[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 189 (Wednesday, November 29, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H13780-H13786]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1545
                  THE IMPORTANCE OF A BALANCED BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Ganske). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hoke] is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, we are going to talk this afternoon about the 
budget, about some of the things we have just heard regarding that, 
about what the importance is of a balanced budget, and I want to 
recognize a great fighter pilot, former, a great American, great Member 
of the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities, and a 
Californian as well, because I know that he has some important things 
to say about education, and education particularly in California.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. 
Cunningham].
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I thank the gentleman, Mr. Speaker. I serve on the 
Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, there is no such thing as a former fighter 
pilot.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. And I still am flying fighters, so there is no such 
thing as a former fighter pilot.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to comment on some of the things my colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle have said. I agree with one thing they 
said, there are some very, very good schools out there. I have some of 
the finest schools in Torrey Pines and San Dieguito, all up and down in 
my particular area. They would compete with any school in the Nation. 
But across the board our schools are not.
  We pour billions of dollars into that but, Mr. Speaker, less than 12 
percent of our classrooms have even a single phone jack for fiber 
optics or computers or software or the programs we need to put in 
there.
  What my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are really talking 
about is power. Washington-based power in education. When they say we 
are cutting Goals 2000, the Federal power of Goals 2000 has been cut to 
zero. Absolutely correct. But we send the money, block grant it to the 
States, and the Governors have told us that they can run those programs 
more efficiently than letting the Government talk about it with their 
rules and regulations.
  We only control about 7 percent of the funding for our schools in 
this Nation out of the Federal Government. Seven percent. But with that 
7 percent comes over 50 percent of the regulations and 75 percent of 
the paperwork to the States. We are eliminating that, Mr. Speaker, and 
we are giving that power to the State.

  If the State wants to run a Goals 2000 without all the bureaucrats in 
Washington, without having to file all the reports, without having to 
go through all the paperwork, they can do it, and they have the funds 
to do it and it is much more efficient. To say we cut Goals 2000 is not 
a fact. It is there. It is at the State level.
  Second, let us look at the perspective of California. We have less 
than 12 percent of our classrooms across the Nation, as I mentioned, 
that have a single phone jack. Seven percent of education, again, comes 
out of the Federal Government. We get less than 25 cents on the dollar 
back down into the classroom because of all the bureaucracy. What we 
are doing is eliminating that bureaucracy and absolutely on the Federal 
level we are cutting it and taking that power out of Washington and the 
Democrats' ability to spend money so that they can get reelected, so 
that they can have the power, and we are giving it back to the States.
  Mr. Speaker, I think there would be a legitimate complaint if the 
Republicans were taking that power and shifting it over to themselves, 
but they are not. They are shifting it back to the people where 
Government is closer to the people and more effective. But we hear time 
and time again from the other side of the aisle that the States do not 
know how to manage their own problems, only the liberals here in the 
Congress know best for what is good for the individual States. We will 
hear it over and over again, but we feel differently, Mr. Speaker.
  I look at the State of California, and look at how they have 
destroyed education. One example. The liberals voted to cut defense 
$177 billion. California is one of the leaders in defense. We have lost 
a million jobs with base closures and defense cuts. Ninety-three 
percent of education is paid for out of the tax dollars of the State. 
That is a million people. Say that half of them got jobs, probably not 
as good as they were in the defense industry, but take that out 

[[Page H 13781]]
of the budget in Sacramento. How many jobs have we lost?
  Let us take just one governmental regulation, meant with good 
intentions but ruled by extremists. The Endangered Species Act, and how 
it applies to education. How many jobs have we lost to the gnatcatcher 
in California? Construction jobs. How many jobs to the spotted owl, 
where we could not even go in and cut timber that the beetles had 
destroyed, that are totally dead trees, just to keep the industry 
surviving? How many jobs in California have we lost in the tuna 
industry because of the porpoise? How many jobs have we lost in the 
Central Valley Water Project, that the gentleman from California [Mr. 
Miller] supported, with the farmers, or the salmon with the farmers? 
And over and over again they have cut jobs.
  Now, let us take illegal immigration, Mr. Speaker. We spend $1.2 
million a day on the school meals programs for illegals, because there 
is 800,000 K through 12 illegals in the California State system, Mr. 
Speaker. Let us take half of that so they cannot dispute the numbers. 
That is $1.2 million a day at $1.90 a meal. And let us not even take 
the three meals, let us just take two meals, 185-percent below the 
meals program. That is $1.2 million a day out of education.
  It takes $4,750 to educate a child K through 12 per year, Mr. 
Speaker. That is $2 billion a year out of the education system, but yet 
we cannot get help from the other side of the aisle on immigration 
reform.
  I look at the other things that cost us. We have 18,000 illegals in 
our prison system. When they talk about cuts, we are cutting the 
Federal bureaucracy, Mr. Speaker. We are sending that money and the 
extra money down to the States. The rest of the education funding that 
was taken out of the Federal Government, do my colleagues know what we 
put it in, in the committee, some of it against my wishes? We put it in 
NIH for medical research, which we also feel is a national level 
interest.
  I thank my good friend for letting me have 5 minutes here but I 
wanted to set the record straight.
  Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield for just a 
second.
  Mr. HOKE. Sure, go right ahead.
  Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hoke] 
and the gentleman from California [Mr. Cunningham]. I wanted to join 
with the gentleman for just a minute, because I, too, serve on the 
Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities.
  Mr. Speaker, it is rather amazing that Mr. Cunningham and I serve on 
the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities, and then we 
have the gentleman from California, Mr. Miller, and the gentlewoman 
from Hawaii, Mrs. Mink, on the other side of the aisle, and we go to 
the same meetings and we do not seem to hear the same things at all. 
Basically, my recommendation is that if education is our friend's top 
priority, running for State Senate might be a thought, because 
education is the priority of the State.
  The State, the folks at home, the parents, the teachers at home 
should run education, yet we send 10 percent of the money from the 
Federal Government to our States and we insist on making all the rules. 
Well, we are, indeed, trying to cut back our costs. We are trying to 
balance our budget. If students want to be unhappy, I think they should 
be very unhappy that we only reduced the cost in education by $4 
billion. Our committee started out trying to reduce it by $10 billion 
over 7 years. We ended up, after the Senate, only reducing it $4 
billion. This had nothing to do with the students or harming the 
students or harming education, this was simply a mechanism.
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, if I could reclaim my time for a minute, 
because we have been talking about--and I thank the gentleman from 
California for his comments very much. Duke, thank you.
  Excuse me, Mr. Cunningham. I was admonished by the Speaker once that 
we should not be using first names. But we had all this talk about 
education----
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. You can call me Duke and I will call you Martin.
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, we have had all this talk about education, and 
it seems to me that there are an awful lot of people in this Congress 
who could use an education about the use of the word cut. The fact is 
that there really is an opportunity to debate the priorities that are 
important to this country in this Congress and that there may be a 
whole bunch of different views regarding that, but we should agree on 
the ability to use language and that certainly requires a little bit of 
education.
  I have here from the Webster Merriam dictionary the definition of the 
word ``cut.'' The first one is to reduce in amount. That is the most 
wisely used definition of the word ``cut.'' It means to be less, 
to reduce in amount, to be less in the next year than it was in the 
current year.

  In fact, let me ask my colleagues a question, if I may. Are we 
cutting, using this definition of the word cut? Are we cutting the 
amount of money that is being allocated to education in this budget?
  Mr. NORWOOD. No, we are increasing the spending. If the gentleman 
will yield, we are increasing the spending in education considerably.
  What they are talking about is this imaginary made-up number that is 
placed out there 7 years from now that nobody knows what is. We are in 
fact, going to balance our budget by spending less than they project, 
but we are increasing the spending from 1995 considerably.
  Mr. HOKE. Less than was predicted by whom? By Federal bureaucrats at 
the CBO or OMB, by people who are hired at a staff level to make these 
things, but not certainly by Members of Congress. Projections that were 
not made, and amounts that are projected off of baselines that do not 
exist except in somebody's imagination or in somebody's mental 
calculations.
  The fact is that, and I want to get into this later, because I want 
to really explore this in detail, because it seems to me it is 
impossible, Mr. Speaker, for us to have the kind of debate that the 
American people deserve, that they should have so that they can 
genuinely ferret out, make decisions for themselves about what is going 
on here, what is being increased, what is not being increased, what is 
being cut, if anything, because there are some things being cut, 
although one would never know it from the kind of rhetoric we hear on 
the floor. But as long as we abuse language the way that language is 
abused all the time on this floor, it is going to be very difficult for 
the American people to get the information that they need in order to 
make decisions about their representives and who they ought to have 
representing them.
  Mr. Speaker, I think that at the bottom of all of this, more so than 
anything else, more so than anything else in this Congress, I believe 
that we need to define our terms so that we are all speaking the same 
English language, so that we are all on the same page and we are not 
going to be arguing about how we define words. I will get into that 
more in detail.
  I want to yield a couple of minutes to the gentleman from Illinois 
[Mr. Weller], who has asked me for some time, and I see the gentleman 
has a bag with him.
  Mr. WELLER. I do have a plastic bag, which I will point to in just a 
few seconds.
  Mr. Speaker, first I want to thank my friend from Ohio, Mr. Hoke, for 
bringing this issue to the attention of the House. I think it is 
extremely important when we talk about some of the changes that need to 
be made here in Washington. I am one of the freshmen, one of the new 
guys, and I heard time and time again from the voters of my district, 
which is the south suburbs and part of the city of Chicago and a lot of 
farm towns, about how we need to change how Washington works and how we 
need to send representatives to the Congress who are going to vote for 
change.
  I have with me something I carry, just like my other colleagues do, 
and that is our voting card. This piece of plastic that has a little 
computer chip in it, -I believe. We walk into the House chamber when it 
is time to cast a vote, slide it in that box and push a red or green 
button if we are going to vote yes or no. The most important and 
significant thing about this card is that for the last 26 years Members 
of the House of Representatives have used this card just like a credit 
care. In fact, 

[[Page H 13782]]
I labeled this voting card the world's most expensive credit card, 
because for the last 26 years, in fact, since Neil Armstrong walked on 
the Moon, Members of Congress have used this card, their voting card, 
to run up a $4.9 trillion national debt.

  Now, Mr. Speaker, when we think about our own families and our own 
households, we all know the pain that everyone feels if someone in the 
family uses a credit card and runs up a huge debt. It is tough to pay 
that off. Today we have a $4.9 trillion national debt. That is four 
times our operating budget for the Federal Government.
  This bag that the gentleman alluded to that I brought with me has 
$19,000 in play money in it. The reason that $19,000 is so significant 
is because every person's share of the national debt today is $19,000. 
So every man, woman and child in the State of Illinois, my home State, 
the land of Lincoln, if we were to pay off the national debt today 
would have to write a check for $19,000. The interest alone on that 
debt is $430 a month for a family of four. That is more than the 
average car payment.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, I think it is time that we worked to address the 
fiscal problems of our Nation. For 26 years this country has operated 
on deficit spending, running up a huge, huge national debt. Now it is 
time to balance the budget, and there is a lot of benefits for my 
State, as well as Ohio, and Kansas, and Georgia, and this great country 
we all live in. We have made a little progress in the last couple of 
weeks. In fact, even Bill Clinton says now he wants to balance the 
budget. The President's agreed with the Congress that we can do it and 
do it in a responsible way over a period of 7 years.
  Now, we are still waiting to hear from the President regarding his 
specific plan on how he would do it and what the fine print is. In 
fact, we are also still waiting for the Democratic leadership to see 
their plan to balance the budget over 7 years.

                              {time}  1600

  Conservative Democrats and the moderate Democrats, like Republicans, 
believe that we can balance the budget over 7 years. They have offered 
a plan and I give them credit for that.
  The Republican plan, our plan, does a lot of good things. We balance 
the budget over 7 years and reform welfare by emphasizing work and 
family and responsibility. We save our Medicare system from bankruptcy. 
In fact, we are increasing funding for Medicare by 50 percent over the 
next 7 years and we are also providing tax relief to working families.
  The President says he does not like our plan that saves Medicare and 
provide tax relief for working families, but has failed to show 
leadership, I believe, by offering his alternative.
  In the early 1980's there was a fast food ad where that one gal said, 
``Where's the beef?'' I think it is time to say, ``Mr. President, 
where's the beef? Where's the beef? Where's your specific plan?''
  It is time to stop governing with opinion polls and press releases. 
We need to actually see specific plans. If we think about it, what are 
the real benefits for my State if we balance the budget? Our balanced 
budget plan will increase student loans, the volume of student loans, 
by 50 percent. Medicaid funding, which is health care for the poor, 
will go up 55 percent over the next 7 years. School lunch funding will 
increase more than the President asked for. Medicare spending for the 
average Illinoisan will go from $4,800 to $7,100 per senior citizen in 
Illinois over the next 7 years, even while we are balancing the budget.
  Those are real benefits, if we think how much money we spend shows 
compassion. But also there are some real benefits to working families 
and that is by eliminating the deficit, the dividend is a reduction in 
interest rates. The Federal Reserve, the Chairman of the Federal 
Reserve has said if we balance the budget and are no longer borrowing 
money to finance deficit spending, interest rates will go down. For the 
average family of four, they will save $2,800 a year on a home 
mortgage. On a car loan, they would save over a thousand dollars a year 
in interest costs for lower interest rates. And for students going to 
college, at the end of that four years, an undergraduate student would 
save about $1,900 on their student loan. Mr. Speaker, those are real 
savings.
  USA Today highlighted the fact that overwhelmingly almost every 
American would directly benefit from lower interest rates. We have a 
commitment from the President to balance the budget over 7 years. We 
know the benefits of doing that. We in the Congress have put a plan on 
the table for the last several weeks which offers specific proposals 
which will balance the budget over 7 years. I think it is time for the 
President to show leadership.
  That is why I am so disappointed he is going to leave the country for 
6 days. Before he leaves, I think he should show us his plan on the 
table which balances budget and shows us how he is going to do it over 
7 years, and then we can work out the differences and come up with a 
bipartisan plan.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hoke] for the time 
and commend the gentleman for his leadership in making sure that the 
American people know that the bottom line is we are going to provide a 
better economic future for our children, free of debt. We have to 
balance the budget.
  Mr. HOKE. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from Illinois 
[Mr. Weller] for his comments and for bringing these things to our 
attention.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HOKE. I will yield to the gentleman from Indiana for a moment, 
and then I am going to open up a free-for-all debate.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hoke] who is the chairman of our Theme Team 
here, for bringing to the attention of the body some very important 
facts.
  The earned income tax credit, our Democrat colleagues have been 
saying that we are going to cut that. The fact is, and the American 
people need to know this, we are increasing it by almost $6 billion 
over the 7-year period.
  The school lunch program, which they said we are going to cut, in 
fact is going to be increased by almost $2 billion over the 7-year 
period. Student loans are going to be increased by $12 billion, not a 
cut like they have said.
  Medicaid is going to go up by almost $40 billion over the 7 years, 
which is contrary to what the Democrat leadership has been telling us. 
Medicare is going up by over $110 billion over the 7-year period and 
they have been trying to scare the American seniors to death by saying 
that we are going to have Medicare cuts.

  I appreciate the gentleman for pointing this out. The American people 
need to know we are increasing all of these things; we are just slowing 
the rate of growth, and that is going to be good for the country.
  Mr. HOKE. Reclaiming my time, I want to take 5 or so minutes, and 
then I see that my good friend from Kansas is here. But I have to say, 
and I thank the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton] for bringing these 
things to the attention of the Speaker, because for me it is so 
exasperating that we hear the abusive language day after day after day 
after day on the floor. I can only believe that this is an attempt to 
obscure the real issues, to confuse the American people, and to make it 
impossible to really define what the differences are in the debate.
  The reality is there are differences in the debate. We really do want 
to zero out Goals 2000. We want to zero it out because we do not think 
that the Federal Government ought to be involved and we have a real 
problem with the kinds of mandates that are being placed on local 
school systems. But it does not have to do with money in the sense that 
it is being portrayed on the other side.
  Mr. Speaker, I put together here, just for the edification of the 
Speaker, a graph that shows, and maybe we can see this on television, 
it shows the total Federal spending from 1995 to the year 2002. We can 
see we have $1.53 trillion in 1995. This is according to the Republican 
budget plan that we have passed in the House that we have passed in the 
Senate and that we have passed in conference. This is the plan that is 
now, but for the President's signature, and remember the President has 
promised that he is going to sign into law before December 31, 1995, he 
is going to sign into law a budget that will be in balance by the year 
2002. But this is what we have done.
  We have passed this with every degree of detail that is necessary. We 
are 

[[Page H 13783]]
going from $1.53 trillion in 1995 to $1.875 trillion in the year 2002. 
Obviously, not a cut if the definition of ``cut'' is to reduce in 
amount. Not a cut.
  It goes up from $1.5 trillion to $1.875 trillion, a tremendous 
increase. I want to go over some of the specific areas, just as the 
gentleman from Indiana did. We increased spending in education; we 
increase spending on school lunches; we increase spending on student 
loans; we increase spending on Medicaid and Medicare.

  We have genuine differences of opinion about how we ought to do that 
and what we ought to be doing. But it seems to me, Mr. Speaker, that 
when the American people listen to this and they constantly hear this 
scare tactic and abusive language that would have them believe that we 
are cutting when we are, in fact, increasing spending, that it makes it 
difficult, if not impossible to make the kinds of considered, 
thoughtful decisions about what their representatives are saying, what 
their representatives believe, in order to really know about what the 
future of our country ought to be and who they ought to have 
representing them. I think that this is right at the bottom, right at 
the foundation of the problem that we face in this Congress.
  Let me talk a little bit about some of the benefits that will come 
from this, and then the reason I wanted to have the opportunity speak 
on my own for just a few minutes was that it seems to me that there is 
one benefit that is really rarely talked about in the Congress. I hope 
that we will have an opportunity to talk about some of the economic 
benefits of the balanced budget, because it will increase job creation, 
economic development. It includes more disposal income, real disposal 
income, consumable income; more cars being build; construction, et 
cetera, et cetera. But there is something we will get with a balanced 
budget that we do not have today that is critically important to our 
future, and that is the ability to define as a Nation what we believe 
Government ought to be doing; what we believe the role of Government 
should be; what the parameters of its extent in our society and in our 
lives are.
  The way that we will do that, on an economic basis, is by what we are 
willing to pay for on a pay-as-you-go basis. It is a fundamental 
concept. It is crystally clear and critically important. That is that 
we not spend more than we are willing to tax ourselves for.
  The problem that we have now is that we do not really know as a 
society, as a people, as an American culture, what it is that our 
Government, what the limits of our Government should be, because we, 
right now, are willing, and have for 25 years, spent more than we have 
raised in revenue.
  So, the point is that when we get to this balanced budget where we 
are saying we are not going to spend more than we take in, then we are 
going to be making the tough decisions about how those resources get 
allocated. The fact is that there is more reality to the debate that 
goes on in the city councils around this country, and more reality to 
the debate that goes on in the State legislatures around this country, 
because that is where when one person wins, another person loses. When 
one interest group gets funding, another interest group does not, 
because it is a zero-sum game.

  We do not have a zero-sum game at the Federal level of Government. We 
just keep spending and spending and spending. It is one of the reasons 
that, as I say, I get so exasperated and so, frankly, disgusted with 
the rhetoric that we hear in the body when we are told that we are 
cutting programs that are absolutely not being cut.
  There are certain programs that are being cut completely. The Goals 
2000 in the House budget was cut out completely; not in the conference 
report, it is not cut out. But in the House budget it was. Why? Because 
it is an honest difference regarding policy decisions that we ought to 
be making in the U.S. House, in the Congress. We should be doing these 
things. It is clear. But we should not be abusing language and talking 
about phenomenal increases in spending, in the case of Medicare, for 
example, we are going from $178 billion in 1995 to $289 billion in 
2002. From $4,800 per beneficiary this year to $6,700 per beneficiary 
in 2002. Yet, we are hearing from the other side, and we will hear from 
the President himself, that this is a cut.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Will the gentleman yield on the education point? 
What we hear time and time again is that we are cutting education and 
that we are cutting student loans, and we are doing all of these 
horrible things. The fact of the matter is that we have an honest 
difference of opinion on goals 2000, and whether we want a bureaucrat 
in Washington, DC, to decide how to educate our children or not. But on 
student loans, there is an honest difference of opinion on how we 
handle student loans. We are not cutting student loans. Our student 
loans increase 50 percent.
  Mr. HOKE. From $24 billion to $36 billion in 2002.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. But we do have a difference of opinion on how we get 
the money to those students to go to college.

  The President of the United States, swimming against the tide of 
history and swimming against the tide of popular support, believes that 
what we should do is take all the money for student loan, round it all 
up, and bring it to Washington, DC, in what he calls his Direct Student 
Loan Program plan, and give Washington, DC bureaucracies a total 
monopoly. So, every time a student, whether that student be in Ohio or 
in Florida, or in Kansas or anywhere across this country, any time they 
want student loan money, they have to go crawling and kowtowing to a 
Federal bureaucracy in Washington, DC. We believe that we should let 
the communities continue to have say so in helping students.
  Mr. HOKE. The gentleman is completely correct. What the President 
passed, or what was passed in this House in 1993, called for a 
tremendous increase in direct student loans, which essentially means 
that the Government got into the banking business.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Let the Department of Education, one of the most 
inefficient bureaucracies in the Federal Government, totally monopolize 
it and take it out of the hands of the community. Because we want to 
empower the communities, and because we want to increase funding for 
education for these loans 50 percent over 7 years, they are saying that 
we are cutting.
  Now, I must admit, I did not go to Oxford and I did not go to Yale, 
but the schools that I went to, and we did not learn this new math 
stuff, but if we go from $24 billion to $36 billion in student loans, 
at least in the schools I went to in the Southeast, that was called a 
spending increase. I do not know what Rhodes scholar's math is like, 
but in my neck of the woods and outside of the Beltway, going from $24 
billion to $36 billion is a spending increase.
  If I could cite some quotes, because we were just talking about 
Medicare, I do not think any of us could say it any better than what 
the Washington Post said. And I see the quotes there, but let me give a 
couple of other Washington Post quotes before you get into that. This 
came from last week by Matthew Miller, who used to work in the Clinton 
administration.
  The Washington Post article, and he was talking about the GOP's 
proposal for Medicare, and he wrote:

       Though many of the President's advisors think the GOP 
     premium proposal is sensible and believe it differs little 
     from the President's own plan, the President fired sound 
     bites from the Oval Office yesterday taking the low road in 
     ways that only Washington pundits could recast as standing 
     tall.

  For that reason, so the President could gain in the polls, the 
President sent home 880,000 workers saying that he opposed the 
Republican plan and he was going to shut down the Federal Government 
because of it.

                              {time}  1615

  The secret is out. The President's plan is just like the Republican 
plan.
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, I hope the secret is out. The one thing that I 
get concerned about is that we hear so much of this rhetoric and 
demagoguery and medigoguery, as the Post has said, and mediscare and 
scare tactics about all these things. And we just heard it from the 
other side that we are cutting, cutting, cutting. I just hope and pray 
that the American public is not being fooled by this rhetoric.
  My friends at home tell me that people are buying into this notion 
that, in fact, we are slashing Government, that senior citizens are 
actually being manipulated and exploited and being 

[[Page H 13784]]
frightened. And I have two parents that are Medicare beneficiaries 
themselves, that that is really what we are about here.
  I get concerned that maybe we have sunk to such a low level of power 
hungriness that we are willing to sell out any group, claiming and 
scare them into believing that they are somehow going to suffer, that 
the sky is going to fall and particularly those that are the most 
vulnerable, of course, the senior citizens, to this kind of tactic. It 
does concern me. The truth is that we ought to be talking about the 
very legitimate and real differences between the world views, and they 
are real and they are deep. They deserve to be heard and thought about 
and not obscured for the American people but, in fact, made clear.
  I believe that the clearer that they are made, the more that people 
will be attracted to them, and they will say, yes, I do believe in the 
values of limited government. Yes, I do believe in the values of family 
and faith and hard work and education and personal responsibility. And, 
yes, the government should not be the institution that we look to in 
our society first. It should be the institution that we look to last as 
a genuine safety net for those who truly cannot provide for themselves. 
But it should not be the first resort. It should be the last resort.
  These are real, these are deep differences between the parties. But 
they get obscured with this language.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to 
yield, one thing that he left out, when he is talking about personal 
responsibility and family and faith, all these other things that we 
stand for, one thing he left out was freedom. That is what is so great 
about the Medicare Program. Once again, our program, at about the same 
price as the President's program, allows senior citizens to make the 
decisions with their physicians and their own doctors on what their 
plan should be instead of having a 1964 Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan 
codified into law and run by bureaucrats. It has been shameless how 
they have done it.

  If I could just briefly quote the Washington Post from November 16 on 
Medicare, I think this is one of the most important editorials of this 
political season.
  Mr. HOKE. The Washington Post, they are generally on the Republican 
side; right? There are two newspapers in Washington? The Times and the 
Post?
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. The Washington Times obviously is a conservative 
newspaper. The Washington Post has long been the nemesis of, considered 
to be a nemesis of the Republican Party and of conservative plans. But 
I will tell you by reading the Washington Post the past few most 
months, it is obvious that they are even turned off by the President's 
demagoguery.
  Mr. HOKE. When one reads these editorials, what is obvious is that 
there is a level of integrity at the Post. The Post is clearly liberal. 
They love government in a way that conservatives never will, but there 
is a level of integrity at the Post that I frankly respect, 
particularly on the editorial page. They have recognized that the 
demagoguery of the President and of the Democrat leadership in Congress 
is really shameful and should end. They have been very clear about 
this. They are as exasperated as I am, as the gentleman is, and as 
others in this House regarding the confusion and the obfuscation and 
obscuring of these issues.
  I think I know what the gentleman is going to read.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. If I could, let me say that the Post has been, I 
think, extremely responsible this entire year, even though they are 
more liberal than----
  Mr. HOKE. Even though they are the paper we love to hate.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Let me read this, the most important editorial, I 
think, of the year:

       Bill Clinton and the congressional Democrats were handed an 
     unusual chance this year to deal constructively with the 
     effect of Medicare on the deficit, and they blew it. The 
     chance came in the form of the congressional Republican 
     plan to balance the budget over 7 years. Some other 
     aspects of that plan deserved to be resisted, but the 
     Republican proposal to get at the deficit partly by 
     confronting the cost of Medicare deserved support. The 
     Democrats, led by the President, chose instead to present 
     themselves as Medicare's great protectors. They have 
     shamelessly used the issue, demagogued on it, because they 
     think that is where the votes are and the way to derail 
     the Republican proposals generally. The President was 
     still doing it this week; a Republican proposal to 
     increase Medicare premiums was one of the reasons he 
     alleged for the veto to shut down the government, and 
     never mind that he himself, in his own budget, would 
     countenance a similar increase.
       We have said it before; it gets more serious. If the 
     Democrats play the Medicare card and win, they will have set 
     back for years, for the worst of political reasons, the very 
     cause of rational government in behalf of which they profess 
     to be behaving.

  Who could say it better than that? Again, if I could just say 
personally before wrapping up, I was extremely frustrated with the 
press coverage of this entire Government shutdown because I thought 
that many were trivializing it. I said I wish one major publication 
would step forward and tell the truth. The Washington Post had the 
medigoguery editorial a month or two back and did it then. They stepped 
forward this time, cut through it all. Because of the influence the 
Post has, I believe this message is going to start sinking in.
  We are not cutting Medicare. We are saving Medicare. We are not 
restricting senior citizens access or rights. We are empowering senior 
citizens. We are empowering medical providers to do what is best for 
senior citizens and not do what is best for bureaucrats.
  Mr. HOKE. And, Mr. Speaker, we are changing the nature of the program 
itself so that, instead of being top down, it is being bottom under, 
where the senior citizen, the beneficiary himself or herself, actually 
has power and control.
  In fact, if you are like me, the most important aspect of our plan is 
the ability for a senior to participate in a medical savings account, 
the medisave plan, which is an integral part of the Medicare reform. It 
is one of the Medicare Plus things.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. And the provider service networks where physicians 
can actually get together with their patients and make the decision, 
what type of plan do we want to put forward for the senior citizen? 
What is the best option for them. Let us cut out the insurance 
companies. Let us cut the Federal Government.
  Mr. HOKE. Attacked by insurance companies, by the way.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Just you, the senior citizen, and I, the physician, 
will sit down and decide what is best for you. And if insurance 
companies and if the Federal Government does not like it, too bad. We 
have been empowered by this plan.
  Mr. HOKE. I see that my friend from Kansas has been waiting patiently 
to dive in and has some things that he wants to add to this debate.
  Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, I am in agreement with what you are saying 
on Medicare.
  Mr. HOKE. What are you in disagreement with us about?
  Mr. TIAHRT. What I would like to do is move on to the 7-year 
commitment that the President has signed.
  Mr. HOKE. Could I read this? This is the commitment to a 7-year 
balanced budget that the President signed into law just last week and 
this was in the continuing resolution. Here is what it says. It says: 
The President and the Congress shall enact legislation in the first 
session. When does the first session of this Congress end?
  Mr. TIAHRT. We are currently in the first session of the Congress.
  Mr. HOKE. And it will end on the last day of December 1995.
  Mr. TIAHRT. And then we will start the second session of the 104th 
Congress. So that gives us just a short amount of time to implement 
legislation that gets us on the path to a balanced budget by fiscal 
year 2002.
  Mr. HOKE. Continuing the rest of this, it says that we shall enact, 
the President and the Congress shall enact legislation in the first 
session of the 104th Congress to achieve a balanced budget not later 
than the fiscal year 2002 as estimated by the Congressional Budget 
Office. This is law, signed into law by the President, passed by the 
Senate, passed by the House.
  Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, the reason I wanted to move on to that is 
because I heard a startling statement that came from the White House 
press secretary just yesterday.

  It was in response to a question that a reporter asked that said, 
asked whether or not the White House would 

[[Page H 13785]]
prefer to put off this larger budget debate and instead operate on 
continuing resolution into next year so that we could carry out this 
kind of thing during the Presidential campaign.
  The response from the White House press secretary was, ``There are 
big differences between the President and Congress, and I suspect that 
those kinds of issues will have to be settled in November of 1996.''
  And he went on to say some other things about averting a shutdown, 
but I think there is a real move to avoid a written, signed contract 
with the American public that this commitment indicates. If you read it 
again, it says, the President and Congress shall enact legislation in 
the first session of the 104th Congress to achieve a balanced budget 
not later than fiscal year 2002 as estimated by the Congressional 
Budget Office.
  This is very important because it is a signed document. The President 
has signed this. Words mean something. I think one thing that we have 
discerned here with the American public, we saw it with the Contract 
With America, that words mean something, that we are trying to convey 
to people that we are very serious about this. The President has agreed 
to it. This was something that was confirmed in 1994 during the 
election. We ran on the Contract With America. It was a signed document 
that we would do things which have been accomplished by this Congress.
  Then this year we are talking about something that has been signed, 
but yet the White House is already hedging on this signature. They are 
hedging on this agreement, wanting to move it off to the Presidential 
campaign where they can use 20-second sound bites instead of open and 
honest debate about what is really important to the American public.
  Mr. HOKE. I could not agree with you more. I want to follow up on 
this with the statement from Mr. McCurry.
  Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman from Kansas is absolutely right. I 
think that what we are saying here is not withstanding the fact that 
the President of the United States, pursuant to very, very long, 
arduous, difficult, tough, detailed, grueling negotiations between his 
chief of staff, Mr. Panetta, the Speaker of the House, the majority 
leader of the Senate, the President himself and the minority leader of 
the House, the minority leader of the Senate and the chairs of the 
Budget Committees, they worked out this language, they worked and 
worked and worked. They fought hard over every single word, and these 
were the words that they came up with that we shall enact legislation 
in the first session of this Congress to achieve a balanced budget not 
later than fiscal year 2002 as estimated by the Congressional Budget 
Office.
  And not a week later, before the President's signature is barely dry, 
his press secretary is saying:

       There are big differences between the President and the 
     Congress. I suspect that those are the kinds of issues that 
     will have to be settled in November 1996, but in the 
     meantime, we can avert the crisis and then have our debate 
     next year during a national election campaign, when we 
     should, as Americans, have that kind of debate. We can avert 
     the shutdown and get on with orderly business.

  He is talking about using continuing resolutions, not entering into a 
balanced budget. That is why, as Mr. Weller said earlier, that is why 
the question that we raise is, What exactly is your budget. There are 
now, what is today, today is the 29th?

                              {time}  1630

  Mr. Speaker, we have got about 30 days left before this session of 
this 104th Congress, this first session, ends.
  Mr. TIAHRT. If the gentleman will yield, I think this Congress is 
heading toward a second shutdown this year, and if it does occur, it 
will reflect that we are unable to come to an agreement that has been 
signed by the President. It will be that he has violated his signature 
to balance the budget in this, achieve a balanced budget, not later 
than fiscal year 2002 by enacting legislation this session, the first 
session of the 104th Congress. I do not think that anyone in America is 
going to accept a violation of this signed contract because you know we 
have seen some tremendous gains in our economy, and I want to just 
quickly go over what every person knows in their heart, what most 
businessmen practice daily, but it is that you must have a balanced 
budget, and I just want to quote someone that goes beyond myself, who 
came out of the aerospace industry, someone who is involved in the 
financial markets, and it is Alan Greenspan, who is the Federal Reserve 
Chairman, and I want to quote his testimony to the Senate Banking 
Committee which was November 27, just 2 days ago.
  He said that I have no idea what the actual proportion of the 2-
percentage-point decline in long-term interest rates is that is 
attributed to the expectation of a balanced budget, but it is a 
significant part. He says that he believes interest rates will drop 2 
percent if we can balance the budget, 2 percent, and what that means to 
the average household, American household, is somewhere around $2,300-
$2,400 per year less money, a lower interest rate on their mortgage, 
lower interest rates on their credit cards, lower interest rates on 
their student loans, on their car loans, any time-borrowed money. It 
also means more jobs because companies will have more, but he went on 
to say subsequently, if there is a shattering of expectations.
  Now I want to diverge here a minute. There is so much involved in 
expectations in the financial markets with just the anticipation of a 
balanced budget. We saw the market rates soar over 5,000, we saw bond, 
a strong bond market, strong financial markets, because of the 
anticipation of what we are trying to do here with this signed 
agreement between the President and Congress, but he says if there is, 
and I quote again, consequently if there is a shattering of expectation 
that leads to the conclusion that there is indeed an incapability on 
the part of the Government to ultimately redress the corrosive forces 
of debt, I think the reaction could quite--could be quite negative, and 
I am fearful that were it to happen there would be a sharp increase in 
long-term interest rates. He is talking about an increase in interest 
rates.
  Now we know, I know, from the economy in Wichita, KS, in my home 
district, that when interest rates dropped, housing starts increased 
dramatically. We saw expansions in both ends of Wichita, a real strong 
economy. So here is the Chairman of the Federal Reserve saying that, if 
we can balance the budget, which the President has signed to and agreed 
with this Congress, if we can do this in fact and not have the 
violation of a written agreement, then he sees a drop of 2 percentage 
points in the interest rates, and the corollary, quote oppositely, if 
it does not occur, if for some reason we are incapable, then we see an 
increase in interest rates.
  Mr. HOKE. Let me reclaim my time for a minute. I also see it is 4:30, 
and I know we are late for a meeting that I am supposed to be at, 
chairing as a matter of fact, and I am going to give the balance of my 
time to the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton]. But let me just read a 
couple of factual things from a report that was just released by the 
Heritage Foundation on what a balanced Federal budget with tax cuts 
would mean to the economy.
  The gross domestic product will grow by $10.8 billion more than under 
current law. In the year 2002 we will have an additional $32 billion in 
real disposable income over the period, an additional $66 billion in 
consumption expenditures, and an additional $88.2 billion in real 
nonresidential fixed investments, a decrease of four-tents of 1 percent 
in the conventional mortgage rate, the additional construction of 
104,000 new family homes than would have been built otherwise, the 
additional sales of 600,000 automobiles, and a decrease of seven-tenths 
of 1 percent in the growth rate of the CPI.
  Mr. Speaker, the other thing that this study points out, and I think 
it points it out very clearly, and it is important to point it out to 
the American people because they will hear the litany over and over, as 
though it is some kind of Sanskrit mantra, that these are tax cuts for 
the rich, in order to pay for tax cuts for the rich. Well, you tell me 
when 89 percent of all of the $500-per-child tax credit go to middle-
class families earning below $75,000, family households under $75,000, 
89 percent, you tell me are those tax cuts for the rich? Only 4 percent 
of those tax cuts on the child credit go to families earning above 
$100,000.

[[Page H 13786]]

  The other thing that I would point out is that, as the gentleman from 
Indiana will recall, we did in fact raise taxes on the quote so-called 
rich in the summer of 1993. We changed the marginal tax rate with a 10-
percent surtax on the rich, people making a million dollars or more 
with a 10-percent surtax, so it went from 36 to 39.6 percent.
  Now let me ask a rhetorical question. If we wanted to cut taxes on 
the rich, if that is really what Republicans were all about, then would 
it not make sense that we would repeal that 10-percent surtax? Would 
that not be the first thing that we would do? I would think that 
somebody that wants to cut taxes on the rich, it would be. Did we do 
that? Is that in this plan? Is there any repeal of that 10 percent, 
notwithstanding the fact that it was a stupid thing to do in the first 
place? We should not have raised that tax. We should not have done it 
because it actually--it works perversely. It does not increase 
revenues. It actually discourages working, but nonetheless did we do 
that?

  No, we did not do that. We clearly did not do that, and we are not 
going to do that. It is a middle-class tax cut. What it does is it puts 
more money in the hands, in the pockets, in the wallets and the purses 
of the men and women who earn it for their families, and it is for 
families.
  Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield the balance of my time to the 
gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Burton].
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman 
from Ohio [Mr. Hoke] for this special order. I think it has been very 
enlightening, and I know many Americans watching it had a lot of their 
questions answered.
  Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Taylor of North Carolina). The gentleman 
is recognized for 8 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. That should be sufficient, Mr. Speaker.
  You know one of the problems you have when you are in public life is 
sometimes you are misquoted, and yesterday I was on CBS' morning show 
along with Senator McCain, and I was on CNN ``Talkback Live,'' and last 
night I was quoted on NBC News, Tom Brokaw's news report, talking about 
my opposition, unequivocal opposition, to sending our troops to Bosnia. 
But one of the reporters from the AP wire service took one line out of 
my statement on CBS news which said, you know, ``He's hell-bent''; I 
was referring to the President, ``He's hell-bent to send our troops 
there, and, if he does that, we must support them,'' is what I meant to 
say, but we were running out of time, and I said ``him.'' And so they 
put that on the AP wire, and it went all over the country, and in every 
major newspaper in the country I was quoted as saying, ``He's hell-bent 
to do this, and, if he does, we must support him.'' Mr. Speaker, it 
made it look like I was in favor of sending our troops to Bosnia, which 
is 180 degrees from the truth. I am absolutely and unequivocally 
opposed to sending our troops to Bosnia, and I want to tell you, Mr. 
Speaker, and the people who may be paying attention to this special 
order exactly why.
  I met today with the Prime Minister of the Bosnian Moslem Republic, 
Mr. Silajdzic, and we had a nice long talk with other members of the 
Committee on International Relations talking about whether or not there 
were perils involved for our troops in Bosnia. I also had an 
intelligence briefing along with members of our committee, some of 
which I cannot go into here tonight because it was a closed briefing, 
and it was an intelligence briefing, and it is not for public 
consumption. But the bottom line is, things that I can say that need to 
be reported to my colleagues and to the American people, is there are 6 
million land mines over there, and a number of our troops are going to 
be blown apart, or lose their arms and legs by stepping on these mines. 
They cannot be detected by metal detectors, many of them, because they 
are made out of plastic, they are very cheap, and they blow off the 
feet, and some of them jump up and will blow of legs and even kill 
people, but they are designed to maim. Six million of them. They only 
know where there are about 100,000 to 1 million of them. That means 
that at least 5 million of them are not known where they are, so that 
is a real peril to our troops.
  Our troops are going to be on a corridor that runs many, many, many 
miles, probably from around Sarajevo up to Tuzla, and we are going to 
have troops in a 2\1/2\ mile wide corridor, and they will be subject to 
terrorist attacks, a terrorist, a Bosnian Serb, a Moslem from Iran, a 
number of people who are disenchanted with the peace accord, maybe some 
people who live around Sarajevo who fear they are going to lose their 
homes when the Bosnian Moslems return. These people may perpetrate a 
terrorist attack on our troops. They could put a truckload of dynamite, 
just like they did in Beirut back in the early eighties, and drive it 
through a barrier and blow up a lot of our young men and women. They 
are being put in harm's way with no end in sight.
  The President said they will be brought home in 1 year, but in 1 year 
will we resolve this problem? After having talked to the leaders of 
these various countries and these various sects over there, I am 
convinced that there is not going to be a solution to this. These 
hatreds go back hundreds of years, and these people do not like each 
other at all, and it is my feeling that in 1 year we will still be 
mired down in this quagmire. The only difference is we are probably 
going to have an awful lot of our young men and women maimed or killed 
unnecessarily.
  I do not think anybody knows for sure how many are going to be lost, 
but make no mistake about it, there will be many. All those land mines, 
all of these age-old hatreds, putting our troops in between warring 
factions, hoping that things will work out even though some people who 
were supposed to be included in the negotiations have not yet agreed to 
them. As a matter of fact, the Bosnian Serb leaders are still trying to 
renegotiate part of the agreement that deals with Sarajevo and the 
property around that.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I am very concerned about sending our troops. I 
oppose sending our troops. Every time I get more information from the 
intelligence community or from the leaders of that part of the world, 
the former Yugoslavia, I become more concerned about the safety of our 
troops and am more convinced that this will not be a solution to these 
age-old hatreds.
  The solution is to embargo products that are going into the warring 
factions, to force them to the conference table, to make them sit down 
and work out an agreement without outside forces being involved 
because, if they really reach an agreement and they really want peace, 
they are going to work it out and have troops there of their own to be 
a barrier between the warring factions. To put our troops, and the 
British troops, and the British troops, and other troops in between all 
these warring factions is a recipe for disaster, and I think the 
President is making a very, very major mistake.
  I see my colleague from California here who shares my views. He is 
going to be taking, I believe, the next hour to talk about this issue. 
But I wanted to make very, very clear to AP and to the people across 
this country who may have been misled by that AP story that I am 
unalterably opposed to sending our troops, I think it is a tragic 
mistake, I think the President is leading us down the road to a real 
possible disaster, and I think that the American people ought to know 
there is a better way to skin this cat than putting American young men 
and women at risk.

                          ____________________