Volume 141, No. 44 covering the 1st Session of the 104th Congress (1995 - 1996) was published by the Congressional Record.
The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“THE RESCISSION PACKAGE OF THE REPUBLICAN MAJORITY” mentioning the Environmental Protection Agency was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H2977-H2984 on March 9, 1995.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE RESCISSION PACKAGE OF THE REPUBLICAN MAJORITY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Becerra] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to come tonight and speak to my colleagues about something that will be coming before us next week. That is the Republican majority's rescission package, which, in essence, is the cuts that were made in the Committee on Appropriations in the last week or two to the tune of about $18 billion, cuts that are going to be used, we first were told, for purposes of trying to finance the disaster relief efforts in places like California, as a result of the Northridge earthquake; in
[[Page H2978]] places like Florida, that still have some final tasks to be done to take care of the hurricane disasters they suffered from; northern California, earthquake; the Midwest, floods; a number of different disasters that this country has experienced over the last couple of years.
Unfortunately, if you take a closer look at this rescission package, you see something very, very disturbing. I would like to go into that a bit.
Again, the rescission package, what it really means in plain English is that we have wiped out funding for certain programs which have already been approved for such funding. In other words, Mr. Chairman, last year's budget, which may have allocated $1 for a program, this past week the Committee on Appropriations went in and decided to make cuts in particular programs under which it has discretion to do so.
It cannot touch things like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, because those are entitlement programs, and they are not discretionary. The discretionary programs include things like the Department of Defense, Department of Education, job training, veterans' benefits, and so forth.
If you are concerned about the quality of public education in this country, teen drug use, the increasing potential of today's youth being involved in gang violence, in crime, if you are concerned about veterans, if you are concerned about housing for seniors that are on a limited budget, then you have good reason to be very concerned, if not outraged, about what the majority party has done with regard to this rescission package.
The majority party's main target, as it turns out, happens to be kids and senior citizens. The GOP's main beneficiaries in this rescission package happen to be the very wealthy. Let us take a look at a few things done through this rescission package.
I have put together a chart here to give us an idea of what happened with all the cuts that came out of the Committee on Appropriations recently. Who takes the hit? Of all the cuts, the close to $18 billion in cuts, 63 percent of those cuts will hit low-income individuals. Close to two-thirds of all the moneys cut come from programs that help veterans who are low-income, the elderly who are low-income, children,
$17 billion. It will be interesting, because we will talk about where that money goes, and it is going to be interesting to find out why we had to cut $17.5 or so billion.
Mr. Speaker, let me focus a little bit more on where those cuts are that we see here listed as having hit mostly the low income. Where did the money come from? For the most part you can see the biggest hit was taken by housing, housing for seniors, housing for low-income individuals, housing to help supplement those who are having a tough time making a living, that are working poor; job training, job experience. Of all the cuts 14 percent come from job training programs to help young people and those who are trying to get off of welfare, and those who are trying to get back on a job because the recession has caused them to lose their job as a result of downsizing in areas like the aerospace industry.
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Health care, health cuts, 10 percent. Education, 9 percent. Within the other 25 percent, I should mention that we list veterans benefits programs. Let me give some quick details on some of those areas in cuts.
Housing, $7.2 billion comes from housing; $2.7 billion comes in rental assistance for low-income families. That is about 62,000 vouchers down the drain, 62,000 families that will not be able to qualify for some assistance to try to make sure they are able to rent a place to stay; $186 million comes from housing for persons with AIDS. In Los Angeles, I can tell you that thousands of people with AIDS will now probably find as a result that they will be denied certain housing because that assistance that was being provided for this population of needy individuals is now being cut.
Job training cuts, $2.35 billion. Included in that is the complete elimination, not a cut, complete elimination of summer youth employment programs, $1.7 billion. That is money that has been used in a lot of different areas, including places like New York, in rural States, in places like Los Angeles, to try to help youth who otherwise might just hang around the street corner at night.
The impact on Los Angeles of that cut, well, we can expect about 23,000 kids to be denied job training and classroom instruction over the next year.
Impact nationwide, probably about 600,000 children, not children, young adults, will be deprived of a chance to do some good work and learn something as they prepare themselves to become working adults.
Education, $1.7 billion in cuts. What do we do? Well, eliminate the drug-free schools program. That is a program to try to make sure kids don't start using drugs and as we know, most folks who are arrested these days, it is as a result of using drugs, selling drugs or somehow drugs are related. Yet we are eliminating the drug-free schools program that tries to keep drugs out of the school and tries to make sure kids don't start using or selling drugs.
What else? We eliminate also school construction programs. How many of our neighborhood schools need some type of refurbishing, how many of our neighborhoods just need schools? Well, we have eliminated a program for that. We have got massive reductions in grants to reform schools, so we finally get caught up in technology. We use money for homeless youth, to educate homeless youth, that is eliminated.
We have a cut in national service. That is the program that ``Says young man, young woman, you are interested in going to college, you want to serve your community, we will give you a little money, pay you low wage, minimum wage, at the same time we'll also tell you that after a year you'll have a grant of about $4,700 that can be used for your education, only for your education. If you go on to college, we'll give you $4,700 to help offset some of the cost of that education.'' Huge cut in national service.
Health cuts, $10 million cut in the Healthy Start Program. That is a program to help working women, poor women who have very little access to health care. It provides them with prenatal care so that they can make sure that they do not end up costing the local government and the community and its taxpayers additional dollars because they end up having a child that is born with low birthweight or some abnormality and has to go to the approximate intensive care units and costs us 10 times as much as it would have cost to have given decent prenatal care.
A $25 million hit on the WIC Program, Women, Infants, and Children Program; 100,000 women and kids are going to probably be denied proper nutrition.
What else? Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. That is the program that helps low-income seniors, others who have a very difficult time during winter months in places where it is cold, to survive those chilling winter months. We are cutting $1.3 billion from that program.
Other cuts, I will mention veterans' benefits, take a hit of about
$206 million. That is a real slap in the face of our veterans who certainly do not believe they get enough as it is in the types of programs available under the Veterans' Administration. Yet they are going to take another hit.
Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $47 million hit, a $94 million hit is projected for the next fiscal year. What we are doing with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in Congress is the Republican majority is trying to get us to a glide path in about 3 or 4 years where we actually eliminate all funding for public broadcasting.
The EPA--That is the Environmental Protection Agency, lots of cleanups to do, all the toxic dumps we
know that are in our communities. Well, $1.3 billion mostly for Clean Water Infrastructure Program is being gutted.
Where does all of this money go from this $17.5 billion or so bill that cuts from these programs? Let's take a look.
We were told first that since the President sent a bill over requesting that we provide some additional moneys to help provide for disaster relief, as I mentioned earlier, that was one of the reasons the Committee on Appropriations had to find some way to fund it. We have never done it before where
[[Page H2979]] in a disaster we have taken money from other programs to pay for a disaster, we have always said this is a disaster, we have always said this is a disaster, we have to pull together as Americans and find a way to help people. But this time we did it differently. But not only did we do it differently, let's take a look at what happened.
The committee, the Republican majority, decided to give about $5.3 billion for disaster relief. Yet they cut about $17.5 billion in programs. So where did the other two-thirds of the money go if only
$5.3 billion went to disaster relief?
Well, you see, the Republicans ran a campaign last year saying in their Contract on America that they were going to provide tax relief. The problem is the tax relief they are providing goes to the wealthy. So two-thirds of all the moneys cut, from veterans, from our schools, from programs that help children stay away from drugs and out of gangs and away from crime, from health care programs, from housing programs for seniors, for moneys that go to help AIDS victims, all of that is being packaged in the $17, $18 billion package. Less than one-third is going to go for actual disaster relief to help people who are still suffering from natural disasters, and two-thirds is going to go to tax cuts. I know I have a colleague who is going to join me in a few moments, I want to talk soon about to join me in few moments, I want to talk soon about what those tax cuts are going to do. But let me just make a couple of quick comments more.
Why tax cuts now? But more importantly, when we looked at the programs that were being cut, why did we not see anything that hit the military? Are we so convinced that there is no fat in the Department of Defense? Is this not the same department that gave us $500 toilet seats and that gave us billion dollar cost overruns on military projects in the last few years? But why is it that we do not see a single cut there? But more importantly, why is it that about 2 weeks ago, this same House with majority Republican support passed out a bill that increased spending for the military, including moneys for star wars? Increasing money for the military spending, giving tax cuts to the wealthy, paying for it through cuts to low income and middle income people. That is what we see.
If you do not believe it, let's take a look at one last chart.
That tax cut that is in that Contract on America, where does it go? Part of it is for a a capital gains tax cut. It is important to understand that when you give a capital gains tax cut, that does not go to every American, and especially not to most working Americans who earn a wage. Most of that goes to people who are fairly wealthy, who have a lot of assets and who get to deduct some of the profits on those assets when they sell them. So much so that let's take a look at who benefits from that capital gains tax cult that the Republican majority is proposing in the House of Representatives. That tax cut, by the way, will cost over the next 10 years when it is implemented, should it ever get implemented, about $208 billion. That is $208 billion to our deficit over the next 10 years. Who gets the majority of the benefits of that? As you can see in this chart, and if it may be kind of small for people to see some of the type, this is broken down into different income levels.
Less than $10,000 incomes, well, you're going to get about half of a percent of the benefits. If you earn between $10,000 and $20,000, well, your benefits will be about 0.8 percent of the entire cut. Well, 20 to
$30,000, you get about 1.7 percent. So all the families in America that earn $20,000 to $30,000 can expect to get as a group 1.7 percent of the tax cuts under the capital gains tax cut; $30,000 to $40,000 income range, you'll get, as a group, about 2.6 percent of all that; $40,000 to $50,000, you'll get about 3.2 percent of the benefits of that. If you make between $50,000 to $75,000, that whole group of Americans within the $50,000 to $75,000 income range will get about 9 percent of all the $208 billion in benefits. If you make between $75,000 and
$100,000, you are going to get about 9.4 percent of that $208 billion in capital gains tax cut benefits. And If you happen to make more than
$100,000, which represents about 9 percent of all taxes-filing, tax-
paying Americans, you get about 72.6
percent of all the benefits. These are the folks that are going to make out like bandits from the capital gains tax cut. And who is getting cut to finance this capital gains tax cut? As I said in that rescission package, if only 5.3 billion is being used for disaster relief, the other $12 billion or so, which is coming out of low-income and middle-income individuals, families and children and seniors, is being used to finance this.
Let me at this stage ask my colleague from Vermont to join me. I want to first thank him for taking the time at this late hour to come and chat with me a bit about this.
Maybe he has a few comments he would like to make as well about what I have just had a chance to discuss.
Mr. SANDERS. First I want to thank the gentleman from California for his wonderful presentation, because I think he hit the nail right on the head.
Essentially what we are talking about tonight are priorities. That is what a government does, like every family in America. It has to make choices as to how it allocates money and where it saves money.
What the gentleman said in terms of the rescission package is basically consistent with the whole thrust of the Contract With America. What that is about, as his charts have amply demonstrated, is that on one hand, despite all of the loud rhetoric about the terrible deficit and the $4.5 trillion national debt, the first point is our Republican friends are proposing massive tax breaks for the wealthiest people in America. Here we have a situation today where the gap between the rich and the poor in America has never been wider, the wealthiest 1 percent of the population own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. We have a terrible deficit. All kinds of very serious social needs in America. And our Republican colleagues are proposing massive tax breaks for the wealthiest people in America.
Now, that may make sense to somebody, but not to the many people in the State of Vermont and around this country that I talk to who work for a living. That is point number one.
The second point that the gentleman from California made, which is also absolutely appropriate, is that today at a time when the cold war has finally ended, when the Soviet Union is no longer our enemy, Russia wants to join in NATO, many of the Communist bloc, former Communist bloc companies want to join in NATO, at a time when we have the ability to significantly lower military spending, to help us deal with the deficit, to help us pump money into all kinds of enormous needs that this country faces, our Republican friends, if you can believe it, and I know that many people may have a hard time actually believing it, are proposing tens of billions of dollars more for the star wars program.
So tax breaks for the rich, more money for star wars, and for other military programs.
If you are going to do those things, which will cost us tens of tens of billions of dollars and if you want to move toward a balanced budget in 7 years, something has got to give. That is the equation. Tax breaks for the rich, more money for star wars. Well, what has got to give?
And the gentleman from California mentioned a number of the areas that have been affected by rescissions, that is, cutbacks in money that has already been appropriated.
Let me reiterate some of them as they apply to the State of Vermont. I was particularly outraged that one of the areas where we saw the most savage cutbacks, $1.3 billion, was for the Low Income Heating Assistance Program, also referred to as LIHEAP. The LIHEAP program provides heating assistance to low-income people, many of them elderly people who live in cold climates. In my State of Vermont, the weather gets down to 20 below zero to 30 below zero. We have many elderly people who are living on very fixed incomes. These are people who often have to choose between heating their homes or buying the prescription drugs they need to ease their pain.
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The LIHEAP program impacts upon 24,000 households in the State of Vermont. The Republican rescission package would cut back 100 percent, would eliminate the LIHEAP program.
One of two things will happen as a result. Either elderly people will go cold
[[Page H2980]] in Vermont and in Maine and throughout northern America, or they will take the little money they have to put into heating and not have the food that they need or the medicine that they need.
I do not know about other people's priorities, but it does not make a whole lot of sense to me to talk about spending billions of dollars more for Star Wars to cut taxes for the rich by tens of billions of dollars and then force tens and tens of thousands of elderly people in America to go cold in the wintertime.
Every politician who gets up here talks about the serious drug problems that we have. It is a problem in Vermont, it is a problem in California, it is a problem in Virginia, it is a problem all over America.
In my State of Vermont I was recently at a town meeting in Bennington and teachers there talked about how important the drug education money that comes into that community is in keeping kids away from drugs. Every sensible human being understands that an ounce of prevention is worth a lot more than spending billions of dollars throwing people into jail. People in Vermont and all over this country are working day and night to keep kids away from drugs, away from gangs.
This rescission program cuts back significantly on money that goes to help teachers and educators keep kids away from drugs. And on and on it goes, cutbacks for education, for people who are homeless.
I think what the rescission package talks about is the priorities that some of our Republican friends have, and I think that they are not the priorities that the ordinary American people have. And I hope that out of this discussion tonight people all over this country will stand up and say, now wait a second, that is not what the United States of America is supposed to be, it is not supposed to be making the elderly go cold in the wintertime, it is not supposed to be taking away educational opportunity from homeless people.
I would simply conclude my remarks by thanking the gentleman from California very much for this extremely important discussion.
Mr. BERCERRA. I thank the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders] for participating and I hope he will have a chance to stay and we will have a chance to indulge in further colloquy.
I would like to recognize my other colleagues in a second. But I would like to make one quick point. The gentleman from Vermont left off on a very important note and I would like to follow up on that and return to this chart which shows where the money goes. As I said, only less than a third of the money is actually going to disaster relief. But let me talk a little bit about this disaster relief.
Something very interesting was done here. It was a play with hands, you know it is a shuffle game. Part of that money that was cut in that
$17.5 billion in cuts included the following: $350 million of unused funds from the Federal Highway Administration. That is money that was allocated for the Federal Highway Administration to help in the earthquake relief efforts to get roads and bridges back up to working condition. It has not yet been expended
because we have not finished the fiscal year.
So, what did the Republican majority do in the Committee on Appropriations? They cut that remaining $351 million, but interestingly enough we see we are getting $5.3 billion for disaster relief, so what they did was say we are taking $351 million, putting it in our pocket, pulling it out and saying now we are giving, about to give $5.3 billion for disaster relief. They do not tell you they really cut $351 million from disaster relief, they are just saying that they have made cuts and they are trying to say that they are mostly cuts in waste, fraud and abuse, but quite honestly we know it is much more than that.
It is really discouraging to see how this is being done.
Let me now take a moment to recognize a good friend and colleague from the State of Virginia [Mr. Scott], who is here I hope to join us and discuss some of these things as well.
Mr. SCOTT. I thank the gentleman. It is a pleasure to join him and the gentleman from Vermont and the gentleman from New Jersey to discuss these rescissions. As the gentleman has indicated, the rescissions are going to pay mostly tax cuts.
Comment was made earlier about school children and lunches and whether we are spending more money or less money. You can call it whatever you want, but if we adopt the Republican budget many school children who are eligible for school lunches today will not be eligible if that budget is adopted.
Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield back the time for just a moment, we should give some detail because the gentleman who spoke earlier about this and said we are actually increasing the budgets over the next several years for those school, those child nutrition programs wants to leave the impression that actually we are giving more under this Republican proposal than was allocated under current law.
Mr. SCOTT. Well, no, it is not more than current law; it is less than current law.
If we continue going as we had planned, to cover the school children that need to be covered, more would be covered. They are going to cover less school children, and some eligible today will not be eligible with inflation; costs go up, more children show up in school, and if we continue at the rate they want to go, some children that are eligible today just simply will not be eligible if this budget is adopted, period.
Mr. BECERRA. So in other words, the Republican proposals do increase from this current fiscal year what will be allotted next year, but they do not cover the true costs because they do not take into account the growth in the number of kids in the schools or the inflation rate.
Mr. SCOTT. This is exactly right.
Mr. BECERRA. So the schools will have to do with a little bit more money, but with more kids and inflation on top of that.
Mr. SCOTT. And more costs and some children will not be able to get fed as a direct result of that budget.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to again thank the gentleman from California for having this special order. The 1995 rescissions touch many programs, but frankly the ones I want to talk about just very briefly are the targeted prevention-oriented programs.
I am particularly concerned about the mean-spirited cuts in the Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities Program and the Summer Jobs Program.
These programs will not just suffer a reduction in funds, but are at risk of being completely eliminated. The Drug Free Schools Program and the Summer Jobs Program are not frivolous programs, they are designed with specific intentions. Drug Free Schools was authorized as a means to repeal the onslaught of drugs and violence in the schools. The most significant changes in 1994 included an emphasis on violence prevention.
In the city of Richmond in my State of Virginia, we have a program called Richmond Youth Against Violence. Recognizing the overlap and risk factors for violence and substance abuse, the school system decided to focus on violence prevention as an effective means to reduce or eliminate drugs used by our young people.
Richmond Youth Against Violence is operating in all eight middle schools. It teaches mediation, how to avoid violence and the circumstances of violence and provides counseling for students suspended for violence. Funds from the Drug Free Schools and Communities Act provided the startup money for Richmond Youth Against Violence, and it works. Through various evaluations, research on this program has shown that boys in the program do not display an increase in violence, violent behavior and they are less likely to initiate substance abuse activities.
Mr. Speaker, the Summer Youth Program is another successful program. The GOP, however, has decided the program that gives over 1.2 million low-income youth their first opportunity at work and their first step toward learning work ethics has no place in the Republican Contract With America.
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Summer youth jobs has a long history. It started in 1964 and has been enjoyed by youth in inner cities and rural areas. Kids 14 to 21 are eligible for the program and they flock to it. Last year there were two applicants for every job in the summer program.
For those who say that the program is ineffective, I say look at the research. The Department of Labor's inspector general says that the program is run very tightly and is well administered, and unlike the stereotypical welfare programs, the summer youth jobs program involves real jobs. It is not uncommon to see youth performing clerical work for city offices, supervising and tutoring children in day-care centers, serving as a nurse's assistant in a hospital.
Work and study done by Westat, Incorporated on the 1993 summer job program gave high marks for the program. The supervisors who were surveyed reported that there are no serious problems related to kid's behavior, attendance or turnover, and, Mr. Speaker, we know the importance about feeling good about your job and feeling that what you are doing is worthwhile. The young people in the summer youth jobs program feel the same way, they work hard and feel good about their summer jobs.
These two programs, like many others, like the education for homeless children and youth, the training for careers and early childhood development and training for careers, and counseling young children affected by violence, the literacy programs for prisoners, all have merit and need to be continued.
Some may oppose the short-term costs, but I remind them of the long-
term risks. We cannot continue to undermine the programs which have been proven to deter violence and crime. We must also provide an environment for young people to gain the experience necessary for them to function as adults. Drug-free schools and communities program and the summer youth and jobs program accomplish these goals.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, the prevention programs work. We can pay for them now or we can pay a lot more for prisons later. We need to defeat these mean-spirited, short-sighted rescissions.
Mr. BECERRA. I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia for taking the time to come here and present a cappella testimony about why we should fear these cuts that are being proposed at this particular time.
Let me at this time recognize another distinguished colleague and friend, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Andrews], and ask him if he has a few things would he like to say. And I thank my friend from California for giving me this time and organizing this discussion.
Mr. Becerra in particular is to be commended for leading on this floor tonight a discussion of priorities in our country and where the taxpayer's money ought to go. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Becerra deserves particular praise because this may be the only discussion we have an opportunity to have about priorities under the way this bill is going to be brought to the floor, and I want to speak for just a few minutes about what is wrong with that and how that cuts off a real debate about where the public's money ought to go and what the Federal Government's priorities ought to be.
Myself and Mr. Scott and Mr. Sanders and Mr. Becerra may have different priorities as to how this bill ought to come down. Frankly, I think it is an urgent priority to cut the size of the Federal budget and to make this government leaner and smaller and more efficient.
I think it is a demanding priority that we find a way to lessen the burden of taxes on the American people, and perhaps there would be some agreement or disagreement among the four of us as Democrats on that point. The point is, this is the place where we are supposed to thrash out those differences over priorities and have our say.
Mr. Speaker, as we all know, when a bill is brought to this floor, it is brought to the floor under something called a rule and the rule sets forth which amendments may be debated and voted upon and which amendments may not be debated and voted upon.
This afternoon, March 9, the chairman of the Rules Committee, the distinguished Gerald Solomon of the State of New York circulated a letter, which I will make part of the record at the appropriate time, which outlines his proposals to what the rules should be under which this bill is brought to the floor, in other words, the rules of debate, what we can vote on and what we can't vote on.
The rules of debate are totally closed, totally unfair, and will totally shut off the kind of priorities debate, Mr. Speaker, that Mr. Becerra has launched tonight. Let me give you some examples.
The Republican bill that will be before us will cut a net $12 billion from this year's budget. Now, one could take one of three different positions on that--four, I guess. You could say that we should cut $12 billion and these are the right $12 billion to cut, and you will have that chance because you will have a chance to vote for this bill. You can say that we shouldn't cut any of it, that we should add to the budget. You won't have that chance because you won't be permitted to add to the budget under this bill. You will only be permitted to subtract from it.
Frankly, I find that OK but I don't think that others that don't find it OK should be denied the chance to add if they so desire.
You might say we should cut less than $12 billion from the budget. You won't have that chance because the number that is fixed in this bill must be going forward and you may say, as I would, we should cut
$12 billion but we should cut a different $12 billion than the Republican have proposed. I will not get that chance. Mr. Sanders will not get that chance. Mr. Becerra will not get that chance. Mr. Scott will not get that chance, nor will any of our colleagues under the rules being brought to the floor.
Let me tell you what I want to do. I am working on and tomorrow will complete a proposal as a substitute for this rescission bill that doesn't cut the budget by $12 billion as our Republican friends would, but cuts it by $13 billion, but cuts it in different places.
The Republican proposal says to an 82-year-old woman who has a fixed income of $9,000 a year and heating bills of $1,500 a year, that the little bit of help that she gets right now, the little bit of help, the couple hundred dollars she gets to pay her electric bill, her heating bill, will be eliminated next winter.
I say instead we should cut research contracts that benefit Exxon and Mobil and Fortune 500 corporations that sell her the energy for that heat. Let's give this House a choice between cutting her heating subsidy and the research subsidy of the Fortune 500 energy companies that brought her her energy. We won't have that choice under this rule.
I would say this, to a 17-year-old who is trying to work a summer job from a low-income family so he or she can earn money to get a college education. The Republican bill would say there will be no federally sponsored summer jobs anywhere in America starting this summer.
So, Mr. Speaker, a young person who is listening to us tonight, 16 years old, planned on getting a job this summer, maybe saving $500 or
$600 or $1,000 toward their school tuition, no job, nothing this summer. I say, why don't we cut out some of the bureaucratic jobs in the Department of Agriculture, the press secretaries, the statistics gatherers, the people who compile information about the American agriculture system.
I would say give us a choice between cutting summer jobs for young people around this country and bureaucratic jobs in the Department of Agriculture. we will not have that choice under this bill, and I will yield to Mr. Sanders for a moment.
Mr. SANDERS. I thank my friend from New Jersey, as he opens up a whole area of discussion that I was intending to get to in a moment and I thank him for getting there earlier, and that is the whole issue of what some of us call corporate welfare.
Now, at the same time as we are seeing massive cutbacks in heating programs for low-income senior citizens, cutbacks in drug prevention programs, cutbacks in programs for the homeless, does my friend from New Jersey or California or Virginia happen to notice
[[Page H2982]] if there are any cutbacks in the corporate welfare programs that are providing tens and tens of billions of dollars of Federal subsidies and Federal aid and tax breaks for some of the largest corporations in the United States of America?
Now, maybe they are there. I happen not to have seen them. I have a list of all of the programs. I did not see them.
If I might for one moment, and there is a long list, the Progressive Policy Institute, I might say a conservative Democratic organization, suggested that there were tens and tens of billions of dollars of savings if the Congress had the guts to call for welfare reform on large corporations and wealthy people. we all know that.
The savings can take place within the energy industry where there are huge tax subsidies for companies who are extracting oil, gas and minerals. There are special tax credits for producers of fuel from nonconventional sources. There are depletion cost allowances for oil, gas and nonfuel mineral firms. On and on it goes.
My friend from New Jersey makes exactly the right point: We should have that debate right here on the floor in front of the American people as to how we proceed to save money. And reclaiming my time, I would say to my friend from Vermont, who truly is an Independent, not only the way he thinks, I have read the bill. There were 228 cuts in the bill. Virtually none of them cut out the kind of corporate welfare, the Wall Street welfare that you make reference to.
So I would say to you that this bill, Mr. Speaker, demonstrates that the majority party of the Republicans are not against the welfare state at all. They are against the welfare state for those who tend to vote for the Democrats, but not for those who tend to vote for the Republicans. And this bill is ample evidence of that.
Let me give you other examples of things we will not get a chance to vote on that some of us would prefer. This bill says that if you are a senior citizen living in what we call section 8 subsidized housing, what that means is you live in a senior citizens high-rise and your rent is limited to 30 percent of your income and a subsidy pays less. So let us say your income is $10,000 a year, you only pay $3,000 a year toward rent and if your rent is really $5,000, the Federal Government picks up the other $2,000 so you can rent a modest apartment in a senior high-rise.
I have had senior citizens call me from around New Jersey scared to death that they are going to lose their apartments because of what is in this bill, because this bill eliminates $2.7 billion from that subsidy. You know what answer I could give them, Mr. Speaker? You just might lose your apartment, it is true.
Some of us, instead of denying housing to senior citizens under this program, would like to stop building so many courthouses and Federal buildings around America. We would like to substitute a provision that says, Do not cut the housing for senior citizens to have an apartment. Stop building a courthouse everywhere that a certain Member of Congress who is well connected enough to get one built.
Yes, we need courthouses in America, but I will tell you what. If we have to wait a few more years before we give a few more judges an elaborate place to sit and hear cases and save the money there and put it into keeping senior citizens in their homes and apartments, I think we should do that. And at the very least, Mr. Speaker, we ought to have that debate and we ought to have a choice, and this Republican rule will not let us do that.
One more example. One more example. This Republican bill says we are going to take $105 million from the program that hires remedial reading teachers, speech therapists, child psychologists, and other educators that help young people with a learning disability get through their school years, and is going to take $38 million from a program that helps young children who do not speak English learn how to. If they come to this country from Vietnam or Cambodia or Mexico or Russia or Poland or wherever, $38 million so those teachers can help our children learn English first when they are in first grade. That is gone from this bill.
Some of us would rather take the money from something called the Export-Import Bank, which is a program paid for, Mr. Speaker, by the people watching us tonight, that gives subsidies to major American corporations to help them underwrite the sale of their goods around the world.
Now, let me say this. I hope that American companies are able to sell their goods around the world tenfold what they do right now because that is good for the country, but the people who will profit from selling those goods should underwrite the cost of selling those goods. The shareholders and investors of those companies ought to pick up the tab of this, not the American taxpayer.
So let me summarize. I would like to see us vote on an amendment to substitute the cut that cuts heating assistance for senior citizens and instead cuts energy research that benefits oil companies. We will not get that chance.
I would like to see us get rid of the cut that abolishes the summer job program for young people in urban and rural and suburban areas around this country, including my hometown, and give us a chance to get rid of some of the bureaucracy in the Department of Agriculture or the Commerce Department or the Department of the Treasury or wherever. We will not get that chance.
I would like to see us restore the cut that would say to senior citizens, we are going to take away the subsidy that helps you get an apartment and instead stop building so many courthouses for so many judges
and so many Federal buildings around America. We will not get that chance.
I would like to restore the cut that says no more remedial reading teachers, no more education for children who cannot speak the English language as their first language, no more assistance for those children. I would like to get rid of some of the spending in the Export-Import Bank that helps IBM and AT&T sell their products around the world. We will not get that change.
Now, my friends as a Democrat, I have been wanting to sponsor an initiative in the last Congress called the A-to-Z spending cuts plan. Any Member can come to this floor during a special session and propose his or her best idea to cut spending. There would then be a debate and a vote.
When they were in the minority, my friends on the Republican side thought that was a terrific idea. The Speaker, the majority leader, the majority whip, all of them signed on to the bill and signed a petition forcing the bill to the floor that almost made it but did not. They thought it was a great idea that everybody's spending priorities could be brought here in debate.
Now they are in charge. Now they have the majority. Now they can win any vote because they have a certain number of more votes than we do. Now they are not quite sure the idea is so good with the majority change in this House, Mr. Speaker, because the people are fed up with a system that is closed, that does not permit free and honest debate.
We are going to have an opportunity to make a decision on Tuesday whether we have a free or honest debate about this rescissions bill. If you vote for the rule that Chairman Solomon wants, we are not going to have a free and honest debate. We are going to have a closed debate and a lousy bill. If you defeat the rule, give us a chance to offer these and other ideas and have the kind of discussion we are tonight, the public will be well served.
I thank the gentleman from California [Mr. Becerra] for this time.
Mr. BECERRA. I thank the gentleman for his eloquent words to make it clear it is not just an issue of substance when it comes to this issue of cuts and our priorities, but it is also an issue of mechanics, how we actually get to the point in the House of the people of making decisions for the people of America. And when it becomes clear to the people of America that their voice, through their Representatives, is not allowed to express itself because we cannot offer amendments, because we cannot try to sell the idea of where our priorities should be and instead must accept what is force fed to us, then clearly we are not doing the jobs as Representatives and clearly that frustrates the American people even more, as the gentleman so eloquently said with regard to why we had a change in November 1994. Clearly the
[[Page H2983]] people are frustrated and we must do some things to change that.
Let me point out a couple of things that disturb me most about this direction that we are heading, the fact that we have closed debates, the fact that we have these cuts that go after middle-income and lower-
income people, but yet will benefit the wealthy.
I cannot understand why we are seeing proposals for a capital gains tax cut that, as you can see, will benefit the most wealthy. But when you take a look at how much the average annual tax cut will be received by the income groups, it is astonishing.
If you earn $20,000 or below, you know how much you are going to get in tax cut relief over the year? About $7.63. That is what a family that earns $20,000 or below can expect to get from the capital gains tax cut proposal that the Republican majority in the House has proposed.
How much tax relief will you get if you have earned between $20,000 and $50,000 for the vast majority of American families? About $33 in the entire year. That is what a family will receive in tax relief from this Republican proposal.
Now, if you are $50,000 to $100,000, what will you get back in extra income? About $124.
Now, what happens if you earn between $100,000 and $200,000? Well, now you are going to get about 100 times what a person or a family earning $20,000 gets. You are going to get about $636 in that year.
But what will 2 percent of America's tax filers get? The 2 percent wealthiest filers of tax forms in this country, the 2 percent wealthiest Americans, what will they get, those earning $200,000 and above? Four-thousand-three-hundred and fifty-seven dollars in a year.
The folks that need it least get the most, and that, I think tells us a bit about the priorities of
this new Congress, where we are heading. It seems anomalous to think that we are going to head in that direction but that is what it looks like.
Mr. SANDERS. If the gentleman would yield.
Mr. BECERRA. Of course.
Mr. SANDERS. Let us reiterate what all four of us have been talking about. No. 1, with a huge deficit, huge national debt, and terrible social needs in America, there are significant increase tax breaks for the rich, at the same time as the gap between the rich and the poor has never been wider.
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No. 2, despite the end of the cold war, increased military spending at a time, in my view, when we should be cutting back on the military. And then in order to move toward a balanced budget, savage cutbacks which go against low-income elderly people, including people in the northern part of America who will be cold this winter if our heat program is cut.
Programs for homeless people; programs for children; cutbacks in the WIC Program. There is one program that Mr. Becerra touched upon earlier that I think we have not perhaps discussed enough and that is a $200 million cutback for the veterans of America.
I do not apologize to anybody for being an antiwar Congressman. Yes, I voted against the Persian Gulf war. I think very often we can resolve international conflict without wars.
But it seems to me that if the Government of the United States of America sends people off to war and asks them to put their lives on the line, and they do that, and then they come back to America and 40 or 50 years goes by, as in the case of World War II veterans and these veterans are sleeping down in VA hospitals throughout this country, it seems to me to be very, very wrong to say to those men and women who put their lives on the line, were wounded in body and wounded in spirit, that you say to them now, Hey, guess what? We have got a cutback on the VA hospitals. Thank you very much for putting your life on the line. Thank you for getting wounded, but now we have got a budget problem and we have to give tax breaks to the wealthiest people. We have to build the star wars. We have got to cutback for you.
I think that this particular cut of $200 million is absolutely upcalled for. I fear very much that as the Contract With America progresses, and I had the opportunity of meeting with Jesse Brown, the very fine and excellent Secretary for Veterans Affairs, and he shares this fear, that in the months and months to come there will be increased cutbacks on the needs of our veterans.
So, I think the bottom line is that we have got to get our priorities right and that is we respect those people who put their lives on the line and we will not go forward with those cuts.
Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. SANDERS. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.
Mr. ANDREWS. The gentleman from Vermont makes an outstanding point about the veterans issue, and Mr. Sanders and I have our differences on defense policy and our voting records will reflect that, but let me chime in to support a point he just made and going back to the point I made about the choices that we are not going to be given a chance to make.
This bill cuts $200 million out of this year's expenditures for the veterans' hospital system across the country and it forgives a $50 million loan to the Government of Jordan.
I am going to repeat that. This bill says to the Government of Jordan, You do not have to pay us the $50 million you owe us. We forgive you. Then it says to the veterans across this country, Oh, by the way, we are taking $200 million, four times that amount, out of your VA hospital system.
Now, some of us would like to offer an amendment that would at least reduce that cut of the $200 million by not forgiving the $50 million loan to
Jordan. A lot of us would like to be able to say maybe the Jordanians should find the $50 million and pay us back.
I find it ironic that in the Persian Gulf war, which was the first vote that Mr. Sanders and I cast as Members of this House, at the time of that war the Jordanians chose to remain neutral. They chose not to take the side of the United States for their own reasons.
The men and women who served in our Armed Forces did not choose to remain neutral. They swore allegiance to our country and served us. We are taking money away from them, who put their lives on the line, and then we are forgiving a loan to the Government of Jordan.
Mr. SANDERS. To the best of my knowledge, King Hussein is not exactly on the welfare rolls as well.
Mr. ANDREWS. I would assume King Hussein will not be receiving home heating assistance this winter.
I yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. Becerra].
Mr. BECERRA. I know that we are running short of time. I want to make sure that any of my colleagues have a chance to express themselves.
I want to quote something that was said by the new chairman of the Committee on the Budget, Mr. John Kasich, who said this about deficit reduction. ``I do not think that Republican special interest programs ought to be spared. I think we ought to look at corporate welfare before this process is over.'' That is a quote in the Washington Post of yesterday.
Well, I think those of us who are here, the four of us who are here, along with a number of my colleagues, I suspect both Democrat and Republican, are going to keep the chairman of the Budget Committee to his word. We want to see those cuts, because quite honestly, we have not seen them in this particular $15.5 billion recision package, but certainly we must see those.
So I would say that in this new ``Newt'' world that we face, that the needs of hard-working, middle-class families should not take a back seat to the needs of the very affluent. But quite honestly, I cannot see anything that says that we are not going in that direction, when everything points to capital gains tax cuts. Cuts to the poor, cuts to the middle income in their programs. Not tax cuts, but spending cuts that would help them. Child Nutrition Program cuts, all of this, yet we are going to increase spending for the military.
And somehow we get into this whole idea about a balanced budget amendment that was up here a couple of weeks ago for debater where we had the Republican majority saying we are going to balance the budget. And they are talking about balancing the budget, which is going to cost us over the
[[Page H2984]] next 5 to 7 years, about $1.2 trillion and if you add the tax cuts that the Republicans are proposing, that adds another $200 billion or so. And if you add the defense billions of dollars in military increases, that adds another $100 billion.
You end up with $1.5 trillion deficit that you have to make up in about 7 years. And I take a look at that and find that they are saying they want to balance the budget and I take a look at where they are cutting now. It makes it clear to me what they are going to do to try to balance this budget, on whose backs they are going to do it, and it scares me.
And I offer my colleagues the final chance to speak.
Mr. SANDERS. I just want to thank the gentleman from California [Mr. Becerra]. I think this is an enormously important discussion dealing with what the priorities of America should be. And I thank you very much for leading this discussion.
Mr. BECERRA. The gentleman from Virginia.
Mr. SCOTT. I want to thank the gentleman from California. This is an excellent presentation. We have choices to make and we have to look at our priorities and the quality of life and what we are doing here as legislators. And I thank you for giving us the opportunity to bring these facts forward.
Mr. ANDREWS. I join in thanking my friend from California. We are all equal Members of the People's House. We may disagree over what our priorities shall be, but we should never disagree over our right to debate those priorities.
The majority is about to deny us that right unless we defeat the rule that comes before us on Tuesday night.
Mr. BECERRA. I would say that the majority is not just denying the four of us, the majority of this House is now denying the American people the chance to express itself and that must change.
I thank all of my colleagues for being here
Mr. MONTGOMERY. Mr. Speaker, as the ranking member of the Committee on Veterans Affairs, I rise to urge all my colleagues to support an amendment to the rescission bill reported last Thursday by the Appropriations Committee. The amendment is modest in scope but vital to VA health care. It would restore the $206 million for veterans programs which the Committee on Appropriations proposes to rescind.
These rescissions don't make good sense. These funds were appropriated by Congress only a few months ago, primarily to help meet a critical need to improve veterans' access to outpatient care. The six VA projects which the committee now proposes to cancel would serve areas where more than 1.2 million veterans reside.
The budget for construction of veterans medical facilities has been pretty lean for the past 5 or 6 years. As a result, the VA says it now has almost 60 projects to improve outpatient services waiting to be funded. The VA could award construction contracts on these six projects in the next several months. We shouldn't put these projects off 1 day.
These are projects that can make VA health care delivery more cost-
effective. This rescission bill would slam the door on veterans across this country. In some parts of the country, the VA doesn't have health facilities that meet veterans needs. In other places, the clinics are
just too small. At one clinic, space is so tight that doctors are forced to perform eye examinations in the hallways. Veterans deserve better than this.
An increasing number of veterans are women; over 1.2 million. Many VA outpatient clinics still lack privacy for women veterans. In the face of such conditions, the rescission bill is a giant step backward.
Likewise, cutting funds for replacement equipment--as proposed by the rescission measure--forces VA to choose between obtaining a needed service at increased cost through contracting or continuing to use inefficient or even obsolete equipment. The VA's medical equipment backlog is more than $800 million. We must assure that VA care is care of high quality. Cutting back on VA funds to replace old equipment is putting our veterans at risk.
I want to commend all of the Members who are working hard to restore these funds--the gentlewomen from Florida, Ms. Brown and Mrs. Thurman, the gentlewoman from Connecticut, Ms. DeLauro, Mr. Volkmer, Mr. Scott, Mr. Romero-Barcelo and the other Members who are gathered here tonight. They are all doing a good job looking out for our Nation's veterans.
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