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I know there are a lot of issues to consider, and oftentimes we will get
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Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Serrano-Ramstad-Delahunt amendment. Once again we are debating a Commerce-Justice-State appropriations bill, and once again we are debating whether or not to adequately fund legal representation for poor and disenfranchised citizens.
Think about it: we are debating about whether or not low-income people deserve the basic kind of legal representation that we Members of Congress all take for granted. In my opinion, there is no argument here. This should not be controversial. This is common sense; this is simple equity.
The Legal Services Corporation offers legal protection to those who need it the most, victims of spousal abuse, child abuse and consumer fraud. During the past year, Legal Services grantees completed almost 1 million civil legal cases, helping everyone from veterans, family farmers, to people with disabilities and victims of floods and hurricanes. These cases involve domestic violence, child custody, access to health care, bankruptcy, unemployment and disability claims. Legal Services gives these people help to maintain their incomes, their homes, their health care coverage, and their dignity.
I could understand the opposition to Legal Services if the organization had somehow been irresponsible or reckless in how it distributes its funds to grantees. Yet Legal Services has been proven highly effective in serving people, while adhering to congressional guidelines.
The corporation requires competitive bidding for all grants and has established strict reporting guidelines for its grantees. In response to this Congress' mandate, Legal Services prohibits its grantees from engaging in certain activities, including welfare reform advocacy, lobbying, illegal alien representation, class action suits and abortion litigation. Some of those prohibitions I do not agree with and did not vote for. Legal Services has also been savvy enough to partner with private organizations to raise additional funds, as well as to promote pro bono services from private attorneys.
So as much as the opposition would like to portray the Legal Services Corporation as an irresponsible, liberal activist group wasting taxpayer dollars, this is simply not the case. This is a responsible organization that is dedicated to representing the least represented in our society.
To underfund Legal Services by nearly $200 million is a clear abandonment of our commitment to provide equal access to our judicial system, and a vote against this amendment says loud and clear that this Congress is content to let our justice system splinter into two categories, one for the haves and one for the have-nots.
Vote for the Serrano amendment and send a signal that we should have one justice system that is open and accessible to all of our citizens, regardless of their income.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.
Mr. Chairman, I want Members to fully understand just what it is that we are doing here. I very much support this amendment, because it makes a bad bill a little better in terms of this item, but I want Members to understand that there is a little kabuki dance going on here, and that is required by the refusal of the majority party to provide an allocation to this subcommittee strong enough to meet our national responsibilities.
Make no mistake about it. This amendment, while it is certainly welcome, will not do the job in restoring the resources we need to ensure equal justice in America, and it will certainly not be enough to justify voting for this bill.
Last year the Federal Government spent $305 million to try to give people without adequate resources an opportunity to have their day in court, which is a constitutional mandate. This bill provides $141 million, a savage cut. The President asked us, because we are moving from an era of huge deficits to huge surpluses, to provide just a few dollars more for the very poorest people in this country, as long as this Congress had decided to give $90 billion in tax cuts to people who make over three hundred grand a year.
The committee's response was to say no way, no way, Jose; and, instead, they provided $141 million. This amendment now seeks to raise it, not to the President's requested $340 million, not to last year's level of $305 million, but to $275 million. That is inadequate.
We cannot do any better under the limitations being imposed by the majority budget, which provide so much money for tax cuts for folks on the high end; but this amendment is the best we can do under those circumstances, and so I will vote for it. But do not let anybody think that a great favor has been done by the Congress when we do this. We will still fall far short of the need. We will fall far short of the legal needs and our moral responsibilities in providing this funding.
So what I would suggest at this point is that we vote for the amendment. It will provide a little salve for our consciences, I suppose; but it will do precious little more to provide for the real needs of living and breathing human beings who have legal rights which they cannot exercise because this Congress makes Scrooge look like Santa Claus on a good day.
Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.
I rise in support of the Serrano-Ramstad-Delahunt amendment. I must confess I am amazed each year. I am amazed, because each year when it comes time for this appropriation, there are always Members who come to the floor, there are always Members who come and try and find a way.
Now, I can understand certain kinds of cuts, and I can understand when you have got these huge amounts of money that there is some possibility of perhaps some of it even being wasted. But I have serious difficulty understanding how we could deny the most basic representation to those in our society who have virtually nothing with which to be represented.
I come from a district that has 165,000 people in it who live at or below the level of poverty. I come from a district that has 68 percent of all of the public housing in the City of Chicago, some of the most distressed public housing, some of the most distressed people. I come from a district that has 13 of the 15 poorest census tracts in urban America in that district. And I come to this floor to hear conversation that would deny all of these people.
Down the hall from my office is a Legal Services office, and all day long I see people marching in and out. All day long when I am in my district office I receive telephone calls from individuals with problems where they are seeking some help, some assistance; and I see these young lawyers in the Legal Services office who have decided that they are going to give of themselves in such a way. Many of them could even be in big firms earning big salaries, but they have decided to do their work where it is greatly needed. I would think that this House could do no less.
[Time: 16:15]
So I would urge all of my colleagues to vote in favor of the pursuit of justice for even those who could be described as being the least among us in terms of the resources with which to pay.
Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.
Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the Serrano-Delahunt-Ramstad amendment to the Commerce, Justice, State bill. With great respect for the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee and for the ranking member of the committee for the hard work that they have put into this bill, I must respectfully disagree with the chairman and commend the ranking member for this very important amendment.
As reported, the bill provides the Legal Services Corporation with a very low $141 million. Indeed, it has been the same figure over the past 6 years that the Republican majority has put into the bill. The bill cuts $164 million from last year's funding level and $199 million from President Clinton's request.
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Mr. Chairman, we have a magnificent Constitution making us the freest country in the world, with liberty and justice for all. But all Americans do not have the same rights of some that can afford those rights and access to them, and others cannot. The cut in funding for the Legal Services Corporation is a diminution of justice in our great country. A person's income should not determine whether or not Americans have access to the civil justice system.
Legal Services Corporation -funded programs are the Nation's primary source of legal assistance for low-income women who are victims of domestic violence. Indeed, I say to my colleagues, over two-thirds of Legal Services Corporation's clients are women, most of them mothers with children.
The Legal Services Corporation was established to provide legal assistance in civil matters to low-income individuals; and these clients include veterans, as has been said, family farmers, women, most of them, again, mothers with children, victims of natural disasters, et cetera. Often, the clients of Legal Services Corporation represent the elderly when they are victims of consumer fraud.
I would like to share a few examples with our colleagues to demonstrate how very, very important the work of the Legal Services Corporation is. My colleagues have referenced some other stories, and if these are duplicative, then they bear repetition, because they are very, very important.
When Mrs. Martinez decided to leave her abusive husband, she had no funds of her own to support her children. Her husband, who controlled all of the family's money, retained his own attorney to help him keep the family home and gain custody of the children, both under the age of 10. Despite a history of mental illness and domestic violence, and again, domestic violence, he had a good chance of winning in court.
A friend urged Mrs. Martinez to contact legal aid for assistance. A lawyer was assigned to represent her. The various hearings and legal proceedings were confusing and seemed very drawn out, but her legal aid attorney went with her to all of the court appearances and kept her informed every step of the way. When Mrs. Martinez's trial date came, her lawyer was prepared with witnesses and documents to demonstrate that the children would be better off in her care.
As a result, she was granted child support from her husband, kept possession of the family home, and, of course, won custody of the children. Her children are much happier knowing that their mother is safe and they can remain together.
Since this is a story about domestic violence, I would just like to urge the subcommittee and the full committee, and indeed, the House of Representatives, when considering Legal Services Corporation and access to those services , that we do not consider the income of the abusive spouse when testing the means of the woman applying for these services . Very often, the abuser has the income and because of that income, a woman, if that is attributed to her as well, she would not be able to meet the means test of getting legal services . So this is a very important point which we have debated in the past, and I hope that will be part of any Legal Services Corporation funding in the future.
But right now, we have a long way to go to even come up to the 1996 levels, the 1995 levels, which were too low then. We wanted more funding. There was greater need than we were matching with resources. There was more need for justice in the country than we were matching with funds at the Federal level, and now we are at 50 percent of that level over 6 years later.
So I urge my colleagues to support this very, very important amendment, which makes a very important difference in the lives of the American people, and a very important delivery of justice in our country.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.
Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that we have a very strange set of priorities in this institution. In the last couple of months, we apparently had enough money and found enough money to increase military spending by $22 billion, despite the fact that we are not quite sure who the enemy is. At a time when the United States has by far the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any Nation on Earth, a majority of the members of the House voted to give huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires, the wealthiest people in this country. We apparently had enough money to do that. Every single year the United States Congress provides over $100 billion worth of corporate welfare to some of the largest and most profitable institutions in the world.
However, when it comes to providing low-income Americans the ability to have equal and adequate legal representation to take care of their needs, suddenly, my goodness, we just do not have enough money available. For the sixth year in a row, the fiscal year 2001 Commerce, Justice-reported bill includes only $141 million for the Legal Services Corporation . This is $164 million below the fiscal year 2000 appropriation of $305 million, and $199 million below the President's fiscal year 2001 request of $340 million.
What are we talking about? There is enough money to fund the Star Wars program, which is not needed and will not work; but when we ask for money to enable low-income women so that when they are battered they can go to court and defend themselves, when they need help for adoption, for child custody and support, for visitation rights, for guardianship, for divorce and separation, for protection against domestic violence, my goodness, there is no money available.
Mr. Chairman, there is a growing perception in the United States that we are becoming two societies, those people who have the money and everybody else. Yesterday, the World Health Organization issued a report which basically said that, if you are wealthy in America, you get the best health care in the world; if you are low-income in America, you get below dozens and dozens of other countries. And that perception exists in terms of justice. If you are wealthy in America, you have a battery of lawyers coming forward, and you have the best legal protection that money can buy; and if you lose, you know how to use the appeal process, and if you lose then, you know how to negotiate a settlement, which gives you the best that you can get. But if you are poor, it is increasingly difficult to find a competent attorney who will represent your interests.
Now, it is one thing to cut housing programs so that low-income people pay 50 percent of their income in housing; it is one thing to provide inadequate nutrition, it is one thing to provide inadequate housing programs so that people sleep out in the street, but even worse than all of that, it is really awful, really awful and unacceptable to deny people the right to legally represent themselves. What we are doing essentially is tying people's hands behind their backs and saying, we can do all that we want to you and you are not going to have the resources to defend yourself in the halls of justice, and that suggests that justice is severely lacking for millions of Americans.
So I would hope, Mr. Chairman, that the Members of the House of Representatives have the common decency to provide justice for all people and support this very important amendment.
Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.
(Mr. NADLER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in favor of this amendment.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of this amendment to eliminate the proposed draconian 59 percent cut in the appropriations for Legal Services .
Legal Services Corporation makes a real difference in the lives of those low-income Americans who need legal representation. Without the Legal Services Corporation , we would truly have the best legal rights that money can buy. It is bad enough that we have failed to enact campaign finance reform, so that Will Rogers' quip that we have the best government money can buy has more than a slight ring of truth. Without Legal Services , only those with money would have any real chance of finding justice in our courts.
There may be Members of this House who do not worry about the ability of low-income
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But, Mr. Chairman, the poor, just like the wealthy, should be entitled to fair legal representation. A right without ability to enforce it legally is not meaningful. If any Member of this House had a dispute or a legal problem, he or she would seek out the best legal services he or she could afford or could raise the money to afford. So there is a general recognition that to have meaningful rights, you need competent legal representation in this society.
In criminal proceedings, that need is so obvious that the Constitution requires publicly funded counsel. But that requirement has not been deemed to extend to protection of rights outside the criminal court, to family court, housing court or civil court. That is the job of Legal Services . We are not forced by the Constitution to do this, but simple decency and a commitment to equal justice under law should be enough. It was enough for President Nixon and for the bipartisan coalition that brought Legal Services into being and it should be enough now.
Some have argued that Legal Services Corporation has failed to live up to Congress' expectations for record keeping and accounting. Some have argued there is some waste and fraud and even abuse in Legal Services . I believe the wild claims that LSC is wasting or misusing large sums of taxpayers' money bear little relation to reality. But imagine if we applied the sort of rigorous accounting rules and this reasoning, the kind of reasoning we heard from the last speaker, to some other programs, like, for instance, the Defense Department. No one has ever suggested that because there is obviously waste, fraud and abuse in the Pentagon, we should abolish the defense budget, zero out of the defense budget. That would be absurd.
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