do, and that is sign welfare reform.