[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 179 (Monday, November 13, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H12179-H12184]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 THE IMPORTANCE OF BALANCING THE BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] is recognized for 
50 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I am certainly glad to join the gentlemen 
in welcoming the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] back. We are 
glad to have him with us, and Democrats and Republicans during this 
stressful period of negotiations can certainly agree on that and keep 
in mind what is the most important thing.
  Mr. Speaker, as of November 8, 1995, our national debt was 
$4,984,737,460,958.92.
  Now that was on the 8th of November. On the 13th, which is today, 
that figure has risen to $4,985,913,011,032.65. We advance each week in 
terms of almost $3 billion.
  Mr. Speaker, this debt is passed on to our children.
  Now I have a 7-year-old daughter, and the other day, as I was coming 
off the floor making my daily phone call home, Ann asked me, ``Daddy, 
what were you voting on?'' And it was, as you will recall, Mr. Speaker, 
last week right after the vote on increasing the debt ceiling was held, 
and I had just voted to increase the debt ceiling on my 7-year-old, and 
I think that just having that happen immediately underscored the 
importance to me of what we are trying to do when we talk about 
balancing the budget. It is not academic, it is something that my 7-
year-old daughter, her 5-year-old brother, her 10-year-old brother, and 
her 12-year-old sister will be having to pay. A child born today, Mr. 
Speaker, owes $187,000 in interest on the national debt during his or 
her 75-year lifetime, and that doe not even pay the principal down.

  Mr. Speaker, that is why I think it is so important right now for us 
to keep in mind why we are working late tonight, why are we working 
probably through Thanksgiving and maybe through Christmas. But we need 
to balance the budget for our children's children.
  Previous speaker tonight was talking about education and education 
being an investment. I could not agree with that statement more. But I 
can tell you another investment, and that is keeping America from going 
broke, and that is why it is so important for us to support this 
Republican plan to balance the 7-year budget, because you see, Mr. 
Speaker, in the year 2002 the Republican balanced budget plan has a 
zero deficit, but the President's plan has a $200 billion deficit in 
the year 2002. The differences are real.
  We have a real bill here. We want to balance the budget. We do not 
want to close government down. But we have got to do this for our 
children.
  Mr. Weldon from Florida has joined us, and I would like to yield the 
floor to him. I see he has a chart and also the gentleman from Illinois 
[Mr. LaHood].
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding, and I cannot agree with you more on the importance of 
balancing our budget for the sake of our children and for our 
children's children.
  The United States has a longstanding history of doing what is right 
in the setting of adversity, in difficult times coming to the right 
conclusions, and I believe that today our Nation is really at that 
point. I think when the other body failed to ratify the balanced budget 
amendment and our dollar decreased from about 106 yen to about 80 yen, 
I think that gave the American people a good glimpse of what happens to 
a nation that truly does spend more than it takes in. Its currency is 
ultimately worth nothing, and the implications for that on our entire 
economic system is really huge, and I cannot understand why the 
President will not join us in this historic effort to restore fiscal 
sanity to our budgeting process and to make sure that our children are 
not left bankrupt, but do inherit a brighter and better future, and I 
do want to take a minute to talk a little bit about this chart because 
the President has been talking about saving Medicare, and I personally 
think it is disgraceful for him to be carrying on like this because 
everybody knows that in his health care plan that he was talking about 
back in 1993, he was talking 

[[Page H 12180]]
about taking billions of dollars out of the Medicare plan. Now he is 
saying that he wants to prevent or stop some of the changes we want to 
make in the Medicare plan, but what he is engaging in I think is 
deceptive because, if you look at what we are doing right now with the 
Medicare plan, the seniors currently pick up about 31.5 percent of the 
premium. That is about $42 a month.

  Now this is the part B. The part A is the hospital insurance fund, 
and that comes out of people's Federal withholding as a separate tax. 
This is the part B plan. This covers physician services as well as 
certain outpatient services, and currently today the average senior 
spends about $42 a month for that, and that actually only consists of 
about 31.5 percent of premium. The actual total cost per month is about 
$130.
  Now this was originally a 50-50 split back in 1964 when the program 
was created, and in an effort to help seniors cope with limited budgets 
that has been allowed to go down to 31.5 percent, and what we do in our 
plan is we fix it at that level.

                              {time}  2200

  What the President wants to do is let that share, the part seniors 
pick up, shrink down to 25 percent. But what he does not talk about is 
who is going to pick up the rest of this. This gets right back to what 
the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] was talking about. We do not 
have this. He wants to go out and borrow this money from our children 
to pay for this difference. We want to keep this right at this level 
here.
  The most shameful thing in all this is that he only wants to do this 
for 1 year, for 1 year, so that he can get the votes of senior 
citizens, and then beginning in 1997 and 1998 and 1999 and 2000 and 
2001 and 2002, he wants to let the senior citizens, premiums go up on 
part B so that in the end, in the Clinton proposal, they will be paying 
$83 a month and in the Republican proposal they will be spending $90 a 
month.
  Why is he doing this? Why is he doing this right now? He is doing 
this because he wants their votes. He said to the American people back 
in 1992 that he would give them a middle-class tax cut. In 1993 he 
changed his mind. He said he was going to change welfare as we know it. 
Then he never did that. He said he was going to put forward a 5-year 
balanced budget proposal, and he never did. I personally think what he 
is doing here is playing politics with the votes of senior citizens.
  Mr. LaHOOD. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. KINGSTON. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.
  Mr. LaHOOD. Let me just also indicate something else that I think is 
going on. There has been a campaign throughout the country on behalf of 
the Democrats to try and scare senior citizens into believing that 
Republicans want to throw senior citizens off of Medicare, that we want 
to eliminate Medicare, that we want to do something drastic to 
Medicare, when the truth of the matter is that three of the President's 
own Cabinet members have told us that if we do not do something to 
reform, to preserve, to protect the Medicare Program, it will be broke.
  Yet our friends on the other side of the aisle would have you believe 
that we can keep continuing doing what we have been doing, but the 
point is there are a number of people coming into the system, health 
care costs are going up, and we want to try and strengthen and preserve 
the program. We do not want to throw senior citizens off. We do not 
want to reduce the benefit. We want to preserve and protect the 
program.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. KINGSTON. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. I thank my friend, the gentleman from Illinois. He 
makes a very valid point. Indeed, as my other colleagues have gone out 
to do town halls in their districts, also perhaps via mail, asking 
through questionnaires what is going on, I think the gentleman from 
Illinois makes a point that cannot be stated enough. A bipartisan 
group, including three of President Clinton's own Cabinet officers, say 
we have to fix this because if we do nothing, the program goes broke.
  The other thing we need to state, because somehow, through the midst 
of deliberate disinformation and an advertising campaign, one simple 
fact has also been ignored. We need to state it ad nauseum. That is 
this: that under our plan for Medicare plus, average expenditures per 
beneficiaries increase from $4,800 this year to $6,700 in the year 
2002. No doubt earlier in this special order that fact has been brought 
up, but I daresay it is something that needs to be repeated again and 
again and again. And, indeed, we hear from people in our districts, we 
hear from people in our States tonight via the telefax, just before I 
walked in on the floor, the Epsteins from Arizona, a pair of self-
described seasoned citizens, to use the expression of one of our 
friends from radio fame, write me and say this: ``Stay the course. 
Stick with present budget. We support the efforts of the 104th 
Congress. Good luck. Keep the faith.''
  Ms. Nelson from Clarksdale, AZ, called in tonight with a three-word 
message: ``Don't back down.''
  Mr. LaHOOD. Mr. Speaker, I think this. I think when people are 
presented with the facts, not a 30-second commercial, because if you 
tell people a lie often enough, they will believe it, so when people 
are not told the facts they begin to believe that that is the truth. 
But when people are presented with the facts, which you have just 
presented, that we want to preserve and protect, and that their benefit 
is not going to be cut, it is not going to be decreased, they begin to 
get the correct information and begin to know that we are trying to 
strengthen, to preserve, to protect a program that has worked well.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, one thing to keep in mind is that under 
the 7-year balanced budget plan, we are increasing overall spending by 
$3 trillion instead of $4 trillion. Four trillion dollars would keep us 
on the road to bankruptcy, but we are increasing it $3 trillion, and in 
the same time, during the same period of time, balancing the budget; 
Medicare spending, as you know, goes from $178 billion to $286 billion.
  Let me repeat, and I see the gentleman from Kentucky wants to make a 
point on this, we are going from $178 billion to $286 billion during 
that 7-year time. That is an increase in Medicare, even if you have a 
Democrat deficit disorder.
  Mr. JONES. If the gentleman will continue to yield, I would like to 
ask the gentleman, what is so extreme about saving Medicare, balancing 
the budget, reforming welfare, giving tax breaks to families with 
children? What is so extreme? We keep hearing the word ``extreme'' 
today, used on us, that we are trying to do extreme things.
  If we are extreme, then they are saying that the American people are 
extreme. The President keeps saying ``extreme.'' I do not see anything 
extreme in what we are doing. We are doing exactly what the American 
people have asked us to do.
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. If the gentleman will continue to yield, I 
would like to comment on that, I remember when I was a kid growing up, 
somebody once called me a name. I do not know if they called me a liar 
or whatever. I went to my daddy and I was upset, and I said, why are 
they doing that? And he said something to me that I will never forget. 
He said, ``A lot of times when people call you names, they have a 
problem in that area themselves, and they are externalizing it on you, 
but they really, actually have the problem.''

  I want to show you some numbers that I think convinces me how extreme 
the situation is here with our colleagues on the left side of the aisle 
and with the White House. Bill Clinton said he was going to balance the 
budget in 5 years, back in 1992. He did not present a balanced budget 
in 1993 after he was elected, he did not present it in 1994, he did not 
present it in 1995. Then after we put our budget on the table, he 
finally brought forth his 10-year budget.
  When he stood over here and said that he would put forward a budget 
using the CBO numbers, he did not do that. His numbers that he 
ultimately presented to us, after he was shamed into having to produce 
something, his 10-year budget was based on his budget office, so we had 
the CBO look at his numbers. Look at this. It goes from $196 billion to 
$209 billion at the end of 10 years. There is absolutely no attempt to 
balance the books here. I would not call this extreme, personally, I 
would call this irresponsible.

[[Page H 12181]]

  Mr. HAYWORTH. If the gentleman will continue to yield, I think we go 
to that word ``extreme'' and use it in a couple of different 
directions. I think, with reference to what my good friend, the 
gentleman from Florida, just outlines, especially in the wake of the 
curious behavior of this Nation's Chief Executive, who says one thing 
one day and something else the next day, I think we have to say, ``This 
is extremely confusing.'' And with reference to extremism being used 
with our plans, extremism, I think we can simply say that what we have 
talked about, saving, protecting, my good friend, and defending 
Medicare through Medicare plus, genuine welfare reform, tax cuts for 
the middle class, and a glide path to a balanced budget in 7 years, I 
think we have to describe that as being extremely, extremely 
commonsensical.
  Mr. LaHOOD. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield 
further, I want to make a point here for the people that happen to be 
watching our discussion. For those people who do not know it, the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Weldon] is a doctor. He is a freshman 
Member of the 104th Congress. I guess, what, he was a family 
practitioner, is that correct?
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. Sort of. I was an internist. A family 
practitioner for senior citizens.
  Mr. LaHOOD. And I assume you probably had as your patients senior 
citizens.
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. About half my practice.
  Mr. LaHOOD. Now, would anybody believe that Dr. Dave Weldon, the 
gentleman from Florida, now a Member of the 104th Congress, would want 
to throw any of his patients off of Medicare, would want them to be 
deprived of medical care? Of course they would not. And for someone 
like the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Weldon], now a Congressman, to be 
accused by people on the other side of the aisle of being hard-hearted 
or wanting to throw people off of Medicare is just simply nonsense.
  I just want the American people to know that the gentleman from 
Florida, Dr. Weldon, comes here as a practitioner of medicine for 
senior citizens. Who could care more about the seniors of our country 
than one who has practiced medicine for senior citizens? I think it is 
an important point.

  Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. KINGSTON. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. CHABOT. Getting back to what the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. 
Hayworth] said, what is extreme, I think what is really extreme would 
be to go along with what the President has been posturing to do. That 
is, to continue to bankrupt this Nation by not balancing the budget. 
That was the message that I heard, and I have been hearing all year, is 
it is time finally to balance the budget.
  I have parents. My parents are in their seventies. They are both on 
Medicare. They both receive Social Security. We are trying to save 
Medicare for the elderly folks in this country so it is there when we 
are going to be using it. I also have little kids. I have a daughter 
that is 13, I have a son that is 6 years old. What has been happening 
in this country over the past couple of decades, however, is huge debt 
has been built up and spent, and we are turning it over to these kids 
and saying, ``You are going to pay this debt, because we have not been 
able to do it. We have not had a Congress that has had the guts to 
balance the budget.''
  We have one now. We have got a Congress that is saying, ``We are no 
longer going to spend this Nation into bankruptcy.'' I hope and I pray 
that the President of the United States will work with us, so we can 
cut out all this posturing and balance the budget, cut taxes, and do 
the things which we promised to do. I think the American people, as 
they learn what the overall plan is, will be supportive. I am from 
Cincinnati, and the calls that I got today were 7 to 1 saying, ``Stick 
to your guns, don't back down, don't back down to the President; 
balance the budget.'' That is what I, for one, intend to do.
  Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I 
got the same type of phone calls today. I just want to go back to this 
extremism that is coming from the President and the liberals.
  If you want to talk about extremism, I have a daughter that is 13 
also, I would say to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Chabot]. If you 
project out, if nothing is done to balance our budget to get this 
spending under control, in the year 2030 my daughter, midway through 
her life and through her career, will have hanging over her head not--
you know, today we have approximately a $5 trillion debt. That is the 
debt. But in the year 2030, let us look at this extreme number, the 
deficit spending for one year, just one year, will be $4 trillion. That 
is mind-boggling. We cannot continue, we cannot go on and survive as a 
Nation with that kind of spending.
  Mr. CHABOT. If the gentleman will continue to yield, just following 
up on the point about what a balanced budget means, it means real 
things to real American citizens, if we can finally balance the budget.
  For example, a person who buys a home, say they spend $75,000 for a 
home, and there is a 30-year loan for that home. If we can balance the 
budget, interest rates are estimated to go down by about 2 percent. So 
for that family who buys that home over the time that they pay for that 
home, they would save $37,000 over the life of that loan if we can just 
balance the budget. It will be money in people's pockets so the economy 
can thrive, and we will have people working rather than being on 
unemployment or being on welfare. There will be a lot of benefits. It 
will mean good things for American citizens if we can balance this 
budget.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman would yield, I am wondering, since you 
are from Cincinnati, there was a cartoon in one of the Cincinnati 
papers which showed a man and woman sitting around the kitchen tables 
paying their bills. They had a calculator and a big stack of envelopes 
going out to the companies that they owed money to, and the woman turns 
to her husband and says, ``Honey, I think we need to increase our debt 
ceiling.''
  What that shows is that this is real. This means something to your 
daughter in Kentucky, and your family back in Ohio with that 30-year 
mortgage. This is real money that we are talking about.
  I was very disappointed last week, four of you folks are freshmen, 
the gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Lewis, and I were here last year. But 
it was a shock to all of us when the President actually went golfing. 
The House passed a debt ceiling increase and continuing resolution to 
try to balance the budget, and the President held a press conference 
saying that he was going to veto it and then goes to play golf, the 
rich man's sport.
  While the Federal employees in 1 hour and 45 minutes will be 
furloughed, their President who claims to be their champion left to 
play golf. I hope it was a good round. I do not play. I do not know how 
to play. I have never been a member of the country club like the 
President. But a lot of Federal workers in my area do not play golf. 
And tomorrow when they wake up and do not have a job, they are not 
going to be playing golf. The President was playing golf.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. I thank my friend from Georgia and I think he brings up 
several good points in terms of the behavior of the gentleman who sits 
at the other end of Pennsylvania Ave.
  It has been curious throughout his term, and indeed the gentleman 
from North Carolina [Mr. Taylor] in a radio response to the gentleman 
from the other end of Pennsylvania Ave. once speculated that perhaps we 
ought to constitutionally set up a new office and call it ``Campaigner 
in Chief,'' so that the gentleman at the other end of Pennsylvania Ave. 
can go around and make the speeches and get people to like him, to 
really like him. In the meantime, we ought to find a genuine chief 
executive who is willing to join with us and govern.
  It is not my intent to pour salt in the wounds rhetorically, but it 
is very curious that much of what candidate Clinton spoke of in 1992, 
much of what the good doctor repeated here tonight, is included in what 
we have sent to him that he chose to veto.

  There comes a time when regardless of party label, we are called upon 
to join together and govern. And if we are to be candid, while there 
are those firm 

[[Page H 12182]]
in their resolve who have called me tonight, there are others who have 
contacted me. My wife gave me the number of a family in Scottsdale, AR. 
A little boy doing a school project needed our address, so I called 
him. He was surprised to hear from his Congressman.
  His dad got on the phone and said, ``Congressman, I am really worried 
about the Government shutting down tomorrow.'' And I said, ``Sir, I 
share your concern. We in this Chamber did what we could, what is 
within our rights to do, and the President chose not to go along with 
it.'' The reason we did it was not to box anyone into a corner, but for 
the very reasons that my good friend, the gentleman from Kentucky, and 
my good friend, the gentleman from Ohio mentioned, and that is as 
genuine as our concern is for the seniors of this country, we also have 
great concern for our children and generations yet unborn.
  The fact is, my little boy, John Micah, who will turn 2 December 2, 
has hanging over his head if we do not make changes, if we maintain the 
status quo with the legislative equivalent of chewing gum and baling 
wire, if we continue to try and keep things going as they are, John 
Micah over the course of his lifetime will pay over $185,000 just on 
the debt. Just to service the debt. That is unconscionable. We cannot 
do that to our children. That is why we are making the tough decisions 
we have to make to change what is going on.
  If it takes this action, as regrettable as this action may be, far 
better to take this action to change the course of what has gone on, to 
change the thinking within this Chamber, yes, within this beltway, yes, 
but to change the thinking to correspond with what we are hearing from 
the great heartland of America.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida, my good friend.
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, that was very, very eloquently 
said. I just want to harken back to this chart, because this is the 
balanced budget of the man who plays golf when the House and the Senate 
were trying to do the Nation's business.
  We sent a continuing resolution to him and we sent a debt ceiling 
increase to him that had some responsible features in it, and he went 
off and played golf. I personally thought that that said volumes about 
his commitment to these principles.

  Mr. HAYWORTH. There is one other example that I think we should bring 
up in the wake of that horrible, horrible assassination in Israel. 
During the course of the state funeral when representatives from both 
parties joined the President to fly to Israel, and granted it was a 
difficult time emotionally for the President, we understand that. But 
during the course of time spent in the air that exceeded 24 hours, I 
think something like 26 hours, to hear from our leadership in this 
House that their interaction with our Chief Executive consisted of a 
``Thank you'' and a hand wave, and that was the extent of the 
interaction, I have to question this.
  Why is it that the Chief Executive is happy to keep Air Force One on 
a runway at LAX and pay $200 for a haircut and take the time to do that 
as he did a couple of years ago, and then not talk to the leadership of 
these two bodies to solve the problems we face.
  There comes a time when we have to have responsible leadership, and 
it absolutely astounds me. I know, colleagues, when we raised our hands 
and took the oath of office we do so to govern with the consent of the 
governed. We were elected, and so too was that gentleman at the other 
end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
  Again this evening, Mr. Speaker, and colleagues, to those watching 
tonight, we extend the hand. Mr. President, join with us and govern. 
The American people deserve no less.
  It is astounding behavior and it is quizzical to say the least. Mr. 
Speaker, I am pleased to yield to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. 
Weldon].
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. The gentleman from Arizona raises a whole host 
of points and it harkens back to what I talked about earlier. The 
President campaigned in 1992 saying that he was going to put forth a 
balanced budget and balance the budget in 5 years. He put forward 
nothing in 1993, nothing in 1994, nothing in 1995. And finally, after 
we put our budget, he came out with this belated, ridiculous attempt to 
balance the budget, which has red numbers straight through the end of 
the 10 years. Hence, it would still be $209 billion.
  He said he would change welfare as we know it. He never did. He said 
he would give the middle class a tax break. He never did. I think we 
have a real credibility problem here. I have some very, very serious 
concerns about whether he will ever seriously agree that we need to 
build a better future for our children, for the young son of the 
gentleman from Arizona, and my 9-year-old daughter, for the daughter of 
the gentleman from Ohio, and the daughter of the gentleman from 
Kentucky, and for the millions and millions and millions of children 
out there.

   Mr. Speaker, what is disgraceful is to play politics with all of 
this and try to buy votes by telling one group, ``We will give you a 
slightly better deal'' and then to turn around and raise their interest 
rates or raise their premiums or raise their taxes down the road, after 
he has gotten elected.
   Mr. Speaker, this is not leadership. As far as I am concerned, this 
is playing politics with the very future of our Nation, the future for 
our children and our grandchildren, and this is not what made America 
great.
  Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman from Florida makes 
some very good points. Candidate Clinton was very different, 
unfortunately, from President Clinton.
  As the gentleman implied, candidate Clinton had said that he was 
going to end welfare as we know it. I agreed. I remember the commercial 
like it was on yesterday when he said that, and he made some very good 
points. I agreed with everything he said. We do need to change welfare, 
and that is something we are doing in our balanced budget this year. We 
really are changing welfare as we know it.
   Mr. Speaker, welfare has become, rather than temporary help for the 
truly needy, far too often a permanent way of life. It has been 
counterproductive. It has unfortunately hurt children all over this 
country.
  Candidate Clinton also said that he was going to give us a middle-
class tax cut. I agreed with him completely that we needed to do that. 
Unfortunately, President Clinton gave us one of the largest tax 
increases in our history.
  What we did, this new Congress this year, we really did give the 
middle class a tax cut. Seventy-five percent of the tax cuts go to 
people who make less than $75,000.
   Mr. Speaker, I hear over and over here in this particular body from 
some of the folks on the other side of the aisle here that we are 
cutting Medicare, which we are not because we are increasing Medicare, 
to give tax cuts, supposedly, to the rich. When, in fact, as I said, 
the tax cuts predominately go to the middle class of this Nation where 
they should go.

  One final point I would like to make about something the President 
said during the campaign is he indicated he was going to be tough on 
the death penalty, tough on crime. In this bill that the President has 
just vetoed which increased the debt ceiling, there was also habeas 
corpus reform. What that means, basically, is the death penalty in this 
country, of which I am a strong believer.
  Eighty percent of the people in this country believe in the death 
penalty. But after conviction, we allow it to drag on. People are on 
death row for 15, 16, 20 years. We finally have legislation which 
reforms the death penalty in this country and cuts down the amount of 
time between the imposition of the sentence and actually carrying out 
the sentence. That was in the bill. The President said he was for it. 
Unfortunately, he vetoed that as well.
  Mr. Speaker, I believe very strongly that we were sent here for a 
reason. I believe we should try to work with the President, and I wish 
he would work with us for the betterment of all the people in this 
country.
  Again, as the gentleman from Arizona said, I think we should reach 
out to the President, just as the Speaker Newt Gingrich, and the 
majority leader, Bob Dole as we speak here now are apparently meeting 
at the White House with the President. I hope some good comes from 
that.
  Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my 
colleagues, 

[[Page H 12183]]
maybe can they answer this; What really have the President and the 
liberals offered in the 104th Congress, other than name calling? What 
have they offered?
  Have they offered welfare reform? Have they offered tax breaks for 
the middle class? Have they offered to save Medicare? Have they offered 
to balance the budget? What have they offered?
  Yes, the President gave us a bogus balanced budget that will not 
reach balance by the year 2002. In fact it would be $209 billion in 
deficit spending. What have they done?
  They have had the Congress for 40 years and we are $5 trillion in 
debt. In 1965, the Great Society was started to win the war on poverty. 
We have more people in poverty today than when it started. We have more 
teenage pregnancy. We have more crime. We have more illiteracy. I mean, 
what have they done in 40 years and what have they offered this year?

  Mr. HAYWORTH. If the gentleman would yield, I think in fairness we do 
need to point out one thing that the liberals offered and it came very 
late, indeed, in the last nanosecond of the 11th hour as we stood on 
this floor and talked about the compelling need for Medicare reform and 
cited the report. And I would ask the gentleman from Florida if he 
could get the poster and hold it up again.
  We cited what three of President Clinton's own Cabinet officers 
signed off on in April. ``The present financing schedule for the 
program, the Medicare program, is sufficient to ensure the payment of 
benefits only over the next 7 years.''
  When we saw that, and chose in the wake of that report last spring to 
move to protect and preserve and defend Medicare, our friends on the 
other side, the liberals, stepped forward with a Band-Aid. They said, 
OK, we will do a little tinkering around the edges.
  Indeed, in the words of one wire service dispatch, in the words of 
one political observer, in his opinion it amounted to a ``deathbed 
conversion.'' At the last nanosecond, they stepped forward with a Band-
Aid.
  Mr. Speaker, I will just make one point and then I will be happy to 
yield to my friend from Georgia. I heard earlier in this hour the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania stand in the well and talk about the 
surgery he needed to return to this Chamber with vitality. It was not 
easy surgery. He stayed the course and got the medical work done.
  Mr. Speaker, I daresay our friend from Pennsylvania and his example 
serves as a metaphor for what we face with these programs. It takes 
surgery, not a Band-Aid, to solve the problem. But that is the only 
thing that has come from the liberal establishment. And as we move past 
a Great Society, let us go to a better society.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield now to the gentleman from Georgia, my friend.

                              {time}  2230

  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, on this last-minute PR solution, more than 
anything, it was just to say we are in it, too. It calls for a 
commission to study Medicare. Here we have a group of professional 
trustees who study Medicare and they have said it is going broke. So 
what did the other party want to do? They wanted to study it even more.
  Mr. LaHOOD. Mr. Speaker, I think the cleverest part of the argument 
that is made over here about this statement is that we have had those 
reports in the past. So we have had them in the past, and we do not 
want to do anything with it. Some of us came here with the idea that 
when you get a report like that and that there are people in the 
country who have benefited from these programs, and nobody will deny 
that Medicare has been a good program, we feel a responsibility to try 
and reform the program to preserve it, to protect it for the senior 
citizens, not simply to say, as our friends on the other side of the 
aisle would say, oh, we have heard those reports before. Some of us 
feel a responsibility to do something about it when you get a report 
from three Cabinet members from the President's own Cabinet.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, let me ask the freshmen, can you imagine 
coming to a body where they are saying something is going broke and you 
are supposed to waive it and you are saying, they always say it is 
going broke. We just have to get through the next 2 years. That is my 
concern. Would any of you be able to go home and run on that platform 
that you saw that report and ignored it?
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. Absolutely not. That is a very good question. 
It leads to an important issue on the Medicare Program. The tax on 
working people to keep the Medicare Program solvent has been raised 23 
times since the program was initiated.
  Let me just say that, as the gentleman from Illinois mentioned 
earlier, I am a practicing physician. I still see patients 
occasionally. The Medicare Program has been a great program. It 
provides the resources so that our seniors can get good quality medical 
care in their senior years. I think it is one of the primary things 
contributing to the dramatic increase in life expectancy for seniors.
  When I was in medical school, when I was in college, the average life 
expectancy for a male, I think, was about 70 or 71. Just in the past 15 
years or so it has gone up to about 78. That dramatic improvement, I 
think, is directly attributable to the good quality medical care that 
our seniors get. But there have been problems with keeping the program 
properly funded as there is a problem right now, as this chart next to 
me indicates, three Clinton Cabinet officials testifying to the fact 
that there are problems in keeping the program properly funded.
  Mr. LaHOOD. Mr. Speaker, let me just cite a couple of examples. 
Whenever I have been in a room of senior citizens, I say, have any of 
you had a problem with billing or with some kind of complication with 
Medicare? Every hand in the room goes up.
  A woman from Tremont, IL, came up to me at the Tremont Turkey 
Festival. She gave me a check. She said: ``Congressman, I am 80 years 
old. Medicare has been a good program. I just received this check from 
Medicare for 2 cents. How much does it cost to process a check for 2 
cents?''
  A gentleman came to me at a meeting in Pekim, IL, at a town meeting 
that I had. He said: ``I had a procedure done, I am on Medicare, I had 
a procedure done. I got a bill from the anesthesiologist for $8,000. I 
took it back to him and I said: Could this be right? He said: `No, it 
should have been $800.' But Medicare paid $8,000.''
  One other example: A gentleman came to my office in Jacksonville, IL. 
He received a bill from the hospital 40 days after he had been in 
there. The first item, intensive care, $36,000; he said: ``I was never 
in intensive care.'' Another item down below: Other services, $11,000. 
He says: ``I do not know what those were.''
  Are there problems with the Medicare Program? Are there things that 
need to be fixed? Of course there are. Ask anybody who is receiving 
Medicare and they will tell you that. That is what we are trying to do, 
play the responsible role and fix a good program and reform it to save 
money for people who will want to use the program currently and in the 
future.
  Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Speaker, I carry around here in my wallet an article 
that I clipped out of the newspaper. We verified this article. It is 
accurate. It is going to take me just a few seconds to read this. It is 
about Medicare, one of the problems with it.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, we are going to have about 7 minutes left. 
After the gentleman reads that, I would like everyone to sort of wrap 
up:
  Mr. CHABOT. ``Representative Joe Knollenberg''--and we all know Joe 
here--``Michigan Republican, tells the story of a Michigan woman named 
Jean English, who while going through the mail of her recently deceased 
brother found a bill for his last hospital stay. Her brother, who 
suffered a terminal illness, died only a few days after being admitted.
  ``The bill for the four-day period came to $368,511.09. All of it had 
been forwarded to Medicare for payment. Shocked by the expense, Mrs. 
English called the hospital for an explanation. What she got was a 14-
page itemized statement.
  ``The greatest expense? A 7-hour stay in the emergency room, 
according to the bill, required $347,982.01 worth of supplies.''
  Just think of that, just 7 hours, $347,000 worth of supplies.
  ``Well, after much hemming and hawing,'' says the Congressman, ``the 

[[Page H 12184]]
  hospital admitted that it had made a mistake. Oops. Instead of 
$347,982.01, the actual charge should have been $61.30. That is right, 
$61.30. An overcharge of $347,920.71.''
  The problem was found. End of story? No. The errant bill had been 
sent to Medicare and paid by Medicare. That is right, they had paid the 
bill.

  That is just the tip of the iceberg. We have to find waste where it 
exists and stop that waste from happening but we do not have to cut 
anybody's Medicare at all. We want to save it so it is there for the 
seniors nowadays and for future generations.
  Mr. LaHOOD. That is what we call waste, fraud, and abuse. That is an 
area that anybody that has been involved with Medicare, any senior 
citizen will tell you, there are all kinds of problems that people 
face. Some of us feel a responsibility to reform this program, to weed 
out, to ferret out the waste, fraud, and abuse and save the taxpayers 
millions and billions of dollars because we want to preserve the 
program. In order to do that we have to make these kinds of reforms 
that we are talking about.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I 
think some very valid points have been raised. Once again our friend 
from Ohio offers graphic evidence, anecdotal evidence of what can go 
wrong. My friend from Illinois made a very valid point, reaffirmed to 
me by the senior citizens of the Sixth District of Arizona. Waste, 
fraud and abuse is a shocking part of this problem. It is one element 
of the problem in dealing with health care coverage for seniors.
  But, again, what we have to point out, and in my couple of moments 
here before we wrap up, I want to point out a couple of things. First 
of all, what we are doing with Medicare is improving and protecting and 
preserving the system, taking the average beneficiaries, cash award of 
$4,800 this year, increasing it to $6,700 by the year 2002. Also, what 
we are doing are expanding the choices, giving people more choices, not 
forcing anyone into the program. But if people like the current system, 
they are certainly welcome to keep this system.
  The sad thing is that younger people have no choice. As I mentioned 
earlier, my young son, if we change nothing will pay over $185,000 in 
taxes just on interest on the debt during the course of his lifetime. 
To the President's credit he did something called general rational 
accounting in his last budget where he projected the services for the 
next generation of Americans if we do not change anything, if we do not 
right size this Government. And taxpayers of the future, the average 
taxpayer would have to surrender 82 percent of his income in taxes to 
the Federal Government. We have seen it rise exponentially, from 3 
percent of the average family of four's income in 1948 to almost one-
quarter of the average family's income in 1994. We have to change that 
not to build a great society but to build an even better society.
  Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, just as Mr. Hayworth said, we 
have to do something and we have to do it now. My mother and father are 
both 78 years old. My daughter is 13. I have a son that is 24 years 
old. We have to save Medicare for my mother and my father. We have to 
balance the budget for my daughter and my son. We have to provide for 
the future. We have to save the economic viability of this country. And 
that is what we are all about.
  It is beyond politics. We are serious. We want to save a country that 
is going to be a country that is going to provide the best living 
opportunities for our children and for our senior citizens. I think we 
can do no less. The time has come. We have a window of opportunity to 
do it now. And if we do not do it now, I am afraid it is going to be 
too late. So I think we have to stop the political rhetoric that is 
coming from the White House and from the other side. And we have to get 
serious and do something. I think we face a crisis as great as any 
crisis we have ever faced in this country and now as I said is the time 
to do it before it is too late.
  I want a future for my mother and my father where they can have a 
good medical care. I want a future for my daughter and my son where 
they will not have to spend $187,000 just on the interest on the debt, 
where they will not have a tax rate of 82 percent. I want a nation that 
is going to be strong and the greatest Nation to continue to be the 
greatest Nation on the face of this Earth.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. 
Weldon].
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Georgia is 
very gracious. I guess I would like to wrap up by pointing out that 
President Bill Clinton ran in 1992 as the candidate for change and his 
behavior over the past 2 or 3 days, I think, clearly indicates that 
though he ran as a candidate for change he is the President of the 
status quo. The status quo is not going to get us into the next century 
for a brighter, better and more prosperous future for ourselves and for 
our children.
  He ran saying that he was going to balance the budget and never 
presented to us a balanced budget proposal. He ran saying that he was 
going to end welfare as we know it, and he never presented a plan to be 
able to do that. And he also ran saying that he was going to give us a 
middle-class tax cut, and what he gave us was a tax increase. And 
furthermore, for him to do absolutely nothing in the area of preserving 
and protecting Medicare and making sure that it will be there for our 
seniors because, Mr. Speaker, my colleagues, we will agree if the 
Nation is bankrupt, nobody will get good quality medical care, 
including our seniors.
  And we have put forward these proposals to the President who keeps 
vetoing them and vetoing them. I personally think this is morally wrong 
for him to do that. He should be willing to sit down and negotiate with 
us and try to come to terms, but he is not doing that. And he really is 
playing politics with these issues, particularly in the area of 
Medicare.
  We have put forward a reasonably balanced Medicare proposal and he is 
playing politics with the issue.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, let us just close with this, do we, 
members of the Republican freshman class, the sophomore class of the 
Republicans, do we want to shut down Government? Do we want Federal 
employees to be out of work tomorrow morning? Do we want the Republican 
Party to ruin this negotiation? Do we want one side to blink first?
  The answer to all of that is no. What we want is a balanced 
budget.What we want is Medicaid restructured. What we want is welfare 
reform. What we want is tax relief for the middle class. And above all 
we want to save, protect and preserve Medicare.
  We believe that there is plenty of room for a bipartisan agreement. 
Democrats and Republicans can come together for the children and the 
future of America. We are proud to participate in that process.
  We hold our hands open for our Democrat colleagues who want to join 
us and we hope and pray that the President of the Untied States will 
work with the leaders of House and Senate to do what is best, not for 
either party, not for reelection, but for the American public.
  I thank the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. LaHood], for being with me, 
the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Weldon], the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. 
Chabot], the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Hayworth], a night-time 
regular, and the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Lewis], for this special 
order.

                          ____________________