[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 137 (Wednesday, September 6, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H8582]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE REPUBLICAN MAJORITY REGARDING APPROPRIATIONS 
                                MEASURES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, as we move forward to the 
fiscal 1996 legislative branch legislation dealing with the budget, I 
think it is important to note, Mr. Speaker, that the conference report 
to the legislative branch appropriations bill, H.R. 1854, ends 40 years 
of bloated congressional bureaucracy. The bill shows that House 
Republicans are keeping their word to make Congress less costly and 
more accountable to the American people. We are doing that by cutting 
our own spending first before cutting any other Federal programs, with 
the principle in mind, of course, Mr. Speaker, to make sure that vital 
services are retained, but where there is duplication and waste, that 
is removed.
  By way of recapitulation, Mr. Speaker, let us look to see what has 
been accomplished. First we have put our own House in order by reducing 
congressional funding of $207 million below the fiscal year 1995 
levels, which was a 9-percent cut. We also eliminated duplicative 
bureaucracies. The bill eliminates the Office of Technology Assessment, 
whose functions have already been duplicated by CRS, Congressional 
Research Service, and GAO, and the National Academy of Sciences. This 
saves at least $18 million.
  We downsized bloated bureaucracies. The bill cuts, again, the 
duplicative Government Accounting Office funding by 17 percent, which 
will save $75 million. It cuts the number of congressional staff. Some 
$57 million was cut from House operations, Mr. Speaker, including 
committee staff, Members' allowances, and the House support offices. It 
cuts by one-third the House franking privileges for the congressional 
mail. It further eliminates three committees and 25 subcommittees.
  While this is a good start, and there have been millions of dollars 
saved here in the House, and we know it will also happen in the Senate, 
we know as we move forward to look to each of the Federal agencies that 
are in existence we will downsize, privatize, consolidate, and make 
sure that we are giving for the American taxpayers real services for 
the tax dollars and eliminating waste, just as we have seen in local
 businesses all across the country. Where people at their own homes are 
trying to save money, we can do no less for the American taxpayer here 
in Congress.

  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate what the gentleman is saying. 
Having just returned from a series of meetings, what people have said 
is they are interested in consolidating, eliminating, reducing 
programs, but at the same time they want to make sure that Congress has 
stepped forward.
  If I heard the gentleman correctly, the bottom line of the 
congressional cuts, about $67 million--is that the number the gentleman 
mentioned? I was off the floor and I was not sure. I think that is 
about the figure we are talking about.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. That is about the figure.
  Mr. KINGSTON. We have 163 different Federal job training programs. We 
have 240 different miscellaneous education programs that the Federal 
Government funds, 30 different nutrition programs. There is clearly 
room to consolidate. Yet, if you picked up the headlines and heard that 
Fox or Kingston moved to cut 25 different job training programs, people 
back home would think you have gone berserk, but yet you still have 
some 135 other job training programs left.
  I think what Congress is doing is trying to set an example that, in 
eliminating 25 committees, we are taking this real serious. I was a 
member of two of the committees that were eliminated. Last year I 
served on the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries. In the 
coastal area of the district I represent we have a lot of marine 
issues, shipping issues, dredge issues, Corps of Engineers, and so 
forth. However, that committee has been eliminated, those functions 
rolled into other committees that were duplicating what the Committee 
on Merchant Marine and Fisheries were doing.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Frankly, the gentleman from Georgia has led 
the way here in Congress, I would say. What we are trying to do is take 
a page out of the American industries' book. If you are running a 
corporation, you want to make sure the bottom line is that, ``We are 
doing our services and we are not wasting, because if we are wasting, 
then we are not delivering for the taxpayer,'' or in the case of 
business, a customer, what is a fair return on their investment.
  We want to make sure we are doing exactly what the American public 
wants, I think whether it is the downsizing of the Federal bureaucracy 
and agencies duplicating each other's work or whether it is the line 
item veto, which the House has now passed. We are waiting for the 
conference committee from the Senate's passage of a slightly different 
bill, and eventually the President's signature, that line item veto 
will cut out the wasteful pork barrel which every taxpayer in every 
jurisdiction knows has caused a great deal of harm, along with unfunded 
mandates, which we passed.
  Mr. KINGSTON. The other thing I think is important to emphasize is 
that we are not sitting around waiting on the line item veto to be 
responsible, nor are we set back by the fact that the other body did 
not pass the balanced budget amendment.
  It is clear that the American people want the budget balanced, so 
every one of our 13 appropriation
 bills moves us in the direction of balancing the budget by the year 
2002.

  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. This is the first year since 1969 that we 
have actually had a balanced budget here in Congress, and we did it 
without having, as you say, even though we passed the balanced budget 
amendment and it has not been passed in the Senate, we did not wait for 
that to happen, we made sure we moved along. I thank the gentleman from 
Georgia [Mr. Kingston] for his leadership in allowing us to move along 
in this dialog in the progress of reducing the cost of the Federal 
Government.

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