[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 50 (Monday, May 2, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 2, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                    SPEECH OF SENATOR MALCOLM WALLOP

  Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, let me broach one very brief additional 
subject for an enclosure in the Record.
  As you know, our colleague from Wyoming, Malcolm Wallop, will be 
retiring from the Senate at the end of this session of Congress. He has 
been a tremendous leader for all of us, a very loud, clear voice for 
Western issues and for conservative principles, and I applaud him for 
his leadership over the years.
  I ask unanimous consent that a speech that he gave to Cato Institute 
on March 26 called ``The Issue Is Freedom'' be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the speech was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                          The Issue Is Freedom

       Anyone listening carefully to President Clinton's State of 
     the Union speech would have noticed something peculiar. Only 
     once was the word ``freedom'' used. And, it was used in the 
     ironic assertion that the Clinton health plan ``preserves'' 
     freedom. Claiming it would preserve the freedom of Americans 
     to choose whatever health plan they may desire, he left 
     unspoken that he Clinton would severely restrict the number 
     of those plans, their doctors and their hospitals. He claims 
     to provide freedom while promoting an extensive intrusion of 
     the federal government into private lives and choices.
       Unfortunately, this is no singular invasion. The Democrats 
     have unleashed a multi-frontal attack on freedom. Just 
     consider the Senate actions over the past week. The Senate 
     yesterday approved S. 4, the Democrats attempt to revive 
     central government planning through an industrial policy. At 
     the same time we were debating this dangerous proposal, the 
     Senate Finance Committee was holding a hearing on the Uruguay 
     Round of trade agreements. Were we discussing the elimination 
     of trade barriers, the expansion of free trade? No. The 
     hearing explored how a new world of government subsidies to 
     industry would be incorporated into the trade agreement.
       This dubious concept is described as the ``green light'' 
     proposal--that is, the international trading community will 
     give a green light to more government interference in the 
     economy. With all our encouragement of government industrial 
     planning, can any one seriously blame the Russian Parliament 
     from backsliding on their economic reforms?
       This attempt to expunge ``freedom'' from the political 
     discourse is the defining issue of this decade. The 
     Democratic Party, as the party of the expanding federal 
     state, clearly has no desire to promote a free people. 
     Freedom cannot exist absent restrictions on the powers of the 
     state and bureaucracy. Democrats represent the interests and 
     its values of those who live by the state. Their philosophy 
     is one of control. A free people is an impediment to the 
     efficient state. It is no wonder that they have banished 
     ``freedom'' from their philosophy. In its place, they promote 
     ``statism''.
       What about the Republican Party? The Republicans, as 
     reinvigorated by Ronald Reagan fourteen years ago, seemed 
     rededicated to freedom. Let me quote a defining message for 
     the Republicans. ``We are a nation that has a government--not 
     the other way around. And this makes us special among the 
     nations of the earth. . . . It is time to check and reverse 
     the growth of government which shows signs of having grown 
     beyond the consent of the governed . . . It is not my 
     intention to do away with government. It is, rather, to make 
     it work--work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, 
     not ride on our back. Government can and must provide 
     opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not 
     stifle it . . .''
       These words, spoken by Ronald Reagan in his first Inaugural 
     address, are an embarrasing reminder of what Republicans 
     could stand for. Could, but as often as not do not, any more. 
     Today, too many Republicans prefer to be Democrat Lite. As 
     any beer connoisseur can tell you, Lite is a tasteless, 
     repugnant concoction.
       The task of conservatives is to challenge the Republican 
     party to return to its true principles rather than trying to 
     mirror Democrats. The alternative is corruption. The issue is 
     corruption. Never has government been more corrupt. No, not 
     more venal nor dishonest but corrupted by anonymity and 
     uncontestable power. Government reaches every life big and 
     small. How ironic that we, a free democracy, won the Cold War 
     against Communism, but now seem incapable of preventing the 
     growth of powerful centralized government--and even seem to 
     embrace its concept--here in America.
       The Democratic Party and the threat of big government is 
     hardly a recent problem. It did not begin with Clinton or 
     Carter, LBJ or FDR. We must go back to the turn of the 
     century, and another Roosevelt, Teddy, as the source of the 
     modern welfare state. The Progressive era created the desire 
     for government intervention. It was inspired by a real 
     problem, namely how would a rapidly industrializing society 
     maintain a representative government that promotes the common 
     welfare.
       Rather than relying on the principle of freedom based on 
     federalism and free markets, Progressives turned to expanding 
     the federal government. The first step was to utilize the 
     Commerce Clause in the Constitution to expand the powers of 
     Congress. Such contemporary failures as the Superfund program 
     and such modern burdens as the Americans with Disabilities 
     Act owe their genesis to an expanded reading of the Commerce 
     Clause. It has meant that Congress could regulate, could 
     mandate, nearly anything--and, unchallenged, it has.
       The Progressives were inspired. As Samuel Elliot Morrison 
     states in his History of America, the Progressives ``looked 
     forward to a `welfare state' controlled by Congress but 
     staffed by an intelligent and dedicated bureaucracy.'' Even 
     back then Republicans lost their bearings. The Republican 
     Roosevelt created the Cabinet Departments of Commerce and 
     Labor. His Republican successor, William Howard Taft, 
     promoted the 16th Amendment to the Constitution--the federal 
     income tax. That is the kind of mischief that results when 
     political parties compete to promote statism.
       The result is best summed up by a 1917 Supreme Court 
     decision. Coming at the end of the Progressive era, the court 
     declared ``there can be nothing private or confidential in 
     the activities and expenditures of a carrier engaged in 
     interstate commerce.''
       We can see a straight line of that thinking down to today. 
     The attitude is afoot that the federal government can 
     interfere in the activities of any individual engaged in any 
     private enterprise.
       While some turn of the century Republicans aided and 
     abetted the birth of this statism, we find today that many 
     Republicans, some who even claim to be conservatives, 
     continue to promote big government. George Will has written 
     about the corrupting effect of big government. But he 
     disdains what he calls ``pillage and burn conservatism'', 
     something he finds ``unlovely.'' His problem, the problem of 
     too many Republicans, is that we assumes big, and perhaps 
     bigger, government is here to stay and that the only question 
     is who will rule it. They are wrong. Disdain for modern big 
     government is wise, patriotic, and even lovely. Al Gore and 
     George Will agree on reinventing government without realizing 
     that Americans don't want it to be better able to deny them 
     liberty.
       Let me remind you that the roots of our problem, the 
     Progressive reformers, argued that power and wealth in 
     America was distorted. Yet, by the end of the Progressive 
     era, power was even more concentrated in the federal 
     government, and the income of the average American had not 
     improved. While the Progressives tried to subdue the robber 
     barons of commerce and trade, they themselves became the 
     robber barons of personal liberty. It was not until the 1920s 
     that incomes improved--a period in time when free market 
     ideas flourished, and government interference was subdued. 
     This period of growth, of course, crashed to a halt when 
     Congress imposed new trade tariffs in 1929.
       It would be wise for conservatives to revive the idea that 
     even when we are the government, government must be the 
     enemy. Its very nature is subsuming and must be confronted on 
     principle. One of my favorite observations by Alexis de 
     Tocqueville, describes this predicament:
       ``After having thus successfully taken each member of the 
     community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned him at will, 
     the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole 
     community. It covers the surface of society with a network of 
     small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which 
     the most original minds and the most energetic characters 
     cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. Thus will of man 
     is not shattered, but softened, bent, guided; men are seldom 
     forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from 
     acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents 
     existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, 
     extinguishes, and stupefies a people, 'til each nation is 
     reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and 
     industrious animals, of which the government is the 
     shepherd.''
       True conservatives have a clear message. We must resist the 
     promise of comforts delivered by a powerful state in exchange 
     for bits of liberty easily ceded and virtually 
     unrecapturable. An all powerful state will casually but 
     cruelly exercise its power and often seems to be of service 
     when doing so. (To use an odd example--Mississippi lesbians, 
     Waco cults, Northwest supremacists.)
       The corruption of statism goes hand in hand with the 
     growing anonymity of power, of politics. Members of Congress 
     continually vote to give vast amounts of power to the federal 
     bureaucracy. Broad policy goals are written into statute. The 
     Occupational Safety and Health Act, passed in 1970, is only a 
     few pages long. It delegates to the bureaucracy extensive 
     police and regulatory powers. Bureaucrats set workplace 
     health standards based on questionable or non-existent risk 
     assessment. Americans spend $47 million per individual to 
     reduce suspected health exposures. Fines are imposed, costs 
     mandated and no one can be found who voted to do this. Other 
     laws are equally vague and burdensome.
       Look at the Americans with Disabilities Act. That is a gold 
     mine for bureaucrats writing the regulations required or 
     desired, and lawyers looking for fees love it--Americans fail 
     in front of it. As I found out several days ago, small 
     communities in my state cannot or are not even allowed to 
     resurface a road because it requires curb ramps to be 
     installed simultaneously.
       Much has been made about the 1300 pages in the Clinton 
     Health Act. It is long simply because it seeks to totally 
     restructure and regulate one seventh of our economy. The 
     original Medicare Act was less than one hundred pages. Even 
     with the 1300 pages, the regulatory authority given to the 
     bureaucrats will be enormous. The regulations they enact will 
     be anonymous. No Senator will have voted for them, yet all 
     Americans must abide by them. No one will be accountable, 
     because no one will be responsible.
       The message of liberty and freedom does not need shaping--
     it needs amplifying and implementing. But more importantly, 
     we must do more than talk. We have had enough--no, we have 
     had much too much--of politicians, Republican and Democrat 
     alike, who espouse conservative rhetoric while enacting 
     liberal policies. George Bush's Clean Air Act and Civil 
     Rights Act and Americans with Disabilities Act and tax 
     increases were not the policies of conservative government. 
     They were the policies of more government. Statist, elitist 
     and commanding, and Bill Clinton is no new Democrat! He is a 
     big government Democrat.
       Government, in the past six years, has crossed a threshold 
     beyond the managing of our economy and meddling in our lives 
     to which we have unfortunately become accustomed. We are 
     faced today with a virtually socialistic administration 
     reaching for unprecedented government intervention into every 
     aspect of each of our lives.
       Today the new embrace of government demands we foreswear 
     liberty in exchange for safety, education and health. Freedom 
     is sacrificed for the promise of security.
       Loo at the administration's three principle efforts:
       1. National education bill--goals 2000
       2. National crime bill--federalizing both the police and 
     courts
       3. National health care
       While believing government has failed to adequately perform 
     its appropriate tasks, an ever-increasing majority of 
     Americans views government as an out-right adversary; in 
     fact, we fear it. Rather than seeing government as a 
     protector of our rights, we seek to hide from it lest it take 
     notice of us and deny even more.
       Bill and Hillary Clinton today unapologetically promote 
     the-bigger-is-better ideology of government rejected by the 
     American people. Clinton advocates programs which Americans 
     adamantly oppose, and governs amidst swirling accusations of 
     unethical and amoral personal conduct. Yet he remains 
     relatively popular. Why?
       While not agreeing with where he is going, Americans 
     perceive that he is at least leading. That leadership is 
     contrasted to an opposition party which knows little but the 
     ``me-too'' Republicanism of compromise and conciliation. 
     Whatever new proposals the Clintons' offer, Republicans want 
     just a little less of the same. Senator Lauch Faircloth of 
     North Carolina described this tendency with his usual 
     insight: ``if the Democrats introduced a bill to burn down 
     the Capitol, we'd offer a compromise to phase it in over 
     three years.''
       The task for us, as conservatives, is as clear as our 
     message. Good government is self-government. Self-government 
     is not anonymous. The people are ready even if their leaders 
     are not. The people are stirring. And I tell you that as the 
     Republican party was born from the ashes of the Whigs so to 
     can a new party rise from the ashes of a party refusing to 
     confront the defining issue of the day--American liberty.
       Last month National Review kindly published an article I 
     wrote entitled ``Can the GOP take America Back?'' The 
     responses I received from NR's readers suggest that Americans 
     hunger for conservative leadership.
       In my article, I enumerated broad philosophical guidelines 
     for conservative action: cut taxes, stop thinking of 
     entitlements as rights, privatize rather than further 
     socialize medicine, de-regulate everywhere, end federal and 
     judicial tyranny over the states, restore personal 
     responsibility, abolish racial and other special preferences, 
     restore control of education to parents, curb crime, restore 
     communal moral standards.
       Do we need a federal Department of Education? It has 
     squandered over $400 billion in its 20 years of existence--
     yet educational achievements have plummeted. It should be 
     abolished, and control of schools should return to the local 
     level. That is one way to circumvent those who oppose school 
     choice.
       Welfare should be returned to the states as a block grant. 
     And, the crime bill should, I reluctantly conclude, not be 
     passed.
       While Congress tries to address the crime issue with 
     greater federal mandates and controls, the destruction of the 
     family and moral values, coupled with the revolving jail-and-
     court house door, remain the real problem today. Borrowing 
     from my friend Bill Bennett's concise analyis, welfare and 
     illegitimacy are the root cause of our crime problem 
     today: undisciplined groups of unsocialized males allowed 
     to run amok unsupervised in our neighborhoods. 
     Conservatives ought to be for more than just locking up 
     the criminals. We must embrace basic values and demand 
     good citizenship. Fix the welfare problem, and you have 
     made a giant step toward solving the crime problem.
       We must start, now, to question the premise of each 
     government program and activity. Every government program, 
     existing or proposed, should be judged against a simple 
     standard:
       (1) does it restrict or increase the growth of government?
       (2) Does it expand or deny personal liberty?
       (3) Will it create or diminish economic growth?
       (4) Will it foster or deny America's traditional values?
       (5) Will it ensure or diminish Americans' security?
       The very premise of a government program or proposed 
     activity is flawed, and it should either be abolished or it 
     should not be created unless in each instance the basic 
     interest of a free people lies first.
       These may well be radical proposals inside the Beltway, but 
     they are mainstream to main street America. If you doubt 
     that, just look at the popularity today of Rush Limbaugh and 
     the burgeoning circulation of conservative publications. Even 
     in the hotbed of liberalism of Washington, D.C., G. Gordon 
     Liddy has a successful conservative radio talk show and 
     Armstrong Williams attracts both black and white to 
     conservatism.
       Conservatives have the right message for the American 
     people. And today, more than at any time in recent years, we 
     have a unique opportunity to find new ways of conveying that 
     message, of reframing the debate. We have innovative and 
     creative ideas--and ideas do have consequences. Leaders of 
     courage and principle can put our ideas into practice and the 
     state put into retreat.
       Government was not meant to possess us, rule us, encompass 
     us, judge for us, substitute for us. It was meant to serve 
     us. We were founded as a noble self governing tribe of free 
     peoples respecting each other as americans under God--not 
     under Washington. Americans know this even if their 
     government does not.
       Since we are meeting in the F. A. Hayek Auditorium, let me 
     conclude with a quote from Dr. Hayek: ``By giving the 
     government unlimited powers the most arbitrary (and I would 
     add `anonymous' and `corrupting') rule can be made legal, and 
     in this way a democracy may set up the most complete 
     despotism imaginable.''

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