[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 57 (Tuesday, April 30, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H4173-H4180]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   THE MYTH OF THE MAGICAL BUREAUCRAT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra] is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, before we start with our prepared remarks 
this evening, I would like to assure the gentleman from Arizona that as 
we move forward and as we get to another week of active reform in this 
Congress probably around the middle of July, we expect that that piece 
of legislation will have worked its way through the committee process 
and will be one of the items that this full House will have the 
opportunity to talk about.
  Mr. SHADEGG. If the gentleman would yield briefly? I simply want to 
thank the gentleman for his assistance in moving this piece of 
legislation forward, thank him for cosponsoring the bill, and tell him 
that I spoke today with the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Canady], the 
chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Committee on the 
Judiciary. He has indicated to me just what you have indicated; that 
is, that we are hopeful that we will get hearings on this legislation 
in the near future and that it can move forward. I appreciate the 
gentleman's effort on its behalf. I appreciate your support, and I 
think it is a step in the right direction.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. And the issue that we are going to be talking about 
tonight builds very much off of the problem that you describe. We are 
going to be talking about the myth of the magical bureaucrat, the myth 
of moving all of this power and responsibility from parents, from local 
levels of government to State governments, that the best place to make 
these types of decisions is in Washington. And we are going to be going 
through a number of examples this evening which we hope expose that 
myth for what it really is. It is for a bunch of people in Washington 
making decisions, spending money in areas where they really cannot have 
a significant, positive impact or most importantly, where they are not 
the most effective agent for bringing about the types of results that 
we want.
  Mr. SHADEGG. If the gentleman would yield again, let me just simply 
say I commend you for this effort, and I want to pass on something. One 
of the greatest influences in my life, as I suppose in, hopefully, many 
American boys' lives, is their own father. My father was a tremendous 
influence on me, and he was very fond in the later years of his life of 
saying that the problem with the Congress was that it had come to 
believe that it knew how better to run every American business and 
every American's life than those individuals themselves. And that is 
the kind of notion that I think your effort is going at.

  The simple truth is that the 535 Members of this Congress, House and 
Senate combined, no matter how well-intended, and the huge army of 
bureaucrats that we control, and there are thousands, tens of thousands 
of bureaucrats that we control, simply cannot know better how to run 
the day-to-day lives of every American and the day-to-day businesses of 
every American business or of every American church or synagogue. We 
simply cannot run those organizations better than they, and the myth of 
the mystical bureaucrat that can do it better than we can is indeed 
dead wrong.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. As we move forward this evening, we are going to talk 
about this myth as it applies to education, as it talks about creating 
jobs, as we talk about Medicare, as we talk about environmental types 
of legislation, so that is one of the key areas.
  We could not have had a better introduction to our topic tonight than 
the legislation that the gentleman talked about, and I again would like 
to just reaffirm that I expect that this House will take positive 
action on legislation like that this summer so that this Congress can 
again begin focusing on the issues that Washington should be dealing 
with, that Washington is good at, in moving the other types of 
decisions, the other types of responsibility and the dollars back to 
State, local, and maybe even back to the taxpayers, parents and 
individuals who really are the driving force behind so much of what 
goes on in this country.
  Mr. SHADEGG. I commend you for your efforts and wish you the best.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Thank you.
  Let me just give a little bit of a brief introduction about what we 
want to accomplish this evening.
  This is an election year. We are in the middle of a lot of rhetoric 
flying around. Those of us in Congress who want to focus on the real 
problems are finding it very difficult to break through what we call 
the clutter, the clutter and the noise. As Members of the Republican 
majority, we have grown accustomed to being called mean-spirited, 
radical. We are accused of being against women, children, and the 
elderly. We are accused of not caring for the poor or for the 
environment.
  In the middle of all this rhetoric, what is really going on? Many of 
my constituents, many of the American people, seem to be very confused. 
We want to take this hour to really set the record straight on what we 
are trying to do in this Congress. We want to focus on what we believe 
is the core issue that is defining this battle in Washington, that has 
defined the battle, really, from January 1995 to the present point.

                              {time}  2045

  Many have thrown around labels. Some have called us extremists. But 
let us cast aside the labels for a little while. Let us cast aside the 
accusations and other typical Washington political jargon, and let us 
get down to the bottom of the debate. What are we really trying to do 
here? What is the core of the debate?
  We can go back to the 1930's, the New Deal. Ever since the 1930's 
Congress has placed more and more of its faith in Washington, its 
bureaucracy, its bureaucrats, and in its money, in its programs, and in 
its services. As we have done that, we have moved much of the 
decisionmaking away from parents, individuals, entrepreneurs, small 
businesses. What we have done is we have created a myth that too many 
people have come to believe, the belief in the Washington bureaucrat: A 
belief in Washington money, a belief in Washington programs, and that 
Washington services can solve many, if not all, of this Nation's 
problems. This is really what all the fuss is about.
  Since becoming the majority in Congress, Republicans have been 
attacking the myth that Washington can solve everyone's problems. We 
know that few Americans believe in Santa Clause. Even fewer believe in 
the tooth fairy. But here in Washington, everyone

[[Page H4174]]

seems to believe in the magical bureaucrat: this magical persons who 
can solve everyone's problems.
  It is as though we believe that bureaucrats are magicians and that by 
spending tax money, taxpayers' money, your money on programs and 
services, what can they do? they can raise and educate children better 
than parents. They can build communities. They build communities and 
homes better than parents or better than Habitat For Humanity; that 
they are better at creating effective, income-generating jobs; that 
they are better than entrepreneurs and small businesses.
  It is time for us to confront this bureaucratic myth. Blind faith in 
the Washington bureaucracy is hurting America. It is hurting America, 
in I believe four specific ways.
  First, the myth that Washington can solve everyone's problems has 
created a belief that success is defined by spending money, success is 
defined by spending money and creating programs, not by the results 
that those programs or those dollars generate.
  Second, the myth that Washington can solve everyone's problems has 
created the substitution effect, where people have a disincentive to 
take personal responsibility for their future and for themselves, where 
they have a disincentive to take care of their children and to 
participate in their community, because someone from Washington is 
supposed to do that; in other words, because a Washington magical 
bureaucrat is going to solve the problem, I do not have to exercise 
personal responsibility to solve it myself.

  The third is the myth that Washington can solve everyone's problems 
has caused Congress to legislate to the lowest common denominator, 
creating one-size-fits-all programs which lower the standards. The 
minimum wage fight, I think, is an excellent example. Here we are 
debating a minimum wage, the lowest common denominator, instead of 
talking about increasing wages for everyone, which is the highest 
common denominator. Instead of focusing on the ideal, we are willing to 
lower the standard for everyone.
  Finally, the myth that Washington can solve everyone's problems has 
cost the American taxpayers trillions and trillions of dollars. If it 
were inexpensive to believe that magical bureaucrats actually exist, we 
could keep spending money on the myth, but it is costing us. It is 
costing us, the taxpayers and working American families, big bucks, too 
many bucks to continue down this path. The myth that Washington can 
solve everyone's problems produces harmful thinking, it costs too much, 
it is hurting America in many different ways, and it is not working.
  It is not a budgetary problem, it is a cultural problem: Magical 
bureaucrats substituting for parents, magical bureaucrats shoving 
everyone into one-size-fits-all programs, magical bureaucrats defining 
success by the dollars they spend, instead of the results they achieve, 
magical bureaucrats doing all this with trillions and trillions of 
dollars that working Americans pay every year in taxes. We will never 
restore fiscal and moral sanity to our Nation until we destroy this 
blind faith in Washington to solve our problems.
  Why is it so hard to balance the budget? Because Washington believes 
the myth, Washington perpetuates the myth, and Washington works every 
day trying to convince American people that the myth is real. Why is it 
so hard to reform Medicare? Because Washington believes the myth and 
sells the myth. Why is it so hard to improve environmental laws? 
Because Washington believes the myth and perpetuates the myth.

  Why is it so hard to eliminate the Department of Education? Because 
Washington believes the myth and sells the myth each and every day that 
magical bureaucrats sitting at desks in Washington educate kids better 
than parents and better than teachers, and have more caring for local 
students than parents and local school boards.
  Why is it so hard to eliminate the Department of Housing? Because 
Washington believes the myth that magical bureaucrats sitting at desks 
in Washington build communities more effectively than local citizens or 
than organizations like Habitat for Humanity. We cannot continue down 
this path.
  With this introduction, Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from 
Wisconsin [Mr. Neuman].
  Mr. NEUMANN. Mr. Speaker, what comes to mind today is one of these 
mythical bureaucrats the gentleman is talking about. I was in a 
committee meeting with them discussing housing, this very issue. I saw 
in this meeting the almost fear that somehow, if Washington allowed the 
people in Beloit, WI, or Kenosha, WI, to decide how to handle the 
housing problems in their own community, if we gave them the 
flexibility to make decisions how to best serve the needs in their own 
community, that somehow things were going to go astray; but they are 
not going to go astray, because I have a lot of faith in Tom Kelly in 
Beloit, WI, and the people running the housing programs out there. They 
best know how to take care of the people in Beloit, much better than 
the people do here in Washington, DC.
  I think this whole thing comes down to how can we best turn that 
responsibility over to the people locally to best allocate those 
dollars to do the best job for their people in their own community. 
That is really what this should be all about.
  This is America. This is not supposed to be a country where somehow 
the people here from Washington are controlling all the lives of the 
people out there. This is supposed to be America, where people are 
taking responsibility for themselves, and the local school boards and 
the local towns are deciding how to best spend that money, or how to 
let the taxpayers keep their own money better. That really is what this 
is all about.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Kansas [Mr. 
Brownback].
  Mr. BROWNBACK. I appreciate the gentleman from Michigan yielding to 
me, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate very much the gentleman also taking us to 
the root of the problem we are talking about today. That is the concept 
and the idea that we are going to create governmental solutions, and 
from a centralized planning authority in Washington, actually solve 
problems.
  I want to talk about one particular example in this area that we are 
talking about, a magical bureaucracy being able to solve an issue. This 
is the agency of HUD, Housing and Urban Development.
   Mr. Speaker, I would like to start this off by saying that no one 
here questions the good intentions of the people who work in these 
agencies, of the employees at HUD, or the people even that design these 
programs. These are good people with good intentions, but the problem 
is we want to talk about reality and what has been the actual reality 
of what has happened after all these good intentions and all this 
investment of resources and all these people pouring in from a 
centralized solution.
  We are talking about a centralized bureaucratic organization in the 
form of HUD, Housing and Urban Development as an agency, trying 
centralized solutions from Washington for a Nation that covers 260 
million people across five time zones that has the largest economy, 
that is the international leader of the world. We are going to plan all 
this in one central entity. That is the fallacy of what we are talking 
about.
  The Department of Housing and Urban Development began with great 
fanfare in 1965. It was on the front lines of Lyndon Johnson's war on 
poverty. It was charged with these things: Renewing our cities, 
encouraging job creation, providing decent, safe shelter for low-income 
Americans. That was the charge in 1965. You can say, did we adequately 
fund HUD, this centralized planning model of what we were going to do?
  Since then, in 1965, HUD and other bureaucracies have spent more than 
$5.5 trillion on poverty programs, $5.5 trillion. That is basically 
about the size of our national debt today. It would be virtually about 
$19,000 for every man, woman, and child in America. Yet, by virtually 
any standard, any measure, poverty, crime, drug abuse, and violence are 
far worse today than when HUD was created in 1965, and since we spent 
the $5.5 trillion. This is what the good gentleman from Michigan is 
pointing out about the fallacy of saying that, OK, if we are going to 
solve a problem, let us create a bureaucracy with good people in it to 
design a program that is going to fit the entire Nation in a one-size-
fits-all, and

[[Page H4175]]

then let us fund it, and if it is not working, the answer is for us to 
put more money into it.
   Mr. Speaker, I just beg to differ on that. The centralized command 
and control type of model failed in the former Soviet Union, has failed 
in command and control areas, and it is failing in America today. Past 
and current attempts to fix HUD have met with a great deal of 
resistance and past failure. Created in 1965, the entity has already 
gone through four major reorganizations of where we are going to 
reinvent HUD, four major reorganizations since 1965. All have failed.
  Jack Kemp's efforts to reform HUD by giving power to tenants were 
stifled by a reluctant Congress at that point in time and an inflexible 
system. Yet the problem underlying HUD's national housing policy is the 
myth upon which it is created: The notion that Washington can address 
the housing needs for all Americans through a centralized system here 
where we set here how it is going to be in Connecticut, in Kansas, in 
California; this is how it is going to be. It just does not work.

  There has been a surge of more than 200 separate Washington-based 
housing programs that have tended to displace rather than encourage 
local innovation and creativity. I want to add as a side note here as 
well, there have been a number of these that are trying to engage now 
more local creativity and innovation. I think those are on a positive 
note, as they try to localize and get local solutions brought forward.
  We have had a lot of rules and regulations coming out of HUD as well 
that have stifled local creativity and innovative solutions to housing 
needs. It has caused former HUD Secretary Jack Kemp to recently 
conclude that HUD is an agency with a disparate and contradictory 
mission. ``The more I was at HUD, the more I realized that the flaws 
were endemic to the bureaucracy.''
  He went on to say at a press conference we had, where Secretary Kemp 
was calling for the elimination of HUD and us giving these decisions 
back to local tenants, that there are good people that work at HUD. It 
is a failed design of the system. It is a failure for us to think that 
we can manage, and that a mythical Washington bureaucracy will solve 
the problem, because it will not. It tends to get more of a centralized 
focus.
  Our model for housing opportunities is local empowerment. It is 
rooted in the premise that housing policy should bypass governmental 
bureaucrats and central planners and provide direct assistance to 
tenants themselves. In other words, we would seek to give vouchers to 
tenants that we want to help and ask them to go find their own housing 
abilities, whether it be with public housing, whether they purchase a 
housing unit, or whether it be in private renting. Housing is a local 
issue. Washington cannot solve local housing needs. Indeed, the more we 
focus on Washington, the more we take away from local housing 
innovative solutions that we could come forward with.
  Just recently the HUD bureaucracy has announced the planned 
construction of a new project in Washington, DC that has an estimated 
cost of $186,500 per unit, $186,500 per unit. This represents, I think, 
an enormous waste of taxpayer money, not to mention those poor families 
who will lose out because of the finite resources that will be spent on 
this project. Instead, HUD could have provided housing vouchers to 
individuals, they could have provided them to 35 families for 1 year 
for the initial cost of building one new unit in this housing project.
  The Congressional Budget Office estimates that HUD has obligated the 
Federal Government to spend, and get this number, $180 billion over the 
next 30 years to pay for the public and private housing commitments, 
most of which were made more than 10 years ago.
  This experiment in central planning is already being passed on to our 
children. Besides, HUD's attempts to fix our Nation's housing problems, 
this bureaucracy applies Washington's answers to igniting economic 
growth in our urban communities.

                              {time}  2100

  A number of us believe that the key to economic growth in our urban 
communities and other places is to cut the burden of Washington. Let us 
cut that taxation, litigation, regulation and manipulation out of 
Washington so that we can have those localized solutions spring up and 
people go forward.
  As Jesse Jackson once said, capitalism without capital is just 
another ism. We need to remove the barriers to self-creating capital. 
Block grants will not do this. People do it. People do these things. 
The Republican Congress has already passed reforms to try to be able to 
cut back on taxation, regulation, litigation and manipulation so people 
and localized solutions can flourish.
  On a worse note, the HUD bureaucracy has become in some cases a 
catalyst of racial and economic segregation. That is according to a 
doctor who has worked at HUD, and an April 1996 desegregation suit 
brought against HUD, Thompson versus HUD, et al. by the American Civil 
Liberties Union of Maryland on behalf of several Baltimore public 
housing tenants who alleged that HUD illegally segregated black public 
housing tenants for 6 decades. This resulted in a settlement which 
caused HUD to break up several of the dilapidated Baltimore projects.
  As one can see, there are direct social and economic costs to this 
mythical bureaucracy. The American people realize that compassion is 
not measured in how many billions we spend on bureaucratic solutions 
when this is done and people are hurt by it. This is one of the most 
uncompassionate solutions of all.
  Fortunately, there is a better way. You have brought that to our 
attention. Our society benefits when people realize their own freedoms 
and creativity and our Government does not try to replace them. That is 
why I think this is a good discussion about a mythical bureaucracy does 
not solve things. Many times it can actually hurt or concentrate 
problems.
  It is people. It is individual solutions. We have those solutions we 
are offering to the American people.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I would just ask the gentleman to go back to his first 
statements where in 1965 we started creating this myth of HUD. And what 
were the parameters and the directives that the President in 1965 laid 
out? What was the myth that was created or started to be created in 
1965. That continued to be driven even into 1996 as we try to change 
some of these programs?
  Mr. BROWNBACK. The myth that was created, I want to read these off, 
it was on the front line of Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, charged 
with renewing our cities, encouraging job creation, providing decent, 
safe shelter for low-income Americans. We followed up spending-wise, 
spending nearly $5.5 trillion since then on HUD and other low-income 
programs.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think we should just also say that if we go into 
Washington, DC, we go to the public housing projects, to get to the 
public housing projects that are inhabited today we go by 3 and 4 empty 
buildings. We go into Chicago, we go by almost a mile of empty public 
housing. We did not do any of those things very well.
  I am sure my colleague from Wisconsin would like to say something 
about this. He is a builder in his real life; when he has a real job, 
he is in the construction industry. But my guess is, I just did some 
rough numbers at $55,000 for a down payment for a smaller home, I 
recognize over these 30 years we could have built 100 million homes. 
Given a nicer home, we could have built, at $110,000 a house, we could 
have still built 50 million homes over the last 30 years. It is 
amazing, $19,000 for each and every American is how much we have spent 
on this program for the last 30 years with these kind of results.

  I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.
  Mr. NEUMANN. I will just point out with 250 million people in the 
United States of America, that is literally one home for every 5 people 
with the money we have spent.
  The other thing I could not help but think, as the gentleman from 
Kansas was going through some of these numbers, contrasting what you 
are talking about to a program like Habitat for Humanity. Back when I 
was in the building business when, before I got into the political 
world in any way, shape or form, I had a group of people from 
Janesville, WI come to me and say, ``Hey, Mark, you're building a lot 
of homes. Would you consider giving us a hand in this Habitat for 
Humanity project?''
  Rather than the Government coming in to do this, we got together in 
the

[[Page H4176]]

community and built the house. When the person moved into that house, 
it was a truly needy person that received this help. Can you imagine 
Habitat for Humanity, with the local support and local effort that they 
get from the local people, spending anywhere near this kind of money, 
and what they could have done with one-tenth of this amount of money if 
the control had just been left out there locally and we had had 
involvement with the local people to help the most needy people in 
their community? Can you imagine what we could have done in this 
country instead?
  Mr. BROWNBACK. I think we would have renewed our cities, encouraged 
job creation, and provided decent, safe shelter for low-income 
Americans.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think if we take a look at Habitat for Humanity, it 
is active in Michigan. They take a caring attitude in reaching out and 
finding the people to move into these houses. These people are part of 
the process. They maintain their dignity. They put in sweat equity. 
They work hard. They put them on finance plans to enable them to buy 
these homes. They put them in the middle of the community so they are 
not segregated into little areas or pockets of the community.
  Mr. NEUMANN. It is not only the person that is working on the home 
that winds up moving into the home, it is the community leaders and the 
community involvement that makes this process successful. I still ride 
by that first house that we built in Janesville, WI every now and then. 
It is still there, it is well cared for. Everything is right about it. 
It is not only the person that moves into the house, it is the 
involvement of the community in solving the problem. They own the 
solution to this problem and they are going to make it real.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I would like to thank the gentleman from Kansas. You 
have got us off to a good start in talking about exposing this myth.
  I now want to turn our attention to another myth. We have talked 
about the one that Washington creates communities, Washington creates 
homes, and we have found out that after $5.5 trillion that is not the 
reality. I would now like to address another myth, that Washington 
bureaucrats create jobs, that they are better than entrepreneurs, they 
are better than small business at creating jobs. To do that, I would 
like to go back to my colleague from Wisconsin [Mr. Neumann] who has 
created real jobs working in the private sector as a small businessman 
in Wisconsin.
  Mr. NEUMANN. I appreciate the gentleman yielding. This is an area 
that I very much like to talk about because we need the American people 
to understand that the American dream is not dead.

  When my wife Sue and I started, we literally were in a position where 
we could not afford to pay our bills, and we took a chance on the 
American dream. As we fulfilled the American dream, many jobs were 
created. We started in the real estate business and eventually got into 
home-building.
  The first year in it we lost money. We built 9 homes, providing 18 
jobs, and we literally lost money. My dream in that first year was 
simply to have the Government get out of our way, and allow our 
business to concentrate on growth and expansion and the things that 
would make a business successful.
  As we stayed in the second year we basically had two choices, either 
let the Government take our business away from us, that is, the banks 
or whoever would take it, or we would turn the business around and 
become profitable. The second year we built 27 homes, then to 81, then 
to 120.
  The key to this discussion is the way jobs are created is not by 
going to the government and asking for Government spending or a 
Government program. The way jobs are created is by entrepreneurs 
allowing their businesses to grow and expand like ours did.
  At the end of 4 years when we were building 120 homes a year, there 
were 250 people in southeastern Wisconsin working because of that. Just 
think what that means. What that means is those 250 families are not on 
welfare.
  Let us just go the next step. What were we really looking for to be 
successful in business? We just wanted Washington, the Government, to 
get out of the way so we could be successful at promoting job expansion 
and job growth.
  When we look at the homebuilding business, and this is one I am very 
familiar with, what is the best thing that can happen for the creation 
of jobs? It is not more Government spending. It is a balanced budget. 
Why a balanced budget? It is because, like Alan Greenspan says, when 
the budget gets balanced, interest rates will stay low, 2 percent, a 
full 2 percentage points lower.
  What happens when the interest rates are low? Our young people again 
have a chance to live the American dream. When the interest rates are 
low, people can afford to buy houses and cars, and people have to go to 
work to make those houses and to make those cars. When they go to work, 
they are no longer on the welfare rolls or on unemployment, costing the 
government money, but instead they are paying money in.
  We just did this. We have just been through a balanced budget battle 
where everyone understood we were serious about getting to a balanced 
budget. Look what happened. When I came here they were projecting 
deficits for fiscal year 1996 of $200 billion. We said we cannot have 
that. That is not good for our country. We are going to a balanced 
budget.
  As we went down this road to a balanced budget exactly as Alan 
Greenspan said, the interest rates stayed low, we stayed on track. We 
passed a rescission bill that took $16 billion out, then we passed the 
appropriations bills that took another $23 billion out, and the markets 
reacted.
  This is the good news. It is not those numbers. The good news is the 
markets reacted, interest rates stayed down, people went out and bought 
Suburbans, they went out and bought Jeeps, they went out and bought 
houses, and people went to work building those products.
  When they went to work, they went off the welfare rolls, and guess 
what happened? We not only hit the deficit targets that we had in our 
glide path to a balanced budget, we actually for the first time are 
about $13 billion ahead of schedule. We are not only on our glide path 
to a balanced budget but we are actually ahead of schedule in this an 
election year.

  I have a chart that shows this. This red line is where we were with 
the deficit when I first came here. This is so exciting to talk about 
because America does not understand that we are actually winning this 
battle against the budget. When we win the battle, it means jobs for 
our young people and it means the American dream can once again be 
fulfilled by American citizens.
  This red line shows where we were when I came here, the deficit where 
it was headed. After 12 months here, yes, through lots of budget 
fights, very difficult budget battles and a couple of presidential 
vetoes, we had made progress. The yellow line shows where we were after 
12 months.
  We dared to dream, to dream that we were actually going to balance 
the budget, not the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings stuff that did not get done 
because they hit an election year and failed. We dared to dream we were 
actually going to do it.
  This green line shows our dream, our glide path to a balanced budget. 
But here is what is different about this Congress versus the other 
Congresses that have been here before us. This Congress not only 
maintained their path to a balanced budget in this, an election year, 
we are actually ahead of schedule.
  America does not seem to know that through all of those budget 
battles that we went through last year, we are winning. And when we 
were winning, everything worked exactly the way it was supposed to. 
People started buying those houses and cars, they started going back to 
work, and the cost of the Federal Government for welfare rolls and for 
unemployment went down just the way it was supposed to work. That is 
what led us to this point where we are ahead of schedule.
  Having said that, I have to caution what is going on today. For some 
reason, a lot of people in this city have kind of lost sight of the 
fact that we have to keep working, that it is not going to be easy to 
get to a balanced budget.
  And when we start losing sight of the fact that we have to keep our 
efforts focused on a balanced budget, let me go

[[Page H4177]]

right back to jobs and job creation. What is going to happen is, the 
interest rates are going to start to climb and inflation is going to 
pick up. When that happens it is much more difficult for the 
entrepreneurs to be successful out there and it just plain does not 
work. It is a spiral in reverse.
  We cannot allow that to happen. We have to refocus our attention on 
balancing the budget, which is what I am doing here and which is what 
many of the freshman class came here to do.
  Just one more thing. We have accomplished what is on this chart not 
by raising taxes on the American people like we saw in 1993, not by 
making it more difficult for our families to make ends meet because 
they have to pay higher taxes. We did this by reduced spending. The 
reality is that is the way it should be done. From the entrepreneurship 
from the private sector here, the best thing that government could do 
is get the mythical bureaucrat out of our way and allow the businesses 
to have the capital available to grow and expand and employ people so 
people can once again live the American dream.
  I just have one final point on this, and I think it is very 
important. The American people need to understand that when the Federal 
Government balances their budget, that means the government is not 
going to borrow $150 billion a year. When the Government does not 
borrow that money, it is available out there in the private sector for 
our young people to use to buy houses and to buy cars.

  That is the whole cycle, the positive cycle. If we can get to a 
balanced budget, the government does not borrow that money, it is not 
available in the private sector for our people to build houses and buy 
cars and so on, and when they do those things, there are more jobs 
created. When they create those jobs, businesses have to expand.
  What is necessary for businesses to expand is the availability of 
capital. Then we are right back to balancing the budget. If the Federal 
Government does not borrow that money, the capital is available for our 
businesses to expand, and when the businesses expands, that is job 
opportunities. Those are real job opportunities for real American 
people. That is what this should be all about. That is what the budget 
battle is about.
  The final words here, we are winning. We have been through a lot in 
the last year and a half in the budget battles and doggone it, we are 
winning. We are winning the battle and we are doing it without raising 
taxes on the American people.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the gentleman for his discussion on that point, 
because really the giant sucking sound here in Washington is the 
Federal Government sucking capital out of the capital markets, away 
from entrepreneurs, away for young people, away from people who want to 
start businesses or build homes or start their futures. The magical 
bureaucrats in Washington here define their success by how much money 
they spend on, quote-unquote, job creation programs, not by how many 
jobs they actually create.

                              {time}  2115

  If I had to make a choice about where I wanted to invest my dollars 
or who I wanted to have spending dollars to create jobs, I would go 
with entrepreneurs and not sending them to Washington and having 
Washington try to pick winners and losers.
  Washington would never have picked Steve Jobs at Apple Computer as 
saying that looks like a good investment. Here is a guy working out of 
his garage. Let us go pump some money into that because I think that is 
going to create a new industry. I doubt if they would have picked Bill 
Gates. Those are not the type of people bureaucrats look at and say 
that is the wave of the future, because they are out of the mold. 
Entrepreneurs break the rules. Bureaucrats live by the rules. They 
cannot accept these kind of challenges.
  I would like to yield to my colleague from Minnesota, who has joined 
us from the exalted Speaker's platform.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan for 
yielding. I was listening probably more intently than most of the 
Members of Congress to this debate. I got excited by the discussion you 
have been having, and particularly about this chart, listening to what 
you are talking about. I think you have really sort of hit on what is, 
if I could describe it as, the nub of the great debate we are having in 
America today and the great debate we are having in this Congress.
  In fact, let me say it this way: Senator Phil Gramm from Texas said 
it so well earlier this year when he was accused by some of the 
administration, I think it may have been the President. He said, you 
know, if Phil Gramm's budget passes, it means that there is going to be 
less money spent on education, there is going to be less money spent on 
children, and there is going to be less money spent on nutrition. And 
he really said it right. He said this is not a debate about how much 
money is going to be spent on education, or children, or nutrition. 
This is a debate about who gets to do the spending.
  Ultimately, whether we are talking about housing policy, Medicare 
reform, all these others things we are talking about, the debate is 
about who gets to decide. Is it going to the American families or some 
magical bureaucrat here in Washington? We know it in our hearts, and I 
think the people understand this better than we sometimes give them 
credit for. They can make those decisions much better for themselves 
and their own families, and they will spend the money much more firmly 
than we can spend it here in Washington.
  We can beat on the bureaucracy and the bureaucrats, and as I think 
the gentleman from Kansas, Representative Brownback, said, these are 
good people. They are trying to do the right thing. But ultimately the 
system consumes the participants. In fact, I was reminded as you were 
speaking earlier of something Thomas Jefferson said so long ago. He 
said, ``Those who would trade freedom for security will lose both and 
deserve neither.''
  We have bought into this idea over the last 30 or 40 years that 
somehow Washington knows best and somehow that elected officials and 
bureaucrats in Washington can make better decisions than families and 
communities and individuals back in their neighborhoods. So I am 
delighted to just take a few minutes to say I think we are on the right 
track. We are winning this battle.
  When we say we, I think we mean we, the American people, because this 
ultimately is not a debate between Republicans and Democrats, it is not 
a debate between the Congress and the President; it really is a debate 
about the future of this country. It is about real individuals and 
about real families. It is not about dollars and cents and CBO and GAO, 
because sometimes we get bogged down in this debate about numbers and 
accounting. This is not an accounting exercise, it is about whether or 
not we are going to preserve the American dream for our kids.

  So I congratulate you for participating in this special order 
tonight. I think the American people need to hear more about this, 
because as I have said before, facts are our friends. The more the 
American people see about what is really going on here in this 
Congress, I think the more they are going to agree that this is the 
direction the United States of America is going to have to move.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the gentleman for his comments. I would like to 
move on and talk briefly about what the gentleman introduced, which was 
the issue of education. I think when Senator Gramm actually got into a 
little bit of a debate with a bureaucrat from the Department of 
Education, who said that I think I know more about educating your kids 
and I care more about educating your kids than what you do, his retort 
was if you know so much about my kids, what are their names? I do not 
know that much about your kids was the answer.
  But you know, that is the other myth that we are fighting here, that 
Washington bureaucrats, that a Washington bureaucracy cares more about 
the education of our kids than what parents in local communities do.
  This myth is also hurting America. It creates the illusion that the 
magical Washington education bureaucrat can substitute, think about it, 
that the people in Washington can substitute for parents and local 
teachers. The myth again creates the illusion that spending equals 
results. The more dollars you spend, the better results you are going 
to have. And the myth leads

[[Page H4178]]

to policy designed for the lowest common denominator.
  Let us take a look at each one of those. The myth creates the 
illusion that many Washington education bureaucrats substitute for 
parents and local teachers. The myth assumes that parents have not 
addressed the major issues their children face, assumes that parents do 
not have the will to make the sacrifices on behalf of their children, 
assumes that parents do not have the knowledge and the expertise to 
solve their children's educational problems. Therefore, the magical 
Washington bureaucrat must step forward, meet the social obligations 
that families, citizens, local schools and communities are ignoring.
  The reality is that Federal programs displace parents and local 
initiatives and solutions. They drive parents out of the process.
  I have gone back and talked to parents, I have talked to local school 
administrators, and what you find is that the schools that work best 
are the ones that have the open door policy, that say any time a parent 
wants to come into their kid's school, the doors are open.
  But what has happened is more programs come from Washington, more 
mandates come from Washington, the end result is that administrators at 
the local level are starting to look more toward Washington for their 
direction about what they should be doing in their schools rather than 
looking to the parent and the local community for what should be going 
on in their schools.
  Once that link between the local community and the local school is 
broken, education goes only one way, and that is down, because once the 
local community no longer trusts the local schools because they do not 
reflect the values, the priorities, of the local community, the school 
system is lost.

  The myth creates the illusion that spending equals results. Hey, if 
you are spending $1 billion on the Save the Kids Program, you must be 
saving kids, right? Otherwise why would you spend those kinds of 
dollars and why would you have a program with that kind of name on it?
  The myth says the problem is not with the programs themselves, but 
with the taxpayers. According to the myth, the taxpayers never cared 
enough to increase taxes and spend money on these programs when they 
had control at the local level, and Washington had to step into the 
process.
  The myth says that the people who want change, those of us saying 
this does not work and what is ``this,'' what we have created here in 
Washington by showing that we care, it is kind of like what my 
colleague from Kansas described in the housing and urban development. 
What we have created here in Washington is 760 programs. We really 
care, 760 programs. We care even more, because we have created 40 
agencies, departments, or commissions, and boy, we really care because 
we are spending $120 billion.
  But what is the reality of all of this spending? The reality at HUD 
was that we were going to improve America. The reality of 40 
commissions, 760 programs, is SAT scores are dropping. In 1994, 17-
year-olds scored 11 points worse in math than 1970. Sixty-six percent 
of 17-years-olds do not read at a proficient levels and reading scores 
have consistently fallen since 1962. U.S. students scored worse in math 
than all other large countries except Spain. Finally, freshmen, think 
about it, 30 percent of all college freshmen, think about it, 30 
percent of all college freshmen must take remedial education classes.
  In 1996, despite the poor results in educational achievement, many of 
us that are advocating this, for saying take these dollars, move it to 
the parents, move it to local school districts, to get involved with 
the kids, we are extremists. We do not care when we say the system is 
broke. The myth, the reality that Washington is trying to perpetuate, 
is not reality. The reality is a failed program. It is a myth that we 
care.
  The myth leads us to develop policies that are for the lowest common 
denominator. We are not driving for excellence in education. We are 
trying to design something for the lowest common denominator. There are 
lots of problems here in education.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. If the gentleman would yield for just a minute for a 
question, I would ask you, you came from the private sector in the 
business world. What would happen to your business had you done 
something similar, investing this sort of time, resources, and focus in 
a particular program area and had the types of results that you have 
just articulated?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If I were still employed, most likely if these were the 
results of my area of responsibilities, I would be unemployed. The 
business would have never let such a key part of its future languish 
with these kinds of results for this long. They would have stepped in a 
long time ago and said ``You are selling us down the wrong track. You 
are out. We have got to take a new look at addressing it,'' because 
this is a very critical matter. We are talking about the education of 
our kids, the kids that are going to be running this country in 5, 10, 
15 years, the kids that have to compete on an international basis if 
this country is going to continue to be the leading example for the 
world. Business would have never survived if they let this problem go 
on.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. If I can ask another question, and I am just giving 
you this hypothetical question, if this was your company and this was 
your core product that you had to have good results out of, and you 
were having these sort of results, they would not have said to you, OK, 
Mr. Hoekstra, we are going to give you another $1 billion to spend 
because you have not produced on this, and the reason is we just did 
not give you enough money.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. No; they would not have given me $1 billion. They would 
have asked me to come up with a new plan, to come up with a new 
process, to systemically take a look at what I was trying to do and 
figure out what the real problem was.
  It is very evident here in education. The problem is not money. Some 
of the best school districts in the country have some of the lowest per 
pupil spending. It is not an issue of dollars, it is an issue of where 
decisions are made. As we are trying to reform this and improve it, we 
do hear the extremists now calling us. Like you said, if I were making 
the kinds of decisions and changes we are trying to make here in 
Washington in the business world, I would be called too conservative, 
not willing enough to really face the issues.
  We are proposing change here in Washington and we are gutting 
programs that in reality do not work.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. If the gentleman will yield further, let me put you in 
another role and ask you if you were the superintendent of schools at a 
particular local school district and had these sort of results, 
spending this sort of money in this sort of program design, what do you 
think the school board would ask of you there?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. The school board would ask for my resignation. They 
would say ``These are our kids. We need to get somebody in here that 
can get the job done.'' So they might, before that, they might ask me 
what the problem is? The problem is, I think, as we have talked about 
it, we have asked administrators and bureaucrats to look to Washington 
for their direction. When you take a look, I have oversight on the 
Education Department. The Education Department, they are not 
educational experts. You would think they would be educational exports. 
They are accountants, primarily, because they are moving money around 
the country rather than really providing expertise.
  I would be glad to yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Just a couple of points. With the 760 different 
educational programs, would you have any idea how many bureaucrats are 
necessary to run each one of the programs?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Well, at this point in time we are trying to gather 
that information. Finding 760 programs is difficult. Having them 
scattered over 40 different agencies, we are calling up these agencies, 
trying to get that data. No, I do not know how many people there are in 
Washington.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Is it safe to say there are a good number of bureaucrats 
necessary to run each one of these 760 different programs?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. There are bureaucrats at every level. There are over

[[Page H4179]]

5,000 in the Department of Education, which administers about 260 of 
these programs. There are bureaucrats at the local level who are trying 
to figure out what is coming from Washington.
  Mr. NEUMANN. How many of these bureaucrats work for nothing?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. At last count, I do not believe that there were any. 
Actually, it would be illegal for them to volunteer.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Let me go on with the point. With 760 different programs 
and a large number of bureaucrats, Washington bureaucrats, necessary to 
run each one of the programs, and each one of those bureaucrats drawing 
a salary, we have many, many tax dollars designed to help the education 
of our young people that are going to pay salaries of people here in 
Washington, as opposed to getting out to the young people these dollars 
were designed to help.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. We have a tremendous number of dollars that should be 
intended to educate kids that are never making it down to the local 
classroom.
  Mr. NEUMANN. I would just like to point out as it relates to 
education there is another way to do this. Before I built homes, I was 
a math teacher. I came out of college as a math teacher. I would go 
downtown and hear from our businesses downtown that my students did not 
understand the math that the people downtown thought they should 
understand.
  We did not turn to Washington, DC, for a solution. I was teaching at 
Milton, WI, at the time. What we did was a survey. We developed a 
survey and we sent it out to our local people. You see, I took offense 
at the idea that my math students did not know the math that they 
thought they should know coming out my classroom. That somehow was very 
offensive to me.
  So we did a survey. We asked them what is it you are expecting our 
students to know when they come out of our classrooms? We got lots of 
people that responded to our survey. We developed a test to see whether 
or not the people downtown were right or whether or not our students 
actually did not know what they were supposed to know when they 
graduated from high school. Guess what we found?

                              {time}  2130

  We found the vast majority of them did not know what our businesses 
expected them to know when they came into the private sector to take a 
job. So what we did at that point is initiated a program locally, at 
Milton, WI, at Milton High School, and through the school system there 
that corrected the problem. Within 2 to 3 years we found the problem 
was corrected and the vast majority of the students graduating gained 
the knowledge that was necessary, that the business people downtown 
expected them to know before they graduated from our high school.
  But that is the difference between the idea of Washington, DC and the 
bureaucrats here solving a problem versus the people in Milton, WI; the 
local control and the local people being involved and what it is they 
expect their students to know and how to develop solutions to problems 
locally. It does not have to be done from Washington, DC.
  The other thing that happens when Washington starts doing it, and the 
gentleman alluded to it, every time we take a responsibility for 
education away from the parents and away from the community people, 
that is one less reason that they have to be involved in the education 
of the young people. And as their involvement decreases, the test 
scores go down, as the gentleman was alluding to.
  So the gentleman is right on the money here. We need to get education 
back to the local level and get the local businesses and the local 
employers, we need to get those folks actively involved with the school 
systems deciding what it is that our students need to know in order to 
function in our society when they get out of high school.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I would like to now yield to the gentleman 
from Kansas [Mr. Brownback] to talk about, I am not sure we will have 
time to get all the way through with it, but to at least talk about one 
other myth that is being perpetuated here in Washington.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. Speaker, I want to again thank the gentleman for 
yielding to me for a few moments. I want to take a few moments to 
explain how the myth of the magic of Washington bureaucracy is actually 
at times hurting the environment which it is designed to protect.
  The environmental movement has produced some wonderful results of 
protecting the environment, especially in improving people's attitudes 
and people's outlooks and actually improving the environment. We are 
all committed to a good, clean, healthy environment. If we do not 
provide a good, clean healthy, environment for our kids and our 
grandchildren, they will not have anyplace to live.

  We have to take care of Mother Earth, we have to do the right things 
to take care of the environment, and I know of no Member in Congress, 
no Member whatsoever that is not strongly supportive of a good, clean 
environment. We have to provide that. But I want to provide one bit of 
information that I do not know if it is commonly known about Washington 
bureaucracy and the environment.
  Does the gentleman know who the biggest polluter in America is? The 
biggest polluter in America today?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman would yield, it is the U.S. Federal 
Government.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. It is the Federal Government. It is the Federal 
Government. For example, hundreds of billions of dollars and many 
decades will be required to clean up Federal hazardous waste sites. I 
will give the gentleman some General Accounting Office numbers on this. 
And the General Accounting Office is the watchdog of the Federal 
agencies of the Federal Government.
  GAO says Federal agencies expect to spend $54 billion this year, this 
year, to clean up their own facilities as far as environmental waste 
and environmental problems created. And the Office of Management and 
Budget estimates that as much as $389 billion in additional funds may 
be needed through 2070 just to clean up pollution and waste caused by 
Washington.
  There are many government programs in Washington and run by 
Washington, and enacted by this Congress even, or past Congresses, and 
operated by government bureaucracies that actually harm the 
environment. The Government should take steps to make sure its own 
house is in order. If we could clean up the Federal Government's own 
mess, the bureaucracy mess that we have created, that the bureaucracy 
has created, we will go a long ways towards improving the environment 
in America, towards making this country better for our children and our 
grandchildren.
  It makes no sense for Washington, a Washington bureaucracy to 
subsidize environmental destruction on the one hand while establishing 
laws and regulations and bureaucracies to mitigate that damage on the 
other hand. And here is a classic example of a place working against 
itself on an overall policy that we all support: a clean, good, healthy 
environment, better for our children and grandchildren in the future; 
and yet the Federal Government being the biggest polluter in America.

  I yield back to the gentleman from Michigan.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I do not know if my colleague from Wisconsin has any 
closing comments. I think we are about at the end of our time.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Do we have a little time left to do an environmental 
quiz?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. We have 4 minutes.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Would the gentleman like me to do a little environmental 
quiz here tonight? I want to see where the gentleman stands.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Only if the gentleman asks my colleague from Kansas all 
the questions.
  Mr. NEUMANN. I will ask my colleague from Kansas. This is a question 
I ask the American people in virtually every town hall meeting I go to. 
I do a little environmental quiz and I just ask a few questions.
  The first one is, does the gentleman think it makes sense for the 
Federal Government, before they initiate a new rule or a new 
regulation, to do a cost-benefit analysis; that is, to decide if the 
cost is worth the benefit received?
  Mr. BROWNBACK. That would seem basic to me, something we should ask 
of everything.
  Mr. NEUMANN. That is the first antienvironment vote that we took, 
because that is what we said. We want a

[[Page H4180]]

cost-benefit analysis before we enact a new regulation.
  Does the gentleman think it makes sense, when we talk about spending 
the American taxpayers' dollars to clean up waste sites, that we first 
do a risk assessment and we clean up the sites that are the highest 
risk to the environment first and the other ones later?
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Well, I would think that it would make absolute sense 
to clean up the highest priority ones first.
  But I want to inquire of the gentleman of one. Does the gentleman 
think when we clean up an environmental site that we should pay more to 
lawyers and lawsuits on cleaning up an environmental site or should we 
actually pay money to clean up that site?
  Mr. NEUMANN. It is clear to me we should be using the dollars to 
clean up the site. And right now only 50 percent of the tax dollars are 
actually getting out there to be used on cleaning up the site.
  And I would point out that is another vote that has been scored as 
antienvironmental if we do a risk assessment.
  Now let me ask another one. If the Federal Government initiates a new 
rule or a new regulation, and that new rule or new regulation causes an 
individual's property, has individual property, to decrease in value by 
more than 20 percent, say, the public is going to gain by this new rule 
or regulation. They want a waterway through a farm, so a farmer can no 
longer farm his land. So they initiate this new rule or regulation.
  Does the gentleman think it is reasonable that the Federal Government 
should compensate the individual citizen for the loss of his property 
value?
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Not only reasonable, but I believe constitutional.
  Mr. NEUMANN. That is called takings, and that is the third 
antienvironmental vote we took.
  Let me do one more question. If there was a forest fire and the trees 
burned out, and we are now looking at all this charred timber out 
there, and a lumber company says I can still harvest some of the 
timber, even though it is charred, we can still harvest some of this 
timber.
  So the lumber company makes a deal they will buy the charred timber 
and replant the forest. Would it make sense to the gentleman that we 
would allow the lumber company to go in and harvest the charred timber 
and replant the forest, as opposed to leaving the charred timber to 
stay there to rot?
  Mr. BROWBACK. That would make sense to me.
  Mr. NEUMANN. That was the fourth antienvironmental vote that has been 
scored by the environmental groups in this country today.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, I think just recently the 
fifth environmental vote was if a Member votes against allocating 
family planning, which is the code word for worldwide abortion, if we 
vote against family planning as part of the foreign aid package, is 
that an environmental vote? If a Member voted against promoting 
abortion on an international basis, that is an antienvironmental vote.
  I think the gentleman has a great quiz, and I want to thank my 
colleagues for joining me. I think we are going to keep raising this 
issue over the coming weeks.
  Washington has drawn its strength from this myth for way too long. 
Washington cannot solve everybody's problems, and when it pretends to, 
it really ends up too often hurting America and Americans.
  When we move decisionmaking to Washington, we substitute Washington 
wisdom, ``Washington wisdom,'' for the common sense of the American 
people. That is not the direction we want to be going. That is not the 
direction we need to go to address the problems that are facing this 
country. It is costing us trillions and trillions of dollars.
  I think working together we will one way restore Washington to its 
proper role in American society. That is what our colleague from 
Arizona talked about when we began this an hour ago. There is much work 
to do to make that happen, but we are committed to working on that and 
seeing what we get back to common sense America and away from 
Washington wisdom.

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