[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 31 (Thursday, February 16, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H1897-H1903]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE 104TH CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 1995, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Scarborough] is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Mr. Speaker, it is certainly exciting to see what 
has been happening in this town since January 4. It seems for the past 
40 or so years we have had an institution in Congress that was not 
responsive to the needs of Americans across the country; that did not 
seem to care about what was going on in the lives of middle class 
Americans, from Maine to California, from Florida to Washington State. 
In fact, things had gotten so bad that just a few months back only 18 
percent of Americans thought Congress was doing a good job.
  Today, only a month and a half after the 104th Congress convened on 
January 4th, almost 50 percent of Americans now believe Congress is 
doing a good job and we are on the right track. And for good reason. 
Look what has happened.
  Of course, there are things we have not addressed yet. There are 
problems we have not had time to work out. But let us look at what we 
have done in just a few short weeks.
  We have undertaken real institutional reform, reform that all 
Americans are in favor of, even the most simple basic reform that 
Congresses in the past have ignored. They have not listened to what 
Americans have wanted.
  We started with the Shays Act. The first day it was passed, and it is 
an act that makes Congress abide by the same rules and regulations that 
they force on individuals, on families, on businesses, on States, on 
the rest of America. I cannot tell you how many times I heard people 
across my district and across the country pound their fist into their 
hands, angry, saying why can they pass laws, and then conveniently 
exempt themselves from it? What makes Congress and the Members of 
Congress feel so arrogant that they somehow believe that they are above 
the law? Why does Congress not do what the overwhelming majority of the 
American people want them to do. Is this not a representative 
democracy?
  [[Page H1898]] Well, the 104th Congress answered the call quickly, 
and before we were out the first day, we passed the Shays Act, which 
pushed forward a very simple proposition, and that is Congress abides 
by the same laws that the rest of us have to abide by. That was a great 
first day.
  But if that was the only thing we had done the first day, it would 
have been an unqualified success. But we went further. We also cut 
staff by one-third. Committee staff was cut by one-third. And we did 
more than that. We cut congressional staff. Members now were restricted 
by the number of staff they had working in their offices and back in 
their individual districts.
  We have recently passed regulations that will cut franking by one-
third. It is a reform that Americans have called for, for years, and it 
is a reform that the 104th Congress answered.
  We also finally put term limits on committee chairmen. So many people 
were disgusted with what they saw in the last few Congresses, by the 
power amassed by the Dan Rostenkowskis of the House, and the people 
said enough is enough. And once again the 104th Congress answered the 
people's call and put term limits on committee chairmanships.
  But they went a step further. They even put term limits on the 
Speaker of the House, something that is absolutely unprecedented.
  You hear so much from the other side of the aisle, trying to build up 
these monsters and trying to vilify Members of the 104th Congress. Some 
have even suggested that our Speaker is setting up this strong Sam 
Rayburn style speakership, as if he is power hungry. The fact of the 
matter is Sam Rayburn would have never agreed to put term limits on 
himself. We have leadership that is moving forward, we have got Members 
on both sides of the aisle that are moving forward toward institutional 
reform. And I for one say it is about time.
  I know, because this time last year, I was not a Congressman, I was 
not a State senator, I was not in the State legislature, I was not a 
county commissioner or a city councilman. I was a citizen. I was a 
citizen who decided I was sick and tired of what was going on in 
Washington, DC, and I wanted to be part of a real and dramatic change.
  As the election returns came in November 8, 1994, it became clear to 
every body across the country that there were a lot of citizens like 
myself that had gotten off the couch. They did not have special 
interests behind them; they did not have power brokers behind them; 
they did not have powerful party leadership behind them. They only had 
simple ideas behind them. They only had reform on their side. And in 
1994 when all Americans got up off the couch and said enough is enough, 
the ideals that we put forward in our campaign was enough. People 
called for reform, we got elected, we came to this Congress, and we 
have put forward great reform.
  We also passed a limitation on tax increases. We have to have a 
three-fifths supermajority now to pass any tax increases on middle 
class citizens across this country. Let me tell you something: That is 
incredibly important, when you consider that in 1993 the 103d Congress 
ignored their constituents and ignored Americans from coast to coast 
and passed the largest tax increase in the history of this country by 
one vote.
  We now require a supermajority, and because of it, the taxpayers have 
received what I call a taxpayer protection plan, to make sure that 
Congress stops stealing money from citizens across the country to feed 
their own special interest pork-barrel projects. And that was a great 
step forward, when you consider that the average American spends 50 
percent of his or her time working to pay off taxes, fees and 
regulations imposed on them by Government.
  Think about that. When you go to work on Monday morning, you are 
going to work for the Government to pay off taxes, fees and 
regulations. When you go to work Tuesday morning, you are still working 
for the Government.
                              {time}  1530

  When you go to work Wednesday morning, you are still working to pay 
off taxes, fees and regulations put on you by the Government. It is not 
until you come back from lunch on Wednesday afternoon that you actually 
start putting money into your own pocket, into your own savings account 
for what you need to get by.
  Let's put it another way. None of us will be working for ourselves 
until July 1. We will be working to pay off taxes, fees and regulation 
put on us by the Government until July 1. That means we all have more 
months to work to pay off taxes, fees and regulations put on us by the 
Government. Before we are able to put aside 1 cent for ourselves, 
before we are able to put aside money to pay off our cars, or to pay 
off our mortgage, or to put money aside for our children's educational 
plans or, heaven forbid, until we can put aside any money for 
retirement.
  Our tax system is a system that punishes productivity. It is a system 
that tells individuals and businesses and families, ``The harder you 
work, the more you're going to be punished.''
  We finally put in a taxpayers' protection plan. Our leader now is 
talking about a flat tax that will tax all Americans evenly and fairly 
at the same percentage rate to make sure that you are not punished, 
that you do not pay at a higher percentage if you dare to be 
productive, if you dare to invest, if you dare to do things that this 
country was founded upon.
  We are finally moving toward encouraging hard work and productivity 
and personal sacrifice. I say it is about time, and I am honored to be 
a part of that process. Again, it is something that we have already 
passed in this 104th Congress.
  We passed a line-item veto. That is something that President Ronald 
Reagan had been calling for for years. That is semething that the 
American people have been calling for for years. Look at the polls in 
the USA Today and in Time and Newsweek and these other magazines. They 
all say an overwhelming majority of Americans have supported a line-
item veto so the President can look through these huge budgets filled 
with pork and be responsible and cut out line items of wasteful 
spending. It is about time.
  Again, it is something Americans have wanted this Congress to do for 
a long time, and yet it is something that was ignored until the 104th 
Congress came to town and we have passed it.
  Some people have said, ``Well, a line-item veto is great, I was for 
it when Ronald Reagan was President, I was for it when George Bush was 
President. But now that Bill Clinton is President, I don't know if I'm 
for the line-item veto anymore or not.''
  Let me tell you something. It does not matter who the President is. 
It finally brings accountability to the process.
  For too long we have had people on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue 
pointing at each other. We have had people from the White House blaming 
the Congress, saying, ``Hey, they've never sent us a balanced budget.'' 
The same thing was argued the other way around.
  Finally the buck stops at the White House, and we have something in 
place where the President will finally not be able to blame Congress or 
blame anybody else if these pork-barrel projects go through. He simply 
takes out his pen, lines through the appropriation, and we have 
accountability in the budget process, and we have it because the 104th 
Congress also passed it.
  We have a balanced budget amendment that is passed from this House 
and is now over in the Senate. That is another thing that Americans 
have been for for years and another thing that Congress has ignored.
  I have got to tell you when you start lining up all these things that 
Americans have been for and you start realizing that Congresses in the 
years past have covered their ears and shut their eyes and pretended 
that Americans did not count, that they were above the law, that they 
were above public opinion, that they were above being in a 
representative democracy, a constitutional republic, you can now see 
why the revolution took place.
  People demanded accountability. Republicans and Democrats and 
Independents demanded accountability. The Republican Party has come to 
town and with the help of people on both sides of the aisle and 
Independents across the country, we have passed these reforms 
[[Page H1899]] through. But this is not simply a Republican revolution.
  In my district, 60 percent of the people who voted in the 1994 
election were Democrats. Sixty percent. I am a Republican. Yet I 
received 62 percent of the total vote. That is overwhelming. It is 
overwhelming because it shows that the issues that unite Americans are 
not about whether you are Republican or Democrat or conservative or 
liberal or independent. It is about accountability. It is about 
listening to Americans and voting your conscience and voting the way 
Americans want you to vote, the way that our Founding Fathers wanted us 
to vote. We have done it. We did it today on H.R. 7. We have taken a 
crucial step forward in once again making our shores safe and our 
military strong.
  There is no doubt we have had the strongest military in the history 
of the world. But unfortunately we have continued cutbacks. Many 
believe now that we are close to having a hollow force. Beyond that, 
there has been another danger. There has been a danger of shifting 
control from U.S. military men and women, from our generals and 
admirals and our Commander in Chief to the U.N.
  Just think about it. Think about the fact that we have men and women 
who may go into combat, and when they go into combat, they will not be 
fighting under American generals or American admirals.
  Is there a problem with having them under the U.N. flag? Is there a 
problem with our service men and women serving under foreign leaders? 
Yeah, there is.
  Our troops fight to protect and defend the Constitution of the United 
States of America. There is a real problem when the Constitution is 
bypassed in military exercises. I want to point out what happened in 
Haiti a few months back.
  We had a President who wanted to push for an invasion of Haiti, but 
he could not get it passed through Congress. He could not garner the 
sufficient support in this constitutionally elected body to have 
support to send men and women, mothers and fathers to Haiti into a 
conflict where they could die.
  Our Founding Fathers knew how important it was that our President 
could not sent Americans into war without approval of this Congress. 
But what did the President of the United States do when he could not do 
it through constitutional channels, through the Congress? He went to 
the United Nations. There is a real problem with that as far as I am 
concerned. It usurps essential powers that were given to this Congress 
over 200 years ago by the Founders of this great Republic.
  You need to go through a democratically elected body if you are going 
to put Americans' lives at risk. H.R. 7 finally steps up to the plate 
and puts an end to some of this madness. It is a first step down a road 
where we will finally consolidate power where it needs to be, and, that 
is, with American generals, admirals and our Commander in Chief.
  But there is more than the U.N. We have the Mexico problem. It does 
not matter where you stand on Mexico, you have got to look and see what 
the President did, and it has to cause you a great deal of concern. 
Because just like in Haiti, when he could not get approval in Congress, 
he wanted to push this Mexican bailout plan, this loan guarantee. He 
said he was going to get it approved in Congress. He could not get it 
approved in Congress, so what did he do? He bypassed Congress again, as 
if we do not matter, as if the 250 million or so Americans that this 
institution represents are somehow irrelevant. Instead he turned and 
used a fund that was set up to keep the dollar strong across the world.

                              {time}  1540

  But he did not use it for the dollar. He used it to prop up the peso. 
It certainly violated the spirit, if not the actual letter of the law, 
and I would encourage the President of the United States to read his 
Constitution and once again bring these matters to an elected body so 
they can be debated and discussed the way they need to, before they are 
implemented.
  H.R. 7 also helps answer a big lie that has been spread, and let me 
tell you what the big lie is. The big lie has been spread over the past 
5 years that somehow this country is safer today than it was before the 
collapse of the Soviet empire. Even though it sounds great, even though 
we hear about the demise of the Evil Empire and that somehow is 
supposed to make us feel that we are in a safer world today, the facts 
point out something very different.
  The fact of the matter is there are still nuclear missiles in Russia, 
they are still pointed our way, but there is a big difference between 
now and 5 years ago. Now we have madmen like Zhirinovsky, a neo-Nazi 
ascending to power in the former Soviet Union. He is a man who is so 
unstable that he threatened to nuke Germany after he ascended to power 
because they would not let him in their country.
  We have got economic and political and military and social chaos in 
the Soviet Union, the former Soviet Union. We cannot afford to let down 
our defenses because Boris Yeltsin may be in power today, but all 
indications show that a very powerful totalitarian force could easily 
overtake the former Soviet Union again and launch us into another cold 
war.
  It is constitutionally our first responsibility as a Government, as a 
Federal Government, to protect the men and women and children in this 
country from foreign attack. And that is what H.R. 7 does.
  Another fact that concerns all of us, or should concern all of us, is 
the growth of China. In the 1980's, China was the second fastest 
growing economy in all of Asia, a region that is booming economically. 
In fact, last year China's economic growth grew at a staggering 19-
percent clip, and make no mistake of it, China is using this new-found 
economic prowess to develop, build, and export weapons technology to 
Third World countries. We have got to keep our guard up.
  And we have got to keep our guard up because a recent Foreign Affairs 
article, which I do not subscribe to everything I read in Foreign 
Affairs, that is for sure, but a recent Foreign Affairs article stated 
that in 5 years over 20 countries are going to have intermediate 
missile range capability, and they are not going to be the select 
nuclear club that we used to have: the United States, England, France, 
China, India; it is going to expand and all of a sudden we might find 5 
years down the road that people like Saddam Hussein and Qadhafi and our 
North Korean leaders will have this weapons technology and the ability 
to launch those weapons across continents.
  Let me tell you something. The world is more dangerous today than it 
was 5 years ago, and anybody who tells you anything different is either 
ignorant of the facts that are out there to be read and studied or else 
they are glossing over the truth for their own political reasons.
  We live in a dangerous world, and H.R. 7 was the first step to answer 
the call of all Americans across this country who said do not let our 
forces become hallow like they were in the late 1970's.
  We are rebuilding this country because our children's lives are at 
stake. We have welfare reform
 coming up, something that all Americans or a majority of Americans 
have supported for a long time. And more importantly, we are not only 
talking about these basic reforms in the Contract With America, we are 
talking about moving beyond those reforms and restructuring the way 
this government works.

  But I want to ask before we talk about our next step, let us examine 
what we have done in 50 days. Let me read through this again because it 
is absolutely incredible. In 50 days or less we have made Congress 
accountable by making them abide by the same laws that all Americans 
have to abide by. We have cut committee staff by one-third. We have cut 
congressional staff. We have cut franking by one-third. We have put 
term limits on committee chairmen, we have put term limits on the 
Speaker of the House. Actually the Speaker put term limits on himself 
and adopted that.
  We have passed three-fifths tax limitation. I call it the taxpayer 
protection plan. I do not care what you call it; what it does is it 
guarantees this Federal Government is not going to be reaching in your 
pocket for the next 2 years, and when we pass the rest of the three-
fifths balanced budget amendment next year we will be protected for 
years to come.
  [[Page H1900]] We have passed line-item veto, we have passed a 
balanced budget amendment, and we have passed H.R. 7, an act that will 
once again keep our military strong and guarantee us that we will be 
able to answer the challenges that are facing us in this extremely 
dangerous world.
  This past week Members of the freshman class stepped forward, some 
have called us new Federalists and they have called us new Federalists 
because we have read the Federalist Papers. We have read the writings 
of James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay and other Founding 
Fathers, and we are committed to return this government to be the type 
of government our Founding Fathers intended it to be.
  I am moved by the words of James Madison who over 200 years ago as he 
was framing this Constitution wrote, ``We have staked the entire future 
of the American civilization not upon the power of government.'' Did 
you hear that? ``We have staked the entire future of American 
civilization not upon the power of government, but upon the capacity of 
each of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, and sustain 
ourselves, according to the Ten Commandments of God.'' That was James 
Madison, a man who helped frame the Constitution. And it was Thomas 
Jefferson who wrote the government that governs least governs best.
  And our own tenth amendment, our own tenth amendment, the poor, 
forgotten tenth amendment says all powers not specifically given to the 
Federal Government are reserved to the States and to the people. Think 
about that. Read through your Constitution, I urge all of you. I carry 
a Constitution. Get a hand copy of the Constitution. If you do not have 
it call my office, again Congressman Joe Scarborough. We will get you a 
copy of the Constitution. Read through it and read the 10th amendment 
and circle it and look through that Constitution and see what the 
Federal power is empowered to do and what it is not empowered to do. 
And if you force your representative to live by the words of the 10th 
amendment, to live by the constraints of the 10th amendment, then this 
Federal Government will once again be accountable.
  We have started down that path. We need to continue. We need to be 
constitutionally accountable, and that is what the new Federalists, 
that is what freshmen reformers have been intending to do this past 
week when we announced bold proposals to move this Congress forward 
towards a 10th amendment vision.
  I would like to recognize for a few minutes a man who helped lead a 
very critical portion of the new Federalists agenda, and that is the 
Honorable Sam Brownback from Kansas. Sam.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman yielding to me 
for a moment. I would just like to talk to Members, the Chamber and 
those listening about what we did this past week. It was on Wednesday 
we came forward with a proposal announcing task forces that would 
develop the proposals to eliminate 4 Cabinet-level agencies, the 
agencies of Commerce, Education, Energy, and HUD.
                              {time}  1550

  And the proposals are that we would look at these agencies and we 
would ask the questions: Do they perform essential functions? And if 
not, can they be eliminated? Can we get many of these solutions and 
these issues back to the people? Can we give these things back to the 
people, back to local units of government? Can we consolidate some of 
these functions? Can we eliminate others? And getting back to what the 
Founding Fathers had envisioned for our Nation.
  It is interesting to me to note Alice Rivlin, the current Director of 
the Office of Management and Budget, in a 1992 book, said she does not 
think the Federal Government ought to be involved in education. It 
should not be involved in economic development. It should not be 
involved in some of these centralized planning functions that are 
taking place. And that is what we are talking about here.
  You know, most of these Cabinet agencies, three of the four, were 
created since 1965. Housing and Urban Development was created in 1965. 
Energy and Education were created in the late 1970's. They were created 
at a time when we had a crisis. In the urban areas in the mid-1960's, 
we had a crisis in urban America.
  What was our solution in that time period? Our solution was let us 
build a government bureaucracy. We built one. In the late 1970's we 
said we have a crisis in energy. What is the solution? Let us build a 
government bureaucracy. We have a crisis in education. What was the 
solution? Let us build a government bureaucracy.
  So we focused centrally in Washington for all the solutions to these 
problems, and we put our energy and our focus and our efforts and 
intensity here when the problem was out there, and our urban cities 
were decaying in New York and in Washington, DC, as the city, not the 
capital, and in Los Angeles and in our classrooms is where the problem 
was. It was not we needed more bureaucracy. It is we needed more help 
in the classroom, and we needed to liberate and free people.
  In housing areas, the problem was not the need for a centralized 
planning agency. The need was for more housing in communities and to 
free people up to be able to deal with the problems they had in their 
communities.
  We say these experiments have not worked, that centralized planning, 
whether in the former Soviet Union or in the United States of America, 
does not work in a large, diverse nation like the United States.
  We think that these agencies, that four things will guide our 
purposes in developing the proposals to eliminate these four agencies. 
No. 1 will be to privatize. Wherever we can privatize functions and get 
them out to the private sector, we will do that in the efficiency of 
the private sector.
  Second will be localize. Anytime we can send these issues to the 
States or local units of government to handle, closer to the people, 
closer to the people, that is what we will do.
  We will consolidate. Where two agencies grew that we will have one in 
the future so we can consolidate a number of these functions and that 
we can eliminate whatever functions are outmoded, outdated, or 
antiquated, that those would be eliminated.
  So at the end of the day that we empower people, we empower 
communities, we empower the States to be able to really deal with these 
issues, and we think that is where actual solutions will occur. That is 
where homes are built. They are built across this Nation. They are not 
built in bureaucracies in Washington. Kids are taught in classrooms 
across this Nation. They are not taught in a bureaucracy in Washington. 
Energy is dealt with in the marketplace and by individual decisions, by 
250 million Americans. They are not dealt with by a bureaucracy in 
Washington.
  We will free and liberate people. We will be realigning the 
relationship of the Federal Government to the people, and it will be a 
very powerful thing for growth and for actually dealing with our 
problems, for actually accomplishing solutions to our problems, and it 
is desperately needed.
  You quote one of the early Federalists. I quote Thomas Jefferson. 
Thomas Jefferson was quoted a saying that moments for great innovation 
in history are few and far between. We stand at one of those moments of 
great innovation in the history of this country, of the ability to 
realign the relationship of the Federal Government to the people, of 
making the Federal Government the servant once again and not the master 
of the people. We are supposed to be able to help and encourage, not to 
direct, command, and control, and that is what we seek to do, and we 
will
 be a better country, and we will be a growth country. It will be a 
better society. It will be a government for the people, not commander 
of the people. And that is what we seek to do. We will be developing 
our plans and proposals, bringing those out sometime in the springtime.

  I would encourage the American people to contact their Congressmen if 
they are interested and encouraged about that. It has been interesting 
to me, the early feedback we have received has not been you cannot do 
that; it has been, ``Well, would you look at the other agencies? What 
about the Department of Labor? What about some of the other agencies?'' 
I think that is very encouraging to open the floodgate of ideas and 
liberation for the people in this country and get the Federal 
Government back to its core 
[[Page H1901]] functions that it should do rather than all the far-
flung areas.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. You mentioned something very interesting. You kept 
talking about these different agencies and you kept saying it does not 
work. I never heard you say it is about ideology or some right-wing 
radical philosophy. I did not hear that at all.
  It reminds me of when I wanted to get involved with this. It was not 
about any deep-seated philosophy or any philosophical ax I had to 
grind. It was about what works and what does not work.
  I have got a 7-year-old boy that is in public schools, and I am very 
concerned about what type of educational system he is going to be 
growing up in. You look at the statistics of what has happened since 
the Department of Education was established in 1979, and every single 
statistic points to a decay in educational standards across this 
country. The Department of Education has been an absolute and total 
abject failure.
  You know, they only provide 8 percent of funding to local schools, 
and yet they dump on them 55 percent of their paperwork. And people 
talk about, well, what is the problem with having this bureaucracy; 
gee, it is a great symbolic gesture. It is robbing money from my child, 
from your children, and from children all across the country.
  A perfect example I read on the front of USA Today about a week ago 
the Department of Education has cut funding by $100 million for the 
upkeep of public schools to make them safe across the country, by $100 
million, and yet at the same time, they are increasing funding on their 
own infrastructure, their own bureaucracy down the road by $20 million.
  So let us get this straight, they take your money and my money and 
our constituent's money, tax money, they send it up to Washington, they 
put a brokerage fee on it. Of course, everybody takes their little 
chunk of the pie out of the brokerage fee, and then they claim to send 
it back to the States.
  But now it has gotten so bad they say, ``We are not even sending the 
$100 million to the States for upkeep of schools to make them safe. 
Instead, we are cutting that out, and we are going to spend $20 million 
of those dollars fixing up our bureaucracy in Washington, DC.''
  Now, that is a sham. That does not work, and it is about what does 
not work.
  You know, Peggy Noonan, who was Ronald Reagan's speech writer, talked 
about an encounter she had with the President in the early seventies 
when he was then Governor of California, and she asked the President, 
she said, ``How could you be a conservative?'' because she had just 
gotten out of college, and she was a liberal. I do not know if you 
would call Peggy Noonan a hippie. I do not know if she is ever capable 
of being a hippie. Peggy Noonan said, ``Mr. Reagan, how can you be a 
conservative? Why aren't you a liberal?'' And Ronald Reagan said, 
``Because it doesn't work.'' And that is the truth. It does not work.
  This is not about ideology. It is about what works.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. If the gentleman will yield further, and that is 
absolutely what it is. It is not about the ideology or the left or 
right or center or the middle or whatever the case might be. What this 
is about is what has failed.
  I do not think that we can stand here and at all say to the American 
people, ``Look, we have not tried this. We have not tried centralized 
planning from Washington on these areas.'' We have. We have tried it up 
to 30 years in HUD. We tried it for 15 years in these other agencies. 
It has not worked. It does not work.
  The American people want to be liberated, and I will tell you what 
will happen when that does occur. If we say, as far as the Department 
of Housing and Urban Development, look, we are not going to do this in 
Washington anymore. We have got some funds we are going to block grant 
to the States, local units of government. We want it generally used for 
housing, ``but you figure out your problems.'' There will be thousands 
of different solutions that will come forward because we have millions 
of different people and thousands of different ideas and how we solve 
it; Topeka, KS, is different than they solve it in New York City or 
Austin, TX. It is just we are different people in a different nation, a 
diverse nation, and will come up with different solutions, because one 
size does not fit all in America, and the same will work in education. 
People were saying, well, if we do not have somebody in Washington 
looking out for our children, well, what is going to happen to them in 
education. I think what will happen to them in education is things will 
get better, because parents care more for their children than somebody 
running a government agency does, and people on a local school board 
know those families much more than somebody working in a government 
office building in Washington.
  One final point, and then I will yield back the rest of the time.
                              {time}  1600

  The final point is that there are a number of good people that work 
in government, and that is what Jack Kemp said at our press conference, 
who was the former Secretary of HUD, who is also on board in supporting 
us. We have former cabinet secretaries of all these agencies working 
with us to dismantle all these agencies. They run them. They know they 
do not work.
  Jack was saying, ``Well, these are good people; there's just too many 
of them, and we shouldn't be doing this. It should be happening out in 
the communities and the individuals,'' and that is what we are about, 
having people doing these things to where the answers really occur and 
not just command and control out of Washington.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. You know, again you talked about Jack Kemp and 
saying that they are good people. I have been asked the question of 
what is going to happen to all these good workers, especially in the 
education field because that is what I do. That is a task force I am 
heading up, the education task force.
  I was also struck by Jack Kemp's comments, and I thought, and again 
getting back to the fact this is not ideological, this is not a battle 
over ideology. It is a battle over what works and what does not work.
  Well, Mr. Kemp's comments remind me of the Alice Rivlin book you 
cite, and I read the book and I know you have, and I certainly hope the 
President of the United States reads Ms. Rivlin's book and follows her 
suggestions because they are great suggestions. But Ms. Rivlin talked 
about the drain, the talent drain, the brain drain, that this huge 
bureaucracy has caused, that from 1932 to 1980, when we had this 
explosion of growth in the government, not only does that suck up all 
the money across the country to Washington, it also sucked up all the 
talent we have, extremely talented people working in Washington, DC.
  So what happens when we downsize these agencies, when we do away with 
these bureaucracies that are preventing them even from showing their 
true talents, stifling them, that are handcuffing them? What happens? 
They go home, and they enrich their communities, and they enrich the 
neighborhoods from whence they came. Washington, DC, does not need 
another bureaucrat, but that bureaucrat in Washington, DC will be a 
productive member of the community, and that is something Alice Rivlin 
wrote about in her book. She said, ``So much of the talent is now 
concentrated in Washington, we need to spread it across the country, 
just like we need to spread the money back across the country and send 
it back to the people, send it back to the communities, because our 
Founding Fathers intended us to be a Nation of communities and not a 
Nation of bureaucracies.''
  And I am just struck. Let us talk about some of the people briefly 
that are supporting this. The gentleman mentioned Jack Kemp. We have 
mentioned Alice Rivlin. I know Leon Panetta once endorsed abolishing 
some of these agencies.
  Who are some of the others?
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Secretary Mossbacher that used to run the Department 
of Commerce was there at the press conference endorsing this. Don 
Hodel, who used to run the Department of Energy I talked to today is 
strongly supporting us. Henson Moore that used to be the secretary in 
command at the Department on Energy, I visited with him today and 
working with him on this particular project as 
[[Page H1902]] well. Those are people both at HUD and Energy. At 
Education, Dr. Bennett and Lamar Alexander have publicly endorsed doing 
away with the Department of Education as a way we can create better 
education and innovation across the country. They both have publicly 
endorsed this as well in that field.
  So, you have got secretaries in Commerce, in HUD, in Energy, in 
Education, all saying ``Look, folks. We tried it. We tried it hard. We 
tried it with billions and trillions of dollars. Centralized planing in 
the Soviet Union, former Soviet Union or the United States, doesn't 
work. You got to get it back home, and this is the way you do it.''
  And we are just starting, and I hope the American people lean in 
toward this concept and help us move this on forward to get the 
government back out to the people.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. If I could, and I know the gentleman needs to be 
going on, but could you just tell me if your experience coming to 
Washington, DC was the same as mine because I know we were both 
citizens and removed from this process, but were you not filled with 
the sense of awe when you came up here and saw freshmen, and 
sophomores, and so-called old bulls that all want to move in this 
direction of reform and bringing power back to the States? I never in a 
million years expected to find so many allies in
 this cause to downsize the Federal Government, and it just amazes me 
that we have done more in 50 days than the past Congresses have been 
able to do in the past 50 years as far as institutional reform, and I 
yield to the gentleman.

  Mr. BROWNBACK. That is obviously the case, and that is what I am 
getting as well, and we had at that same press conference the chairman 
of the Committee on Appropriations, the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. 
Livingston], the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, the gentleman 
from Ohio [Mr. Kasich], the chairman of the Committee on Rules, the 
gentleman from New York [Mr. Solomon], all of which acted as if their 
soul was having a chorus of angels singing to it, but they were 
ecstatic that here were people willing to stand up and say, ``Enough is 
enough. We tried it. It doesn't work. It's time to try something 
else.''
  And then they were all saying that, and that is what I continue to 
get from people all across the Government and across the Nation. Look, 
we have tried it, and we have really tried it. It is time to move on, 
and let us try something different that we think really can work and 
can be liberating to the people across the country, and you are seeing 
it take place from this freshman reform group, 73 of us coming in 
strong at this time, many of us elected on the type of agenda I was, 
reduce the Federal Government, reform the Congress, return to the basic 
values that built the country, those being the watch words for us.
  And I cannot help but think the original Federalists are saying, 
``It's about time.''
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. It is about time, and I thank the gentleman from 
Kansas [Mr. Brownback] for his leadership in this area because it is 
long overdue, and I hope this Congress will move forward, and more than 
that I hope that the American people that stood up and said, ``Enough 
is enough,'' on November 8 will continue to take a proactive role and 
say, ``We're not going to sit back anymore; we are going to change this 
Government,'' and they will continue to use whatever means possible, 
whether it is the fax machine, or talk radio, or mail, or e-mail, or 
the town hall meetings that we are all doing. I hope they will continue 
to use that and put external pressure on this institution and their own 
Representative to say enough is enough.
  I yield to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Foley].
  Mr. FOLEY. I wanted to jump in the conversation for a moment because 
you are hitting on, I think, a nerve out in America. What I found when 
I went home, the average citizen, not the political pundit, not the 
editorial writer, the citizen I saw at the south Florida fair came up 
to me and said, ``Keep doing what you're doing. Make Government more 
accountable.'' They had their little children with them, and the 
detailed stories of trying to get information out of the school board 
or trying to call Tallahassee for information about their student's 
performance, their child's performance. It was unavailable.
  So what I am hearing from the citizenry out there:
  It's not about being a Republican or Democrat. It is about being 
American, about making a Government work.
  I served with you both on the restructuring, if you will, of some of 
these agencies; I am on the Energy Committee, the subcommittee, working 
on reform. It is ironic in one of the committees the other day I am 
reading the material about the Energy Department and how they have a 
clean coal study, and this clean coal study is to allow us to use a 
variety of fossil fuels to diversify away from just gas, and oil, 
petroleum, to use coal. Well, clean coal, we are spending millions of 
dollars on technology to make it available and efficient. At the same 
time in my district in Florida Carol Browner, who is at EPA, has 
canceled the program to build a clean coal facility in Okeechobee, so 
you have one agency making rules saying, ``We want to have this 
technology,'' and one agency of the same branch of the Government 
appointed by the same President of the United States and saying, ``No, 
but we don't want to do that.''
  So the dilemma here for all of us as new Representatives, as freshmen 
of the 104th Congress, is to figure out how we break down the 
difficulty that every American faces when they approach Government.
  I did not know this job when I came was about running interference 
for constituents and problems that they were having with agencies 
regarding laws that we have created. That was not the job that I ran 
for, to really be a clerk, if you will, of taking their complaints, and 
running to an agency and saying, ``The law that was passed in the 103d, 
102d, 101st Congress is now having this onerous burden on business, on 
the human race.''
                              {time}  1610

  That is what it has become. So the effort amongst us as freshmen and 
sophomores and all the Members of the 104th Congress is really about 
making Government more efficient.
  I want to make one other comment, because the gentleman from Florida 
[Mr. Scarborough] did such a tremendous job in explaining the issue 
that is so important on national security. I think probably one of the 
most passionate speeches I heard on this floor was Mr. Dellums from 
California, about ideas, about making America work, about making our 
interest, our national interest a priority to this Congress. So I thank 
the gentleman from Florida, because I think he has capsulized what the 
debate on national security was about. That is what we are here for in 
the 104th Congress.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. You bring up Mr. Dellums. You talked about your 
surprises when coming to Congress. I am going to tell you one of my 
surprises coming to Congress. I had campaigned, I am from northwest 
Florida, we believe in a very strong national defense down there, and 
Ron Dellums has been perceived as a super liberal. And somebody during 
the campaign, quite frankly I heard a lot of questions about it. People 
said what is the deal with this Ron Dellums guy? When I came up and 
started talking to people on the Committee on National Security, I 
would be talking about him, and I was amazed that these hawks that were 
always on the opposite side of Ron Dellums it seemed like on every 
issue, spoke in the most glowing terms of Mr. Dellums because he is a 
very articulate speaker, he has very deep convictions, and he says what 
he means.
  That is what I was alluding to before, we can have disagreements on 
issues, we can disagree on the best way to have welfare reform, we can 
have disagreements on what is the best way to protect our shores. As 
long as we keep the debate at the level that Mr. Dellums always keeps 
the debate and other Members on our side of the aisle always keep the 
debate, we will be fine. Because in the end it is not about an 
ideological argument. It is not about who is going to win, whether Bill 
Buckley or Mike Kinsley or whoever is on whatever side of what issue as 
a commentator. They can do that on TV and they can yell at each other 
and get 
[[Page H1903]] high ratings. But we have to hold ourselves to a higher 
standard. We need to be interested in what works.
  Let me tell you, the reforms we have undertaken in the first 50 days 
have worked, and have put this country back on track for the first time 
in a very long time. I am hearing that where I am going, and you have 
alluded to the fact that you are hearing about that where you are 
going. Are all the constituents you talk to, are they all in one accord 
about that?
  Mr. FOLEY. I don't know if they agree philosophically on everything 
we are doing, but they agree there is a serious problem. On welfare, 
they know there is a problem. They know it is not working. They know if 
you spent $5 trillion and the poverty level is higher than it was when 
the war on poverty was enacted, they know there is a significant 
difficulty.
  You were talking about education with the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. 
Brownback]. In Tallahassee, as the gentleman knows, we have a 17-story 
building designed by I.M. Pei, the internationally renowned architect. 
That building is as out of character with the landscape of Tallahassee 
as anything I have seen. It is not about ideas, it is people in that 
building who have never taught a classroom. That is a fundamental 
problem with the Department of Education in our State, that people are 
processing papers about our children. But the results never change for 
our children. The hands-on experience of the classroom will never get 
any better if we run it from our capitals of Tallahassee and 
Washington.
  What I am hearing from people again is the fact that they feel that 
this is the greatest Nation on Earth, but they want to have pride in 
the people they have sent here. They do not want us yelling across the 
aisle and screaming at a Democrat. As Mr. Dellums said, it is about 
ideas. I will challenge you on your ideas, on your convictions, on what 
matters for this Government, but I will not challenge you personally.
  What I am hearing when people call when we have been on C-SPAN and 
have been talking about the very issue of the day, they are delighted 
we are responding to what is their opinion. Mr. Scarborough, as you 
know, we have been accused with the contract of propaganda, of 
Republican streamrolling everybody on ideas.
  The premises of the contract, the 10 points of the contract were 
designed from surveys throughout America of what people were asking 
for, about term limits, about a balanced budget. These are not ideas we 
sat around at Republican party headquarters and thought up ourselves. 
This is the American public saying these are the changes we want. We 
are acting. We are working on an agenda. There is considerable reason 
for disagreement on some of the premises, but we are working in a 
collegial body that makes this body so effective and efficient.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Reclaiming the time, anybody who has seen the 
Department of Education in Tallahassee, as I know you have, knows that 
that is enough of a bureaucracy for our children in the State of 
Florida, and I have got to tell you it is a duplication of services, 
not only in Florida, but all across the country.
  It is the same thing with a lot of other departments. We do not need 
two departments of education to teach our children. We need to free up 
tax dollars for individuals across this country that educate their 
children and once again give them choice and give them freedom to have 
their children taught in the way that they want to have them be taught. 
And if we listen to the ideas of Madison and Jefferson and the Founders 
of this great Republic, and if we once again look at the 10th amendment 
that once again says all powers not specifically given to the Federal 
Government in the Constitution are reserved to States and citizens, if 
we follow that path, we will once again become the type of nation we 
were intended to be, and that is a nation of communities, a nation of 
families, and a nation of individuals who once again take control of 
their own lives and can decide the way they want their community to be 
run, the way they want their family to be protected and taught, and the 
way they want their own life to be run.
  It is a very constitutional premise, and I for one am honored and 
fell very privileged to be part of this process and to be part of the 
104th Congress that actually dares to debate the great issues of the 
day. If we continue to do this, the second 50 days of our 100-day plan, 
and of the next 2 years, then this country will see change like it has 
never seen change before, and citizens across this country, men and 
women, will be empowered, and once again will have confidence in their 
country and believe that their elected leaders came here for a reason, 
and that reason was to serve.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  

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