[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 61 (Monday, April 3, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H4081]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                              {time}  1845
               BALANCING OUR BUDGETS IN A POSITIVE MANNER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kingston). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Scarborough] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Mr. Speaker, this week as we start talking about the 
very important tax debate and the budget debate, I am looking forward 
to hearing positive discussions on where we move this country over the 
next 5, 10, 15 years, to see if we will finally come to grips with the 
economic uncertainties and try to balance our budgets and at the same 
time try to move forward in a positive manner to make sure we put money 
back into the pockets of middle-class, working Americans who for too 
long had seen their money sucked up in Washington and they see 
absolutely no return for their money.
  Unfortunately, instead of this afternoon of hearing discussions along 
those lines, we have heard that the Republicans have killed school 
lunch programs, we have heard that the Republicans have killed Big 
Bird, we have heard that the Republicans are slashing education 
funding.
  Well, let me tell you something: All three of those facts are simply 
misrepresentations, and they are wrong.
  First of all, you are not cutting spending on a bureaucratic program 
if you spend more money next year than you spent the previous year. 
Take, for instance, funding for school lunch programs. Over the next 4 
years, under the current proposals that passed through this House, we 
will be spending more money on school lunch programs than we spent in 
the previous year. Maybe in Washington there is some sort of new math 
that I do not understand. I am a freshman here. Maybe I am a little 
shrill, I do not know. The fact of the matter is if you spend more 
money next year than you spent last year, in middle-class America, 
where I come from, or in small businesses across the country where I 
worked, that is called a spending increase. Let us reframe the debate 
and let us get serious about it.
  When you come to the floor and talk about killing Big Bird, when the 
fact of the matter is the Republican majority voted against killing Big 
Bird, so to speak, when the Crane amendment was on the floor, then you 
are not killing Big Bird.
  The fact of the matter is it is more Washington-speak, more emotional 
dribble that is supposed to inflame people and get everybody excited 
and aroused in the debate, to give this false impression that we are 
cutting all these spending programs.
  I am humored by calls out there where the question is asked, ``Do you 
believe Republicans are cutting too much?'' Some people are saying 
``yes'' because of the debate we are hearing on the floor. The fact of 
the matter is we have not cut anything yet. We have not gone far 
enough.
  You take educational funding, for instance. We hear talks about how 
we are cold and cruel and going to be cutting education. Well, let me 
tell you something, you can be for children and you can be for 
education without being for a huge Federal educational bureaucracy that 
has wasted money over the past 20 years and provided little, few 
results.
  Take the Department of Education bureaucracy in Washington, for 
instance. It was established in 1979. Most everybody understands that 
it was a payoff from Jimmy Carter to the teachers union, the NEA, to 
have their own Federal bureaucracy up here. But the fact of the matter 
is, if you look at the money that has been poured into that bureaucracy 
over the past 20 years and look at the results, you will see that our 
children are not getting the best bang for the buck. The fact of the 
matter is in the years since the Department of Education bureaucracy 
was established, test scores have gone down, violence in school has 
gone up, drop-out rates have gone up and every other measure by which 
we measure our educational institutions have shot down.
  Let us reframe the debate and say it this way: Because I care for 
children, because I care for education, I am going to be against 
blowing more money on a Federal educational bureaucracy, and I am going 
to allow parents and teachers and students and people in the individual 
communities to have more of the say-so over how we teach our children 
than a bureaucrat in Washington.
  While we are at it, we can reframe the debate on all these other 
Federal agencies that have exploded over the past 30 years since the 
Great Society. We have spent $5 trillion on Lyndon Johnson's so-called 
war on poverty that ended up being a war on the family, ended up being 
a war on hard work, and a war on personal discipline, and so forth.
  We have to reframe the debate and speak straight to the American 
people. We owe them that at the least.


                          ____________________