[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 20 (Wednesday, February 1, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H1038-H1045]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                 PROGRESS ON THE CONTRACT WITH AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 1995, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hoke] is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, I am looking forward to this special order 
that I have asked some of my colleagues to participate in, the 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Portman], the gentleman from North Carolina 
[Mr. Jones], the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston], and what we 
want to do this evening is review some of the things we have already 
done in this Congress, review some of the things that have happened 
immediately preceding and some of the things that we expect to be 
doing.
  I want to point out first of all that today we took a very important 
step on the road to recovering the confidence of the American people 
that began with the election last November. That is because what we did 
today is 
[[Page H1039]] we passed a bill that will examine unfunded mandates to 
the States, and the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Portman] is going to 
discuss that in detail a little bit later. But we have been following 
this road map that was laid out in the Contract With America for 
getting more done, more quickly than even we could have imagined, and 
best of all this is the work that the people of America want us to do.
  Let me give a fact on that, because a poll was released this past 
Monday by the Washington Post and ABC News which contains extremely 
good news for this House and good news for the American people. In only 
3 months public confidence in Congress has actually doubled. That is 
the largest increase of its kind since the 20-year history of the poll 
that has been taken.
  The majority of Americans now say that Congress can deal with the big 
issues facing our country, and we are dealing with the big issues just 
like we promised. Anyway, why has this happened? Why is there this 
rising confidence in what the American people can expect from Congress, 
and why is this cynicism starting to drop away?
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield. Just to repeat those 
numbers again, Congress went from about a 20-to-40-something-percent 
approval rating because for the first time in recent memory Congress is 
following through on campaign promises.
  Mr. HOKE. Elected Members are actually keeping the promises that they 
made to the people, and the impact that that has on confidence in our 
institution is really immeasurable. But it is wonderful to see in this 
kind of polling result that actually people are able to express that 
yes, they have more confidence in the U.S. Congress' ability to solve 
the problems, the major problems that are facing our country.
  Look at what we have done; and why is it we have done this? And in 
less than 30 days we have cut the fat out of Congress, we have reduced 
staff and committees and we have passed reforms that will make it the 
most open and fair public legislative assembly in the entire world.
  Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, if I might add 
to that, what we did was we campaigned on the word ``trust.'' We said 
to the voters, for many years you have not been able to put your trust 
in the Congress. We are giving you a written agenda, a contract, and we 
intend to stand by this contract.
  To the gentleman from Ohio I would say I am pleased that when I go 
back to my State of North Carolina I am stopped in the grocery stores, 
I am stopped on the street, people that I really do not
 even remember their names because it has been so long since I have 
seen them telling me, ``Keep on working, keep the focus. We are proud 
of what you are doing in Washington, D.C. You are rebuilding the trust 
level that has been lost for so many years.''

  Mr. HOKE. I think one of the most remarkable things about this 
Contract With America is that it has created a road map for us that 
even we did not realize it was going to be so important to us in terms 
of keeping us focused on exactly what the American people wanted, what 
they expected and what we promised to deliver to them. And that is 
exactly how it has worked for us.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield, I got a letter recently, 
and I assume I was one of 435 Members of Congress who got such a 
letter. It was not a constituent, it came from Ohio, or some other 
exotic spot that we had to study about in seventh grade geography, but 
it had the letters DWUSUWGTD. It says to a Member of Congress: I want 
you to put it on your desk and look at it every day. On the back of the 
letter it stands for: Do what you said you were going to do. And my 
staff sees the sign every day, and I think that is in somewhat of a 
nutshell what the Contract With America is about. That is why it was in 
writing, that is why we signed it, and that is why we keep referring 
back to it.
  Mr. HOKE. Let us tick off exactly what we have done so far. Cut the 
fat out of Congress, reduced committee staff by a third, cut the budget 
of Congress. We have made Congress subject to the same laws that 
everybody else in this country is subject to, and we passed last 
Thursday, I am extremely proud to say, a balanced budget amendment to 
the Constitution of the United States. And today, thanks to the very 
able stewardship of Congressmen Clinger, Davis, and Portman we passed 
the unfunded mandates bill ending the Government practice of spending 
States' money to finance our own mandates to them.
  Mr. PORTMAN. If the gentleman will yield, we had an exciting day 
today. It was truly a landmark piece of legislation. It was a historic 
day for the House, the first time we have ever, ever, as a Congress 
done anything to stop these unfunded Federal mandates.
  And it was bipartisan. The gentleman mentioned a few of the major 
sponsors of the bill. Another one is Gary Condit of California, a 
Democrat.
  Mr. HOKE. Who gave an extraordinary speech on this floor a couple of 
days ago to rousing bipartisan applause.
  Mr. PORTMAN. We had a vote today of 306 to 74 on this legislation. We 
worked on it for 2 weeks on the floor of the House, over 30 hours of 
debate. That means we got about 130 Democrats to support the bill 
today. This is despite again a lot of disagreement on the other side. 
We had health debate and we worked hard on this bill. None of this 
stuff is easy to do. You have to roll up your sleeves and really work 
at it.
  But we got to the point of final passage after accepting a lot of 
amendments and perfecting the bill where a large bipartisans group of 
the members of this House decided yes, it is time to step up to the 
plate and start being accountable for what we do for the States and 
localities.
  Mr. HOKE. Maybe that is one of the reasons why in this same poll the 
majority of the American people say that ``Republicans are breaking 
down legislative gridlock.'' As you can see, this clearly was a 
bipartisan effort.
  What was the vote count again?
  Mr. PORTMAN. The vote was 360 to 74. And I have to be honest, the 
first few days one wonder whether
 we were getting back into gridlock because we committed to have an 
open rule on this. This meant any Member of Congress could come to the 
floor of this House and file an amendment, and we had 174 of them 
filed, and then have a debate on that amendment, with no time 
limitation because everyone can speak for 5 minutes, and that can be 
expanded.

  So it was a challenge and I have to tell you we spent 3 or 4 days on 
a very small part of the legislation that was even preliminary to the 
real meat of the bill, and I was concerned that we were getting into a 
mode that might be viewed as filibuster or too much dilatory tactics. 
But finally, after staying to midnight one night we broke through that 
and got into serious discussion of some of the outstanding issues.
  Again if you roll up your sleeves and work at it you come up with a 
bill that makes sense. This bill is in the Contract With America, but 
on the House floor we improved it. It is even a better bill than it 
was.
  Mr. HOKE. I thought the comity at the end of debate today and 
especially the kind words for the chairman by the gentlewoman from 
California, they were both well taken and they went an awfully long way 
toward building an even better spirit of working, although we were not 
working together in that case, but clearly working on something that 
was of importance to your constituents in a way that reflected well on 
this body as opposed to reflecting poorly.

                              {time}  2010

  I think the American people want to see us get the job done. The 
gentlewoman you are talking about did not vote for the bill. She did 
not agree with the premise of the bill. But as you say, in the end, in 
a spirit of comity, she talked about how the chairman had been fair, 
how we had an open process on the floor. That is what the American 
people want to see. They want to see an honest debate on the issues. If 
we have differences, they want to see us air those differences. But 
they want to get on with the business of managing this country.
  Mr. HOKE. Could I ask you a question? I think there is a lot of 
misunderstanding about this bill. I think people think and there is a 
general understanding in the public somehow we will no longer be able 
to legislate anything 
[[Page H1040]] that would cost the States money. Is that what the bill 
does?
  Mr. PORTMAN. No. That is not what the bill does. The whole premise of 
the bill is if something is important enough for us to mandate at the 
Federal level, to tell the States and localities you have got to do it 
our way, we ought to be able to step up to the plate and provide 
funding for it. This bill says
 there has to be, for the first time ever, first time ever, we have 
never had this in Congress before, a cost analysis of what the 
legislation is going to cost.

  How many times have you come up to the House floor and never had any 
idea what the cost is to State and local government of something you 
are going to vote on? Frankly, we have not had that information. That 
forces us to get that information.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I heard a statistic this morning I thought that was 
interesting. There are 39,000 municipalities in this great country of 
ours. Eighty percent of them are populations below 10,000, and 48 
percent have populations below 1,000. We sit up here in our inside-the-
beltway ivory tower mandating all these ridiculous programs on them. 
They do not have the money to pay for them. They do not have the 
personnel. Inevitably they have to turn around and raise the taxes on 
all the constituents back home.
  Mr. PORTMAN. They have two choices at the local level, and it is 
pretty obvious, if you think about it. One is to raise taxes at the 
local level, and that tends to be property taxes. Talk about regressive 
taxes. And the second is to cut services, the very services our 
constituents are saying they want more of, fire, police protection, 
personal security. That is what they do. These are the communities the 
gentleman is talking about that are going to have to go with one or two 
fewer police officers during a particular timeframe. That is not what 
we want to be doing to the people we represent and who are also 
represented by State and local officials who are having to live under 
these mandates increasingly.
  Mr. HOKE. So you are saying it is going to require a cost analysis? 
Does anything else happen then?
  Mr. PORTMAN. It requires a cost analysis so we will know what we are 
voting on. Then on the floor of the House, any Member of this House can 
stand up and raise what is called a point of order, which means it can 
stop the whole process if a new mandate is not funded. So you know what 
the cost is, and if some committee sends a bill to this floor that is 
not funded, in other words, it has a new requirement that is not 
funded, then any one of us or any other Member can stand up and say, 
``Point of order; this legislation needs to stop,'' and it stops right 
there, and you have a debate on the floor of the House about the 
unfunded mandate in that legislation.
  Let us take an example, the motor-voter bill, the first bill that I 
had the privilege to consider here in the Congress when I walked in my 
first day. I had to vote up or down on motor voter. I kind of looked at 
it. Everybody wants to have more voter registration. But I did not 
think it made sense, because Ohio, as the gentleman from Ohio knows, 
has a good voter registration program. It is run at the State level, as 
all programs were until we passed this national bill. I was told by 
some members of the Governor's office here in Washington this was going 
to cost the State of Ohio several million dollars a year. Nobody was 
sure, because there was not a good cost estimate. There was no Federal 
money to pay for it.
  I voted against the bill on that basis. Now we are finding out many 
of these States, including California, are suing the Federal Government 
for precisely that reason. It is costing them a lot of money for voter 
registration.
  Mr. HOKE. What is Ohio estimating it is going to cost them just to 
run the Motor-Voter Act?
  Mr. PORTMAN. Twenty-nine million dollars is what the Governor is 
saying annually.
  Mr. KINGSTON. It is $3 million in Georgia. It is interesting the 
party in power in Georgia was even against it, the same party as the 
White House and those who were pushing it here, so it is really not a 
partisan issue.
  Mr. PORTMAN. It is not. That is an excellent point. Let me just for a 
moment, we talked about, you know, it takes a lot of hard work to get 
to this point. You have got to have a bipartisan group here in Congress 
to support and get behind it. This is not a partisan issue outside of 
this room really, and outside the Beltway.
  One of the concerns I had with the debate on the House floor over the 
first few days is it appeared to be sadly a partisan debate. If you go 
out into the real world, if you talk to township trustees, you talk to 
county commissioners, mayors of these small towns the gentleman talks 
about, it is not a partisan issue; whether you are a Democrat, 
Republican, or independent, you are getting sick and tired of the 
Federal Government having a one-size-fits-all Federal requirement 
coming down on you with no money to pay for it.
  Mr. HOKE. You know, I listened to the debate today. It sounded to me 
like some of the things coming from the other side that this bill, this 
unfunded-mandates bill, would repeal all of the legislation we passed, 
you know, since 1789. Is that the case?
  Mr. PORTMAN. No. It is not. What this bill does is it looks 
prospectively. It looks to the future.
  Mr. HOKE. So it has nothing to do with anything we passed in the 
past?
  Mr. PORTMAN. No. It does not affect the Clean Air Act. It does not 
affect the Clean Water Act. Now, if those bills come up for 
reauthorization or there are new mandates attached to them, absolutely, 
it applies to that. The whole idea is we have got a critically, 
critically ill patient on our hands. There is a crisis out there. The 
first thing we do in an emergency room is stop the hemorrhaging, and 
that is what we are doing here, we are trying to stop the practice, to 
get Washington to get serious about this, and for the first time ever 
today we passed a bill to force Washington to do that. It was a 
historic day. It was part of our contract. It is us keeping our 
promise. It involved a lot of hard work. We have got to work with the 
Senate to come up with a compromise between the House and the Senate 
version, and we will be able to do that as we work with the Senate on 
this bill.
  Mr. HOKE. If I can interrupt and ask you a question, because I agree 
with the gentleman that it is absolutely a critically important first 
step.
  As you said, what you can raise with this is a point of order that 
stops all of the business on the floor with respect to a new mandate on 
the State, and debate then takes place as to whether or not that 
mandate should, well, as to how much it costs. We have to have a cost 
analysis of it, and then, at that point, does that mean that bill will 
no longer obtain or what happens?
  Mr. PORTMAN. No. It does not. What happens then, if Congress chooses, 
Congress may, by a majority vote, waive that point of order. But it 
forces us to face the issue.
  Mr. HOKE. Creates accountability?
  Mr. PORTMAN. Exactly. You know, it is again, an up-or-down vote on 
this House floor because of our rules has historically been very 
difficult. Motor
 voter, again, a good example, there was never a debate on this floor 
as to whether there was an unfunded mandate. There was never any cost 
information to have an informed debate, and then there was no up-or-
down vote on whether to impose the unfunded mandate.

  What this bill does again for the first time is it says let us be 
accountable. If we are going to do this, let us step up to the plate 
and do it in the full view of the American people, the press, and so 
on.
  That is why the Governors, the other State and local officials, 
mayors, county commissioners, and so on, supported this bill and worked 
with us to draft a bill that makes sense for them, and why even today 
they were here congratulating us on passing this bill. It was the No. 1 
item for the National Conference of Mayors, No. 1 item for the National 
Governors' Association, and so on.
  Mr. HOKE. Are there more Democrats or Republicans in the National 
Conference of Mayors?
  Mr. PORTMAN. It has typically been the case that there are more 
Democrats. It is not a partisan issue again. We happen to have more 
Republic Governors than Democrats right now, but I can tell you that 
some of the Democrat Governors have been leading advocates on this 
issue to get Congress to get its requirements under control, and it is 
part of a much bigger picture, I have got to say to the gentleman from 
Ohio, 
[[Page H1041]] and that is the whole issue of federalism: What is the 
role of the Federal Government?
  We are finally getting to the point in this Congress where we are 
beginning to debate that issue in a serious way. It is going to come up 
with welfare reform, it is going to come up with health care reform if 
we get into that again later in the year: What should the role be of 
the Federal Government? Should we be dictating everything here from 
Washington, or should we be giving the States and localities more 
flexibility, more say in how they go about solving the problems of this 
great country?
  Mr. KINGSTON. We are at this point 2 out of 10 on the contract?
  Mr. HOKE. Actually, no. We are about 3 out of 10. We have 
congressional accountability, we have knocked down unfunded mandates, 
and we passed the balanced budget amendment.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Does that bring us to crime on our discussion?
  Mr. HOKE. Yes. I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio for spending 
the time. If I could ask the gentleman from Ohio one more question, 
because the gentleman has had and has been instrumental in pushing this 
unfunded-mandates bill through. If this is the first critical step, do 
you have anything to share with us as to what the next step is in this 
process?
  Mr. PORTMAN. Well, I do. The next step in the process is there will 
be a year-long study of all existing mandates which would include the 
Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and so on. There will be a report 
to the Congress a year from now, assuming this legislation is signed by 
the President and goes into law, and that report will go through all 
the existing mandates in a comprehensive way, and in a logical way, 
because you want to look at all the different pieces, and it will make 
recommendations that are very specific as to what we as a Congress 
should do legislatively to change existing statutes and existing 
mandates.
  This is one reason again these State and local officials supported 
this legislation so strongly, because it gives us the ability to figure 
out what makes sense to be mandated from Washington and what does not.
  Mr. HOKE. Find out how much it costs, not to eliminate it, not to 
repeal it, but to find out what it really costs, because certainly 
there are some programs that cost much more than they are worth, but we 
will never know that if we do not have a bona fide critical analysis of 
it.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Absolutely.
  Mr. HOKE. I thank you very much for spending your time with us.
  It is a good way to segue into another area of extreme importance in 
the Contract With America that we are going to be getting to, and that 
has to do with crime and welfare as well. Maybe the gentleman from 
Georgia [Mr. Kingston] would like to talk a little bit about where we 
are going with this.
                              {time}  2020

  Mr. KINGSTON. It is interesting you put crime and welfare right on 
top of each other because there is no question they are very related. 
The situation that we are in as a society is, we are not free if we 
cannot walk down the streets of America without having to look over our 
shoulder, without having the security guards, without discussing 
whether or not you can carry a gun to protect yourself. We are not free 
as long as there is the criminal, slime element on our streets.
  The Clinton program basically was a Hug-a-Thug program. Their idea of 
getting tough on the criminal was having him foul out in midnight 
basketball. Our criminals need arraignment, not entertainment. They 
need to be in the big institution or pay restitution. I mean, that is 
just the bottom line. We need to have the truth in sentencing law that 
says ``All right, if you are sentenced for 10 years you are not going 
to serve 3\1/2\ years, which is the 35 percent normal sentence; you are 
going to serve the full 10 years,'' or at least 9 years or 8 years. But 
currently it is just the revolving door, we bring them in, they have 
basketball, they have libraries, they have TV's. You cannot even make 
them work. Then we say: Why isn't it working? Why aren't our streets 
safe? We should say that we are going to put you in jail and you are 
going to stay there, and we will make you work while you are there.
  Mr. HOKE. May I ask the gentleman a question? Could the gentleman run 
down again a couple of those things once more, those that rhyme, 
particularly?
  Mr. KINGSTON. Well, you will have to buy the record.
  Mr. HOKE. No hugs for thugs?
  Mr. KINGSTON. No hugs for thugs. They need to be in an institution, 
which we call the big house back home, or pay restitution. I do not 
know what they call it on Ohio, but you need to have people in jail. 
They have broken the law. We have decided in society that certain 
people need to be insulated from others and they need to be in jail. 
They need to be in an institution or they need to be out on the streets 
paying restitution, if they have stolen money they need to pay back to 
the victims.
  You know, we always forget the victims.
  I had a constituent call me. The woman was at home bathing her 3-
year-old and some slime kicked down
 the door and raped her, and the son-of-a-gun was caught--fortunately 
not because of that, but because of another crime, and incidentally he 
had raped three or four people--he was getting out of jail 5 years 
later. Now, how would you like to be that husband, that sister, that 
brother, knowing that creep was back out on the streets in your 
hometown? It is not right. That is what we have got to change. That is 
what the Contract with America tries to do.

  Mr. JONES. I would like to add to the gentleman from Georgia's 
response to the gentleman from Ohio's inquiry.
  During our campaign, the polling we did before we entered the race 
for Congress and during the race for Congress showed that crime and 
punishment was always among the top issues with the people. They 
believed that the Clinton crime package, if you will, that you made 
reference to, was too soft, that it did not do what needed to be done 
to protect the citizens.
  Quite frankly, I think that is why our Contract with America, when we 
get on this issue, you will see the response from the American people 
will be just as strong today as it was when they elected the Republican 
majority. Because they want to see, they want to be protected; they 
have felt for so long, as the gentleman said, they have a locked-in 
mentality while those who should be locked in are out on the streets.
  So I just wanted to add to the gentleman's comments that this part of 
our contract is extremely important. That is why we have been given 
this opportunity, because the majority of the past, which is now the 
minority party, did not do the job to protect the citizens of this 
country.
  Mr. HOKE. Well, does the gentleman think that it has to do with the 
pendulum swing? If the pendulum has swung so far over to favoring 
criminals, favoring thugs, favoring those people that are abusing our 
society, that are abusing other people, and are simply antisocial that 
we have to move it back to the center? Is that not what is happening?
  Mr. JONES. If I may just touch on what happened. It just so happened 
that yesterday the Governor of North Carolina, Jim Hunt, a Democrat, 
had a luncheon for all the Members of the Congress here in Washington, 
DC. He had sent us a letter 2 days before about a person in North 
Carolina who spent 13 years on death row. The individual had kidnapped
 three cheerleaders at a small college in North Carolina, three girls, 
put them in the trunk, took one out, raped her, and then killed her. He 
spent 13 years on death row through all these endless appeals.

  That is why people are sick and tired of it. The Governor of North 
Carolina in his letter to us and also at the luncheon yesterday said 
that we need to end these endless appeals.
  I think in our contract we are talking about a 2-year limit.
  Mr. HOKE. Let me give both of the gentlemen some good news. I happen 
to have the honor of sitting on the Judiciary Committee, where today we 
marked up and passed out and reported out the reform of habeas corpus, 
which is the Latin phrase referring to the endless rounds of appeals 
that can go to the State court, to the Federal court, back to the State 
court, to the 
[[Page H1042]] Federal court. We have limited and compressed that 
timeframe dramatically now so that you will not be able to go into 
endless round of appeals.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Well, that is part of the process. The gentleman has 
alluded to it. That is the frustration that common, decent Americans 
have with the penal system when people are not serving their full 
sentence, who get endless appeals, they get to tie up courts. It 
really, in this country, has become a matter where they can tie them up 
forever and get away with whatever crime they committed.
  You know there is another aspect of our crime reform bill that I 
think is very important: 22 percent of the prisoners in the Federal 
penitentiaries are illegal aliens, who are not American citizens, 22 
percent. Again, they are getting all the amenities that you or I would 
only be able to get if we went to a good hotel room. Yet we cannot even 
deport them.
  This changes that. We want to deport them. I believe that any kind of 
fooling with the trade bill, foreign aid bill, immigration; I would say 
``Look, you folks are welcome to our country legally any time you 
want.'' They come here illegally, then they are going home on a one-way 
ticket and ``Don't send them back, we are going to bill you the costs 
back,'' through negotiation.
  I think it is time that we start tightening up; we cannot afford to 
pay the bill for 22 percent of the non-Americans----
  Mr. HOKE. It also goes a step further with respect to legal aliens. 
That is people in this
 country legally, but who commit violent felonies, criminals, they get 
convicted and do time. That then becomes an issue upon which they can 
be deported upon having done their time in jail. And this is a change 
in the law--if they are sentenced regardless of whether or not they 
actually do the time, if they are sentenced for 5 years or more for a 
felony, they can be deported for that and they also lose the privilege 
of ever becoming an American citizen.

  These are important things because citizenship in this country is a 
privilege, and we should not be extending it to violent felons.
  Another thing I wanted to ask the gentleman about with respect to the 
crime bill and the changes we are going to make: I believe there are 
three things that are absolutely necessary. I call them the three C's. 
For the criminal justice system to work as a deterrent, you have to 
catch, convict, and confine. And you have to do all of that in a 
compressed period of time. When you do that, then somebody who is 
contemplating criminal activity knows that when they commit a crime 
they are going to be caught and when they are convicted they are 
actually going to do time.
  They are going to have to go to the big house, as the gentleman said. 
When that all happens in a compressed time period, then you will find 
the justice system works as a deterrent to stop people from committing 
crimes, because they know they are going to go to jail. We have done 
things in this contract that specifically go each area there.
  First of all, we increased the number of police on the streets as a 
result of it. This is in a block grant way directly to the communities.
  Mr. KINGSTON. And let the municipalities under this bill spend the 
money as they see fit. They may not need policemen, but they may need 
police cars. So this gives them that type of flexibility.
  Mr. HOKE. The gentleman is exactly right.
  Mr. KINGSTON. It is not the big brother telling them what to do.
  Mr. HOKE. Exactly right, the gentleman is absolutely right.
  Now, No. 2 is that with respect to conviction we have given the 
courts the ability to use evidence that may have previously been not 
allowed because of the exclusionary rule.
  Mr. KINGSTON. So as I understand that, if you find the gun but for 
some reason the investigating officer did not have the warrant 
perfected, maybe some little technical wording problem, you cannot use 
the gun as evidence, which is ridiculous. This says if it is a good 
faith mistake you still can use this as evidence, the gun, hatchet, or 
whatever it is.
  Mr. HOKE. That is exactly right. It is the good faith exclusion. What 
it says is that we are going to discipline the police officer, teach 
that person how to do it right. But if it was done in good faith and it 
did not impair the criminal's rights, then we are going to allow that 
evidence to be admitted. That is an important thing because that swings 
the pendulum back to punish criminals and to be on the side of victims.
                              {time}  2030

  Mr. JONES. May I ask the gentleman from Ohio a question?
  During your debate on this bill, during the campaign, I heard 
numerous times people say, ``I'm so tired of reading in the paper where 
a person incarcerated, serving time for a crime, is given the 
opportunity to file suit over some usually frivolous type issue, and 
we, the taxpayers, are paying for this.''
  Mr. HOKE. You mean prisoners who are----
  Mr. JONES. Absolutely, those that are incarcerated.
  Mr. HOKE. That is exactly right.
  Well, we dealt with that today in the Committee on the Judiciary, as 
a matter of fact, specifically, and in fact there is an element of the 
bar that makes a full-time living in contacting prisoners and then 
using shotgun approach lawsuits to file for all kinds of ridiculous and 
frivolous things like, for example, the food is not good enough, we 
want better food, we want different kinds of silverware, we want towels 
that are not so scratchy. I am not making these things up, and the 
reason they do this is because the bar, the attorneys, can actually be 
reimbursed their fees, all of them, by the Federal Government when they 
bring these lawsuits, civil lawsuits, on behalf of prisoners.
  What we have done is we have said that you can bring the lawsuits. We 
are not impairing a prisoner's right to bring lawsuits. But you can 
only be paid if you win, and you can only be paid on the part that you 
do win on.
  Now it is a little bit technical; I understand that, but typically 
what happens is an attorney will file a lawsuit with 50, 60, 70 
different complaints and hope that he or she is going to hit on one of 
them, and then they get paid for the entire lawsuit, all of the time 
that they supposedly put in. This changes that dramatically.
  Mr. KINGSTON. That is another aspect. You mentioned it just briefly 
with your action in the Judiciary Committee today.
  I am sick and tired, as I know my colleagues are, because of the 
police officers actually being treated like criminals by the lawyers 
when they get in these courtrooms. The police officers are the men and 
women who are out there on the line risking their lives, and remember 
they are not arresting people for the second or third time. They are 
arresting people under the current system for the eighth, ninth, or 
tenth time, and I ask, ``How would you like to be a plainclothesman 
working the street in a dangerous neighborhood not knowing if the last 
guy you sent up the river is going to be bumping into you at the 
convenience store?'' But that is the situation we are in now.
  As my colleagues know, there is another aspect, and I know we need to 
move on to welfare reform. I wanted to mention this bill also 
authorizes $10 billion for new prison construction, and I would say, 
just like Tom Bodett, ``We're going to leave the light on for them.''
  Mr. HOKE. Well, it is catch, convict, and confine. Catch extra 
police. Convict habeas corpus, or exclusionary rule reform. Confine $10 
billion in prisons. And with that, a requirement that a prisoner must 
do 85 percent of his sentence time.
  Mr. KINGSTON. As my colleagues know now, one of the root causes of 
the crime problem, the explosion of crime particularly in the inner 
city, is the breakdown of the family. The previous speaker mentioned 
that there were 15 million children being raised in single parent 
homes. Actually there is 15 million being raised in homes generally 
without fathers.
  Now of the children on AFDC or basically on welfare, 92 percent live 
in a home where they do not have fathers, and that is homes really 
where small children are being raised by teenagers. We are talking 17-
year-old mamas raising kids and often on top of going to 
[[Page H1043]] high school, and sometimes a 17-year-old is raising two 
children. There was a study that said one of the biggest co-
relationships between crime in the neighborhood is an education. It is 
not poverty. It is just having fathers at home, and one of the key 
elements of the Contract With America's reform plan is to reunite that 
family saying that if you are under 18 years old, you have got to 
identify the father, and I will mention that a little bit more later, 
but also you got to stay at home with your own parent in order to get 
that welfare check, and I think that will help strengthen the family 
unit which has been broken down really because of Government policy.
  Mr. HOKE. Well, I could not agree more, and I look forward to a very 
spirited debate on this because, as the gentleman knows, there is a 
great deal
 of feeling, certainly among my constituents, that we are a big part of 
the problem, having created this problem, that we have created 
financial incentives, or if ``incentive'' is too strong a word, at 
least we create the financial viability of the single parent family in 
this country, and there was no financial viability under the Great 
Society, until we abused a program that was devised for widows to be 
able to have--be able to provide for their own children in a widowed 
situation. We have taken that, and it has grown into this extraordinary 
bureaucracy that has brought much, much grief and much, and little 
happiness to our country.

  Mr. KINGSTON. Here we are, 30 years later, $3 trillion later, and 
here is a definition of a trillion: ``If you spent a hundred thousand 
dollars a minute 24 hours a day, it would take 19 years to get to one 
trillion.''
  We have spent $3 trillion starting with the Great Society under 
Lyndon Government-Can-Solve-Anything Johnson, and during that period of 
time the poverty level in 1965 was 14 percent. Today it is 14 percent.
  So, Mr. Speaker, we have accomplished absolutely nothing except for 
the absolute destruction of inner city families.
  Mr. HOKE. Well, as my colleague knows, the thing the people want, 
they never want to agree there are any correlations here, that they are 
causal things going on, but the fact is today two-thirds of all 
minority births are illegitimate. Twenty-five percent of all 
nonminority births are illegitimate.
  Those are shocking, shocking number when you consider that----
  Mr. KINGSTON. The national combined average is 30.1 percent.
  Mr. HOKE. Thirty point one percent, and when you consider that in 
1960 we were at less than a third of that.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Twenty-nine out of 1,000 15- to 17-year-old girls will 
have a child illegitimately, and when we talk about that 30 percent 
level, we are not talking 30-year-old Murphy Browns who have a career, 
and income coming in. We are talking 18-year-olds. We are talking 14-
year-olds who cannot care for themselves, much less the awesome burden 
of being a parent.
  Mr. JONES. If I can just add briefly to this?
  What we have had is a system; the Speaker has spoken of this so many 
times. We have had a system that has perpetuated this type of behavior. 
We have had a system that has through payments encouraged people to 
have children out of wedlock, and, as the Speaker has said so many 
times, we want to help people get off welfare. We want to help people 
become productive citizens. Welfare should not be a hammock.
  Welfare should be a springboard.
  Mr. HOKE. I heard Phil Gramm say it very well the other day. He said, 
``The problem with welfare is it's no longer a safety net. It's become 
a hammock.''
  The gentleman is absolutely right.
  Mr. KINGSTON. The other thing about this, and there is a work 
requirement, too, but before we leave this single parent thing, what 
our society has said, what our Government welfare program has said, is, 
``You're a young girl, 17 or 18 years old, and you get pregnant. That's 
your baby, you're responsibility, and you're responsible to raise the 
baby, the child. You're on the hook for the next 21 years.''
  Now for the 17-year-old boy who is the father, ``Don't worry about 
it.''
  Mr. HOKE. No accountability, no responsibility, no requirement that 
paternity be established. Are we changing that in the contract?
  Mr. KINGSTON. We are changing it. You have to establish paternity. 
What we are saying to these alley-cat dads is, ``Come on home. We are 
fixing to get serious. We are going to domesticate the alley cat.''
  That is what we need to do.
  Mr. HOKE. And we have got some very strong, across-state-line laws 
that we are looking at to go after deadbeat dads as well.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Absolutely, and there is a barrage of other laws that 
will go after deadbeat dads if the Republican Contract With America 
welfare plan gets passed because there are other laws that are 
contingent on this that will further make life hard on deadbeat dads 
and could include revoking drivers licenses and so forth. We are going 
to get the money from the dad, and we are going to bring him back in 
the formula.
  Mr. HOKE. As my colleague knows, as I thought about welfare in the 
United States generally over the past couple of years, it strikes me 
that what we say to a young woman, a 16-, 17-, 18-year-old woman, is, 
``Look, we're going to make a deal with you. If you want to have a 
child, you can do that, and we are going to help you out with that 
child. We are going to help you with housing, we are going to help you 
with food, we are going to help you with day care if you want that, we 
are going to help you even with job training, and we're going to give 
you money as well so that you can provide for that child.''
                              {time}  2040

  There are two conditions for this good deal we are going to give you, 
OK? No 1 is you have to promise us that you will not get married. That 
is No. 1. Just promise you will not get married. No. 2, you have to 
promise us you are not going to get a job. Do not get a job, and in the 
meantime we will provide you also with health care in addition to all 
those things. But as long as you fulfill those two promises, then we 
are going to take care of you. You just cannot get married and cannot 
get a job.
  Now, what is it we are saying to people? We are saying if they are in 
a single-parent family, they have much less of a chance of giving that 
child an even break in terms of being raised. Statistics do not lie on 
this. It is absolutely crystal clear in terms of outcomes that kids 
coming out of single-parent families have a tougher time, graduating, 
finishing school in time, not needing psychological counseling, et 
cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
  What is the other thing that we are doing? We are robbing that person 
of the fundamental dignity of having a job, of having work, of having 
self-reliance. It is a bad deal.
  Mr. KINGSTON. What is also good about this program is there is a work 
requirement that they do try to get involved in some sort of work 
training, and dads again must participate in it. There is also another 
part of it which I would say is internal, and that is combining so many 
of these government bureaucracies, which simply duplicate what the 
other one is doing. What they want to do is not make people 
independent, but keep them dependent. They create a clientele. So they 
are all fighting for it. But if you suggest why do not we combine it 
and cut out some of the bureaucrats' jobs so we can get more food to 
the child in the classroom that is hungry so they can learn math better 
or science better and so forth, so they can break the cycle, then you 
have this resistance from the bureaucrats. But the contract goes after 
these programs and combines them.
  Mr. HOKE. One of the things I am looking forward to with respect to 
our welfare reform is block granting this money to the States. There 
must be a State in this Union that will have the courage to actually 
eliminate welfare and require that its citizens reach out to help those 
people that need that help, require its citizens to go out and one-on-
one adopt, be a part of, become completely bonded and a part of the 
needs of its community.
  It seems to me that that will take tremendous courage on the part of 
a State. But when we do that, we will see a very real, a very different 
attitude, and a complete change in the way that that State deals with 
the problem of indigency, the problem of illegitimacy. And that will be 
the beginning of the 
[[Page H1044]] restoration of a much more sane commonsense approach to 
dealing with these problems in a way that is deeply compassionate, that 
truly connects people with people, and that does not alienate us from 
each other as neighbors in our communities, and does not alienate us 
from our institutions as well.
  Mr. JONES. If I can just add one situation that happened months and 
months ago before I even became a candidate for Congress, in my 
business I was calling on a manufacturing firm, and I will never forget 
the story the gentleman was telling me about a lady that lived in the 
housing project in this small county and small town. And one of the 
best workers that he had, every time he give her a raise, her rent went 
up. So she got to a point that she came back to him and said, ``Why 
work? I am working harder, but I can't achieve because the government 
continues to raise my rent.''
  There has got to be some way to work out a system so that an 
individual that is trying to do better for themselves through work is 
somehow given an opportunity, for example, using this as an example, 
hold the rent down for a couple of years, and make that individual put 
money in a savings account and let that be monitored by local agencies.
  But any time somebody tries to do better for themselves, many times 
through this archaic system that we have, they are being penalized. 
There are many people that want to get off welfare, but the system 
keeps holding them down. And that is what we are talking about in this 
contract. That is what you have been talking. We can change it, and we 
are going to change it.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Gentleman, I need to leave you, and I know you are 
going to go on and talk about term limits and so many of the other good 
elements of the contract. I appreciate your time and leadership both of 
you all have shown on these issues. Let us do it again sometime.
  Mr. HOKE. I thank the gentleman from Georgia for
   participating and for being a part of this.

  I want to just close with the idea of this block granting with one 
final thought, and that is that I think that what we will find out is 
there is a tremendous amount of creativity in the States. There will be 
States that will try all kinds of different solutions to the welfare 
problem, and they will come up with many, many different programs and 
ways of dealing with it, and some States that may, as I have suggested, 
even eliminate certain programs, certain welfare programs, to others 
that will try a very different approach. And that is what we need.
  We do not need a one-size-fits-all type of approach. We need to 
unleash the creativity, allow that creativity to erupt and to try 
different things that will truly work. We do not know what will work, 
we do not know what will not work, but we do know what is not working. 
By giving the States that kind of flexibility, we are going to get a 
heck of a lot more of an idea of a better direction to go in to solve 
that particular problem that is so very, very difficult.
  I wonder if I could ask, Mr. Jones, if you could talk to me a little 
bit about the work that you have been involved in with term limits and 
where you expect that to go and how that fits into our Contract With 
America?
  Mr. JONES. I thank the gentleman for this opportunity. It has been a 
great experience for a freshman. I have been here 4 weeks, and this has 
been an exciting day in many ways, passing an unfunded mandate, and a 
balanced budget amendment last week, and participating with you tonight 
and with the other two gentlemen.
  In the area of reform, there is probably not anything more important 
than giving the people of America the opportunity to vote on term 
limits. Quite frankly, I was in the general assembly in North Carolina 
for 10 years. I have worked hard in the area of campaign finance 
reform, ethics, rewriting the lobbying laws for the lobbyists in the 
State of North Carolina, and I have got some background, so to speak, 
in this area. And I started years ago talking about the need for term 
limits.
  If I can just for a moment cite a story. My father served in the U.S. 
Congress for 26 years. About 3 years ago, 4 years ago, I was talking to 
him in our hometown of Farmville, and I was telling him how I believe 
very strongly in term limits. Again, he served 26 years. And he said, 
``I did not do a very good job of raising you, if you feel that good 
about term limits.''
  Mr. HOKE. If I could ask you, was your father a Democrat or a 
Republican?
  Mr. JONES. My father was a Democrat.
  Mr. HOKE. Are you a Democrat or a Republican?
  Mr. JONES. I am a Republican.
  Mr. HOKE. So not only are you not a Democrat like your father, but 
you are also telling him you want to have terms limits. Were you a 
Democrat in the North Carolina House?
  Mr. JONES. Right. I was. I developed the reputation of being the 
foremost advocate of reform in the North Carolina General Assembly, 
which I am very proud that I earned that reputation.
  But I will tell you this, since you asked me about my father. He did 
know, and we talked about it before he became ill and he eventually 
died, that I would be changing my party affiliation. He stated he 
supported that decision and would state that publicly, but obviously he 
did not live long enough.
  I listened to the people, and in our contract we listened to the 
people. Every issue we have talked about tonight, every issue, came 
from the fact that when we developed this contract, we listened to the 
people of America. These 10 bills in this contract is what the people 
of America want to see pass in the U.S. House of Representatives, and 
hopefully the U.S. Senate.
  But I will tell you in the area of term limits, this is one of the 
utmost issues that the American people, every poll that I have seen, a 
minimum of 65 percent of the people in America say they want term 
limits, and quite frankly, as high as 75 percent say they want term 
limits.
  We look at Tom Foley, the former Speaker of the House, and his people 
in his State wanted term limits. And he took his people to court, and I 
am glad he did, because we have a fine representative from Washington 
there.
  But my point is so many States already, 22 I believe on their own, 
have passed term limits. The people of America want this Congress to 
give them the privilege to act on term limits. We know and you know 
that we need 290 votes on this House floor. Right now the best that we 
can figure that we have is 228. So if there are any citizens throughout 
America watching this tonight, I hope they will call their Congress 
person if they feel strong that they, the people, would like to have 
the vote on term limits.
                              {time}  2050

  Quite frankly, we have three bills, two that have been filed, one is 
three terms, that is 2 years times three, 6 years, a 6-year term. The 
other is a 12-year term. That has been introduced, I believe, by the 
gentleman from Florida, [Mr. McCollum]. He believes that it should 
parallel with the Senate, that would have two terms, 6 years each, 12 
years. Then I believe that the gentlewoman from Florida, [Mrs. Fowler] 
will be offering an amendment on the floor that will speak to 8 years, 
four terms, four times two.
  So we are going to have a choice. I just hope that we will give the 
people of the United States the same choice that we have here on the 
floor. And I hope, again, we think we have 228 people that have signed 
on or signed the pledge on the Republican side and the Democratic side. 
I hope we can get the 290 and get some form of term limits to the 
people.
  Mr. HOKE. As a strong proponent and supporter and agitator for term 
limits for a long time, I think you are right on the money when you 
suggest that people ought to call their Representatives and lobby and 
make known their feelings about this issue. Because I am absolutely 
convinced that term limits, the combination of term limits, which will 
truly reform this institution, as well as the balanced budget 
amendment, which will reform the way that we spend money, that those 
two things form the cornerstones of making our Government completely 
and truly representative once more, of the American people.
  [[Page H1045]] Mr. JONES. Absolutely. If I could add this, because I 
think it is of interest, according to Stephen Moore of the Cato 
Institute, if term limits had been in effect in recent years, the 
balanced budget amendment would have passed in 1990. The Clinton and 
Bush tax increases would have failed. The Penny-Kasich spending cuts 
would have passed and the congressional pay raise of 1989 and 1992 
would have been defeated. What happens is that we have a system that 
continues to perpetuate itself, perpetuate itself because it is based 
on seniority. And we both know that obviously an incumbent has an 
advantage, particularly when it comes to raising money. And I, quite 
frankly, think that if we give the people the opportunity to vote on 
term limits, we will have a better system that will be the system that 
the people of America want.
  Obviously, if we give them the opportunity to vote and they do not 
pass in enough States to change the Constitution, then obviously the 
people have had the chance to speak on this issue. I think that is what 
the people want.
  Mr. HOKE. I think you are absolutely right. I would actually urge 
people not to lose sight on this, especially people who generally are 
very happy with what is happening with the Contract With America, who 
feel really good about the direction that the Congress is going in. 
Some of those people who have moved this polling that says that 
Republicans are breaking down legislative gridlock and that the 
Republicans are bringing integrity and honor and confidence back to 
this institution, for Heaven's sake, it strikes me, do not get fooled 
into thinking that, therefore, we should not have term limits. It is 
essential to the viability of this institution and to the vitality of 
it going on.
  I will tell you, I have got another bill that I have been very 
excited about with respect to term limits that actually changes the 
length of the term from 2 years to 4 years and then limits it to three 
4-year terms. I believe strongly, as I have for a long time, that the 
2-year term, while clearly was introduced for specific reasons by our 
Founding Fathers, is outmoded in the 20th century and that, 
unfortunately, what it means is that we are only working 50 percent of 
the time, because essentially we are legislating for a year and then 
become more and more distracted with campaigns in the second year.
  And that distraction is not just because the legislator wants it to 
be and is motivated to do that, but, in fact, that is when the sniping 
begins and when all of the negative stuff starts with respect to 
somebody trying to take your seat, and it really becomes a tremendous 
distraction.
  Mr. JONES. May I ask when the gentleman filed the bill? I just heard 
about it today, and I thought it was a very exciting idea.
  Mr. HOKE. The other thing is, if you look at the other legislatures 
around the world, the shortest one is 4 years in Western Europe. I 
think New Zealand might have 3 years, but most are 4- and 5-year terms. 
I think I like the idea of the symmetry with the Senate, and I think 
that it is very important toward moving toward becoming a citizen 
legislature.
  Mr. JONES. If I might add to this, because I think the people that 
might be watching tonight need to know that probably the term limit 
issue will be debated in the committees probably in March, sometime in 
March. And they really, as you said yourself, people need to really let 
their elected Congress person know exactly how they feel on this issue.
  Mr. HOKE. And in Ohio where we passed a law that would limit Members 
of Congress to four 2-year terms that I supported and I campaigned for 
and I voted for, I will have the opportunity to vote on the amendment 
of the gentlewoman From Florida [Mrs. Fowler] with the four 2-year 
terms.
  I think that you are right on the money when you say that people 
ought to really work hard on this, because it is critical to the 
citizen legislature that we all envision.
  I would say one other thing, and that is that we often, we hear the 
phrase that power corrupts. And there is no question about it. Power 
does corrupt. But what I would suggest to you is that power corrupts 
relatively slowly and that the problem that we had with the fact that 
one party was in control for 40 years did not come about, we did not 
have a problem in the first 10 years or the first even 15 years 
necessarily, but the arrogance and the occupation that became endemic 
to this institution really began in the 1980's and continued through. 
And it seems to me that we cannot get lulled into thinking that anybody 
has--that there is some sort of a corner that one party has on purity 
or righteousness. The problem is when one party is in control for far 
too long.
  Now, do not misunderstand me. There are philosophical differences 
that are very, very fundamental and basic to the way that the Democrats 
view the world and the way that Republicans do. And I think it is fair 
to say that Democrats have a great deal of confidence in the 
Government's ability to fix things, and Republicans have little 
confidence in that and a great deal of confidence in the ability of 
individuals and families and private institutions to fix things.
  But I think it is also fair to say that I, for one, do not believe 
for a minute that any group that has power for 40 years straight is 
going to stay lily white. And I think that that is a problem that we 
have to address.
  Was there anything you wanted to add to that?
  Mr. JONES. Just one other point. Did we, in our reform package as it 
related to the rules, did we put a number of terms that a person could 
as chairman? I think it is important to remind the people that we have 
done this, 6 years, and also the Speaker, four terms, 8 years; is that 
correct?
  Mr. HOKE. That is correct, yes. We have done that. We have limited 
the terms of committee chairs and of the speaker, and we did that 
because we could do that in our own rules package. We actually did that 
in terms of ranking Members in 1992 at, frankly, the insistence of my 
class, which I feel very proud of.
  Mr. JONES. Congratulations to your class.
  Mr. HOKE. I really thank the gentleman from North Carolina, and I 
thank the gentlemen from Ohio and from Georgia for participating.
  It has been a pleasure doing this with you. I think it has been very 
helpful to me to have your input. I really appreciate it. So I just 
want to say that.
  I want to close by saying this, let us review the bidding on what we 
have done and where we are at with this Contract. On the first day of 
Congress--I want to review the bidding with respect to the notion that 
somehow this is the Republican Contract With America, because the truth 
is that this is not. This is an American Contract, and every single 
thing that we have done on this floor has gotten bipartisan support.
  Let us review, on the very first day of the Congress, every single 
vote to reform the rules of the House received Democrat support, 
sometimes by as many as 203 Democrats, practically their entire caucus.
                              {time}  2100

  When we passed the congressional accountability law, a total of 171 
Democrats supported our bill, 171 out of about 200 Democrats supported 
the bill. When we passed the Balanced Budget Amendment, 72 Democrats 
broke with their leadership to do the right thing. When we passed the 
unfunded mandates bill, another 130 Democrats sided with Republicans to 
give the American people what they wanted.
  Given the degree of bipartisan support that our Contract has 
received, the American people may well wonder why it has taken so many 
years to get these badly needed reforms passed, and the answer is very 
simple. For years the way too liberal, way too powerful, way out of 
touch leadership of this Congress, of the Democrat party, throttled 
these bills and kept them from the floor, from even being considered.
  In their power and in their arrogance, the Democrat leaders not only 
ignored the wishes of their own party, but more importantly, they 
forgot about the needs of the American people. We have not, and we are 
not going to. This is a Contract With America, it is a Contract For 
America, and it has finally given America the government that it wants 
and it needs.
  Mr. Speaker, this Contract is right on target. This Contract is right 
on track.




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