March 29, 1995
Bowling Green State University
Remarks by Mike Ferner
My thanks to the organizers of today’s rally for inviting me to speak. Students at BGSU and around the nation today can be proud for organizing the first large-scale response to the madness emanating from Washington. Too many of our leaders, such as local elected officials, sit by silently, uttering not a peep of protest, watching Congressional votes that will cause millions of citizens to demand help from city and state governments. As happens often in times of national crisis, students help lead the way. If the people lead, the leaders eventually will follow. Hopefully some of the students here today will become those leaders. It would be an improvement.
I believe that the Contract on America and our protest here today is not fundamentally about welfare reform or poor people. It’s not fundamentally about educational aid cutbacks. It is not even about reducing deficits or balancing the budget.
It’s about the kind of nation we choose to be. It’s about who has enough political power to hold onto their entitlements at someone else’s expense. It’s about democracy. It’s about whether we in fact have a democracy, because it is fundamentally about who runs our country.
Let me explain.
Last month during all the hoopla over the commissioning of a nuclear submarine, the USS Toledo, a most ironic story unfolded on the local TV news one night. Nervous seventh-graders from Byrnedale Jr. High marched into the glare of TV lights and saluted a 10-ft. model of the sub their class had built. The announcer spoke of the excitement shared by all Toledoans.
The very next story on the news jumped out of the tube into my living room like a ton of bricks. A House committee had just voted to eliminate the federal entitlement for school lunches, opting to send block grant dollars to states to distribute as they see fit. If upheld by Congress and Clinton, it will end a program started in 1946 to address a national disgrace: young men failing their army physicals because of poor nutrition. Even today in some states, educators attest that students carefully pack leftovers from Friday’s school lunch, because it is the last meal they will eat until school resumes on Monday.
Beginning in 1946 with school lunches and a decade earlier for AFDC and other programs, we decided as a nation that our fellow citizens free-falling into poverty deserved—were entitled to—a certain minimum existence just because they were Americans.
And this is not just about compassion. It is an investment in democracy. For how can young people fully participate in a democracy if they are too hungry to study; never able to find employment that will keep them from the slavery of holding two or three minimum wage jobs to make ends meet; never having the economic security or leisure time to participate in running their government?
But apparently a majority of our representatives favor a return to social Darwinism, and are prepared to say that needy students in America are not entitled to a daily meal.
For school lunch, and for many other programs, the trend is to make annual block grant or lump-sum appropriations to states. Regardless of national recession or individual misfortune, when a state runs out of money, that’s it. No longer will appropriations be determined by how many people are in need. Income guidelines, nutrition standards and eligibility criteria for a host of programs will be decided by each state. Those who cry “too much bureaucracy” at the federal level will insure the wheel gets reinvented 50 times over. And tragically, just as before 1935, the richest nation on earth will have decided its children are entitled to absolutely nothing.
Contrast what the Contract On America did to the kids eating school lunches (who coincidentally don’t make campaign contributions), with what it did for corporations eager to limit liability for damage to consumers and the environment.
With school lunches, the battle cry was “reduce Federal bureaucracy; let states administer the program.” When it came to so-called “reform” of tort law—the kind of lawsuits arising from causing a harm or damage—it was another matter altogether. Here corporations want to preempt states, federalize the ground rules, and have them serve their goals. The bill that passed the House recently did just that. Key provisions restrict product liability damage awards, require the loser to pay costs, and generally make it much less likely attorneys will take such cases, reducing people’s ability to obtain justice. Corporate lobbyists can hardly believe their good fortune.
Product liability cases are a tiny fraction of all civil cases, far fewer than disputes over contracts or business bankruptcy cases. In fact, of all product liability cases filed from 1965-1990 involving punitive damages, an average of only 14 punitive damage awards per year were made, with a median award of $30,000. So the corporate argument that these kinds of cases are clogging the courts just doesn’t hold water. What they’re really concerned about, is that for now at least, the legal system still allows significant damage awards when an Exxon Valdez runs aground or Dalkon makes an IUD that kills and maims.
For companies like Exxon, the “reform” measure reduces punitive fines to the point that they will simply be a cost of doing business. And surprise, it allows corporations to file claims for commercial losses whenever there is a damage, no matter how long after the product is purchased, but consumers and injured workers face a statute of limitations. Is this debate about reducing the deficit? Or is it about who runs our country?
Students eating a free school lunch and millions of our fellow citizens are in the eye of the Contract On America hurricane. Budget cutters seize upon laws that provide the poor with a shrinking piece of the American dream or that offer a degree of deterrence from exploding Pinto gas tanks, oil spills and dangerous products; all because of the deficit, they say. But that’s not all that’s at risk. So is basic democracy—but you have to have a sharp eye.
When Speaker “give every poor person a laptop” Gingrich, and his weak-kneed collaborators in the Democratic party wield the knife, they do so like skilled sleight-of-hand experts—keeping our attention focused elsewhere. They use code words like “family values,” “moral fabric,” and “personal responsibility,” of course, as they try to convince us the republic is in danger of collapse because Black teenagers have too many babies; because food stamp recipients spend too much on cornflakes, peanut butter, and high fashion from the Salvation Army; that greedy trial lawyers serve only themselves. These are the “hot button” issues they use to attract our attention.
With patronizing indignation, they loudly proclaim we must think of the poor and of consumers—welfare destroys motivation to work; product liability laws cause higher prices in the marketplace.
But ask these exemplars of compassion who lead a carefully-orchestrated clamor for cuts, to eliminate the subsidies handed out routinely to corporations; to slow the torrent of corporate dollars flooding campaign coffers. They fall purposely silent. Is this debate about budget deficits? Or is it about who really runs our country?
When the USDA gave McDonald’s, Miller Brewing Co., Pillsbury Inc., and other multinationals $1.25 billion to “encourage export of agricultural products,” didn’t this contribute to the deficit? Have we undermined the work ethic of CEO’s who run major companies in the Pacific Northwest, by selling them below-cost electricity from the publicly-owned Bonneville Power Administration? Why doesn’t Gingrich rush to save their morals? If venerated free market rates were charged to these companies, enough money would be raised to pay for Public Broadcasting. Is this debate about budget deficits? Or is it about who really runs our country?
The Cato Institute, a fiscally conservative think tank, reported recently that “corporate pork is everywhere,” itemizing $85 billion in annual corporate subsidies. One nugget from their report: of the $1.4 billion in annual sugar price support payments, 40% went to the largest 1% of sugar farms. One family who own several large farms in the Florida Everglades, received $60 million a year in profits from price supports and import quotas. That same family contributed $350,000 to political campaigns in 1992. Is this debate about reducing deficits? Or is it about who runs our country?
Congressman George Miller estimates several billion dollars a year can easily be raised by charging market rates to corporations profiting handsomely on our commons: our public forests, our grazing lands, and our minerals. He lists some of the subsidies in a report, “Taking From the Taxpayer.” It reads like a shameless litany of legalized larceny. For example, the 1872 Mining Law transfers public land to private ownership for $5 an acre; requires no royalty payments to the public; and allows mines to be abandoned, with reclamation costs paid for by us. Using this law, the Homestake Mining Co. “bought” 62 acres in California for $310, when the land contained gold worth $700 million! Our timber and grazing land is disposed of similarly. At Gingrich’s invitation, conservative think tank representatives recommended to a House committee even more attacks on our commons: turn national forests over to private landowners; scrap federal energy efficiency and renewable energy programs; turn the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge over to energy companies. Woody Guthrie’s words live again: “some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen.”
Ralph Nader, commenting on subsidies ignored by budget cutters, thundered: “While the corporate elite holds cap-in-hand for their annual entitlements from the poor and middle class taxpayers, millions of…people are left without the same economic opportunities provided to corporations.”
Twenty-five years ago, corporations paid 36% of all federal income taxes. Now they pay 20%, a decline of over 40% in their share of income tax revenues. During Ronald Reagan’s first term, 130 of the largest corporations in America paid no income tax in one or more of those years, and in fact received $6 billion in tax rebates! In 1986, Congress finally passed the alternative minimum tax, which this Congress may well repeal and grant retroactive tax credits. Citizens for Tax Justice estimates a repeal will cost the treasury $125 billion over the next ten years. America is not going broke—the money has just been taken out of the commons. Is this debate about budget deficits? Or is it about who really runs our country?
The USS Toledo cost five times what the lunch and breakfast program cost in all the schools of Ohio last year. Should arms manufacturers be “entitled” to additional billions when our military budget is 17 times that of the combined military budgets of what the Pentagon last year called the U.S.’ six “adversary” nations? Is this debate about budget deficits? Or is it about who really runs our country?
The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector recommends dropping 3 million children from AFDC aid because their fathers are unknown, and that welfare cuts “reduce the subsidization of dysfunctional behavior.” Don’t let anyone tell you this debate is about economics and budget deficits.
The poor, particularly children of the poor, are the most politically vulnerable among us. Will our representatives protect them, or will they protect the wealthy? Will Congress fight to preserve the democratic rights of citizens to be the sovereign power in America, or shift even more economic and political power to corporations?
These are truly fundamental questions. As we answer them, we have immediate work before us: to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our fellow citizens who deserve a share of this nation’s wealth; to make clear to elected officials who care more about corporations than about democracy, that they will pay a political price. Congratulations for being among the first to do so.
