CALIFORNIA CONGRESSMAN PETE STARK TELLS IT LIKE IT IS
COMMENTS BY CALIFORNIA CONGRESSMAN PETE STARK DURING HOUSE DEBATE ON CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET, FISCAL YEAR 2003
-- (House of Representatives - March 20, 2002)
Mr. Chairman, there are some of us who remember this world in the 1930s, when Hitler suspended the Bundestag to promulgate conservative ideology and not let people speak. It is a shame that the Republicans in the House, Mr. Chairman, have taken up that same ideology and are denying a chance for debate and open discussion of a budget. It does smack of fascism; and it is too bad, because the American people will recognize that and understand that in a free economy, and in a free country that created programs like Social Security and Medicare and special education and aid for dependent children and aid for people who are unable to care for themselves, for the disabled, that to deny them care is obscene.
I think it will be quite clear that, for whatever reason, whether it is deficits or anything else, that the overwhelming desire of the Republican Party is to destroy programs in the Federal Government, except those few intended for the very wealthy.
Most of the colleagues who are screaming about the war never wore a uniform other than the Boy Scout uniform. And I would like to suggest, as I said before, none of them have worked in free enterprise, which they tout so loudly. And yet, because that is where the campaign contributions come from, in the hundreds of millions of dollars, that is where their allegiance is. They are forsaking the seniors who need health care and who need an economic safety net. They are forsaking our children by denying them the chance to come along and get an education.
I am sure the American public is going to recognize this, and I am sure they are going to recognize it when they see wasteful money spent on things like Star Wars, which will not work, and programs which do nothing except to pay for large defense contractors, who are related to former Republican Presidents, and I think they are going to see that this is an obscene, corrupt, and undemocratic attempt to harm those people who are most fragile in this country only to benefit the 1 or 2 percent of the very wealthiest. And I hope my colleagues will vote down this budget.
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