I briefly wanted to discuss an amendment which I will be introducing as soon as the rule on the supplementary appropriation is fixed, which deals with an emergency situation for gulf war veterans who are really not getting the attention…

for young people graduating high school, their entry level jobs are now paying 30 percent less than was the case 15 years ago. For young women, it is about 17 or 18 percent less. Furthermore, Americans at the lower end of the wage scale…

we have to be honest about it, yes, for the vast majority of workers, wages are going down. Yes, we have lost hundreds of thousands of jobs for our working people, but we have not been totally fair tonight; and that is we must acknowledge…

I regard it as an outrage that more and more pressure is being placed on the Bureau of Labor Statistics to change their approach of determining how the Consumer Price Index, the CPI, is being determined, with the goal of lowering it…

If we want a volunteer program, let us develop a volunteer program. But a volunteer program says, we would like you to volunteer. And we create the circumstances. That is a good idea. If we want people to work, we have got to pay them. I…

I think, picking up on the point of the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kucinich], that the truth of the matter is the average American worker is scared to death.

If I can interrupt for a moment, it is not a question of is it happening. It is happening. Let us not be naive about this. What is going on now is the standard of living of the average American worker is in serious decline. The gap between…

People are scared to death precisely because of what the gentleman is saying. Because if they stand up for their rights, their company is going to say, we do not need you anymore. We are going to Mexico; we are going to China. Ultimately I…

Let me just pick up on the gentleman's point, and that is essentially, if you have desperate people in Mexico who are making 50 cents an hour, who are living in shacks, whose kids may be begging out on the street, who are forced to work…

In terms of distribution of wealth in America, you have the richest 1 percent now owning 42 percent of the wealth, which is more than the bottom 90 percent. One of the problems that all of us have is in dealing with the media. In terms of…

As the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior] knows, 23 years ago the United States led the world in terms of the wages and benefits our workers received. Today, as a result of a number of factors, not least of which is our absurd trade…

And working less. Yet what is happening? Just the opposite is happening. And what is the end result? The end result is corporate profits soar, CEO salaries soar, and distribution of wealth becomes more and more unfair.

let us be frank. Exxon, Ford, Citibank, and DuPont are profitable multibillion dollar corporations who pay their CEO's millions of dollars in salary. These companies do not need OPIC corporate welfare payments from the taxpayers of this…

Today Congress has the opportunity to put an end to the insidious practice of insurance companies sending moms and babes home before they are ready to go. Hurried discharges after childbirth fly in the face of established medical practice…

ever since my first day in Congress I have been fighting to raise the minimum wage. The simple truth is that the purchasing power of the minimum wage today is 26 percent less than it was in 1970, which means that our minimum wage workers…

in a time when this Congress is proposing huge cuts in Medicare, and Medicaid, and education, environmental protection, veterans programs, it is absolutely insane that we continue to provide $125 billion a year in corporate welfare, tax…

Mr. Chairman, I think we are all in agreement, those of us who have spoken, about what the issue here is, and it is not a complicated issue. What all of us believe is that when a patient walks into a doctor's office, we want to know that…

This amendment touches on an issue that is of growing consequence to tens of millions of Americans as this country moves from traditional health care to HMO's and to managed care. What this amendment deals with is the need to break the gag…

Mr. Chairman, as many Members know, the U.S. taxpayer is the single largest supporter of biomedical research in the world, spending $33 billion in 1994 alone for biomedical and related health research. Unfortunately, our taxpayers are…

We have been and will continue to be strong supporters of the veterans' pro bono representation program which will receive a substantial portion of the proposed transfer. Without adequate funding, this essential program will be unable to…

Excuse me, Mr. Thomas. You made a falsehood and I would like an apology. I was on the ballot in the State of Vermont as an independent, always have been, and I would like an apology from you, sir.

Mr. Chairman, let me reiterate what the gentleman from Illinois reminded us. Last year in the city of Chicago, as I understand it, 500 people died in a sweltering summer. That is not what America is supposed to be. In my State of Vermont…

Mr. Chairman, it is a national disgrace that large numbers of people in this country, including many elderly people, go cold in the wintertime. That is not what this country is supposed to be about. It is especially stupid that we have a…

In fact, Mr. Chairman, we should be standing in opposition to that policy. Our tax dollars should not be going to that policy. Imagine the worker from Lockheed-Martin who has been laid off because of the merger saying, ``My tax dollars…

the great crisis facing this country today is the decline in real wages for American workers and the proliferation of low-wage jobs. We have millions and millions of workers today who are trying to survive on $4.25 an hour, $5 an hour…