[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 13 (Wednesday, January 31, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H987-H988]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             REPUBLICANS ARE WORKING TO BALANCE THE BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Jones] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, I was home the last couple of weeks, and I 
represent eastern North Carolina, the 

[[Page H988]]
Third District. I am a freshman, and I campaigned with a promise to the 
people of my district and the people of America that I would work with 
my colleagues to balance the budget.
  I had to come to the floor when I hear some of these scare tactics of 
not meeting our obligations as a government and letting this Government 
default. That is such an outrageous statement, and the people in my 
district do not believe that.
  I am a little bit tired, from Medicare to default, that we are going 
to let the Government default, we are not going to take care of our 
senior citizens.
  I want to make just a couple of comments. My father served in the 
U.S. Congress for 26 years. He was a Member of the other side, a 
Democrat, and many times we would talk about in the late 1980's why the 
Congress did not balance the budget. And several times he would make 
the statement to me, ``Well, Walter, you know, we could have chaos if 
we do. Programs would be cut. People would feel threatened.'' I would 
say to my father, ``Father, I don't understand if we don't balance the 
budget, we also are going to have economic chaos,'' and that is what 
this debate is all about.
  When we know the General Accounting Office, the GAO, says that in 17 
years without a balanced budget, working people will pay 80 cents out 
of a dollar. People are not going to stand for that. We have got to 
deal with these problems now, and putting our heads in the sand is not 
going to solve these problems. We have got to deal with the problems 
now.
  I just could not sit in the office and hear this debate go any 
further.
  I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. I thank my friend from North Carolina. I listened with 
great interest. I am sure the gentleman from Florida did as well to 
hear our friend from New Jersey kind of rhetorically gloss over the 
actions taken by the Treasury Secretary.
  Quoting my friend from New Jersey now: Secretary Rubin has been 
``doing some things'' to keep this Government in business.
  Mr. Speaker, what the Secretary has been doing is raiding the pension 
funds. What the Secretary has done, and this is the fundamental part of 
this debate, are we so in love with government that we fail to live up 
to our responsibility? For, as my friend from North Carolina points 
out, the ultimate economic disaster, what unleashes chaos on the world 
markets is runaway spending of the type we have seen for the past 4 
decades.
  The real question is not doing some things, like raiding the pension 
funds and using that as really the epitome of the examples of what has 
gone on here for the last 40 years. The key is to change things now.
  How? With positive economic initiatives for the future that deal with 
growth, growth that emphasizes the freedom of the marketplace; that is 
the essence of the debate, not to be in love with government, but to 
love every generation, our seniors and generations yet unborn, to end 
business as usual, end this runaway spending, restore true fiscal 
integrity.
  Mr. JONES. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.
  Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  This really does concern me, because it is again another scare 
tactic. We saw the scare tactic with Medicare, the comments about 
Medicare dying on the vine.
  In fact, the President's own commission said that this program was 
going to die on the vine if we did not do anything. God forbid we 
should give seniors another choice. You just take this is full of 
waste, fraud and abuse, and everybody is dipping their bucket into it 
and profiting from it except the seniors it is to serve. So here again 
we are scaring the seniors that we are not going to be able to pay 
their checks, using them as pawns, giving them only one choice, but in 
fact we, the President and this administration, will make a choice, and 
the choice is also in these budget figures. They want to pay illegal 
aliens. They want to pay people not to work.
  Now this has not worked. We have seen the mess it has created in our 
society, and it is related to crime, it is related to our juvenile 
problem, it is related to teenage pregnancies, and you can do all you 
want, put them in uniforms or do whatever you want to do, I am telling 
you, unless you make people responsible and people to work; they want 
to pay people not to work, but they do not want to pay the senior 
citizens when this bill comes due. They do not want to pay our 
veterans; they would rather pay volunteers in a volunteer program with 
better perks and benefits than pay our seniors and our veterans.
  So this is what this debate is all about, really. We have got to get 
a grip in this Congress.
  We came here as the new majority. We said we were going to do things. 
We cut a quarter of a billion dollars out of our legislative 
appropriations. They talked about cutting here. They talked about 
congressional accountability. We passed it. We live under the same 
laws. We passed gift ban, lobbying reforms, things they talked about 
and dreamed about for years and never did a darn thing about.

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