I rarely disagree with my good friend from Massachusetts who preceded me, but he was much too harsh toward the Republicans. He should not have chided them for voting for a budget that would bring the deficit up rather than down next year…

we should be discussing Medicare, but sometimes decency requires us to deal with unpleasantness. The unpleasantness in this case is an outrageous, inaccurate, degrading accusation by Speaker Gingrich about the late Ron Brown. Speaker…

That is $200 million out of $4 billion. Mr. Chairman, let me take back my time to say, here is the point: Yes, $200 million, maybe a couple hundred more, was used for Bosnia. Billions of dollars were unspent. I am making two points. First…

My point was, and I must say I am again unreassured that these crack intelligence people who are so terrific cannot keep track of the money. I will say, in fairness to them, I do not think this was lousy accounting, I think this was…

Yes, and I will explain what I said to the gentleman. I am sorry the gentleman and his colleagues have done, frankly, such a lousy job in letting these people put $4 billion away, and it was $1 billion and then $2 billion, and now it is $4…

I say to the gentleman, continue this trend of ever-increasing appropriations and authorizations for this agency, even when they have shown it is excessive by building up these surpluses, and you mandate deeper cuts in the environment and…

I do not believe it was an honest error. I believe they figured out a game. The central point I want to make is this, and I am not for hanging anyone, but the fact that an agency was able to accumulate a surplus greater than 10 percent of…

I support the gentleman, but I begin to get second thoughts because maybe we have found a way to really cut the deficit. This hidden money that we lost track of started out at a billion. Then within a couple of months it was $2 billion…

I must tell my friend from Texas I am less reassured by that than I might have been, given the fact that after we passed that conference report and it was signed into law, the unobligated, unaccounted for secret surplus went from $2…

I would make this distinction, and in the case of HUD, I am more critical, because we had for 8 years a Secretary of HUD, appointed by Ronald Reagan, who was dishonest and incompetent, in combination. I do not think that is the case here…

They just lost $2 billion? With their satellites they could not find $2 billion?

It has to do with the practice of large, wealthy entities using a combination of their wealth but also the laws of this country, the securities laws, the tax laws, accounting principles to acquire companies when their intention in…

This is a very clear-cut issue. Members have said American troops are not there to defend other countries, they are there to defend us, but the fact is that they are doing both. No one thinks that we have no role in defending other…

in fact what happened was the gentleman from New York [Mr. Hinchey] had two separate amendments, and they only stole one. They forgot to steal them both. So the gentleman only took half of Hinchey; he got a ``Hinch'' but no ``E'' here. So…

No tenant has said to me, ``Please let them raise my rent.'' The housing authorities explained this to me: Given the cutbacks that have occurred in the housing budget, they believe they are going to have to raise the rents on working…

I want to try to reach some agreement here. The point is this: By the gentleman's own chart he is acknowledging, by his choice of a date, that when the Brooke amendment was simply a cap and not a floor, it did not have that negative…

The amendment I have goes back to the pre-1981 days. It sets a 30-percent limit. It does not require an increase. The gentleman's argument, be clear, here is what he says: If you tell housing authorities that they can charge no more than…

Yes. And under the amendment of the gentleman from New York, what he says is this. He said it in his argument: If we limit the housing authority to 30 percent we are saying, ``Take any factors you want into consideration, geography…

That is the same point. If in fact discussions between Members of the House and the executive branch about how to deal with some of these issues, if that is to be subpoenaed and made public, then comparable documents on this side will be…

What we have here is one of the opening phases of the 1996 Presidential campaign. It is a Presidential campaign, the Republican campaign, which is not going sufficiently well on its own for the Republicans to conduct it in the normal way…

I am glad the gentleman from New York brought out his chart; it was his chart, and he picked 1982, not as a random number but because that is the point at which he believes the Brooke amendment began to have a negative effect…

this very carefully drawn recommit says, if a majority of your income comes from work, you will get the same cap that welfare recipients get. We will be creating, if we reject this, precisely the disincentive my colleagues said they did…

That is absolutely right. Let me just say, my friend from Minnesota just suggested a point. Under their theory, the way to get the rents lower is to let the authorities charge as much as they want. I guess the way to get people to drive…

Mr. Chairman, I would say the gentleman from New York has a key point, but I think it makes our argument. Remember, the Brooke amendment has had two forms. As originally proposed by Senator Brooke and adopted, it was simply a cap and not a…

I have asked the gentleman to explain to me how that is the fault of the Democrats. Would he explain to me, I will be glad to yield to him, how was the fact that the Reagan budget of 1981 turned the Brooke amendment from a tenant…