[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 53 (Tuesday, April 23, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H3722-H3728]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       COMPETING PHILOSOPHIES FUEL DEBATE OVER ROLE OF GOVERNMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Collins of Georgia). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. 
Hayworth] is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Illinois who 
preceded me here in the well. Indeed amidst all the talk of a lack of 
civility, amidst all the talk of hostility in this Chamber, Mr. 
Speaker, I can personally say without equivocation that one of the 
honors of serving in this House in addition to being here representing 
the people of the Sixth District of Arizona is to serve alongside my 
good friend from Illinois. Because without venom or vitriol, he states 
a case, and he makes mention of the fact that, yes, there are two 
predominant philosophies at work in the Congress of the United States, 
by and large two philosophies represented within the two- 

[[Page H3723]]

party system, and I applaud him for his efforts to go beyond mere 
accountancy and figures to try and explain what many of us have come 
into contact with with various road projects, both at the Federal and 
State level, where we have all seen the sign that says, Your Tax 
Dollars At Work.

  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the efforts of my good friend from 
Illinois. But, as he says, there are basically two philosophies, and, 
indeed, Mr. Speaker, it is not my intent to put words in the mouth of 
the gentleman who preceded me here in the well but simply to challenge 
his fundamental thesis, the underlying argument, Mr. Speaker, that he 
presents tonight to the American people.
  My friend seems to say that American citizens laboring from January 
through May to account for the huge Federal tax bite, well, that is 
money well spent, so my friend says. And, yes, there are problems, but 
incremental reform and fine-tuning and some adjustment can give us the 
necessary change to confront the next century.
  Again I applaud my friend's effort and it is not a spirit of one-
upmanship that brings me to the well of this House tonight, Mr. 
Speaker. But again I feel compelled to challenge the assertion nor the 
assumption of my dear friend from Illinois. For, you see, Mr. Speaker, 
I believe true reform and true effective use of tax dollars stems first 
and foremost from this document, the Constitution of the United States. 
And while I appreciate my friend's effort to account for your tax 
dollars at work, I do not believe that any of us can improve on the 
assertions of our Founders who in a beautiful and indeed inspiring 
Preamble to the Constitution offered, Mr. Speaker, I suppose in the 
buzz phrase of the mid-1990's, their vision statement, if you will, for 
this constitutional republic, and I quote:

       We the people of the United States, in order to form a more 
     perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic 
     tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the 
     general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to 
     ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this 
     Constitution for the United States of America.

  And indeed, although I am joined on the floor by a dear friend who is 
a practicing physician, most of what transpires in this Chamber and 
upon this hill does not equate with brain surgery nor complex 
accounting. Instead, its most fundamental premise is founded upon the 
notions set forth in this document, what one historian, I believe, 
rightly called the Miracle at Philadelphia. This document, timeless, 
timeless in its ability if not to predict the future but to provide us 
with a framework for a free people to determine what should transpire 
within this free society. And I cannot help but note the irony of those 
who purport to represent the party of Jefferson who all too often 
forget his words, and this is something that becomes misunderstanding 
given the theatrics and the rhetorical excesses bound to occur in an 
election year, but it is worth noting again the Jeffersonian ideal. It 
was not for elimination of government but, as Mr. Jefferson pointed 
out, the ideal of a limited and effective government with the proper 
role for the Federal Government and a far more active role for State 
governments, for counties and for urban jurisdictions.
  And so that frames the debate as we approach the next century.
  Are we to assume that history occurs in a vacuum? Are we to assume 
that because at previous junctures in our Nation's history we should 
only subscribe to a philosophy that would dictate that power should 
reside primarily here in Washington, D.C.? And, further, that that 
power be exercised not by those elected but by those appointed or those 
who have sought career service within a vast bureaucracy?
  That is the crux of the debate. Let me pause here, lest someone 
misunderstand.

  Mr. Speaker, this is not a diatribe directed toward those who find 
themselves in the employ of the Federal Government. Indeed, I would be 
the first to say, Mr. Speaker, that there are many hardworking, 
dedicated people employed in the service of the Federal Government. 
But, Mr. Speaker, it is to say this: At this juncture in our history, 
is it preferable for power to be concentrated here on the banks of the 
Potomac in the hands of unelected officials accountable really only to 
themselves? And is it proper to issue the assertion that, Mr. and Mrs. 
America, if you work from January until May to satisfy your Federal 
level of taxation, well, well and good, because you are receiving 
incredible benefits? Is that really the course we should follow? Or is 
instead it more proper to understand that the average family in 1948, 
the average family of 4, surrendered 3 percent of its income in taxes 
to the Federal Government as opposed to the average family of 4 one 
year ago which surrendered almost one-quarter of its income to the 
Federal Government? And, mindful of that, is it a good and fair deal 
that the families of this Nation now spend more, Mr. Speaker, on taxes 
than on food, clothing and shelter combined?
  For, you see, Mr. Speaker, this argument is made not out of avarice 
or greed or selfishness or any of those labels so many in this election 
year are willing to bandy about akin to playground taunts. No, the 
question is asked legitimately because it helps define what type of 
future we should have. And indeed as I look beyond the Preamble to this 
Constitution, I cannot help but note the first clause in article I, 
section 1, which reads as follows, Mr. Speaker:
  ``All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress 
of the United States.''
  All legislative powers, Mr. Speaker, vested in this institution and 
the other body across this magnificent structure, the Congress of the 
United States.
  Yet what has transpired in this century? Often for the most noble of 
motives, this Congress has established agencies within the executive 
branch and those agencies in turn issue regulations.
  Let me again pause at this juncture to make sure I am not 
misunderstood, Mr. Speaker. I am not saying that regulation in and of 
itself is a bad thing. No, quite the contrary. Certainly, Mr. Speaker, 
in my profession as a broadcaster, I know firsthand that a modicum of 
regulation was necessary to create order out of chaos on the airwaves, 
first at the behest of a Secretary of Commerce by the name of Herbert 
Hoover, then through a Federal Radio Commission established in the late 
1920's, and ultimately within a Federal Communications Commission, and 
I think we can all agree with the developments in technology, with the 
changes we have seen throughout this Nation with the wonderful 
expansion of the economy and opportunity, some modicum of regulation 
must continue. But what I am saying and indeed what I propose in H.R. 
2727, the Congressional Responsibility Act, is to indeed make sure that 
the first section of Article I of the Constitution is followed, that 
all legislative powers be vested here. Accordingly, H.R. 2727 would 
provide that every proposed regulation return here to the Congress of 
the United States for an up-or-down vote before it is printed in the 
Federal Register.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HAYWORTH. I yield to the gentleman from Georgia who joins my good 
friend the physician from Florida.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I do not want to jump in front of the gentleman from 
Florida [Mr. Weldon] but on the point of regulation one of the bills 
that we have pending now is reauthorization of the Safe Drinking Water 
Act. One of the current regulations that water systems have to operate 
under requires small systems that use ground water to test for 
contaminants that are only found in surface water systems.

                              {time}  2200

  So here we have EPA, taxpayer funded, requiring groundwater systems 
to do the same tests as surface water systems. Absolutely absurd.
  The same act also requires that EPA post new regulations for 25 
contaminants each 3 years, whether the regulations are needed or not. 
It is just absurd. It goes under what you are saying, we do need 
regulation, but we do need common sense in the regulatory authority.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Even in addition to common sense, which I laud the 
gentleman for mentioning, and which many observers would say time and 
again seems to be absent not only from this Chamber at times, but also 
through the vast bureaucracy, we need a proper reassertion of 
constitutional authority. That is why every proposed regulation should 
not be enacted by bureaucratic fiat, for as my two colleagues know, Mr. 
Speaker, what oft

[[Page H3724]]

times happens is you have a shift in the power. Instead of the power 
being conferred by the people on their duly elected representatives to 
make laws, the power is bequeathed or ceded to the regulators who can 
come up with regulatory expansion, as my friend from Georgia mentions, 
that exceeds what the average person would deem to be reasonable. In 
doing so, it subverts the whole notion of laws and by the expansion of 
what I choose to call the tyranny of the bureaucracy and the power 
being conferred on government bureaucrats, what we have done is allowed 
those bureaucrats in essence through the issuance of regulation to make 
laws, because as my two colleagues know, certainly my physician friend 
from Florida understands, those folks with the sanctions of 
imprisonment or fine are basically enacting laws.
  Of course I yield to my good friend from Florida.
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. I appreciate the gentleman yielding. I very 
much applaud you in your efforts to reassert the authority of the 
Constitution of the United States, because I feel very strongly that 
not just for years, but for decades, the language of our Constitution 
has been either subverted or totally ignored. There is probably no 
better example than the rampant, wanton, overwhelming number of 
regulations that have come from Federal bureaucrats that have 
tremendous impact on the day-to-day lives of American families who are 
very, very often just struggling to make ends meet.
  You were talking about tax policy before. What is so amazing to me is 
that the callous, casual attitude that many politicians have about 
raising taxes, when many families, they are on such a tight margin that 
those slight increases in taxes mean a cutback in their ability to plan 
for a vacation, to plan for higher education for their children, to 
plan for an expansion on their home.
  But getting back to the subject you were talking about, regulations, 
the other body, their Governmental Affairs Committee recently reported 
out that Federal regulations cost the average American household $6,000 
annually in higher prices, diminished wages, and increased taxes or 
reduced services.
  Furthermore, under the Clinton Administration, there has been a 
record increase in the number of Federal regulations. They have 
increased at 4.6 percent per year during the Clinton administration. 
This is a record, it stands at an all time record of now 67,518 pages 
of regulations, 18 percent higher than what they were in 1992.
  Some people think this is just an abstract concept. But when you talk 
to a small businessman who is trying to start a new business and 
discovers that he has to fill out form after form after form 
of regulations dealing with multiple different layers of bureaucracy, 
and that inability to get himself started in his business frequently 
results in lost income for his family, and sometimes in bankruptcy, 
businesses not even being started, jobs not created because of the 
burden of Federal regulations, this indeed I think is one of the silent 
crimes of our government against our people, the fact that there has 
just been this endless amount of regulation issuing forth from 
Washington, DC.

  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I think my friend from 
Florida, indeed on the front lines of not only health care as a 
physician, but also on the front lines here representing very capably 
the people of this district, again points out something which we should 
note with more than curiosity, indeed with widespread concern, for 
taking the model offered by our dear friend from Illinois, who preceded 
us here in the well, who said well, let us set up the construct, if you 
are paying from January to May for the tax bill, it is money well 
spent, there is in fact a hidden tax, and this is what the gentleman 
from Florida refers to, a hidden tax of overregulation that by many 
estimates means that the average American is really in essence working 
for governmental entities far beyond May, indeed past the day upon 
which we celebrate our independence, and that the true Independcence 
Day for the American citizen in terms of taxes and fees levied by 
excessive regulation, either through higher costs or other things, does 
not come until really mid-July.
  So there you have it, more than six months, in reality, six and a 
half or almost seven months, where the hard working people of the 
United States work and labor essentially to propagate a system of 
excessive regulation and a system of centralized control.
  What we offer in the new majority is very simple, and this is 
something that we need to articulate here once again, free from the 
diatribes and the playground taunts and the interesting interpretations 
that some of our friends in the media would offer. What we are simply 
saying is this: Mr. Speaker, the citizens of the United States of 
America work hard for the money they earn. They ought to hand onto more 
of that money and send less of it to Washington, and they should have 
not only the money in their pockets, but they should ultimately decide 
what is best for their families and their futures, instead of ceding 
that power and that revenue to a centralized governmental authority.
  Let me yield to my friend from Georgia.
  Mr. KINGSTON. A story of one of your freshmen colleagues really fits 
in there, and that is that of Sonny Bono, one of your better known 
freshmen.
  He tells the story of leaving Hollywood and going to Palm Springs to 
start a restaurant. He needed to make some changes in the building that 
he bought and so forth. So he went down to the city hall to get 
building permits, thinking that he was going to be creating jobs and 
additional tax revenues and all kinds of positive things for the area 
that they would say ``Mr. Bono, we are so happy to have you in here, we 
need entrepreneurs, employers. This is a great boost for our economy.'' 
Instead, he was given the runaround. ``Why do you need these permits? 
How have you chosen the contractor who is going to do the work?''
  They started nickeling and diming him and micromanaging the project. 
He thought it was going to take 15 minutes. Six months later he still 
had not gotten his permits for his building, the renovation and 
building permits, from the city there.
  Mr. BONO. tells a great story of walking in one day and saying ``I 
have got my permit problem solved.'' The bureaucrat behind the desk 
said, ``No you don't.'' Sonny Bono said ``Yes, I do''. The bureaucrat 
said ``No, you don't, Mr. Bono. Nobody solves permit problems without 
me. I am the one who decides. I represent the government. You can't do 
anything on your own without me.''
  Sonny Bono looked at him and said, ``Oh, yes, I can. I have solved my 
permit problem. I am going to run for mayor, and I am going to fire 
you.''
  That in essence is a true story of how Sonny Bono got into politics. 
He did run for mayor, he was successful. He points out, he is not 
inhumane. He did fire the guy, but turned around and let him be his 
gardener, so all was not lost.
  But the point of the story is you have in the U.S. Congress now 
people who have experience with real world bureaucratic red tape. They 
have not been raised in the political ranks, where they have chief of 
staffs and administrative assistants and directors who protect them 
from the dirty world of red tape which the real world has to contend 
with.
  So as your 73 freshmen Members came to the House floor, you have 
fought for less regulation and more individual responsibility and more 
indivdual freedom. I think you have made it. You have got a securities 
reform litigation signed by the President, the Paperwork Reduction Act 
signed by the President. We have stopped the practice of passing local 
laws and making local county commissions pay for it after we decide how 
to run every county in Arizona and Florida and Georgia. We are trying 
to back off that.

  So the impact of the 73 freshmen has been tremendous, and yet it is 
just a start as to what we need to do to truly get government off the 
back and out of the pocketbooks of small businesses all over the 
country.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Reclaiming my time, my friend from Georgia makes an 
excellent point, and indeed relating once again to us the real life 
experience of our colleague from California and what prompted his entry 
into pursuit of elective office I think is especially appropriate.
  But there is something that undergirds it entirely, Mr. Speaker,

[[Page H3725]]

and that is the notion of those who put together this document, the 
notion of our Founders, which was unique in human history. For in 
contrast to our English forbearers, or our British cousins, as some of 
us affectionately refer to our friends across the Atlantic, in this new 
Nation, in this constitutional republic, we did not choose to recognize 
one person or one family as sovereign or as sovereigns.
  Instead, in this Nation we operate from the assumption that, first, 
power is conferred upon us by a creator, and that in this Nation, the 
people are sovereign and they in turn confer their power, or political 
power, if you will, on governmental institutions. Yet, as our friend 
from Georgia relates the story, what all too often happens is that 
notion is twisted or turned to where American citizens are suddenly 
accountable to unelected career Washington bureaucrats, instead, Mr. 
Speaker, of what was intended, and that is for government to be 
accountable to the people.
  So, indeed, this so-called revolution, which, by the way, can only be 
defined as extreme in terms of the context of making extremely good 
sense, what is in fact a resolution not born of something radical but 
something entirely reasonable, simply says that the power, indeed, Mr. 
Speaker, it is reminiscent of a popular slogan in the 1960's, that 
power belongs to the people, and that power goes to the people.
  Let me yield to my friend from Florida.
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. I appreciate the gentleman yielding. I just 
want to add to your comments about the so-called revolution. In my 
opinion, the revolution that people talk about here in Washington is 
nothing more than a dose of common sense coming from the people that 
you talk about, which is where the power truly lies with, a dose of 
common sense coming to the people of this city.
  This city is insulated from the people that put them here. This so-
called revolution is nothing more in my opinion than the people that 
work in Washington at the bidding of the governed who elect them and 
put them here, finally having to start acting on some of these things 
that people have been crying out for for years and years and years and 
years, like reforming the Congress itself, making the Congress live 
under the laws that they have been passing on to the people.
  Madison, in Federalist Paper Number 37, which I am sure as a student 
of history as you are, J.D., you would know that he said in that 
federalist paper that the Congress should not be allowed to pass any 
law that does not have its full operation on themselves or on their 
friends. In reality, as we know from the past 25 or 30 years, they have 
repeatedly passed major pieces of legislation, including the Civil 
Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family Leave Act, 
even the labor laws themselves and OSHA regulations they exempted 
themselves from.
  And OSHA regulations, they have exempted themselves from it. As I 
understand it, the people from OSHA right now are beginning to do their 
audits on all these buildings here on Capitol Hill, and that some of 
them have some very, very serious problems. And those problems would 
have never been recognized if it had not been for the fact that this 
so-called revolution, which I think is nothing more than common sense 
reform coming to this body and coming to this city, and it is something 
that the American people have been asking for for years and years.

                              {time}  2215

  Mr. HAYWORTH. I thank my friend from Florida and I would be happy to 
yield to my good friend from Georgia after I offer this parenthetical 
note to quantify what the gentleman from Florida just said.
  Indeed, if we were to define this, Mr. Speaker, despite the 
sensationalistic notion of revolution, what in essence we have here is 
rather than revolution, a reclamation, a reclaiming of this government 
for its rightful role in society, and that is what is at stake here and 
a reevaluation of the role of government.
  I thank our good friend from Florida for joining us, making those 
points, and once again I am happy to yield to my friend from Georgia.
  Mr. KINGSTON. The gentleman from Florida had mentioned OSHA, the 
Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and for years this has 
been the group that was kind of the government watchdog on health and 
safety in the workplace. Certainly it came into being under the Nixon 
administration. It was a pro-worker law, but it was not an anti-
business law either. It just had some common sense.
  And yet we are now in a situation where over 60 percent of the OSHA 
fines are for paperwork violations. You have to list such hazardous 
substances as that of the ink that you use in a Xerox machine. If you 
store that, you have to have a material safety and data sheet. And if 
you do not fill that out properly, you are fined. There have been cases 
of OSHA coming in and laying a heavy hand on small businesses and 
putting them in some cases almost out of business because of the 
financial crunch, litigation, and so forth. Yet in the agriculture side 
of our economy, there is the Soil Conservation Service which gives 
farmers technical assistance to prevent erosion, which is a pro-
environment type agency, but giving technical assistance to farmers, 
which they need, a very good working relationship between soil 
conservation and farmers.
  And here you have the same type relationship between OSHA and 
businesses, only it is an antagonistic one. What we would like to do is 
have OSHA be more like Soil Conservation is to the farmer, helping the 
businesses make their worker environment safer, because one of the 
things I learned when I sold workers compensation insurance is that the 
price of the accident, a hundred dollars for stitching up somebody's 
thumb, is four times when you consider the time lost and the problems 
with worker morale and so forth. Businesses have every motivation in 
the world besides government to take care of their employees; if 
nothing else, just from the production standpoint.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming the time, I thank my friend 
from Georgia for making this fundamental point, for as certain as the 
sun rises in the morning, there are those who will willfully distort or 
mischaracterize what we are saying here tonight.
  And the gentleman is quite right, Mr. Speaker, for he talks of 
regulation that is there to establish order and also there to offer a 
helping hand, not in terms of money or tax dollars allocated to 
business, that is not what we are talking about, but to work in a 
cooperative fashion with business and industry as opposed to an 
adversarial relationship, or a game that is ofttimes played in the 
Nation's press, in the common vernacular it is called a game of 
``gotcha''. So that we pass so many regulations, so cumbersome, so out 
of touch with what is reality or in any way, shape or form reasonable 
so that those responsible for enforcement can come in and say, ``Ah, 
`gotcha'.'' Part B of subparagraph 1 of section 325 states this. You 
made an effort but you did not quite reach what I believe, as the 
regulator, as the arbiter of this, to be the right decision.
  It comes back not only to this document, our Constitution, but also 
to the simple notion I mentioned earlier, Mr. Speaker. And it is this 
question. What is reasonable? What would a reasonable person do?
  As my friend from Georgia mentioned a second ago, even if we accept 
the notions that some in our society seem to adopt, that business, by 
its very existence is greedy or motivated out of avarice; even if we 
were to accept that notion wholeheartedly, we would have to understand 
that it is in the best interest of business to make sure that employees 
are productive. And to be productive they need to work in a safe 
environment.
  So even if we were to proffer the notion, as some in this Chamber do 
from time to time, that the profit motive is inherently evil or selfish 
or somehow misguided, even if we were to accept that notion, there 
would be the corollary offered by my friend from Georgia, which is 
this: Those folks owning the business would like to keep it productive, 
and to do so there has to be a modicum of worker safety.
  I want to yield to my friend from Georgia.
  Mr. KINGSTON. The other thing is that if we want to help workers, we 
do want to have a safe work environment.

[[Page H3726]]

Everybody, an employer, government employees, everybody will agree on 
that. But if we want to help the workers across America, the key thing 
we have to do is honor why they are working, and that is to make money 
and make a better society.
  Now, if we want to help those workers, let us let them keep more of 
their own paycheck. And the President has vetoed a $500 per child tax 
credit. He has vetoed an earned income tax credit that would have 
helped America's working poor. He has vetoed a balanced budget 
amendment which would have brought down interest rates so that they 
could borrow money less expensively for their cars, for their homes and 
so forth. But I think one of the things that really adds insult to the 
American workers is his veto of a bipartisan welfare reform bill, a 
welfare reform bill which would have only required people to work 20 
hours a week.
  Now, I ask the gentleman from Arizona, is there anybody in Arizona 
who can provide for their families working 20 hours a week?
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I know of no one who 
works from dawn to dusk to provide for their families who could do that 
for 20 hours a week.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I want to make sure the American people know this, 
because here we are talking about workers' safety and we are talking 
about the quality of the job done, allowing workers to keep more of 
their paycheck, and the President of the United States says it is not 
good enough to require able-bodied people on welfare to work 20 hours a 
week.
  The working men and women in Georgia and Arizona are working 40, 50, 
60 hours a week. They are in debt. They are barely getting by, and the 
President says I am not going to make people work 20 hours a week for 
their welfare benefit.
  Now, for crying out loud, here it is an election year and he is 
saying 20 hours a week is too much? I think that is absurd, and I think 
the people of Arizona are probably just as outraged as the people in 
Georgia are about it.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Reclaiming my time, and again I thank the gentleman 
from Georgia for bringing forth this very cogent observation. And 
again, Mr. Speaker, we should note this is not said with venom nor 
vitriol, not in the form of a playground taunt, but, really, Mr. 
Speaker, just to examine the record of the gentleman who resides at the 
big White House at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, for if words 
are to mean something, actions should correspond to the words.
  And, indeed, as my friend from Georgia points out, we have a 
President who campaigned in 1992 on balancing the Federal budget in 5 
years. Yet when confronted with a realistic plan that actually gave him 
a 2-year grace period, if you will, a balanced budget plan which was 
introduced by the new majority, back I believe last October, the 
President chose to veto that; instead putting in its place a document 
of suspicious foundation from this standpoint, Mr. Speaker.
  It would be akin, and I will use a personal example, I am fighting 
the battle of the bulge around my waistline, it would be akin to saying 
to someone we are going to give you a year to lose 50 pounds. We ask 
you to lose two pounds in the first 50 weeks of the year, and in the 
final 2 weeks of the year we ask you to lose the remaining 48 pounds. 
On paper the mathematical operation can work, in real life that would 
be very difficult.
  That is what we are dealing with. And as my friend knows full well, 
we have, at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a President elected 
by saying that middle class taxes were too high and that people should 
hang on to more of the money they earned, yet adopting the philosophy 
upon his inauguration of those proponents of big government who said, 
oh, no, no, no, more of your money should come here to Washington. 
Thus, the largest tax increase in American history.
  But especially galling, as my friend from Georgia points out, and 
this is something that happened on my watch, if you will, after I was 
elected to the Congress of the United States to represent the good 
people of the 6th District of Arizona, we provided this President, Mr. 
Speaker, with a welfare reform plan, taking him at his word when he 
said we should end welfare as we know it, and as my friend pointed out, 
with a modest work requirement.

  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman would yield.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. He chose to veto it not once but twice. And I yield to 
my friend from Georgia.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman would yield. What is interesting is, 
last September, I think it was September 15, 1995, it was on Larry King 
Live, the President said about the Republican welfare bill, I like it, 
it would end welfare as we know it.
  And that welfare bill passed the U.S. Senate, which certainly is not 
an activist conservative body. It passed the U.S. Senate by a vote of 
87 to 12. We had all the liberals voting for this one, and the 
President indicated he was going to sign it and he vetoed it. Vetoed 
that tough requirement for 20 hours a week work. Vetoed that tough 
requirement saying illegal aliens could not get taxpayer dollars. And 
vetoed that tough requirement saying that teenagers need to identify 
the dads so that they could participate in the uprearing of that baby 
financially, if nothing else.
  But you know what? I think it is probably our fault, and I will tell 
you why, Mr. Hayworth. When the President said I am going to end 
welfare as we know it, we were not listening. He said I am going to 
extend welfare as we know it. We missed the E-X-T. I think what he 
really meant was not end welfare but extend welfare. Because in the 3 
years that his watch has taken place on Pennsylvania Avenue, all that 
we have seen is an extension of welfare, more folks who are able-bodied 
staying home than ever before.
  The poverty rate is up 2 percent higher than when Ronald Reagan was 
President, and we have now spent $5 trillion on welfare since 1965 and 
we are not bringing down the poverty rate.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Reclaiming my time, little wonder, then, that the so-
called credibility gap of the 1960s, Mr. Speaker, has expanded to this 
credibility canyon involving the President of the United States who 
says one thing and then has actions totally, totally in opposition to 
his rhetoric.
  And, Mr. Speaker, again this is not said to score partisan points. 
Indeed, the irony of what has transpired in the last year and a half is 
that this new majority has moved to enact many of the programs that our 
current President championed on the hustings only to abandon once he 
moved in to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
  But it is especially galling to have this situation. And now, in 
addition to the credibility canyon, now in addition to the reality of 
this President extending welfare as we know it rather than ending it, 
you have the whole new wrinkle known as the Clinton crunch. For, yes, 
Mr. Speaker, there will be a day of reckoning.

                              {time}  2230

  When this President has the audacity to come back to this Chamber, 
after standing here at this podium a few short months ago telling us 
the era of big government is over, and insist that this government, 
already in arrears to the tune of $5 trillion with the national debt, 
should expend yet $8 billion more of those dollars which we do not 
have, it is an incredible assertion, not something to be championed or 
applauded, but something to be questioned for its very absurdity.
  It is indeed frustrating to find those who would give lip service to 
reform and think not of the next generation but instead of the next 
election. That is something that my friend from Georgia and I are not 
here to do, for we are not career politicians.
  Let me yield to my friend from Georgia.
  Mr. KINGSTON. As the gentleman pointed out, with the veto of the 
balanced budget and not offering an alternative, what you have done is 
you said no to lower interest rates because a balanced budget would 
have lowered interest rates 2 percent. Businesses would have been able 
to expand. Jobs would have been created. Therefore, you are saying no 
to lower interest rates, no to new jobs. And also, you are saying no to 
the $500 per child tax credit, the much-needed tax relief to the middle 
class in America. That is what we need so desperately.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Reclaiming my time, when you talk about that $500 per 
child tax credit, I cannot help but

[[Page H3727]]

think of the people of the Sixth District of Arizona who send me here 
to represent them. I cannot help but think of a single mother who may 
have three children, whose spouse may have deserted her, who is working 
hard, playing by the rules, trying to provide for her family and yes, 
seeking outside educational skills to heighten her earning potential, 
despite the trauma that has most assuredly occurred in her personal 
life.
  By denying the $500 per child tax credit, the champions of big 
government, the champions of expansive and excessive bureaucracy are 
saying to that single mother, ``No, indeed, ma'am. You do not need that 
$1,500 to spend or save for your family as you see fit. That money 
instead should be taken from you and given to the bureaucracy in 
Washington, D.C.''
  How fundamentally cynical, how philosophically bankrupt, how 
essentially immoral that notion is. For what we do here is to establish 
the primacy of the State, the primacy of the bureaucracy instead of the 
power of the people. In a free society, that young lady struggling to 
provide for those three children should have that money to spend on 
those children as she sees fit.
  Let me yield to my friend from Georgia.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman would yield, as things go, had our 
bill passed into law instead of been vetoed by the President, your 
constituent would have in her pocket today $1,500 extra which she could 
use for clothes, for textbooks, for college education accounts and so 
forth. Instead, that $1,500 did not go to deficit reduction, it went to 
welfare expansion, other programs such as the AmeriCorps program which 
pays ``volunteers'' $26,000 a year, and most of them who end up going 
through the program end up working for the government, and just 
countless other bureaucratic, Washington-based command and control 
programs. You know, I have a lot of faith in the people of Arizona. I 
have never lived there. I have not visited your fine State as much as I 
want to.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Reclaiming my time, we absolutely invite you to the 
great State of Arizona, Mr. Kingston. I hope you will visit often.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I would like to do that.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. You will be back.
  Mr. KINGSTON. But I have just as much faith in your folks as I do in 
mine, and my people would do fine without Washington command and 
control bureaucrats telling them how they need to run education, 
telling them how to run the environment, telling them how to run health 
care, telling them how to run welfare. We have ideas of our own in the 
First District of Georgia, and we can do fine without Washington 
bureaucrats.
  Just think about what we are doing. We send our money to bureaucrats 
and then they tell us how to spend it. They get their cut and they send 
part of it back to us to run programs, and we know these people better 
than they do. We can do a better job on poverty, right down the street, 
than people in Washington can.
  I often think about that story, and you have heard it, ``The Star 
Tosser.'' I do not remember the author, do not even remember the name, 
but the guy walks up and down the beach picking up starfish and he 
throws them in the water. Every morning he does that after high tide. 
He throws these starfish back in the water.
  Somebody came up to him one day and said, ``What are you doing? You 
cannot save all these washed ashore starfish. There are thousands of 
them. On a good day, you maybe get 150 of them back in the ocean. What 
difference could you possibly make?''
  The man picked up a starfish and said, ``I do not know what 
difference I make, but I am going to make a heck of a difference to 
this one right here,'' and he threw it in the ocean.
  Now, the point is, I cannot clear up poverty in Arizona or in 
California or all over the country. I might not even be able to do it 
in my own hometown, but I know this: I am going to have a heck of a lot 
better shot at taking care of poverty in my hometown than I will in 
your hometown.
  Mr. BILBRAY. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. KINGSTON. What the bureaucrats in Washington are telling us is 
they are so smart, they can do it in all of our hometowns.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Reclaiming my time, I will be happy to yield to my 
friend from California.
  Mr. BILBRAY. The gentleman from Georgia was just pointing out that 
the people in the community know how to serve their poor the best and 
that Washington does not know best.
  Let me tell you, as somebody who was a county supervisor in a county 
of 2.5 million plus people, that we operated a welfare system larger 
than 32 States. When we ran into welfare fraud, we actually ran into a 
situation where we realized we did not have pictures on the 
identification cards that welfare recipients use.

  Maybe being a little naive, I, as an administrator of a large welfare 
system, decided that it was time that we brought the system into the 
20th century and put pictures on welfare cards. That is all we were 
saying, the ability to try to reduce fraud. Washington, D.C. said, ``We 
are not so sure we can allow you to do that because it might violate 
the privacy of the welfare recipients.''
  Now I want you to remember that every time you look at your driver's 
license, and think about the fact that do you honestly think your 
government is violating your privacy by having you take a photo? I 
think that common sense approach that we fought so hard for in San 
Diego, in trying to get the Federal Government off our back and allow 
us to administer these programs in a reasonable, logical way, just 
really has to ring true here of saying guys, it has gotten out of 
control.
  Washington is not the only well of wisdom and compassion, and we have 
got to allow people to address the problems they see in their community 
and in the programs. As a past administrator, I sure hope this city 
learns to finally understand to trust the people with freedom and trust 
them to do the right thing. The American people are good people, and if 
Washington would just give them enough latitude to do the right thing, 
American people will do the right thing.
  I appreciate the time. I would just like to point out and to say to 
the gentleman from Georgia, I would like to offer him happy birthday 
tomorrow. I hear it is the gentleman's 41st birthday.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Would the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BILBRAY. Go ahead.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Forty-one for the youthful visage of the gentleman from 
Georgia, it is truly amazing.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Yes, but I still like rock and roll and do so any 
chance I get. I just do not want my 13-year-old daughter to know about 
it.
  Mr. BILBRAY. Well, I would just like to say congratulations, and I 
would like to say it must be the fact they do not get as much sun in 
the West, so they are better preserved for a while, right?
  Mr. HAYWORTH. It could be that, reclaiming my time, or the fact that 
our dear friend, as my friend from California knows, is just the 
perfection of physical fitness, as you are, spending time as I know 
that you do, surfing. I also know that my colleague from California and 
my friend from Georgia----
  Mr. KINGSTON. I hear people laughing through the camera at this 
point, but I just want to say one think you two could do is eat a 
little more Vidalia onions.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. We would be happy to. I thank my friend for the offer 
and I am expecting those Vidalia onions, providing they do not violate 
the gift ban any day now.
  Mr. BILBRAY. We will make that ambition our goal.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Let me say, Mr. Speaker, to my friend from California 
and also my friend from Georgia, as we talked about what in essence has 
become the act of extending welfare as we know it, and my friend from 
California especially knows this, we are not only extending welfare 
benefits to American citizens. No, indeed. We have extended those 
benefits to folks who are not United States citizens, to those who 
commonly cross our borders in illegal fashion. I know that is a problem 
within the State of Arizona and also within the area my friend from 
California represents.
  Mr. BILBRAY. Would the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HAYWORTH. I gladly yield to my friend.

[[Page H3728]]

  Mr. BILBRAY. As somebody who grew up on the border, the absurdity of 
the way local governments are required to handle these situations, to 
give you an example, you have the mother of a person born here in the 
United States, but she is an illegal alien. She will get the check for 
that child. But the law says that while she is here in the United 
States, she cannot work and she cannot spend one cent of that money on 
herself.
  Then we wonder why the studies in Los Angeles show that over 70 
percent of the recipients that are receiving welfare checks that are 
illegal aliens are committing welfare fraud. It is because the law is 
absurd, and I want to point this out.
  I think the one thing we do is, we focus on the illegal alien issue 
or the immigrant issue. It is the absurdity of the rules we make in 
Washington and that they do not apply in the real world. This is a 
situation where we may be called mean-spirited, but the fact in 
Washington is stupid and it is irresponsible. We need to change these 
things and do something that is maybe a little radical to somebody, and 
that is do the reasonable thing in Washington, so those of us in 
California and Arizona and Georgia and across this country can do the 
reasonable thing.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Reclaiming my time, what is radical within this beltway 
is reasonable to the people of the United States. I thank my good 
friend from California for mentioning that fact, and I thank my friend 
from Georgia for offering real-life experiences of his constituents and 
the challenges they face.
  Indeed, Mr. Speaker, that brings me back to H.R. 2727, the 
Congressional Responsibility Act, which I sponsor, which simply again 
redesignates and reemphasizes what Article 1, Section 1 of our 
Constitution says: All legislative powers herein granted shall be 
vested in a Congress of the United States.
  Mr. Speaker, H.R. 272 does not outlaw executive agencies enacted by 
this very Congress which now exist within the executive branch. All it 
does is say that all of those proposed regulations, before they become 
in essence law published in the Federal Register, should come here to 
the Congress of the United States in expedited fashion for an up or 
down vote.
  Now, the government experts say, ``My goodness, that would require 
too much time on the part of the Congress of the United States.'' But, 
Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, as has been my honor on several 
occasions of preside as Speaker Pro Tem of this house, I have presided 
on at least two occasions where this body was engaged in largely 
ceremonial debate for a ceremonial vote to name Federal installations 
after noteworthy Americans. Now, I do not criticize that process, but 
instead I ask this simple question, Mr. Speaker: If this Congress, in 
the wake of over the last year having cast more votes than any other 
Congress before it, still can find the time to expend hours of its 
energy on largely ceremonial votes, cannot this same Congress take the 
time to fulfill its constitutional obligation as stated in Article 1, 
Section 1 of the sacred document we call the Constitution of the United 
States?

  Mr. Speaker, it is about this: Reclaiming this government for the 
American people. As my friend from California pointed out earlier, it 
is nothing radical; instead, it is reasonable. Indeed, the only way it 
can be called extreme is in the fashion of making extremely good sense.
  Let me yield to my friend from Georgia.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I wanted to get back to the gentleman's statement and 
also Mr. BILBRAY's. He said the Washington bureaucracy is stupid and 
irresponsible. I do not think anybody paying taxes back home would 
disagree with that. It is also inefficient.
  What really happens, though, I know there are a lot of good people 
involved in government, elected and unelected. A lot of good folks are 
called bureaucrats. But you know what I think of having been around a 
lot of teenagers? I know a lot of teenagers who individually are fine 
folks, but when you get a pack of them in your living room or a pack of 
them in your kitchen, strange things happen and all those individual 
good people turn out to do some pretty stupid things as a pack.

                              {time}  2245

  That is what happens in Washington. These folks need to go back home 
so they can continue to be good folks, because when they get together 
the association causes some real inefficient and irresponsible results.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, 
who fast approaches his 45th birthday tomorrow, and again provides the 
wisdom of his age in the interaction of the teenagers in his household.
  Mr. Speaker, I simply thank my good friend, the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Bilbray] and my good friend, the gentleman from Georgia 
[Mr. Kingston], who joined us during our special hour.
  Mr. Speaker, it is all about this document, the Constitution of the 
United States, and people being free to decide what is best for 
themselves and their families, instead of relinquishing that power to a 
centralized authority in Washington, DC.

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