[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 88 (Thursday, May 25, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H5592-H5593]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


               CALL FOR ABOLITION OF DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hoke] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, I have a number of things I wanted to discuss 
with the House today, first of all with respect to the Department of 
Energy.
  Mr. Speaker, as a part of our ongoing effort to both balance the 
budget and give our children and our grandchildren a better future and 
to turn back the tide of taxation without representation, which is one 
of the things that the patriot founders of this country shed their 
blood for, we have to examine every single program and weed out those 
that do not provide a vital national service.
  By that measure, the Department of Energy should and must be 
abolished. Under the Clinton administration, the Department failed to 
adequately meet the minimum requirements of maintaining the operational 
readiness of our nuclear weapons stockpile. Instead, it appears to have 
become more of a travel service to satisfy the Secretary of the 
Energy's wanderlust. Evidence of that failure can be found by simply 
examining Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary's schedule. Last Wednesday, 
May 17 she traveled to Paris in order to give the welcoming speech at 
an international energy conference on Monday, May 22. Then she went to 
Baku, Azerbaijan, to give the keynote speech at an oil and gas 
conference. Today Ms. O'Leary is in Florence, Italy, for a luncheon and 
a dinner banquet at a conference on geothermal energy.
  While these world travels are indeed very exciting, it would be 
interesting to know just how much they cost. I understand that 
Secretary O'Leary has transferred at least $100,000 from other travel 
accounts, including accounts used by scientists and technicians in the 
Department's nuclear safeguards and security program, to pay for this 
globe trotting.
  That is the gist of this, that is the essence of this, not so much 
that we want to micromanage the Secretary's travel schedule but that we 
are very concerned that money is being taken from other accounts, 
particularly the accounts that have to do with the safety, security, 
oversight, and general management of the nuclear weapons that she is 
charged with being the steward of to pay for this travel.
  Indeed, it is my understanding that a number of offices involved in 
maintaining the safety, performance, and reliability of our nuclear 
weapons will run out of funds by July, 3 months before the end of the 
fiscal year, because of the Secretary's personal travel demands. They 
will run out of travel funds from those accounts.
  While Secretary O'Leary's commitment to personally attend these 
international alternative and traditional energy conferences may be 
commendable, I find it very difficult to conceive that her attendance 
in exotic locales is more important than safeguarding our nuclear 
deterrent.
  For that reason I have sent letters to the chairmen of House 
Commerce, National Security, and Government Reform and Oversight 
committees asking them to initiate investigations into the Secretarty's 
prodigious travel. Here is a copy of the Secretary of Energy's travel 
schedule for the period that I was describing.


                          student loan program

  Mr. Speaker, I want to speak next with respect to the comments of the 
gentleman from Texas regarding the Student Loan Program.
  I have followed this as a member of the Committee on the Budget very 
closely and I have frankly been astonished at the response of the 
minority in this case. The issue is whether or not we should subsidize, 
that is, pay for the interest on student loans during the period of 
time that a student is in school Or should that money, the interest on 
that loan, be capitalized and added to the principal amount of the loan 
at the beginning of the loan period immediately following graduation; I 
think it is maybe 3 months following graduation. [[Page H5593]] 
  The amount of money that that costs the Treasury is significant. 
There is a no question about it. The additional amount of money that it 
costs each student is not particularly great. It amounts to about $40 
per month.
  But here is why I am astonished by the minority's arguments. If you 
look at the earnings potential for a college graduate versus a high 
school graduate in this country, what you find out is that on average 
over the period of a person's lifetime, a college graduate will earn 
about $14,000 more per year on average for the entire period of their 
working career. If you take a 42- to 43-year period as the period that 
you are going to be working and you figure that the money will have 
some value as well, time value of money, that means that a college 
graduate stands to earn, on average, about $1 million more than a high 
school graduate.
  My question is this: Why should the high school graduates be 
subsidizing with their tax money, why should they be working to pay for 
this interest subsidy during the period that the college graduate is 
going to school?
                              {time}  1215

  It does not really make any sense to me because our proposal does not 
eliminate student loans. To the contrary, it increases the funding for 
student loans. What it does say is that we will subsidize during the 
period of the loan while they are going to school, we will actually pay 
that as an additional loan, but we will not forgive it. It will not be 
a freebie, it will be capitalized and added as principal at the 
beginning of the period.
  I just cannot understand why Democrats want people who are going to 
make a million dollars more on average over their lifetimes to be 
subsidized by hardworking people who go to high school. It does not 
make sense, it does not make economic sense, does not make any kind of 
fiscal sense.

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