[Pages H3831-H3837]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

WORKING FAMILIES OF AMERICA BEING MISTREATED BY 106TH CONGRESS

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fletcher). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, the working families of this Nation are still
being trampled on by this 106th Congress. They are being grossly
mistreated in two basic ways: One is indifference and neglect on
certain key issues, and the other is active oppression in certain ways.
Indifference and neglect is reflected in the fact that we are not
concerned about a minimum wage increase. There is a rumor that the
leadership of the majority party has decided that it will agree to a
minimum wage vote and that it will take place sometime later rather
than sooner, and they are delaying because they want to make sure we
get close to the election and be able to say, well, we voted for a
minimum wage, or we allowed it on the floor and let the Democrats vote
for it, so we did our job.
And, of course, there is a rumor also that the minimum wage being
proposed by the majority is 25 cents a year for the next 4 years. An
increase of 25 cents per year for the next 4 years means in 4 years the
American worker would have a dollar increase instead of the two-step
increase being proposed by the Democrats.
But there is no hurry. We have an unprecedented prosperity in the
Nation. We have a situation where the value of the stock market in 10
years has grown by $10 trillion. We had the assets and the value of the
stock market in 1989 at $3 trillion. Now it is $13 trillion. With a $10
trillion increase in the value of the stock market, we can see that
there is a great increase in the wealth and prosperity in America at
certain levels. Why not share that with the working families? Why not
in the most basic way make certain that the wealth of the Nation in
some small way benefits the entire Nation?
A minimum wage is just one tiny part of that effort. Being willing to
finance or support more generous health care is another. The President
is proposing soon a new benefit in Medicare, should be in Medicaid
also, a new benefit which would cover prescription drugs. In this time
of great prosperity, the least we could do is to make the miracles of
science available at a cheaper cost to all the people who need them in
terms of health care. Prescription drugs ought to be covered by
Medicare and Medicaid.
We talk a lot about Medicare and we forget that Medicaid is designed
to serve the very poorest and they deserve to have the same kind of
increase. We should not have two tiers of health care in America.
Second class health care is inadequate health care. There should only
be one class of health care. But we are refusing to deal with that in a
forthright manner on a timetable that is meaningful because we just do
not seem to care.

{time} 2045

There is an indifference, an indifference to the poor, an
indifference to the plight of the working families who are not sharing
the great boost in our wealth. That great jump from $3 trillion in 1989
to $13 trillion in 1999 is not felt by a lot of people who are still
out there struggling to make it. So jobs, health care, investment in
education are all obvious kinds of actions that should be taken by the
government. This Congress, acting in concert with the President, should
make certain that we take advantage of this boom in prosperity to take
care of some of our problems.
But there exists in this Congress an attitude which goes in the
opposite direction. It is stubborn, it is unyielding, it is
wrongheaded, but it keeps going on. Take, for example, what happened in
the vote on the supplemental budget, or the development of a long-
awaited supplemental budget, which included the President's request for
$6 billion for the Kosovo war, a war which I think is very necessary, a
war which I think we could not afford to have not conducted or been a
part of. I do not think we could have walked away from the genocide
being committed by the Yugoslavia regime and held up our heads. We have
seen it happen too many times already in this century.
What Hitler did was on a grander, more massive scale. They had gas
chambers and ovens and millions died, but the numbers are not as
important as the action and the kind of thing happening in Kosovo.
Certainly if it only means thousands dying, it is still significant and
it is happening over and over again. We have seen it happen in
Cambodia, we have seen it happen in Rwanda. It is about time that we
did something to send a message to the dictators and the sovereign
predators that exist throughout the world that somewhere the civilized
nations of the world are willing to take a stand against this kind of
murderous activity against human beings.
We have done that in Kosovo. So we needed our participation in that
effort. The $6 billion was requested by the President. But instead of
that bill moving ahead with $6 billion plus the emergency aid requested
for South America, for Central America as a result of the floods and
the extra aid that was needed for the weather disasters that took place
in the Midwest, we had a whole lot of other things piled on top of it
and a $6 billion request became a $15 billion request, a $15 billion
request most of which came out of the surplus. It was deemed emergency
funding and the surplus which is around $100 billion, I think, about
the same, a little more maybe in the coming fiscal year, it is going to
be about the same amount; the surplus was used for most of it. They
could have used the surplus to cover it all, but to make a point the
majority decided to offset $2 billion, take away from other programs $2
billion worth of money to cover part of the spending.
Now, the emergency in Central America, the emergency in the Midwest
with the tornadoes and storms, et cetera, those were emergencies. They
clearly rank as emergencies. Why did we have to make the point that
they have to be offset? The point that I want to make is that in the
process of the offset, who did they go after? The poorest people in
America. The bulk of the cuts for the offset came from domestic
accounts, including $1.25 billion from the food stamp program, and $350
million from Section 8 low-income housing programs as well as $22.4
million from the Labor Department contingency fund related to
unemployment insurance.
They reached into the programs that serve the poorest people,
programs that

[[Page H3832]]

may benefit the working families on the very lowest levels, and they
took out the money to offset and make the point that they want to make
cuts in social programs.
There is a coming need, according to the budget that has been
promulgated by the majority, a coming need to cut further, maybe $20
billion out of the domestic budget. Some of it could come from defense
if they wanted to, but it will probably come out of the domestic
budget; $20 billion will be cut and the preview of coming attractions
we have seen already. The way the supplemental budget was handled tells
you they are going to get it from the people who are the weakest, the
people who have no power, working families, poor families, poor people
who are not even working, the elderly, those who need Medicaid as well
as Medicare; they will suffer as a result of the coming $20 billion
cuts or more that may be proposed.
Certainly they are not proposing investing any more money in
education. Education, most of which would go into our public school
system, is the place that you benefit working families most. Working
families' children need an education. There is no way to survive, there
is no way for them to take advantage of the prosperity that keeps
growing and growing as a result of high technology. The jobs that are
available are jobs that require education. You are not going to be in
on it, it gets worse all the time, the demands are greater and greater.
I was at a job training consortium in New York City yesterday and
they were telling me about the fact that we just need mechanics. In
addition to the known need for information technology people, 300,000
vacancies in information technology, they need mechanics. They could
hire 30,000 mechanics in the metropolitan area if they could find them.
Why do they not have mechanics who would work on trucks and tractors
and some of the machinery that industry needs? Why do they not have
them? Because the demands have gone up educationally. There are
computers and various devices being employed now in trucks and cars and
various vehicles that require a little more education than a mechanic
had to have 10 years ago or 5 years ago.
So we have a problem, a creeping problem of people in basic areas, as
basic as mechanics, auto mechanics, that cannot survive because they do
not have the personnel to do the job because the education system is
failing to produce that pool of people which is educated. A broad pool
of people educated, you can reach in and pull out all kinds of people.
The range of people with various kinds of skills and know-how would be
great. You would get the technicians, the mechanics, the theoreticians,
the scientists, the geniuses. That certain percentage of people would
come out if you have a broad range of people in the pool because we are
educating the masses. Mass education is needed more now than ever
before.
But working families who need to have free education in the public
school system, free but first rate, it cannot be education in
facilities that are falling down, it cannot be education in situations
where kids are afraid to go to school because of threats to their
health and safety. It has to be the kind of education that everybody
wants for their child here in this Congress.
I know large numbers of Members of Congress send their children to
private school. It is most unfortunate that they have given up on the
public education system, but as public officials, whatever choice they
choose to make privately, it is disloyal and dangerous to have public
officials give up on our education system.
So when you consider what happened in our $15 billion supplemental
appropriation, you can see how trampling on working families is a
problem. And there is going to be more trampling on working families.
It is not just neglect. It is also active oppression to take the money
out of the programs that benefit the poor the most. It is even worse
than that. The active attack, the oppression which is very aggressive,
continues to go on in the Committee on Education and the Workforce. I
serve as the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Workforce
Protections. As the ranking Democrat on Workforce Protections, I will
be the first to tell you that the name of the committee under this
majority Republican administration ought to be changed. It is not
workforce protection that they are concerned about. It is workforce
persecution. It is workforce oppression. Because every bill that is
introduced by the majority on that committee is an attempt to make life
more difficult for working families.

We have three coming up very soon we have just passed recently in the
Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, and now it is going to go to the
full committee, and they are a continuation of what was started in the
104th Congress and continued in the 105th Congress, and now it is done
on a sort of a guerrilla warfare basis. It is not talked about as much
but it is still the same agenda. They are attempting to take away
rights that workers have won over the last 50 years.
There is a bill, H.R. 987. It is an attempt to block the
implementation of any ergonomic standards, standards which relate to
the fact that there are jobs which require repetitive motions that end
up in injuries and debilitation of people's muscular faculties; they
cannot function. Carpal tunnel syndrome is one of them. Back injuries
are a large part of it, people who have repetitive kinds of activities
that strain certain parts of their bodies. That is the broad topic of
ergonomics the majority on the committee do not even want to have
discussed. They do not want to allow the Department of Labor, the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration under the Department of
Labor to do what they have been doing for years, establish a set of
standards to relate to these workplace injuries, workplace dangers.
So they have H.R. 987 which ironically the Republican majority on the
committee calls the Workplace Preservation Act. It is an attempt to
make the workplace more dangerous by blocking an effort to deal with a
clear and present form of injuries that we have been discussing for the
last 15 years. So H.R. 987 is one of those examples of an attack on
working families through a reduction in the safety provisions in the
workplace. There are more than 6,000 people who die every year in our
workplace situation, and then many, many others who are injured. This
attack on the workers continues by the Republican majority.
They have another one, H.R. 1381. It is an attempt to sabotage
overtime payment rates by excluding bonus income. H.R. 1381 is
ironically called Rewarding Performance in Compensation Act. But they
have a way of reaching in to take out the income that is figured in the
bonus in order to reduce the rate of hourly pay so that that is not
included when you pay a person overtime. It is a little guerrilla
trick, it is almost something you would not see or not respond to if
you were not very alert. But it is an attempt to sabotage overtime
payment rates by excluding bonus income. H.R. 1381, another attempt to
reduce the benefits of working families.
H.R. 1439 is another one. That attempts to undermine the OSHA,
Occupational Safety and Health Administration's enforcement by misusing
the self-audit process. We have a self-auditing process that we
encourage. We want to make a partnership between government and
industry. But they want to allow industries to audit themselves and
then not allow the result of the audit, which determines whether or not
they have certain hazardous conditions in the workplace, in the plant,
in the garage, whatever unit of employment this is. After they complete
the audit, if they identify things that are wrong, they are allowed to
keep it secret and we are saying, ``No, you have to reveal what is
there.'' The self-audit process would be misused if you made your
survey and audited yourself, identified hazards, and then refused to
correct them because, of course, it might cost a great deal, but you
keep them secret, nobody else knows about it. Of course you would fire
any employee who also knows about it and then would report it. So we
have H.R. 1439 which again, an ironical title, is described as the
Safety and Health Audit Promotion and Whistleblower Improvement Act of
1999. The Safety and Health Audit Promotion and Whistleblower
Improvement Act of 1999 is an attempt to do just the opposite. It is
going to make the workplace less safe.
We have another bill, an alternative which we will offer at the final
markup

[[Page H3833]]

of the full committee which is entitled ``The Whistleblower Protection
Act.'' That is H.R. 1851 which I introduced as a countervailing force
against the phony H.R. 1439.
But I give you examples of concrete bills, the business that is going
on here in this place. We are moving at a very slow pace. Things that
ought to be done and ought to be on the agenda are not on the agenda.
But the guerrilla warfare against working families, against workers in
the workplace, the guerrilla warfare goes on. We ought to come to grips
with the fact that this is wrongheaded, stubborn, unyielding, and at a
time like this very dangerous in America. We should be investing in our
workers in every way instead of oppressing them and neglecting them.

{time} 2100

In another area, education, which I talk about often, education
reform is still rhetoric. We are talking, always when we talk about
education about nickels and dimes and lots of words.
Everybody has adopted some kind of education platform, everybody is
in favor of improving and reforming education, but nobody wants to
spend significant amounts of dollars. Words instead of dollars is the
order of the day with respect to education. Education reform is
rhetoric, too much rhetoric in the area of the majority; and in many
cases, in the minority, too, there is too much rhetoric and too little
commitment to real dollars for education.
School construction is one of the tests of whether or not we are only
concerned with rhetoric and only going to play word games with the
voters. Or are we really going to do something significant about
education?
The voters have given us a mandate. As my colleagues know, it is one
of the few times in history where we have the focus groups and polls,
everything keeps repeating the message over and over again. The voters
of America want the Congress of the United States, and the President
and the entire government to significantly take steps to improve
education, to give Federal aid to education in the process of trying to
improve education.
Now, because the voters are saying that we will get plenty of
rhetoric from both sides, but there is contempt for the whole public
education process that is expressed in many ways. They express it in
ways which relate to neglect and abandonment and indifference, but also
it is sometimes expressed in a very active way. As I said before, there
are actions taken which are aggressively against working families and
things that working families need. Education and investment in
education by the government is one of the things that working families
would benefit from greatly, and they need it.
We saw on the floor of the House today a vote which demonstrates
great contempt for education, a great contempt for the whole research
process. It happens to be an agricultural appropriations bill, and the
agriculture appropriations bill, in the hassling back and forth for
reasons that I do not clearly understand, the majority knows what it is
doing; but for reasons that certainly are not noble and reasons that
are not reasonable and were not laid out and described to the Members
of Congress in any respectful details, a huge across-the-board cut in
agricultural research, something like $100 million cut in agricultural
research.
Now, agricultural research is at the heart of America's great food
production system. As my colleagues know, agricultural research, the
research, the educational part of it, the egghead part of it, that
draws great contempt obviously from the majority party members. Instead
of them dealing with subsidies which may be wasteful or the Farmers
Home Loan Mortgage Program, and there are a lot of wasteful programs in
agriculture just as there are in some other places in the government,
but because they have constituencies and because the ol' boys network
demands that they be protected, they are protected. But academia and
research, the people who are on the cutting edge of improving
agriculture and responsible for the fact that Americans enjoyed the
best food production system in the world, we get the best food at the
lowest prices, and everything happened by accident.
There is a long history involving education and research starting
with the Morrill Act which created the land grant colleges. The model
for land grant colleges was Thomas Jefferson, and the University of
Virginia was the first State university. It was a very wise move by
Thomas Jefferson who made, of course, numerous wise moves and set
certain standards for our entire country that we still should be very
grateful for and set us on a course that has proven to be very
positive.
Jefferson was not in favor of a national university. He did not want
one big, huge university in Washington similar to the Sorbonne, to the
Oxford chain in London. He wanted each State to have its own
university, and Virginia, of course, was the first example, and later
the Morrill Act established land grants for every State. The Federal
land grant colleges were established, colleges and universities were
established; and going beyond just the establishment of land grant
colleges, they were given a mandate for practical education, practical
education starting with an assumption that agriculture could be
improved greatly if it benefited from science and education.
So applied science in the area of agriculture became the driving
force that took our farmers, long before farmers anywhere else in the
world, into a whole new realm of production, greatly improving the
yield of the land, greatly increasing the kind of production that
resulted in our having a tremendous amount of surplus products, as we
still do in many areas.
This agriculture research, as my colleagues know, the experimental
station, the theoretical base in the universities, the county agents to
take it out to the farmers and show them how to apply it, it is one of
the great things we should be very proud of, dissemination system for
knowledge. As the knowledge was generated in the universities and the
experimental stations, it was taken out to the farmers; the farmers
applied it, and you got a result.
That is all based on agricultural research. It begins with the
research.
So we just walked onto the floor today and found an amendment to wipe
out $100 million worth of agriculture research. Is that responsible
legislation? Are working families going to benefit from a crippling of
our agriculture production system? There are always problems, as my
colleagues know, in terms of new kinds of bugs and viruses and various
kinds of things that go on and on that can wipe out gains that are made
over the years if they are not researched, if they do not keep up with
them.
So even in the area of agriculture where we have such a sterling
record of performance, today we found the reckless attitude towards the
things that matter most to ordinary Americans take hold and in one fell
swoop we wiped out some basic parts of our agriculture research system.
Then, as my colleagues know, I think that a lot of this preoccupation
with the reduction of programs that benefit working families, that
benefit people who are in greatest need in our Nation, a lot of this
preoccupation and obsession is based on the fact that eventually we are
going to have a proposal on the floor for a huge tax cut, a huge tax
cut for the people who are benefiting most from the prosperity that we
have generated already.
I said before that the stock market value has gone from $3 trillion
in 1989 to $13 trillion in 1999. So do the rich need a tax cut? Do they
need some help? As my colleagues know, why are we preoccupied with
making the budget safe for a tax cut? Why are we willing to cut food
stamps and willing to cut low-income housing in order to make the
budget safe for a tax cut? But that is what is coming. The Republican
tax cut crouches in the bush like a wounded lion. It is there, it is
not going to go away.

One of the problems we have is that the people who represent and care
about working families, the great majority of our Nation, of course,
made up of working families, those people do not have a tax program for
working families. Working families have suffered the biggest tax
increase of any group in the last 20 years, the payroll tax, Social
Security and Medicare. Those payroll taxes have jumped more percentage-
wise than any other taxes. They hit the people on the very bottom.
Nobody is proposing to relieve them. I have a few proposals that I

[[Page H3834]]

would like to offer, and I will offer them in a few minutes.
As my colleagues know, my point is, you need a whole platform, I
guess, for working families, and we do not have it. My friends in
organized labor, as my colleagues know, they have things that they care
about that they are always telling us about, and those are the right
kinds of things that working people need; but it all comes in bits and
pieces.
We need a whole platform which lays out the need for working families
being given their fair share of the great American prosperity in many
ways. The Republican tax cut should be answered by a proposal for a tax
cut for working families as well.
Between now and Election Day in November 2000 we must lift up a
meaningful platform for working families. The showdown will come
sometime in the fall of the year 2000. The pattern has been the same
for the last, and it will probably be the same as it has been for the
last 4 years in the conflict between a Republican-controlled Congress,
a Democratically-controlled White House.
The really important measures are going to come down to a negotiation
session at the White House between the majority in the Congress and the
White House, the President. The really big decisions are going to be
made then. What we do with this surplus is really going to really be
determined then. Whether we are going to allow working families to have
a share of the wealth of America through programs that benefit them
will be determined then.
So we have a scenario. We have time, but we have to start now
visiting a platform for working families which has all of these
components; and you know we have to come to grips with the fact that
there is a mind-set in this Nation maybe among powerful people that
they do not have to be concerned with the poor. The poor are poor
because they did not make it, they are poor because they deserve to be
poor. They are not wealthy, they are not able to take care of
themselves without some help because that is the way it is, and that is
the way it deserves to be, and why should the Nation care?
As my colleagues know, we have whipped the welfare mothers to death,
and they are becoming a nonentity in the political discussion. They
have been whipped so often and so much, until they almost just
disappeared. They may be still aching out there, there may be
situations where we are causing more harm than good because we are
putting families in a bind, and the children are suffering, and those
suffering children are going to create great problems in the future for
our health care system, our education system, our corrections system,
prison system. As my colleagues know, we may be generating a lot of
problems.
Right now, they are invisible. We beat them to death, and now we are
going after working families in the workplace, take their overtime,
take away safety provisions, et cetera, because there is no ethic which
says we have a responsibility to these people.
Let me just take the conversation in a new direction. Because of the
war in Kosovo, I think we ought to stop and think, as my colleagues
know, and it certainly brings to mind it is one more situation where we
are at war, there is no threat to the United States, and there are a
lot of elements there that do not fit the description of the war
against Hitler.
As my colleagues know, World War II was a war where there was a real
threat to the whole Western world, and it was just a matter of if we
stood in line, if we did nothing, our time would come. So between, as
my colleagues know, Tojo and Hitler we had to act, and it was a war
which definitely was a war to save our own way of life. There may be
doubts about other wars, but we had the same rationale in the Korean
war and in the Vietnam war, and we always made the assumption that, you
know, you had to do this, the domino theory of fighting the Communists;
if you do not stop them there, they will keep going.
I do not want to get into all of the various arguments, pro and con.
Let us just accept war as a fact of life. Let us accept the fact also
that the most any citizen can do for their country is place their lives
at risk in a war. I mean, I do not know of anything greater that any
citizen can do for his Nation, whether they are drafted and forced to
go or whether they volunteer, that they are in a situation where they
are on the firing line, their lives are at risk, than they are offering
this supreme price. And of course, if they are injured and become
casualties, they pay a great price, and of course, if they are killed
in combat, they die. That is the supreme price, as my colleagues know,
to have to give your life. So I do not think there will be any
disagreement.
Let me just point out the fact that, mind you, and I got these
figures on casualties from the Pentagon, from the Archives, which got
them, of course, from Pentagon research, so they are sound figures.

{time} 2115

Who dies in the wars? Who dies? There is a lot of contempt always
directed at our big cities, our inner-cities, where the poor live
mostly. One of the things that is coming out over and over again, and
some Democrats are as guilty as Republicans, is they do not want to do
anything about the public school system, because if you had legislation
which appropriated large amounts of money for school construction and
you did it on the basis of need, where the oldest schools are and the
needs are and they do not have libraries and laboratories, buildings
are more than 75 years old, if you did it on that basis, most of the
money would go to the big cities. They have the greatest need in that
area.
Just like we have an insane argument now that is being promulgated by
the Committee on Transportation, I think in the Senate, in the other
body, that need relates to the fact they say Los Angeles and New York
are getting too much transit money, too much mass transit money.
Los Angeles and New York are the places where you have most of the
mass transit. New York has more than 30 percent of all the mass transit
in the country, of the riders, and yet we do not get 30 percent of the
funding. The amount we get, however, has aroused the ire of certain
people and they want to cut down the amount New York gets or Los
Angeles gets in transit money. That is where the people are.
Why do we have large amounts of casualties come out of the big cities
in every war. World War I, World War II, the Korean conflict, the
Vietnam conflict, where did most of the casualties come from? The big
states with the big cities.
New York has always led in casualties, even back to the Gettysburg
battle. The largest numbers of casualties at Gettysburg were soldiers
from New York State. They did not break it down by city, but I assure
you most of them were poor immigrants out of the cities.
But I will not go back to that. I am not interested in discussing the
fact that valor and willingness to fight and all kinds of conditions
are in motion to generate casualties. But the fact is that the
casualties come out of the places where people live, where the
population is. That is where you are going to have the people to put
their lives at risk, the people who died, who paid the supreme price.
They will be the people that come from the areas where the most people
are. It is simple arithmetic.
New York in World War I, there were total casualties of 35,100
official casualties. Out of those there were 7,307 combat deaths, those
causalities, larger than any other state. For some reason California in
World War I was very low. I think maybe because it was not as highly
urbanized and the poor were not as concentrated then as they are now.
Whatever the reason, New York.
Pennsylvania had 29,576 casualties, 5,996 deaths in World War I. By
the way, Pennsylvania has Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, the big cities.
Illinois has Chicago, Springfield, big cities: 15,000 casualties, 3,000
combat deaths. Ohio, Cleveland and Cincinnati, big cities, 14,487
casualties, 3,073 deaths. Massachusetts, with Boston and a couple other
big cities, 11,455 total casualties, 2,253 deaths. Michigan, with
Detroit, 9,000. New Jersey, a small highly urbanized state, 8,776
casualties. There is a pattern.
The pattern is the same in World War II. The casualties went up a
great deal. New York, 89,656 total casualties, 27,659 deaths in combat
from New York State. Why? Because they were braver than anybody else?
Maybe. I do not know. The important thing is that is

[[Page H3835]]

because that is where the people are. Larger numbers came from New
York, because that is where the people are, first of all, and probably
that is where the poorest people are who were drafted in larger
numbers, and they went off and fought and died for their country.
Why do we treat that class of people with great contempt now?
Pennsylvania, 81,000 casualties, 24,000 died in combat. Illinois, where
Chicago is located, 54,000 casualties, 17,000 died in combat. Ohio,
49,000 casualties, 15,000 died in combat. They came out of the big
cities where the people lived. California in World War II, more
urbanized, 47,000 total casualties, 17,000 died in combat.
Korea, New York had 8,780 casualties, 2,249 combat deaths.
Pennsylvania, again, second, Illinois, third, Ohio, same pattern.
Vietnam, the same pattern: New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois,
Massachusetts, Ohio, Michigan, California. Simple arithmetic.
The point is, the people who die, who pay the supreme price for their
country, come out of the big states and the big cities. Therefore, we
have every right to treat them with great respect. We should honor the
dead from these areas by making certain that the living always are
given the fullest possible benefits the government can offer.
Why are we abandoning the big city school systems when so many
ancestors of the present children in those systems paid such a high
price to create and maintain the America that we have now? Think about
it. Think about it.
The people who died, who paid the highest price to keep our Nation
going, deserve to be respected at all times, not the present attitude,
the wrong-headedness, the unyielding stubbornness toward poor people
and working families that has taken hold among decisionmakers, not
among the voters.
The voters say we want education to be the number one priority of the
government. The decisionmakers in Washington say all right, we will
play games with you and pretend it is number one, but if you look at
the appropriations process, we are not appropriating that kind of money
for education.
We had a bill last year which authorized $218 billion for highways
and transportation, $218 billion. There was money for mass transit in
there. That is part of what is being appropriated this year. They are
having a big debate about taking away some of the mass transit funds
from New York where the riders live. Where the people are, for some
reason, our hearts and our appropriations do not go.
There is some flaw maybe in our whole system. The grand compromise
that our forefathers made when they established the Nation, that they
had to make because the states existed before the Nation, the grand
compromise of giving two representatives to every state created a
powerful body which represents a minority, and that body has over the
last 20 to 25 years essentially been anti-urban, anti the population
centers of the Nation, anti-policies that would benefit the great
masses. So we have a reversion kind of thing going here in our great
democracy, and our great democracy, one-man, one-vote, is being diluted
and distorted in a way which results in policies and power which hurts
the great majority. The places where the people live are getting the
worst attention or the least attention in terms of their needs.
Education is a clear area of great need. In Kosovo we have had zero
casualties, so far have zero casualties, but if ground troops had been
needed they would have come from the same places that they always come
from, in large quantities they would come out of the big cities.

Go and look at the Vietnam Wall. I love the Vietnam Wall as a
monument because it broke the pattern. No more ever will we have tombs
of unknown soldiers. Tombs of unknown soldiers mask the great tragedy
of war. The fact that the Vietnam memorial lists the names one by one,
they are all written there, they are all honored for what they have
done in terms of paying the supreme price for their country, they stand
out as individuals. I have seen many people cry at that wall because it
comes home personally. That is the way war ought to be depicted. It is
a very personal kind of set of tragedies.
``Saving Private Ryan'', Spielberg's great movie, starts out and is
based on the premise that a whole family has contributed a certain
number of sons and the last son ought to be saved. I think that in the
beginning of the movie when they drive out to the house to meet the
mother, it is a very poor family, relatively speaking, a poor family
that has given those sons. That is a pattern of World War I, of World
War II. Why do we have contempt in our policies for the people that we
expect to die for America?
Madam Speaker, I will submit a little summary that I made called Big
State, Big City Casualties, which lists some of the things that I have
just said about where the casualties are, in which states, and the
statistics are by state, and also indicates the cities located in those
states.
I have, of course, a bigger record that is more complicated. It lists
all the states. In the case of the war in Vietnam they even list the
casualties by race. You find that the black casualties there are
greater than the proportion of blacks in the population. In Vietnam
certainly, when they kept statistics by race, some of the same people
were treated with great contempt as we abandon our school systems and
abandon our safety net, health care services, welfare. Those same
people paid the supreme price for our country in large numbers. Let us
stop and think about the pattern of exploitation, negative, abandonment
of working families in America.
We need a tax plan which addresses itself to the needs of working
families. Not only are we in a situation where the only targets for
cuts, for taking away benefits that have existed for years, are
programs that benefit working families and poor families, the poor who
do not work, the elderly, the disabled, a lot of people who are not
working who benefit from these programs, we are not only targeting the
cuts for them, we are targeting the benefits of government policy to
the rich.
We have got tax proposals that are going to be brought out and put on
the table between now and the end of this appropriations process, and,
of course, they will be pursued again next year in the final showdown
that takes place in this Congress, this two year span. There are going
to be tax cuts on the table and a bargaining process, and we are
probably going to end up with some kind of tax cut.
All those people who are benefiting from the great increase in
wealth, the jump from $3 trillion to $13 trillion, a large amount of
that is what you call unearned income. Unearned income is a term I did
not invent, but it is all the money you make that does not come from
wages directly.
Wage earners provide the principal support for the Federal
Government. Almost two-thirds of Federal revenue comes from income and
Social Security taxes that are paid by workers, people who earn wages.
They are the ones that provide the taxes. It is taxes on earned income.
By contrast, income taxes on unearned income, stocks and bonds and
that kind of thing, produce only about 12 percent of the total Federal
revenue. I propose, and I think that the working families platform that
ought to be adopted by working families and organizations that are
supposed to represent them, I propose a massive shift in the burden of
the taxes from the earned income of working people to the unearned
income of those who are getting the greatest increases in wealth.
Ten years ago, the early 1989, as I said, the value of all U.S.
stocks was about $3 trillion. Now it is about $13 trillion, a $10
trillion increase. That is the opportunity. You can get new revenue
from that increase and the people who are continuing to earn without
any pain being caused.
The great political position that we need a tax cut is not related to
pain and the reduction of pain; it is related to a wrong-headed,
unyielding, stubborn policy which defines ``them'' and ``us'' and
disregards the fact that there is a place, there ought to be a place,
for working families to share the great wealth of America.
I introduced on March 11 of this year H.R. 1090, which I call the
Social Security Protection and Tax Relief Act of 1999. It cuts the
Social Security tax rate from 7.65 percent to 6.4 percent.

{time} 2130

This will give a tax cut of $15 for every $10,000 of earned income to
all

[[Page H3836]]

working families and to the rich as well as the poor, if the rich are
working and earning wages, and whether or not they pay income tax, of
course, they will benefit through the various devices in place in the
Tax Code.
So cuts of the social security tax, payroll taxes, where the biggest
increases have taken place over the last 20 years, and where the people
on the bottom are taxed at the same rate as the people on the top,
those cuts would be a great benefit for working families.
My H.R. 1099 imposes a new 12 percent social security tax on all
taxable unearned income to offset what you would lose from reducing the
taxes on people at the lowest levels. We propose social security taxes
on all taxable unearned income.
I also on April 12 introduced another bill, H.R. 1390, the Income Tax
Fairness Act of 1999. That cuts all income tax brackets by 3 percentage
points, all income tax brackets, from the highest to the lowest. The
present rates in the 5 brackets are 15 percent, 28 percent, 31 percent,
36 percent, and 39.6 percent. The new rates would be 12 percent, 25
percent, 28 percent, 33 percent, and 36.6 percent.
I am not on the Committee on Ways and Means, and I know most people
would consider it inappropriate that I should be here talking about
taxes and changes in the tax policy.
The Committee on Ways and Means is an exclusive committee. For the
benefit of people who are not close to Washington, we have a caste
system in the Congress. There are exclusive committees and there are
other committees for the peasants. I am not on an exclusive committee.
The Committee on Appropriations is exclusive, the Committee on Ways and
Means is exclusive, the Committee on Commerce and the Committee on
Energy are exclusive.
Some of the wrongheadedness and anti-democratic attitudes that are
generated come out of the structure itself. It is all wrong to say that
education is a lesser committee. The Committee on Education and the
Work Force is not an exclusive committee. However, what is more
important to the Nation at this point than the education system which
brought us to where we are and will take us into the future?
At any rate, I am not on the Committee on Ways and Means, but I think
every Member of Congress has a right to speak out and offer the best
wisdom that they can offer to stimulate the discussion. Hopefully we
will develop a platform which all the people who consider themselves
advocates for the average American, the average taxpayer out there, the
working families, will also get involved in the debate.
Steve Forbes and the various other conservatives should not be the
only ones who are concerned about tax reform. There ought to be a tax
reform program that comes from working families and their advocates.
H.R. 1390 cuts deductible depreciation on nonresidential buildings
from 2.6 percent per year, and it is based on an estimated useful life
of 39 years, et cetera, et cetera, some other details that I think we
need not go into.
The estimate is that this tax program that I offer will be either
revenue-neutral or a revenue-plus. Total Federal revenue, income and
social security taxes, will be reduced by between $190 to $200 billion
per year and increased by the same amount or more, $200 to $250 billion
a year by the mechanisms in these bills.
I am also convinced that the great social security problem we all
talk about, and we have good reason to worry about, the great social
security problem could be dealt with if we were to place a social
security tax on all unearned income. In addition to the tax on earned
income, let us put it on all unearned income. That is the area of
greatest growth. That is the area where the ratio of people in the
workplace does not determine what goes into the social security
coffers.
Let us have a social security tax on unearned income for the first
time, and that will save the social security system for at least two
generations, and I suspect will go even beyond that and solve the
problem once and for all.
In other words, I think working families deserve a platform, a
program of their own. I hope the candidates, certainly the candidates
in the Democratic Party for president, will break out of the mold, will
break out of the conventional wisdom, and move forward and talk in more
direct and affirmative terms about programs which benefit the great
masses in America.
Finally, I want to conclude on the program that I think benefits the
most people, and all of us, but certainly working families in dire need
of the public education system that is able to deliver the kind of
education that is needed as we go into the new millennium.
As we go into the 21st century, we need the best schools in the
world. We are not going to be able to maintain our lead economically if
we do not have the best educated populace in the world. We are not
going to be able to maintain our strong military if we don't have the
best educated populace in the world.
Already we have great shortages in the Navy. I understand the last
great super aircraft carrier that was launched was short of personnel
by 300 people. They could not find 300 people to staff it. There are
other shortages throughout the Navy and other services, shortages of
appropriate personnel.
Are there shortages of bodies in a Nation with more than 250 million
residents? There is never a shortage of bodies. They are talking about
a shortage of people who have the capacity and the prerequisite
training to be able to deal with a high-tech military. The Navy needs
people who have some kind of education which prepares them to learn how
to operate high-tech weapons. The Air Force needs the same kind of
people. The Army needs the same kind of people.
Even in the military, we need the best security effort that we can
launch, which would be a better educated population through a revamped
public education system, everywhere we go, economics, foreign policy,
globalization, military, and even social security.
If we are worried about social security, what is the great worry
about social security? The number of people who are going to be on
social security as we progress into the 21st century, the ratio of
people who are earning or drawing money from social security will be
far greater than the number of people who are in the work force paying
into social security. That is a simple understanding that is correct.
We are going to have fewer people paying into social security than are
getting benefits from social security. Then we have a situation where
if we do not find new sources of revenue, it is going to run out of
money.
I have just indicated part of the solution may be to look for other
revenue sources for social security. But even if we stay with the
primary revenue source of wage-earners paying into the social security
fund, if we have an education system which guarantees that the jobs
that are created in this Nation will be there and the people who are in
the Nation can qualify for them and earn wages and pay into the social
security system, we are helping social security.
So education helps to keep us strong militarily, it helps to keep us
strong economically. Education is the best investment we can make in
social security.

The problem now is that because already we have not been able to fill
many of the jobs in the high-tech industries, corporations are
contracting out to other nations. Bangalore, India, is called the
computer capital of the world because in Bangalore, India, they have
numerous contractors from this Nation who are contracting with firms in
Bangalore to provide computing services. And because of our high-tech
communications facilities, we can do that kind of thing.
In addition to large numbers of corporations contracting to firms
located in Bangalore, and the people in Bangalore, of course, pay their
social security into the Indian system, not the American system, we
have also large numbers who come to this country as foreign workers and
improve their skills because they are hired in the jobs that cannot be
filled by our corporations. They go back and make the computer and
other high-tech industries of their Nation even more efficient and
effective as competitors. So wherever we look, we find the need for
greater investment in education.
There are many ways we can invest in education. We have talked about
a lot of them. I do not think that I would rank reducing the classroom
size over

[[Page H3837]]

construction or construction over reducing the size of the elementary
classes, but I would like to say that a school construction initiative
which is meaningful would send a message to the whole Nation and the
whole public education system.
If we believe in a religion, then the first visible commitment of
that religion is manifested in the kind of church they build or temple
they have or synagogue they have. The physical facility is not at the
heart of what the religion is all about, but the physical facility is a
visible manifestation of a commitment.
If we abandon the public schools of this Nation, and we have a
situation similar to the one we have now, where we are spending only 23
cents per child on physical infrastructure in the elementary and
secondary schools, the Federal commitment, the Federal portion of the
commitment to the physical infrastructure right now is about 23 cents
per child. We have 53 million children in school. When we look at the
amount of money the Federal Government is spending, it is about 23
cents per child.
I propose a bill, H.R. 1820, which I have already introduced and am
seeking cosponsors, where we would spend $417 per year per child
instead of 23 cents per year per child. For $417 per year per child, we
could deal with the crumbling, dilapidated schools, schools that
endanger the health of youngsters because they have coal-burning
furnaces, lead pipes, some have serious problems in terms of the roof.
No matter how many times you repair it, the water seeps into the walls
at the top and it keeps coming down. Lead paint, lead is in the paint.
There are all kinds of dangers.
Many buildings are just so old. We have a lot of buildings in New
York City that are 75 years or older, many that are 50 years old. This
is not unique to New York City. All of the big cities have the same
problem. Many rural areas, of course, have even worse problems. They
never had sound buildings. We need a construction effort.
I conclude by saying that investment in the public education system
is one of many of the steps we need to take to end the oppression of
working families and provide benefits, and have them share in the
wealth, instead of being objects of our contempt.
Madam Speaker, I include for the Record the following information on
World War II:

BIG STATE, BIG CITY CASUALTIES
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total Combat Three big
State casualties deaths cities
------------------------------------------------------------------------
World War I
New York..................... 35,100 7,307 New York,
Buffalo,
Albany
Pennsylvania................. 29,576 5,996 Philadelphia,
Pittsburgh,
Harrisburg
Illinois..................... 15,984 3,016 Chicago,
Springfield,
Peoria
Ohio......................... 14,487 3,073 Cleveland,
Cincinnati,
Dayton
Massachusetts................ 11,455 2,153 Boston,
Amherst,
Burlington
Michigan..................... 9,702 2,213 Detroit, Ann
Arbor, Lansing
New Jersey................... 8,766 1,761 Newark, Jersey
City, Hoboken
California................... 6,153 1,352 San Francisco,
Oakland, Los
Angeles
World War II
New York..................... 89,656 27,659 New York,
Buffalo,
Albany
Pennsylvania................. 81,917 24,302 Philadelphia,
Pittsburgh,
Harrisburg
Illinois..................... 54,686 17,338 Chicago,
Springfield,
Peoria
Ohio......................... 49,989 15,636 Cleveland,
Cincinnati,
Dayton
Massachusetts................ 31,910 9,991 Boston,
Amherst,
Burlington
New Jersey................... 31,544 9,742 Newark, Jersey
City, Hoboken
California................... 47,073 17,048 San Francisco,
Oakland, Los
Angeles
Korean Conflict
New York..................... 8,780 2,249 New York,
Buffalo,
Albany
Pennsylvania................. 8,251 2,327 Philadelphia,
Pittsburgh,
Harrisburg
Illinois..................... 6,435 1,744 Chicago,
Springfield,
Peoria
Ohio......................... 6,614 1,777 Cleveland,
Cincinnati,
Dayton
Michigan..................... 5,181 1,447 Detroit, Ann
Arbor, Lansing
Vietnam
New York..................... N/A 4,108 New York,
Buffalo,
Albany
Pennsylvania................. N/A 3,133 Philadelphia,
Pittsburgh,
Harrisburg
Illinois..................... N/A 2,926 Chicago,
Springfield,
Peoria
Ohio......................... N/A 3,082 Cleveland,
Cincinnati,
Dayton
Massachusetts................ N/A 1,317 Boston,
Amherst,
Burlington
Michigan..................... N/A 2,641 Detroit, Ann
Arbor, Lansing
California................... N/A 5,563 San Francisco,
Oakland, Los
Angeles
------------------------------------------------------------------------

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