[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 29 (Tuesday, February 14, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H1745-H1746]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                     REVIEWING REPUBLICAN CONTRACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, we hear a lot about the Contract With 
America, often from Republicans, but often from the other side of the 
aisle as well and most of it is criticism. I do not see a solid 
alternative from them at this point now that we are in our third month 
almost of being in session.
  The contract actually asks for very specific things and attempts to 
address neglected parts of our society and our Government which have 
not been running well in the past 15, 20, or 40 years, however you want 
to count.
  Part of the contract was to pass a balanced budget amendment and 
line-item veto. This has been done. Another part of it was to stop the 
unfunded mandate practice of the Federal Government to require local 
cities and county governments to do certain things but not have us pay 
for it, and they in turn have to turn around and tax their own 
constituents, which is basically a tax increase that we are giving 
people through the back door.
  The other thing we have been trying to and we have had a debate on it 
last week and this week was to put the criminal justice system, to 
focus on the criminal and protect the victim and protect society and 
not treat the criminal like one more special interest group.
  It seems in the course of the debate that many people have been 
saying, oh, you've got to do this for the criminal and you have to look 
out for him and her and their best interests and so forth. We have had 
that. That is what we have got now. It is time to lock people up who 
commit crimes. It is time to give them swift punishment. It is time for 
them to serve an adequate amount of their sentence, preferably 100 
percent of the time but maybe 80 or 90 percent. Currently the average 
criminal serves 35 percent of his or her sentence. As a consequence, 
our police officers are arresting people not for the second or third 
time but for the ninth, 10th, and 11th time. I would hate to be a 
police officer going out on the streets that they are supposed to 
protect and 
[[Page H1746]] face people who you have already arrested 10 or 12 
times. But that is the situation we are in.
  This program also cuts out a lot of Federal bureaucratic jobs. There 
again that is a constituency that some people want to protect but I 
think most people in America want to see a reduction in the 
bureaucracy. The way it does this is give block grants back to the 
States.
  We hear so much about the 100,000 police officers that the 
President's program allegedly handles. But, in fact, for most it only 
pays for 25 percent. After that, the municipality is stuck with the 
cost for these additional police officers.
  What our program says is, ``Look. You may want to put money into the 
police officers but you may need new communications equipment, you may 
need new police cars, and if you do, we want to give you that option, 
because we here in Washington don't have the answer for every 39,000 of 
the cities across America.'' We feel that people on the local level 
know better. We have passed that today.
  It will go to the Senate, it will have further debate, they will 
amend the bill, it will come back to us, as will some of the other 
bills in the Contract With America, but we are working to fulfill our 
commitment with the American people.
  We are going to start next on welfare reform and national security 
prohibiting American soldiers from being under U.N. command.

                              {time}  1825

  Refining our military so that it is not too expensive, not wasting 
money but effective and able to meet the challenges of the world.
  There are a lot of things in our Contract With America, things like 
legal reform, helping senior citizens by letting them stay in the 
workplace longer and not having to penalize them on their Social 
Security. There is also family reinforcement, $500 per child tax 
credit. These things will help make America great again.
  But in addition to this, Mr. Speaker, we are not stopping with the 
contract. We are going into the appropriations process. The President's 
recently introduced budget adds another $1 trillion to a $4.8 trillion 
debt. We cannot afford that. Already the third largest expenditure on 
the national budget is the interest on the national debt. It is about 
$20 billion each and every month, and that is money that is gone 
forever. We need to reduce the deficit so that we do not year after 
year continue to add to the size of the debt.
  I will say quickly it is a Democrat and a Republican problem. It got 
there that way. And I will say that many of the items in the contract, 
as I hope our budget ideas will be worthy of bipartisan support, 
because we need to do this together as Democrats and Republicans so 
that we can represent the best interests of America.


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