Your Congressman won't spend EIGHT CENTS from each taxpaying family of four to help US Citizens who still have limited English but spent $3000 of each family's $50,000 budget on three new programs ALONE!!!

Cong. Istook of Oklahoma, bless his heart, introduced an amendment HR 3061 Roll Call Vote No. 380 October 11, 2001, which amended the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill that would stop spending money to carry out an executive order that requires federal contractors and other recipients of federal assistance to provide translators for people with limited English. This at first sounds like a good bill - until you think about it. First, Puerto Ricans are US citizens, so imagine a fellow bringing his family and grandparents to the 50 states. The grandparents probably will never learn English, but are taxpaying US citizens. Imagine also US citizens from a different nation, and pays taxes and deserves service too. So how expensive is it for contractors to compy with offering free translation? Not much. The bill looks even dumber when you look at the House discussion in the Congressional Record. At first Istook sounds reasonable, pointing out:

"What is all this about? It is about an executive order that was issued last August and regulations that were issued pursuant to it mandating that not only Federal agencies but also State and local agencies, businesses, nonprofit groups, anybody who has received any funds to administer or handle or be involved with a Federal program must make all vital documents, it says, available in multiple translations; basically into any language group involving 3,000 people or more."

"Mr. Chairman, there are over 200 language groups in the United States involving 3,000 people or more. If we are required to translate everything into each one of these languages, the average cost for billions of pages is $40 a page per language. Multiply $40 per page by over 200 languages, by billions of documents, and my colleagues can begin to see the nature of this problem, the huge unfunded mandate that this puts on businesses and on local governments. In fact, nine or 10 States officially have petitioned for these not to go into effect because of the unfunded mandate."

You get the idea how you wouldn't have to be a racist, xenophobic reactionary to support this bill IF things actually work this way. But they don't. Nancy Pelosi rose to object to the bill:

"This amendment ignores the positive impacts of limited English proficiency. They ignore the Department of Justice's reasonable direction. Many limited-English proficiency persons work in some of the lowest paid jobs, are more subject to abusive employment situations, and need more help with complicated government bureaucracies."

"For example, a Cambodian refugee worked as a landscaper to support his family of five children. After he was laid off, he made repeated attempts to file an unemployment claim. He could not communicate with his State agency, and often received contradictory information. For most of the winter, he was without income and unemployment insurance compensation."

"The costs of providing assistance to persons who have limited English speaking abilities does not have to be expensive. In California, the limited-English speaking population is estimated to be over 3 million people. Since 1973, we have had a State law with more specific interpretation of translation requirements than title IV, which this guidance addresses; and this law has not created a burdensome financial strain on the State of California's Department of Social Services. That department spends a total of $648,312 to staff an internal team of 13 employees to translate documents into Spanish, Chinese, Cambodian, Russian and Vietnamese; and not that much more in outside contracts for vendors for translation into other languages."

(at this point, try to remember that exactly a month earlier, 9/11 happened, but this nonsense is going on - your taxpayers' dollars at work)

In any event, you'd think that since the Cambodian gentleman had probably come here to get away from the Khmer Rouge and that he was implicitly part of Sam's 'band of brothers' against the Viet Cong, Pathet Lao, and Khmer Rouge, Sam would not have voted for this amendment, or maybe even that Istook would have withdrawn it. I mean, if you read further you'll find NO defense of Istook by Republicans from California, etc., countering Pelosi's figure. Not like I enjoy quoting Pelosi, but if she isn't refuted, you have to wonder. Using her figures, then, and the 2000 Census for California, 33,871,648 divided into her figure yields over 1.9 cents per person or almost EIGHT ENTIRE PENNIES FOR A FAMILY OF FOUR!!! So for the most POLYGLOT STATE IN THE UNION, its social services budget was impacted by that entire figure per taxpaying family of four.

If you thought that Sam Johnson ended up voting for Istook's amendment because he's just that cost conscious, realize that by supporting the war in Iraq, Leaving No Child Behind, and the Prescription Drug 'Benefit' (all three of these Bush initiatives without which our Republic survived for over two centuries) Sam Johnson and other Bush lap dogs (and that's why they voted for all three programs - as Bush lap dogs - Clinton NEVER could have gotten them to do this!) blew a $3000 hole in the pants of the average family of four. Yet Sam Johnson voted for this EVEN AFTER Pelosi's discussion. The amendment failed by over 100 votes. Most other Red Staters knew not to be this cheap and this mean and this racist-looking and xenophobic-looking. Not Sam, even though Garland, in his own district, has over 120 languages used there, beating Richardson's 90.

Even more amusingly, the amendment came in the middle of a debate on - get this - family planning in the context of abstinence. Watch Democrat Cong. Gonzalez make fools of Istook and company:

"Mr. Chairman, prior to this amendment we were arguing abstinence and how we teach it, how we promote it. If my colleagues had their way, they would basically be espousing abstinence in a language never understood by the individual that Members seek to assist. This is what is so crazy about this whole debate."

Then watch Democrat Cong. Rodriguez get into it:

"Secondly, it says the frequency of the visits in terms of the hospitals. Most important, it also talks about the severity. If the person has tuberculosis, cancer, and it is serious, there has to be a real need to make sure that that person understands if it is a life-or-death situation, so depending on the severity of the case and the numbers of the population."

"In addition, let me state that it is going to be very important that as we look at this, that we also consider the seriousness of the situation. I had a case of a person who was told in English that they were positive for AIDS, and that person understood positive as everything being okay."

So what have we learned from this? We've learned that even though the 3rd has changed from 15% minority in 1990 to 36.7% minority in 2000, Sam Johnson doesn't want to care about his new constituents. So maybe we need a new Congressman to replace him who will be more flexible.