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.
“A BUSY WEEK” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Commerce was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H2706-H2712 on March 22, 1996.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
A BUSY WEEK
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, we are concluding today's session, the session for the week, going home. And it has been a very busy week. I will not say it has been a very fruitful week but certainly we have been very busy.
I am looking forward to going home and talking to my constituents for 12 hours in an all night teach-in that I will be holding at the Borough of Manhattan Community College from 7 p.m. Saturday night to 7 a.m. Sunday morning. We are having this all night teach-in because there is just not enough time to talk about all of the things that need to be talked about in this very critical period in the life of our Nation. There are forces moving very rapidly and overnight they want to remake America.
The Speaker of the House has said that politics is war without blood and that he wants to remake America, and we are trying to remake America in a very short period of time. The fallout is hurting a lot of people.
In New York State and New York City it seems that the Governor and the mayor want to get ahead of the Republican majority here in Congress. They are have instituted certain cruel harassing programs that are worse than anything we have yet passed here in this House. So our people need to know a whole lot about what is going on. We need to talk about just exactly what is happening, and there is not enough time to do it in a regular day.
Mr. Speaker, also, if we want to get people together who are experts and can throw some light on this subject, they are too busy, they cannot stay long or, if we have an opportunity to talk, the amount of time available is too little. So I will have a marathon teach-in, all night long, 12 hours.
We are going to talk about the fiscal future of New York City, the fiscal future of New York City. The discussion begins with a discussion of what is happening here in Washington because the fiscal future of New York City is inextricably interwoven with the policies that are generated here in Washington, our Capital. I am going to start by talking about the fact that New York City is often discussed on the floor of the House of Representatives. People often talk about New York City and New York State. It is the favorite target of the Speaker of the House. Speaker Gingrich often refers to New York State and New York City as a welfare State and a welfare city. For that reason, the people of New York need to understand the perspective of our relationship with Washington better.
We are called a welfare State, welfare city. We are often accused of draining, being a drain on the Nation, and yet New York City pays taxes to the tune of $9 billion more into the Federal Government than it received back in 1994. New York City, the city alone, paid taxes of $9 billion more to the Federal Government than it received back from the Federal Government in various forms of aid.
In that same year, 1994, New York State paid $18.9 billion more. The total of New York State, the city and all the other parts of New York State, paid $18.9 billion more to the Federal Government than we received back from the Federal Government. The year before that, in 1993, New York State paid $23 billion more to the Federal Government than we received back from the Federal Government. So New Yorkers need to know in this all-night teach-in we are going to start by talking about the fact that our city is not bankrupt. Our city is not broke. Our State is not bankrupt. Our State is not broke.
Mr. Speaker, it is baffling. We do not quite understand why Members on the floor of the House of Representatives like to single out New York City. New York City is often singled out, and New York State, for its high expenditures on Medicare and Medicaid. Well, after we take away our high expenditures for Medicare and Medicaid, which are the highest in the country, I admit that. I can think of no more noble way to expend public funds than by taking care of the sick, the infirm, the elderly in nursing homes. That is a noble way to expend funds.
Yes, if there is waste, we want to get rid of the waste. If there is corruption, we want to get rid of the corruption. We do not have any money to spend for anything except the intended purposes. But even if we take away the high expenditures for Medicare and Medicaid, New York City is still paying more and New York State is still paying more to the Federal Government than they are getting back from the Federal Government. Stop and seriously consider it.
According to the formulas in the way things are arranged here in Washington, New Yorkers, New York City people have to pay for 25 percent of their Medicare costs, and then again the State pays another 25 percent, which means that New York State pays 50 percent of its Medicare costs while Mississippi only pays a small fraction of its Medicare costs. Most of it is paid by the Federal Government, and other Southern States pay only a small fraction of their total Medicare and Medicaid costs. The rest is paid for by the Federal Government.
The result of all this is that in 1994, the Southern States combined--I mention the Southern States because often the Blue Dogs and the Republicans and various people are the ones who are criticizing New York. Certainly the Speaker of the House is from Georgia and he is a major critic of New York. The Southern States combined receive $625 billion more from the Federal Government in terms of aid than they pay in to the Federal Government.
Mr. Speaker, Mississippi gets the highest amount. In 1994, Mississippi got $6 billion more from the Federal Government than the people of Mississippi paid in taxes to the Federal Government. In Georgia, in 1994, the people got $2 billion more from the Federal Government than the people of Georgia paid to the Federal Government. The county in the country, in all of the United States of America, the one county which received the highest per capita in Federal aid, the highest amount of money in Federal aid was the county represented by the Speaker of the House.
Speaker Gingrich's county received more money per person from the Federal Government than any other county in the United States of America. So why is New York City constantly being lambasted? Why is New York State constantly being lambasted? I suppose we should call upon some psychologists and students of human nature because not only was it the case in 1994, when New York paid $18.9 billion more to the Federal Government than it received in Federal aid, but in 1993, we paid $23 billion more to the Federal Government than we received in Federal aid. But this has been the case for the last 20 years.
The last 20 years, New York State has consistently paid more into the Federal Government than it has received from the Federal Government. Why do the States that are recipients of the money who always pay less to the Federal Government than they receive become the critics of New York? That is a challenging study of human nature. Why are we kicked in the pants and why are we spat upon because of our generosity?
If we were to have complete States' rights as some Members are proclaiming economic States' rights, and if everything was block granted and the State was left on its own, New York would have no budget problems. If we had the $18.9 billion from 1994, and probably 1995 will show a similar pattern, if we had the money that we pay into the Federal Government, which is so much greater than we get from the Federal Government, we could balance our budgets. We could take care of all our problems.
In my all-night teach-in, I want to let New Yorkers know this. I am going to let the people who live in my district know this, constituents know this, because they are assuming a posture of fatalism. Too many people, too many people, those who are using the day care centers and do not find that they are able to find places anymore, those who are being laid off in various city departments, those who are being denied public assistance, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, harassed, too many people have given up already, and they say that the city cannot do any better.
It is not a matter of an administration which is unduly harassing people who need Aid to Families with Dependent Children. It is a matter of the situation is such that the city cannot do any better. The city is almost broke. It is about to go bankrupt. It cannot do any better. The all-night teach-in is designed to let people know this is not true, that New York City is a wealthy State, New York State is a wealthy State, and there are many ways we can do better.
So I am looking forward to this all-night teach-in because it will give us a chance to have the kind of dialog necessary in this critical period when there are forces moving to remake America. They want to overnight change the way America is. They want a revolution. Revolutions are always dangerous because the people who are the strongest are sometimes the dumbest, and the people who are the strongest and the dumbest can do a lot of damage before you can get them back under control.
It has been a busy week, and we have seen some of this dumbness played out here in Washington. Some of the stupidest are here in Washington.
At this very moment, the 32,000 young people in New York City who got jobs last summer in the Summer Youth Employment Program do not know whether they are going to be able to get jobs this time because it is a federally funded program. Last year, 32,000 young people were employed in the Summer Youth Employment Program in New York City. Across the country, in other big cities, and in some suburban areas, youngsters were employed in summer youth employment programs who could not get jobs in any other way.
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That program has existed for the last 20 years. It has been steadily cut. When I was commissioner of the community development agency responsible for parts of the program in 1968, 90,000 young people in New York got jobs in the summer program. It went from 90,000 in 1968 to 32,000 in 1995. The reduction was so great that we went down to one-
third the total amount of the original program. But it is still a very important program.
We do not want to go from 90,000 to zero, and right now there is zero in the budget for the Summer Youth Employment Program. There is no budget for the Summer Youth Employment Program. That kind of stupidity is still prevailing here in Washington.
I do not know why the Republican majority targets programs for young people. I do not know why they went after the School Lunch Program and reduced the School Lunch Program. I do not know why they went after the Title I Program. Title I has been reduced by one-seventh, $1.1 billion taken from tile I designed to help youngsters in elementary and secondary schools across the country. Ninety percent of the school districts in America get some part of title I funds. Why is the Republican Majority insisting on going after young people?
We are supposed to be a family-oriented Congress and we hear the words ``family orientation,'' ``family values'' all the time, but the children are the target of the Republican majority in this Congress. They went after school lunch programs, they have gone after title I programs.
The only body in the history of Washington since the very beginning of the Head Start Program, the only body to cut the Head Start Program is this Republican-controlled majority here in the House of Representatives. We cut Head Start by $300 million. That cut is still hanging over the head of the Head Start Program.
Head Start cut back $300 million; title I cut by $1.1 billion; Summer Youth Program last year was about $650 million, that is cut, now zero at this point. All of those actions by the Republican-controlled Congress and House of Representatives add up to a war on children. The war to remake America is first a war on children, a war on education.
The President released his budget earlier in the week. As I said before, it has been a busy week. The President released his budget and in that budget he has less for a tax cut than the Republican-proposed budget. He is proposing, I think, $100 billion over a 7-year period in tax cuts.
Among the tax cuts that President Clinton proposes is a cut which would allow parents who are paying tuition for children to deduct tuition costs. Up to $10,000 in tuition costs can be deducted under President Clinton's tax cut plan. I think there is no more noble tax deduction that you could give than a tax deduction that relates to the education of young people.
I have three sons and all three of my sons are out of school already, but I assure you it was a very difficult period to put three sons through college. I was glad when the last one graduated and only a few years ago I paid off the last parent's loans.
It was a very difficult situation when it comes to putting young people through college. It gets more expensive all the time, and so President Clinton has moved in a direction which will help family. I do not think you can have more of a family orientation than that. At the same time it will help the economy of the country by providing the kind of high-skilled, highly trained individuals that we get only when people go to college. There is a certain kind of training needed now that requires that you go to college.
In addition to that, the President's tax cut includes the $500 per child tax deduction increase, an increase of $500 per child. Again, it is family-oriented, and I must say that the Republicans also have that in their proposed tax cuts. At least we are guaranteed that there will be agreement on a tax cut, a tax deduction for children, $500 per child increase in the coming budget because both groups agree.
But, in general, the President has stayed the course and kept in his budget the money which allows for increases in education. Not only does the President not accept the cuts of Head Start or the cuts of title I or the cut of the Summer Youth Employment Program, but the President puts additional money in there for education. The only basic increase in the President's budget is money for education and job training. Those are the two areas that are increased.
We know that Americans are suffering, families are suffering a great deal of anxiety now because of the fact that there is a great gap in the income of the 10-percent who make the most money in this country and those at the bottom whose wages have stagnated in the last 20 years.
There is a need to deal with that in many ways and one way, of course, to deal with that is to make sure we have the proper education and the proper training. We cannot emphasize too much the necessity to take the initiative on education and maintain the initiative on education.
During this busy week we also took up the immigration bill. The immigration bill is very important to me and to my district. I do not know of any other district in the country that probably has as many legal immigrants as my district has. I have not checked it, so I do not know, but I know that according to the last census 150,000 of the 581,000 people in my district are not citizens; 150,000 of the 581,000 people in my district are not citizens, and I interpret that to mean that they are legal immigrants because the illegal immigrants do not allow themselves to be counted. Illegal immigrants do not come forward and do not get counted.
The people who have been counted and who have admitted that they are not citizens is a staggering number of 150,000 in my congressional district. The 11th Congressional District of Brooklyn has more than one-third of all the immigrants who are legal and who are counted in the census in New York City. New York City has between 400,000 and 500,000 legal immigrants and 150,000 of them are in my district.
The immigration bill is very important. These are people who are hoping to become citizens. We have an intense drive on telling everybody who can become a citizen, do become a citizen as rapidly as you can. You need to defend your own interests, your own rights.
We think that the attack on immigrants reflected in the immigration bill, that attack is unwarranted. We think that the attack on immigrants is un-American. Never before have the people of America attacked immigration. Immigration has always been the great source of new life and new blood in America. We are a country of immigrants.
Why all the sudden are immigrants considered bad people? Immigrants helped to build the country. Right now in the country we have fewer immigrants than any period in history. In New York City we have 400,000 to 500,000 immigrants, whereas 20 years ago 1.5 million people in New York City were immigrants.
Why are we attacking immigrants with such intensity and hostility now? Is it because the immigrants now are not white? Most of the immigrants are Asians or Hispanic, or they are people of African descent from the Caribbean area. Is the attack another form of racism? I think so. We have fewer immigrants.
According to a New York Times editorial, the immigrants in New York earn on average greater income than a lot of other people who have been there longer than they have been. The immigrants in New York put back into the economy a large amount of money because they serve as entrepreneurs or are very active in many different ways in the economy of the city. The immigrants of New York are a benefit to New York.
In fact, one of the things I am going to talk about in the all-night teach-in that I will be hosting at Lower Manhattan Community College will be diversity and the contribution of immigrants to New York City.
One of the great strengths of our city is that it is a diverse city. The population is one of the most diverse in the country, just as the population of the country as a whole is a diverse population, and that is one of the great strengths of America.
People of all kinds from all over the world live here. It is not a weakness; it is definitely a strength. We should not, through hostile immigration legislation, turn our backs on what is a self-evident truth. All of a sudden we have grown very stupid and very dumb.
We are blinded by racism which tells us that we do not want Hispanic immigrants or we do not want Asian immigrants or any black immigrants from the Caribbean area. We are blinded by the truth of the matter, and that is that immigrants have always contributed to our Nation through immigration and our diversity puts us in a position that is advantageous in the rest of the world.
As we move in this so-called global economy and the United States is competing for global markets with other nations, because of our diversity we will always have a salesman out there in that marketplace, no matter where the marketplace is, we can have a salesman that looks just like the people there, who talks like the people there, and who can share a cultural heritage of the people there, whether you are talking about the Pacific Rim countries or you are talking about China. China is now the third largest economy in the world. We have a lot of Chinese in this country. They are not in any way a liability. The Chinese are an asset.
There are a lot of Koreans. Korea is a bustling economy. I visited Korea a few years ago, the City of Seoul, where three of my relatives, a uncle and two brothers were in the Korean war. They were in Korea during the time of the war, and they know the City of Seoul as a city which was totally demolished by the communists.
The City of Seoul is one of the most beautiful cities in Asia now. The City of Seoul has probably more people than the City of New York right now. Not only did they rebuilt the city for the residents individually, tremendous rows and rows of apartment houses and stores and all kinds of buildings, but they have built into the city a park system which is second to none to take care of the open air needs of their citizens.
We have a lot of Koreans in New York. We have a lot of Koreans in the rest of the country. We will interchange with them in a very profitable way in the future. The diversity helps New York City. The diversity helps the Nation as a whole.
I would like to report good news. In the debate on the immigration bill somebody convinced somebody, because we had bipartisan support, for a separation of the legal immigrant issues from the illegal immigrant issues. Many have counseled that for some time and begged for it. We thank the President and the White House for coming out at the last minute, but they did come out in support of a separation of legal immigrant issues from the issues of how to take care of illegal immigrants.
Nobody is going to stand on this floor and countenance illegality of any kind. Illegal immigration is a representation of the inadequacy of our Government to take care of its basic business of guarding the borders and making certain that certain laws are enforced. Illegal immigration is a signal that there is a tremendous incompetence in the way that we handle certain matters. We should move to end that incompetence.
Maybe we are not allocating enough resources. We should move to do that. But we should not be preyed upon by illegal immigrants, just as we should not be subject to the ravages of any other kind of illegal activities. We did vote and I am happy to report to my constituents and to many others that basic issues of how to handle legal immigration, how to establish new numbers, how to deal with families being reunited, a number of issues were separated out, and this bill in the end finally dealt mostly with illegal immigration.
There were some bad moments, and there was a provision voted in that said that immigrants coming into this country must be proficient in English. That, I think, is a step in the wrong direction, and there were some other things that I consider steps in the wrong direction, but we did get the separation of the legal immigration issues from the illegal.
One other thing was voted down, and that was an attempt by the corporations to bring in selected personnel so that they could drive down the costs of doing business. The same people who argue that we should limit immigration in general, the same people who have made war on immigration in general suddenly want to make an exception. They want to bring in computer programmers. They want to bring in people from countries where salaries are much lower for technicians and professionals, and use them to undercut the wages of professionals and technicians in this country, including nurses.
In particular there was a specific vote on nurses. Now, at a time when we had a need for nurses, nurses came from other countries and filled that need and many or some have become citizens. I do not want to make war on any particular ethnic group or country that provided nurses when we needed nurses, but this Nation does not need to import nurses from abroad at this point. They are closing nursing schools in New York City and New York State. There are nurses who are being laid off in hospitals, large numbers of nurses experiencing great anxiety at the restructuring of hospitals in ways that utilize less nurses and endanger the welfare of patients.
Nurses are planning a big march here in Washington for May 10. Independent nurses are coming to Washington on May 10 because they are very upset and very concerned, not only about what is happening to their profession, but also concerned about the implications of what is happening to their profession to the health of their patients.
I applaud the independent nurses who will be coming here on May 10. I applaud the action taken by the Members of the House of Representatives yesterday to vote down the provision which would allow more foreign nurses to come in and undercut the salaries and the working conditions to nurses that are here already.
Finally, today, in this busy week we voted on the repeal of the ban on assault weapons. In my all-night teach-in which is focused on the fiscal year of New York City that will take place tomorrow, Saturday, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Sunday morning, we will not focus a great deal on crime and violence and the ban on assault weapons but certainly it will be a part of the discussion.
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You cannot discuss New York City without discussing the need to lessen the amount of crime. You cannot discuss New York City without dealing with what guns have done to New York City and the surrounding area or what guns have done to the Nation as a whole. You cannot discuss New York City without understanding that the city cannot survive with its very strong gun control policies and laws unless we do something in the Nation's Capital to relieve New York City and all the other big cities of the burden of guns.
There are too many guns in America. Too many guns in America. We are the only industrialized nation, other than South Africa, which permits widespread ownership of guns, and as a result we have too many murders and too many deaths by gunshot wounds. It was 16,000 people 2 years ago. I do not know what the latest figures are because they are not compiled completely, but 16,000 people in 1 year died from gunshot wounds in America.
At the same time less than 100 people died as a result of gunshot wounds in Japan and the same thing was true in Britain and in Germany and in France. Very small numbers of people died as a result of gunshot wounds in countries which have policies which restrict the ownership of guns.
We voted in the last Congress to get rid of, to ban the manufacture of assault weapons in this country. Under Ronald Reagan we had already voted to ban the importation of assault weapons. So we didn't want to bring assault weapons from outside. Last Congress we decided we don't want to manufacture them in this country. That is all the ban on assault weapons did, it stopped the manufacture of assault weapons in this country. It specified the kind of weapons.
So why do we have it on the floor today to repeal it? Why did we have on the floor a law to get rid of a law which had gotten rid of assault weapons?
Across America the public pays a high toll. Yesterday, in the suburbs of New York City, a man with a rifle killed a policeman and held all the law enforcement officers at bay for 12 hours before they finally got into his house and found that he had killed himself. The pattern plays itself out over and over again. The large numbers of guns generate violence at a level that would not exist if the guns were not there.
Yes, people will be violent. Yes, people will get angry, but the more guns there are, the more deadly the violence; the more deadly the anger. Any civilized nation should be able to clearly see that if you lessen the number of guns, you will lessen the number of deaths due to gunshot. You will decrease the murder rate, you will decrease the serious crime rate.
We say we care about the public. We say we want to lower the dangers for crime. We say we want to make people feel safer, but we come to the floor, and we repeal in a law--and it was not a close vote. I do not think they have enough votes to override a veto, but it was not a close vote.
The repeal of the ban on assault weapons took place. That has great implications for New York City, and we will talk about it because the health and welfare of the city, the ability of the city to expand its major industry and the major industry in New York City is tourism.
People come from all over the world to see New York City. Every educated person who knows about cities in the world want to see New York City at some time in their lifetime. We are going to try to make it cheaper for people to come there. We also have to make certain people feel safe. And the safety of New York City is dependent on policies that take place in Washington.
We have very tough gun control laws. You cannot own a gun in New York City without a gun permit. You cannot own a gun in New York State without a gun permit, and the criteria for issuing guns in New York State and New York City are very, very strict. But people bring illegal guns in from Virginia, from Texas, from all over the country because we still have illegal guns being sold in many States. Guns being sold are not illegal in those States, but they are illegal in New York. But they are transported to New York.
We need to make guns illegal, the purchase of guns illegal anywhere in the country. But that is not our total major subject. It has a bearing and it is most unfortunate that we voted today, the majority voted today to repeal the ban on assault weapons.
Next week we will have another busy week. We are going to deal with a minimum health care bill. We have gone away from 2 years ago from a comprehensive bill offered by the Clinton administration, a comprehensive health care bill which wanted to move the country toward universal health care. We were moving in the right direction. We were moving in the direction to catch up with the rest of the industrialized nations.
All of the industrialized nations of the world, again except South Africa, all of the industrialized nations of the world except South Africa have universal health care programs except South Africa and the United States. In this country we still have 40 million people, many of them poor children, who are not covered by any kind of health care plan; 40 million.
So we were moving 2 years ago, a little more than 2 years ago toward a comprehensive health care plan which would deal with the provision of health care for all families and for all individuals.
Now, next week, we are going to have what I call a minimum, a bare minimum health care bill on the floor. We are going to be discussing a health care bill which is only going to make a few cosmetic changes in the way health care service is delivered. We are going to deal with portability, an ability to allow people to carry their health care plan from one company to another if they change jobs.
We are going to deal with people who retire and how they deal with the health care of those who have retired. We are going to deal with a few little issues affecting people who already have health care plans. We will do nothing next week, nothing, absolutely nothing, zero, to help people who have no health care plans whatsoever.
I think in this proposal next week there will be some Democratic proposals which will take the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill, and Democrats have agreed, generally, to support what Kennedy-Kassebaum are proposing and not to support what the Republican majority will put on the floor next week.
We will take the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill and try to add a provision for equal deductibility for entrepreneurs and some small businesses. In other words, we are going to try to have people who are on their own now, who have their own business be able to make the same kind of deductions on their taxes for health care that many corporations are allowed to take now. In other words, we call it the equal deductibility for entrepreneurs provision.
That is a small change, again, but it is very important. The large amounts of people have been thrown out of their corporate jobs. They no longer are tied to a big health care plan. They are on their own, as entrepreneurs and small business people, and they need a health care plan which deals with their problems. If they were able to deduct more of their health care payments from their taxes, it would solve a big problem for a large number of Americans who have been caught in the middle. So we want to add that.
The other thing that is important about next week is that there is no discussion in next week's schedule for Medicaid. Medicaid is a health care plan that does cover poor people, very poor people. You have to meet a means test. You have to be eligible in order to get Medicaid.
Now, Medicaid is not being discussed next week, but a shadow, a deadly shadow, a deadly silence hangs over Medicaid. There have been proposals that Medicaid will be changed drastically. Not only will the budget for Medicaid be cut, but the eligibility requirements, the fact that in the law the Federal Government stands behind the payment for health care of any person who meets the means test, any person who is poor enough to qualify for Medicaid will receive Medicaid, that entitlement will be taken away. The entitlement is threatened.
Not only has the entitlement been threatened by the Republican majority here in this Congress, but the entitlement is also threatened by the Governors' Conference. Both Democratic and Republican Governors have agreed that they would like to take away the Federal entitlement. They want to take away the Federal entitlement and have the States totally in charge of the health care of the poorest people.
They want to run the Medicaid Program under a block grant arrangement. A block grant arrangement means the Federal Government will give the State a set amount of money, and when the State runs out of money the State is supposed to make up the difference or the State will cut off the service. It means that we have gone a long way in the 30 years since Medicaid started, but we will be going backward rapidly.
Medicaid is the one definite step toward universal health care coverage for everybody. Medicaid is the one step the Government has taken in that direction.
By the way, it is important to point out that Medicaid, two-thirds of the money spent for Medicaid goes to cover the cost of nursing homes for the elderly. Two-thirds of the Medicaid funds go to cover the cost of nursing homes for the elderly. Only one-third goes to poor families. So you are jeopardizing the ability of elderly people to have nursing home care when you deal with taking away the entitlement for Medicaid.
Many elderly people have Medicare, but if you are really ill for a certain period of time, even with Medicare, it costs you a certain amount of money. You have to pay some portion of the cost. And when people are ill for a long time and run out of money, they move from Medicare to Medicaid in order to qualify, in order to be able to pay the fees for a nursing home.
So nursing homes are filled with people who started out that they were middle class before they got so ill that they ran out of resources, and they are, in the end, paid for by Medicaid in nursing homes. So all of this is threatened.
There is a shadow hanging over the head of Medicaid, a deadly silence about Medicaid in this capital. The White House is too silent, the leadership of the Senate is too silent, the leadership of the House is too silent. When all this silence settles, past experience has shown us that the silence means that somebody is about to pull a fast one; that suddenly we will find Medicaid on our desk one day, a rapid movement to the passage of Medicaid legislation, and it will not be good legislation. There is going to be a rapid attempt to rush through a take away of the entitlement for Medicaid.
We must be vigilant. We must watch. At my all-night teach-in I intend to talk to my constituents about the need to watch and be vigilant about Medicaid, the need to make certain every elected official at the State, city, and Federal level is aware of the fact that there is a great threat to Medicaid, the entitlement.
There is a double need to put the pressure on the Congress. There are many Congressmen who say they do not want anything to happen to Medicaid, but they are sitting silent and nothing is happening while the deadly silence surrounding Medicaid moves in on us like a fog, that is the kind of fog that strangles people with asthma.
So next week will be a busy week as we consider health care. I hope that my colleagues who care about health care for poor people will be vigilant and watch for a possible last-minute trick on Medicaid.
Finally, let me just talk about the all-night teach-in in a little more detail. Why are we having an all-night teach-in? As I said before, there is so much that needs to be said until we have to set aside the time to say it.
We cannot have a town meeting which lasts for 2 hours and people are ready to run. There are experts who need to talk. We can't hear them at any other time because they are busy during the day on various jobs and there are people who have grievances and who are living in the middle of the results of this so-called revolution to remake America, people who have great anxiety about what is come.
Some people in New York City and New York State are already suffering because the Governor of New York State and the mayor of New York City have gotten ahead of the revolution here in Washington.
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They need to be heard. So we are going to have an alternating situation where we will spend part of the time listening to people who have a great deal to tell us about specifically what is happening in their lives and their agencies and their institutions, and the other time will be for experts who will explain to them the nature of what is happening politically, the nature of what is happening economically.
And then another part of the time will be used to talk about creative solutions to the problem. We do not want to have 12 hours of whining. We have people who are coming to make vision statements, to tell us how we can solve the problems that are afflicting our big cities in general and specifically how we can solve some of the problems that are afflicting New York City.
We are going to break it up into segments and there will be 1-hour segments. We will start off with vision statements. James Forbes, one of the leading ministers in New York City, will led off with a vision statement. We have the actor-activist Archie Davis who is going to make a vision statement about where he thinks New York City ought to be going.
Why do we have a person like Archie Davis? Because New York City's future is all tied up with the tourism industry. The one industry that is growing in New York City is tourism, the major industry.
Now, tourism strikes most people in America as a strange industry. We have been acclimated and educated not to understand how much money is generated by people traveling into a place and spending their money.
The average tourist coming to New York City spends $600 a visit. The
$600 goes into the economy, it creates jobs, it creates revenue, it creates a whole atmosphere which allows other entrepreneurs to be able to develop their businesses and profits.
So tourism is a big industry. It is a big industry all across the country, by the way. Many big cities have had a great increase in tourism, other than New York City. In fact, New York City, the tourism rate of growth has slowed down because other cities are being visited by tourists in greater and greater numbers.
We have to deal with that and make certain that in the coming next 5 to 10 years, we take actions to encourage more people to come to New York City.
But tourism to the Members of the Congress who say they have vision, tourism to the Members of the Congress who want to go forward to the year 2000 and talk as if they are a member of the cyberspace generation and they know everything and they are going to lead us into a great new future, tourism to them is not an industry.
The Congress criticized the President for spending money to promote tourism. We have just closed down in the Department of Commerce the office of tourist promotion. The office that is designated to promote tourism in the U.S. Government is gone. There is no agency in the U.S. Government promoting tourism in the Nation as a whole. We are the only nation in the world, the only industrialized nation that does not have at the national level an ongoing effort to promote tourism, to get people to come from all over the world into our Nation and its cities, countryside, whatever, and spend their money. We are the most backward people in the world on that issue. We do not see it. We had an effort going forward. The President even had a conference on tourism. The White House had a conference on tourism. I tried to get a report on the conference. They do not have the money to print up the report.
I congratulate the White House for its vision, I congratulate the Department of Commerce for its vision, but it came under attack from this Congress. The Neanderthals of this Congress have defended giving McDonald's Federal subsidies in order to promote hamburgers abroad. We give Federal subsidies to the fur industry to promote furs abroad. We give subsidies to a number of those industries to promote those industries abroad. The same Neanderthals cannot see that McDonald's does not need any help to promote hamburgers abroad but we should be promoting our own cities, our own wonders. The Grand Canyon is something that people all over the world want to see. It is not a city, but people all over the world are willing to spend money to come see the Grand Canyon.
The sea coasts, the gulf coast of Florida, the California coast, all kinds of great features we have in this Nation that people all over the world want to come and see. The exploding middle class throughout the world wants to travel.
One of the features of middle-class people is that they have disposable income. When the disposable income gets through taking care of the immediate normal luxuries, the immediate normal luxuries dealing with the TV set, refrigerator, a house, the next level of desire that takes over is the desire to travel.
This is a pattern of middle-class people all across the world. They want to travel once they reach a certain level.
Just consider for a moment what happens in an economy like the Chinese economy. The Chinese economy is now the third largest economy in the world. Overnight China has eclipsed a number of nations and become the third largest economy in the world. How did they do that? Because one of the features of economies is that economies are very much interrelated with people. If you have a billion people, automatically you have an advantage. If you can ever get yourself organized and have that society organized in a certain way, a billion people will automatically generate a lot of wealth.
Consider yourself out there selling shoestrings or pencils to a billion people. Just a shoestring or a pencil sold in China, you have got hundreds of millions of people who are going to buy it. Just the impact of the numbers is staggering.
This Nation has a little more than 250 million people. Two hundred fifty million people is one-quarter of the Chinese population. It is expected that in the next 4 or 5 years, China will have a middle class which is about one-quarter of its population. That means that 250 million Chinese will be in that middle class in the next 4 or 5 years. If one-tenth of those 250 million decide to travel to America, you have 25 million people coming into this country just from China in the next 4 or 5 years. There will be a great boom in tourism.
Then you have the other Asian countries. Japan already has the second largest number of tourists coming into this country. I think Germany has the largest number. Japan has the second largest number. But you will have a big boom, a big increase when the other Asian/Pacific rim countries increase their travel into this country. Then you have eastern Europe where people have not been able to travel and there is a new middle class in eastern Europe. Then you have South Africa. And we should not leave out the booming middle class in South America. So there will be a great increase in all the cities of tourism. And it would be greater if you had some kind of planning setup at the level of the Federal Government.
New York City needs a planning process. It could double the number of tourists. The number of tourists that came into New York City was 24 million last year. Twenty-four million tourists came into New York, most of them from other parts of the United States. About 5 million came from foreign countries.
If in 5 years we could double that amount of tourists coming into New York City, we could double the amount of money earned from tourism. How much money does tourism generate in the economy of New York City? Last year it generated $54 billion. Do you hear what I say? In various forms, $54 billion.
Of that amount, $13 billion was collected in revenue by the city, revenue collected in various ways: Revenue collected from the hotel tax, which has been lowered greatly now, revenue collected mainly from the income of those people who work in the tourism industry, and as a result of the tourist industry, they had an income and they paid taxes. Revenue collected as a result of the increase in the property values. Revenue collected in the restaurant tax. Everybody eats when they come to New York, or when they go anywhere else.
So just one industry, if we were to take a creative approach to increasing it. How do you increase the tourism industry in New York City? Any business traveler to New York knows right away our biggest problem. Our biggest problem is the high cost of hotels. The high cost of accommodations in New York is a barrier to more people coming. We now have 24 million a year and almost 25 million expected this year. Then if we remove the barrier of the high cost of hotels, we could have millions more.
In New York, most people who come stay in hotels. If you go to Paris or to Rome or to Berlin or anywhere in Europe, they have high-priced hotels, they have hostels for youth, they have dormitories for families, and they have camping grounds right in the city for people who want to just camp. They have all kinds of alternative accommodations so that the tourist does not have to spend all of their money on accommodations, on housing.
If they do not have to spend all their money on housing, then they put the money into the economy in restaurants, they go to visit museums, they go to plays and shows and other forms of entertainment. At the same time, all of them eat, of course, in a restaurant, and many of them buy large amounts of retail goods in the stores.
So a simple feat has to be performed in New York. But nobody has ever looked at the situation and said, ``Let's do that.'' They have said instead, ``New York is getting less and less money from taxes, we're going to go broke, so let's cut the services of the schools, let's keep cutting the schools.'' The schools in New York have become a joke almost because we keep cutting. ``Let's cut the schools. Let's cut the day care. Let's cut the senior citizens' programs.'' And finally,
``Let's cut health care. Let's sell hospitals.'' The mayor is proposing to sell hospitals, or lease hospitals.
A more creative approach is to improve the industries that are naturally growth industries in our city. Medical-related industry is also a natural growth industry. We should not be selling hospitals, we should be expanding hospitals.
Because a population of 8 million people, it is hard for most people to comprehend. Eight million people in one place, very compact, very dense, 8 million people is a population that not only needs health care services but they are diverse.
Any disease known to mankind, you are going to have it in New York City because of the diversity of the population. Which means that any cure, any regimen, any protocol that can be developed for a disease or for a condition can be developed in New York City. Medical research should not be leaving New York City as it is now. The medical research industry should be expanded in New York City. That is another source of income for the city.
The city has a million schoolchildren, a million kids in our public school system.
It has 200,000 college students in the City University of New York system. We have great private schools like New York University, Columbia University, Fordham University. You add up all the students in higher education and you are talking about 300,000 to 350,000 students in higher education within the borders of New York City.
So education byproducts, educational technology products, any computerized products, any products requiring imagination and creativity, the production of those kinds of products should be encouraged in New York City.
Those are the kinds of things we are going to talk about in the all-
night teach-in. We want to answer the doomsayers. We want to answer the people who stand on the floor of the House and say that New York City is a drain on the Federal Government because it has too much welfare and too much of our Federal money goes to take care of Medicaid and Medicare and other problems in New York City. Not only is that a lie, it is a big lie.
Currently New York City is paying more money into the Federal Government than we are getting back. I cannot repeat the figure too often. In 1994 we paid $9 billion more in taxes to the Federal Government than we got back from the Federal Government. New York City alone.
New York State as a whole paid $18.9 billion more to the Federal Government than we got back from the Federal Government in 1994.
In 1993, the figure was $23 billion. New York State paid $23 billion more to the Federal Government than we got back in various forms of aid from the Federal Government. So New York City is not a basket case dependent on the Federal Government. On the contrary, there are many States in the country that get more from the Federal Government than they pay into the Federal Government, and they are the problem.
Mr. Speaker, in closing, I just want to remind you that we cannot talk too much about the present condition that we find ourselves in in the country in general. And in New York City on this Saturday night from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., 7 p.m. Saturday night to 7 a.m. Sunday morning, we will have an all-night teach-in giving everybody an opportunity to deal with the problem that New York City has as a result of the attempt to remake America.
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The Republicans in this House of Representatives have said that they want to remake America. The Republicans in this House of Representatives have said that politics is war and blood, they do not care if some people have casualties. We do not want New York City residents to be casualties. We do not think they have to be casualties. We think this city, our city, can defend itself, first by energizing its assets.
We do not think the mayor is correct when he says that the only way he can solve the city's problems is by cutting the budget for education, cutting the budget for schools, the only way to solve the problem is by cutting the hospitals, selling the hospitals, the only way to solve the problem is by harassing the people who need welfare, whose children are on aid to families with dependent children. We do not think we need to close our nursing homes. We think the seniors of New York can be taken care of in the future as they have in the past. We have some of the best senior citizens centers in the country. We want to keep it that way.
The city has the resources. We want to talk about what the city has to do in terms of changing Federal policies and changing State policies which strangle the city. We want to talk about certain policies the city itself promulgates. The city gives too much tax incentives to businesses to stay. The city allows the State to trick it into a formula where they give school aid on the basis of attendance rather than on the basis of enrollment. There are a number of policies that have to be changed. In addition to changing policies, and all New Yorkers have to fight to get these policies changed at the Federal, State, and city level. We have to take actions to get more creative efforts launched by the city to increase those industries in the city which are naturally compatible with industries for New York City, industries related to tourism, industries related to medical research, industries related to education and students and the talent of the faculty and students of our colleges and universities, and those things can happen and provide a positive answer to the problem of the remaking of America.
Yes, if America is to be remade, do not try to do it in 2 years. We do not need a revolution. We can have an evolution. Part of the evolution of cities like New York should call upon their citizens and get the best possible wisdom from those citizens to deal with the problem of remaking our cities into forms which allow them to be self-
sufficient and self-supporting.
We can take care of our own problems. We need the Federal Government to get off our back in New York. Everybody needs to know they have to participate if we are to do this. I will see everyone at the all-night teach-in at Manhatten Community College, corner of Chamber Street and West Side Highway, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. I urge all interested persons to join us there, and we will have a dialog that is good for the city, good for the State, and good for the country.
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