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“PROPER ALLOCATION OF TAX DOLLARS REQUIRES EXPERIENCED LEGISLATORS” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H3863-H3870 on March 28, 1995.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
PROPER ALLOCATION OF TAX DOLLARS REQUIRES EXPERIENCED LEGISLATORS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 1995, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, a large part of what we do here in the House of Representatives relates to budgets and appropriations. I would say 75 percent at least of what we do is related to the budget and appropriations process. It is the most important thing we do, and I think that there needs to be far more discussion of the budget and appropriations process. It is a highly complex process, it is a very important process and the details are very important also.
Mr. Speaker, one of the problems with term limits is that it trivializes the functions of the Congress. It makes it appear that this is an easy job and it is easy to understand what goes on here. The budget and appropriations process alone is a tremendously difficult job, and no one would recommend for a difficult job related to their health care that they go and seek the surgeon who has the least number of years, that nobody wants to have open heart surgery done by a surgeon with 15 or 12 years experience. On the contrary, most people seek the most-
[[Page H3864]] experienced surgeon if they have an operation which is a life and death matter.
If you have a complicated legal case in the courts, you go seeking a lawyer who understands the complexities of the law and who has a lot of experience in the practice of law. No one automatically says it is more desirable to have a lawyer who has been practicing for 6 years only or 12 years only. That is a bit ridiculous.
The whole premise, the arguments that I have heard for term limits, are unscientific, they are illogical, they just do not hold water. It is based on an assumption that the work of the Congress is trivial, anybody can do it.
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We should have a citizen Congress. Any citizen can make these decisions. Yes, we should have a Congress more reflective of the citizenry. We should have a greater cross section of the citizenry. But to throw out experience as being important is to say that you do not think the job that we do here is important. Eisenhower was how old when he led the forces in Europe? MacArthur was how old when he--not how old, but how many years had they been in the Army? How many years had they been generals. Would you want inexperienced generals to lead your armies? No, nobody would want that because that is too important. That is a life or death matter. You would not want a surgeon who is inexperienced; you would not want a lawyer who is inexperienced when a large amount of money is at stake or even in a civil suit, let alone a criminal case.
So why suddenly does it become a virtue to have less experience? To deal with the budget process here, to deal with the appropriations process requires a great deal of experience. It may be that there are some arguments, like those we have just heard, which are very important and there ought to be a more scientific and reasoned analysis of what this body is all about and what kind of structure we may need to deal with term limitations and being most efficient.
It may be that the prohibition on being Speaker for more than 8 years is a good idea. It may be that the prohibition on serving as the chairman of a committee for more than 8 years or 6 years, whatever it is, is a good idea because with the size of the body, the concentrations of power may be the problem and not so much that 435 people have been here too long.
One of the charts that was just presented said that the average Member of Congress stays 8 years; 8 years is what the average is. Then they went on to say the leadership is here for 22 years. There is a problem then with leadership that may concentrate too much power for too long. Let us correct that problem.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. OWENS. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to support the gentleman's statement here. In the previous
Congress I was chairman of an appropriations subcommittee. I had served for 8 years on that appropriations subcommittee and became its chairman. The responsibility of that subcommittee was to spend $67 billion in a year for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration and several other agencies, 130,000 Federal employees, $67 billion budget.
There are people who will argue for term limits today who believe that Members should come in and in a matter of a few months or a few years be looking forward to leaving. I will tell you if that is the case, the decisions which will be made on those budgets will not be made by Members of Congress. Those decisions will be made by special interest groups who will still have influence on this body as well as the bureaucrats within the Federal agencies.
Mr. OWENS. There are no term limits on special interest groups, no term limits on bureaucrats, no term limits on the lobbyists.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I think what it does is take away the voice of the people, the voice of America in this process by minimizing the voice and role of individual Members, men and women who come to this body in an effort to make a contribution. We were able to do some substantial things in the couple years that I chaired it. And, frankly, I would not have been able to do it without some experience, because many times you make a suggestion for a change and some bureaucrat will say, You cannot do it that way; it has never been done that way; it is impossible to do it that way. After a few years you find out you can do it that way.
I would just say in closing to the gentleman, I am glad he had taken this special order. I hope that every Member of Congress who stands in this well on this floor arguing in favor of term limits will answer two questions before they say the first word. Those two questions are: How long have you been here and when do you plan on leaving? Because you are going to find so many Members who get up here, some Members have been arguing for 15 years that we should have a 12-year term limit in Congress. And you are going to find time and again that the Members who stand up here and argue for term limits have been here way beyond the period of time that they say is the right period of time to serve.
I go back to the people who wrote the Constitution. Two years up for reelection, let the people decide every 2 years whether this Congressman or anyone else should stay. There was wisdom in that decision, and I do not think we should overturn it lightly.
Mr. OWENS. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Speaker, it is very important that you take note of the fact that I want to talk about appropriations. He is on the Committee on Appropriations. I want to talk about the budget. That is my primary concern. But I want to take note of the fact that one of the problems with the budget/appropriation process here is that it is very complex and there is too little discussion of it.
Four hundred thirty-five Members are not engaged in the discussion of the budget and appropriations process, which is the most important thing we do, which has an impact on the lives of all Americans. The Federal budget is more than a trillion dollars.
I do not know what the situation is now, but Great Britain, with a far smaller budget, used to dedicate at least 2 or 3 days where nothing was discussed on the British Broadcast Corporation network except the budget for 2 days; 2 or 3 days, nothing but the budget was discussed.
We have a very large budget, a very complex budget. It touches the lives of everybody. And that process alone requires that we have Members who have a great deal of experience. And we should reorganize the House so that more of them are participating in these very complex decisions related to the budget and the appropriations process.
All of the items that we have discussed up to now during this 104th Congress in various ways relate to the budget and appropriations process. Certainly, some of the ones that have gotten the most attention, the balanced budget amendment was very much related to an attempt to place parameters on the budget process so that there would be a squeezing, a forcing of, a ratcheting down of expenditures for social programs. That was the immediate aim of the Contract With America, to create a condition where they would be able to force more and more reductions in programs that were designed to help the people in greatest need. They certainly did not want to make reductions in the area of defense, where we have obsolete weapons systems that are now being still funded and
manufactured and new weapons systems that are being proposed which are not obsolete but unnecessary because there is no enemy that is capable of threatening us and we do not need an F-22 fighter, we do not need another Seawolf submarine.
So the balanced budget amendment, the line-item veto, the rescissions that were made already by the Committee on Appropriations, $17 billion cut from this year's programs, of that $17 billion, $7 billion is cut from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, low-income housing programs; almost $2 billion in education programs cut, and most of those cuts are in programs that help the poorest students across the country. It is all related to the budget and appropriations process.
Welfare reform is less a reform of welfare and more a search for dollars.
[[Page H3865]] What it turned into was a search for dollars. The Republican-controlled leadership did not address welfare reform in terms of moving people off welfare and into work.
They instead were searching mightily for ways to save money. I think they saved, according to the calculations, about $60 billion, among the dollars that they saved was about $2 billion saved on school lunches. This is a conservative estimate that comes from the Congressional Budget Office. You have heard a lot of different figures thrown around, but the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the school lunch savings in the Republican welfare reform package amounts to about $2 billion. The search for money is so intense that we reach into the mouths of kids and pull out food in order to save a few billion dollars to contribute to the overall process of accumulating enough funds to give a tax cut.
The tax cut for some of the wealthiest Americans is really the crown jewel. That is the crown jewel of the Contract With America. Everything else feeds into that. Some drastic things are being done, some extreme things are being done in order to guarantee that the crown jewel, the tax cut, is in place and that they are able to deliver on that.
Welfare reform degenerated into an opportunity to realize some savings on the backs of the most needy people in the country, people who are victims. We are very generous with victims, and we should be. We are not very generous, but we recognize victims and the Government comes to the aid of victims.
We have appropriated about $8 billion for the California earthquake victims; $6 billion was appropriated for the flood victims in the Midwest; $6 billion was appropriated for the hurricane victims in Florida. These are all victims of natural disasters, and we recognized that and we came to the aid of the victims.
We have victims of man-made disasters, a mismanaged economy in our big cities. There was a time when there were jobs in the cities and large numbers of people migrated from other parts of the country to our big cities to get those jobs during World War II. And a period for 20 years after World War II, more or less, there were jobs. And now the economy has been managed in such a way, including the decisions made on the floor of this House and the other body, decisions are made which allow for it to be more profitable to manufacture products outside the country, to chase the cheapest labor markets across the world, although the companies are owned by U.S. citizens and although the products are sold, the market is here, we are the consumers. Nevertheless, our policies encourage the people who are able to finance, manufacture to go to other parts of the world to do that.
So we have created a lot of unemployed people. A lot of unemployment destabilizes families. The easiest way to deal with many of our social problems, welfare certainly, which is primarily Aid to Dependent Children. Children who have no other way of surviving, get assistance from the Federal Government.
By the way, those checks average about $350 a month; $350 a month we are talking about. The most generous State, which is probably New York, gets up to about $600 a month, and the cost of living, of course, in New York in far greater than in most other places. If the average is
$350, you know there are many places where you are talking about less than $200 a month for a family of three, $200 a month. That is cheaper than full employment.
We have welfare in America because it is cheaper than full employment. If you have full employment and have to provide jobs for people, you are talking about a minimum-wage job and probably has to have some health care benefits. It will cost you far more than keeping people alive on $350 a month or less.
So welfare is cheaper than full employment and that is why it goes on and on in America. It is always going to be here unless we decide we want full employment policies. Unless we decide that in our vision of America of the future, the vision that is being projected now by the persons, the group in control of the Congress is not a vision that talks about creating jobs for all Americans. They want to take away not only the jobs and the opportunities but also the opportunities to get the education, to get the jobs.
Their latest budget cut proposal, they are proposing to cut aid to college students, college loans, which are subsidized loans. There are areas in our society where subsidies are very much in order. There are some subsidies that we ought to get rid of as fast as we can. I will talk later on about some of those subsidies, subsidies to rich farmers. Subsidies to rich farmers are one category of subsidy we need to get rid of as fast as possible. But we certainly should subsidize students.
There is a proposal now that we save $12 billion, a proposal that $12 billion would be saved over a 5-year period. Again, the process here is to search for money that can be put into the cash box for the tax cut. So we are going to take $12 billion from the students, college students, by ending the subsidy on their loans during the time that they are in school.
Presently a college student gets a loan and they pay back the loan after they get out of school. And the interest on that loan starts accruing after they get out of college and begin to pay back the loan.
The Government picks up the interest for the time they are in school, our Government. It is a subsidy, and it is a subsidy that is very much in order. It allows a person to get a college education and go into the job market and get a job which will generate income taxes that during the course of their lifetime will pay for that subsidy over and over again. It is a very meager subsidy relative to the return that you receive for that subsidy.
So now that is the latest. We have gone for school lunches. We have gone for the poorest people on welfare. We have collected as much money from those programs as we can. Now we are going to go after the college students and take money from them in this budget process that is so important.
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So the tax cut, as the grand scenario, the climax of it is the tax cut proposals that will be on the floor of the House next week.
This evening, I would like to talk in more detail about this budget and appropriations process. I would like to unmask some of the mysteries of the process and talk about some of the details. And in subsequent special orders we would like to go into the budget in even more detail.
I am the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus alternative budget committee. We are considering an alternative budget that we would like to offer on the floor as a substitute to the leadership budget, to the Republican budget.
In the Republican budget, they will present their vision of America for the next 5 years. As we go toward the year 2000, the budget will reflect what they think is most important. They have already indicated that there are some people and some groups that are not important, some people who yield and sacrifice in order to take care of others. ``The America of the future has no room for everybody.''
We would like to present a Congressional Black Caucus budget which shows there is room in America for everybody. There are enough resources for everybody. We do not need to take food out of the mouths of hungry children. We do not need to harass college students and lessen the opportunities for college students. We do not need to make heavy drastic reductions in Medicaid.
A lot of things that are being proposed and will be carried out certainly in this House are not necessary, and we want to prove that and show you that we can balance the budget, too.
If American people think that there is too much waste in Government, I would concur. There is too much waste in Government. The problem is the waste is not in the School Lunch Program. The problem is in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children Programs, what you call welfare, where there might be some abuses and some waste, and there is need for reform.
We support reform in welfare. Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the Democrats voted for a reform. I think the only time in this Congress and probably the only time in the last few Congresses that all Democrats have voted for anything together on the
[[Page H3866]] floor was last week when they all voted for the Deal
substitute, which was a drastic reform of the welfare program.
It was welfare reform that was real reform. It provided for jobs. It provided for educational opportunities. It also maintained the entitlement that everybody who is a victim and needs assistance will be able still to receive assistance under Federal entitlement.
And we stand behind them. We do not propose a block grant, which is a swindle. Any time you hear the word or concept block grant, you know there is a swindle about to take place, that that function, whatever it is, and the recipients and beneficiaries of that function are going to end up with much less in 4 or 5 years than they had when the block grant was initiated.
That is the history of block grants. They are not done unless there is an attempt to foist them off on the States and begin to back away from the commitment at the Federal level.
So in the School Lunch Program, where they keep insisting that there is more money than there was before, each year there is more money, well, there is not. The Congressional Budget Office has indicated that there is not more money because the money is a relative thing. If there are more children to feed, then the amount of money has to go up. It has to go up in anticipation of the new enrollment, additional children being enrolled, and it has to go up in anticipation of more children becoming eligible because of economic conditions which move some families that were not eligible and not in need before to the category of needy. So, again, the details are important.
Where is the waste in Government? As we talk about the programs that the Republican-controlled House wants to cut, it might be good to juxtapose the programs that they want to cut with the programs that they want to keep.
They are all in favor of keeping every weapons system that anybody could imagine, including Star Wars, the Brilliant Pebbles in the sky that is supposed to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles that are going to be fired by what country I do not know since the generals from this country have gone to visit the generals in Russia, and they have gone down into the silos, and they have all agreed to point the rockets away from each other. And a number of things are happening which lessen the need for the so-called Star Wars to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles, even if it could be done; and most scientists say it cannot be done.
Yet it took a vote on the floor, the one time we have been able to win a victory for reason, rational thinking, scientifically based thinking on the floor of the House was a defeat of the Star Wars vote, but that was being proposed by the leadership.
The leadership is still proposing billions of dollars more for defense at the same time as they say there is a need to cut money from School Lunch Programs. They say there is a need to cut money from loans for college students at the same time we are going to go forward with these new weapons systems.
Where is the real waste? The waste is primarily in defense. The waste is in agricultural subsidies that go to rich farmers. We are going to talk about that in this great detail in a few minutes.
In defense, you still have the F-22 fighter, which was originally projected to be a $72 billion cost, and because of the questions raised they scaled it down. But even a scaled-down version of the F-22 fighter will cost you $12 billion in the next 5 years.
Listen to the figures closely. $12 billion will be used to build F-22 fighters that are the most sophisticated fighters ever known. The trouble is, the second most sophisticated fighter planes ever known are already owned by the United States of America so who will fight the F-
22's?
Nevertheless, they are being built for $12 billion over the next 5 years. $12 billion is exactly the same figure that is being sought, the same amount being sought from the college students, college student loans. By making the students pay the interest on the loans during the time the students are in college, they will yield about $12 billion. The same $12 billion, if you want to save it, you can save it by jettisoning, discontinuing the manufacture of F-22 fighters.
Why can't we discontinue the manufacture of F-22 fighters? One of the reasons may be is that they are manufactured in the Speaker's district in Marietta, GA. One reason may be that in the other body, the very prominent person in the area of making decisions about defense also hails from that State.
Why do we have obvious waste continuing in the area of defense? Take a close look, and you might find it.
The Seawolf submarine, another one. The argument is given we need another Seawolf submarine because we want to keep the technology alive. Nobody expects it to be able to be used to fight. That is $2.1 billion. Listen closely: $2 billion, slightly more than $2 billion to build a nuclear submarine. Happens to be the same figure that is being saved from the School Lunch Program. $2 billion, a little more than $2 billion is what the Republican-controlled House of Representatives will get from the School Lunch Program. We could get the money instead from a discontinuance, a canceling of the Seawolf submarine.
Or if you do not want to cancel the Seawolf submarine, then look at the CIA's budget, which is a secret budget, is estimated to be no less than $28 billion. All intelligence operations, because the CIA is really atop of all intelligence agencies, that whole operation is $28 billion at least.
If you save 10 percent, if you cut the CIA 10 percent per year for the next 55 years, you got them down to about half the size of present CIA, you would be saving each year $2.8 billion. $2.8 billion would certainly cover the cost of the School Lunch Program.
And you can contribute it toward some of the other programs, the WIC and a couple of other programs that did not get increases. We are not going to serve all of the eligible babies and mothers in the WIC Program.
So if you feel like one of my constitutents feels, that somebody has to do something, she said, ``We have to tighten our belts. That means the kids have to eat cheaper lunches, OK? We have to suffer because we do not want to bankrupt the country. Everybody has to contribute a little.''
Well, I am not certain that everybody should be contributing a little. I am not certain that growing children should have to sacrifice any part of lunch in order to contribute to a situation which is not desperate. It is not a desperate situation. We have places where money can be saved.
There are places where money can be saved in the corporate welfare structure. We give a lot of money to corporations.
In the first place, over the last 20 or 30 years, the amount of the tax burden borne by corporations has dropped drastically. It used to be more than half, around half of the total tax burden. All the taxes collected in the U.S. corporations were contributing almost half by the corporate income tax. Now the corporations are down to about 25 percent.
And the amount, proportion, percentage being contributed by individuals, April 15 is not far away. On April 15, individuals pay far more income taxes than corporations.
I would like to see us move toward a situation where we eliminate the individual income tax, the personal income tax as we know it. I would like to see us move toward a situation where we increase, get back to corporate, a greater share of the taxes being borne by corporations.
I would like to see a situation where we have taxes from other sources and less from personal income tax, certainly people earning
$75,000, $50,000 or less maybe should not be paying any personal income taxes at all. We should be looking to other sources.
In the Congressional Black Caucus budget proposal we are going to call for the creation of a tax commission. That is not the first time that has been called for, but I think a more creative commission is needed to take a hard look at all the ways in which wealth is generated in our society now. We are generating wealth now in ways that never were imagined even 10 or 15 years ago.
The recent sale that was highlighted by President Clinton yesterday, the recent sale of frequencies above us, you know, above our heads there is wealth. Frequencies optioned have brought $7 billion already into the Federal coffers,
[[Page H3867]] and it is estimated that pretty soon that figure will be up to $9 billion.
Well, 10 years ago we wouldn't dream of anything up above our heads owned by all the people being worth $9 billion. They are just beginning the process.
Well, let us take a hard look at that wealth in the sky or wealth above our heads and how it may be used for the public good. Maybe we shouldn't be selling all of it. Maybe we should be leasing it or maybe there should be some arrangement whereby you do not have to be rich to buy it.
Maybe we should have a lottery system so every American would have a chance, rich or poor, anybody with some know-how and might get into the business, could draw lots. And the Federal Government would lease it to him instead of a person having to put up
the capital as an alternative. And because that arrangement didn't involve capital the Federal Government would go in as a partnership. Forty percent of profits would go to the people, to the Government and to the people; and the other 60 percent would go to the person who makes it work and earns a profit.
There are many arrangements that we do not look at, royalties on products that are created as a result of Government action and Government research, et cetera. We ought to take a harder look at those.
I am not going to go into that much more detail now, but that is part of the process. We need, as I said before, people in Congress who understand these things factually. We need some people who have been here long enough to be able to imagine creatively how we may do things better, how we may collect revenue in less painful ways and more effective ways, targeting the revenue collection process to those who are able most to afford it and those who have benefited most from the riches of America in various ways.
So let me just mention a few corporate welfare setups that ought to be looked at in more detail in this budgetmaking process. Instead of cutting school lunches, instead of going after students and trying to squeeze $12 billion out of the Student Loan Program, let us limit tax subsidies for exports.
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Tax subsidies for exports, if they were limited, would yield revenue to the tune of $21 billion. Tax subsidies for exports, what is that? There is a title passage, a thing called the title passage, sourcing rule and reform the title passage sourcing rule and eliminate the foreign sales corporation loophole. That would enable U.S. corporations, I mean, that does now enable U.S. corporations to shelter a portion of their export income from U.S. taxation. We have a loophole to the title passage and the foreign sales corporation that, you know, whoever talks about these things, the Committee on Ways and Means has a monopoly on this language and a monopoly on the process, and even the other, most of the other 435 Members of Congress never even discuss the tax subsidies for exports.
The tax subsidies for exports, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the Congressional Budget Office, as you know, is an objective body, about as objective as you can get. Most of the people who work there are civil servants. The top leadership is appointed by the leadership of the House of Representatives, so you have leadership in the Congressional Budget Office that is appointed by the party now in control of the Congress, the Republicans, but basically, the civil servants who were there before, people who have civil service status, are still there, and their objectivity is about as good as you are going to get.
They said export subsidies increase investment and employment in export industries, but they do not increase the overall levels of domestic investment and domestic employment. In the long run, export subsidies only increase imports. You do not get any great benefit from it. So why subsidize corporations for exports?
Twenty-one billion dollars would be gained over a 5-year period if you eliminated that.
Impose a minimum tax on foreign-owned businesses. That is another corporate welfare scheme we could go after. If we merely established a minimum tax on foreign-owned corporations to discourage the manipulation of transfer prices which shield income from U.S. taxation, we would realize $1.9 billion. The formula approach under the minimum tax provides a simple way to ensure that foreign-owned companies conducting business in the U.S. pay an acceptable amount of U.S. tax.
This is a quote from the Congressional Budget Office. Let us go after these corporate welfare items, eliminate the loopholes, and you will realize a lot of the taxes, the revenue that are being sought, savings being sought by going after the school lunch programs and college student loans.
There is a dairy and breeding cattle exclusion. If we end the special exclusion for the cost of raising dairy and breeding cattle, you would realize another $700 million.
There is a tax deferral on income of controlled foreign corporations;
$5.7 billion would be realized over a 5-year period if we end the ability of U.S. firms to delay the tax on income earned by their foreign subsidiaries until the income is transferred to U.S. accounts,
$5.7 billion, and on and on and on it goes.
I am not going to exhaust the list of corporate welfare items today. But out there, the American people should take note this is not a simple process, not easy to decipher even when you are a Member of Congress. So I do not expect you to comprehend what has really gone on here.
The mysteries are here. You hear the drum beating against people on welfare, demonizing of people on welfare, the comparison of people on welfare to alligators, comparison of people on welfare to wolves. Demonize and scapegoat, and all that is supposed to make you forget that corporations are receiving billions of dollars in subsidies from the American taxpayers.
One of the groups that likes to pride itself on not receiving Government aid is the farm community. I have often heard and seen people from the Midwest and the Far West and the South who insist that they do not want Government giving them any kind of help; Government ought to get off people's backs; Government should not intrude into people's lives.
There is a great deal of hypocrisy here. A large amount of your taxpayers' dollars are going to subsidize rich farmers. Welfare for rich farmers is a major scandal. It is a legalized form of corruption. We are just going to talk a little bit about one aspect of it.
It is so corrupt, legal corruption, you cannot arrest anybody. I am not saying that you should go out and try to effect a citizen's arrest, or you can bring a suit. It is all legal, because it is so complex until most of the Members of Congress, certainly those who come from urban areas and are concentrating on other kinds of things, have not really deciphered exactly what is going on with the farm subsidy program and how awful the giveaway is to rich farmers.
Let us take a hard look at it, and I invite you to follow me through a quick review of a report called City Slickers. City Slickers is a report produced by the environmental working group. The environmental working group is a nonprofit environmental research organization based in Washington. It is a project of the Tides Foundation and the California Public Benefit Corp., and they have started preparing a series of reports related to agricultural subsidies, welfare for the farmers. This is just the first report. If you want to get a copy of the report, I will tell you at the end where you can order a copy.
It is a very well documented report based on an analysis of data that would probably not have been possible 20 years ago, using computers and analyzing the records of the Department of Agriculture. They have been able to come up with this very informative study which should open your eyes. What they are saying is that in the farm subsidy program, the program that has been in existence now for several decades, actually the program that was started in the New Deal by Franklin Roosevelt, that program was to help poor farmers. The Government got involved in paying farmers to do certain things, and it worked. It was very much needed.
In fact, the intervention of our Government into the agricultural sphere
[[Page H3868]] has been very successful in general. We are the most productive nation on the face of the Earth when it comes to food production. Our farm industry cannot be challenged by any other industrialized nation. What we produce on our farms, the kind of productivity is unparalleled, and part of the reason for that, a large part of the reason for that, is the early intervention of the U.S Government in the process. Government sometimes can intervene and be a player in a very productive way.
The land grant colleges that were created, the experimental agricultural experimental stations, the county agents, all of that was federally, you know, generated. People talk about government should stay
out of local affairs. Well, the Department of Agriculture program penetrated right down to the county level, and the county agent went out into the fields with the farmers. It was government involvement at its best. I am all in favor of government involvement when it is necessary.
We basically have a capitalistic economy. That does not mean there are not a lot of places where there should not be intervention and government assistance. Government assistance to farmers made a lot of sense when it started. Government assistance to poor farmers kept a lot of people from starving. Government assistance to poor farmers enabled poor farmers to build, to gain the know-how and to build a great agricultural industry of America, but it long ago wore out. It long ago became corrupted.
We do not have many poor farmers anymore. Less than 2 percent of the American population now lives on the farm. The billions of dollars that are being, of your taxpayers' dollars, that are going to subsidize the farms or the agricultural industry are going to rich people. They are going to corporations, agricultural corporations. Agribusinesses are absorbing your dollars. They are going to individuals, too many of them are rich also.
And many of them do not live on the farm, and the last few years they have not set foot on the farm. That is what this report is all about. This report is about city slickers, people who get billions of dollars from your taxpayers' money, your money, meant for farm subsidies to help keep the farm industry alive.
There are many good reasons why we started these programs, to guarantee that we would never lose the family farmer, that they would always be there to make farming competitive, to keep the land productive, to conserve the land, et cetera. There are many good reasons, and there are still good reasons.
But the process has been corrupted to the point where people who live in the cities have never visited a farm and are drawing now checks for farm subsidies. Let me just read from the report City Slickers; I think it is such a good report, I will read verbatim from several parts of it.
What is wrong with the city dweller owning a bit of land in the country? Absolutely nothing, as far as we are concerned. Why, we would not mind owning a little farmland ourselves, nor do we have a problem with urbanites investing time, money, or both in a farm operation even if it is not their main livelihood, and even if the farm is thousands of miles away. But why on Earth should taxpayers be involved in the arrangement for these gentleman farmers? And as this report documents, we are involved big-time by virtue of Federal agricultural subsidy policies that are out of date and out of control. It is time for a change. Sending hundreds of thousands of Federal farm subsidy checks worth hundreds of millions of dollars to a handful of city dwellers each year can hardly be the best, the fairest, or the most efficient way to help farmers stay on the land, give rural communities a chance to survive and prosper or protect water, land, and wildlife that farming so profoundly affects. Left to the farm policy fraternity, the country's depression-era farm programs will continue to misspend taxpayers' dollars. Americans can do better, but only if more people become involved in the debate over the Nation's multibillion-dollar farm programs. After all, you do not have to be a farmer to get farm subsidies. You should not have to be a farmer to have a say in how your money will be spent after the new 1955 farm bill is signed into law.
It just so happens that the farm bill is up for reauthorization this year. So aside from the budget process and the appropriations process, there is a new authorization process for these farm programs.
I recall the last time we had the agricultural subsidy program on the floor of the House, I joined with a colleague, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Schumer], in offering an amendment which said that any gentleman farmer or gentlewoman farmer, persons who are not living on farms who have other incomes, any one of those who earns more than
$100,000 a year should not be eligible for the farm subsidy program, and that is a clear opportunity for the Members of Congress to take some action in a very meaningful way.
They would cut off anybody making $100,000 or more who also was not a farmer full-time from the farm subsidy program. We got only 140-some votes out of 435. That is the nature of the deep entrenchment of the vested interests that support welfare for rich farmers.
Let me continue to read from the report though. City Slickers, that is the name of this report, the first in a series of Environmental Working Group studies on Federal farm subsidy programs that will be published over the coming months. They are going to publish other reports. It was made possible through the efforts of the environmental working group, analysts and computer programmers. They went to work in the Department of Agriculture files to pull out all of this data, and what I am reading from in the report is based on hard data. They have the charts in here. They have the graphs in here. They have the statistics in here. If you doubt their findings, get a copy of the report and check it out. It is very sound, basic work. I commend the people who put this report together.
Let me read further from the findings of City Slickers:
American taxpayers are sending hundreds of millions of dollars in Federal farm subsidy checks every year to a handful of absentee owners, corporations, and other farmers who live smack in the middle of the country's biggest cities. Over the past decade, taxpayers wrote 1.6 million agricultural subsidy checks worth more than $1.3 billion to city slickers, city slickers whose permanent mailing address is in the heart of one of 50 of the most populous urban areas in the United States.
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They did a study and focused on the 50 largest cities, and they traced the checks coming from the Department of Agriculture to addresses in zip codes in the 50 largest cities in the country.
The environmental working group analysis of 110 million U.S. Department of Agriculture computer records, computer records of $106 billion worth of farm subsidy payments made since 1985, found over 74,000 recipients whose current mailing addresses for Agriculture Department checks is in downtown New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Miami, St. Louis, Detroit, Dallas or other top U.S. cities.
If you are laboring under the assumption that welfare for the farmers, the subsidy program for the farmers, should not be questioned or not challenged because, after all, they are the people who grow our food and we want to keep them out there, we do not want a monopoly to be established by the agribusinesses. I have heard many reasons offered on the floor of this House.
A large portion of the people receiving the checks are not farmers, ladies and gentlemen. They are drawing down the checks and receiving the subsidy from you taxpayers, and they are not setting foot on any farm, I assure you.
When they analyzed major suburbs and satellite cities surrounding these big cities, they found that the payments increased greatly. A lot of people living in suburbs also around big cities are receiving payments. It went from $1.3 billion to $1.8 billion when you include some of the other people close to the city.
From Beverly Hills to Key West, the research shows that it is the rare, well-heeled suburb, urban enclave or resort spot in the United States that does not receive Federal farm subsidy payments. The pattern, the rule, is that they do. It is rare that they do not receive. The richer the community is, the more likely you are to see large numbers of farm subsidy payments flowing into that area.
In every major U.S. city farm subsidy checks pour in from farms located in dozens of States. Farms in 42 States pump government subsidies into New York City. Thirty-eight States send Federal farm dollars to Los Angeles, 37
[[Page H3869]] States have farm program recipients in Chicago, and 41 States are sending agricultural assistance to farmers in Houston.
In many cities, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Tucson, for example, half or more of the subsidies come from farms located outside of the State.
If you want to make the argument of, somebody has already got a rationalization put together, well, sure, people may live in the cities, but New York State has a big farming sector. Agriculture is a big business in New York State.
So these people may live in New York City, but outside New York City in certain parts of the State there are farms.
But these checks are not coming from farms in New York State. The checks that are going to New York City are coming from 42 different States, 42 different States. You taxpayers are funneling money meant for farmers into city slickers from 42 different States to New York.
And in other cities it is much worse. I am going to read from a chart later on of the five highest ranking cities receiving these payments from you. In big cities, as in the countryside, a small number of individuals, partnerships, trusts and corporations
collect the lion's share of Federal farm subsidies. These are rich people mostly who are collecting these checks.
Just 862 big city subsidy recipients collected $388 million over the period checked, nearly 30 percent of the total payments to the postal areas in the top 50 cities. A general partnership in Dallas, TX, for instance, received 157 checks over six of the last 10 years. And this general partnership's 157 checks, listen to this, totaled $1.8 million. The $1.8 million came from farms in two counties in Mississippi. Mississippi, one of the poorest States in the country.
The money is flowing from your taxpayers' pocket, supposedly to help the farmers in Mississippi, but it flows into a firm in Dallas, TX, which one firm alone collected $1.8 million over the last 6 years.
The top recipients in Los Angeles is a general partnership in zip code 90024, and they received 22 checks over 7 of the last 10 years, and those 22 checks were worth more than $837,000.
The top farmer in Washington, DC, received a total of 271 farm subsidy checks from a North Dakota county in 8 out of the past 10 years. And his checks, the name of that person appeared in a newspaper article, totaled $286,000.
San Diego's top producer is a corporation which stockholders have brought in 246 checks worth $968,303 from a farm in Montana, a farm in Montana that has drawn down your taxpayer subsidies every year since 1985.
More than 63 percent of the total farm subsidies paid to big-city recipients went to individuals who on average received at least $13,000 a year over the 10-year period. General partnerships brought in $150 million, averaging $72,000. Corporations with stockholders collected 11 percent of total big-city subsidies, which equals about $138 million. Corporations in big cities collected about $138 million over the period, the 10-year period studied. Joint ventures collected $74 million, averaging $200,000 each over a 10-year period.
These are your taxpayer dollars flowing to poor farmers according to the original legislation. The idea was to keep the farmers solvent, help the farmers make a good living, but now it is a corrupt racketeering enterprise, a legal racketeering enterprise.
You know, there may be a contradiction in that when you say racketeering and legal, but the savings and loan scandal showed us how you can swindle people, how you can have a massive racketeering enterprise which is mostly legal.
Continuing to read from the report, and I am reading from a report called City Slickers. City Slickers is prepared by the Environmental Working Group. They are located at 1718 Connecticut Avenue Northwest, Suite 600, in Washington, DC 20009.
I have given you this information because if you do not believe my figures, if you do not trust me or if you want to see more documentation and if you want to read the report in more detail, if you want to get to know about this gigantic swindle, you might want to see the whole report. Environmental Working Group, 1718 Connecticut Avenue Northwest, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20009, (202) 667-6982. Fax number
(202) 232-2592.
Now I understand there has been some controversy about giving out information about books or things for sale. This is for sale for $10 I think. I have no connection whatsoever with this group. I have never been to their office. I am not a member. Nobody on
my staff is a member. It is a nonprofit environmental research organization so far as I am concerned. I welcome you to contact them to get the whole report.
We need to know. Members of Congress need to know more. Even those who have been here 10, 12 years do not know enough, have not been here long enough to really learn, no matter how studious they may be or how hard they work at it.
It is a complicated world, ladies and gentleman, The American Government is the most complicated entity on the face of the Earth. The Members of Congress, 435, plus the Members of the Senate, 100, are 535 vice-presidents of the world's largest and most complex corporation, the world's most powerful corporation.
We hear people talk about term limits. They want to make this body weaker. They want to trivialize what we do here. They want to make it weaker for the purpose of continuing these kinds of scams, these kinds of racketeering enterprises.
The weaker the Congress is, the more it is ridiculed, the more it is trivialized, the less it is likely to have the people who will be able to take on correcting these massive racketeering enterprises which waste a great deal of taxpayers' money.
The weaker the Congress is, the more likely people are to fall for demonizing of welfare mothers, demonizing pregnant teenagers, calling of alligators and wolves and making it appear that they are about to bring the country down.
No, the waste that is about to bring the country down is here. This is one example. We are going to be showing you many others in the weeks to come.
Continuing to read from the report City Slickers:
Massive and widespread cash payments to absentee interests in cities are just one of many indications that America's Federal farm subsidy programs are out of date and badly out of control. This study underscores just one of the fundamental problems with America's depression-era farm programs. They mostly now reward the ownership of land, not the farming of the land but the ownership of the land. They reward most those who own the most, not those most in need.
Let me repeat that. From the report City Slickers:
This study underscores just one of the fundamental problems with America's depression-era farm programs. They mostly reward the ownership of land, not the farming of it, and reward most those who own the most, not those most in need.
Welfare for the farmers is not means tested. People on welfare, aid to dependent children, that is what we call welfare. You have to prove you are poor before you can get a dollar.
Farmers do not have to prove they are poor. In fact, it is well known that many of them are rich, big agribusinesses. Everybody knows. The rich know. Nothing hidden there. No secret. They are the ones who are receiving the taxpayers' dollars. Free money to people who do not need it.
Continuing to read from the report, I quote:
Absentee landowners, distant corporations and far-flung investors are able to draw substantial government agricultural subsidies, though they may reside in a big city hundreds or even thousands of miles from the farm and never set foot on that farm for years on end. As a practical matter, almost anyone, almost anyone can qualify for Federal agriculture subsidies. You do not have to farm the land, you do not have to live anywhere near the land, you do not even have to visit from time to time. You do not have to be related to the farmer or to anyone else who has an interest in the farm. And wealthy,
absentee farm owners who are most likely to run afoul of payment limits or other rules have ready access to legal advice that can help them maximize their government payments, advice provided by the government itself.
The fact that Federal farm programs transfer massive Government subsidy payments to recipients in big cities, as we document in this report, is just one
[[Page H3870]] more compelling reason why the 1995 farm bill must not result in business as usual.
I conclude by stating this is a report called City Slickers, and we need to read more of it together. Get a copy yourself.
And as we progress on our discussion of the budget and appropriations process here in this Congress, we are going to talk more about where is the real waste, where is that money that is needed to give a tax cut or do anything else? It is not in the school lunch program. It is not in the college loan program. There are billions of dollars that are routinely being wasted, and we should take note of that as taxpayers.
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