[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 2 (Thursday, January 4, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H165-H172]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      THE SITUATION WITH OUR NATION'S BUDGET AND THE NATIONAL DEBT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I have with me the gentleman from South 
Carolina [Mr. Sanford]. We are going to talk tonight about the 
situation with our Nation's budget and our national debt. The gentleman 
from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox] is also going to be speaking with me.
  I think the first thing that we wanted to do, Mr. Speaker, just to 
get off the issue of reopening the Government, because that is very 
important, we are talking real people, real jobs, real mortgages, real 
paychecks and real grocery bills, and so forth. Speaking for myself, I 
want to get these folks back to work. So, I am in favor of trying to 
get the Government up and going again, get these folks back on 

[[Page H166]]
the job, and yet at the same time, I do not want to back down from the 
7-year balanced budget.
  But having said that, I hope I can erase as many of the Democrat 
comments as possible. Mr. Speaker, I would yield now to the gentleman 
from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox].
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to add my comments on 
this. As we speak, the Republican conference is meeting for just that 
purpose, to try to get all the important Federal workers, all the 
Federal workers back to work, not only for the sake of their families 
and the good work they are doing, but also because we want to make sure 
in fact that the services they perform, passports or Social Security or 
veterans matters or any other agency, gets back to work and takes care 
of constituents and also takes care of their families.
  Mr. Speaker, all we are trying to make sure of on the balanced budget 
is to make sure the House and Senate wants to have one; the President 
wants to have one; let us get together on the details and find the 
common ground. That is what they sent us here to do, not to have 
gridlock or one side finger-pointing at the other, but actually to make 
sure that the job is done in a sincere way.
  Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, I think what 
is interesting about doing that job is that we not lose sight of the 
prize, and that prize is actually getting to a balanced budget in 7 
years and using real numbers to get there.
  Back on Monday, I spent a couple of hours in front of the Kmart in 
Myrtle Beach talking to folks, and what was interesting about those 
conversations was that people over and over and over again said, ``Hold 
the line,'' because if we look at this budget, what we are looking at 
is $12 trillion. $12 trillion. It is called extreme.
  Mr. Speaker, over the last 7 years the Federal Government spent $9.5 
trillion. Over the next 7 years what is proposed is spending $12 
trillion. Basically, for too long talks in Washington would go along to 
get along and there were plenty of slaps on the back. And now what we 
have said in essence is let us hold the line here. This is what we are 
hearing from folks at home, is that $12 trillion over the next 7 years 
is enough.

                              {time}  2015

  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. What is interesting, if the gentleman would 
yield, is that fact that we can balance the budget, making sure we 
provide vital services to our constituents while still maintaining 
increases for Medicare, increases for Medicaid, increases for 
education, increases for the environment, and increases for child care. 
All we want to do is eliminate the waste that has gone on for years in 
duplicative programs.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, here is a certificate, a Federal Reserve 
note, that was sent to us, and I believe all Members of Congress, 
Democrat and Republican, got it from the Old York Foundation. What they 
said, this was done in the name of the late Seymour Durst. I am not 
familiar with him, but what he said is this is a $5 trillion note. 
Every Member of Congress has this $5 trillion note for a $5 trillion 
debt that we are passing on to our children and our children's 
children, and we will continue to do so if we do not do anything about 
it.
  What the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Sanford] says is that 
1994 was an election not so much to throw the bums out but an election 
to stop politics as usual, as you have said. I think it is important 
for us to think about the size of our national debt and just a couple 
of numbers that are absolutely terrifying.
  This is the number as of November, $4,984,800,213,988.31, and it 
increases at a rate of $2,207,000 each day, which the gentleman from 
Texas [Mr. Thornberry] says is enough to buy McDonald's Big Mac extra 
value meals for every person in the United States and in Mexico. He 
goes on to say that with the annual budget of about $4.6 trillion, we 
as a government spend $4.4 billion each day, each day that we are here, 
which the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Thornberry] points out that this is 
$50,736 each second. That is what the Federal Government spends. These 
numbers are important because the debate here is about Government 
spending. That is what we are debating. We are debating the size of 
government.
  Mr. SANFORD. What is interesting, if the gentleman would yield, about 
that particular number, a carry with me a quote, it is from Sir Alex 
Francis Taylor, a Scottish historian a little over 100 years ago.
  His quote was a democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of 
government. it only exists until the voters discover that they can vote 
for themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on 
the majority usually votes for the candidates promising the most 
benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy 
always collapses over loose fiscal policy and is generally followed by 
a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has 
been 200 years.
  These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to 
spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from great 
courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to 
selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to 
apathy, from apathy to dependency and from dependency back again into 
bondage.
  What I think is startling about that is as you look across the time 
line of history, Rome, it was the largest place in the world at that 
time, collapsed in 476. The Byzantine Empire came on its heels and yet 
collapsed in 1453. The Italian Renaissance, as great as it was, came to 
an end in 1550. The Spanish empire controlled a quarter of the entire 
known world and yet came to an end around 1588 with the sinking of 
Spanish Armada.
  The point is, you could go through a lot of parallels and in every 
instance each of those nations, each of those civilizations reached a 
crossroads in which they had to decide do we stay in this awfully 
comfortable cycle of upward spending and upward government consumption, 
or do we go back to what made us a world power in the first place. That 
is what those numbers I think suggest.
  Mr. KINGSTON. It is always far easier to increase spending, add 3 or 
4 percent, 10 percentage points each year and just keep on spending. 
That is why this process this year is so difficult and so long. But 
generally speaking, we are trying to increase the Federal budget 3 
trillion new dollars over the next 7 years, and the President wants to 
increase it $4 trillion over the next 7 years, so we are debating $3 
trillion versus $4 trillion directly in new growth. We are not cutting 
and we are not freezing the budget.
  I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox].
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. I appreciate the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. 
Kingston] taking the time to have this special order because frankly 
the American public will benefit, I think, from not only having a 
balanced budget but having the workers return to work and providing the 
services.
  But what the benefits are, that some may not realize, and Alan 
Greenspan has pointed this out, by being able to have a balanced budget 
we will be able to reduce the expense of interest, which thereby will 
reduce the cost for college education, home mortgage, the expense of 
health care, all of those things that we have as yearly regular 
expenses. That is going to help working families, help senior citizens, 
help our children make sure they can have the American dream.
  After all, every other government, whether it be State, county or 
local, has to balance its budget just like families do. What we are 
trying to do is over a period of time, working with the President, to 
come to an agreement whereby we can have a balanced budget and 
everybody has a chance to have the American dream, have their own home, 
and people will have a job that is of great worth.
  Mr. KINGSTON. The gentleman is correct. If we realize the scope of 
this disaster, of a tremendously expensive debt, and then we look at 
the benefits of balancing the budget, to give specifics on what the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox] is saying, that on a 30-year home 
mortgage the average interest rate will drop 2.7 percent, and on a 30-
year mortgage of $50,000 that means a family will save over $1,000 
annually or $32,000 over the life of a loan. Car loans will drop 2 
percent, which means on a $15,000 car the average family budget would 
save about $900 during 

[[Page H167]]
the life of the loan. Sending children to college, the same thing.
  But the other thing, though, that is very important is that 
businesses will expand, jobs will be created and economic opportunity 
and prosperity will follow.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. If the gentleman will yield, what is very 
exciting I think for the American public is, not only will it be new 
jobs but it will not be Government created jobs. These will be private 
sector jobs that really will spin out other allied industries, creating 
more private sector jobs.
  Back on education just for a second. I think it is also important to 
note that this Congress in a bipartisan fashion is moving ahead with 
additional programs for student loans and grants, such that legislation 
which many of us have cosponsored would create 100 percent tax credits 
for employers who provide their employees with college education, and 
to change the law back so that it is not considered taxable income to 
the employee who is receiving the educational benefit and hopefully 
being with a company for some time and bringing that benefit to others.

  So we are looking for ways to improve the quality of life, improve 
education, improve the environment, improve Medicare, improve Medicaid. 
That can all be accomplished in this budget picture where we have 
already seen an increase of $71 billion in the areas I have identified.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If we have established that it is disastrous to leave 
the debt out there, we have established there are great benefits to 
balancing the budget, then what is the problem? Because Speaker after 
Speaker from both sides of the aisle have come to the well today and 
said we support a balanced budget and certainly the President does.
  Let me read some quotes, though, make sure that we are talking about 
the same President, June 4, 1992 on Larry King Live, President Clinton 
speaking: ``I would present a 5-year plan to balance the budget.''
  Then on his ``Putting People First'' campaign brochure: ``Our plan 
will cut the deficit in half within 4 years and assure that it 
continues to fall each year after that.''
  May 19, 1995, Bill Clinton, New Hampshire, radio interview: ``I think 
it can be done. Well, it can, first of all it can be done in 7 years.''
  Later on that day, also in New Hampshire: ``I think it can be done in 
less than 10 years. I think we can get there by a date certain.'' That 
was in May.
  October 1995: ``Well, I think we could reach it in 7 years. I think 
we could reach it in 8 years. I think we could reach it in 9 years.''
  The reason why I say that is not to ridicule the President. Good 
Lord, everyone in Congress, everyone in America says things and changes 
his or her mind from time to time. In this case he did it over the same 
interview, in a 20-minute period, but even then some people are 
entitled to change their mind.
  But here is what George Will said, and this is his column but it was 
in the Savannah Morning News. It says, ``Clearly the President does not 
want a balanced budget any more than he wants to end welfare as we know 
it. So he is vetoing Republican plans that would balance the budget 
more slowly than he as a candidate promised to.'' Then he goes on to 
say, ``He said 5 years, they say 7 years, and he probably will, it will 
depend on who talks to him last, and he'll veto it,'' and he will 
probably, George Will is saying, he is probably going to veto our 
welfare reform, which we will talk about welfare reform in a minute, 
but there is a welfare bill on the President's desk right now and we 
hopefully will get his signature on it.
  But what I wanted to point out is that it is time now to have a 
balanced budget on the table.
  You two are freshmen and you have been called radicals, and yet it is 
interesting to me that as candidates you had a written outline of a 
campaign plan, as did President Clinton. As newly elected freshmen, you 
followed the plan, unlike newly elected President Clinton. And then you 
did the plan and got criticized for it, and the criticism is coming 
from people who did not follow their own campaign speeches to balance 
the budget.
  So you have been here a year, you said you were going to do 
something, you did it, and now you are saying, ``I have done it, now 
come on, the rest of you all,'' but we are not seeing it.
  It is very frustrating to the process. Again, I am not trying to get 
into this big partisan thing. But it is so hard to negotiate when there 
is not a counterproposal on the table.

  I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina.
  Mr. SANFORD. I would think two thoughts on what the gentleman has 
just been saying.
  One would be, there was a question as to why would the President be 
doing this. I think it is awfully easy inside the Beltway to lose sight 
of the decided benefits to balancing the budget.
  Jack, I do not know if you saw the article in today's Washington 
Post, but there was an article talking about, it reads, ``On Balance, 
Budget Deal Could Offer a $1,000 Bonus,'' and it talks about a study by 
several economists and it looks at the three benefits that would go 
with balancing the budget. One would be our children would not have to 
pay debt in the future because we would have not added another $1 
trillion worth of Government spending, the economy would grow more, and 
we would see lower interest rates.
  But here in the Washington Post it is talking about a $1,000 bonus 
per family for balancing the budget. So I would say that one of the 
reasons probably the White House has gone back and forth on this number 
is it is easy to lose sight of those future benefits.
  As to your second point about being one of those radical freshman, I 
think it is awfully interesting to move away from the talk, because 
there is plenty of talk in Washington, DC, and simply look at the 
numbers. And how radical is this budget, because what is interesting is 
if you go from simply the last 7 years, the Federal Government spent 
$9.5 trillion, and what is proposed in this budget is spending of $12 
trillion, which is roughly 2.5 percent annualized growth each year.
  For instance, take some of the programs. With Medicaid, we spent $443 
billion over the last 7 years, and what is proposed is to spend $791 
billion over the next 7 years.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield on that point because I am 
glad you brought up some of the specific program differences. Because 
one of the things that we are not debating here is what are the 
differences between the Democrats' plan, or lack of plan to some 
degree, and the Republican plan.
  One of the big differences that we hear is that the Republican budget 
cuts Medicare. As the gentleman just pointed out, and let me get him to 
repeat those figures.
  Mr. SANFORD. On just Medicaid. I will get to Medicare. For instance, 
with Medicaid we go from spending $443 billion over the last 7 years to 
spending $791 billion with this proposed budget over the next 7 years. 
With Medicare we go from spending $926 billion over the last 7 years to 
a proposal that suggests we spend $1.6 trillion over the next 7 years.
  Mr. KINGSTON. It is interesting that the gentleman would bring that 
up, because here is a December 6, $1 million check and an offer made by 
the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Haley Barbour. What 
he said is if any Democrat can prove the rhetoric that Republicans are 
cutting Medicare, I have got a $1 million check waiting for you one 
block away from here at the Republican National Committee, just come 
show us where Medicare is being cut.
  Although the rhetoric has not stopped, nobody has collected $1 
million.

                              {time}  2030

  Just think about it, if you were a Democrat, if you could prove that 
Medicare was being cut, you would be such a hero and getting the 
million dollars to boot, but nobody has come to claim that check, which 
is almost a month old now.
  Mr. SANFORD. I know my colleague from Georgia knows these numbers 
better than I do. When you actually look at the Medicare on a per 
capita basis, look at how we go from spending $4,800 per beneficiary to 
moving up basically at 7 percent a year to $7,100 a year in 2002, it is 
remarkable to see that kind of yearly growth.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Would the gentleman kindly yield for a moment? I 
certainly will not take advantage of the length of time that you have, 
but 

[[Page H168]]
you did indicate that nobody has claimed it. I will be happy to try and 
claim the money as far as the Medicare is concerned.
  But I do not want to engage in the kind of verbal jousting that I 
think has characterized some of the debate.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If I could reclaim, and I will yield back to you, I am 
glad to hear that because, you know, so much of the jousting, and both 
sides can admit some guilt here, is totally based on fantasy and what 
sounds good on a 30-second sound bite rather than what is real.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I quite agree. So my question is a serious one on 
that leading to the other question about balanced budget, which I am 
also serious about.
  I think the reason that the argument starts over Mr. Barbour's offer 
and then goes off into the ethereal on Medicare is that the argument is 
not about whether or not there is increased amount of money in the 
Republican proposal or in Mr. Clinton's original proposals, for that 
matter, but whether or not, given the expansion of the base population 
that will be in need of Medicare and Medicaid, whether that will be 
sufficient to cover the basic needs regardless of how much you are able 
to rein in the overall expenditures on hospitals, nursing homes, 
pharmaceutical needs, et cetera. That then becomes, if you will, just 
allow me another 10 or 15 seconds, that then becomes an argument over 
different economists making projections as to what the need will be 
vis-a-vis the population of the United States, the aging population of 
the United States, the requirement in social security benefits as the 
baby boomers come in and the number of people contributing to it goes 
down, et cetera, those kinds of things. That gets into the realm of 
sheer speculation.

  Mr. KINGSTON. Reclaiming my time a second, that is a good point, and 
that is why our budget goes from $4,800 to $7,100 per person with 
anticipation of the population increase, $4,800 to $7,100, which again 
is not a cut.
  Now, one of the questions is, OK, is that enough? Let me finish now. 
Is that enough? Well, I can say this, if we do not act to reform, 
preserve and protect Medicare, the April 3 trustees report has already 
told us it is going bankrupt. So while we cannot tell you with absolute 
certainty that going from $4,800 to $7,100 is going to be perfect, we 
can tell you with certainty based on the trustees report of April 3, 
1995, that Medicare is going bankrupt in 7 years.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. If you will be so kind, then why would we want to 
take any money out of that fund? Why would you not want to, if you are 
increasing the money from $4,800 to $7,100, I will not dispute that, 
that there is an increase in that number? I would argue that I do not 
believe that is going to be enough, based on our experience in Hawaii, 
and so on. That is my view and some others. I mean, economists have a 
job explaining to other people why they do not have jobs. Right. So one 
economist will tell you one thing, and, you know, we are victims of 
that as much as we are beneficiaries.
  So why would you want to take any money out of Medicare at this time, 
$270 billion, $240 billion, whatever it is? Why would we want to take 
money out?
  To the degree we want to count savings as a result of tightening up 
waste, fraud, and abuse, tightening up the amount that we are willing 
to pay for hospital care or doctor's fees or pharmaceutical needs, et 
cetera, to the degree there is a savings, let us suppose, again for 
honest conversation sake, that the $270 billion that is proposed for 
savings is actually savings, would we not want to have that savings 
reinvested in the system? Are you counting the $270 billion toward the 
$7,100?
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman from South Carolina wants time, just 
speak up.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I will not take much longer. This is your time.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I think these are very good questions and they are 
valid. As you know, Medicare inflation has been 11 percent a year. 
Regular medical inflation is between the 4- and 6-percent range.

  What our plan does is try to slow down that increase of inflation and 
growth or growth due to inflation each year and get it down in the 6- 
to 7-percent range, which the gentleman knows is what Mrs. Clinton 
called for in 1993.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Which we have already achieved in Hawaii.
  Mr. SANFORD. If the gentleman will yield, I think what is interesting 
about the numbers, and I mean you are looking at a 49-percent increase 
over 7 years, you are looking at an increase two times the rate of 
inflation, but you are touching one of the holy grails in politics, and 
I think the significance of that is that typically the way that 
Washington has been hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, as it 
relates to anything that might be at all controversial, and clearly 
Medicare is; but you have got a trustees' report that says if you do 
not do something you guys are going to have a real problem, that it 
will go bankrupt, period.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Then, excuse me, why would you not then want to take 
the $270 billion out of it? Why not apply it toward the $7,100?
  Mr. KINGSTON. Reclaiming my time, let me make correct the terminology 
to the degree that we are not taking money out of that. What that $270 
billion figure represents is the projected growth at the 11-percent 
inflation rate range, and for us to have private sector inflation rate 
in the 4-percent range and public Federal health care and Medicare at 
11-percent range is totally inefficient. What we want to do, as a way 
to reduce that growth rate, is to increase the competition and replace 
that 1964 model with a 1995 model which will save and protect and 
preserve Medicare.
  Mr. SANFORD. If I might interject just prior, I think the 
significance of that, though, is that you look at, I mean, Medicare 
right now is the equivalent of the only gas station stop on a very long 
and lonely stretch of interstate, and what is being proposed with this 
Republican plan is basically rather than that one gas station where, 
sure enough, you can count on getting gas but you may not get the lower 
price or best service, is having six or seven little gas stations so 
you begin to have competition, which begins the working of the 
marketplace which directly affects price.

  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I appreciate you yielding the final time. I think 
you would be able to make, not you personally, but we would be able to 
make this argument back and forth in a way that could resolve this 
issue a lot better, then, and I think would be understood more easily 
and accepted, perhaps more importantly, by the American people as a 
whole, than if we kept that argument within the Medicare-Medicaid-
Social Security syndrome and got rid of the tax cuts. I think if people 
were not making the association between cuts and/or additions arguments 
that are made in Medicare and Medicaid, in the context of a tax cut, if 
we could remove that tax cut from the context, I think that this 
argument would reach a different level of not only civility but of 
understandability and perhaps even acceptability within the country.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I appreciate the gentleman's comments. I would be quick 
to say, unfortunately, it is Members of your party who have linked the 
two even in the face of their own trustees saying that Medicare is 
going bankrupt in 7 years.
  You know what, I was reading an article about President Clinton, who 
has not had an agenda this year, has finally found a cause to be, and 
that is the agenda of fear on the old folks, saying that Republicans 
are going to do all kinds of things to the elderly, as if we do not 
have parents, as if we do not have grandparents. And so I am glad that 
the gentleman is forthcoming, and I will say this, that I was asked by 
a reporter the other day, ``Well, isn't the balanced budget going to be 
an election issue if you do not solve something?'' And I said it is 
going to be an election issue whatever happens. And it was in 1994, it 
was in 1992, it was in 1990, and it will continue to be, as will all 
Federal Government spending.
  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I am very grateful for your yielding the time. I 
hope at some point when I am discussing the balanced budget issue, 
perhaps you could be on the floor, and perhaps I could yield time to 
you so we might further the discussion.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I am always happy to yield time to the distinguished 
weightlifting gentleman from Hawaii. 

[[Page H169]]

  Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Many thanks. I send you my aloha.
  Mr. KINGSTON. We wanted to touch base also on this tax issue because 
I think that it is important to talk about it because we have heard so 
many times that it is a tax break for the rich.

  Now, President Clinton said as much as President Clinton says 
anything that he supports a capital gains tax cut. Then, of course, he 
immediately said a disclaimer, saying, ``I am not sure how much or 
when,'' or whatever kind of Clintonesque comments he would qualify 
something with.
  But let us assume that the capital gains tax cut is OK. So what do we 
have now that we are giving to the middle-class taxpayers that has 
horrified so many of the folks on the other side of the aisle that is a 
tax break for the rich?
  This is it, a $500-per-child tax credit. Now, who is going to get the 
benefit of that? Eighty-nine percent of the people who get benefit of 
that have a family household income of $75,000 or less.
  Now, look at this, 4 percent of the people who benefit from that have 
an income of over $100,000. Now, there are Members of this body who 
like socialists more than they like successful people who have earned 
and lived the American dream, and I think that is too bad. We need to 
have successful people in our country, and we cannot constantly use 
them as a whipping post for all of our frustrations because maybe not 
everyone knows how to make that money. So 4 percent of the people who 
are going to get a $500-per-child tax break have an income of over 
$100,000, and I believe we have capped it anyhow at $110,000 down the 
road.
  But, you know, what I am saying, that 89 percent of the people who 
are going to benefit have a household income of $75,000 or less. Does 
that sound l ike a tax break for the wealthy?
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. It does not. Further, what made the middle-
class tax reform such a viable proposal, which had bipartisan support 
in the House and the Senate, is that it also had some other significant 
items that helped other individuals across the board, an adoption tax 
credit of $5,000 to help families adopt children. It also called for a 
seniors' earning limit increase. Right now seniors under 70 cannot make 
more than $11,280 without deductions from Social Security. Our proposal 
would take it up to $30,000 a year.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Let me interrupt you one minute. As I recall, President 
Clinton increased taxes on Social Security in 1993.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. That is correct.
  Mr. KINGSTON. What you are saying is we are repealing the Clinton 
Social Security tax increase.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. And as well allowing the seniors to earn 
more than $11,280 a year without having a bite out of social security, 
both.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I guess since the Democrats voted for that social 
security tax increase, that is why they do not want to vote to repeal 
it?
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Obviously, I could not explain that to you 
as to reasons of other persons. I think the proposal has a lot of 
merit. It also called for elder care tax cut, two new IRA's for 
individuals and couples, and I think, frankly, with the infusion of the 
capital gains tax reduction for individuals and businesses, what we are 
going to have here is growth of businesses, growth of savings, and 
growth of jobs, all of which are pro-economy, and pro-people, and so it 
is the populist idea that has been embraced by Republicans and 
Democrats alike as well as those who are financial experts on Wall 
Street and on Main Street.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I think one thing that is interesting, as we talk 
taxes, two things about the administration, first, as a candidate the 
President promised a middle-class tax cut. That was part of his 
platform. That was one of the main planks of his platform as a 
candidate in 1992. Speaking in Houston, TX, October 17, the President 
said, ``Many people are still mad about the 1993 budget,'' and they 
think he raised taxes too much. Now I quote, ``It might surprise you to 
know that I think I raised them too much, too,'' the President said.
  So, you know, here we have a candidate who said he was going to give 
a middle-class tax cut; then we have a President who 2 months ago said, 
``I think that I raised taxes too much.''
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. That is what gives me hope that we are going 
to come to a settlement here. We are going to get a balanced budget. We 
are going to make sure programs like Medicare, Medicaid, the 
environment, children's programs, education, will, in fact, be there 
for all Americans, but not with the waste we have had over the last 20-
30 years, with the unbridled spending which duplicates much of what is 
happening in our local districts, and none of the waste that has come 
from having bureaucracies upon bureaucracies to the extent that we are 
definitely spending too much.

                              {time}  2045

  Mr. KINGSTON. I want to talk about some of the unbridled spending 
after the gentleman from South Carolina.
  Mr. SANFORD. Just on the subject of taxes, I hear it a lot at home. 
You are talking about Main Street. What is interesting is to think the 
National Taxpayers Union estimates that all of us spend basically the 
first 6 months of each year working to pay for the total cost of 
Federal, State, and local governments. If you actually break that down 
on a daily basis, it means that everybody goes to work in the morning, 
they spend the entire morning working for somebody else, they break for 
lunch, and then they get to spend the afternoon working for themselves 
and their families. What I am hearing from folks is that does not make 
common sense.
  What I think to be even worse, you look at how that is going to 
impact children. It takes every single Federal income tax filed west of 
the Mississippi simply to pay the interest on the national debt. And if 
that was not bad enough, what is worse is how it looks for our 
children.
  A child born in America today will pay $187,000 in taxes to pay for 
their share of interest on the national debt. Viewed another way, 
generational accounting says to keep our Government solvent, they would 
have to pay an 82-percent tax rate if we stayed on the course we are 
on. So I think when we talk about these tax rates, they are fairly 
alarming numbers that I think impact everybody's lives.

  Mr. KINGSTON. I think it is important also to point out that in our 
budget process, not only do we repeal that 1993 tax increase on Social 
Security, but we also increase the earnings limitation. As the 
gentleman knows, senior citizens are only allowed to make a certain 
amount of money at the age of 62. This increases that threshold from 
$11,000 to $30,000 over a 7-year period of time so seniors can remain 
working, productive, and not be penalized on their Social Security that 
is also in the budget.
  We mentioned spending. I wanted to make this point on spending. One 
of the programs that the President has said he is prepared to go to the 
mat for is his AmeriCorps Program. I know there are a lot of good 
things that happen through AmeriCorps. But here is a Savannah Morning 
News article, an editorial, about the volunteers. It says that the 
volunteers working for AmeriCorps are making approximately $18 an hour. 
It says that the program is already bigger than Peace Corps ever was, 
just in its first year of operation. It has become a costly Great 
Society program that relies too much on government and not enough on 
society to solve its own problems.
  The General Accounting Office, which is nonpartisan, reports that the 
average participant in AmeriCorps is supported by $25,000 in Federal, 
State and local taxes. That is more than private sector jobs.
  It talks about some of the good things that they do, feeding the 
hungry, helping the elderly and so forth. And then this article says 
but those AmeriCorps volunteers are paid only about $9,000 for their 
$1,700 of community work, with approximately $1,500 of that going to 
college expenses. The rest of the $25,000 goes to the bureaucracy.
  This is the President's idea of efficient and effective spending? 
Going to the volunteer himself is $7,500, and the balance, well, minus 
the college tuition, is going to the bureaucrats. That is what we need 
to change in Washington. If it is a good program, certainly the 
President should want to try to reform it and change it.
  Mr. SANFORD. Where I grew up back in South Carolina, volunteering was 
actually volunteering. Aside from having philosophical questions about 
being 

[[Page H170]]
paid to volunteer, I think it goes back to what Davy Crockett said on 
the House floor, again more than 100 years ago, and that was this whole 
notion of there are a lot of good things we would like to do for other 
folks, but when we are spending other people's money to do so, I think 
which have to pause a real long time.
  Mr. KINGSTON. That is exactly right. Here is another example of a 
good program that went bad, the Earned Income Tax Credit. Now, the 
Earned Income Tax Credit, the idea was to get people off of public 
assistance. But since they would not be making as much in the private 
sector immediately as they were when they were on welfare basically, 
then you give them a tax credit so they would have extra money for 
housing and food and insurance, and so forth.
  I think that is very noble, and Ronald Reagan supported it, and Tom 
Petri, who is one of our best members of our conference, has been a 
champion of that in the past.
  But in 1993 that program was expanded, and expanded rapidly, and here 
is what some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are doing 
to capitalize on the fact this is basically free money. This is an 
actual mailing that went out to constituents of a Member of Congress. 
Listen to this.

  Put some money in your pocket. The Earned Income Tax Credit. You may 
be eligible for as much as $2,258 tax credit. See details on back. Come 
clean. Your money. Did you work in `94?

  What is ironic about this is you don't even have to work now under 
the Clinton changes, you can prefile and get your money advanced before 
you actually do the work. It says you are eligible if this and that. 
`'Even if you do not owe income tax, you can get EIC. Want more 
information?'' Call another toll-free number, the IRS.
  I have deleted the Member's picture for decorum purposes, but it has 
a picture of the Member of Congress. It has his address, and it has his 
office number, and so forth.
  So obviously what Members of Congress are doing with the Earned 
Income Tax Credit are not doing this as a champion of the poor. This is 
a paid brochure. It is a public money giveaway. The bottom line here is 
not to help the poor; the bottom line is to keep people in Congress and 
keep the poor dependent on them. ``Hey, you want your check? Send me 
back to Congress.'' That is totally wrong and totally against the 
spirit of what a public assistance program is.
  Mr. SANFORD. I would simply agree with the gentleman in that there 
are too many things with the way Washington works that do not reward 
savings, they do not reward investment, they do not reward hard work, 
and a lot of things in essence are tied to feeding people in essence 
with a spoon, keeping them tied to the government knot, rather than 
having them out there. Again, what we need to reward in American 
society is initiative.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Here is another example of a program gone amuck. This 
was sent to me by Mr. E.R. Lott of Folkston, GA. It is a copy of a 
letter to the editor by Brenton Bradbury in Jacksonville to the Florida 
Times Union.
  It said,

       An expensively dressed woman came into my office a few days 
     ago to rent a house I had advertised in the paper. I took a 
     chance and rented the house to her, despite her bad credit, 
     because her income was good. She paid the month's rent and a 
     security deposit, a total of $1,130 in cash.

  What makes this situation remarkable is that this household's very 
substantial income, expected to exceed $46,000 this year, is derived 
entirely from the Government and welfare programs. This 36-year-old 
mother of four teenage children also has her elderly disabled mother 
living with her. One of the teenagers is retarded, one is pregnant. 
When I added up the various income amounts listed in the rental 
application, I was astounded, then angry.
  I telephoned the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative 
Services and learned it is all perfectly legal. Their monthly income 
includes two welfare checks totaling $1,510, an Aid to Families with 
Dependent Children check for $214, food stamps worth $440, a Housing 
and Urban Development housing check for $550, Medicaid benefits worth 
$550 a month, and a projected $426 per month from AFDC when the 
daughter's new baby arrives.
  He goes on to say that, ``In addition, they will have a housekeeper 
come in twice a week at a cost of $242 a month that is paid for by the 
government.''
  It goes on and on and on. But it says their household income is 
$46,784.08, and it is all legal.
  Then Mr. Bradbury concludes, ``Ever wonder where your tax dollars are 
going? This is out of control. This is something that is scary.''
  Now, I know we could make the case and others will make the case that 
this women deserves every penny of it, and perhaps she needs or the 
baby needs some of this money. But $46,000 a year? Basically by taking 
advantage of government programs?
  This is the real world, this is a real world case. Any Member of this 
House who wants a copy of that article, I will be glad to send it to 
them. But this is where your money is going. This is why we are trying 
to reform government. We are trying to do this not maliciously. We are 
saying, you know, you can help people, but you do not have to give it 
all away to do it.
  Mr. SANFORD. I think this is what really gets underneath the skin of 
folks back home, these kinds of horror stories. I think what we also 
have to remember, we proposed fairly radical welfare reform, which I 
think is absolutely needed. But at the same time, I think what we are 
doing is preserving that hand-up element to welfare. In other words, 
when people are really down, what we have said is we are not going to 
abandon them.
  To give you an idea of that, again, the budget is constantly talked 
about as being extreme, extreme, extreme. Yet, over the past 7 years, 
we spent $492 billion on welfare. What is proposed here with the next 7 
years is $878 billion on welfare. That does not seem extreme to me. It 
seems to me it preserves the helping hand nature, but it ends that 
hand-out nature.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Also, what our program does is lets States have some 
flexibility. I was in Savannah talking to a caseworker a month ago, and 
he said, you know, I could use some flexibility. If you combine the WIC 
program with AFDC, I will have some money and more latitude to help the 
people who need it, and you can get rid of some bureaucrats and I can 
do my job better.
  I believe we need to have State flexibility, and that is what the 
block granting is all about. The other thing our program does is says 
if you are able to work, you have to work. If you are disabled, you 
have 435 Members of Congress who want to help you out. But if you can 
work, we believe it is time.
  Remember, again, we have a $4 trillion debt, almost 5, and again, we 
are spending $50,000 per second as a Federal Government already. It is 
time to get these things under control.

  Now, another program that the President does not want to reform, does 
not want to give an inch on, is the student loan program. I have a 
September 24 article written by Joseph Perkins, which also was in the 
Savannah Morning News. He talks about the White House, President 
Clinton's visit to Southern Illinois University. He talked to student 
leaders at a round-table.
  There was press there, his PR press, which we know is the network 
news, surrounding him to show this real live thing. But what Mr. 
Perkins says, unfortunately, the White House carefully screened all the 
students who were let in the room so the only people who got to talk to 
the President were the ones who were in complete agreement. He said 
there was one guy, a 24-year-old William Karrow, president of Southern 
Illinois Graduate Student Council, who had the audacity to suggest that 
maybe the President was picturing a distorted picture, and the White 
House bounced him out of the room and he was asked to leave the room.
  So on the evening news, the President got the kind of coverage he was 
looking for, carefully selected adoring students promising that he 
would fight to protect their loans from the GOP.
  Now, here is what Mr. Perkins says about the Republican plan. Student 
loans will actually increase 50 percent over the next 7 years. They 
will go from $24 to $36 billion. Now, in addition to that, Mr. Perkins 
goes on to point out that Pell grants have increased to the highest 
level, and he alks about the TRIO Program and the supplemental 
education opportunity grants going to $583 million, the TRIO Program, 
which 

[[Page H171]]
is flat and goes strictly to basically disadvantaged students, $463 
million.
  This is what is happening with student loans. The Republican Party is 
not trying to rip the guts out of student loans, but the President will 
not even admit that there are problems with it. For example, as you 
know, the direct loan program lost $1.5 billion last year. We are just 
trying to correct it and make it more efficient. But at the same time, 
we are trying to increase student loans 50 percent.
  Mr. SANFORD. I think what you are really getting at is the relatively 
gradual nature that is being proposed. Again, what we are talking about 
is overall Federal spending still going up by 2.4 percent each year. To 
give you an idea in relative terms of where that stands, take, for 
instance, right now our deficit is basically 2.2 percent of the whole 
economy. In France, it is about 2.5 percent, and in Sweden it is about 
7.5 percent.

  As you know, those countries have proposed cutting back on the size 
of their government. But what is interesting is we proposed to do this 
over 7 years. France has proposed to do it over 2 years. Sweden has 
proposed to do it over 3 years. What that means is the slowing of the 
rate of government that they are proposing, or the cuts in government 
they are proposing, are eight times as great in Sweden, and three times 
as great in France.
  So, again, it goes back to, I think, the reasonableness nature that 
you were getting at.
  Mr. KINGSTON. But, you know, a speaker earlier tonight, the gentleman 
from California [Mr. Dellums] raised a very good point, and his point 
was that this is a profound debate. I agree with him. This is a 
profound debate, because we are talking about two different visions of 
government.
  Now, the gentleman from South Carolina earlier tonight talked about 
ancient civilizations that had fallen because of financial problems, 
and so forth. But the other thing that they have fallen, or the other 
consequence has actually been war, civil wars, internal strifes, coups, 
assassinations, and so forth.
  I am proud we are not doing that in America. But when I draw that 
parallel, I am not totally off the farm here, because we are talking 
about a fundamental change in government. We are talking about shifting 
power from one group, basically a group in Washington who wants to 
handle and control everything, to another group outside of Washington, 
and those people are your neighbors, your associates at work, the folks 
at the grocery store, people that you see on the city streets. They are 
regular, normal people.

                              {time}  2100

  And what we want to do is go back to a time in America where those 
folks control their own destiny, their own towns, their own communities 
and make their own decisions.
  I think there is an exciting opportunity out there to let, for 
example, the counties, and I represent 22 counties in the First 
District of Georgia, and I know the gentleman has multiple counties in 
South Carolina, to let our own counties control our own poverty, our 
own health care, our own ways of doing business. Does that mean that 
Government will be gone at $12 trillion over the next 7 years? There is 
no way.
  The Federal Government is not going away, but the Federal Government 
is taking a step back and saying, hey, maybe there is a lot of 
brilliance back home.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. SANFORD. I think what the gentleman is getting at is balance, 
because I think what we both recognize is that over the years the 
Federal Government has done a lot of good things, whether that is with 
helping in cleaning up some of the rivers that were burning not that 
long ago, or whether it has been with educational programs, or bringing 
us out of the Great Depression, or bringing us through World War II. 
The Federal Government has done a lot of good things, but the pendulum 
has swung too far over here, and what I hear from back home is it has 
done a lot of wonderful things, but it is too far over here, because we 
want a little greater hand in educating our children.
  We want a greater hand in how we spend the hours of our day. We want 
to have a little greater hand in deciding a whole host of things; and, 
therefore, we just have to bring the pendulum back over here a bit, so 
that we at the individual level or the county level or at the State 
level are making those decisions rather than the bureaucrat in 
Washington.
  Mr. KINGSTON. That is right, and when the gentleman thinks about, 
well, the Government is getting out of this, there are 163 different 
job training programs. Now, if we cut 25 of them out or 20 of them out, 
the headline would be Republican party cuts out 20 job training 
programs. They will not say there are 143 of them still around. And 
yet, in addition, there are a lot of State programs and even local 
programs.
  The EPA. We are getting a lot of criticism now for cutting EPA, and 
we have not passed that bill. These things are being negotiated. But 
recently I had the opportunity to talk to the National Association of 
State EPA counterparts. I do not know the exact name of their 
organization, but these were folks who were basically State EPA 
directors, and I thought, man, I am walking into a lion's den, but here 
is what I found.

  No. 1, I found capable, intelligent, bright people, people who were 
close to the polluted river, close to the smokestack that was putting 
the dirty air in the atmosphere, and they were very much on top of the 
situation. They had a lot more hands-on experience than people in 
Washington.
  No. 2, what I found is that they were not afraid of the EPA stepping 
back, because 20 years ago, or over 20 years ago now, when the EPA was 
started, their organizations were not in existence, and they have grown 
over 20 years. There is a lot that has come forward in the States in 
terms of environmental cleanup, in terms of health care, and in terms 
of poverty and so forth.
  So just because the Federal Government is withdrawing its horns every 
so slightly in certain areas, it does not mean that there is not a 
presence of pollution enforcement or helping poverty programs or public 
assistance benefits and so forth. And yet that is what we are charged 
with over and over again. It is an absolute distortion of what really 
is going on here.
  Mr. SANFORD. I would agree.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I want to conclude with this. Our vision 
is to have a balanced budget. We are not cutting the budget and we are 
not freezing it. We are increasing spending 3 trillion new dollars over 
the next 7 years. The President wants to increase it $4 trillion over 
the next 7 years. We can negotiate that. That is the American part.
  Mr. SANFORD. I would say, in the midst of that debate, I have talked 
to folks back home, and they get awfully frustrated with the seeming 
fractiousness over Washington, yet what I tell folks at home is let us 
keep it all in perspective. We can look at a place like, for instance, 
Cuba, and we look at any kind of disagreement basically being squashed 
because there is a dictatorial rule, or we look at a host of places 
around the globe and we see people solving problems with guns rather 
than with words. And what we have going on right here, as messy as it 
is, I have heard that saying, that if one likes sausage, do not watch 
it being made. I guess the same is true with democracy. But what we 
have here is everybody yanking on the level of government control that 
was afforded them by the Founding Fathers; the Congress with its power 
to appropriate, and the President with his power to veto, all within 
the confines of a system that the Founding Fathers created. I think 
that is kind of exciting.

  Mr. KINGSTON. That is right, and we are debating, along with the 3 
trillion new dollars versus the 4 trillion new dollars, we are debating 
the role of government and releasing power out of the hands of 
Washington bureaucrats and empowering citizens, friends and neighbors, 
and putting it on the streets and in the cities and counties all across 
America.
  The benefits of what we are doing, if we can balance the budget in 7 
years, as Alan Greenspan said, interest rates will go down. If interest 
rates go down, we will have lower home mortgages, lower student loans, 
lower car payments, but probably most importantly is that we will have 
more jobs and more prosperity in the economy.
  Now, this is a very difficult process. We are going to go through 
with it. As 

[[Page H172]]
we started out saying earlier, we believe that it is time. It is timely 
to get the Federal Government employees back to work. We want to pay 
those folks who are working. We want to get the ones who are not 
working back on the job, and we think that is the right thing to do.
  We want to move that issue from the table, or speaking at least for 
myself, so that we can get to this focus on the 7-year balanced budget. 
I am hearing a lot of people saying, of course, I support a balanced 
budget, but they did not vote for it and they have not cosponsored one. 
There are Democrats and Republicans who have voted for a balanced 
budget and have cosponsored one, but there are a lot who have not.
  I do not believe a Member has the right to come to the well and say 
they support a budget if they do not have one at this point, because 
the people of America pay us $134,000 a year not just to criticize what 
the other side is doing but to bring our own ideas to the table. If 
Members have their own ideas, they can criticize mine, but if they are 
just sitting there criticizing without a plan of their own, maybe they 
should return some of their paycheck permanently.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, we yield back the balance of our time.

                          ____________________