Burgess Owens

we have had a bit of a reign of pettiness over the past few weeks in the House of Representatives. Certainly it would appear to the general public that pettiness was in command, and much of the previous presentation that we have had was in…

also, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights has opposed this fast-track national testing initiative. They have given very sound reasons for opposing it. To help the children of America, a bipartisan school reform package with substance…

While I am all in favor of increased funding for education, I did not support amendments that sought to take funds from Health and Human Services or to take funds from labor programs, programs related to working people. I think we should…

today, July 29, is being celebrated as a day when a bipartisan compromise reached its climax in the 105th Congress. We have agreement on a tax bill, an agreement on an expenditure bill, and probably before we recess on August 1 we will…

in the spirit of bipartisan cooperation, I would like to urge the majority to withdraw its opposition to this amendment. This is a very conservative amendment seeking to hold onto the status quo. We are only asking that you continue to do…

It was most unfortunate that we started the day by pulling a bill which would have reauthorized vocational education assistance, and stopped the forward movement of that bill because there was an amendment on the bill which called for a…

one speaker has implied that we are not serious when we offer this amendment because we know it is not going to pass. I regret that it will not pass. We are reduced to a ceremonial action each year. Once again we are here to impose what I…

there are 80,000 jobs, high-tech jobs, that cannot be filled right now that are available in America; 80,000, and the number is growing. Our weapons are very sophisticated. If we do not pay more attention to education, we are going to have…

I hope that this amendment sponsored by the gentleman from Vermont is not just another ceremony where we are talking to the wind. I think that the American people, the polls have shown the American people are gradually beginning to…

today there was a little bit of history that meant a great deal to me. The last bill we passed was a bill sponsored by the gentleman from Oklahoma [Mr. Watts], called the Joint Resolution Celebrating the End of Slavery in the United…

I am sure that both of my colleagues know well that phrase that they have heard repeated often, that in slavery everybody on the plantation had a job, because a job was then defined as work that the master wanted you to do. You did not get…

I want to point out that the problem of putting people to work on welfare and the problem of providing decent jobs and wages for workers is not unrelated to the overall scene here in this House. The budget drives everything. We have…

Mr. Speaker, in closing, let me just say there is an effort to divide and conquer welfare recipients who are put over here and workers who are put over there. The workers of America must understand this is a threat to all of us. If you did…

We have traded places with Great Britain where the gap between the rich and poor used to be the greatest. We are now, democratic America has now the greatest gap between the rich and the poor. It is the phenomenon that has taken place. It…

Mr. Speaker, we are in a situation where, as I said before, there is a drive on to drive the workers' wages down to the lowest levels, and the process of globalization is being used to do that, where corporate powers are moving the jobs…

the corporate greed we are seeing has absolutely no common sense. What history has clearly demonstrated over the past 50, 75 years is that the locomotive, the engine of the locomotive that drives the economy of America, and the American…

I would just like to comment briefly, because I think I have an hour after this where I will be continuing the discussion of the downgrading of the wages of American workers, but I want to thank the minority whip and my colleagues for…

The story is that we are the wealthiest nation that ever existed on the face of the Earth. The wealth of America is constantly increasing and the wealth of wealthy people throughout the world is constantly increasing. There is no reason…

We may have on the floor this week or early next week an attempt to codify the denial of the payment of minimum wage and other worker benefits to welfare recipients.

I think the fact that the British economy in general was performing very well, they say we have prosperity. What the common ordinary people in Britain understood was that more and more people at the top were getting more and more of that…

I urge that we get back on track and really go to the core of providing opportunities to learn. We want to have a national curriculum. We want to have national testing. We need national standards in terms of the opportunity to learn. At…

again, the Congressional Black Caucus budget has demonstrated that we can balance the budget, and we can balance it without pain. Our budget shows how we can cut more corporate welfare and balance the budget without cutting Medicare and…

I want to ask the gentleman if he was aware of the fact that the CRS figures which show the funding pattern for the youth training programs other than summer youth, which we were talking about before, which was badly needed, and the…

this is an amendment on the Summer Youth Employment Program. The committee's work has been repeatedly congratulated. I hope that it is as good as we think it is because, in this closing of this century, jobs and employment will become a…

I hear language, and a central program is not the same as a mandate. We have tricks here of the trade which all of us who have been legislators understand very well. It leaves it wide open for the strangling. The summer youth program will…