[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 146 (Tuesday, September 19, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H9231-H9238]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             TOPICS OF IMPORT REGARDING REFORMS IN CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Washington [Mrs. Smith] is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 10 minutes to the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Greenwood].


                            Medicare Reform

  Mr. GREENWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding and 
I will not take much of the time that she has reserved.
  The gentlewoman may know, I was back in my office and some of my 
colleagues from the Democratic Party took to the floor and began to 
give such a tirade of incredibly breathtaking misinformation about 
Medicare reform, that since I am one of the 8 members of the Republican 
task force drafting the new plan, I felt compelled to come over here 
and set things straight. My friends would not yield me much time, and 
so I appreciate the gentlewoman doing so.
  Number 1 thing that our colleagues from the other side of the aisle 
did not want to go into very much is the fact that the trustees of the 
Medicare program, part A, and those trustees include three Members of 
President Clinton's cabinet, issued a report back in the early part of 
this year. That report indicated that Medicare, part A, is in trouble.
  The program is paid for by payroll taxes and this year, fortunately, 
we have more than enough funds to pay for that program. But next year 
we start to spend more than we take in, and in 7 years there is no 
money to pay senior citizen health care costs at all. The program goes 
broke.
  We cannot let that happen. The President of the United States has 
agreed with that and, of course, what the other side did not mention at 
all is that President Clinton has suggested, has recommended in his 
budget document that in fact we need to do something about the 
outrageous, unsustainable inflationary rates in our Medicare program.
  Medicare costs are going up by 10 and 11 and 12 percent a year, and 
there is no need for that. In the private sector, health care costs 
have all but leveled off. And if we continue to waste money in Medicare 
by continuing to have those 10 and 11 and 12 percent increases, we are 
foolish and we are wasting the taxpayers' money and we are doing 
nothing that values our senior citizens.
  So what are we going to do? We are going to try to work together in a 
bipartisan fashion and here is what we are going to try to do. It is 
really quite simple. Our plan will ensure that every single senior 
citizen in America on Medicare, as well as those who are disabled, will 
have the option to stay exactly where they are. They will continue to 
receive what is called fee-for-service health care.
  Mr. Speaker, that means they can go to the doctor of their choice 
when they choose and Medicare will pay all their 

[[Page H9232]]
bills. If they go to the hospital, Medicare will pay all of their bills 
just as it does now. Their cost for part B premium will stay just as it 
is now at 31.5 percent of the cost. And, as seniors know who have been 
on Medicare for some time, as the program inflates a little bit, that 
31.5 percent costs a little bit more each year, but their COLA, the 
social security cost of living increase, more than compensates for 
that. Their Social Security check will be bigger next year than it is 
this year.
  We are going to increase the amount of dollars that we spend on 
average for a Medicare beneficiary in this country from $4,800 a year 
this year to $6,700 a year in 7 years. And I need to repeat that, 
because all of this talk about cutting Medicare is outrageous. Listen 
again. We are going to increase, the Republican plan increases what we 
spend on average for each and every Medicare beneficiary, our moms and 
dads and our grandparents, from $4,800 per year per beneficiary this 
year, increase it 5 percent each year for the next 7 years for a total 
increase of 40 percent, up to $6,700 per year.

  Then we are going to create some exciting new options for our 
seniors. We are going to make it more attractive for insurance 
companies to offer managed care. Managed care programs are programs 
where the managed care company tells you what your network of doctors 
will be, and if you want to get into that network, you can benefit from 
some of the additional benefits that they can offer you.
  My mom and dad are in their middle-70s, on the low side of mid-70s, 
Mom, but they have chosen on their own to go into a managed care 
program and they love it. They no longer have to pay Medigap costs. 
They have a new prescription drug program. Their doctors are in their 
network and they get all of the referrals they need and they are very 
happy.
  In the Republican plan, those seniors who want to gain those benefits 
and achieve those savings will be able to go into managed care and if 
for any reason their circumstances change or they are not happy with 
the plan, they simply opt out and go back into the fee-for-service 
program.
  Mr. Speaker, I am very, very confident of the fact that later on this 
week when we unveil the Republican Medicare improvement plan, that the 
senior citizens of this country will like it and like it very much. 
They will understand that what we have done is not raised their 
deductibles, not raised their co-pays or limited their options, but in 
fact continued to give them the same first class health care program 
that they enjoy now with many more options.
  What this is all about is a decision as a Nation as we look at the 
Medicare program going broke, as we look at the Nation as a whole going 
broke, $5 trillion in debt, are we going to be grown-up about it? Are 
we going to be adult about it? Or are we going to continue to act like 
adolescents, spending today without regard to tomorrow?
  I think most Americans demonstrated in the last election that the 
policy of enjoying the benefits of programs today and expecting our 
children and our grandchildren to pay for them with ballooning debts 
and deficits are unconscionable. The senior citizens of this country 
know what it is to be grown-up and to act responsibly, and I believe 
that once they see how responsibly we Republicans have behaved in 
fashioning this program to meet their needs, they will then do the 
responsible thing and support it.
  Mr. Speaker, I think the country will be better for it. Medicare will 
be better for it, and all of this political posturing will soon be 
behind us.
  And with that, I would yield back the balance of my time and thank 
the gentlewoman from Washington [Mrs. Smith] for yielding.

                              {time}  1930


            eliminating PACs and Other Congressional Reforms

  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. It gets confusing sometimes, does it not? I 
hear all of these things out in the public and I do not know what to 
believe.
  Mr. Speaker, I think the real thing that we can all believe is that 
Medicare is going to finally be preserved, and the President's task 
force said it was going to go belly up and be in stark trouble. Look at 
what is happening. We are debating the real issues and we are debating 
how to preserve it, to protect it. A few people are demagogueing it. 
But most of Congress, Democrat and Republican alike, understand that we 
have a responsibility above politics.
  Mr. Speaker, with that, we want to talk tonight and share some of the 
thoughts going on in Congress, and just talk them through, because the 
American people often do not get to see what is happening behind the 
scenes. Today there was a meeting that was vitally important to this 
place, and we have decided that never, ever again in the history of 
Congress should we be having discussions over whether someone voted 
because of the money they got from special interests. This coalition 
went together and we put together a plan. After we reminded ourselves 
of all of the good things we have done so far, which there have been 
many, we decided that we still had to do more.
  We would like to go through; and in fact, I would like to ask the 
gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra] if he could help me remember. 
Mr. Speaker, it has been 10 months since we started this year and we 
have done so much reform. Let us go through what we have done, even 
though our group is going to ask for a lot more, and let us talk about 
what we have done so far.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Will the gentlewoman yield?
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. I would be happy to yield.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If we go back to opening day, we were here for what, 
12, 13, 14 hours, and it was a long time ago. But when I think back 
about my first term of office and how different this session of 
Congress has been, because some of these changes that we made on 
opening day, we did go through and we reduced the size of committee 
staffs by one-third, so we are downsizing Congress. We went to a 
process now that is very important as we work towards a balanced budget 
within seven years, and we said that we would go into truth-in-
budgeting baseline reform. A third reform is even in this Congress, we 
had a historic first vote on term limits for all Members of Congress.

  What we were able to do on opening day is we were able to establish 
term limits for the Speaker, committee and subcommittee chairmen; we 
banned proxy voting, one of the reasons that so many of us are getting 
so much exercise this year, we are running back and forth between the 
House and various committees, making sure that we as Members are 
present and voting in committees, and we do not have chairmen there 
with a stack of paper saying how they believe Members should vote. We 
had sunshine rules concerning committee meetings. All of our committee 
meetings have been open to the public and the media. We have passed a 
supermajority regarding limitations, or the requirement for a 
supermajority on any future tax increases.
  More recently we have seen the result of one of those other reforms 
that we put in. We had the first comprehensive House audit, and I think 
we all recognize the disappointing results of that House audit, 
basically not getting a clean bill of health like private and public 
corporations around the country are required to get from their 
auditors, but basically telling us that we had significant work to do 
in this House to bring our standards of financial accounting up to what 
is expected in the private sector.
  Then the last significant reform that we had on opening day was the 
Congressional Accountability Act, where we went through and said that 
it was time to take many of the laws that applied to the rest of the 
country and apply those laws to Congress, so that we would get a better 
understanding of what is happening to small businesses, medium-sized 
businesses, individuals around the country, with the different laws 
that we have put in place and we have never lived under.
  So that is kind of a quick overview of the types of things we passed 
on opening day. In the last Congress, those would have been considered 
historic. In this Congress, they are now considered a footnote because 
we passed them all on the first day, and people are now saying, well, 
you did that on the first day, where are you moving to now? What is the 
next step?
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, we have moved along so 
quickly, we have had to do so much. Even the audit was monumental, 
because this House has not been audited 

[[Page H9233]]
in 40-some years. Can you imagine a business not being audited in that 
long?
  So we have done a lot. But we had a meeting today of reformers, and 
there are a group of reformers, Democrat and Republican in this House, 
that want more and more, because we believe the American people want 
more and more. So we came to a conclusion today that we should 
eliminate PACs-giving. Now, that is historic, because it was a big 
enough group that we think that we can actually accomplish that if the 
American people come behind it and help us push.
  We were asked, why eliminate PACs, and I am going to go back to the 
charts we were using in this meeting today to share them again, because 
I think the reason that people are unhappy with us is they think that 
once you get here, and I have not been here long, but once you get 
here, the money comes in, the committee chairs get more powerful, the 
people get more powerful, and the incumbents just stay because of that 
money and that power.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, they are right. The American people are right. 
Right now, incumbents get 43 percent of their money from PACs, and that 
leaves individuals at 53 percent, and a lot of that is connected to 
both the lobbyists giving individually and the attorneys for those same 
entities, those same PACs. So when you start whittling this down and 
you take those out, very little, relatively, comes from the person's 
district from small contributions.
  Now, look over here. That is the challenger on this side. The 
challenger, and no wonder not very many challengers win, get very 
little from PACs. PACs bet on the incumbents. The incumbents can sit 
here, never go home to middle-class America or to the streets of their 
districts, and they can just get reelected by fancy media campaigns and 
sending direct mail and never have to shake a hand of a constituent.
  So, Mr. Speaker, we decided today some monumental things. I guess I 
would like to have you two share why you decided to participate in 
these reforms. I mean, this is pretty courageous, this is a pretty good 
sized group now of courageous people who have said, we are going to try 
to break the back of the old system and kick out the money brokers.
  Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentlewoman is exactly right, 
in that if you look at the number that you were just pointing at, the 
really interesting number is to look at the difference between 
incumbents and challengers. If you look at that 11 percent number that 
goes to challengers, what you really begin to see is corrosion of the 
democratic process.

  For instance, in the 1992 election cycle, if you were to break the 
numbers which you would be looking at, is that roughly, challengers 
picked up around $15,000 per election cycle from PACs, while incumbents 
picked up about $212,000 per election cycle from PACs. That is not 
exactly what we call a level playing field back home in South Carolina. 
Mr. Speaker, again, $15,000 as compared to $212,000, and that is that 
kind of difference in terms of funding of campaigns that has a lot to 
do with the fact that we have a 90 percent reelection rate in Congress.
  What people have been saying with the term limits movement is that we 
want to break the back of this sort of permanent political working 
class, and instead, they want to see a citizen legislature that goes in 
for a little while, tries to make a difference as best they know how, 
and then goes home. One of the keys to leveling that playing field is 
this money thing that we are talking about.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I think the other piece that 
we decided on, although we have not decided exactly the mechanism, but 
we decided that most of the money, if not all, if we could get a 
constitutional okay on it, if enough people would say it was not 
unconstitutional, that we wanted all or most all of the money to come 
from the district or State of the voters that put that person into 
office, and no money to come from anywhere else. What do you think 
would happen next year if that were in place and the incumbents could 
not raise money from special interests here? What do you think would 
happen to those incumbents? What would they do, quite naturally?
  Mr. SANFORD. They would either be in real big trouble or they would 
have to head back home to their districts, which is again how I think 
the finding fathers wanted it.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Or they would retire.
  Mr. SANFORD. That is exactly right.
  Mr. Speaker, on that point I would like to bring up the fact that a 
lot of people say well, there is no difference between PAC funding and 
individual funding, and as I think all three of us know, there is a 
fairly considerable difference, because a PAC is all about focused 
special, specific interests. That same amount of money coming from an 
individual; for instance, if I was to go back home to the fellow that 
runs the corner hardware store and say, well, it costs money to run a 
campaign and I sure would appreciate you helping out, and that person 
is not only concerned about business or concerned about that particular 
community, but they have children or grandchildren, so they care about 
education, they care about the Social Security system. There are 1,001 
issues that make up that individual, and so you begin to get a general 
interest as opposed to a very specific interest, and I think that 
distinction is awfully important.

  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. You know, I think it is common sense, as 
the first reforms we passed are common sense, that people are saying, 
other people used to vote by proxy and we did not know that, or why 
should a chair hold a committee chairmanship as long as he or she is 
alive and can be put in the chair? Mr. Speaker, that should be turned 
over every so many years so power does not get too tough.
  Well, people know those things, but we seem to have kind of isolated 
ourselves here in Washington, DC, and forgotten some of those common 
sense conclusions.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Will the gentlewoman yield?
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Sure.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, the discussion this evening is focusing on 
PACs, but I think if we go back and we take a look at, just for a 
moment, at the larger objective and the larger picture that we talked 
about today, we evolved to political action committee funding, but we 
started off with a vision of where we wanted to be, taking into 
consideration what we did on opening day, the process that we have gone 
through this year, and what we hope to accomplish yet during the next 
15 months of this Congress.
  Overall, where we want to move to is we want to move to an 
institution, a Congress, that the American people can feel good about, 
that they see that we have put in place a series of reforms, a series 
of change in procedures about how we go about doing our business that 
will reinforce to them that our primary interest, our only interest, is 
in doing what is good for the long term of this Nation, moving away 
from what I think a lot of people have perceived Congress has become 
and Congress people have become, which is focal points for special 
interest groups. That we are here, and we are about doing the people's 
business, and that what we are going to do is try to eliminate all of 
those things which detract us, or which move us from focusing on what 
is important, to focusing on special interest groups and no longer the 
good of the country. Political action committees are one of the primary 
things that do that.

  We also talked today about a series of things about ethical reforms.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Let us go through those so that the 
American people know what is being talked about, and what we have been 
thinking about, because there are many things. I took a little bit of 
your time, but I will share all of the rest of it with you.
  The American people are interested. Let us start talking about these 
other reforms, because even though we resolved on certain things today, 
we resolved on getting rid of PAC influence, returning campaigns to the 
streets of America, and eliminating all gifts and trips; other than 
that, then we got into things we wanted to add to strengthen, and let 
us talk about some of those.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Well, we talked about things like ethical reform, what 
Members of Congress can do once they leave the institution; for 
instance, should they really be permitted to go work for foreign 
governments, taking the knowledge that they have gained 

[[Page H9234]]
here. Should they be permitted to come back and lobby Congress? We 
talked about pension reform: How lucrative should a retirement from 
Congress be?
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I think we said that Congress 
people should not get any more pension than an ordinary person, and I 
think that is what we came to.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Yes. I think there is another whole series of things 
that I think are going to provide a very fertile ground for us to 
explore, not only reforming this institution, but also reforming the 
size of Washington government and our relationship with the American 
people.
  The gentlewoman is well aware of some of the ideas that I have been 
pushing, such as the opportunity for the American people to recall 
Members of Congress in the Senate; the opportunity for them to have 
initiative and referendum, and those types of things, and I think we 
may hopefully also, as we put this package together, a comprehensive 
package of reform, of building trust in a relationship with the 
American people, we can have an exciting package of reforms that 
demonstrate that we are serious about changing the way that Washington, 
DC, does business, and we are serious about changing the way that 
Washington, DC, relates with people at the grassroots level.

                              {time}  1945

  We are about change. We are about progress. We want to be about good 
Government.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. I would like the gentleman to talk about 
the initiative referendum because it is something that was up last 
year. It has not been talked enough about this year, but you have been 
a leader in that. Then let us talk about that a little bit because it 
sure makes a lot of sense to me.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. The process we proposed 2 years ago, we came here 2 
years ago with a smaller freshman class and with a different majority. 
And we recognized that we needed to put in place reforms. But we said, 
where do we get the pressure to really change and force Congress to 
act? How do we empower the American people?
  One of the things we see is a total disconnect. People at the grass 
roots level no longer feel like they can really influence Congress 
because of things like PAC's. We said, there are a number of States, 
Michigan being one, where through a thoughtful, deliberative initiative 
and referendum process, people at the grass roots level have been able 
to put in term limits, put in tax limitation, put in good government 
measures, because they had a legislature that was unwilling do it so we 
provided them at the State level a mechanism to have an influence on 
legislation that would change the way government was done in the State 
of Michigan. We said, why can we not provide that same opportunity?
  I think one of the things that we have a real opportunity to pass in 
this Congress is we have an unfinished agenda in the Contract With 
America. We passed much of what we wanted to do with the Contract With 
America. We fell short on one major item in the House of 
Representatives. That is term limits.
  The Speaker of the House said that when we come back, if the 
Republicans are in the majority in the next Congress, the first 
legislative vote we will have in the next Congress is a revote of term 
limits. And I think an initiative process or a referendum process on 
term limits would be wonderful. Let the people, the candidates debate 
the pros and cons of term limits in the spring, summer and fall of 
1996. Let them all go to the polls on the second Tuesday of November 
and advise us whether they think term limits is an appropriate piece of 
legislation. Take the results from that advisory referendum and in the 
first day that we are back in session in 1997, see if we cannot pass 
term limits and complete the agenda of this Congress.

  This Congress has not heeded the call of the American people. The 
American people want term limits. This Congress said no. Let us give 
the American people one more chance to instruct us and see if the next 
Congress cannot get the message.
  This is the process that we are looking at building yet during the 
next 15 months.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. You can see it is a dynamic coalition.
  Mr. SANFORD. If I may, you are talking about the American public 
getting the message or trying to send the message. Getting back to what 
we were talking about earlier with your charts in terms of PAC 
contributions, one of the messages that I think has been mixed are 
folks that say, there is really no difference, again, between an 
individual contribution and a PAC contribution.
  One of the things that I think stands out on that front is not only 
the difference between the single issue and sort of the wide ranging 
issue, wide range of issues held by an individual, but as the recent 
Forbes article pointed out, it was here in the last year, I do not know 
if you saw it. I think it was very interesting. It tells a tale about 
how specific money is tied to certain issues in a way that is 
destructive to our democratic system.
  It was a study done by the American Tort Reform Association on, of 
all things, the American Trial Lawyers Association. This is a Forbes 
article of October 24 of last year.
  What was interesting about this study was they studied contributions 
by the American Trial Lawyers Association to California, Texas, and 
Alabama. Between the dates of January 1990 and June 1994, during that 
period, they contributed $17.3 million. By election time it was right 
at $20 million. And if you took it across all 50 States, you would be 
at about $60 million.
  What is interesting about that number is the point of the article 
was, did these folks get a good return on their investment. The answer 
was, absolutely yes, because most attempts at sort of meaningful reform 
in terms of tort reform have been stymied in large part due to the $60 
million. So I think, one, it is interesting the way the money flows to 
specific issues, but as well the bundling factor which is not talked 
about often with PAC's, which is that PAC's can contribute up to $5,000 
per election cycle to a campaign, which means, for instance, in my race 
I had a primary and then a runoff and then a general, they could give 
$5,000 in the primary--$15,000.

  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. One group?
  Mr. SANFORD. One group.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. And you would say that had no effect.
  Mr. SANFORD. Exactly. They could get together with three other PAC's 
and you could be looking at $45,000 from one group, and the American 
public is looking at it and saying, wait, this does not pass the common 
sense test.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. I have to say that people that are standing 
here have to be commended simply because we have been thrown into the 
system, a lot of freshmen, and you are a freshman too, as I am. We are 
standing up against it.
  Now we have recruited, I call it the older reforms that got beat 
down. All of a sudden they are standing up with the freshmen saying, 
``We do not like the sewer either.'' They are talking about it from 
within. This is historic. Never, never before have they really pointed 
to the institution and themselves. They have always pointed to somebody 
else on the other side of the aisle or they got out of politics and 
then talked afterward.
  Mr. SANFORD. Right.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. So you are saying those things about your 
campaign is really historic, that you would be willing to step out.
  Mr. SANFORD. Hopefully, that is what is different about our class. 
People will actually step to the plate, whether it is on term limits or 
whether it is on campaign finance reform, and stay that for too long 
people, as you have said, have just pointed the finger saying we need 
to reform all of this out here but never us. Hopefully we are beginning 
this cleansing process for beginning with ourselves.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. I think that I really do commend you 
because I know that some of the folks have been afraid of pointing to 
it for fear that those that are not so kind will say, but you came in 
in a PAC system. What I say to them is, if you are willing to stand up 
now, I believe the American people will stand up with you. You ran 
against PAC mania, and if you challenged an incumbent they were raising 
it there. So it is quite natural.

[[Page H9235]]


  Then you come in with a debt, and the PAC's are here, and they are 
paying off the debt. And your opponent has already filed against you 
the day after your last election. They are getting PAC money. So no 
matter where you are, are you courageous enough to stand up in it and 
say, no.
  Mr. SANFORD. Speaking for PAC mania, I was looking at numbers from 
the Federal Election Commission showing numbers for PACS; December 31, 
1974, they were right at basically 89 corporate PAC's total, 89 
corporate PACS; July 1, 1994, 1,666 PAC's. You can see this explosion 
in terms of the way special interests have manifested themselves. So 
you are right when you say the word PAC mania.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. We want to get our good friend here, the 
gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Graham].
  But take a look at this. A total of PAC contributions just to the 
House for 80 million in 1984. There are 132 million just to the House 
in the last election. And it is going up just about the sharpest, just 
about like the national debt did. I wonder if it is connected.
  Mr. GRAHAM. This is the upstate version. Mark is from the coastal 
area of South Carolina, and I am from upstate.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Good State.
  Mr. GRAHAM. One thing we agree on is that the system needs to be 
changed. The gentlewoman has done a good job bringing the debate on the 
floor for the House tonight and throughout the Congress. Let me say why 
PAC contributions have gone up in my opinion.
  We tried to reform giving in the past, and this was a loophole that 
we limited individual donations, so PACS were formed. They have 
replaced individual giving, corporate giving. We said corporations 
could not give in their own name so they created political action 
committees that will allow you to give in the same manner that you were 
before when corporations were giving directly.
  When it comes time to evaluate whether we have done things 
differently in this Congress, I would like people at home to think 
about what the debates are now. The debate now is how much do we reduce 
Government, how much do we cut spending, how much do we deregulate, how 
quickly do we reform Medicare, how quickly do we balance the budget. I 
can tell you that 6 months ago that was not the debate in this country.

  So there has been a substantive change in the way we are looking at 
national issues. I think our class had a lot to do with it. There are 
people that have been fighting for a long time in this institution to 
bring better Government about. But the whole debate has changed. I am 
proud to be a part of the new debate.
  The only group of people that I know that has serious doubts about 
the merits of term limits at the national level happen to reside here. 
When you go out in my district, it is not a real serious debate as to 
whether or not you need term limits. There are people that genuinely 
believe that term limits is something that we should not do. Certainly 
not going to cure every Government ill, but the vast majority of 
Americans, 70 to 80 percent of them, believe it is time to experiment 
with our Government and try a new form of serving in Congress, make it 
an opportunity to serve your citizens and come back home.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Why do you think they want term limits?
  Mr. GRAHAM. I think a recent example of someone who has been up here 
for a very long time, term limits and arrogance go together. I think 
the public sees it as a way to control the arrogance for power. The 
average committee tenure for chairmen tenure in Congress was 26 years 
on average. Committee chairmen had held their jobs for 26 years. And I 
do not see those people losing their jobs unless you change the 
institution.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. What is wrong with that? What is wrong with 
all that experience? I had somebody say, well, that is experience.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Well, experience is good in many areas, but in 
Government, the power centers are dominated by a few people. And 
literally, it has been true in Congress that if a handful of people did 
not like the idea, regardless of its merits, it could never see the 
light of day.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. What kind of people?
  Mr. GRAHAM. A handful of committee chairmen and the power structure 
here. As a freshman, we have been beat on a little bit. We are not 
always right, but we want change to come about quickly. We want change 
to come about, and it would be real change. I have been in the State 
legislature, and I know that enthusiasm that you get with a new job. It 
is irreplaceable.

  After 12 years, I ran on 12-year term limits. At this pace I do not 
think I will last that long, but I guarantee that I will be part of the 
problem so that it will be good for this institution to have new people 
recycle through.
  In my district there are a lot of people that could be good 
Congressmen. I am certainly not the only one, and I would give them a 
chance to do it. But term limits was the only item in the Contract With 
America that was failed, and it was the only item that affected our 
political future.
  I hope and pray that people will not give up on this issue. We have 
an inclination in this body to still protect ourselves. There is no 
doubt in my mind if PAC reform gets to the floor for the House that 
campaign finance reform gets to the floor of the House. It will be a 
slam-dunk vote.
  People in this institution are afraid to vote against the mood of the 
times, but our problem is getting it out on the floor for a vote. When 
it comes out and sees the light of day, these reform measures are going 
to pass. Our leadership is very busy now trying to balance the budget 
and reform Medicare, but I hope they will listen to us. More 
importantly, I hope they will listen to people back home and get real 
reform that affects Members themselves on the floor so that we can 
profess to people finally that we are serious about not only changing 
the way the Government works but the way we serve in Government.
  If we can establish credibility at that level, then everything is 
possible. We can balance the budget. We can reform Medicare because we 
live by example, and I am optimistic that we are not too far away from 
that date happening.
  So folks at home need to take some encouragement. The debate has 
changed, and we are going to get the Government back on track sooner or 
later. I think it is going to be sooner.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Has it not been exciting to be a part of 
freshman reformers on both sides of the aisle. I was thinking about 
that as we were setting a meeting today with reformers, Democrat and 
Republicans. I was looking at these people that were saying things, 
like I do not care if I get reelected, we have to do this, and that 
were willing to take on the old committee structure.

  Some of the more difficult folks to change are going to be some of 
those that have been chairs forever or because Republicans took 
control, finally have chairmanship but who have been here for years. It 
is going to be hard for them to accept the change. But when I looked 
around that room and I saw the determination, I do not know how you 
feel, but I thought, I think that if the American people give us the 
support, we are going to be able to make sure that the leadership 
understands this has to get to a vote.
  Did the gentleman fell good about the dynamics for the meeting today?
  Mr. GRAHAM. Yes, I felt good about the fact that the people did seem 
very sincere. And I would be the first to admit, I enjoy my time in 
Congress. I limited my own term, and I am going to live by that if the 
people allow me to come back.
  I am concerned about getting reelected but not at all costs. I would 
like to see this revolution through for several terms so that we can 
make sure that what we start today does not die next term. We need to 
sustain a majority with people of the right mind and right spirit.
  I would rather be beat than not to balance the budget. I would rather 
be beat than to walk away from the Medicare system that is going broke. 
I would rather be beat than not to fund the military adequately. There 
are certain things that mean more to me than my political career 
because I can see the future, and the future is at stake now.
  We are going to take one or two paths. We are going to deal with 
entitlement issues in this country in an 

[[Page H9236]]
honest way, or we are going to turn our back to them and worry about 
the reelection solely on the idea that, if you do not give the American 
people everything you perceive they want, they will not vote for you.

                              {time}  2000

  What I perceive the American people wanting is honesty in government, 
to be honest with them about Medicare, to give reforms that are 
sincere, that are meaningful, and to get away from the rhetoric. I 
think the American people are our best ally. I am not afraid of them at 
all. I think we are way behind the power curve and they are way ahead 
of us.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. I have been home a lot. I go home every 
weekend, 3 or 4 days a week. I find this place is so far removed from 
the American people. There is a lot of common sense. They want 
solutions. They do not want the polarization. What they consider common 
sense seems to be different than what is here.
  Can you imagine if we had the American people here right now, we had 
them all in this room and they took a vote on whether lobbyists should 
be giving us money at all, what the vote would be?
  Mr. GRAHAM. I came from a State in South Carolina where 16 to 18 
people in the State legislature went to jail for taking bribes on their 
votes, for taking gifts illegally. We have the strongest ethics law in 
the country in South Carolina. You cannot take anything of value from a 
lobbyist. We were able to operate State government, I think, better.
  If the American people could vote by television or some other device 
on these issues, it would be a slamdunk. It would be a slamdunk if this 
body had the opportunity to vote on campaign reform. So the message has 
to be: Call your Congressman, tell him that you are insistent that a 
vote come about.
  We will have another vote on term limits, and I honestly believe that 
the American public is going to demand that this issue be resolved in 
favor of national term limits; that those people who consistently 
oppose term limits are going to lose their job through the democratic 
process.
  The public has an agenda of its own. I think we have embraced that 
agenda in the Contract With America, but we have a lot more to do. 
Medicare to me is kind of a defining moment in this Congress. I believe 
this about Medicare: that if you take more money out of the system than 
you are putting in on average per couple, that the system is going to 
be subsidizing you. The number they tell me that is accurate is that 
the average American senior citizen couple takes out $10,000 more than 
they put in the system, which means their children and their 
grandchildren are paying the difference.
  What we are trying to do up here is to even the playing field, reform 
a system that most of us believe does not work. The sicker you get in 
Medicare, the more money the doctor and the hospital gets. The 
incentives are all wrong. There is no opportunity to get reimbursed for 
preventive medicine, so we are going to create a system that has 
different incentives behind it and prevents the future generations from 
going bankrupt from subsidizing the system that really does not provide 
quality of medicine in an efficient manner. That is what the Medicare 
debate is about.
  I think senior citizens in this country are going to step up to the 
plate and help us solve the problem. They won World War II, most of 
them lived through the Great Depression, they have seen the Great 
Society grow and interrupt their individual freedom. Can you imagine 
being a senior citizen in America and your sole source of income is 
Social Security, which the Government has its fingers in, and the only 
way you can get health service is through Government-sponsored health 
care? Who wants to be in that boat? You surely do not want that for 
your children and grandchildren. That is no place to be. We are trying 
to change that dynamic.

  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. I think the exciting part for me about 
Medicare is this has been a Congress of courage. Instead of doing what 
was recommended by the President, just do nothing for a while, let us 
just do nothing until the next election, they decided to do it in spite 
of elections. Any time before we have tried to reform the major systems 
of Medicare and Social Security, the--I will just call them people that 
like to scare older people--have gone in there and one things, so they 
have not done it year after year.
  When we all got here as freshmen, we had to face what they should 
have done 15 years ago in stabilizing these systems. Instead of us 
backing up and saying ``We just got elected,'' we look at them. I went 
through the financials on Medicare. Serious problems. Anybody who has 
been here for 10 or 15 years that did not take a stab at really fixing 
them or trying to stabilize them before is really responsible. Here we 
were to handle them.
  Instead of our freshman class and a lot of colleagues coming in 
saying, ``Oh, my goodness, we are going to lose our elections,'' they 
said, ``It is not responsible to not stabilize it and make sure it is 
there for the most vulnerable people. We have to do that.''
  Therefore, we have to talk about it. It did lay us open for 
criticism, but a leader that does not get criticized is probably not 
doing anything, or lying to both sides anyway. I appreciate that about 
the freshman class, being the motion behind that.
  Mr. GRAHAM. I think that truly is the spirit of the class. The bill 
is now due for 30 and 40 years of socialism. The bill has finally come 
due and it has come due on our watch. What are we going to do?
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Instead of our grandchildren's.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Now is the time to change it. By the time they inherit 
it, it is too late. We have the incentives all wrong. If you are a 
senior citizen and you make over $11,000, we start dipping into your 
benefits and punish you for staying in the work force. That is a crazy 
program. I would like every senior citizen in America that can work to 
keep working and pay taxes, Social Security taxes, for the rest of 
their live until they decide not to work; not have the Government 
punish you because you continue to work.
  Welfare, we have a system now where you have to pick between 
dependence and independence. If you are a mother with a couple of 
children, the main reason that you want to stay on welfare is for 
health insurance. If you get a part-time job and you make $1 too much, 
we take your Medicaid benefits away from you. If you want to live 
together as man and wife, we take your benefits away from you because 
you went over a magic threshold.
  I would like to see the Government help people help themselves. Do 
not have it all or nothing. Let us help you, and you work and help 
yourself, and as you go up the economic ladder we will reduce the 
benefit package but allow you to work and receive public assistance so 
you can be independent and feel good about yourself. The incentives in 
this system for the last 30 or 40 years have tried to keep people tied 
to it.
  The entrepreneurial spirit and independence is a threat to the Great 
Society because the whole reason it has existed is extracting votes 
from the American public, because they are tied to Government, and I 
want to change that incentive. I want your vote because I come up with 
good policies, not because you are dependent on me for a check.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Today many of us met with Ross Perot, the 
head of United We Stand, and we talked about a poll of the 
independents, and how the independents, what they are looking at. They 
want strong change, they want real change, and they want us to do it 
now. They are not willing to wait very long, and I think that what we 
are doing is strong change that is constructive strong change. They are 
basically behind that change.
  The one loose cog we have there, though, is they really want to 
eliminate PACs because it builds the confidence in the solutions. You 
made a really good comment during that meeting, that without the 
confidence, and I will not quote you, because you are here, something 
to do with the confidence we need of the American people in these 
solutions. I certainly do agree with you: if they do not trust us in 
the solutions, no matter how good they are, it is like trying to heal a 
patient that does not believe in the cure. They 

[[Page H9237]]
can have the best cure and die from a lack of trust in the cure, at 
times.
  Mr. GRAHAM. The question is what makes us different. Rhetoric abounds 
in politics, but the public is not going to be satisfied until they see 
substantive changes. We have talked about concepts that are long 
overdue for change, but one thing we have to prove to the American 
people is that we are willing to change the way we serve, the length of 
time, and the benefits that we are getting from serving. If we are 
willing to do that, if we are willing to change our pension plans, if 
we are willing to change the way we get our elections financed, if we 
are willing to change the career nature of being in politics----
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. And no more gifts?
  Mr. GRAHAM. And no more gifts, I think people will respond in a 
positive fashion and accept the other changes we are asking them to do 
in their daily lives. There is nothing wrong with politics that cannot 
be fixed. The only way we are going to win this war is for the people 
to stay involved and insist on change. And watch what we do when we 
vote, not just what we say up here talking; follow our voting records, 
follow what bills we sponsor. I take PAC money right now because I am 
the first Republican in 120 years to get elected from my district.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. You want to give somebody PAC money? That 
is kind of the way the game is played.
  Mr. GRAHAM. The Democrat Party spent as much as I did in PAC money, 
but the Democrat candidates have traditionally outspent Republican 
candidates 5 and 6 to one. I am and I was competitive. I want to change 
the rules of my game, but I am not going to take my helmet off when I 
play football until everybody in the circumstances takes their helmet 
off.
  I believe our class is willing to put the measures forward to vote on 
this floor and that we will win, but do not be too hard on us because 
we are unwilling to play by a different set of rules when the people 
who have run this place for 40 years will not.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. That is what was exciting about the meeting 
with Ross Perot is that he said, ``Just change the game.'' He really 
was not critical of us, because everyone came in running against people 
with PACs, and if you did not compete that way, it was like fighting 
with a B-B gun against a bazooka. But I think the scenario that came 
closest, he said, maybe before you were there or during the day, 
something to the extent of being thrown in a sewer and liking it. If 
you are there very long and it starts smelling good, you have a 
problem. If you are thrown in and you are trying to swim out and keep 
your nose above water, that is quite different, but you are not going 
to be willing to sink.
  Mr. GRAHAM. There is nothing wrong with politics that a few good 
people working with their constituents cannot fix. And honest to 
goodness, we have changed the debate in this country, and I am 
committed now more than ever to reforming the government. I believe it 
is possible now more than ever, because we have changed the whole 
debate of what is going on in Washington within a 6-month period. To 
follow will be substantive changes in the law, but things do not happen 
overnight. We are well on our way.
  The number one comment I get in my district in South Carolina is, 
``Do not turn back. Do not give up.''
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Do it faster?
  Mr. GRAHAM. That is right. It excites me. I live in a district where 
the average per capita income is less than $14,000. I did not run on a 
campaign promising them more benefits from the Federal Government, an 
increase in the minimum wage. I ran on a platform of getting the 
Government out of your life, decentralizing the role of the Federal 
Government, giving you choices to raise and educate your children, 
giving you an opportunity to start your own business and succeed or 
fail based on your own merits, deregulating the society so we can be 
competitive internationally, and I won by 60 percent, by people who 
have traditionally been written off by the Republican Party. I think 
that is a shortcoming of our party. We are truly the hope of the 
future. The entrepreneurial spirit lies with this new generation of 
politicians. Let us bring it back to life.

  The thing about democracy is that you give people opportunities, and 
when you have an opportunity, you can blow it and you can fail. We have 
to be willing in this country to allow people to take chances and fail, 
and understand that that is just the nature of competition.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. So they sent you as a candidate for change?
  Mr. GRAHAM. That is right.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. They sent me as a candidate for change. My 
election was only 2 weeks in the primary, and then 6 or 7 weeks.
  Mr. GRAHAM. You were a write-in candidate?
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. I was a write-in candidate. I came back 
from vacation and all people knew about me in the State, other than my 
direct Senate district I already represented, was that I had passed 
campaign reform and spending control, and that I was close to people. 
The polls afterwards show the people elected me to go and change 
Congress. They saw hope in me to be a change for this level, because I 
was at the State level.
  I am a very, very strongly known person for being opinionated a 
little bit, maybe a whole bunch, you know me.
  Mr. GRAHAM. It is not all bad.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. If you follow the old political wisdom, 
they say, ``If you have strong views, keep them to yourself because you 
do not make anybody mad.'' I did not follow that in my State, so in 
Washington State they know where Linda stands on most everything, but 
they did not care on the things they disagreed with me on, as long as I 
would go in and clean house so the system would work, like we did in 
Washington. I look at our colleagues that have come in with us and some 
that came before us, and there has been a whole wave for 2 years of 
people sending people they want to change this place.
  Mr. GRAHAM. The thing that amazes me about our class is that when we 
first got together at the very first part of Congress, I did kind of an 
informal poll. I think our campaign literature was absolutely the same. 
Whether you were in the deep South or in Washington or in Minnesota, 
you had the same view of what the problems were in this country; that 
you wanted a balanced budget amendment, and I want a balanced budget 
amendment in the Constitution to protect the public even from the 
Republican Party.
  I want term limits not just for Democrats, but for anybody that wants 
to serve. I want to give the President of the United States the line 
item veto. I am very disappointed----
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Even though he is a Democrat?
  Mr. GRAHAM. I want to give it to President Clinton now, and I think 
we have sat on that issue far too long. It is time to act.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. We passed it through the House.
  Mr. GRAHAM. We did in the House. The Senate has a version, and they 
need to come together and get a version signed into law. Speaker 
Gingrich has made a commitment to try to do that by the end of the 
year. Those types of reforms serve the country well, because you need 
the line item veto even if Republicans are in charge, because there is 
a habit up here of spending money to get reelected, and I would like to 
have somebody sitting over the shoulder, regardless of the party, 
saying, ``That is not good for the country, even though it may be good 
for your district.''
  The balanced budget amendment, if I write a bad check as a private 
citizen I go to jail. If I write a bad check as a politician, I get 
reelected. I do not trust any party enough not to have institutional 
control.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. It is not funny, but the ways of the past, 
all you can do is laugh about them.
  Mr. GRAHAM. When you think things are not going so well, go home. I 
have been home every weekend but two. I went home and met with Senator 
Thurmond. He is 93 and he can run circles around me. He is for term 
limits. He said 12 more years and he is getting out.
  They say, ``How can you support Senator Thurmond and be for term 
limits?'' I said the problem is not whether Senator Thurmond goes or 
Ted Kennedy goes, it is the institution. I am 

[[Page H9238]]
looking at institutional changes. There is no use picking on one 
person.
  The thing that is great about this job is I got to go to the 100th 
anniversary of Saluda County, and I met a woman who used to babysit 
Strom Thurmond. She is 103. She said, ``I want you to go to the old 
folks home with me, because they need cheering up.'' She goes every 
Sunday and pushes people around in a wheelchair. She has a lot of 
spirit.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Does she still believe in America?
  Mr. GRAHAM. She believes in America now more than ever. She saw Strom 
Thurmond grow up. She said he was a nice young man. That was a great 
opportunity to see what is good about America. If anybody from the EPA 
wants to change the water in that area, they had better call me first, 
because the gentleman that sang the song at the end of the ceremony 
sang the same song at the 50th anniversary. Senator Thurmond laid the 
stone at the 50th anniversary when he was Governor, and his babysitter 
was at the same ceremony, so there is no problem about the water in my 
district, and they had better stay out of it.

                              {time}  2015

  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. It sounds like you are getting real 
personal on that one. But when you go home you find out the truth of 
what people are wanting. They want us to be truthful and they want 
strong reform.
  I think that today we turned, you might say, the corner when we put 
together the coalition that says we are going to ask the leadership to 
take strong votes before we leave for Thanksgiving on campaign and 
ethics reform, and we want votes and strong action, moving forward. To 
me that is a confidence builder for the American people like nothing 
else because they can trust our solutions. When we go home, they can 
say, job well done.
  Mr. GRAHAM. I am going to go and jog with Senator Thurmond here in a 
second.
  The only thing that will keep us from not passing campaign reform 
will be the lack of an opportunity to vote on it, because if it gets on 
the House floor it is going to pass, because nobody wants to face the 
wrath of the American people on this issue. So I really do believe the 
leadership is going to give us that opportunity the first part of next 
year and that when it gets on this floor, you are going to see some 
amazing votes.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. And you are going to be one of the ones 
that pushes it to the top of the hill, are you not?
  Mr. GRAHAM. I will be there cheering it on.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. With that, I thank the gentleman. Good 
night. It has been a great day for America. We are moving ahead and 
turning the corner for real reform.

                          ____________________