[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 48 (Tuesday, April 16, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H3481-H3486]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ITEMS IN THE CONTRACT WITH AMERICA
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Collins of Georgia).
Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Pennsylvania
[Mr. Fox] is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I want to take this time to
speak with my colleagues about the items in the Contract with America
and other items that have received legislative approval in this House
for which I think there can be bipartisan pride. Many items have come
forward to this House and have received almost unanimous Republican
support and overwhelming support from the Democratic side of the aisle
as well. I think they are worth repeating tonight so that people could
put a perspective in this House where we have gone and how far we need
to go.
Mr. Speaker, the first item I want to mention would be that we have
passed the congressional accountability law. That is a law introduced
by Congressman Chris Shays to make sure that the laws that we in fact
have passed that affect everyone else, I am speaking of civil rights
laws, the Fair Labor Standards law, OSHA, prior Congresses, bills were
passed and Congress, congressional employees were in fact exempt from
the benefits of those laws.
{time} 2200
Mr. KINGSTON. Before yielding to the gentleman from Arizona [Mr.
Hayworth], I want to make one final point. None of that money was
raised in your district. It all came out of Washington, DC from special
interest groups.
Mr. HAYWORTH. I thank my friends for yielding, and lest, Mr. Speaker,
those viewing on television and in the gallery would misunderstand what
we are saying, we do not have any problem with good, honest debate in
the American political system. We do not have any problem with honest
differences of opinion. But it is more than ironic, indeed I daresay it
is hypocritical of those on the left who would repeatedly use the
lexicon of special interests and big money and power and extremism
applying to members of the new majority and yet as my colleague from
California has outlined, actually take money from outside States and
congressional districts, take Washington money and pour it into a
certain district.
There is one other further distinction. Because, Mr. Speaker, the
people of the United States who have come to view this endeavor quite
cynically might honestly ask, well, what is the difference? There is a
major difference. When union bosses take union dues and without the
permission of union members take those compulsory dues and donate them
directly to the Democrat National Committee, and indeed even as we have
derided the increase in taxes, even as we have pointed out the Arkansas
shuffle from a campaigner-in-chief who spoke of balancing the budget in
5 years only to renege on that promise, from a campaigner-in-chief who
spoke of tax breaks for the middle class, only to renege on that
promise, from a campaigner-in-chief who talked about ending welfare as
we know it, only to renege on that promise, veto those measures in all
three instances, now again comes another irony of saying one thing and
doing another. The Beck decision, a mechanism my good friend from
Pennsylvania, well versed in the law, is aware of, effectively said to
end that practice of compulsory, nonvoluntary donations. And yet this
President and his Justice Department refuse to enforce that decision.
So, Mr. Speaker, I do not blame the American people for their
cynicism, but I believe a little background is in order. For the
difference is if people can freely give to candidates of their choice,
then so be it. But it should be a donation freely made. Not in the
realm of compulsory action.
Mr. KINGSTON. Let me ask the gentleman about this Beck decision. Are
you telling me that a paper mill worker in my district who is prolife,
antigun control, and anti-NAFTA has his money, his dues going to, say,
President Clinton's reelection campaign, and he does not have a say-so
in it, the union employee does not know his money is being used for
those causes, even though they may be things that he does not stand
for?
Mr. HAYWORTH. If the gentleman will yield further, that is exactly
what I am saying. Or the experience I had on one occasion, flying here
and some of the folks on the flight, some of the flight attendants
involved in their union made clear their displeasure with the incumbent
President and members of the liberal minority and said that they called
the local chapter of their union to put in their two cents worth and
those members of the union were amazed to hear that a portion of their
dues were going, even really without their knowledge, to guardians of
the old order, guardians of the special interests, folks who would put
bureaucracy above people and folks who would trust Washington, DC more
than the American people. Those folks were absolutely flabbergasted.
That is exactly what I am saying and to my friend from Georgia, I will
say something else. It has been noted that Boss Sweeney of the AFL-CIO
has asked for what sounds like the Clinton tax hike, an increase in
those dues. Even as they bemoan the so-called stagnation in earning
power, these bosses are asking for an increase in those dues, ergo a
compulsory donation to the guardians of the old order without one whit
of personal conviction from many members of unions. Indeed by some
estimates almost half the members of unions are conservatives who vote
consistently with the new majority. It is one of the ironies of life
here in Washington.
[[Page H3482]]
Mrs. SEASTRAND. It is interesting the gentleman mentioned that. I had
earlier commented about the ads playing in my district, on the 800
number. This has been going on for a year, but it has been interesting
because I field calls in my office, being a Californian, here in
Washington, DC, we have a 3-hour edge so the folks back home, it is 7
o'clock, it is now 10 o'clock, so when I am working in the office,
people will call, I will answer the phone and it is interesting because
they said, ``I just saw that ad on television, it's an 800 number, I
have to go through shenanigans to get to it.'' I guess they are hooked
up to the union switchboard. They take their name and address I guess
for future fund-raising efforts. ``But I want you to know I'm outraged
to know my dollars are used in this way. I'm a union member, always
have been and believe in some of these things, but I also agree with
you that we have to get big government under control.''
It was interesting to note when I was home these last 2 weeks, there
was a very well-organized protest outside my district office in San
Luis Obispo. But it was interesting to note that the people that came
were the union organizers. They came from San Francisco, there was one
from Los Angeles, one from San Jose. And then the executive secretary
of the local union who is the hired bureaucrat and another gentleman
were all part of this. Everybody else, the union members, the ones they
work for, are hard at work trying to make a living for their family. I
agree. They say 40 percent of members are good Republicans, pleased
with what we are doing and it is firsthand knowledge, that is what I am
hearing. In fact one went on television to tell the world that she was
very upset to see her dollars being used in such a way for union ads
when she was pleased about what we are doing here in the House.
Mr. TAYLOR of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. KINGSTON. I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.
Mr. TAYLOR of North Carolina. Allow me to compliment and put in
perspective what these freshman Members of Congress, and we have two
with us tonight, have done. And not only the freshmen but the gentleman
from Georgia [Mr. Kingston], a Member of the 103d Congress. In the 102d
Congress when I came in, we had a Congress that had been controlled for
almost 50 years at that time by one party. We had a situation where in
the House bank, Members were writing checks freely. They were not
paying the money back. They were laundering money and selling drugs
from the post office, which is not a U.S. post office. We are not
making these things up. There have been numerous convictions and
investigations to prove this to be true. That party from this side that
had controlled the House for so long could have reformed it. They did
not. Seven of us, became known as the Gang of Seven, started unraveling
the twine with a request for an investigation. We finally after 8
months forced an investigation because the people of this country
demanded it and we started with the investigation into the House bank,
which followed in the post office and made the changes.
Even after all of that became known, we could not make the changes in
Congress that needed to be made until this 104th Congress and our
majority with our freshman class came on board. And now during the last
18 months for the first time in the history of the country, we have had
an audit, an audit that has disclosed discrepancies in the past in the
House. We have had numerous changes with the Contract With America that
was offered. This House has passed most every aspect of that, certainly
with the majority in Congress, and has sent it on, most of it has been
sent to the President who has vetoed tax reform, tax relief for people
in this country. They have vetoed welfare reform and other areas that
the freshmen of this group have put through. There answer to the
American people has been not to join and do what the American people
want, not to pass the reforms the American people have demanded and
that this freshman class and this Republican majority Congress has
given. It has been to try to go back to the dirty politics side, try to
run ads with millions of dollars against freshman Congressmen and try
to win back control.
What will they be winning back control to do? To return back to the
same situation we had before, where house bank scandals and house post
office scandals were common.
I commend their class for the work you have done. Those of us that
fought in the 102d Congress and later when the gentleman from Georgia
[Mr. Kingston] came in the 103d Congress and fought, are being joined
by you, and I think the people will make the same decision. In my first
race, I won by about 3,000 votes. They immediately gerrymandered my
district and put 30,000 votes against me by taking 15,000 from one
party out and putting 15,000 new in. And although the President,
President Clinton, carried by district, I won in a hard campaign by 55
percent. Last year all the liberal organizations joined, the Democratic
women's organization of Emily's List that you are going to find and
those contributions do not have to be reported. They can be bundled and
slip under the law in a method that allows hundreds of thousands of
dollars to go to campaigns unreported. And we won 61 to 39 percent.
What I am saying is the people out there are living and listening to
what is happening and the things you are doing and I think they will,
with knowledge of what is going on, return you to office in order that
reform may continue in this body, that you are carrying out and have
been working on. I want to commend you for the work you have done.
Mr. HAYWORTH. I will ask the gentleman from Georgia to yield so I can
respond to my friend from North Carolina.
Mr. KINGSTON. Yes.
HAYWORTH. First of all, Mr. Speaker, let me thank the gentleman from
North Carolina for his membership and his actions as part of the Gang
of Seven, and I point out now there is a gang of 73 and a new majority,
and the gentleman from North Carolina is quite right. For in the midst
of this talk of reform comes one legitimate question that the gentleman
from North Carolina touched on, Mr. Speaker.
If this newfound embracing of reform by the liberals in this House
were so genuine, where was it during their long years of domination of
this institution, their complicity with the forces of big government
and the forces that would always use the same tired equation, the
answer of tax-and-spend, tax-and-spend, tax-and-spend. Where was that
commitment? And make no mistake. If we retreat, Mr. Speaker, one can
imagine a new liberal majority coming to this institutions, having
learned its lesson in what through misleading claims and the politics
of fear and the complicity of many liberals in the journalistic
endeavors might wish to take place here, they would turn on this
institution and that notion of reform in a heartbeat. Their notion of
reform would be as the actions taken by ancient Rome against the
Carthaginians. They would move metaphorically to lace the soil with
lime to ensure that the full honest flour of reform would never take
root again in this Chamber for the foreseeable future, and to return to
an iron grip with rules completely out of proportion, a majority that
would border on tyranny. In short, the same type of tyrannical majority
we saw in this institution at the tail end of those 40 years of one-
party domination.
Mrs. SEASTRAND. If the gentleman would yield, if you watch, you talk
about the reform, how there would be no reform, let me tell you, if you
look at these ads, negative ads, there is no hope. Everything is
negative, negative, negative in the attack I am taking. Bad balanced
budget, bad welfare reform, bad tax relief, bad this and that. There is
no hope in these ads. And because there is nothing, let us fact it,
their ideas are bankrupt after 40 years. There is no hope in their
ideas. And so what do they do? All they have left is to just condemn
and to attack. And it would be something if they could offer
alternatives to the situations at hand today for the problems that need
to be solved across this Nation, but it is all the same.
{time} 2215
Their answer is usually more, bigger, more dollars here from
Washington, DC.
Mr. KINGSTON. Let us talk about some of these basically Republican
solutions, but they are anti-Washington
[[Page H3483]]
bureaucrat solutions, some of the things that I think that we have been
trying to work for: more choice in medicare, a balance in environmental
policy, more local control in education, more State flexibility in
poverty and welfare programs.
Thinking of the Medicare policy, here we have in April last year, a
Clinton trustee saying Medicare is going bankrupt and in two years, it
will be out of money. Well, they missed that by 11 months. In February
for the first time in the history, Medicare ran out of money. So we
went in there, said okay, people want traditional Medicare, we
understand that. But if our seniors want options, like physician
service plans, and if they want to join a managed care plan or take an
individual medical savings account, let us give them those options, and
by offering the options we can reduce the growth from 11 percent each
year in Medicare to 4 percent and head away from the insolvency and the
bankruptcy. We can save, protect and preserve Medicare and increase
spending per recipient from $4,800 to $7,100 at the same time.
Mr. Speaker, a key component of that, as you two know, is cracking
down on fraud and abuse. I have with me a Derma-Gran bandage, which a
friend of mine in business has sent to me. He said this bandage
actually cost 94 cents to produce. It is sold to health care providers
for $6. And Medicare, on this 94-cent $6 purchase, gets $36.44 with it.
Now, your mother is paying for that and your father is paying for
that, and it is going at the price of their health care, a diagnosis or
something down the road. My friend's math on it, he just pointed out to
me, that does not sound like that much of a problem, does it? But the
fact is potentially, listen to this. Potentially 20,000 nursing home
patients each day use this. That would mean this is costing American
taxpayers at that $36 rate $21 million per month or, $262 million in
nothing but waste and almost fraud but certainly abuse in Medicare. And
this is what we were trying to resolve, and this is what the President
vetoed, cracking down on these.
Again, we are just giving seniors choices and protections that we
need for the program.
Mr. HAYWORTH. If the gentleman would yield, I think it is important
again to articulate something, because it is lost in the politics of
hyperbole, in the grand political theater of the propaganda on the
Nation's radio and television stations right now. And incidentally, I
would challenge my former colleagues in television to do their reality
checks that they often reserve for the political campaigns. I would
challenge my former colleagues in television news around the country to
apply the truth ads to these cynical, manipulative, untrue
announcements and maintain the vigilance now that they reserve for the
election campaign.
But the gentleman from Georgia brings up an interesting point. I do
not know anyone, despite the extreme rhetoric of those outrageous
claims made on television and radio, I do not know anyone in the new
majority who would for a moment wish that his parents would have
inadequate health care, desire for his grandparents inadequate health
care, purposely move to starve children and deprive them of the basics
of life, nor doom America to drinking dirty water and breathing impure
air. The claims are outrageous, and my colleague from Georgia correctly
points out the challenge is met.
The challenge is presented by the waste, fraud, and abuse in the
current vacuum in a Washington-based, one-size-fits-all system that is
devoid of the very compassion it claims to give to people, for it
denies the most essential element of our freedom: The opportunity to
choose. When my parents turn 65 next year, when that happens, there
will be no federally provided shopper to accompany them out of their
homes and to decree what department store they will visit, what
clothing they will buy, what car they will drive. And yet in the
current health care system, in the one-size-fits-all anachronistic plan
of the 1960's, which we hope to update, improve, transform and, yes,
even save, a vacuum exists. A massive bureaucracy exists that invites
the very waste, fraud and abuse that the gentleman spoke of.
Mrs. SEASTRAND. If the gentleman would yield.
Mr. HAYWORTH. I yield to the gentlewoman.
Mrs. SEASTRAND. It is interesting that the gentleman mentions the
waste, fraud, and abuse, but I think one of the things, particularly in
the ads from the big labor unions, the statements they make is we are
cutting Medicare. My mom is on Medicare, and she was concerned about
this, that her daughter was going to be doing something that she was in
need of. And I just want to tell people that that is the worst thing to
say, to scare our senior citizens. And I know some of them actually,
people went into with their propaganda into nursing homes to scare our
older and elderly that are in nursing homes and convalescent homes
across the Nation.
I just want to set the record straight. We actually increased
Medicare spending from $4,800 per beneficiary starting now to $7,100 in
7 years. Now, I am just an old fourth-grade school teacher that did a
lot of old math without calculators. But if we subtract that, we get a
difference, and that difference has a big plus sign in front of it.
Very, very hard to get that point across, especially to some of the
reporters today. I guess they were brought up on new math.
But we are increasing Medicare spending over the next 7 years by
$2,300 per beneficiary, and that is with more and more seniors coming
into the system. So you can tell we are spending a lot more. And that
is one of the falsehoods in the ads that is hitting and attacking some
of the freshmen, myself included, today on television.
Another interesting point was I know in the ads, and we heard it all,
we hear it from the other side of the aisle, that we are just taking
care of our rich friends with tax relief. Well, you know, I have been
through this litany. What am I doing here for the rich? A $500 per
child tax credit that would benefit 29 million families; a capital
gains tax credit that will create 6.1 million jobs; relief from the
marriage penalty that would allow 23 million taxpayers to receive $8
billion in tax relief; an adoption credit that would have allowed
parents to claim a $5,000 annual tax credit for up to five years in
order to help with their child adoption expenses; or how about an
elderly care deduction that would allow 1 million taxpayers a $1,000
deduction for the care of a parent or family member?
Mr. Speaker, now maybe for some of those union bosses that live high
on the hog here in Washington, DC, that do not understand what the
working families back in each of our districts have to face, this is
what I voted for and what we proposed is for working families across
this nation, and I do not know about any rich people.
Mr. KINGSTON. The gentlewoman had mentioned also about some of the
putting common sense into some of the environmental laws. One of the
things that happened in California that we know of, Riverdale,
California, the endangered kangaroo rat. Now, you know, my view is I do
not want to lose a species. I am committed to the Endangered Species
Act. Riverdale, CA had kangaroo rat, and the EPA would not let them cut
fire breaks in the residential area because it would endanger the
habitat of the kangaroo rat. So what happened? A fire came and it
destroyed 30 homes.
But in addition to that, it also destroyed 25,000 acres of kangaroo
rat habitat. So we have got lose-lose policy for both the private
property owner and the kangaroo rat. We see this kind of impracticality
over and over again. In fact, I think it was in Arizona, may have been
New Mexico, where the Boy Scout was lost last year in a wilderness
area.
They discovered him I think 48 hours later, and the Park Service
would not let a helicopter land there because it was a motorized
vehicle. And under the Wilderness Act, you cannot have any sort of
motorized vehicle in the park area. So here is this kid 14 years old,
12 years old, I am not sure of the age, and he is hungry, he is
starving, he has been sleeping on rocks, and the helicopter comes and
it won't rescue him. You know, it is just out of balance.
The other thing is, the decision to dig fire breaks in Riverdale,
California, or to rescue a 14-year-old in a western State does not need
to be made out of Washington by a Washington bureaucrat. I think that
the Park Service people and the local county commissioners
[[Page H3484]]
and the residents can probably figure it out, keep it in Federal
guidelines. They can solve their own problem without Washington
bureaucrats.
Mrs. SEASTRAND. Well, if the gentleman would yield, I think a lot of
the bureaucrats that work here in Washington, DC have never been to our
districts. Unless they read National Geographic, they have never come
to the middle kingdom of California to see the Monterey Bay Sanctuary
or the Channel Island Sanctuary. So what do they do? They do
regulations that one size fits all, and it does not fit our particular
needs at the local level.
Mr. Speaker, every one of us wants clean water, a better environment.
After all, we are going to leave this place and I hope to leave it in a
better way for my children and my grandchildren than I found it. But it
is interesting, another area that when we are dealing with the
environment is to look at the Superfund. And the folks back home say,
hey, my tax dollars are going and where are the Superfund sites being
cleaned up? And what do we find out? We are spending it on bureaucrats
in Washington, DC, who are attorneys and using those dollars to
litigate, litigate, litigate. In the meantime, the sites remain dirty.
And we want to cut through that so we can take those precious tax
dollars, put them into the sites, clean them up and get on with the
business of the day at hand.
Mr. HAYWORTH. If the gentlewoman would yield, indeed the current
Superfund legislation, in stark contrast to the genuine reforms the new
majority would propagate, which we advocate, the current Superfund
legislation could well be renamed the special interest and lawyer
subsidy act with an incidental tip of the cap to the environment to
camouflage its true purpose. I mean that is a long title, but that is
in essence what has transpired here. Come to think of it, may not be
entirely grammatically correct. I would bow to my friend who taught the
fourth grade so capably for many years in that regard.
But regardless of the fractured syntax, it does not take away from
the validity of the observation of the gentleman from Georgia.
Mr. Speaker, I can recall on another occasion just prior to our
recent recess when we returned home to the districts, where I came to
this floor along with the gentleman from Georgia, a gentleman from
Maryland, a gentleman from Michigan. No, we do not agree on every jot
and tittle of what should transpire with meaningful reform to
conservation and environmental legislation, and yet there were some
common themes. One just rearticulated by the gentleman from Georgia
dealing with the notion of local control and State control now being
perhaps the most capable way to address many of these problems.
Indeed, I do not believe anyone would argue of the necessity of the
action taken in the early 1970's in the Nixon administration to create
an Environmental Protection Agency. The question now becomes, however,
with 50 States with their own departments of environmental qualities,
in other words, 50 State-run EPA's, in effect, a legitimate question
can be asked, should everything be centered in Washington? Indeed, the
gentlewoman from California referred to one of the main problems, and
let me pause here so no one will misunderstand. I do not discredit the
millions of hard-working people who are in the employ of the Federal
Government. I realize many of them work hard to do the jobs they are
given. But sometimes those jobs are ill defined, or worse, the dynamics
or the situation into which these employees are thrust leads to
impracticalities, such as the notion of being deskbound instead of in
the field looking at problems.
On an occasion which we were discussing Indian housing, and there are
more native Americans living on reservations in the Sixth District of
Arizona than anywhere else in the continental United States, one of my
constituents offered the story. There was a body of water on the
reservation land in that district that the people had come to call
Twelve Mile Lake.
{time} 2230
Well, there was some contentious debate with an EPA administrator, I
believe from San Francisco so the story goes, according to my
constituent. And during many telephone conversations, the EPA official
in San Francisco behind a desk was adamant, certainly there must be
significant wetlands protection for that body of water known as Twelve
Mile Lake. The tribal administration, my friend who recounted the
story, said, sir, you don't understand, it is not a significant body of
water, it is a tiny body of water. It is akin to a mud puddle. Oh,
certainly you exaggerate, said the EPA official. There must be these
safeguards.
Well, miracle of miracles, the U.S. official, the San Francisco
bureaucrat, left that beautiful city by the bay and traveled to the
reservation land, and the tribal officials took him to what in essence
was a mud puddle. My constituent said, evoking images of Madison
Avenue, it made for a Kodak moment to see the expression of
stupefaction that crossed the bureaucrat's face. He said something to
the effect of, you're right, it is a mud puddle. Why do you call it
Twelve Mile Lake? And the tribal official said, well, you see, sir,
that's what we've been trying to tell you. The reason this particular
small body of water is called Twelve Mile Lake is not because of its
dimensions but because, you see, it is 12 miles from the center of town
to this particular body of water.
And I think the story speaks volumes, and I daresay a disturbing
tendency would be the overzealousness to abandon the context of what is
reasonable to have almost the unbelievable advocacy of saying that mud
puddle should be equated with a navigable water and should be a wetland
that is protected. And that is the next course of action that has been
taken on many different fronts. What should always undergird our
mission in this Congress is a standard test of the law of Western
civilization. What is reasonable? What would a reasonable person do?
Mr. KINGSTON. Our friend Frank Luntz uses this illustration. Do you
know that the State of Indiana does not participate in daylight savings
time? They do not spring forward and fall backward.
Mr. HAYWORTH. If you would yield for a second, let me also say the
great State of Arizona does not subscribe to savings time either.
Mr. KINGSTON. Did you know that Indiana did not? I did not know that
of Arizona. Did you know that?
Mrs. SEASTRAND. Yes, I did.
Mr. KINGSTON. You two are exceptionally brilliant. Four hundred
thirty-five Members, I can almost promise you that 90 percent of us do
not know that. But don't you think that is relevant to the people in
Arizona and Indiana, that they do not spring forward and fall backward
on their time? And don't you think that would be relevant for a
business doing commerce in either of those two States, or a visitor or
a government?
And isn't it ironic that I can vote, as can any other Member of
Congress on things affecting the people of Arizona and Indiana, and not
even know such a fundamental thing about their culture? And yet we do
it routinely, just like you talked about with the Twelve Mile Lake.
The bureaucrat in Washington can set the rule, having no idea that
the lake is not 12 miles wide, simply that, and not knowing that it is
just simply 12 miles from town. But they are experts on everything, and
they are from the government and they are here to help and they are
going to tell you how to run your town and your State.
Mrs. SEASTRAND. It was interesting, I have just been appointed to the
Speaker's Environmental Task Force. I am serving on the steering
committee. And during the recess, I naturally organized a task force
for my two countries of my district and invited, as a jumping off
period, a first meeting, some 28 people from different agencies and
local groups that are active within the environment. And when you start
thinking about this, this is vast. We can have a lot of great
discussions, and I am looking forward to our monthly meetings.
But it was interesting at that first meeting, an attorney who makes
his living on litigation said, I hate to say this because I make my
living this way, but I deal every day trying to make sense of the
regulations from Washington, DC. And because some of these laws were
written some 20, 25 years ago, technology is advanced,
[[Page H3485]]
science knows so much more, and we need to look at science, we need to
look at the technology today and reform and change some of these laws.
Not throw them out, but let us change what can fit 1996 for a better
way, a better environment.
It was interesting, one of the Federal agencies' representatives
said, you know, in my job I have a standard, and I have the State
official from the agency following me right behind, and we are doing
the same work. In other words, repetition. The taxpayer is not getting
good use of people sharing resources.
Another gentleman said from one of the other Federal agencies, you
know, I would do anything to be able to have a local advisory group to
give me input as to what they feel about situations that affect what I
am doing here. So it was interesting, in that short 1-hour beginning
meeting of a task force, I was able to learn and get from other people
that have to deal in this area every day, their feelings of what we
have talked about in this new Congress with this new attitude.
We want to give incentives to people, not penalize them so if they
find an endangered species on their property, they are worried about it
and they do not want to tell anybody. I want them to be able to tell a
government official about it, so that they can get an incentive and
figure out how they are going to continue having the endangered species
on their property and still have property rights to see that they can
utilize that land.
So it is interesting. We have a long way to go. It will be an
exciting time to be part of the environmental task force so that we can
come together and discuss the policy for the 21st century.
Mr. KINGSTON. Now, one of the things I hear, and you mentioned
earlier on the Superfund, is that Superfund is 15 years old. We have
spent $25 billion on it and yet we have only cleaned up 12 percent of
the national priority polluted sites.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Would you yield just a second? I want you to repeat the
amount of money spent on this over 12 years, over 15 years.
Mr. KINGSTON. Over 15 years we have spent $25 billion on
environmental cleanup and only cleaned up 12 percent of the sites.
Mrs. SEASTRAND. And may I add, if the gentleman would yield, I want
to add this statistic. The Justice Department spent over 800,000 man-
hours just on Superfund litigation between 1990 and 1992. That is a lot
of hours.
Mr. KINGSTON. I understand that translates to about 43 cents on the
dollar going to the cost of litigation. Now, it does not matter where
you are on the environmental debate, we all should come together and
say this is broken and we need to fix it.
Mr. HAYWORTH. And if the gentleman would yield, numerous examples
from the great Grand Canyon State of Arizona, one in particular from a
couple of years ago, bears out what I talked about in an abbreviated
fashion this morning in responding to my good friend from Georgia on
this floor, and what we have talked about tonight, and indeed what is
one of the basic tenets of this new practical, realistic, common sense
majority, and that is one size does not fit all.
Phoenix is not the same as Philadelphia, nor is Flagstaff the same as
Fargo, ND. And, indeed, something that transpired 2 years ago in the
desert City of Tucson, Arizona, offers a stirring example.
There was a violent windstorm in the desert. Those wind storms blow
up great dust devils, great amounts of dust in the air. Visibility is
poor. There was a car crash on Interstate 10, one of those long 20-car
tangos, if you will. But also, even as that was transpiring on the
interstate, moving through Tucson, Arizona, technical data collection,
equipment provided by the Federal Government to monitor the Clean Air
Act, showed that at the same time Tucson was technically in violation
of the provisions of the Clean Air Act.
Now, the particulates in the air on that day did not come from the
cars involved in the accident on the interstate, it came from the
particulates in the air. When you live in a desert and a windstorm
blows up, there will be more particulates in the air; ergo, Tucson is
not the same a Tacoma. Different places, different areas of this
Nation, different climatic conditions offer different challenges.
And, yes, while there are some technologies that are common,
certainly the circumstances of those respective areas should be taken
into account, not for Washington standards but for local standards that
are realistic, reasonable and move to protect the environment.
Mr. KINGSTON. And with the Federal presence, guidance, and oversight,
but not necessarily Washington bureaucratic micromanagement.
Now, I think probably the biggest failure of the Washington
bureaucracy to manage a problem is local poverty control. You know, the
folks on welfare in Savannah, GA, have to do what the bureaucrats tell
them to do in Washington, and it is the same bureaucrats telling your
folks in California what to do, and the people in California in Mrs.
Seastrand's district have to do what the folks in Arizona in your
district do, and you have one Washington bureaucracy command
controlling poverty. As a result, since 1964 we have spent $5 trillion
on poverty. The poverty rate then was 14 percent, and the poverty rate
now is 14 percent. It has not worked. We need local control and
flexibility.
You know what? I cannot solve Mrs. Seastrand's poverty problem, and I
cannot solve Mr. Hayworth's, and maybe I cannot solve mine. But you
know what? I can do a heck of a lot better job on mine than I can on
yours. Just give me the tools and I think I can do it.
That is one reason why you want State block grants. Cut out the
poverty brokers and put the control in the hands of the local people.
Mrs. SEASTRAND. If the gentleman would yield. I had a firsthand
experience in what you are saying. I served in the State assembly in
California. And so often the folks back here in Washington, DC, in this
House, would vote a particular bill, legislation, change the law, and
then it would come down to us and they would hold the hammer over our
head. If you do not follow these rules the way we want you to do it, we
are going to hold back on transportation funds or welfare funds or
whatever.
And we knew that we could do it a better way; that we here in
California perhaps did not match what you needed to do for your folks
in Savannah, GA, or the people in Arizona. And that was day in, day out
that we were constantly told if we did not adhere to the new mandates
from the Federal Government they would hold back something from us.
So many times I would vote no to just protest, and then most of the
folks, though, would vote yes and we would receive another mandate from
the Federal Government that many times did not make sense to us at the
State level.
Mr. HAYWORTH. And if the gentlewoman would yield, it is worth noting
that one of the genuine reforms and one of the few times in which the
gentleman at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue in the big white
house was willing to work with us was on this notion of unfunded
mandates, where Washington bureaucrats decreed to local government
officials you will do it this way.
The frustration of that system has led the mayor of Winslow, AZ, to
coin a new phrase. He calls it the idiocracy. The idiocracy which would
mandate an action being taken without taking into account the
realistic, common sense, reasonable notions of the good people who live
right there in the area and also want to redress the problem but on
their own terms, reflecting their own priorities, with no less of a
commitment to solving that problem. That is what we must remember.
Mrs. SEASTRAND. If the gentleman would yield. I know our time is
coming to a close, but I would just say that all of Americans across
this Nation I think have to be reminded that so many of them voted for
a change in 1994 and that change has begun, but it is not going to be
completed in such a short time. We have to chip away at so much that
has been built after 40 years and we have to keep driving for that
change.
You know, I am pleased, being from California, that we have seen, in
passing legislation off this floor regarding immigration reform, we
talked about lowering taxes, and we talked about earlier the line item
veto and returning government decisions to state and
[[Page H3486]]
local levels and to continue our push for a balanced budget. But we
have to continue to do that. And I just would say that what we have
seen happen here, there are forces that do not like what we have
accomplished.
{time} 2245
They are going to try their very best to more or less take some of us
out in this next election so that they can take back that old status
quo of big bureaucratic Washington-controlled government. I just am
going to fight it, as I know you gentlemen will, too.
Mr. HAYWORTH. I would close with an observation by one of my
constituents in the Navajo Nation, having spent Sunday in Window Rock,
Arizona. A lady told the story of a young homemaker in a Navajo
household cutting off a substantial portion of a hand. Kids asked her
why. She said, I do not know; mom did it. So she went to great-grandma
and she said, why did you cut off a major part of your hand. She said,
well, it used to be a smaller pot and so I had to cut that off to make
it fit in the pot, an example of a tradition for tradition's sake that
defied common sense and needed to be changed, in much the same way we
need to make changes here. Not because Washington said so, but because
technology and the people living in those areas are willing to make the
changes of their own volition. History does not occur in a vacuum and
history is on the side of freedom.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, let me conclude with this. Last week a
teacher in Darien, Georgia told me that in an 8-hour day she spends two
to three hours filling our paperwork, about 50 percent of it is for the
Federal Government. That is 10 to 15 hours a week that is not spent
teaching Johnny how to read, write, and do arithmetic. She can teach
her children better than the bureaucrats who are making her fill out
the paperwork in Washington.
What we are asking with that and all these other examples, let the
local people do what they know how to do best and let the Washington
bureaucrats stop the micromanagement, return freedom to the people and
increase personal responsibility along the way.
I thank Mrs. Seastrand of California and Mr. Hayworth of Arizona for
being with me tonight.
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