[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 2 (Thursday, January 4, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H134-H135]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 ONE TRILLION DOLLARS MORE IS TOO MUCH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Tiahrt] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, I think that the Dole campaign is going to 
be very pleased with all of the support he is getting from across the 
aisle in the Democrat Party. I hope they will attend the fundraisers 
and help Senator Dole gain the Presidency of the United States, because 
I think he is a good leader, which is demonstrated right here by the 
support that he is getting from the Democrat party.
  Although I currently disagree with the policy he has on this 
continuing resolution, I still see him as a fine leader, and the type 
of man that I want for President of the United States; and I am glad to 
see many of the members of the Democrat Party on the other side of the 
aisle join with us in their support for Majority Leader Dole over 
President Clinton on this.
  I want to move on to something else, though, because I am really 
wondering how long the President is going to tolerate what is going on. 
I am wondering how long Congress is going to tolerate what is going on. 
I am wondering how long the American people are going to tolerate what 
is going on, even though we are finally talking about a balanced 
budget.
  Now, we have been talking about a balanced budget a long time here in 
Congress. Ever since the 104th Congress has been going on, we have been 
very specifically targeting a balanced budget that would take 7 years 
to achieve. But now we are seeing a very dramatic change. The President 
is talking about it; even the liberals here in Congress are talking 
about it. But the President still wants to spend $1 trillion more over 
the next 7 years than Congress does, $1 trillion.
  Now, that is a lot of money. To give you some kind of an idea how 
much money it is, if you were to have gone in business the day after 
Christ rose from the dead and you lost $1 million that day and every 
day up until today, almost 2,000 years, you would only be about 80 
percent of the way to losing $1 trillion. That is only $800 billion 
that you would have lost.
  One trillion dollars is a lot of money, and that is what the 
President wants to spend over what Congress has put in their budget. Do 
you ever wonder why?
  There are some liberal organizations the President obviously supports 
that do not have the support of the majority of this Congress, like the 
national bureaucracy for the Education Association, our current welfare 
bureaucracy. We here in Congress would like to send the solution or the 
money closer to the 

[[Page H135]]
problems and let the States deal with it. They are doing it very well 
in the State of Kansas where I come from, and I have confidence in 
Governor Graves and Rochelle Chronister, the Secretary of 
Rehabilitation Services. They are doing a very good job.
  What we have seen here is something very ineffective. Particularly 
agencies like the Department of Energy have been horribly mismanaged. 
Secretary O'Leary, the Secretary of the Department of Energy, has 
become a focal point because of her travel, but this is just the tip of 
the iceberg.
  It started last year when we were looking at different agencies. The 
General Accounting Office said that the Department of Energy was 
ineffective as a Cabinet-level agency. Vice President Gore in his 
National Performance Review said that they were 40 percent ineffective 
in the environmental management area, and it was going to cost 
taxpayers $70 billion over the next 30 years unless we do something 
about it.
  Then we found out about the public relations office. The Department 
of Energy hires over 500 public relations employees at a cost of about 
$25 million to taxpayers. Secretary O'Leary has a personal media 
consultant that she hires. She has even hired a private investigative 
firm to develop a list of unfavorable reporters and Congressmen so that 
she can ``work on these people a little.''
  Let us focus a little bit on her travel, because today in the 
Subcommittee on General Oversight and Investigations, we found out that 
Secretary O'Leary has taken over 100 domestic and international trips. 
Now, some of this travel is needed, particularly in the domestic area, 
because that is where the Secretary of Energy's responsibilities lie. 
But the international travel, 16 trips, are outside the scope of her 
requirements as Secretary of the Department of Energy.
  The GAO, the General Accounting Office, looked at two specific trips. 
One was to South Africa and one was to India. Now, this is reported in 
the Washington Times today. The trip to South Africa included 135 
persons, 63 from the Department of Energy and 72 from the business and 
academic areas. It cost taxpayers about $1 million, $1,860,000, over $1 
million.
  The second trip to India had 37 people from the Government and 41 
guests. It cost $729,000. One of the interesting things about this is 
that according to Chairman Barton from Texas, the Department of Energy 
charged these non-DOE visitors, these guests, $2,800 for coach fare on 
this, but the actual cost to taxpayers was $12,860.
  So who is going to make up that $10,000? Well, the taxpayers are 
making it up, and I think it is kind of a sad state of affairs.
  Second, we found out that Secretary O'Leary has transferred $400,000 
from a nuclear weapons-related account over to her travel budget so she 
can make these trips.
  What it all boils down to, Mr. Speaker, is that we must balance the 
budget. We must remove Secretary O'Leary; we must eliminate the 
Department of Energy as a Cabinet-level agency. Let us get the 
Government back to work, cull the deadwood out by eliminating the 
Department of Energy.

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