[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 10 (Thursday, January 25, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H860-H861]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 STATE OF THE UNION MESSAGE LACKS FACTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Mica] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, we heard in this Chamber 
just a few days ago the President of the United States give his State 
of the Union, and I think some of the things that he alluded to should 
be responded to. I am going to try to use as many facts as I can in my 
consideration of the State of the Union.
  The President came before the Congress and he talked about how good 
the economy is and how things are going and how people felt good about 
economic data. I pulled up the economic data from the Joint Economic 
Committee, the last report that they had, and here is what they said:

       Recent data shows the economy has slowed considerably. 
     Manufacturing has contracted for 4 straight months, the 
     lowest since 1991. Housing starts have fallen for 3 
     consecutive months. Both new orders for durable goods and 
     leading economic indicators fell in October. Industrial 
     production fell. New home sales fell.

  This is the information that I have. In talking to the people of my 
district, too, during the recent recess and also around the country, I 
found that people are concerned about the future, that the major jobs 
that the President has talked about creating under this administration 
are, one, low-paying jobs, part-time jobs, and service jobs, all again 
low-paying jobs.
  I heard, I think it was Senator Bradley, talking about one of his 
constituents who said he heard the President talk about this and said 
that several years ago the husband and wife had two jobs. And he says, 
now we see where the job increase has resulted. Because now we have 
four jobs to keep the income level that, in fact, we had some years 
ago.
  Then we heard the President talk about the 200,000-job cut in Federal 
employment. Folks, that is strictly smoke and mirrors. I chair the 
House Subcommittee on Civil Service. We looked at the cuts. The cuts 
are almost 95 percent in the civilian defense work force and relate 
primarily to base closures, civilian defense employees. The bulk of 
bureaucrats, the 350,000 that we have just within 50 miles of the U.S. 
Capitol are still well entrenched, and there have not been cuts in that 
core bureaucracy.
  The President talked about values, and he led off with V-chips and 
regulating cigarettes, and maybe he forgot that there is already a 
turnoff switch. Then he got to welfare. Maybe he had his priorities 
mixed up, because I see the crime, I see the problems in our society; 
and the people I have talked to say that it is coming from the welfare 
system that we have created in 40 years of Democratic rule of this 
House. It has perpetuated the problems that we see. It is not just 
answered by a V-chip or regulating cigarettes.
  Then I heard him talk about immigration, and he said, immigration, 
illegal immigration is down. Well, I had a press report where 1,000 
Haitians left his success story to come to the United States and had to 
be brought back, where over 40 died at sea in the last couple of 
months.
  Then he talked about tightening up immigration. Well, he has, in 
fact, begun to talk about tightening it up, but what we have done in 
fact is changed our policy so many times it has been the policy de 
jour, like the soup de jour. In fact, we have imported into my State of 
Florida over 20,000 Haitians and Cubans in the last year. They have 
been flying them in at 500 a clip.
  So this is the policy that I see, a failure. No economic plan in 
Haiti. We have empowered one party who has really executed the 
opposition, and we have no hope. We have put the entire country on a 
Clinton-style economic welfare program.
  Then we heard about EPA, and that really galls me, because I served 
on the committee that oversees EPA; and the real argument with EPA is 
some of the policy that they have and also the operations that they 
have.

                              {time}  1300

  They have increased their number of employees from less than 12,000 
about 10, 12 years ago, to now 18,000. They 

[[Page H861]]
have almost as many employees, 8,000 people in Washington today, just a 
few miles from here, as they had in the entire program a little over a 
decade ago.
  So this is the kind of debate that we have.
  I served on that committee. We had a report that EPA wasted a half a 
billion dollars in a management information system. They could not even 
tell us where any of this money was spent.
  Then we heard the President talk about cleaning up hazardous waste 
sites. We spent 85 percent of our money for studies and attorney's 
fees. I submit that that is not the way to go.

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