[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 2 (Thursday, January 4, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H142-H143]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   REPUBLICANS BELIEVE THEIR BUDGET TO BE PERFECT; WITHOUT ROOM FOR 
                              NEGOTIATIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Hefner] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HEFNER. Mr. Speaker, this has been a very interesting time for 
me, in the time I have been here, for all these years. First of all, if 
we buy the rhetoric from our friends in the Republican party, we have 
to assume that there should not be any negotiations on the budget; that 
the President should just sign the budget that they sent to him; that 
it is a perfect document, he cannot improve on it, it has all the cures 
for the ills that affect this country.
  The President has real concerns, and so do the majority of the 
American people have concerns about the budget that the Republicans 
sent to the President of the United States, especially our senior 
citizens, our health delivery system, our hospitals, and I have just a 
whole list here from hospitals in North Carolina, veterans hospitals 
and private hospitals that say that this budget would be devastating to 
the delivery system to our senior citizens and to Medicare, not only in 
North Carolina but all across the country.
  So we have to assume that the Republicans are saying that all we have 
to do, all the President has to do to put these people back to work is 
to sign their budget; that there is no room for negotiations. There is 
no room for negotiations on the taxes, there is no room for 
negotiations on the cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.
  Throughout history, Mr.. Speaker, presidents have had the option to 
veto legislation, and then we try to work out the differences, but we 
do not shut down the Government and inconvenience millions of people.
  There is one facility that is very, very special to me. There is a VA 
Hospital in my district, in Salisbury, NC, and when I went there over 
40 years ago, one of the first places we went--I was in an 
entertainment group, and we went to this hospital and we entertained 
the veterans.

                              {time}  1745

  And to this day, I go on a regular basis to entertain the veterans 
and to meet with them and to listen to their problems.
  I want to tell my colleagues that our veterans' hospitals are in dire 
circumstances today, and I talked with a number of them today. Not only 
is their help getting frustrated; they are not being paid, and in one 
instance, a man who is used to getting $500 to $600 a week, he received 
$141, and this is a man with a family. But it is beginning to trickle 
down to the care of these veterans in these hospitals.
  Mr. Speaker, that is our brothers, our uncles, our parents. These are 
veterans that served in Korea and Vietnam and some as old as World War 
II, and through no fault of their own, they are being penalized by 
losing the services that our Federal employees provide to these 
veterans.
  Mr., Speaker, it is just plain wrong for us to hold these Government 
employees hostage to debates that are going on at the White House down 
on Pennsylvania Avenue. There is absolutely no reason why we cannot put 
these people back to work. And, of course, one of the Presidential 
candidates says: No big deal. Who misses these Federal employees?

  Mr. Speaker, I can tell you who misses them. Those senior citizens 
that want to file for their Social Security, they have become 62 or 65 
and they want to file for their Social Security. They cannot do it. We 
have the people that work in the hospitals that are looking after these 
veterans, and some of them completely incapacitated, and those nurses' 
aides and nurses that are carrying around the bedpans, they either are 
not being paid or are being half paid.
  But guess what? The people that are perpetrating this hoax on the 
American people, every one of them is getting a full paycheck the first 
of the month. We could even be voting here today on a measure that says 
we are going to give up some of our pay, but they will not even allow 
that.
  So, it is not just Federal employees that are being inconvenienced; 
it is average hard-working American citizens that believe in 
Government, that have 

[[Page H143]]
paid their taxes, and they expect the services that the Government 
renders to them as citizens. This is not fair. There is no reason. I 
challenge anybody on the other side of the aisle to come and give me a 
valid reason why we cannot put the Federal employees back to work and 
continue the negotiations down at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
  Now, what I say today, is it worth inconveniencing millions of 
Americans to get at the President of the United States? Is it worth 
that to my colleagues? This is just plain wrong. It is not the American 
way. Let us put these people back to work and make America work like it 
is supposed to work, and work out our differences like we always have 
over the past years in honest negotiations on legitimate differences in 
philosophy.

                          ____________________