[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 26 (Thursday, March 10, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: March 10, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
THE REPUBLICAN BUDGET ALTERNATIVE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich] is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Speaker, I want to take a few minutes tonight to talk
a little bit about the Republican budget alternative, the putting
families first, Kasich, Republican, budget that will be voted on
tomorrow, we believe, and I know that maybe some of our listeners are a
little bit tired of all the budget talk they heard today. I know some
of the people are tired of listening to this discussion about the
budget. But I know they are not tired of thinking about the fact that
each one of them may qualify because they have children who would be
eligible for the $500 tax credit.
More on that later for those that are listening. I want to go back
and kind of paint the picture of where we have been in the last 15
months.
I say to my colleagues, you might remember that last year the
President came up here, and he said, ``If you don't like my tax and
spend program, then, Republicans, let us have your specifics,'' and so
the budgeteers sat down, and we basically began to reinvent government,
and we put our specifics on the table, and what we did is we said that
we would be able to reduce the deficit by as much as the President
without a tax increase.
Mr. Speaker, we sent our specifics down to the President. He rejected
them. We sent them to the majority party, the Democrats, in the
committee. They rejected them. We came to the House floor, and we were
rejected here. They were not interested in our specifics to offset
their taxes.
But we did not quit. The reconciliation, or tax bill, came to the
House floor, and the President said, I would say to the gentleman from
Connecticut [Mr. Shays], the President said, ``If you don't like my
specific taxes, tell us how you would get rid of them,'' and we did. We
gave our specifics about how to reduce the influence of the Federal
Government in all of our lives and to have deficit reductions through
tax increases because we fundamentally believe that big government, big
taxes, and big regulation stifles economic growth in this country.
Well, they did not like our proposal that time, beat us again in
favor of more for Washington and less for the people.
Well, Mr. Speaker, then the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Penny] and
I got together, along with a distinguished group of legislators, and
our goal was to try to reduce spending again by a penny on a dollar to
get the momentum rolling for change in this country. We sent our
specifics to the President. He said he did not like them. So did the
vast majority of the majority here. They said they did not like them,
and so one more time they beat down our specifics that were designed to
downsize the Government, to reduce the influence of Washington. They
voted at that point to give more to Washington and less to the people.
And then this year the President came for his State of the Union
speech, and he said, ``You know my budget is the toughest budget ever,
toughest budget in 40 years.'' I do not remember exactly his remarks,
but he claimed that he was sending us a tough-minded budget, and, as I
pointed out today in the debate, if we let these automatic spending
increases occur as provided for under law, if in fact we put the
Government on automatic pilot and the President had not sent his budget
to Capitol Hill, we would have lower deficits and lower spending than
the budget that the President sent us.
And so Republicans said, ``We can do better,'' and so I would say to
the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Shays] that we got together again,
and this time we got even more serious about reinventing government. We
privatized programs. We consolidated programs. We eliminated some of
the programs like the helium reserve and the Interstate Commerce
Commission. We decided on elimination, and privatizing and
consolidating programs to eliminate Federal waste and on letting people
at home have more control over solving the problems with their money
that they send here to Washington.
Basically what the President said is, ``I want more for Washington
and less for the people, and, oh, by the way, that middle income tax
cut--forget it. You can't have it.''
And so what we did is we went through all nooks and crannies of the
Federal budget, and we truly have begun to reinvent government. But we
felt that reducing the deficit was our No. 1 priority, and so what we
did was we reduced the deficit in all 5 years by a greater amount than
the President, and cumulatively over the 5 years we are $150 billion
lower in deficits.
Let me emphasize again, I say to the gentleman from Connecticut and
to our other colleagues, this budget that the Republicans will offer
tomorrow has $150 billion in lower deficits than the administration.
Now we think there are some other things that should happen as a
result of downsizing the Government. We think the family, the American
family, ought to share in the benefits of downsizing the operation of
the Federal Government. After all, it is their money.
Now this $500 tax credit, $500 per child, per family, up to $200,000
in income is going to be the first installment on an effort by
Republicans to try to help the besieged American family, and we pay for
it. We are not providing benefits or tax credits to somebody, and
taking that money and saying, ``Well, we'll pay for it later.'' We have
paid for it in our Republican budget.
We have also said there ought to be a crime bill. We ought to pay for
more prisons. We ought to put more police on the street.
We also say there ought to be some real welfare reform, and the
leader of the welfare reform movement in the House and frankly, I
think, the national leader on this welfare reform movement, the
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Santorum], a member of the Committee
on Ways and Means, he is going to be with us tonight to talk a little
bit about what the welfare reform package is.
And we also make a down payment on health care reform by introducing
the Republican health care bill which relies on market forces rather
than the Government to begin to fix this health care problem.
And we have also provided help for the American worker. How? Well,
not by turning more money over to Washington, but we have provided some
help for the American worker by, No. 1, giving business the ability to
buy more plant, buy more machinery, become more efficient and more
effective and hire more people so we can be even more competitive
internationally.
And we also provide for everyone in this country a provision to
protect their investments against inflation. Now let me explain that
for a second. We index the capital gains tax.
I have some next-door neighbors who are senior citizens. They
probably bought their house for, I do not know, $30,000 or $40,000. I
do not know what their house is worth now. But I can promise my
colleagues that that house has gone up in value not just because of an
increased value on that home, but because of inflation driving up the
price of that home. If they should sell that home, I do not think they
should have to pay taxes on the inflation value of that home.
So, we are not only trying to help business and the American worker
by making it more possible for them to expand and export, to have
higher productivity, but at the same time we are also saying that we
will index the capital gains for industry and for individuals, and at
the same time, Mr. Speaker, of course we want the American family to
share in a piece of the reinventing government that we have started in
this Congress of the United States.
Imagine $150 billion in lower deficits under the Republican plan,
$500 per child, per family, up to $200,000, more incentives for
business to expand and hire people, a crime bill, a welfare reform
bill, the down payment on health care all within this package.
{time} 2010
I would say there is no reason to vote against this proposal, because
do you know what this proposal represents? This proposal represents
more for the people, and less for Washington. And that is how it will
be judged on the vote tomorrow, should it come tomorrow, or next week,
if it comes next week. And it will be judged for the rest of this year.
Decide who you want to choose up sides with, just like when you were a
kid picking teams at a baseball game. Do you want to choose to play on
the team with the Washington establishment, or do you want to vote to
help the people of this country who are back home in the districts we
represent?
Mr. Speaker, at this time I would yield to the distinguished
gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Shays], a Member of the Committee on
the Budget, who has done such yeoman's work in terms of aiding our
effort, all of our team effort, to reinvent government.
Mr. SHAYS. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I am struck by your
talking about what happened in the last 15 months. When the President
presented his plan last year, I remember you had already got us working
on the Republican side of the aisle to start to find ways to match the
President's numbers on deficit reduction with no tax increase.
We spent 2 months before the President actually even began his plan.
When we knew his numbers, then we started to come forward with a
deficit reduction package of $500 million without a tax increase.
I remember it wasn't easy at first. When we did this, some members in
the caucus said why should we do this? We are not in control. But you
and others felt very strongly, and I felt that some way, that it was
our job to show that you could balance the budget with no tax
increases, or at least meet the President's numbers with no tax
increases. And we did it.
The impact of that was significant, because the President came in
with $3.53 of taxes for every dollar it cut in the increase in
spending. And you got them to realize they had to cut more, and they
did. And they got their numbers down to $1.50 of taxes for every $1 of
spending cuts.
What you did not say, which I wish you had said, was that when the
President got his package through it was considered a great victory. He
got it through by two votes. And if one Member in the House had not
voted, it would have been a tie vote and would not have passed. But to
get it through, the Speaker of the House said this is just the
beginning. We need to cut more. We need to cut more spending, get this
deficit down. This is just the beginning. And he promised that there
would be the Penny-Kasich opportunity, that Mr. Penny would have an
opportunity.
Mr. Penny comes in a bipartisan basis, and you put forward a plan
with others. And we go to the White House and say, you asked for
specifics; we are giving you specifics. You said work on a bipartisan
basis, and Mr. Penny is doing that with us. And now we can move
forward; $90 billion of cuts. And the White House snuffed it out. They
worked hard against it, as they are doing now.
I see we have the expert on welfare here, and I just am intrigued by
his comments today. I would like to return the floor to him very
quickly. But I just want to make this point to you. It just astounds me
that rather than opposing this package, the White House would not
support it.
We have $150 billion of cuts, $150 billion of cuts, specific cuts. We
reform welfare, we reform immigration, we have crime control, and we
have a plan that, while I was not an advocate as strongly as others, we
are returning $500 to the family of every child. And if there are two
in a family, they get $1,000, and it is to the families that need it.
It just seems to me that there is very reason to support this
package. The choice tomorrow is we can go with Mr. Clinton's plan, or
we can go with the Kasich Republican plan. The Kasich Republican plan
is $150 billion of deficit reduction over 5 years, welfare reform,
immigration reform, reorganization of government, consolidation of
programs.
You know what? This wasn't a sudden plan put together in a week or
two. This was the culmination of what happened 15 months ago. You
started us 15 months ago on this plan. When our plan was defeated in
March, we kept working on it, and this is the result of a lot of hard
work. And I just hope that tomorrow we are going to see Democrats
willing to step forward in support of a plan that truly deserves
bipartisan support.
I would like to continue to participate, but we have others as well,
and I yield back.
Mr. KASICH. I would like to yield to the distinguished gentleman from
Pennsylvania [Mr. Santorum]. I wish you would just take 5 minutes, that
is a long time in a special order, but take a little bit of time, if
you would, and repeat for our colleagues tonight what you talked about
today, the SSI Program, because I would say to the gentleman, Members
came on the floor as you were talking and they were locked in place,
they were really locked in disbelief of what you were saying. And then
maybe give a little broader explanation of what our welfare reform
package does.
Mr. SANTORUM. What I talked about today was the explosion of the SSI
Program with respect to drug addicts. There is an odd provision in the
Supplemental Security Income Program that allows drug addicted
individuals who are so badly addicted to drugs or alcohol that they can
no longer work, and as a result, they are eligible for cash assistance,
they are eligible for treatment, and they are eligible for Medicaid.
In 1985 there were about 4,000 people on this program. Today, as of
1993, there were almost 80,000 people in this country who are on that
program. That sounds like an explosion of a program. It is roughly $300
million we spend on drug addicts who are so addicted that they simply
cannot work.
What happens? Well, I asked the Commissioner of Social Security, I
said now, these people are required to be in treatment in order to get
them off their drug addiction so they can get back into the mainstream
of life and off SSI. What percentage of the people in this program are
on drug treatment?
She said, well, anywhere from 3 to 9 percent. Even though they are
required to be in the program, in order to receive the cash, only about
3 to 9 percent are in the program.
I said, well, what are you doing with the other 91, 97, whatever,
percent of the people who aren't in treatment? She says, well, we do
not know where they are. We simply send them the check.
Now, the odd thing is they do not really send them the check. They
send the check to a representative payee, because the Social Security
Administration figured out you don't send a check to drug addicts. You
send the check to someone who manages the money for the drug addict. So
the money is sent to someone who is appointed to receive the money for
the drug addict and take care of their funds.
The problem is the General Accounting Office testified at this same
hearing a few weeks ago that in ever increasing numbers, the person
turning out to be the representative payee is the drug dealer or the
bartender. There is the case in Denver, CO, of a bartender who receives
almost $16,000 a month in SSI cash benefits to take care of the
alcoholics who visit his bar.
Now, it even gets worse. I asked the Social Security Administrator, I
said, now, how effective is this program? And she said we have--listen
to this, I didn't say this today--in the history of this program, in
the history of this program, there has not been one documented case of
anyone getting off this program because they have been cured of their
addiction. They have absolutely no evidence that anyone has gotten off
this program.
Mr. KASICH. Let me ask the gentleman, if I could get him to yield for
just a second, does the Kasich Republican budget begin to address this
problem?
Mr. SANTORUM. It hits it right between the eyes.
Mr. KASICH. Does the Clinton budget address this problem?
Mr. SANTORUM. Let me tell you what the Clintons are doing now that
you mentioned it. We found, and the Social Security Administrator
reported to us, that three States have 60 percent of these 80,000 drug
addicts, three states, California, Michigan, and Illinois.
Now, you say wait a minute, California, Michigan and Illinois, they
are big States, but certainly not 60 percent of the population of this
country. Why do they have such a disproportionate number?
The reason, because the Social Security Administration figured out
that these people are sick and they need our help. And so we are going
to set up outreach centers, and they did, several years ago, in
Chicago, in Detroit, and Los Angeles, to go out and find drug addicts
and alcoholics to sign them up so they can receive Government benefits,
Medicaid, and drug treatment.
Now, the Social Security Administration says this has been so
successful because the program has grown so dramatically, this is
success in Government terms, getting more people on the benefit rolls,
that they are now going to set up outreach centers in every State in
the country, in all major cities, to go out and find these people and
bring them into the system.
They just set up one in Washington DC. They have 18 now in the pilot
program, and they are going to expand it even further. That is what the
Social Security Administrator told us at the hearing, this is a
successful program. This program will double in size. The number of
people in this program will double in size.
{time} 2020
Now, that is what we talked about as one aspect of the SSI problem.
There are many more.
Mr. KASICH. Does the Kasich Republican budget alternative begin to
address this problem?
Mr. SANTORUM. It hits it right between the eyes. We simply say this:
We say that if you are someone who is on this program, we will do a
drug test. And if you fail the drug test in the sense that you have an
illegal substance in your body, and you fail that drug test, then you
will be removed from cash assistance and Medicaid. You will continue to
receive drug treatment. We will give you drug treatment as long as you
need the treatment in order for you to get off. We will allow you to
come back and test again after a period of time to see if you have
gotten off drugs. But we are not going to continue to subsidize
behavior which is, in fact, destructive.
The basic premise is, if you want more of something, subsidize it.
We are subsidizing the kind of behavior that is not what we want to
see in this country, and so that is the solution that we put forward.
We believe it saves not only a lot of money, but we think it sets the
right kind of response.
Mr. KASICH. That language is not contained in the Clinton budget.
Mr. SANTORUM. It is not only not contained in the Clinton budget, but
as I suggested before, they wanted to expand this program.
Mr. KASICH. Would the gentleman spend a few minutes talking about the
bill that he has pioneered here that is included in this budget, the
welfare reform section.
Mr. SANTORUM. The welfare reform section, not only does it save $20
billion, I know that is one of the major reasons it is in this bill,
because it saves a lot of money, but it does what is really consistent
with the Kasich, and I just have to commend Chris Shays for the
tremendous amount of work that he has done on this bill. There is not
anybody who comes to the floor and is more diligent in trying to get
this budget reduced, and willing to put forward and put their good name
on the line every single day--to come out here and do that. I want to
commend you for your work on the committee and here on the floor.
It is consistent with what you folks have been trying to do, which is
to do programmatic reform, to try to come up with, in a sense,
reinventing government to make it work better, to create the right
incentives.
What our plan simply does is attack the two major societal issues
that lead to poverty in this country. One is obvious, nonwork. People
do not work, they are poor. In fact, 86 percent of families who have no
workers in the family are in poverty. That does not come as any
surprise to most people, except when you look at what happens when
people work.
If you take families with one full-time year round worker, if you
have families, if you look at all families that have one full-time year
round worker, whether it is two parents or single-parent families, only
6 percent of American families that have one full-time year round
worker are in poverty, versus 86 percent that have no workers that are
in poverty.
Work pays. What we need to do is get people to work in jobs so they
can get out of poverty. How do we do that?
The Republican plan tries to be, in a sense, to strike a cord of
bipartisanship in reaching out to the President, reaching out to the
Democrats, and say, we will adopt your 2-year limitation on welfare and
then require work. And we have some very serious provisions that if you
do not work, if you do not work, you do not receive your benefits.
Simple as that. You lose the cash portion of your benefits.
It is a requirement, and it is a requirement to give you an
opportunity to get out of poverty. What we need to do is to move these
people and give them the opportunity to go out and work, to learn the
ethic, and to get up every morning, get ready, and go to work, and get
their children off to school. Most working families in this country,
all working families in this country, do in America.
So we think that is a very important part of the plan. It is in here,
and it is something that we hope to get a lot of support for.
The second problem is the problem of out-of-wedlock births,
illegitimacy. The numbers are just astounding, the growth of children
born out of wedlock in this country. Sixty-eight percent of all
African-American children born in this country are born out of wedlock.
Twenty-two percent of children in the white community are born out of
wedlock. That is a startling number. It is one that is, frankly, as
many are considering, the biggest societal problem that we have.
Because it, in fact, has dual consequences of, No. 1, having a bunch of
young males not attached to families out in communities joining with
gangs instead of moms. And you have children being raised in single-
parent families where mom is being stretched to the limit and not able
to provide the kind of nurturing and support needed and--that fathers
are so important for young children. So we have both of those problems
being created by the problem of illegitimacy.
It is causing a disintegration not only of families but a
disintegration of communities and neighborhoods and is the root cause,
in my opinion, of the crime problem in this country.
We take a very pro-active position on that. Two ways: No. 1, fathers.
Fathers are often ignored in welfare debates. We do not ignore them
in this case. We say fathers are necessary. Fathers are no longer
disposable, that fathers are going to be encouraged to stay with
families, that we are not going to penalize families if fathers stay,
which is what we do now.
If dad leaves, mom gets more money, which is the perverse incentive
that the welfare system creates.
We changed that. We allow States to allow the benefit to continue,
even though the father who is not married to the mother may be around
or living and supporting the child. That is No. 1.
No. 2, we find out who dad is. Over half the children on welfare
today, who are born out of wedlock, do not know who their fathers are.
That is absolutely unforgivable, and it is not necessary. Because the
fact of the matter is, mom knows who the father is. So what we have to
do is somehow convince mom that it is important to have both mother and
father supporting children and that we are not going to say that
fathers are okay to leave.
So what we do is, we tell mothers that they have to give us the name
of the father in order for them to be eligible for welfare benefits, if
they so want to apply.
Mr. SHAYS. One of the things that is so clear in this budget, because
of the good work that you have done, is that we know that 12-year-olds
having babies, 14-year-olds that are selling drugs, 16-year-olds that
are killing each other, 18-year-olds that cannot read their diplomas
are the legacy of a welfare State.
What we are trying to do, as Republicans, is be pro-active and
recognize that Government has helped create the very problem that we
are now left with.
The incredible story you tell of the Government sending money to
people to further their addiction is just a continuation. It furthers
that process.
I was speaking with John Kasich about it. He said, ``This just points
out where Government is headed and what we need to do.''
What I like about the Republican plan and what you did is, it is not
like we stand back and say, no, Government cannot get involved. We just
realize that Government is involved in the wrong way. We need to switch
it around, get Government involved in the right way and change it.
To me, that is what President Clinton said he would do. He was going
to change America.
Mr. SANTORUM. And welfare, as we know it. And if you look at some of
his early drafts, over a year into his Presidency and his No. 1
campaign issue that made him the moderate that he was has still not
been delivered to the Congress and the United States. We are still
waiting. If you look at the preliminary documents being circulated,
they are not even close to ending welfare as we know it.
I would argue that they extend welfare as we know it. It is not a
bold plan. It is not a dramatic plan. It is a sellout plan.
What we have done in this budget is put forward a plan that is
meaningful, that changes behavior, that sets expectations, that demands
responsibility, that says that the American people are very giving and
loving people and they want to help, but they do not want to encourage
a lifestyle that is simply unproductive and unsafe for this country and
for its future.
If I could just finish, the other thing we do is something that a lot
of conservatives are pushing for to be done across the board. A lot of
pressure is coming these days to say that if you have a child born out
of wedlock, no welfare benefits. That is the end of discussion right
now, to cut all children born out of wedlock and moms off welfare.
We believe that that maybe makes nice philosophical talk and that you
do not want to encourage behavior that in fact you think is not
necessarily productive for a society.
{time} 2030
But that is a rather dramatic step to take on a theory. So what we
have suggested is let us apply it to the population, on those who it
makes the most sense to try that theory out, and that is the young
children, teenagers who have children out of wedlock. They are
predominantly, almost exclusively the welfare-dependent population of
this country, because if you have a child at 14, and do not finish
school, and you end up on welfare, you are probably going to be on
welfare for a long, long time.
So what we have done is focus in on that generation because No. 1,
there is a potential for long-term and massive destruction. No. 2, in
fact because they are younger, they have more of an ability to be
influenced by society and by rules and regulations. And No. 3, they
have a family network which has a legal obligation, if not a moral
obligation, to continue to support them until they get out of their
teenage years.
So what do we do? We end welfare for minor children who are under the
age of 18 who have children. No cash benefits; no housing benefits.
They are required to live at home, and we are requiring and encouraging
people to do exactly what the gentleman from Connecticut said, which is
to replace the Federal Government's role of giving people fish and
saying it is time for the community, the family, the individual, the
churches to begin to take back these people, to begin to say that they
in fact are the principal folks who are going to help care for the poor
and give the poor the opportunity to rise up in our society.
I have done about 30 meetings on welfare reform around the State of
Pennsylvania, and the theme that I keep hearing come back and back is
the story of a Government that is taking over more and more of our
lives and making us not only dependent on Government, but less
dependent on each other. We are a country that used to know who our
neighbors were, all of us. We do not anymore, or not as much anymore.
We are a country that used to be committed to organizations, used to go
out and do a lot of community service and be committed to each other,
and to support each other as a community. If we look at the VFW's, if
we look at the Rotarys and all of these clubs, they are declining in
enrollment. There was an article the other day on record clubs. Record
clubs used to sell long-term contracts to buy records. They can only
sell 1-year memberships now. Why? Because Americans will not commit to
anything longer than that.
You see we have become more isolated as a country. Government has
done more for us. We pay our taxes and then it is not our job anymore.
It is somebody else's job to take care of my next-door neighbor. It is
not my job. I am too busy. I have too many things to worry about
myself. That is what the danger is in our society.
I will give the best example. I was watching the Olympics the other
night and I saw the biathlon coach for the United States who was from
Lithuania. He was talking about his sister who is still in Lithuania,
and he got a call from his other sister just before the Olympics, and
she called and she told him that his sister was dying, his other sister
was dying in the hospital. She had sepsis, a massive bacterial
infection, and that there was not any medicine in the country, and no
one would get the medicine, it was available other places but no
agency, no individuals, no institution would take the time or take the
trouble to go out and save this person who could be saved. So what did
he do? He called his friends. And they were able to organize and get
the medicine, and someone else got him to the airport in New York,
someone else bought the airplane ticket, all individuals, and they flew
him over to Lithuania and he saved his sister's life. And what he said
was so important and so central to this debate as to what welfare will
be. He said, ``In my country, in my old country of Lithuania, because
of government-run institutions, and because of socialism for so many
years, people do not care about each other anymore. In America we are a
great country because we do.''
Mr. KASICH. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman for taking
the time to talk about this very important section of our bill. I think
we are all disturbed about the fact that the President came here and he
gave a beautiful speech where he talked about all of the things that he
wanted to see done, but you know, it is kind of like the middle-income
tax cut. The President said the centerpiece of any economic program
that he will present to the American people will be a middle-income tax
cut. Of course, we still do not have it.
But the Republicans are going to give everybody in this country a
chance to vote on a tax credit for children, paid for with a budget
proposal $150 billion under the President's by downsizing government.
We reduce the deficit, then give the American family a piece of those
savings. After all, they are the ones that sent all of the money here
to begin with.
I wonder if the gentleman might have a comment on the tax credit.
Mr. SANTORUM. I would love to comment, and then I would like to yield
to my colleague from Iowa [Mr. Nussle]. We always like to say in the
102d Congress we were the two youngest Members of the U.S. House of
Representatives, and both of us have two young children. He has Sarah
and Mark, and I have Elizabeth and little Johnny, not named after John
Kasich, I would add. But we both have two young children, and we care
very much about families.
What we have done to the American family over the past 40 years in
this country is simply criminal. What have we done? I always say, you
know, when I was growing up and I was a kid, I used to watch Leave it
to Beaver, and I used to watch ``Ozzie and Harriet,'' and I wondered
how Ward and June Cleaver did it, how they could live in that nice
house with just one person working, and Ward got home at 5 o'clock in
the afternoon, and how did they do it? How were they able to survive in
America living in that situation? I do not know whether there was a
Ward and June Cleaver ever, but I can tell you that there were better
chances for it in the 1950's. Why? Exactly what the gentleman from Ohio
was referring to. We were a lot friendlier in the tax code to families.
The average American family in the 1950's paid 2 percent of their
income to the Federal Government in taxes, 2 percent of the average-
income family. Today that same average-income family pays 24 percent of
their hard-earned dollars to Washington, DC. The principal reason for
that is the dependent tax deduction. If you had taken what the
dependent tax deduction was in the 1950's and indexed it to inflation,
then instead of it being $2,650 for a dependent or per child today, as
it is today, it would be over $8,000 per child.
What have we done with all of this money? What we have done by taking
all of this money away from families is that we have paid a bunch of
people here in Washington to help you. I think a lot of Americans back
home are saying stop helping me. Let me keep my own money and let me
take care of my own family.
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. KASICH. I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Iowa.
Mr. NUSSLE. Mr. Speaker, I think that is exactly right. And I would
just comment on the thrust of some of the comments the gentleman made
when he was wrapping up his conversation on welfare.
Do you know what struck me? It was when the gentleman was talking
about the organizations that have maybe gone a little bit south and
have not had some of the support they had in the past, and the fact
that we do not know our neighbors, and maybe we seem to be a little
more closed off and that we are not as responsible. And the thought
came to my mind that really what John Kasich is trying to do, and the
people that supported his plan, and those of us that have tried to add
our 2 cents to his effort is we are really trying to recapture the
American dream. That is really what this is all about.
The $500 per child tax credit is just one very small downpayment on
that American dream.
I just looked through the information that we had here on what the
$500 per child tax credit would mean to my State and to my district. We
always talk about it in this Chamber, and even over at the Senate as
well about how we are able to bring home the bacon to our folks. And
maybe it comes in the form of a road sometimes, maybe it comes in the
form of a research grant another time, but it is usually snuck through
in a special project. Here is something very demonstrative that we can
do for every child in our district. We can give them an ability to
start to recapture the American dream, put a downpayment on it, if you
will. Just for my district it is $61 million, $61 million, and for my
State, $303 million, just for my State alone. That is what this
downpayment that we give for every child in this country would mean, a
downpayment on the American dream.
And I think we still see some glimmer of hope. I would not say the
American dream is yet something that we have lost. But I do think we
have to start fighting for it.
The way I like to describe it is I am a volunteer fireman in
Manchester, IA, and one of the things that always struck me as
interesting was that when I went out to a fire, let us say it was a
farm, maybe a barn was burning down, right after the fire trucks came
over the hill to help try and put out the fire, then the neighbors came
in the pickup trucks, usually with a covered dish of some sort to help
out the family. They are neighbors, they are doing more than maybe
their fair share. They are being responsible, they are reaching out.
There is no government program. There is no research study that says
how much a damaged family from a fire might eat in casseroles in one
evening. We do not need the Government to do it, and yet we still have
that American dream, we still have that neighborly attitude in many
parts of this country. And I guess that is what we are looking for. We
are just looking for an opportunity to share that.
The President did break, I think, many of his promises. We have
already heard about the middle-class tax cut. We are fulfilling the
promise through this kind of tax cut to our kids.
{time} 2040
Welfare was a centerpiece of his campaign. You give it to the
American people through your plan, through the Kasich plan, and I think
that is exciting.
Crime: We are able to fund our crime bill in here. The President has
yet to put his crime bill on the table.
So as Americans look at this and they wonder whether or not they have
the American dream and whether their kids, for that matter their
grandkids, are going to be able to recapture or renew the American
dream, I think the John Kasich plan, the plan that was put together I
think in a very responsible way with other leaders of the Republicans
in the House and many of us who had an opportunity to add our 2 cents
even though we may be new around here, I think is a way to do just
that, not only fulfill the promises, but put a downpayment on a process
to get there.
I would ask my friend, the gentleman from Arkansas [Mr. Dickey], and
find out if the American dream is alive in the South these days.
Mr. DICKEY. If the gentleman will yield, I have a definition I got in
the mail today of several different things. One is if we expect our
fathers to take care of us that is called paternalism. If we expect our
mothers to take care of us, we call that maternalism. If we expect the
Government to take care of us, we call that socialism. If we expect our
comrades to take care of us, that is communism. If we take care of
ourselves and our neighbors, that is called Americanism. That is what
we are talking about, is it not? That is exactly what we are talking
about.
Let me tell you something that has happened that is not happening in
America for us, that would be a good example for us, and that is in
Mexico to the south. We had inflation that was going wild down there,
1,000 percent a year. We had a debt that was out of sight, taxes that
were unbelievable, and oppressive, and we had government taking over,
thinking that it could do better than private enterprise taking over
the economy.
We never would have accepted a NAFTA Treaty if that situation had
existed.
So what happened? Without our help and without our example, they
said, ``We have to raise revenues.'' So what did they do? They cut
taxes. They got the government out of business. They sold or they
privatized all the businesses they thought they could run better in the
private enterprises, and they got money for that and they also got
taxes from the operations because they became successful.
They paid off the debt in 2 to 3 years. Inflation is down to 8 or 9
percent.
Now, how they did that was by cutting spending, by being disciplined,
by being just like we are when we in our home budget come to a point
where the money that is coming in is not enough to pay out for the
debts or expenses, so we stop the expenses and we go back and start
paying the debts off. That is what we have to do as a nation.
I am concerned, because what I am seeing as a freshman legislator in
the United States of America is people of this body and of Congress
saying to the people of America and to the freshmen and to the
inexperienced, `'What you are saying to us about cutting spending first
is rhetoric. You do not really mean it, because when we start cutting
spending, when we start voting for the Kasich or the Penny-Kasich bill
or this type of operation or this type of bill, what we are saying is
we are going to have to sacrifice, and those people back home do not
want to sacrifice.'' They are saying, ``Jay, do not believe those
people at home when they say, `Cut spending first' and that helps them
at the barbershop, that helps at the coffee shop and in their
conversation and that even helps them with you as they communicate with
you, but they do not mean it, because when you start cutting spending,
watch what they do.''
When we got back to the definition of socialism and communism and
Americanism, we have to bring in the fact that we are going to cut
spending, and it is not going to kill us.
The people in this body have got to understand that there is life
after spending cuts, and that we can raise revenues by cutting taxes.
Mr. KASICH. Let me ask the gentleman, let us go back to the coffee
shop in Arkansas. In fact, it would be fun to be there this Saturday to
see their reaction. I am going to be in a coffee shop in Westerville,
OH, this Saturday.
If you went to the people at the counter and you said, ``You know, we
have got a budget plan. It really does cut the number of paper clips
and the number of trips that bureaucrats make around this
country especially in the fourth quarter of the fiscal year, and it is
going to mean you are going to not be able to print as many papers,''
and just look around this place today and all the paper just sitting
here, and you are going to have to cut back some of these overhead
expenses in the Federal Government, and you said to them, ``You know,
we are going to take this money, and some of it, tougher choices, and
we are going to apply a big, big chunk of it to reducing the national
or to reduce the deficit, but we are going to give your kids, we are
going to give your kids a little bit of it, we are not going to make
your kids pay for it later by giving it to you, we are going to pay for
what we are giving them now, but we are going to reduce the deficit by
$150 billion more than the President does,'' and I am going to tell
them that at this coffee shop that, ``I want to give you a little
benefit from that right now for your family who has been under siege,''
what do you think the reaction would be at your luncheon counter?
I know what it is going to be in Westerville. What will it be in
Arkansas?
Mr. DICKEY. Let me tell you what I think is going to happen. I think
Arkansans, we are proud people and independent, and stand up and say,
``You are not giving me anything. This is money that I have earned. You
are just not taking it from me.'' That is the first thing that I think
Arkansans would say, particularly the people in the fourth district.
They would say, ``You all,'' being the Government, ``are not earning
anything. We are the ones earning it. We are giving it to you. You are
acting like you are giving it back to us.''
Then they would say, ``Yes, we can spend it better than the Federal
Government, and there will not be any middleman in the way to take our
money and be inefficient with it.''
Mr. KASICH. In other words, if people in that coffee shop have the
money in their pocket rather than sending it to the Government and
somehow it filtering down and, of course, that $500 that they would
have sent up here, by the time it would get back to them, instead of
giving them the tax credit, by the time it gets back to them probably
it would not be enough to buy a cup of coffee with, they would be
pretty happy about this, would they not?
Mr. DICKEY. Let me say this, $53 million in my district alone will be
given or will be kept by the people in the fourth district if this vote
is passed. That money will then multiply. That money will then bring
more revenue and more taxes into the coffers in my opinion because it
circulates seven times.
Mr. KASICH. Do you not think these same folks in this country would
say, ``You know, I do not want to have a tax credit if we are going to
lay it on other people?'' Would they not feel good if they knew we made
choices so that we made this money or so that we could refund some of
this money to them?
Mr. DICKEY. Yes, sir; yes, sir.
Mr. KASICH. It is hard to believe, is it not, I say to the gentleman
from Arkansas, that we could actually have a package that has crime
reform, welfare reform, health care, and incentives to business, some
refunds back to the children of these folks, and still have $150
billion in lowered deficits; can you imagine how anybody would come
here and vote no on that and vote for a status quo budget that
reaffirms the tax increases from last year?
Mr. DICKEY. Only if the crusted leadership in this body is correct in
saying that it is rhetoric. I do not believe it is rhetoric. I think
cut spending first is what the groundswell is from America. I believe
what the fourth district is saying is what the rest of the Nation is
saying. We have got to start that, and this bill will do it.
Mr. KASICH. I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.
Mr. NUSSLE. I think there are some people who are going to be able to
come here tomorrow and vote no on that kind of a plan, and I think the
reason is it is a matter of who they trust.
I see in your plan a willingness to trust the decisionmaking that
happens around the kitchen tables of America, you know, when they are
balancing their checkbooks, trying to decide how they are going to send
their kids to school, to college, what to do about next month's bills;
they have got to make some pretty tough choices, in fact, tougher
choices than I think sometimes we give them credit for but also tougher
choices than we make. We trust them to make those decisions. We trust
them to make those better decisions that affect their daily lives.
I think there are a lot of folks around here who do not trust that
anymore, that do not trust the power of the individual, the family, the
neighborhood, and the community to make those decisions. You not only
see it with raising taxes, but you see it manifested in another way
that we have not really even talked about and that is the mandates,
that is the unfunded mandates, because somebody said to me in a town
meeting, they said, ``The big print giveth and the small print taketh
away.'' That is exactly right. We have got a lot of small print in the
budget that came down from the White House that has a lot of mandates
that tell us what to do. Do not give us the money; tell the American
families, the American communities how they are going to operate, and
yet do not give the opportunity to pay the bills.
{time} 2050
And they have to figure out around their kitchen table, with their
county supervisors' meetings or city council meetings, how to do that.
It is a matter of trust. There are folks who trust people and some who
do not trust.
Mr. KASICH. We have mandated relief language in this bill. We also
say that we want to decrease the total amount of regulation on this
economy downward to a lower percentage of the gross domestic product.
Why? Because the lower that amount of regulation is, the more jobs that
get created because regulation is a job killer. It increases prices and
it kills jobs.
We actually have a provision in here that says that the standing
committees--and I say that to my colleagues though we have never even
talked about this provision--that we would give the standing committees
authority to only regulate to a certain percentage of the GDP. They
could not regulate beyond it because regulations beyond it will kill
jobs in this country. It is a very unique concept that we are going to
begin to push the rest of this year.
I want to say to the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Nussle] that he touched
on a very important point about trusting people at home. Part of the
way in which we pay for this budget--and it drives me crazy when I try
to explain to people why it is we cannot get this adopted--but if you
take the nutrition programs of the Federal Government and you put them
altogether and you block-grant them to the States, you can save money
and increase the amount of money that goes to feed poor people.
Now, why is that? Because if you start money in a Federal agency,
every hand that it touches, you are burning up the money. If you
consolidate offices and say to the people of Iowa, ``We are just going
to send you the money. We are not going to put strings on it. You go
ahead and feed people in the most efficient and effective way,'' you
save money.
Job retraining: Our idea is consolidate the job retraining programs,
send it out to Iowa, to Ohio, to Arkansas, to Connecticut, and to
Pennsylvania; send it out there, get rid of all the bureaucrats and let
the people out there, the county commissioners, the Governors' offices,
the legislature, let them work together to design a job training
program to employ people.
Now, if you do not think the people in Iowa, Arkansas, Ohio,
Connecticut, and Pennsylvania are capable of doing that, you do not
like that program or you do not like that idea. You know, in many
respects this is almost like a Reagan budget of the early 1980's. It
has tax incentives, but there is a difference: We pay for them.
There is a consolidation of programs, returning to the States the
authority, but we also give them the money. This is in a way like
Reagan-II.
I know the gentleman knows this, there is just no confidence that the
people back home can solve problems for themselves. That is why there
are strings and mandates.
The Secretary of Labor, Mr. Reich, came before us and I said, ``Why
do we have to do job training from the top down? Why not from the
bottom up?'' He said, ``States, if they want waivers to get this money,
they can ask for them.''
Why do the people in Columbus, OH, have to ask a Federal bureaucrat
who does not even know what time zone it is in Columbus for a waiver so
they can try to help a poor person get a job? It is just a matter of
fundamental philosophy.
The gentleman is right, it is just not family at the kitchen table,
but it is the idea that people back across this country cannot solve
problems unless there is somebody in Washington telling them how to do
it.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas.
Mr. DICKEY. Mr. Speaker, I go back to this: Where are we dealing with
rhetoric? The rhetoric, it seems to me, at this point, what the people
here in Washington are saying is that the rhetoric at home is to cut
spending first, but that they do not mean it. They want pork barrel
coming in. I do not believe that. I believe the real rhetoric is here
with the people in Washington, Those people who are trying to get
reelected and say, ``We would like to cut spending.'' The rhetoric is
here, it is time for us to show what we really are in this situation.
We are going to vote on it. I hope the people of this body will refer
back to what the folks at home want and need and vote for this bill and
say that the rhetoric is here in Washington, it is not at home.
Mr. KASICH. I want to thank all my colleagues for participating. I
understand there have been a lot of calls coming into the offices of
our colleagues from people all across America, the ones that we want to
help. I hope that the public calling is going to make a difference on
deciding whether you are going to go with Washington, more for
Washington, or whether we are going to give incentives and whether we
are going to rebate part of the benefits of this program to the
American people.
I think it is an interesting debate and a critical debate and one
that is just not going to go away.
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