[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 141 (Monday, October 3, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: October 3, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
               A DESPICABLE DEMOCRATIC CAMPAIGN STRATEGY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Inslee). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Gingrich, is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. GINGRICH. Mr. Speaker, I am going to talk tonight on a despicable 
Democratic campaign strategy. Today the White House Office of Media 
Affairs releases a so-called analysis of the House Republican contract 
that is a false, misleading, dishonest document. This Clinton 
Democratic strategy of frightening senior citizens is despicable, and 
it is totally false. Let's look at the facts.
  House Republicans have proposed a balanced budget amendment to the 
Constitution. House Republicans know the Federal Government is too big 
and spends too much. House Republicans believe that over a 5 to 8-year 
period a transition to a balanced budget is possible. House Republicans 
believe that cutting spending, not raising taxes, is the right 
direction. Liberal Democrats and their liberal news media allies seem 
terrified at the idea the Republicans might actually cut Government 
spending, cut Democratic political pork, and work to balance the 
budget.
  The Democrats have now come up with a totally phony analysis which 
suggests that Republicans would cut Social Security, rather than debate 
discretionary, rather than debate other entitlements, rather than 
debate changing the bureaucracy. The Democrats, at least in this White 
House release today, seem to have decided that only by scaring senior 
citizens do Democrats have a chance to survive.

  This is a totally false accusation. Let me read the record. On Meet 
the Press yesterday I said the following. ``We have to look at 
transforming virtually every area of the budget except Social Security. 
You take one part of that pie chart called Social Security, set it to 
one side as the contract that virtually all Americans agree on, I think 
you have got to look at every single aspect of the budget * * *.
  ``* * * The fact is Social Security is the widest accepted contract 
in the United States, it is one that I think should be off the table.''
  Now, that was on ``Meet the Press'' yesterday. Today the Clinton 
White House decides to lie about my position.
  The gentleman from Texas, Congressman Dick Armey, on a C-SPAN viewer 
call-in show September 28, said the following about Social Security: 
``It is a paid annuity program. I can't be party to a process that says 
to the American people: One, we're going to take your aftertax dollars 
into this annuity and then tax you when you take your benefits out 
later--but that's what the Democrats want to do. I think that's unfair, 
it's unkind.
  ``Secondly, we can't break our contract, our responsibility, our 
fiduciary responsibility to those people who spent their entire working 
years paying into this contract.''
  Now, here are the No. 2 and No. 3 ranking House Republicans, the 
people who almost certainly will be the No. 1 and No. 2 House 
Republicans next year, and what we are saying to the American people is 
we are not going to touch Social Security. We have said publicly and on 
the record. The result is not an honest debate from the Clinton White 
House and the debate about how to get to a balanced budget, not an 
honest effort to understand what we are trying to do, but a 
deliberately distorted, deliberately false accusation that we are going 
to cut Social Security.
  Let me carry this a step further. If you look at what Gov. Fife 
Symington has done, a Republican in Arizona, he has taken Medicaid, a 
very expensive program, and he has turned it into managed care. He no 
longer allows people to show up at the emergency room to get aspirin. 
He no longer allows people to simply waste dollars if they are on 
Medicaid.
  The result is he is saving millions of dollars in Arizona and, 
applied nationwide, we could save billions of dollars. In New York 
State alone, there is one study that suggests that we could save 
$11,000 per welfare family in health care costs in New York State if we 
went to managed care, without in any way cutting off any care, but 
simply by turning it into an organized orderly process.
  Gov. Tommy Thompson, Republican of Wisconsin, has gone to a learnfare 
and workfare program and has discovered that when you require people on 
welfare to work, fewer people show up for welfare and you change the 
whole program, and you dramatically both lower your costs and you 
improve the experience of the people on welfare. It is a program that 
will work. It is a program we ought to be trying.
  I have been talking with Ross Perot, with corporate leaders around 
the country, looking at successful downsizing. What happens when Ford 
or General Motors or Chrysler or Xerox or IBM decides they have to 
shrink their middle managements? How do they go about doing that?
  I believe we can save billions of dollars by downsizing the Federal 
bureaucracy and using effective systems. I believe with a thorough 
overhaul of our defense procurement system, we can get more weapons and 
better weapons faster for less money. That is the essence of the 
concept that Dr. Edwards Deming developed, which is quality, quality, 
but which is an approach to doing business in a way that is better and 
more effective and less expensive. The Democrats don't seem to get it. 
They think you have to keep the current welfare state and keep the 
budget unbalanced.
  I simply ask them in closing, please don't lie to the American people 
about Social Security. It is off the table. It is not a topic. That is 
not going to be touched. Please debate us honestly about what really 
needs to be done to balance the budget.

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