Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to second the remarks of the dean of the House, my friend, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell).

Last night, in this great Capitol building, about 10 p.m., the Committee on Rules was meeting. Our friends on the other side of the aisle had just come back from their lavish dinner at which the newspapers report they raised some $22 million for the Republicans. They voted on this rule, and they voted to deny this House the opportunity to work its will on $47 billion in the DOD budget.

That is a matter of some concern, because that is one of the largest items in the entire bill, and the House is unable to work its will on it due to their denial of an amendment. But more important than that, they denied over 700,000 DOD employees to have this section of the bill aired and debated. Over 700,000 families who work for our Pentagon worldwide are not able to hear their concerns aired on the floor of this House.

This is the people's House, yet over 700,000 patriotic and loyal Americans who have served this Nation well in the Iraq war, in the Afghan war, and let us remember 65 of these civilians died in the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, but, no, this House is too busy to consider their concerns. That is not fair, that is not right, and this House should demand justice.

These are important civil servants of our Nation. They work hard every day to keep our Nation strong. Only last week our committee bothered to commend them for their skill, their hard work and dedication. But, no, their concerns are not important enough to be aired on the floor of this House.

We had one hearing in the Committee on Armed Services, we had no subcommittee markup, and now we are unable to debate the issue on the floor of this House. It is an injustice.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion.

I am in its present form, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, this is the amendment that was banned in Washington. This is the amendment that Republican leadership does not want us to vote on. Why? They are afraid Members will like it. They are afraid it will pass. They are afraid that the real majority in this great House of Representatives, common sense, the Democrats and Republicans working together, will like what is in this amendment.

That is why the Committee on Rules did not allow it to be considered in either rule, and that is why the chairman of the Committee on Armed Services did not allow an amendment like this to be put before the Committee on Armed Services.

What is in the Cooper-Davis-Van Hollen amendment that makes it so controversial? Members will be surprised when they read it. There are copies at the desk.

It is a relatively simple three-page DOD civilian bill of rights. No new rights are extended. All we are trying to do is to make sure, to make absolutely sure, that existing civilian employees' rights are preserved.

Let me read section A. The right of an employee to receive a veterans preference in hiring and reduction in force shall not be abridged.

Who in this House is against that?

An employee shall have the right to be free from favoritism, nepotism, or discrimination.

Who in this House is against that?

The Secretary shall not refuse to bargain in good faith with a labor organization.

Who in this House is against that?

The Secretary shall submit negotiating impasses to an impartial panel.

Who in this House is against that?

An employee shall have the right to full and fair compensation for overtime and pay for hazardous duty work.

Who in this House is against that?

An employee shall have the right to form, join, or assist any labor organization, or to refrain from any such activity, freely and without fear of penalty or reprisal.

Who is against that in this House?

Such right includes the right to engage in collective bargaining with respect to conditions of employment through representatives chosen by employees.

Who in this House is against that?

There are simple, basic, due process and appeal rights that these employees have today that you are about to take away unless Members vote for the motion to recommit. These rights include freedom from racial discrimination, so these people have a chance to take their case to the EEOC.

Many on the other side of the aisle will say these rights are already in the bill. If that is true, if that is true, they should welcome this motion to recommit and vote for it. If they are believing their own speeches, they should vote for this motion to recommit, because it will not kill this bill. It will not even delay this bill a microsecond. All it will do is safeguard the rights of DOD employees.

This is the only chance Members will have in this long debate to help these employees. The next time Members visit a military base, the next time a DOD employee or family member appears at a gathering, they are going to ask Members what they did or did not do to help them. They are going to ask us why the Senate helped them and you did not. Because the other body is treating these people in a much fairer manner.

You do not want to tell these 750,000 patriotic families that you do not have time or the interest to consider preserving their existing rights. So now is your chance, your only chance to help these people, 65 of whom died on September 11 when the terrorists attacked

the Pentagon, people who are part of the best employee workforce in the history of the Pentagon.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman and the ranking member of the Committee on Armed Services for their overall fine work on this bill.

Due to the shortness of time, I would like to focus on one, unfortunately, negative aspect of the bill. It starts on page 349.

I would urge all of my colleagues not on the committee to pay particular attention to these sections, because they deal with the 750,000 Pentagon civilian employees, DOD employees, who are some of the finest civil servants in our Nation's history.

Remember, these are the employees who were attacked viciously on September 11, 2001, with the terrorist attack on the Pentagon. These are the employees who have served so skillfully and with such hard work and dedication that we honored them in our committee last week with a resolution commending them for their actions.

This section of the bill is one of the most radical and risky reforms undertaken in almost half a century; and, unfortunately, it is being undertaken with very little real consideration. The first draft of language was presented to Congress on April 29, just about 3 weeks ago. We had one hurried hearing. There was no subcommittee markup of this language; and no improving amendment was allowed in full committee, despite the great length of the markup at full committee.

Members should be aware of the radical changes that are undertaken by this language. I think we all in this House support our troops. I would hope that we also support the civilian workers in DOD who are supporting our troops every day.

What does this language do? Well, at best, it throws these careers into great uncertainty, and, at worst, it could harm the morale and throw them into a situation of favoritism and patronage.

We have an amendment that we are hoping the Committee on Rules will allow us to offer. This amendment would establish a DOD Civilian Employee Bill of Rights so that we could make it clear that we are in favor of flexibility in management in the Pentagon, that we are in favor of pay for performance, but we are also in favor of basic civil rights for our DOD employees.

This amendment, for example, makes it clear in plain English, which the text of the bill does not do, that employees at the Pentagon and DOD should be free from favoritism or discrimination. We preserve the veterans' preference. If veterans do not get preference as Pentagon employees, where on Earth can they get it?

We require the Pentagon to bargain in good faith. That language is nowhere in this bill. We preserve such things as hazardous duty and overtime pay for these workers. Why were these protections explicitly taken out of the language that is in this bill? We preserve the right to collective bargaining, a fundamental American right.

So, Mr. Chairman, it is important that House Members pay attention, and hopefully the Committee on Rules will allow our amendment to be made in order so this can be a fairer bill.

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman, my friend from Ohio, realizes that this bill is being rammed through Congress with an absolute minimum of discussion. The protections that the gentleman makes an effort to reference, such as collective bargaining, is not collective bargaining as the Nation understands it but collective bargaining as defined in that chapter in that bill, which really gives no definition. Ask folks who know about collective bargaining, and the gentleman will find that real collective bargaining rights are not preserved in the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a privileged motion.

Mr. Speaker, I am an unlikely radical. I called for a motion to adjourn today, that disrupted normal House business, in order to highlight one of the smelliest pieces of legislation in recent memory. Sunshine is the best disinfectant, and this bill, although it is labeled as helpful to our military men and women, needs lots of sunshine and lots of disinfectant so that a new, improved bill can be truly helpful to our military.

I felt compelled to rise in reluctant opposition to H. Res. 126 and H.R. 878, the rule for debate and the ``Armed Forces Tax Fairness Act.'' I am one of the strongest supporters of our National Guard and Reserve, but this bill is not good enough for them. It only grants a tiny fraction of the tax relief that our Guard and Reserve deserve, and it is a bill loaded with special interest provisions that have nothing to do with the Guard and Reserve,

Fortunately, the Republicans have now pulled the bill from the floor because I think they were beginning to notice the stink that their legislation was causing. I hope that we will vote on an improved bill very soon because our service men and women deserve a clean, strong bill to give them tax relief now.

Newspapers across the nation have denounced H.R. 878 with headlines such as, ``Help Soldiers, Not Gamblers,'' but many members still feel compelled to vote for it on final passage because it does still contain some relief for our men and women in uniform. That is a devil's bargain. We should not be blackmailed into accepting special interest tax provisions just because they are packaged with all too meager tax breaks for our Guard and Reserved. Especially in a time of war, the U.S. House of Representatives should honor and reward our Guard and Reserve, and not limit their benefits as this bill does. Above all we should not load it with lobbyists' dream lists of special interest tax provisions, such as a tax relief for foreign gamblers.

The Republicans majority are using our Guard and Reserve as human shields for their special interests selfishness. They should have allowed a substitute to be offered so that Congress could vote for either their bill, with $189 million in tax benefits for our Guard and Reserve over 10 years, or the Democrats and Senate Finance Committee bills with $851 in tax relief for our troopers. A fair vote on these two bills was denied the House, under the rule, H. Res. 126, and that's why I am opposing not only the bill but also the rule.

Who would have thought that the Republican majority would add tax breaks for foreigners who bet on U.S. horse races to the bill, or tax relief for bow and arrow manufacturers, or tax breaks for mixing diesel fuel with water. These provisions should be considered separately, not in legislation whose title is the ``Armed Forces Tax Fairness Act.''

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I, like most Americans, am strongly opposed to human cloning. It is wrong to try to duplicate human beings. But it is important, as we ban human cloning, that we do not prevent legitimate scientific research into life-saving therapies that can mean so much to human life. All of us have friends who suffer from Alzheimer's, diabetes, stroke, Parkinson's, heart disease, liver failure, end-stage renal disease, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, burns, multiple sclerosis, brain damage, Lou Gehrig's disease and lupus. Americans who suffer from these diseases should not be told that Congress has stopped the search for a cure for their diseases, and that they will have to move to another country to have any hope.

One of the great achievements of Congress in the last several years has been to boost NIH funding to accelerate the discovery of cures for many of these dread diseases. It would be a mistake to put NIH and other leading research institutions in a legal straight-jacket that prevented legitimate research.

Unfortunately, although the Weldon bill commendably bans human cloning, it also cripples scientific research into potentially-life saving therapies. That is why I am supporting the Greenwood bill, which bans human cloning without harming other scientific research. The Greenwood bill actually has tougher punishments for those who violate its provisions than the Weldon bill does.

There is considerable confusion surrounding this debate. I have been listening to many people with differing points of view, and read many articles concerning the bills. One particularly touching conversation was with a father whose own son has Type I diabetes, and whose opposition to the human cloning and any related technology is so strong that he is willing to forego research that could even save his own son's life. For Middle Tennesseans, the debate is more confused because Senator Bill Frist, M.D., has surprised the scientific community by supporting the Weldon bill. It is interesting to note, however, that Vanderbilt University, the institution where Dr. Frist worked before entering politics, opposes the Weldon bill and supported the Greenwood bill. The head of Princeton University, where Dr. Frist received his training in pre-medical studies, also opposes the Weldon bill and supports the Greenwood bill.

Having studied this issue closely, I think that the Greenwood bill hits the target of banning human cloning, without harmful side-effects. In past congressional debates, such as over research on DNA, Congress was tempted to pass an overly broad ban, but, fortunately resisted such temptation. Congress has another such opportunity today: to pass legislation that achieves the objective of banning human cloning, with out harming the health care of our people.

Finally, it was unfair to the Republican majority to require a vote on this bill without having held any committee hearings or received any testimony on it in this Congress. While it was considered in the previous Congress, there are many new members who do not have the benefit of those hearings, and even older member lack of updated information that is available from the scientific community. It is a serious mistake for Congress to rush complex legislation through without any hearings and with minimal debate, especially when it could have such a profound impact on the health of the American people.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, today we honor the life and legacy of Al Hirschfeld, the pen and ink illustrator who chronicled some 75 years of American theater and entertainment history who died on January 20 in Manhattan at the age of 99.

Hirschfeld, who was born June 21, 1903 in St. Louis, earned a special Tony award for his drawing of theater people. As my colleague, the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), has mentioned, he often featured the word Nina for his daughter in thousands and thousands of his drawings. In fact, it is kind of fun to find the Ninas in a particular drawing and Hirschfeld made more than 10,000 caricatures in his career.

At the tender age of 11, Hirschfeld's art teacher in St. Louis told his mother, ``There is nothing more that we can teach him here in St. Louis.''

The family promptly moved to New York where he enrolled in the Art Students' League. At age 17, Hirschfeld became an art director at Selznick Pictures. He held that position for about 4 years; and then in 1924 he moved to Paris to work, led a Bohemian life, grew a beard, which he retained until his death.

Although Hirschfeld is best known for his illustrations on the New York Times's theater pages, he also turned out posters for Broadway shows and drew for ``TV Guide,'' ``The Washingtonian,'' ``Play Bill,'' ``Rolling Stone'' and many, many other publications.

In 1991, Al Hirschfeld became the first artist in history to have his name on a U.S. postage stamp booklet when the United States Postal Service released five stamps they commissioned Hirschfeld to design. The stamps portray Laurel and Hardy, Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Abbot and Costello, and Fanny Brice.

The Hirschfeld postage stamps were so successful that in 1994 the U.S. Postal Service again commissioned Hirschfeld to portray Hollywood's celebrated stars of the silent screen era. This series of commemorative Hirschfeld stamps honors Rudolf Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and the Keystone Cops.

In a 1999 interview with Reuters, Hirschfeld is quoted as saying, ``After 70 years of drawing you have to improve, otherwise you are a dolt. It is a question of elimination and understanding, of trial and error, and suddenly something happens, an epiphany.''

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support H. Res. 46, honoring the life and legacy of Al Hirschfeld.

Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler).

Madam Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to four remarkable men, four brave men from the U.S. Army's 106th Special Operations Aviation Regiment who gave their lives recently while in service to our country.

On Thursday, January 30, 2003, the four-member crew was participating in training operations near Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan when their MH-60 Blackhawk helicopter crashed. The elite Night Stalker 160 SOAR unit, which is stationed at Fort Campbell near my home district in Tennessee, honored these four aviators at a memorial service last week. Chief Warrant Officer 3 Mark O'Steen, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Thomas Gibbons, Staff Sergeant Daniel Leon Kisling, Jr., and Sergeant Gregory Michael Frampton were remembered as deeply patriotic and devoted family men.

Their tragic loss will not be forgotten among family members, friends or fellow soldiers that they left behind, nor will it fade from the memories of those who live and work in Fort Campbell. Each of these men made the greatest sacrifice a soldier can make, to give his life for the cause of preserving our freedom.

I thank them for serving our country proudly and honorably.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt). I appreciate your leadership on these vitally important issues. I think many patriotic Americans wonder what those moments are in American history when we really do reach a turning point; and to be honest with you, in all the congressional debates there are very few real turning points. But I would like to suggest, as the gentleman has already suggested, 1993 was a turning point when this Nation literally reversed its fiscal policy and finally set our Nation on track towards reaching surpluses which many Americans had given up on ever seeing again.

And I would like to suggest that this year, 2003, is another such turning point, as we dig deeper into the hole of deficits and plunge future generations into what is likely to be a permanent and unresolvable debt load.

Our friend, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott of Virginia), has already pointed out this chart, and I would like to suggest that this should be on everyone's screen saver, on every computer in America as we put the deficit in perspective.

They were relatively inconsequential in the Carter years, the Nixon/ Ford years. But then with President Reagan we plunged into a sea of red ink which many Americans thought was irreversible. Then in the crucial budget vote in 1993, suddenly we got an upturn, even developing a surplus.

But then again, another pivot point in American history under George W. Bush and his budgets, we are reaching even graver levels of deficit and debt.

I think the gentleman will recognize that many of our constituents just have an instinctive feeling that, well, the President is a Republican and, therefore, he is conservative and, therefore, his budget must be conservative.

Mr. Speaker, does the gentleman from South Carolina think that deficits of this magnitude are conservative?

As I recall, the gentleman has already said these are about to be the largest deficits in history. Is that conservative?

As I recall, the gentleman has said that the deficit for fiscal year 2004 is supposed to be about $300 billion, not counting the war in Iraq, not counting the war in Afghanistan, not counting the war on terrorism, not counting other important problems that need to be solved in our Nation. So the deficit may well be $400 or even $500 billion.

A temporary deficit is one thing. As we know, sometimes a deficit is appropriate to stimulate the economy, but what we are talking about are permanent structural deficits in our economy.

The gentleman is so correct. And a huge deficit like that hurts our economy. It creates higher interest rates. It hurts the employment statistics. And as I think most of the world knows, under the Clinton years we had the most robust economy in the history of this Nation or the history of the world. Surpluses helped us. Fiscal discipline helped us. That is important for us to realize now as we are returning to the era of massive budget deficits.

The gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) has displayed great leadership, but I worry so many folks back home find these numbers too large to be comprehended. They are confused. They are over-burdened in their daily lives. They are worried about the war. They are worried about unemployment. They do not know really how to grapple with numbers of this magnitude. But this chart shows it better than anything else, this sea of red ink that we are passing on to the next generation.

President Bush mentioned in his State of the Union that each Congress, each President should take care of its own problems, but this budget is not doing that.

Mr. Speaker, I do. It was a very close vote. As I recall, it was by a one-vote margin the Clinton budget was passed.

Mr. Speaker, as I remember, zero. In fact, they excoriated the President's budget saying that it would lead to depression and other crises in the economy.

Mr. Speaker, many Members were defeated for having done the courageous thing, for having been a profile in courage.

Mr. Speaker, they are few and far between in this budget. It is a massive document of some 20,000 pages, I suppose. It contains many crippling cuts to our programs. Our colleague from North Carolina mentioned several of them in the education area. There are so many features that I hope the public will be aware of and we will try to bring out in the debate.

One feature that is particularly concerning to me is an unconstitutional provision that is in the President's budget. It is little known. It is on page 318 of the analytical prospectus of the second or third volume of the budget. It actually says, if Congress has not completed its business by October 1 of

this year, the budget will automatically revert to the President's budget; whereas, the Constitution of the United States gives that power exclusively to the Congress of the United States, not to the White House.

And that allows this administration, with a handful of Senators, to clog up the budget process, and then automatically, without a single vote taken by this body, turn over the budget to this administration. That is one of the most radical proposals I have ever heard mentioned in public policy debates. And yet it is in this President's budget.

That is why I asked, as I mentioned to the gentleman from South Carolina earlier, this is not a conservative budget. There is a radical budget. This is an irresponsible budget that is leading our Nation perhaps on the road to ruin. No American wants to see that.

It is the responsibility of a two-party system to point out problems. And certainly Democratic budgets in the past have sometimes not been perfect, but we can be proud of this record of actually achieving a budget surplus for the first time in American history, I think, since before the Depression, 3 straight years of surplus were achieved. And that is an important record of achievement that we need to continue, not a road with this massive flood of red ink.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, the gentleman is so correct. He made an extremely important point a moment ago. So many people in the other party feel that deficits do not matter, deficits do not matter; and I think that philosophy is not only wrong, it could lead our Nation into serious economic trouble for decades to come.

I would like to suggest to the gentleman, I even heard some of my colleagues across the aisle say that deficits are a good thing. There is an article today in the New York Times quoting a leader in the other party saying that a deficit is a good thing because they shrink the size of government; and I would suggest that sort of philosophy is not only not conservative, it is one of the most radical approaches to government that I have ever heard of, to pretend that red ink of this volume and dimension does not matter and that it could actually be a good thing.

As the gentleman from Virginia so wisely pointed out, that puts a debt tax, an unrepealable tax on future generations for all time in the amount of $12 billion forever just due to the debt we are running up this year. That is an irresponsible fiscal policy. That is a radical fiscal policy. It is not a conservative fiscal policy.

I think that is what so many of our constituents back home are failing to realize because these numbers are so large, the problems seem so vast, they are preoccupied with the war and with their own personal situation, that when they are presented with a multitrillion dollar budget, it is hard to take it seriously, when, in fact, we are reaching a turning point in American history, and we do need to take action, we need to bring these problems to the American people's attention so that they can respond and call for fiscal responsibility and fiscal sanity because we are not seeing enough of that today in Washington, D.C.

I would like to commend the gentleman from South Carolina and the gentleman from Virginia for their comments.

The gentleman is an excellent economist, and another great economist is our own Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, who said, History suggests that an abandonment of fiscal discipline will eventually push up interest rates, so deficits do matter, crowd out capital spending, lower productivity growth, and force harder choices on us in the future.

We should be listening to Alan Greenspan. We should be listening to the gentleman from South Carolina and the gentleman from Virginia because deficits do matter. They are hurting this economy, and we need to return to the fiscal discipline that we saw in the previous administration and live within our means because our Nation is embarking on long-term structural deficits today that we may never be able to erase.

Mr. Speaker, most Americans take for granted that federal laws apply to every American equally, regardless of what state we live in. Well, you may be surprised to learn that taxpayers in seven states are discriminated against by the Internal Revenue Code, and have been since 1986. This means that the 51 million people who live in the states of Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Washington, New Hampshire, Alaska, and Wyoming are treated differently, and punitively, by the federal government, due to no fault of their own, and for no good reason of public policy. This injustice amounts to many billions of dollars in higher taxes paid by residents of these states every year.

How did this discrimination occur? Prior to 1986, federal tax law allowed taxpayers to deduct from their federal income tax any state taxes that they paid, whether for a state income tax or a state sales tax. This deduction allowed all Americans the ability to reduce their federal tax burden due to the accepted principle that (1) the federal government deferred to the chosen tax system of each state, and (2) to prevent double taxation of taxes paid to state governments.

After 1986, in the tax reform act of that year, only state income taxes were deductible. Taxpayers in states with no income tax were suddenly allowed no deduction on the money they paid to their state governments. The 1986 tax reform legislation was a giant bill with many unintended consequences. There was no sound public policy reason for discriminating against states which have chosen to rely on a sales tax, yet this discrimination has persisted for 16 years.

There are 43 states today which have a state income tax and seven states which have no income tax, but which in most cases use a state sales tax for their primary source of revenue. This means that taxpayers in 43 states get different and better treatment from the Internal Revenue Code than the residents of the other seven states: Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Washington, New Hampshire, Alaska, and Wyoming.

I have introduced a bill today to remedy this situation. My original cosponsors are Bart Gordon, John Tanner, and Lincoln Davis. My legislation would allow taxpayers in states which rely on a sales tax to get the same deduction as residents of income tax states--no better and no worse.

To allow the current injustice to continue means that federal law is forcing all states to adopt an income tax. This should never be federal policy. To deny 51 million Americans the benefits of a deduction that every other American enjoys is rank discrimination. And to deny this deduction is to effectively double-tax the hard-earned pay of residents of seven states.

My colleague Brian Baird has been fighting this battle for years now, as has my predecessor, Bob Clement. There are 79 Members of Congress whose constituents are directly and adversely affected by this discrimination. We owe it to our seven states, and to the 51 million people we represent to restore basic fairness to our tax code.