[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 64 (Thursday, April 6, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H4401-H4407]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                  DORNAN TO ANNOUNCE PRESIDENTIAL BID

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, and I am particularly pleased that you are 
in the chair tonight, sir, because, given the change of events today, 
which enabled us to finish tomorrow's work this evening, thereby having 
no votes tomorrow, just our well-deserved Republican majority 
celebration for completing the 100 days of the Contract With America in 
only 93 days as of today, I decided that although I got this time, from 
the Speaker, to honor our Americans that died over the longest period 
of any sea battle in history, Guadalcanal was 7 months of land and sea 
battles, but the battle of Okinawa, which began on April 1, 1945, 50 
years ago, and reached a crescendo today after a slow beginning that 
persisted for over 87 days, with one of our Members who has served on 
both sides of the aisle, Bob Stump, a conservative Democrat, came here 
with me in our bicentennial year election, sworn in January 4, 1977, 
and after 6 years of seeing his party drift to the left, actually not 6 
years, less than that, about half of that, he became a Republican, and 
now is the No. 2 Republican in seniority on the National Security 
Committee, formerly the Armed Services Committee.
  Bob Stump was a young 18-year-old sailor--he had joined at 16--in 
that battle of Okinawa, and he saw many sailors burned to death before 
his eyes in the fuel spread across the seas, watched some of the 34 
ships that we lost sunk, and I will come back in May and do a full hour 
on the battle of Okinawa.
  Tomorrow the largest battleship ever created, the Japanese Yamamoto 
was sunk with no survivors, almost 3,000 men. The Japanese this very 
day, Bob Stump was just telling me in the cloakroom--he has already 
flown back to Arizona--the Japanese lost 477 planes on April 6, 50 
years ago, a world record for any aerial conflict.
  This is quite a battle. I would loved to have spent the whole hour on 
it.
  But, Mr. Speaker, my good colleague from California, George, when I 
come back on May 1, I will be a declared Presidential candidate, one of 
nine.
  I believe our Governor will declare during this month, Pete Wilson. I 
believe that Bob Dole will start a trek back to Russell, KS, the most 
severely wounded Member in any war that serves in either the House or 
Senate. Bob Dole declares Monday and starts back to be in Russell, KS, 
on Good Friday, the 50th anniversary of his crucifixion where his young 
body of 21 years of age was ripped for the rest of whatever life God 
gives him. I will start on Holy Thursday, declaring at the National Law 
Enforcement Memorial which is exactly like the Vietnam Wall, a memorial 
to those who gave their lives to protect our lives.
  In the case of the police, or Law Enforcement Memorial, it will have 
names added every year till the end of our lives, Mr. Speaker. We added 
more than a dozen names just this year, I believe 14 or 15, and two of 
them were female officers who died in the line of duty. The Vietnam 
Wall has just about ended with changing names from missing in action or 
POW, the last one, Col. Charles Shelton who was lost on his 33d 
birthday, southeast Asia, a known POW for 5 years, he, just a few 
months ago, was declared presumptive finding of death.
  There are no POW's left on the wall. Missing in action monthly are 
turned into killed in action. But
 the Police Memorial will be updated each year with the names of young 
men and women and some not so young. I found a Dornan on there who was 
killed in the line of duty as the chief of police in a small West 
Virginia town.

  This living memorial is truly something to visit. It is very moving. 
And because crime is one of our No. 1 issues, I will start with my 
declaration on Thomas Jefferson's birthday, the founder of the oldest 
party in America, now the minority party in the House and the Senate, 
and when I think of Jefferson, I think of two things. I think of 
``least government is the best government'' and I think of what is 
inscribed inside of that beautiful Jefferson Memorial across the 
reflecting pond with all of the beautiful Japanese cherry blossoms that 
were given to this Nation in 1912, such a living gift, when they were 
our friends and our allies through World War I.
  But inside that Jefferson Memorial, up in the frieze area it says, 
``I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal vigilance against every 
tyranny over the mind of man.''
  This founder of the Democrat Party, it is a nice day to declare on 
the 13th, but I will be heading toward my principal day of declaration, 
which is Easter Sunday.
  We take the train, my wife, and I, two sons-in-law, a daughter-in-
law, all of our five grown children, two sons, three daughters, and 
nine grandchildren--it is going to be quite a gaggle--on the Amtrak 
train to Boston, be picked up by young Republicans on the morning of 
the 15th, and then we will go up to Exeter, NH, in front of the once 
hotel, now business building where the Republican Party was born.
  Three cities claim this honor, Jackson, MI, Ripon, WI, but I think 
Exeter has the edge, at least on dates, Columbus Day, October 12, 1853.
  Our party was born over a moral issue, slavery, taking people's 
lives, the fruits of their labors, enslaving them, taking away their 
freedom.
  The abortion issue in this country is equally the moral issue of our 
day, because you don't just steal a person's months and years and the 
sweat of their brow. You take their life away. You snuff out their 
life. You crush their little skull in the womb. You flat-line their 
brain waves. You snuff out that heartbeat. Every abortion stops a tiny 
little beating heart because that heart starts between day 18 and 20 
and most women don't even know they are pregnant except a little 
feeling inside that your body is changing, that you have human life 
inside of you, a whole different genetic package, a different gender 
possibly, different hair color, eye color, different height, different 
bone structure, a total genetic package with a little heartbeat and by 
day 40 a brain wave.
  This is an important issue. That is why I chose Exeter. Not only is 
it the birthplace of the Republican Party, but a birth born of a moral 
issue, slavery.
  Then we are going across the State, it should not take more than an 
hour. We may stop in Manchester and say hello to some of the folks at 
one of the Nation's greatest newspapers, the Manchester Union Leader. 
Then we are going over to Nashua, to Nashua High School, in the 
gymnasium, to resurrect a memory that is certainly good for me and I 
hope will incline people to understand that I not only was conservative 
before it was cool, I was conservative by decades ahead of some of my 
worthy colleagues that are declared.
  I will declare again at the Nashua High School gymnasium where Ronald 
Reagan, fair and square, beat
 George Bush in 1980, when he grabbed that microphone from Mr. Breen, 
who is now a newspaper editor over by the seacoast in Portsmouth, and 
mistakenly called him Mr. Green and said, ``I've paid for this 
microphone.''

  There was only one Congressman there for Ronald Reagan, it was yours 
truly, Mr. Speaker, Bob Dornan. I had a great Senator sitting there 
next to me, Paul Laxalt and on the other side, Bush, having served in 
this House from 1967 to 1971, had about 15 Congressman there, several 
Senators. He had the 
[[Page H4402]] rooting section, but Ronald Reagan carried the day.
  I want to resurrect that memory for the press in New Hampshire and 
whoever else has any interest in my candidacy.
  Then we will car caravan with young Republicans at the helm down to 
New York City, Easter Sunday, where I was born, in Harlem, 110th 
Street, April 3, 1933, the 30th day of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 12-
year-plus Presidency. We have graciously received 20 seats from one of 
the greatest cardinals in church history, Cardinal John Joseph O'Connor 
of New York. We are going to his Sunday Mass, that is my wife's 
birthday which makes it extra nice, Easter Sunday, and our 40th wedding 
anniversary.
  We will stand, at a quiet moment that early moment that early 
afternoon, at the altar where my parents were married June 27, 1929, a 
few months before Black Tuesday and the crash. They did not come home 
from their honeymoon. My dad, a young 37-year-old New York businessman, 
said sell it all off, the first loss is the best loss. I've got more 
important things to do. I'm on my honeymoon.
  They went as far as the Holy Land. My mom was 29. Irish folk got 
married earlier in those days. I married by wife on her 21st birthday, 
13 days past my 22nd birthday.
  We will renew our wedding vows. Then we will stay overnight, go out 
and declare again for anybody that is interested on Ellis Island, 
because I still haven't sorted out in my head the fair way to approach 
illegal immigration as opposed to legal immigration because this, as 
our Speaker describes it, is an unique civilization. The American 
civilization is composed of people from every continent on the Earth, 
from Australia to all of Eurasia, to our second largest continent 
Africa, to South America, from American Eskimo Native Americans to 
every part of the world, all the islands in the Pacific.
  In my old part of my district that is Ed Royce's district now, we 
swore in 800 people a few weeks ago, and the largest group was 
Vietnamese-Americans. Then Mexican, about to become Mexican-Americans. 
Then Koreans, about to become Korean-Americans. And the list went on 
through about 38 different countries.
  We are a melting pot of the world. If we cannot make the dream work, 
nobody can.
  Then we are going over to the Statue of Liberty, a nice way to begin 
a Presidential race. Then I will come back here in Virginia, answer a 
few more press questions, do the regular routine that has become de 
riguer now, the Larry King Show. Face the Nation is going to give me my 
own half-hour for the first time in my life. I did Meet the Press way 
back in 1982. Maybe I will get a second shot at that.
  Then I am joining a great group of American Republicans.
  Mr. Speaker, Bob Dole, Phil Gramm, Dick Lugar, Arlen Specter, four 
sitting Senators, one Congressman, two former Reagan appointees, Pat 
Buchanan and Alan Keyes, terrific guys, both great radio talk show 
hosts, great writers, great columnists, wonderful speakers, and a 
former Governor, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee; and a current Governor.
  That is the field of nine. I don't think it is going to expand much. 
All of this field--I don't even want to exclude myself--I'll be vain 
enough to say, including me, we stand head and shoulders in character 
and integrity and in political skills, I believe, above the current 
occupant of the White House. This is an honor to go out on the road 
with them.
  I see my pal, my friend, my colleague from the other big sunshine 
State and retirement State, Florida, in the well. As I recognize him, 
let me get in one piece of history first, then I am going to tell 
everybody why I am running for President.
                              {time}  1930

  Do you know, Mr. Stearns of Florida, how many members of the 
Democratic Party in the House of Representatives have gone from this, 
the world's greatest parliament, the world's greatest deliberative 
body, right to the White House? The answer is zero.
  Do you know how many Republicans have done it? Our minority leader 
from 1880. A highly decorated Civil War two-star general. James A. 
Garfield, not known outside of Ohio, won it on the 36th ballot in 
Chicago, and was shot on day 120. Would have saved him in a week and he 
would have been back on the job in two or three weeks today. No 
anesthesia to probe for the bullet. No X-ray to look for it.
  After 80 days of suffering, took him to the New Jersey coast to get 
out of this hot city. He died on day 200. That is it for this House.
  Now we have got lots of people who served here and went on to the 
Senate, to governorships or to a long gap, like Lincoln served 2 years, 
lost the Senate race in 1858 to Douglas, and then got elected 
President. His last immediate job was here in 1847 to 1848. That is the 
only man to make it from this House directly to the White House.
  People say, ``Dornan, when was that? 1880? Look at the odds you are 
against.''
  Let's talk Senators. In the 1700s and 1800s not a single U.S. Senator 
ever went from the other body to the White House. In this entire 
century, and it is almost over, 95 years, I am speaking 206 years of 
history, two, 1 Democrat, John F. Kennedy, and 1 Republican, Warren 
Harding, a Senator who had been a newspaper publisher who was dead when 
he was five years younger than I am, died at age 57 in his third year 
in the White House. That is it. One Senator from each party. No 
Democrats. One James A. Garfield, Civil War general, who had been in 
the House about 18 years and was the minority leader. That is it.
  Does that mean that Lamar Alexander has a lock on this or Pete 
Wilson? Not necessarily. Records are made to be broken. I am about to 
embark on a quest, a crusade that I think is going to be one of the 
most enjoyable years of my life, and as with most endeavors in life, 
only God literally knows the outcome.
  Mr. STEARNS. If the gentleman would yield for just about 15 or 30 
seconds.
  Mr. DORNAN. I will yield to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Stearns].
  Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, I came down just to say this is the 25th 
day of captivity for David Daliberti and William Barloon. I just want 
to mention this.
  But before I say my piece here, I do want to let the gentlemen from 
California know how much I admire him. Frankly, I think you bring to 
the presidential debate something that is needed and that is a social 
conservativism that you have displayed. As you know, you and I voted 
many, many times in very difficult votes.
  I think you are going to bring to the presidential debate items like 
prayer in school, which a lot of candidates will not talk about but 
that you have the courage to do. So I commend you for what you are 
doing; and I certainly, as you know, admire you.
  But I wanted to point out to the Speaker that today marks the 25th 
day of captivity for 2 Americans held prisoner in Iraq. Their 
incarceration began on the 13th of March. They were tried and unfairly 
convicted on the 25th. The two men were sentenced to 8 years in prison 
simply because they made a wrong turn.
  Mr. Speaker, we must continue to hold the two
   Americans in our minds and hearts. Twenty-five days is too long for 
any innocent American to be held in captivity, so I ask all Americans 
to recognize that this is the 25th day of their captivity.

  Mr. DORNAN. Thank you for reminding us of that. Because if the 
audience on C-SPAN is 1.3 million going toward 1\1/2\ million, I mean 
dedicated people who have really come to know their government by 
watching C-SPAN, we can ask 1.3 million people right now to pray for 
these 2 fellow Americans to give them courage.
  The worse part of their captivity is over: the slapping around, the 
torture, some beatings. Now comes the boredom and the drudgery.
  Dick Lugar, U.S. Senator, has gone out further than any of us calling 
for military action. People say, ``Well, isn't that your style, Mr. 
Dornan?'' No, I am holding back my thunder because I think this is a 
crude bluff, and I think that diplomatically is probably the way to 
force this dictator's hand.
  However, a friend of mine who is a great movie director, John 
Milleous, did ``Flight of the Intruder,'' did a movie with Brian Keith, 
I think it was 
[[Page H4403]] called ``The Wind and the Lion,'' about an American held 
captive in North Africa by one of the Berber leaders in Algiers or 
Morocco. Teddy Roosevelt was the President then, and he came out with a 
simple sentence. I believe the man's name was Porteralis, ``alive or 
rastuli,'' dead. That was the Arab chieftain or warlord. The American 
citizen was soon released, and it turned out he was a Greek citizen 
about to become an American, and he did become an American.
  But we can speak softly and carry a big stick because you try to do 
these things quietly and deliberately at first, but if it came down to 
a standoff and months went by, this is a republic. Clinton is not a 
royal personage. Every American is worthy of full support and 
protection by his country as Mr. Clinton gets from the Secret Service.
  And I will focus like a laser beam on getting these two men out with 
proper challenge if they are not out. It is their 25th day, so I hope 
everybody will pray for their safe release. I have seen their families 
on television shows, and they are suffering and worried about them.
  Mr. Speaker, why am I running? Tomorrow night I will be the sponsor 
at the confirmation for the oldest of my nine grandchildren, Richard 
Cobban. Ricky and other young people have said to me, ``Why are you 
running?'' The first thing that pops into my mind is so simple it 
probably sounds flippant: Save America.
  We have a financial crisis, $5 trillion of debt by this summer, and 
there is nothing any of us can do in this Chamber from either party or 
the U.S. Senate to stop that debt from creeping up to $6 trillion 
before we begin to turn it around. I believe it will take us 30 
measured years of dedicated work to pay off that national debt.
  The average American is coming close to owing $20,000, the newest 
baby, the oldest senior about to meet his maker. The average American 
family has $76,000 worth of debt put on their back by the U.S. 
Government.
  One stunning figure is, if you break this down monthly, just the 
interest on the debt, and we must pay that interest every year on time 
if we are a noble superpower, every average family's debt of just the 
interest is $440 per month. How many people can afford to make a car 
payment that big?
  So here is why I am running, and I have some thoughts written down. I 
would like to share them
 with this great electronic audience. Mr. Speaker, it looks like it is 
just the two of us and a few guests and our great Capitol Hill police 
in the gallery.

  If you do not know already, Mr. Speaker, I am very different from 
most of my colleagues. I have found out in my 17th year here, 2 years 
out of office but staying in close contract, this is my 17th year in 
office. Nineteen years I have been around the Hill. I have noticed that 
I think differently.
  I have a voracious appetite for history. It knows no bounds. I 
consider myself one of the three true historians in Congress. If 
anybody else is, they sure keep it to themselves. The others being two 
Ph.D.s, Newton Gingrich of Georgia and Philip Crane of Illinois.
  To a large degree, this sense of history, my sense of history is one 
of the major reason why I serve in Congress and why I will always try 
to lengthen my stride in service to my country.
  In my 62 years, I have witnessed American men and women continuously, 
consistently, virtuously lay down their lives and their good names of 
preserve our liberty only to see that these twin pillars, liberty and 
virtue, only to see them trampled upon by the selfishness and greed of 
others.
  In America, this beautiful, bountiful land, through the grace of God, 
we, the people, are the repository of power. The rise and fall of our 
great Nation rests squarely on the shoulders of the men and women in 
this Chamber and in the U.S. Senate and the occupant of the White 
House. We are only to blame in failure, and only pure humility prods us 
to credit God for our success.
  The fact is that no civilization can long endure the hollow 
sustenance of fallen men and women, and I do mean fallen, Mr. Speaker, 
in the Biblical sense. We cannot have liberty without virtue, and we 
cannot truly be virtuous without liberty. Men and women must be free to 
choose virtue, but they must unequivocally choose virtue to be free.
  Benjamin Franklin said it best as he described his, our, newly formed 
Nation to a woman who demanded, ``Dr. Franklin, what have you given 
us?'' And he responded, coming out of these long, secret sessions, he 
said, ``Madam, we have a republic, if we can keep it.''
  A key reason for my Presidential quest is to focus on this vision for 
America and to say that my
 conservative friends who only concern themselves with economic issues 
are providing a grave disservice to the American people invoking the 
near deity of the marketplace on such altars as the ``Baal Street 
Journal.''

  Well, these false economic priests of conservatism are little 
different than the Keynesians who believe we can use government to 
spend our way to prosperity or, for that matter, hardened Marxists who 
view the world with the tunnel vision of economic models and class 
warfare. Lord knows, Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot of class warfare 
rhetoric, some of it poisonous, in this Chamber over the last 2 weeks, 
if not longer.
  The truth is that without a moral base and a virtuous people, the 
free market simply cannot function. Happiness is not necessarily a 
derivative of prosperity. True happiness, true happiness comes from a 
deep and an abiding faith in God and in living the way that God 
intended.
  The tendency toward only an economic view of life has given rise in 
social conservative ranks to what some pretenders call a cultural free 
market. Frankly, I have never met a purebred conservative who believes 
in this cultural free market. Nor, by the way, have I ever met anyone 
who believes in a decadent society with a balanced budget.
  The fact is that successful political leadership demands that some 
cultures be discouraged and other cultures encouraged. Any American, 
let alone any of us seeking the mantle of the Presidency who is 
unwilling to make these kinds of judgments, is hardly a productive 
citizen.
  I disagree wholeheartedly with some of my econ-obessed friends who 
pontificate that the market punishes immorality, and, therefore, that 
is reason enough why no social issues should be discussed in this 
campaign or in this Chamber or in the Senate or in any other campaign 
by a participant who is a Republican.
  Let me tell you something, Mr. Speaker, and I am going to carry this 
message sea to shining sea, the defenders of the second amendment will 
back me up with this little play on words. Markets don't punish 
immorality; people punish immorality. People also reward immorality, 
which is why we have arrived at the sorry state in which we find our 
society today.
  What do we and what do our public institutions and our debased 
popular culture consist of today if not wholesale corruption?
                              {time}  1945

  Please do not misunderstand what I am saying nor mistake the motives 
of true social conservatives. For instance, I am not talking about the 
wrongheaded and extreme use of using tax dollars to fund even wholesome 
art or Christian art or anything like that. But I am saying, keeping 
within this art framework for just a moment, that responsible leaders 
find ourselves morally compelled to make absolute judgments on what 
passes for art in contemporary society when tax dollars go to fund the 
arts, and as long as tax dollars are used to fund the arts, I would not 
dare leave such an important stewardship up to the marketplace to make 
that point, especially when today that art sells so well.
  Once again, the false gods of prosperity and economics do not produce 
good citizens or even virtuous ones. Actually the reverse is true.
  Our Founding Fathers understood this moral imperative better than 
anyone. The countless allusions to God and the Creator in their 
writings, including our Declaration of Independence, the very words 
ring out with a firm reliance upon divine providence.
  When I was a 19-year-old aviation cadet, I took a ball pen and 
pressed that, the reverse of embossing, into my little, cheap blue Air 
Force binder with a firm reliance upon divine providence, we mutually 
pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor, and of those 56 
signers, almost the whole bunch lost their homes, burned to the ground, 
and many of their lives and all 
[[Page H4404]] of their fortunes. But they kept their contract with 
God.
  It is true, these grant men were religious men, but they understood 
first and foremost that a free people had to be a good people, and when 
a nation stopped being good, it became enslaved.
  The best of the ancient Greek cultures, the best of the ancient Roman 
cultures, and there was more corruption and decay and brutality and 
slavery than there ever were of these golden moments in those two 
amazing civilizations, but they taught us that when a nation stopped 
being virtuous, eventually all of the citizens were enslaved.
  I have long held to a motto of ``God, family, and country.'' To 
second the nomination of Vice President George Bush in the beautiful 
city of New Orleans in 1988 in August, I want for alliteration and 
changed ``God'' to ``faith'' to embrace all of the great religions of 
the world, and I changed ``country'' to broaden it out to ``freedom,'' 
because my dad had offered his life to die for France and almost did, 
and I offered my life during the Eisenhower years to defend Hungary. We 
pulled back on that one, and I volunteered later to fight to not only 
save Korea but Vietnam, Israel, other small countries around the world.
  And I had been out of the cockpit too long to be recalled on active 
duty, but I went to Vietnam to witness these heroes and their excellent 
nurses, which is where women mainly served in that tragic decade of 
trying to keep half of Vietnam free as we kept half of Korea free. I 
watched those young heroes, by now most of them younger than I, and it 
is a debt that I want to pay back.
  Truthfully, I would declare in front of the Vietnam Memorial, but I 
know what the liberal press would say. ``Dornan is doing this to get at 
Clinton, Dornan cannot let go of Vietnam, Dornan is locked in the 
past.'' That is why I will pay a private visit there on the morning of 
April 13, I repeat, Jefferson's birthday, and then go to the National 
Law Enforcement Memorial for the first of several declarations during 
that 4-day period.
  So I have long held to his motto, Mr. Speaker, ``Faith, family, and 
freedom.''
  The world has always been divided along these lines, and it always 
will be as long as sin and transgression exist. The 20th century 
humanists' attempt to remove faith from civics has only deepened the 
divide which separates us as an American people.
  We believe that a Creator grants unto us certain inalienable rights. 
Or do we not? Is that not how we were founded? In my view, Mr. Speaker, 
there was no greater political distinction to be made by any aspirant 
to the Presidency. We either believe as our Founders did, or we do not. 
Either God grants us our most fundamental of rights or man does, and if 
it is man, then man can also take away those rights in a heartbeat. But 
if it is God who grants us these rights, then our allegiance as 
Americans should be to his goodness and his mercy. I take the latter 
view.
  This is why I believe that liberty and virtue are absolutely 
inseparable.
  The second component of my motto, and this would be on the family 
escutcheon, if I were not from
 dirt-poor Irish farmer background. If I had one of these beautiful 
brand crests, it would be, ``Faith, family, and freedom,'' for this 
generation of Dornans.

  Well, family, the traditional family, is what I mean in that battle 
cry. The family, along with a deep and abiding faith in God, is the 
basis for all successful civilizations. The family is the fundamental 
social, political, and economic unit of Western civilization, not the 
state, not the corporation, not the individual. Essential faith is 
first manifest, and because of this fact, the family is the most 
natural of settings from which to base all human actions including 
public policy.
  It is a truism, Mr. Speaker, that no other success in life can 
compensate for failure in the home. Nothing. Nothing makes up for that. 
How many millionaires have we read about in fact and fiction that would 
pay millions of dollars to get back their son that committed suicide, 
their daughter who destroyed herself on drugs or turning herself over 
to the mean streets? Who can deny this, that anybody will squander his 
fortune to have the love back of a son or a daughter or to get back a 
wife in those early years that he just so easily let slip away from him 
because of irreconcilable so-called differences?
  And yet an ever increasing march against the traditional family 
mounts up like an evil force in this United States of ours. The deadly 
combination of heavy taxes, levied by government at every level, 
county, State, Federal, and personal selfishness has both driven and 
led many women away from the home and encouraged men to justify their 
own familial neglect of wife and children. Onward to the new Mercedes, 
your income goes up, the wife's income goes down, and her struggle 
deepens.
  To help save your families, we must substantially cut taxes, which 
means spending as well, of course, and we have got a good start on 
that, a small start in the last few days, and then we must do all we 
can within the proper bounds of governmental powers to encourage 
single-earner family wages so that mom can stay home when she chooses 
it with the children and so that dad can feel confident, or the mother, 
if she is the breadwinner, that he or she is able to provide sufficient 
income for the family, and in most cases because of that need for the 
mother to be with small growing children, I believe most families will 
opt for the traditional role.
  And this does not mean in any way to cater to the almost vicious lie 
of flippant elitist media that traditional family people want to keep 
the mother home uneducated, pregnant, barefoot, and slaving over the 
spaghetti. No; no. It means an intelligent family sharing in both 
roles, the husband the bread-earner when the children are tiny and need 
their mother around the clock, not quality care, an hour a day, not 
good day-care centers, which is a fruitless search for many families, 
but when those little children are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, what the 
abortion industry says is viable, that little 1-year-old viable, that 
1-week-old viable, 1-month-old, 1-year-old. A 4-year-old is not viable; 
out they go into traffic to be kidnaped or torn apart by the mean 
streets again.
  At what point are we really able to go out on our own without being 
nurtured through an educational process? I heard a philosopher say 
every generation is only 18 years from the savagery of the jungle 
existence, survival of the fittest, the cruel, the brutal rule, because 
it takes 18 years to prepare most people, and most civilizations, to 
play a productive part in society.
  To help our families, I repeat, we must substantially cut taxes and 
spending.
  Now, the last thing we in Congress should do is to create something 
like a Department of the Family. That would ensure the family's demise. 
We have seen what other departments have done.
  The third and final component of my chosen motto is freedom, freedom, 
interchangeable with liberty. We must once and for all, before it is 
too late, return to our political roots and change, Mr. Speaker, what I 
will call the mechanisms of power.
  Let me explain that. The first American revolution was certainly 
incited by the abuse of power; a great movie out now about King George, 
mad as a hatter, but more importantly, it was also the direct result of 
a corrupt power structure.
  Today, like then, 1776, Americans face not only the abuse of power 
but the very same corrupt power structure.
  To think, as do some of my neo-conservative or country-club 
Republican friends of the big-tent school, that is a simple change of 
personnel or an obsessive focus on money, and they think that will 
solve the problems of the Federal Government. It is not only crudely 
elitist, but it is downright
 offensive.

  I have many friends of our new second American Revolution which began 
to take hold on November 8 last year, but I would no more trust them 
with the current mechanisms of power than I would trust Mr. Clinton. It 
is the mechanisms of power that must be altered.
  I am for a flat tax. I have been for about 27 years. I was trying to 
figure this out the other night.
  But as large an improvement as a flat tax would be compared to our 
current system of tyranny which punishes hard work and investment and 
savings, the best solution is one where the IRS is completely 
abolished. Is anybody ready for this in a Presidential campaign? I do 
believe the Nation is.
  [[Page H4405]] Let us face reality. The IRS is a creature of a 
planned economy, a socialist state. It exists solely as the enforcer, 
the muscle, for a comparatively few elitists who desire to control our 
lives. Without it, how could these liberal elites extort so much of our 
money, your money?
  Yes, the flat tax is an improvement. But with the enforcement 
mechanisms of the IRS would remain in place. I think the chairman of 
our Committee on Ways and Means, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Archer], 
the man who actually took George Bush's seat in this Congress, is the 
right man, in the right place, at the right time.
  A flat tax is a plateau for a few years to work out how we shut down 
the income tax.
  I prefer the repeal of the income tax, Mr. Speaker, the repeal of the 
corporate income tax, the repeal of the capital gains tax, and any 
other tax which requires the IRS to enforce collections, and I would 
replace all of this with a national sales tax or a similar proposal.
  What could be fairer? The rich would pay the bulk of the taxes while 
the poor, who spend very little in comparison, would pay little in 
comparison.
  I mean, the Irish comedian, George Carlin, always talks about how the 
rich accumulate stuff, stuff, stuff, and more stuff. I know that urge. 
I am a collector, and my collections are little things, coins, stamps, 
little automobiles, model airplanes. There is still a lot of the little 
boy in me. But people who collect Duesenbergs and people who collect 
art, major art, and hide it out in their homes instead of donating it 
to museums where the poorest and humblest of us can share in that joy, 
they all do that when they are about a week from their death bed, some 
a little bit before. Andrew Carnegie, that dour Scot, is my ideal. He 
said it is more fun to give away money than to make it, and the perfect 
life is when you give the last dime of the money you earned during 
God's gift of life, you give away the last dime on your death bed.
  We could even exempt the poor up to a certain income from some of 
this new tax structure.
  That is what I mean by changing the mechanisms of power. I have got a 
lot of good people that I have met over my life that work at the IRS. 
They work hard, and we will get other good jobs for them that are not 
part of the elite structure.
  Another example is abolishing the Federal Reserve and returning the 
power of money back to the elected representatives of the people. My 
pal Jack Kemp says, ``I would rather be Chairman of the Fed, Chairman 
of the Federal Reserve, than President of the United States.'' Jack has 
studied this and knows the raw power of our good friend and decent man, 
Alan Greenspan.
  I do not know about you, Mr. Speaker, but I am sick and tired of 
having an unelected, little, tiny group of people come up to Congress 
every few months and tell the American people that our economy is 
growing too fast, and that one person, the chairman all by himself, has 
made the decision to stall the economy by artificially raising interest 
rates.
  Why not speak the truth? Harmful inflation is not caused by a growing 
and productive economy. It is caused by government intervention in our 
money supply.
                              {time}  2000

  Now, I loathe violence. That is why I marched with Martin Luther 
King. I have to believe that our founders have taken a similar power 
structure with King George, out to the gallows, the full weight of the 
good citizens hard-earned money strapped to his ankles. They were not 
as patient as some court systems today.
  I have introduced a bill on this subject, Mr. Speaker, H.R. 1130, to 
halt the absurd mechanism which allows advocacy groups, most of which 
are very left wing, to receive Federal grants and then turn around and 
lobby and protest the Federal Government to keep those tax dollars 
flowing.
  Here is an example of what I mean about my legislation, changing 
again the mechanisms of power, H.R. 1130. The National Council for 
Senior Citizens, NCSC, it is a left wing, AFL-CIO front group, 
established in 1961 to help pass the Medicare bill, and they took in 
just $105,000 in membership dues for the most recent year of record, 
1993. $105,000, less than the pay of one Congressman or woman. That 
same year they received over $68 million in Federal grants. National 
Council for Senior Citizens.
  They are a tax exempt political lobby. They rate us in this Chamber. 
They rate our congressional votes. They hand-picked votes to give some 
of us a zero rating, and others a 100 percent rating who did their 
bidding. They endorse candidates. What in the world, Mr. Speaker, are 
tax dollars going to fund the political activities of this left wing 
lobby group for? Just one example. American Education Union, on the 
national level, is another public institution held embarrassingly 
captive by powerful special interest groups. Going all the way back to 
the George McGovern, Shirley MacLaine Convention, that is the way I 
remember it best, in 1972, the majority of delegates were members of 
the teachers union, and it has been that way at every Democratic 
Convention since.
  Under the circumstances, it is absolutely a no-brainer to abolish the 
Department of Education. Bob Dole has called for this, Lamar Alexander, 
a former Secretary of Education under George Bush, Bill Bennett after 
he left that position and went to another job in the White House. I 
think before this race is over, all nine of us will be calling for the 
abolition of the Department of Education, as are most people in the 
cloakroom that I have spoken to here on
 the Republican side of the aisle, the majority side.

  Again, some of our friends who call themselves conservatives do more 
harm than good on this issue as they attempt to play to the very 
natural interests parents have in the education of their children. All 
we hear about from some so-called conservatives is how we need to train 
our children to compete in the world markets of the 21st century. More 
math, more science, more national goals and standards.
  Well, whether we like to hear it or not, Mr. Speaker, it is just New 
World Order mumbo-jumbo in the main. All this talk of remaining 
competitive, the best, the best in the world, the best this, the best 
that, all of this for economic purposes only is global baloney. Global 
baloney. It is funny how we did not need this kind of political 
leadership to become the most industrious Nation that had ever existed. 
Only social engineers talk about America in macro terms as if they know 
better than parents what is best for their children and how to train 
them and how to educate them.
  Education in America is not in jeopardy because parents continue to 
care. Education is in jeopardy because we have not yet taken the time 
to change the mechanisms of power, particularly at the Federal level, 
built up around our educational systems state to state.
  Everyone knows that on the whole private schools and home schooling 
outperform public schools, and that given a choice, most parents, if 
they could, would send their children to private schools or keep them 
home, particularly given the violence and the guns and narcotics and 
the beepers and the knives that are carried in some urban schools. Not 
only urban schools.
  But then why have we built up all of our mechanisms of power around a 
particular, bureaucracy laden public school system, and my younger 
brother is a proud and hard working public schoolteacher, why have we 
built up this system which locks up all of our children into an 
education of lesser distinction? Is it to help the poor? If so, then 
why not lift the poor up rather than pull a lot of middle class 
students down?
  In changing the mechanisms of power, Mr. Speaker, surrounding 
education, we must remind ourselves that the essential state interests 
in education is liberty, and from liberty comes that virtue, and vice 
versa.
 It is not surprising that a socialist, welfare state mentality would 
ultimately pervert this state interest in education into some kind of 
class struggle, solvable by redistribution of the wealth enforced by 
the IRS?

  I would rather abolish the welfare state before ever relinquishing 
over to some people who at their hearts are Marxists the real, real 
reason why we stress education in America. Abolish that Department of 
Education, repeal 
[[Page H4406]] compulsory attendance laws, and localize all schooling 
decisions, and our Nation will not only house the best educated and 
most literate people in the world; we will remain the freest people on 
Earth as well.
  Lastly, changing the mechanisms of power, it is as they relate to 
defense and foreign policy. Mr. Speaker, we need such a spirited public 
debate on just what national interest means that I just yearn for this 
debate.
  I am a staunch pro-lifer. Everyone round here knows that. But my 
allegiance to life does not stop in the womb. I care about every man 
and woman asked to give their life for our country. It is the very 
height of immorality to send American lives into harm's way without a 
crystal clear moral reason for doing so, and I released position papers 
on this on my birthday last Monday on all of the mistakes, some of them 
just through sheer stupidity and lack of understanding about why 
someone would dedicate their life to the profession of arms. Warriors 
hate war and do not want to have to lose any of the lives in their 
care.
  This administration has been the worst in this century as far as not 
understanding why you do not put our Rangers and our Delta Force and 
our 10th Mountain Division in harm's way in the angry violent ridden 
streets of Mogadishu. We did accomplish saving 300,000 or more lives of 
women and children, but now they are left again to the non-tender 
mercies of the battling politicians there for power with their jeeps 
mounted with heavy weaponry, and we can only pray for them. The 
slaughter in Burundi this week, we could not extend a helping hand 
because Rwanda suffered severely, and we were unable to go in because 
of what Clinton showed in the way of absolute bankrupt leadership in 
Mogadishu. That is why the fathers and mothers of the two Medal of 
Honor winners who were given that medal posthumously because they tried
 to save Michael Durant's helicopter crew, and did succeed, in trading 
their lives for Michael Durant's life, getting him out of the 
helicopter, laying him down on the ground where God took over from 
there and kept him from being beaten to death as were his three other 
crewmen and the two rescuers. ``Greater love than this no man has, that 
he give up his lives for his colleagues and friends.'' God bless Gary 
Gordon and Randy Shugart and their wonderful families and their wives, 
and those two little beautiful children of Gary Gordon, Ian and 
Brittany. This is what you have to understand when you are the 
commander-in-chief, that every family, every life of every man and 
woman in the military is precious.

  What is our national interest, Mr. Speaker? Is it bailing out 
multinational corporations who roll the dice in a foreign land and then 
lose? Should we shed blood over an economic commodity, even oil in the 
Middle East? We had a great debate here at the beginning of the 103d 
Congress. Everybody on both sides did themselves proud. But at least we 
fought it out here, whether or not we were going to lose 148 lives of 
our finest young men and several women to Scud missile attacks and 
plane crashes and a lady helicopter pilot flying into power lines in 
bad weather and desert sand. We lost the best, the very best this 
country has to offer, for a commodity. We should have debated that in 
depth.
  Should we sacrifice lives in the names of foreign wars far removed 
from any direct threat to the United States? Sometimes, yes, we should 
help. I am not nearly as narrowly focused on this as my pal Pat 
Buchanan with his battle cry of ``America first.'' There are many cases 
where we should help because we can help and we can save many innocent 
people. But it has got to be debated in this Chamber and the Senate, 
except for emergencies when the President has to act swiftly. And that 
is why I put in legislation to kill the War Powers Act, to give back 
the White House its full emergency power to use force.
  I cannot tell you how many American veterans I meet who will break 
down and actually shed tears at the mere mention of men and women 
having to don the blue beret or blue helmet of the United Nations to 
risk their lives in battle under foreign commanders. It is a atrocity 
that some of our leaders would allow this to happen. To think that 
Americans bled and died, lost life and limb 50 years ago in Okinawa, or
 going back to the birth of our country, our revolutionary struggle, 
the Civil War between the States, World War I, World War II, Korea, 
Vietnam, Panama, the Persian Gulf, Somalia, only to see American 
sovereignty go out the window with a stroke of a pen. No one would 
ever, of course, ever see that under the presidency of this 
congressman.

  There is no more enduring term for any Nation than sovereignty, when 
properly respected and constructed. In fact, if the United States were 
a person and we asked it to define itself, it would tell us that 
without sovereignty, it would not exist. Those leaders who would push 
us to shed our borders and merge our lives, our economies, our cultures 
and our governments into one big wonderful world government, ask for 
something they will only receive answerable through much uprising and 
probably bloodshed.
  We are historically, Mr. Speaker, a moral nation, and a moral nation 
fights only moral wars. And that is why we have a Department of 
Defense, not a department of offense, of attack, or of war any longer. 
We must immediately begin to develop world class antiballistic missile 
systems to defend the homeland. Then and only then do we have the moral 
authority to establish peace through strength.
  Somebody said to me what would be a blue print for your campaign, 
Bob? And I said how about the Preamble to the Constitution? Just think 
of that preamble. ``We the people of the United States, in order to 
form a more perfect union,'' and there is the word union carved right 
into the Speaker's platform there along with liberty, ``in order to 
form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic 
tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general 
welfare,'' and welfare in those days meant the common wheel of the 
commercial marketplace, a chance to success and farm and have small 
businesses, and that is what welfare meant in any 1700's dictionary, 
``and to ensure the blessings of liberty upon ourselves and our 
posterity,'' that is our children, ``do ordain and establish this 
Constitution of the United States of America.''
  There it is, provide for the common defense, right in the preamble, 
for the whole beautiful Constitution. The original contract is the 
Constitution. The original contract is the Constitution. And we have 
past in this House, it is one of the items in this Contract with 
America, the 24 Republicans jumped ship and the majority of Democrats
 voted not to defend the American homeland. We will defend our troops 
overseas, a moral obligation. We will defend our allies overseas with a 
ballistic missile defense from rogue missiles, if nothing else, but we 
are not going to defend our homeland yet by the Contract.

  We can truly call ourselves a free people once we change all of the 
mechanisms of power, once we reassert the 10th Amendment, which this 
Contract does very well, that 10th Amendment to the Constitution, 
return the power back to the states and local communities, once we 
reaffirm property rights, Mr. Speaker, as the most basic of all our 
inalienable rights, once we send a clear message that multinational 
profiteers do not run this country wherein they expect to be bailed out 
every time they make a bad investment. Our founders already fought that 
war, and now we must renew the struggle.
  This is the real revolution. What happened last November 8th is just 
the beginning. I am committed to ceiling this new second American 
revolution through to the very end.
  Let me conclude with a few personal observations about principal 
leadership, and I will return in a month to do that hour on the heroes 
of Okinawa. For the next 87 days, since April 1st, we will be living 
through the 50th anniversary of the greatest Naval conflict ever fought 
in history, with 49,000 American seamen blasted apart or drowned or 
burned to death, and 4,800 wounded. That rarely happens where the 
wounded are less than your killed.
  But let me conclude by saying I have always felt that principal 
leadership means not asking anyone to do something you would not do 
yourself. For instance, as president, this means the unenviable task of 
perhaps one day 
[[Page H4407]] calling your nation to arms and sending men and now 
young women into harm's way. What an insult it would be to have a 
President who never wore the uniform, when he had the obligation and 
the opportunity, if he was healthy. That is God's call. 4-F is nobody's 
fault. Or being a woman that is not subject to the draft or being alive 
not during a voluntary period. I mean when the obligation was there and 
you were healthy, to ask a young man to go in your place, and then to 
aspire to the mantle of the presidency, asking young men and women to 
die for their country or for some other country that truly needs us 
when that person refused to do the same when it was asked of him.
                              {time}  2015

  We have got to sort this out. This job of president is different than 
any governorship. It is different than any other role in our Nation 
because of this aspect of commander in chief.
  Further, I have always felt, Mr. Speaker, that principled leadership 
also means self-control. What right does any man have to claim 
authority to govern the lives of others when he cannot control his own 
behavior? Fortunately, I do not see that problem with any of the nine 
candidates that are out before the people at the end of this month. 
Principled leadership sifts through the pack rather quickly.
  I serve here in the House of Representatives, in my 11th year from 
Orange County and a very exciting six years from West Los Angeles in 
the late 1970's and early 1980's. I serve here because I want to help 
restore America to its former greatness and its promised future.
  My last sentence, Mr. Speaker, is this, America's future will remain 
in jeopardy as long as leaders lack the guts and convictions to move 
the revolution. The first 100 days was important, but the second, third 
and fourth and fifth 100 days will reveal the character of this body.
  We either stand for liberty and virtue or we cower toward a seemingly 
safe island of moral isolation. I stand for liberty and for virtue.


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