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“CONGRESS SHOULD LINK WELFARE REFORM TO MINIMUM WAGE INCREASE” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H3798-H3804 on April 24, 1996.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
CONGRESS SHOULD LINK WELFARE REFORM TO MINIMUM WAGE INCREASE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Riggs] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. RIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate you recognizing me, and I appreciate this opportunity to address what is now a pretty empty and still Chamber, but hopefully some of my colleagues are still following our discussion on the floor this evening.
I intend to talk about a number of very timely issues and concerns, but I want to begin my special order by addressing my colleagues who this evening, most recently just a couple of moments ago the gentlewoman from California, who brought up the minimum wage issue, but prior to her the gentleman from West Virginia [Mr. Wise] and the gentleman from California [Mr. Miller] who brought up the minimum wage issue.
I want to also preface my remarks by inviting any of my colleagues who want to discuss any of the issues that I raise tonight to join in this special order. I will be happy to yield time, both to my Republican colleagues on the majority side of the aisle as well as my Democratic colleagues on the minority side of the aisle.
First of all, let me say with respect to the minimum wage issue, I am a little unclear why this has suddenly become--except for the possibility that it is being used now as a political football by the National Democratic Party--why this has become such a pressing issue here in Washington.
Now, do not get me wrong. Back in 1994, while campaigning for Congress, I committed to voting for a modest increase in the minimum wage. It was my feeling back then and it is my feeling today that the minimum wage needs to be increased to keep pace with inflation, and that without an increase in the minimum wage, we will be witnessing a further erosion of the purchasing power of the minimum wage, which is going to put very low-income workers further and further behind the economic curve and exacerbate this growing income gap and I guess you could say this potential economic chasm that is dividing American society.
Just a few weeks ago I was one of seven Republicans who on this floor voted for a procedural motion that would have allowed the House to, at that time and in a timely fashion, consider legislation increasing the minimum wage roughly $1 over the course of the next year. I am one of 20 or 21 Republicans who supported, who are cosponsoring our own separate freestanding bill, a competing measure to the Democratic bill that would actually raise the minimum wage slightly higher than the legislation proposed by the President and congressional Democrats.
But here is the part about the minimum wage debate I do not get. If this is such an enormous issue and pressing concern to the National Democratic Party, why did they not raise the minimum wage when they had the chance? That is to say, why did they not raise the minimum wage during the last 2 years or prior to last January, when they controlled both houses of the Congress and of course the White House? That is the part I do not get. There is a certain disconnect there because they did not act on legislation raising the minimum wage when they controlled both the legislative and executive branches of government.
Second, I have been maintaining all along and I have attempted to make this case to our leadership, the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives, that a modest increase in the minimum wage needs to be linked to real reform of the welfare system.
It seems to me that we have many perverse incentives in American life today that are the result of misguided Federal policy. For example, we have an economic policy or a tax policy, tax code, that seems to encourage consumption and spending over savings and investment, and that in turn has put a tremendous strain on the so-called old-age retirement programs, social security and Medicare.
But we also have in our welfare system today, especially in my home State of California, which has a fairly lucrative welfare benefit structure, a perverse incentive in that welfare in the aggregate oftentimes pays someone more than what they can make in a minimum wage job. It seems to me to be rather basic, that if we want to reform welfare by moving people from welfare to work, helping them make what is a very difficult transition, especially for single mothers who many times struggle against heroic odds, that we have to raise the minimum wage so that at least the minimum wage pays more than welfare benefits.
The gentlewoman from California was absolutely right in the statistics that she quoted. Unfortunately, she walked off the floor because I do not think she wants to engage in a debate about this issue. She is right, though, when she says that a full-time minimum-
wage worker today would earn only $8,840 a year, which is far less than many States pay in welfare cash benefits and well below the Nation's poverty level.
It is my belief that we need to correct this inequity, an inequity that the Democrat majority in the last Congress was unwilling to address, so that people who want to work are not forced to choose between work and welfare because welfare actually pays better than work. So again, it seems to me we have to reverse that equation, address this perverse incentive, which is one of many that riddle American life today.
The other point I wanted to make on the minimum wage issue, watching, I believe it was, a CNN program over the weekend, their Inside Edition on late Sunday afternoon, early Sunday evening, they were profiling the Republican revolution after 15, 16 months of this Congress and sort of begging the question, is that revolution alive or dead?
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They focused specifically on the subject of welfare reform, and they actually interviewed several current welfare recipients who, looking right into the camera, said ``I don't feel that I can support myself, much less my family''; that is, meet the needs of my dependents and loved ones in an entry level minimum wage job; that is to say, a job probably in the service sector of the economy, the kind of job that they would be most likely to find if they were to move from the welfare rolls to work now.
So there you have it. You have living, firsthand testimony, from several people right on that show Sunday evening, basically saying what I think many of us believe, and that is that we have to again address this perverse incentive, and we have, if we want to reform welfare by moving people from welfare to work, make a minimum wage job pay more than welfare benefits in the aggregate.
But that is the other party with a little bit of the grandstanding going on on the other side of the aisle with this particular issue. Again, I am trying to make a linkage to real reform of the welfare system. That is my rationale or justification for supporting an increase in the minimum wage, yet I think anyone who has followed the debate in this Chamber and the developments in this Congress, the 104th session of Congress in our Nation's history over the last 16 months, knows that while we promised in our Contract With America to reform the welfare system, to emphasize work, families and personal responsibility, we have gotten virtually no assistance from our Democratic colleagues in that effort in either the House or the Senate. In fact, we have already in these past 16 months, this session of Congress, sent the President two welfare reform bills which he has vetoed.
So here you have a certain irony in a Republican majority in this Congress trying to help this Democratic President, who back in 1992 as Candidate Clinton promised to end welfare as we know it, make good on that campaign promise. Yet he has refused to consider welfare reform legislation. I believe personally the President would have a political problem with the far left wing of his party, and this political constituency of dependency that we have built up in America over the last several decades, if he were to entertain signing welfare reform legislation, again, despite the promise he made back in the 1992 campaign for President, which was just one of several major promises that he has broken to date in his last 3-plus years as President of these United States.
We all remember, of course, back in the 1992 campaign when he promised to submit to the Congress a budget that balances in 5 years. Many of us recall he made a middle class tax cut the centerpiece of his economic plan, which he called putting people first. Of course, as I said a couple of months ago, he also campaigned on a promise of ending welfare as we know it, which made him look the centrist, new Democrat that he wanted to be during the 1992 election. But, of course, as the record now shows, he has tended to govern more as a traditional left wing, big government, tax and spend President.
So I find some of the rhetoric coming from my Democratic colleagues just a little disingenuous on this issue, because again I do not see how you divorce or separate an increase in the minimum wage from real reform of the welfare system, particularly if it is a bipartisan goal of both the Congress and the Presidency to try and help people make that transition from welfare to work.
We know that those experiments in workfare are succeeding around the country. Many States, including Virginia, just across the Potomac River, where I reside part-time while serving back here in Washington representing the 1st Congressional District of California, Virginia has launched a workfare program, welfare reform, over the last year or so, which to date has been a tremendous success. In fact, there was just a story in today's newspapers back here documenting again the success stories of those people who with the proper assistance from the Government in the form of education, skills training or job training, adequate child care and transportation, are making that transition from welfare to work. But, again, I submit to you that if we wanted to have large scale welfare reform, if we really do want to pursue this dream or this vision of ending welfare as we know it, we certainly have to make an entry level minimum wage job pay more than welfare benefits in the aggregate.
So again, I find just a little tad of hypocrisy in what some of my Democratic colleagues have had to say on the floor this evening, and on certainly prior occasions, with respect to the minimum wage issue, and I look forward to the coming debate on the minimum wage issue, so that we can hopefully constructively discuss the minimum wage, how we can move that legislation through the House. Again, I would like to see it move in the context of welfare reform.
There is one other thing I want to mention about welfare reform, and that is earlier this year, I think it was back in January or February of this year, we saw in this town a truly remarkable event. Now, I know that people tend to get, particularly the longer they stay back here in Washington, they tend to succumb to sort of the beltway culture. They become just a tad cynical, maybe just a little jaded. But we saw something earlier this year that even the most jaded Washingtonian, even the most skeptical pundit, I think would have to admit was truly a remarkable development, and that is when the Nation's Governors, meeting back herein Washington at their semiannual meeting, unanimously agreed on welfare reform proposals.
Unanimously. I did not say this was a consensus agreement, where a majority prevailed obviously over a minority in supporting and advancing welfare reform proposals. No, this was a unanimous agreement. We had 43 of the Nation's Governors, big State, little State, Democrat and Republican, meeting back here, all endorsing the welfare reform proposals.
Since that time, the other seven Governors have also endorsed those proposals, so we have the remarkable, the absolutely remarkable development of unanimity in the ranks of the Nation's Governors, all 50, again, big State, little State, Republican and Democrat, supporting welfare reform proposals.
I wonder just for a moment, in a perfect world, what would happen if we were to attach the minimum wage increase that, again, 20 or 21 of us Republicans and a solid majority of the Democrats in the House, to those unanimous welfare reform proposals of the Nation's Governors? Would that not give us the opportunity to do something on a truly bipartisan basis that we could be really genuinely proud of and which might stand as one of the shining accomplishments of this congress, the 104th in our Nation's history?
tribute to gilbert murray
Mr. Speaker, I want to change subjects for just a moment and explain why I am wearing this green ribbon on my lapel, which is a question I have been asked many times today by many of my colleagues. I also want to acknowledge that hearing the comments of my colleagues earlier this evening, both sides of the aisle, talking about the reflecting upon the genocide in Eastern Europe that dates back a considerable amount of time, that on these kind of occasions, when Members stand in tribute, I think the Chamber takes on really its most formal and solemn atmosphere.
I want to follow that by mentioning that this green ribbon on my lapel is in memory of a man by the name of Gilbert Murray, Gil Murray, who 1 year ago today, on April 24, 1995, was killed in his office of the California Forestry Association in Sacramento, CA, by a seemingly innocuous mail package. We now know 1 year later that Gil was tragically the last victim of the so-called Unabomber.
I did not know him well, but as I knew him, he was a fine man, a family man, a dedicated professional, someone who was advancing the principles of responsible and sustainable forestry on both our public and private forest lands. I can tell you that Gil, 1 year later, is very much missed by his friends and his family certainly, and those of us who had the privilege of knowing him.
Now, I suspect that his death is something his family can never truly recover from, but I hope and I pray that they continue to heal from this tragic event, and that we all remember April 24, 1995, as a day that will forever change the way each of us look at our own lives and the world in which we live.
We can, of course, now today, April 24, 1996, take some solace knowing that with the apprehension of an individual who is strongly suspected of being the infamous Unabomber, no other families will suffer the tragedy of losing a friend and loved one like the way we lost Gil.
One year after his tragic death, the memory of Gil still touches those of us who work on forestry and resource issues on a daily basis. His death touches us deeply, and our love and affection go out again to his family, his friends, his extended family, if you will, which would certainly include the other fine folks at the California Forestry Association.
I hope we never forget his tragic death, because it was a senseless and evil act. Again, I personally asked a number of my colleagues today to show their solidarity and their respect for Gil by wearing a green ribbon on their lapel, such as I am doing now, and I am very pleased that so many of my colleagues would join me in this effort. Really, in their own way, or by extension, they honor all the victims of the Unabomber and their survivors.
I want to do one other thing that is related to Gil Murray's passing, and that is I want to address some of this, because I think Gil would approve of this, I want to address some of this environmental fear mongering and hysteria that we have been hearing in the halls of Congress in recent days and weeks. It sort of came to a head I guess on Monday of this week, Monday, April 22, the so-called National Earth Day, when we heard all kind of exaggerated and wild-eyed claims being made down here on this floor that, again, I think can only be described as environmental fear mongering or hysteria.
I think most of us, particularly those of us who live in the western United States and who represent resource-dependent congressional districts, that is to say, represent communities where the economy is based on resource use and development, most of us know that you have to find a balance between the need to protect the environment on the one hand, and the need to protect jobs on the other. We strive to find that balance in our congressional districts and certainly here on the floor of Congress when we, in our everyday professional lives, as we make policy decisions.
So I tend I guess over time to just sort of tune out this environmental fear mongering and hysteria. But when I hear Members, especially from the other side of the aisle, coming down to the floor, and let us be honest about it, most of them, and I am not going to name names, particularly since they do not have the opportunity to be here and debate the issues, but most of them come from metropolitan areas, they represent urban congressional districts where the thinking on environmental issues is about 180 degrees different than the more rural areas of America, like the district that I represent.
But I heard several of these Members come to the floor the other day and refer to our timber salvage legislation, the legislation authorizing the Forest Service to sell more of the dead, dying, and diseased trees on Federal forest lands, and referring to that legislation as so-called logging without logs.
Now, I want to be very clear about one thing. We are talking about logging, selective harvesting, of dead, dying, and diseased trees on Federal forest lands. Not in our national parks, not in our wilderness areas, not in an area that has a wild and scenic designation, but in our Federal forest lands, these vast forest preserves that were set aside in the 1940's in part to provide a growing Nation with a very valuable commodity and a steady supply of timber.
It just seemed prudent to those of us in the Committee on Appropriations who wrote this legislation that we ought to allow greater harvesting of the dead, dying, and diseased trees, if for no other reason than to deal with the tremendous fuel load, the buildup of combustible materials, the underbrush and downed trees, on Federal forest lands, particularly when just a couple of summers ago we saw wild fires raging out of control in our drought-stricken forests of the western United States, wild fires that I might add cost the taxpayer
$1.1 billion and took the lives of 33 U.S. firefighters attempting to extinguish those fires.
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So, Mr. Speaker, we thought we had a good bill, yet it has been called logging without logs, and we saw Members stand here on the floor and the other side of the aisle demagoging this issue, handing out fig leaves and saying, and this is an actual quote, ``Let's not be conned'', yet today a three-judge court of appeals upheld the timber salvage law. They said it was perfectly legal. It is not logging without logs. And at least one of the three judges is an appointee of President Clinton.
They specifically upheld the so-called 318 green sales provisions of this particular bill. This is the section of the timber salvage legislation that directed the Forest Service or the Federal Government to honor contractual sales commitments that had been made to private parties who had successfully bid for the rights to harvest trees on Federal forestlands in the Pacific Northwest, in Oregon and Washington. And the three-judge court of appeals today simply said that the Federal Government, in fact, will honor its longstanding legal obligations and proceed with those sales.
So there is no logging without logs. We know that, sadly, that right now, today, April 24, we are operating a portion of the Federal Government on a 24-hour so-called continuing resolution. This is a short-term funding measure for 5 of the 13 annual spending bills, which we call appropriations, that have not yet been enacted into law. And we are down to resolving, those of us who have been a party to these negotiations, as I have, as an individual member of the House Committee on Appropriations, we are down to just a few issues really now dividing us in this House, Republican Majority, Democrat Minority, and between the Congress and the White House. But those few issues have to do with the so-called environmental riders to the Interior appropriations bill, which is one of the five bills, again, not yet enacted into law.
And these were provisions that, again, Members were talking about here on this floor just a couple of days ago, on Earth Day, Monday. What are they? They are the idea of allowing expanded oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and expanded timber harvesting in the Tongass National Forest of Florida.
We have Members running down here constantly claiming that by expanding oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and bear in mind this is a very small portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, it is presently set aside for oil leasing and drilling, all the remainder staying as wilderness, and by expanding harvesting in the Tongass Forest, which is again surrounded by vast tracts, huge amounts of land, I mean hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness, and by the way these are areas that maybe a handful of Members of Congress have ever visited; I must confess I have never visited them. But we want slightly increased resource use in Alaska, for one reason and one reason only, and that is the duly elected representatives of the State of Alaska, Congressman Don Young, Congressman for all of Alaska, and the two United States Senators representing Alaska are strongly supporting these provisions. And one would presume since they have been duly elected by the people of Alaska that they have a support of the majority of Alaskans; yet by trying to pursue these provisions, we are then accused by the other side of attempting to gut environmental regulations.
Then they mention the Endangered Species Act. And, yes, it is true in the annual appropriations bill, one of the appropriation bills last year, we imposed a moratorium on the listing of any new endangered or threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Now why would we do that? We have been accused of being radical by doing that. But what the other side never points out is that the Endangered Species Act is no longer authorized. The congressional authorization of the Endangered Species Act expired over 2 years ago. Rather than this law simply sunsetting, going off the books, it has remained in effect only because the Congress, the House specifically, would appropriate money on an annual basis to the Federal agencies which enforce that law; again, even though the original law itself, the statute, is no longer authorized. The authorization expired, again, over 2 years ago.
That sort of begs the question: Why didn't the last Congress, which was controlled by the Democratic Party, bring a reauthorization bill of the Endangered Species Act to this floor? And the answer is simple. Had they done it, there would be a bipartisan majority of Members, Republicans and Democrats, who would have wanted to amend the Endangered Species Act to include greater protection for jobs and greater consideration of the economic consequences of listing decisions. Again, trying to find that elusive balance between the need to protect species on the one hand and the need to consider and, hopefully, mitigate economic consequences and potential job losses on the other hand.
I do not think that is so radical. So, again, we have demagogueing going on in this House without the American people really being told both sides of the issue, not getting the full picture.
Lastly, one of the things that I wanted to mention on the environment is that earlier in this session of Congress, in fact during the first 100 days in this session of Congress, we passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in this House one of the provisions of the Contract With America that was signed into law by the President. We have this impression a lot of our Democratic colleagues would like to leave with the American people that the Contract With America is very radical. The reality is that 9 out of 10 provisions passed this House, 9 out of 10 provisions in the Contract With America passed this House and they passed this House, in many, many instances, with very strong support from the Democratic Members of the House. And one of those provisions, the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, became law with the President's signature.
How could that be? That is one provision in the Contract With America, passed the House, passed the Senate, and was signed into law by the President. And that is radical?
That Unfunded Mandates Reform Act created a new commission, actually there was an existing commission within the Federal Government, but it gave them a new charge and that was to examine existing Federal laws to determine whether those existing laws constitute an unfunded, or perhaps a better word would be underfunded mandate, imposed on States and local communities by the Federal Government. In my view, it is sort of a heavy-handed, top-down, one-size-fits-all fashion, and of course we continue to write laws back here with the arrogance that, you know, the law is going to work as good in Portland, OR, as it does in Portland, ME. And sometimes I think we are sadly mistaken in that belief.
But we passed this Unfunded Mandates Reform Act. It became law. And the Unfunded Mandates Commission then began looking at existing Federal laws. And do you know what they found? They found that Federal environmental regulations, and they were very specific, they named the Endangered Species Act, they named the Clean Water Act, they named the Clean Air Act, they named the Superfund law and several others, that those existing Federal environmental regulations constitute, surprise, an unfunded mandate imposed on State and local communities by the Federal Government.
Furthermore, the unfunded mandates panel called on the Congress to rewrite these laws, to give greater consideration to the concerns of and the impacts upon States and local communities and to give States and local communities more of a say in the writing of these laws and in the administration of these laws. Since, again, we pass that responsibility for administering these laws on down to the States and to local communities.
And that is the flexibility that the State and local communities have been screaming for for years. That is why we passed the Clean Water Act Amendments in this House. And so many of our Democratic colleagues would have the American people believe that we passed the Clean Water Act Amendments because we are beholding to big business and corporate special interest. Well, to the contrary. The real impetus for amending the Clean Water Act came from the National League of Cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, both bipartisan organizations representing locally elected officials.
So I get a little tired when I hear this environmental fearmongering, this hysteria. I recognize it for what it is. It is a good political issue in a Presidential election year, but I think we are, by giving this hysteria any credence, we are really deceiving, misserving, or doing a disservice to the American people.
I want to read you very quickly a letter that appeared in a publication called Green Speak, that is put out by the National Hardwood Lumber Association. It is a letter from a mutual friend of mine and Gil Murray, again, the last victim of the Unabomber, for whom I wear a green lapel ribbon this evening. A mutual friend of ours by the name of Nadine Bailey, who was very involved just a couple of years ago, she lives just outside my congressional district, actually in Congressman Herger's congressional district in northeast California, in a little mill town called Hayfork, and her letter is dated March 11, 1996 and it is an open letter to the President.
It says, ``Dear President Clinton, you made a promise to my daughter on a national television program.''
This actually was the televised proceedings of the so-called forestry conference or timber summit held out in Portland, OR. I guess this would have been early 1993, soon after the President was elected, and both the President and the Vice President attended that particular timber summit or forestry conference, and Nadine starts her letter by making reference to it.
She then goes on to say ``When Elizabeth'', her daughter, ``showed you her class yearbook, with the names of the children whose parents would lose their jobs because of the spotted owl'', and of course those of us who hail from northwest California and the Pacific Northwest, we know very well about the spotted owl because it is listed as an endangered species and has had a tremendous impact on the economic well-being of our communities in northwest California, the Pacific Northwest.
``You made a promise to her and to all the children who live in timber-dependent communities. Do you remember what you said? Your promise was that you would solve the problems in the northwest and California, that you would bring everyone together and come up with a solution that would allow logging and protect the spotted owl. Do you remember? Do you care where Elizabeth is today? Do you care where her father is? Do you know how hard her family worked to bring about solutions that would save the community and ensure the health of the forest?
``I hope this brief summary of the last 3 years,'' the first 3 years of the Clinton administration, ``will make you understand and regret your broken promise.''
So this would be a broken promise that follows on the heel of the broken promise to balance the Federal budget, to end welfare as we know it, and to give the middle class a tax cut.
``1993. After the summit, I worked with the environmental community to develop a plan that would add jobs while protecting habitat and wildlife. I received a call from Vice President Gore asking for my support for the Option 9 forest plan.
``1993 to 1994.'' Two-year period. ``The Option 9 plan is approved and the region gets an adaptive management area. These areas were specifically designated to have adaptive management techniques used to produce products that would enable local communities to survive the transition brought about by changes in forest management. Hopes are high in the region that some relief from the timber supply crisis will be felt.
``Spring 1994. Jobs become hard to find. Grants from Option 9 do not make their way to unemployed loggers. In fact, in public forums,'' your forestry policy adviser, ``Tom Tuchman admits much of the money will go to infrastructure. In other words, the people most affected by the change in national forest policy will be the least likely to receive help. We no longer have our business. Years of work to build a business are gone, and my husband, Walley, works for five different employers, some as far away as 8 hours. Families are starting to leave the Trinity area. Some Trinity County School districts now have 96 percent of their children on free and reduced lunches, which means they now live below the poverty level.
``Fall 1994. The last large logger in Hayfork prepares to move operation because of lack of work.'' What she really meant to say was the lack of harvestable trees, or timber. The adaptive management area fails to produce any more timber than other areas under Option 9. In fact, there seems to be more study in the adaptive management area than other areas affected by the Option 9 plan.
``Spring 1995. We move our family from our home in Hayfork to Redding. At this point I contacted the many agencies that have been given money to help displaced workers for help with the move. We were told that we that we didn't qualify because my husband already has found work. We are forced to borrow money from a family member to move. We had been homeowners, now we are faced with renting and finding
$2,000 needed for deposits. We cannot sell our home, partly because of the market and partly because the house was built by my mother and father and I cannot face losing my home.''
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Wally, my husband, becomes even more bitter about being betrayed by your administration. Despite my job at the California Forestry Association, we fall deeper in debt. My kids are not happy. City life in Sacramento or in Redding is much different. To leave a high school with 125 kids and start again in a high school with 1,000 is almost too much for country kids. I am very concerned about Elizabeth. She misses her friends so much. Wally finds work 6 hours from home. He moves out to live on the job site and I become a single mother again.
April 24, 1995, the date that I observe this evening, a bomb goes off at my office, killing my boss and friend, Gil Murray. I seem to have lost the heart to fight for our community. Nothing I have done in these last 4 years seems to have made a difference. My trust in Government and society as a whole is weakened. You use the Oklahoma bombings to attack right wing political groups. You never mentioned the Unabomber. Vice President Gore doesn't call this time.
Let me just parenthetically ask if anyone sees anything wrong with the fact that of course the President and some of his political allies have no hesitation or reservations about insinuating that somehow, some way the National Rifle Association and Rush Limbaugh might have been responsible for the very tragic, horrific Oklahoma City bombing, but yet they see no possible connection between the rantings of the Unabomber and the environmental hysteria that goes on in this Chamber with regularity or for that matter no connection between some of the things that Vice President Gore has written and some of the writings of the Unabomber himself.
Summer 1995, where did I go wrong? Was it in believing in your promises? Could I have done more? Everything is beginning to unravel. With the exception of some local groups that came together to seek solutions through consensus, like the Quincy Library Group in Quincy, California, everyone seems to be going back to war.
By that she means the timber wars which have polarized our communities and divided the environmental camp from folks who make their living in the forest products industry, either directly or indirectly:
I wonder if you realize what an opportunity you had to heal old wounds. Instead all hope is fading for the future of towns like Hayfork. I still get calls late at night from people not knowing how they will make it through the winter, wanting to know if they should stick it out, if there is any hope that things will change. For the first time in my life, I have no hope.
That is what Nadine, she goes on and wrote a few other personal comments about her family. She actually ended up moving to Wisconsin where she now works at the timber producers office of Wisconsin.
But it is a very, very sad commentary about our inability to find that balance, the balance really that was promised, I believe, by the President and Vice President when they convened this timber summit in Portland, the balance that was promised to communities like Hayfork and to families like Nadine Bailey's.
I wonder where all this is going to lead, because in today's paper, in the San Francisco Chronicle, on page 1 is a headline that says, Victory for Sierra Club Dissidents. I think most people know that the Sierra Club, with roughly 600,000 members, is probably the largest environmental organization in the country. It has become a major environmental organization, no question about it. They have a full-time professional lobby here in Washington and in State capitals around the country. And they have an energetic grass-roots membership.
The point I am getting at is that they also enjoy this image of being moderates on the environment, reasonable people, people that you can sit down and talk with and maybe hopefully reason with as we grapple with these very, very complex and difficult and seemingly intractable issues. But the headline says, Victory for Sierra Club Dissidents and then it goes on, the subhead is, Vote to ban logging in national forests, Vote to ban logging in national forests.
Now, I know some of my constituents do not like it when I say this, but I ask repeatedly, as someone who is very proud of my role in helping to make the timber salvage legislation law, what is more extreme? Harvesting dead, dying and diseased trees in our national forests, which the foresters, like the late Gil Murray tell us is good for forest health and for fire suppression purposes and, I might add, it makes, to me, certain economic sense to use those dead, dying and diseased trees to produce a much-needed resource, while those dead, dying and diseased trees still have some economic and monetary value. I have yet to encounter too many Americans who do not live in wood framed structures. And I would also point out that if we followed the lead of the Sierra Club, this moderate, reasonable, middle-of-the-road environmental organization and we banned all logging in national forests, not national parks, not wilderness areas, national forests, that that will only increase the pressure to harvest trees on privately owned lands and that we need to find that equilibrium, that balance between a sustainable timber harvest on public lands and a sustainable timber harvest on private lands.
If we follow their lead and we ban all logging on our national forests, in essence turning our Federal forest into additional national parks, then we will, in my view, not only increase the pressure to harvest on private land but we will be creating a tremendous fire hazard in those Federal forest lands, particularly in our drought-
stricken areas of the western United States.
So what is more extreme? Harvesting dead, dying and diseased trees to produce a resource, or those who are so opposed to timber harvesting that they do not want to harvest even a dead tree? I wonder. Because leading the pack in this whole debate back here, of course, is the Vice President, Al Gore and the Secretary of the Interior, Secretary Babbitt.
So I believe it is a very, very alarming and sad day, and I wonder about the terrible irony of the Sierra Club taking this particular position on the same day that we commemorate the tragic death of Gil Murray.
In fact, I should mention, the article goes on to say, Members of the Sierra Club have handed a dissident faction, it is no longer a dissident faction because they prevailed, they are now the majority within the club, handed a dissident faction an important victory by voting that the club for the first time in its 104 year history will support an end to commercial logging in national forests. The club's membership approved the measure 2 to 1, the San Francisco based conservation organization announced yesterday. Although the club has fought vigorously against logging in many situations, it has never formally opposed an outright ban on the common practice of commercial logging in national forests.
So the Sierra Club is now coming out and taking a position that we will not even thin these forests to selectively harvest the dead, dying and diseased trees. We will have no timber harvest in our Federal forest lands at all, even though that was largely the reason that those Federal forest lands were created to begin with.
So I mentioned the Vice President because I think a lot of this is, particularly the current impasse over the budget, the so-called omnibus appropriations bill, the conference report which we would like to bring to this floor tomorrow, a lot of this impasse right now is again over environmental issues.
I think my colleague, Mrs. Seastrand, would admit that. I will yield to her in just a moment. But to me it continues a very disturbing pattern back here in Washington of demagoging on issues. I take very strong exception to the demagoging that I see going on. I know it is a sad fact of political life. I know that we are going to see more, not less, as we approach the November election. But there are some issues that in my view are too important for this sort of common, everyday petty politics and this demagoging back and forth.
Let me give you one other example. That is Medicare, because a lot of the demagoging that we hear coming from the other side of the aisle in the Congress and from the Clinton administration has to do with the environment, Medicare, education. I think those are the three big ones that they like to hit all the time. So I want to mention Medicare.
I want to first of all just point out for my colleagues just how out of hand this demagoging is. This is an April 19, so this is a Congress Daily from last week, that reports on a press conference over on the other side of the Capitol outside the Senate Chamber where the Vice President was quoted as blasting Senator Dole and Senate Republicans for attempting to push on, this is a quote, Push on the U.S. Senate a provision that would have led to serious and grave damage to the Medicare system.
There were just two problems: One, the amendment that the Vice President was referring to, having to do with medical savings accounts, had nothing to do with Medicare; it was in the context of health insurance reform. No. 2, Senator Dole himself was standing behind the Vice President when the Vice President made these particular remarks. It is almost as if, again, certain figures in the administration cannot wait to demagogue an issue. And it is sort of the old mindset that my mind is made up, do not confuse me with the facts.
It had nothing to do with Medicare. It had to do with the health insurance reform legislation that we would like to move through Congress on a bipartisan basis and get to the President so he can sign.
But here, Mr. Vice President and other concerned colleagues, here is the real issue pertaining to Medicare, and that is the very stark headlines just out of yesterday's newspaper. I do not understand why, if we are going to have these Chicken Little folks running all over the Capitol saying the sky is falling, the sky is falling let us shift our focus from the environment and start talking about something that is really of crucial concern to this Nation and future generations; that is, Medicare.
It is going broke. It is going broke faster than expected. And we need to do something in this session of Congress about the problem. We have already sent the President a plan that would increase Medicare spending per recipient from $4,800 today to $7,300 per Medicare recipient in 7 years, increase spending, increase choices, and save the program from bankruptcy. But President Clinton vetoed that legislation, as we all know now.
But here is what is so alarming, because the facts and figures indicate the truth and we can see a trend developing. Back on February 5 of this year, February 5, 1996, the New York Times reported on page A1 with a Washington dateline, Washington, New government data shows Medicare's hospital insurance trust fund lost money last year for the first time since 1972, suggesting that the financial condition of the Medicare Program was worse than assumed by either Congress or the Clinton administration.
Then, as I mentioned, again, the New York Times yesterday, April 23, 1996, again on page A1, the New York Times is not exactly a conservative publication.
Mrs. SEASTRAND. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. RIGGS. I yield to the gentlewoman from California.
Mrs. SEASTRAND. It was most interesting to see that New York Times article appears in the Santa Barbara News Press. The Santa Barbara News Press is owned by the New York Times, and to see the headline stating that Medicare is going broke faster than we here in the Congress think that it will go broke, $4.2 billion, it was interesting because the subheadline on the front page of that newspaper said that the Clinton administration was very much trying to cover up the calculations.
Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman from northern California would agree with me that through all of this discussion, on trying to save Medicare for our moms and dads and for future generations, we have taken quite a bit of heat, not from necessarily the folks in the district but from those outside forces that come from Washington, DC. I know the gentleman is, like I am, one who has been besieged by television, radio ads, coming from Washington, DC, and trying to tell constituents in our district that the gentleman from California [Mr. Riggs] and the gentlewoman from California [Mrs. Seastrand] were trying to cut and destroy Medicare, and so it is a little sad to see those headlines.
Mr. Speaker, when you take the stand, you argue your positions and you do battle. It is sad to, while I enjoy seeing the headline saying, yes, I was right, Mr. Riggs of California was right, we support our bill to save Medicare. But when you do realize how much the people, our senior citizens presently, our children and our grandchildren are going to suffer just because of the fact that politics is played, demagoguery was taking place, and we did not get about to saving Medicare as of yet.
So, I agree with the gentleman from California [Mr. Riggs]. It is a pretty sad day, but it is interesting to see that it has to be true. I mean that headline appeared in all of our newspapers across this land. I just say, if it is in the New York Times, I just guess it has to be true.
I think Mr. Riggs would agree with me that we are being besieged. The gentleman was talking earlier about fear mongering, and it is interesting because the same ads have appeared in my district that have appeared in the gentleman's district, with the same 800 number. Whether it was some of the more extreme groups trying to scare our constituents that we are trying to poison the water, we have lead in the water and arsenic in the water, and we are going to pollute our oceans, I would just stand here, saying as a mom and one who hopes one day very soon to be a grandmother, I am definitely concerned about our environment and where we are going as we turn into the 21st century.
Mr. Speaker, so it is a bit bizarre. But to see the fear mongering not only from different organizations but amazingly the AFL-CIO, I think they played the same ad that we re definitely cutting into Medicare, destroying Medicare, cutting education.
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They were destroying the environment, and we voted for a bad budget, and it is just interesting to note that again this fear is coming from the heart of this city, Washington, DC.
We know, it is those big labor bosses that are very, very disturbed that they lost power, and they do not seem to wield it here in this capital city as much as they used to for 40 years.
But, you know, when you were talking about not having the opportunity to do some timber salvaging in our national forest, I was thinking about how many working families, by that position that the Sierra Club took, how many working families it is going to affect in your district, and I often think, too, about the AFL-CIO, how many people because of their positions where I am trying to fight for a balanced budget to help my children and grandchildren and yours and taking the position of tax relief, of $500 tax credit for children, seeing that we cut through capital gains so we could help those small businesses in the northern end of California and on my central coast; all these things that are so important for our working families throughout our two districts, and because of the rhetoric, the yelling of radical extremists, how many, because of that, how is it going to affect our district and affect those very working families that belong to the very so-called AFL-CIO union.
And when you think just recently they had an annual convention here in Washington, DC, and they raised the dues of those working families in my district, in your district, and they are going to have to pay for those dues to fund a continuation of the fearmongering advertising that is taking place in our districts.
I have a quote here. At the convention, we had vice president Linda Chavez Thompson say, ``We stopped the Contract with America dead in its tracks. Now we have to spend 7 times as much to bury it 6 feet under.''
I tried to talk to my working families in my district and say the Contract with America; what is that? That is balancing the beget so that we can lower those interest rates so you can buy that home that you want to buy or buy that truck that you need, or to send your children to college so maybe they are going to be the first to graduate out of your family. Or it means tax relief, that $500 tax credit, or a tax credit for adoption of our children. Or it might mean welfare reform or saving, just cutting away at the big bureaucracy here in Washington, and I think the gentleman would agree with me that we are trying our very best to bring some sanity, and yet the rhetoric is very strong, especially on two freshmen.
And I just might say in this week we are commemorating Earth Day and talking about the environment. I will just say to the gentleman from northern California, you have been recycled as a Member of this Congress, and very gladly, because you served in this Congress for 2 years, and you were out for 2 years, and now you are back, and I am just glad to recognize you as one of the members of the freshman class.
But what we have been trying to do in this 104th Congress to make this place accountable to those working families that are way back on the West Coast of California and make some sense to the men and women, the moms and dads, that are trying to make it in this very hard economy.
So I just thank the gentleman for bringing up all the issues that you previously did, and I would just say that I guess we are going to have to tighten our seat belt because we are going to continue to see radical groups, big labor, especially the ones based here in Washington, such as the AFL-CIO, continuing to launch an assault on our efforts to bring about meaningful change in a way the Federal Government operates and undermine our efforts to secure a brighter future for the folks in California.
I think it is very obvious that at AFL-CIO they are not looking out for their union members and their families in our two districts. No; those Washington bosses, as far as I am concerned, are using those membership forced dues to fight against that balanced budget that would give them and the families such benefits as more take-home pay, and lower interest rates and the ability to decide how they are going to spend their dollars, and not a bureaucrat here in Washington, DC.
You know, I believe that the union members and the families in my district and yours, Mr. Riggs, if they were given a choice, it is likely they would prefer their balanced budget bonus to a deceptive, dishonest, propaganda campaign against our voting record. And you know it is just amazing to see it transpire, and I would just say I guess we were going to see this until November.
Mr. RIGGS. I think so, and I thank the gentlewoman for her comments.
Again, she is so right. She is basically describing the so-called mediscare campaign that has been launched by big labor, the major Washington-based labor unions back here which have become the core constituency of the national Democratic Party, yet they are ignoring all the warning signs that we are heading towards bankruptcy, for one reason and one reason only: They want to use this as the political issue to regain control of the Congress.
Independent analysis indicates that you know Medicare is going broke. The gentlewoman from California [Mrs. Seastrand] mentioned that we both been targeted by radio and television ads in our congressional districts, giving us an F for our votes on preserving Medicare from bankruptcy. That is actually out of the union press release. Yet if you look at the independent analysis that has been done of some of these advertisements by Brooks Jackson of CNN, he talks about the ads being a big hoax on the American people, grossly misleading.
One of the ads running now says the Democrats want to protect Medicare the Republicans want to gut it. But then Jackson goes on to admit Republicans currently propose to cut the growth of Medicare by
$168 billion over 7 years. President Clinton's budget calls for $124 billion in cuts, which he calls savings.
He also analyzes another allegation in these ads. Republicans cut school lunches, cut Head Start, cut health care. Then Jackson, Brooks Jackson of CNN, calls this Democrat National Committee ad false advertising.
Mr. Speaker, the Republican Congress appropriated more money for school lunches this year, just what President Clinton asked, in fact, and the Agriculture Department says it has increased the number of children served. Money from the Head Start preschool program has been cut 4 percent this year temporarily, but Republicans have agreed to a 1 percent increase once a permanent appropriations bill is passed. Meanwhile not a single child has been affected. In fact, Head Start enrollment is up this year.
On child health care, Republicans did pass a $164 billion cut in Medicaid growth, which Clinton vetoed. Now differences have narrowed. Republicans last proposed to cut only $85 billion over 7 years, again to save that program, which has been growing in an unsustainable rate, and President Clinton's own budget proposal cuts of $59 billion.
As we saw in this ad, the Democrats' strategy is to, exact quote, Brooks Jackson on CNN, ``not let the facts get in the way of a pro-
Clinton political spin.''
So again I thank the speaker for the time this evening. I will have more to say about these ads in the future. I would simply try to admonish her to advise the American people, you know, do not believe the lies and the scare tactics. Research the issues for yourself. Be informed, and I think you will see that we are trying to do the right thing, the responsible thing here in Congress, and we are trying to remember the old admonition of Mark Twain, which is, always do right, you will make some people happy and astonish the rest.
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