[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 73 (Wednesday, May 22, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H5493-H5499]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MORE ISSUES OF CONCERN
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Collins of Georgia). Under the Speaker's
announced policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr.
Kingston] is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to touch on some issues that we
have not really gone over tonight, but I do want to make sure Mr.
Hayworth got in his last comment on missile defense.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Well, I thank my good friend from Georgia.
It is simply this, Mr. Speaker. I believe those watching this debate
tonight in the United States of America need to take a very clear-eyed,
sober-minded approach to providing for our common defense and to
understand that we are vulnerable to intercontinental ballistic missile
attack. This is not scare tactics. This is something, believe me, we
wish were otherwise, but we need to take steps today to ensure that we
provide for the common defense and that we do not always look to that
legitimate role of the Federal Government, providing for that defense,
as the place where all the job cuts and the reductions come to reinvent
government as some would state it.
With that, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding to me.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California
[Mr. Hunter].
Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, before we totally leave the missile area, I
just wanted to flesh out the question the gentleman from Arizona asked
about how we are treating Israel with respect to building a missile
defense as opposed to our own people. The Israelis are surrounded by
Arab neighbors who want to launch ballistic missiles at Israel. In
1987, the Israelis were trying to develop a fighter, a craft called the
Lavi aircraft. A number of us on the armed services program signed a
letter that I drafted and Curt Weldon signed it, a number of Members
who were still, Hal Rogers of Kentucky signed it, a number of members
who are on the Committee on Armed Services today, and we said to the
Israelis, do not build a fighter aircraft because a lot of nations make
fighter aircraft.
But there is one thing that no western nations build, and that is a
defense against incoming ballistic missiles. We think that your
program, your coproduction program with the United States should not be
fighter aircraft, it should be a defense against missiles. And the
reason we think that is because we think in the near future, we wrote
this in 1987 to Mr. Rabin, we said we think in the near future you will
be attacked with Russian made ballistic missiles coming from a
neighboring Arab state. And it was somewhat prophetic. We predicted the
state might be Syria. It ended up instead coming from Saddam Hussein.
But they were attacked by Russian-made ballistic missiles coming from
another country.
The Israelis are very practical people. They live on a little postage
stamp of land. They are very vulnerable. And they realize that they
live in an age of missiles. When their Billy Mitchells tell them
something, they act. So they said, we need a defense.
So they started, they embarked upon the production of the Arrow
missile defense program. That is a defensive missile that when an
incoming missile is launched at one of their cities will go up and
intercept that missile and destroy it.
This President has signed on wholeheartedly in speeches to leaders in
Israel to people that support the existence of the Israeli State, he
has said, and properly so, I stand foursquare behind your program to
defend against incoming ballistic missiles that might hurt people in
Israel.
All we are asking him to do with the Defend America Act is to sign on
for the same program for Americans. We want basically the same thing
that we
[[Page H5494]]
provide and are providing for the people of Israel. Nothing more,
nothing less.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Again, it begs the question, with all due respect, if
it is good enough for the nation of Israel, is it not good enough,
should we not be prudent enough to provide the same sort of missile
defense for the people of the United States of America?
Mr. HUNTER. Absolutely.
Mr. KINGSTON. Now, if the gentlemen would like to stick with me, I
want to switch gears and talk about a few things.
First, I do think that it is absolutely appalling that people in St.
Mary's, GA; Jacksonville, FL; Brunswick, GA are not protected from a
missile attack to the nuclear submarine in St. Mary's. I am glad that
the two of you are working on this. I am proud to cosponsor the bill. I
hope that we can protect, shore up our security so that parents around
the land do not have to worry about this.
I do want to switch gears. I have a letter from Mr. George Renshaw
who ironically lives in St. Mary's. I want to quote him. He said, I
never felt so strongly about Congress as I do now. All of you have
amazed me. I see you many times on the House floor. Keep up the good
work. By the way, I am an ex-Democrat.
I thought that was just a little good, positive feedback.
Mr. HUNTER. Is that one of your relatives?
Mr. KINGSTON. It may be, if not, certainly a friend.
I also wanted to apologize to the people from New Jersey. The other
night the gentleman from New Jersey was talking about Medicare cuts. I
pointed out to him that Medicare was going from $196 to $304 billion
and if he thought that was a cut, that was a reflection of the
education system in New Jersey.
I have a letter here from a Mr. Ron Jones in New Jersey, and he says
he is offended by that. He agrees with me that the Congressman from New
Jersey may have missed the point, but when you increase Medicare
spending from $196 to $304 billion, that is not a cut.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, I think the observation to make to the
good people of New Jersey is the gentleman from New Jersey, who fails
to understand that, it is not so much that he is a product of New
Jersey's system of education as much as he has adopted the old math, I
will call it, the old math of the Washington bureaucracy, where a
reduction in an anticipated increase is called a cut. Only in this city
does that transpire.
Mr. KINGSTON. I am glad the gentleman mentioned that.
We are also increasing student loans from approximately $27 to $36
billion. Yet the President of the United States has called that a cut.
I do not know what school system he went to, but, again, going from $27
to $36 billion is not a cut.
On Medicaid, we are doing the same thing, going from approximately
$90 to $140 billion. Yet the same status quo Washington liberal
bureaucracy is calling these things a cut. The fact is, we have got to
get these programs under control.
I have an article here where the Atlanta Legal Aid Society tried to
sue the State of Georgia because Medicaid did not pay for a sex change
operation.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Would you please repeat that? I want to make sure that
I understand what you just said and I think you owe it to the people
nationwide who watch us tonight and to the Speaker in the chair, could
you please repeat this letter?
Mr. KINGSTON. Remember the backdrop here. We are a country that is $5
trillion in debt. We are a country that has a welfare program that is
totally out of control. We have spent about $4 trillion on it.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Actually, all told, Government spending at all levels
in the so-called war on poverty is now in excess of our national debt,
$5 trillion.
Mr. KINGSTON. Which is more money than we spent to win World War II.
And at the time that most of these programs started under the big
Government expansion programs of Lyndon Johnson, the poverty level was
14 percent. Today it is about 14 percent. So for all that we have done,
we have only created great jobs for bureaucrats.
But here in the backdrop of all this debt, the Atlanta Legal Aid
Society sued the State of Georgia to try to force it to use Medicaid
funds, which is welfare insurance, to pay for a sex change operation.
The case was called Rush versus Parham. Fortunately, it was dismissed.
But that is the kind of ridiculous thinking that we have got out there.
Now, the gentleman from California will find this interesting. The
legal services also sued the State of California because although one
immigrant did not have, excuse me, very big distinction, these were
illegal aliens.
Mr. HUNTER. We have lost several members of the bar in California.
They were backed over by a van carrying illegal aliens. I am being
facetious. Actually, they usually wait for the van to stop before they
get out and offer their services.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman is finished, I will
continue.
The legal aid society sued the State of California for not giving
illegal aliens a driver's license, even though they were in the country
illegally.
Mr. HAYWORTH. It is just interesting, because in other States, I
could be corrected by my friend from California, that is very
interesting. Legal services wanted to step in for illegal immigrants.
Illegal aliens here in this country without a passport, without due
process to come into the country and remain, sued for the right of a
driver's license. And yet in other States, I believe California has
been courageous in this regard, because so many States have processed
motor voter where all one needs to register to vote is to apply for a
driver's license.
Mr. KINGSTON. All one needs to get people to vote is drive down the
street and say, hop in my van, let me take you to the polls because you
are now registered to vote, because you are on welfare or you have a
driver's license or you have other forms of public assistance.
Mr. HAYWORTH. It is stunning. Give us an update on the California
situation.
Mr. KINGSTON. Just save us from your jokes.
Mr. HUNTER. I will not offer any one-liners, but I have to say that
this situation does beg for some one-liners. You could actually get a
twofer. If you are an illegal alien and you are driving to vote and you
are pursued by the Border Patrol, you will not only be able to cast
your ballot but also enjoy a healthy lawsuit against the Border Patrol
or a sheriff's department with a good chance for recompense.
Mr. KINGSTON. Let me ask you something else.
Mr. HUNTER. What the gentleman has described is true. As I
understand, in talking to a member of the State assembly, the bill to
deny illegal aliens, and this was Jan Goldsmith who represents Poway in
San Diego County, the bill to deny illegal aliens the right to a
duplicate driver's license, even though it is obvious that the driver's
license was fraudulently issued, was passed out of committee. His bill
to deny them this right was passed out of committee by, I believe, a
single vote. I believe every member of the Democrat Party voted against
that.
{time} 2230
Now, I am not positive on the breakdown of the vote, but as I
understand, it was a very, very narrow vote to pass the ban coming out
of committee on this activity.
Mr. HAYWORTH. And is it not amazing that for most commercial
transactions, when any American citizen wants to go into a major
retailer or any store, a grocery store, and wants to pay for the items
purchased with a check, that that shopper must produce two forms of
identification, quite often, and with the manipulation and the
usurpation of rights under motor voter, we are setting up a scenario in
which noncitizens will not be required to show any proof of citizenship
to have the right to vote in elections that determine the future of the
United States of America.
How cynical, how corrupting. What an insult to those hard-working,
honest immigrants who come here who apply for citizenship, who want to
be American citizens more than anything else in the world, who want to
contribute something to this country, who want to have a better future
for themselves and their families, and whose very citizenship is being
cheapened by these cynical actions designed to perpetuate a cynical
welfare state and to
[[Page H5495]]
return to power those who seek power by any means necessary.
Mr. KINGSTON. Let us talk about this because I think it is very
important, as we explore welfare reform for the third time, and
hopefully, maybe because it is an election year, the President will
vote for it this time, but as we get into the health care benefit and
the portion of welfare and State grants and so forth, I think it is
important to know we have worked on health care reform for American
middle-class families. We have tried to make it more affordable and
more accessible through the portability clauses and eliminate the
preexisting-illness conditions of the policies so that middle-class
Americans can take their health care with them and not be held hostage
to the insurance company or have a job loss.
The other thing, which I know the two of you have supported, is
medical savings accounts. Today I presented to the Speaker and to Denny
Hastert and the health care conferees a letter signed by 162 Members,
bipartisan Members, of this Chamber asking that conferees keep the
medical savings accounts in the health care reform; medical savings
accounts, basically a high-deductible plan that allows consumers to pay
for their own first-dollar health care expenses like stitches, x rays,
routine checkups, and so forth, but they get to save the money, they
get to pocket what they have saved from the deductible, use it for
long-term health care or use it for a college education account or, you
know, use it for Christmas money or whatever they want. The money is
tax free, though, if it is spent on medical expenses.
And that is what middle-class America needs, is health care----
Mr. HUNTER. But, if the gentleman will yield, the liberals in America
do not want the American people to have the freedom to shop for
themselves, because it is exactly what you are talking about is
shopping. Instead of shopping for food, instead of shopping for
clothes, you get to shop for your own medical care. And if you think
you have got a good doctor who will take that x ray for $25 or $30
under the costs of another doctor, you have got an incentive to go out
and shop for that better buy just like you shop for a better buy in all
aspects of life.
Liberals do not like that. They do not like it because it cuts
dependency, and they do not like it because people exercise freedom. If
you teach people to exercise freedom enough, pretty soon they are going
to want to have a lot more freedom, and that is a bad thing from a
liberal perspective.
Mr. KINGSTON. Well, the irony is two things, how this can serve, is
that when American consumers go into an appliance store, they know how
much a dishwasher costs, a new refrigerator, a stereo, an automobile,
even a house, and yet if you get a broken arm, we do not have any idea.
Is it $200, is it $900? How many bills am I going to get? You know,
what about setting a broken leg? I have no idea.
I mean American consumers need to know. An amniocentesis, if a woman
gets an amniocentesis, she gets bills from every lab in America for 6
months. Should not the women in America be able to know when they go in
how much it is going to cost them?
What a medical savings account will do will put her back in charge,
and then she will know, hey, this is supposed to be a $300 deal, this
is not going to be a $600 deal, Dr. Jones down the street only charges
$275.
Mr. HUNTER. You know, you are talking about that woman who, in so
many cases today, is the head of household, and the idea that we are so
cynical in Washington, DC, or liberals are so cynical that they do not
want that woman who is head of the household to go out and shop for
medical care, they do not think she is smart enough, they do not think
she should be trusted with making that choice. So they are going to do
it for her. And yet if she goes out and shops smart, and she is able to
shop smart in every other area; there are many households now headed by
women who are building and, in many cases where there is single women
raising kids, they have many choices and many challenges to meet with
respect to education, with respect to buying homes, with respect to
buying automobiles, with respect to forging the lives and building the
character of their kids, and the idea that liberals have that somehow
that a woman is not capable of shopping for a less expensive x-ray or
she is not capable of finding out how much a medical procedure costs,
does not make sense.
In fact the only way that we are going to be able to make health care
affordable in this country is to rely on the best thing that we have
got. That is the good common sense of our citizens.
Mr. KINGSTON. That is exactly right.
Let me give you another example of how medical savings accounts can
make a difference and more consumer information. I read an article----
Mr. HUNTER. Now, what does a medical savings account do? If I have a
medical savings account, what will I have?
Mr. KINGSTON. It is basically a high-deductible plan where any money
that you do not spend you can use for long-term health care or you can
use for a college education.
Mr. HUNTER. How much could I save out of the year if I do not spend
much money on----
Mr. KINGSTON. It is $2,500, $2,000, $4,000 deductible. So anything
that you do not spend goes into your pocket.
There is a woman in Tampa, FL, who had breast cancer. She could not
get the information she needed through the traditional health care
provider network. So what she did, she got on the Net. How many of you
out there have breast cancer? And she formed a network and was able to
find a support group and a physician who had a new specialty and a new
drug, and as a result she has been able to deal with her illness a lot
better.
Now, there is a doctor in Fort Worth who recommends a system whereby
we can use our own television to actually one day get on some of those
blank channels after channel 40 that, you know, we have on every TV,
and they are all blank, get in there and say, ``Back injury. How much?
What? Lower back? Upper back,'' and keep pushing your remote and
concentrate on where your back problems is, and then it would tell you
the nature of it, which physicians in your area serve it, how much it
costs to prevent, to spend on it. And think about how, if you tie in
medical savings accounts in with the information highway, how great it
will be for the American consumers.
Mr. HUNTER. You know, if the gentleman will yield on that point, a
great American conservative, Tom Clancy, the author of ``Hunt for Red
October'' and so many other best-selling books, has done something
along the line of what the gentleman is talking about. He had a young
kid who had cancer, kid named Kyle, young boy, and Tom formed a great
friendship with this youngster as he was experiencing the trauma of
cancer, and Kyle ultimately passed away. Well, Tom Clancy formed the
Kyle Foundation, and the Kyle Foundation is dedicated to linking up
people who need cancer information: What kind of information can I get
about this type of cancer or that type of cancer? What types of doctors
are specialists in this particular type of cancer that my son may have?
Where do I go to get these doctors? And networking not only the users,
the moms and the dads with children with cancer, but also networking
the doctors so that a doctor who is making a breakthrough in one type
of cancer on the other side of the country can hook up with a doctor on
the other side of the country and exchange information, and this
exchange of information and this ability of free people to shop for the
best ideas and the best innovations in medicine is kind of what the
gentleman is talking about.
That is the idea of not being harnessed by government one-size-fits-
all, ``Wait in this line, and we will get to you when we get to you.''
Mr. KINGSTON. We had a neighbor of mine, unfortunately he passed away
also, named Julian Bono, and he did the same sort of thing is Savannah,
GA, networking with other people who had cancer, passing on
information, passing on treatments about doctors, and they had a list
of physicians all over the country. Actually, he found a cure or a
potential cure in Greece and helped some of the people go over there,
and it is all we are saying to the liberal Washington establishment is
let the American people do what they are best at: be sharp, smart
shoppers.
[[Page H5496]]
Mr. HAYWORTH. And it goes a bit further than that, if the gentleman
would yield. It goes to this question:
Not just allowing the American people to do so because realistically
the power resides with the American people. Our system of government,
our constitutional republic, provides that the power that many of us
believe comes from a higher authority is bestowed on the people. The
people in turn bestow it on the government. So it is not the
government's domain to, quote unquote, allow the people this
opportunity. Instead it is their fundamental right to pursue treatments
they believe can help them, and it is their fundamental right, and I
dare say as we stand poised at the dawn of the next century, we should
restore the basic element of trust that we who are honored to serve in
government through the consent of the governed trust the people to make
decisions.
And again as I have said many times, I believe what crystallizes the
debate when we get past the playground talks, when we get past the
scare tactics, when we get past the deliberate disinformation, what
characterizes this debate on almost every question of import is this:
Do you trust the American people, or are you so cynical or disdainful
of the American people that you place your trust in a centralized
bureaucracy in Washington?
I trust the American people, and I believe the people trust
themselves, and we work to empower the people.
Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield on that, about the big
bureaucracy, it is interesting that as we are debating budgets, the
Democrat budget versus the Republican budget, that the Clinton Democrat
budget adds 3,000 more Federal employees to the payroll and adds 14 new
bureaucracies and agencies, and you know that is not what the message
was. The message from the American people, which was accurately
mirrored by the President, was the era of big government was over.
Mr. HAYWORTH. I just want to make sure because the gentleman was
sitting close to me, and I heard in this well in that very unmistakable
twang of Arkansas speech that the era of big government was over, and
yet again I would ask the gentleman from Georgia to offer those
figures, provided by the gentleman who stood here and told us the era
of big government is over; what is that again?
Mr. KINGSTON. I will be happy to give you these figures, and I tell
you one other, but the Clinton budget will cost us 3,000 more Federal
bureaucrats, it creates 14 new Federal programs, and it claims to have
$129 billion in tax relief, but it takes back $90 billion in increased
taxes which were passed under the President, and then, as you probably
know, the savings are all on the back end.
Yes, the President's budget balances in the year 2002, but, as the
gentleman in the well has pointed out it is equivalent of Mr. Hayworth
saying, and I can get away with kidding him a little better than Mr.
Hunter, but it is the equivalent of you saying that you are going on a
diet and lose 30 pounds, but you are not going to in 1 year, but you
are not going to lose any of it until November.
{time} 2245
Yes, you will be 30 pounds under by December 31. I would say to the
gentleman from California [Mr. Hunter], if he wants to join in that, it
might be a good idea.
Mr. HAYWOOD. Really. It is the equivalent of trying to lose 50 pounds
and spending all year, the first 50 weeks, losing 2 pounds, and saying
you are going to lose the other 48 in the final 2 weeks of the diet.
Mathematically, the operation of subtraction can work when you put
pencil to paper. Realistically, honestly, it does not work. It does not
work.
This is what is especially galling. For when one is selected to serve
and take the oath of office in this Chamber, as a member of the
legislative branch, and I daresay, as our Chief Executive at the other
end of Pennsylvania Avenue, there is a sacred trust, and there is a
burden, an opportunity of governance that rests upon our shoulders.
How cynical it is to devise mathematical formulae which would say,
oh, if I am bestowed with the trust of the American people for a second
4-year term, 2 to 3 year after I leave we will achieve this; 2 to 3
years after I give up custodianship of this role, things will come into
balance.
It is akin to the shortcut to house cleaning, but it is with far, far
more dire results, because you can sweep a little bit under the rug. We
can take those kinds of shortcuts, but what this threatens is the very
structure and the very foundation of our free society. It is not the
same as sweeping the dirt under the rug, but it is fundamentally being
less than candid about the challenge that confronts the American
people.
And to some, in a Machiavellian sense, it may be really smart
politically, but what a tragedy it would be if we would sacrifice
candor and truthfulness and forthrightness in our governance for the
sake of political expediency, rather than a call to make changes for
the better.
Mr. HUNTER. If the gentleman will yield, Mr. Speaker, I hope and I
think that the American people are not going to be taken in by the
inconsistency that this President has displayed. I remember we were all
sitting here the night when he said, ``The era of big government is
over.'' But I recall a few minutes later in the same speech, he
announced, I believe, three new programs. Only William Clinton could do
that and get away with it. I notice not a single news station, at least
the ones that I observed, picked that up.
Only this President, who said that he loathed the American military
and deliberately avoided service during Vietnam, could use the Soldiers
and Sailors Relief Act that is designed for military men and women
serving overseas to keep them from losing their property while they are
serving their country. Only he could invoke that Soldiers and Sailors
Relief Act to protect himself from a civil lawsuit in Arkansas.
But I think that there is such a thing as being a little too cute and
underestimating the American people to the point where, ultimately,
when the people make a judgment with respect to this President, we are
going to see that they have a lot more wisdom than he attributes to
them.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, let me get back on the balanced budget.
There are three reasons we need to keep focus on the balanced budget.
No. 1, the Federal Reserve says if you have a balanced budget, interest
rates will fall. If they fall as much as 2 percent, it would make a
significant savings in your monthly home mortgage and your automobile
bill, if you own your car.
No. 2, it will create jobs. Because small businesses can borrow money
at lower interest rates, they will expand more opportunities which will
be out there for everybody.
No. 3, your taxes will go down, because you will not have that huge
crunch from the Federal Government that is draining the pocketbooks of
American workers right now. That is one reason why this Congress fought
so hard for the $500-per-child tax credit.
The gentleman earlier talked about single women at home. Raising
children is the most frustrating, the most difficult, the most
expensive thing that I think I have ever tried to do, or anybody else
can do. And a $500-per-child tax credit will help the American working
men and woman afford their family. It will help the middle class like
no other measure that we could pass in Congress.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, what is especially important, I think of
the single moms in the Sixth District of Arizona, and imagine if they
had for their 3 children $1,500 to save, spend, and invest as they see
fit for those children, to spend that money on those children, to save
that money for those children, instead of surrendering that money to
Washington. It is especially galling that we have had a President who
campaigned, and people talk about political strategies, and, oh,
members of that reelection team looking at the Ronald Reagan strategy
of 1984. Nonsense.
This is the same strategy utilized by the President in 1992. It is,
simply stated, this: Talk like Ronald Reagan, govern like Michael
Dukakis. Always talk right, govern left. This same President who said
that the middle class deserved tax relief gave itself the largest tax
increase in American history. This same President who said end welfare
as we know it, has vetoed, not once but twice, the very welfare reform
he purports in a general sense to champion.
[[Page H5497]]
This same President who said as a candidate in 1992 that he would
balance the budget in 5 years, even when given a grace period of an
extra 2 years, if you will, still uses curious mathematics and said, as
pointed out by the gentleman from California, even in the same breath
with yet another Reaganesque utterance: The era of big government is
over, but here are three more programs. Here is more and more spending
in Washington, DC. Here is more and more power vested in Washington,
and here is the preservation of the status quo, even amidst the
language of change.
There is, as I said earlier this evening, Mr. Speaker, a credibility
canyon to go along with the Clinton crunch.
Mr. HUNTER. Mr Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, let us do some
taxes. I think a lot of single moms out there, a lot of heads of
households, a lot of folks with kids would like to know what this tax
cut was that the President kept them from getting. We have all done our
taxes in April. Most folks realize and remember how much they paid for
taxes. Let us prepare some income taxes here, and show them what the
American people lost when President Clinton killed the tax cuts for the
American family.
It is very simple. If you are out there and you have two kids, you
multiply two kids times $500 apiece, and that is $1,000. You deduct
that from what you paid on April 15, so if you paid $1,000 on April 15
and you have two children, under the tax cuts that the Republicans
passed but that President Clinton killed, two times $500 is $1,000. At
the bottom line on your 1040 you would have deducted $1,000 from the
$1,000 you owed and you would have paid no taxes.
That means you would have had $1,000 in your pocket for maybe the
last half of that mortgage payment you were having trouble making,
maybe the education fund for your daughter who is 15, who will soon be
going off to college, maybe $1,000 to put that down payment down on the
lot outside of Phoenix, AZ, or San Diego, CA, where you want to build a
house someday. That is the tax cut for the rich.
If you have four kids, you multiply four times $500 and that is
$2,000, so everybody should just remember right now, just take a minute
and remember what you paid in taxes to the Federal Government on April
15. Look at your family, whether they are in the living room with you
or in the kitchen or they are out playing Little League or whatever,
count the number of kids that you have an multiply that times $500, and
deduct that mentally from what you paid. That is the amount of money
that you would have saved. Once again, Mr. Speaker, President Clinton
depicted that tax cut as a tax cut for the wealthy.
Mr. Speaker, I agree with him in a way. I think everybody in America,
in this land of opportunity, who has children is wealthy. They are
rich. They are rich; not rich economically, but they are rich in
opportunity. But this President killed this tax cut, and he called it a
tax cut for the rich, so I hope that every American who pays taxes will
remember that last figure they put down on their 1040, that $1,000 that
they paid or that $10,000 that they paid, and that $500 per child that
they could have deducted if President Clinton had not stepped in and
killed that tax cut.
Mr. KINGSTON. What is interesting, Mr. Speaker, is that while the
administration was busy not cutting taxes, they had no problem cutting
drug awareness money. Last week I had the opportunity to speak at the
Harris County DARE graduation, and just some statistics that are in my
mind.
The average age now nationally that teenagers smoke marijuana is age
13. Thirty-eight percent of parents think that their kids do not smoke
or get involved in drugs, and yet, in reality, the percentage is often
higher than that, depending on where they are. Twelve- and 13-year-olds
and 14- and 15-year olds have one of the highest increases in marijuana
use in the Nation, higher than any other age bracket.
But one of the statistics that I think is very encouraging is that if
you can keep your child off of drugs until he or she is 19 years old,
then they have a 90 percent chance of staying drug-free for the rest of
their lives.
I think what we really need to do is talk to our teenagers about drug
abuse. I think it should be drug and alcohol abuse and any other
substance, legal or illegal, that they can abuse, because we have to
keep our children drug-free. We have to keep our schools drug-free and
the workplace drug-free. If we can do that, we are going to have a
generation that will successfully take the torch on, and we will all be
able to retire one day and they will pay for our Social Security.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, I would say, in fairness, I am glad that
our friend, General McCaffrey, has been given charge of the war on
drugs, but that does not excuse the fact that this administration has
basically been AWOL in that war for the first 2\1/2\ years, almost 3
years of its time in office. So again, it is a case of too little, too
late; or a type of ``me too-ism'' that smacks of electioneering, that
smacks of opportunism, rather than a genuine quest to make the changes
the gentleman from Georgia mentioned are so necessary.
It is borne out in other figures in the President's budget. Oh, sure,
there are modest increases, for example, for the Drug
Enforcement Agency, for the number of employees; for the Immigration
and Naturalization Service, for the Border Patrol.
But yet, but yet, the glaring problem is this: that more and more
money is put away so that upwards of 115,000 people in Bill Clinton's
budget would be employed in the Internal Revenue Service; easily, what,
three times the number of people, or close to that, employed with the
INS or the Border Patrol. So the message in fact is this: We may not
have time to fight the war on drugs, we may not have the ability to
protect the sanctity of our borders, but, by golly, we have the time to
come and audit you, Mr. and Mrs. America, and your tax returns, because
we fundamentally do not trust you; and these other problems, well, sure
they are problems, but you see a lot in the priorities expressed in
that budget with reference to the Internal Revenue Service.
Mr. HUNTER. If the gentleman will yield, Mr. Speaker, let me tell him
what has happened with the Clinton administration's policy on stopping
cocaine that is coming across the international border. A border
patrolman, and as you may know, I represent a great deal of the
California Mexican border, kind of the southern slice of the State. I
know the gentleman represents a great deal of Arizona just to the east
of my district.
A border patrolman came to us one day and gave us an internal
memorandum from Doris Meissner, who is the head of INS for the Clinton
administration. It concerned the border fence, because we have been
building a border fence made out of landing mats, steel planks like
those that you used in Desert Storm to build runways, except we turn
them vertical instead of horizontal, and when we weld them to posts, we
are making a steel fence 10 feet high and now some 14 miles long, from
the Pacific Ocean to the coastal hills.
{time} 2300
When we built that fence, my staff went out and searched the
inventories of every military base from Guam from Guantanamo and found
179,000 surplus steel planks to build this fence with. But when we
built the fence, we increased cocaine interdiction by 1,000 percent
because the drug runners, who were just driving their cars and trucks
across the border, not at the regular crossings but just right across
the sagebrush landscape, now could not get across because of the steel
fence, so they had to go through very channelized areas and we were
catching them.
Now, in a number of places we had fence that was made out of chain
link, and these chain link fences, the drug pushers and the drug
smugglers would just take their clippers, clip that chain link, roll it
back and drive their van or heavy-duty truck through it with cocaine
for America's children.
The Government of Mexico asked Doris Meissner to meet with them
because they did not like the idea that we were replacing these chain
link fences with steel fences that nobody could drive through, made out
of steel landing mat. As a result, she circulated a memorandum. I am
going to bring it out to the floor next time we have a special order
because I have got a copy of it.
[[Page H5498]]
It tells every Border Patrol chief, ``You are no longer allowed to
replace this flimsy chain link fence with steel landing mat.'' I call
that the drug smuggler provision. Because the Government of Mexico has
complained about it, from now on you can only repair a chain link fence
with chain link.
Mr. HAYWORTH. If the gentleman would yield for a question, since when
does an official of this Government change policy for the protection
and the edification of the citizens of this country to please
representatives of a foreign government? Where on Earth and why in this
Nation has that taken root? What is the explanation or the rationale
for this?
Mr. HUNTER. The gentleman is asking me to explain a President who has
sent our Government to the United Nations, our marines to Bosnia, and
our jobs to Mexico. The answer is that this President is an
internationalist. He believes very strongly in listening to people on
other sides of the border. Now, that can be good, but it is not good
when it conflicts with the thoughts of people on his side of the
border.
We have an absolute right to maintain a border with integrity, tell
people when they come across, come through the front door. Do not come
through our back door. Do not drive cocaine across the hillsides into
the southern reaches of California and Arizona.
But this administration has been dragged kicking and screaming to the
border, and they have been a little disingenuous with us, while they
are doing press conferences. They fought us on the 6,000 Border Patrol
increase that we put in the crime bill and on the 600 Border Patrol
increase that we put in the appropriations bill in fiscal year 1994.
They fought us on that.
Mr. KINGSTON. And, I want to point out, vetoed the provision in
welfare reform that said no permanent welfare benefits for illegal
aliens, and that then was vetoed by the President.
Mr. HUNTER. Precisely. When the President vetoed that welfare
provision for illegal aliens, when he allowed that welfare provision to
keep being paid out, that kept the magnet alive. That kept the magnet
that told people that if they came to the United States, as several
Social Security ladies showed me when they came in my office, they
said:
Congressman, here are some illegal alien families making
more money on welfare than we are making as GS-11's working
for the Federal Government, and they have discovered the joys
of daytime television, they are not working.
That is a magnet that this President has allowed to keep turned on at
full power, that brings people into this country illegally, because he
is paying them more in welfare payments than they can make working in
their native country.
But the point that I am making is this President and Doris Meissner,
his INS Commissioner, who is a nice person, have testified against and
fought against every Border Patrol increase that we have passed in this
Congress, that Republicans have passed.
Yet when we bring those newly trained Border Patrolmen that the
Republican Congress passed down to the Boarder Patrol headquarters at
San Ysidro, who is there to do a press conference and greet them but
the very same Clinton administration officials who fought their funding
in the first place. You know something? They do not even crack a smile.
You know something else? If we took all those Clinton officials who
do press conferences at the border in San Diego and we simply had them
touch hands, just link arms, they would stretch across the
entire border between San Diego and the gentleman's great State of
Arizona. We would not need a Border Patrol because we have more public
relations people there than we have illegal aliens.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Well, it bring to mind really the definition of
politics, I suppose, here in the late 20th century, at least as
practiced by our campaigner in chief. I would have to say it is
politics at its most cynical, the mission being, accept credit for
those things you have absolutely nothing to do with and divert the
blame for those projects and those objects, I might add, that cause
problems that you literally may have your fingerprints all over. That
has come to define politics here in the late 20th century as practiced
by our friend at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Mr. HUNTER. Well, if the gentleman is talking about those documents
that they found in the White House after months and months of not being
available, I know where they were. They were right underneath the TV
Guide all the time. That is where they were.
Mr. KINGSTON. Maybe underneath the Constitution. I know that is not
read over there.
The question that some of you just mentioned, and I think it is about
time we need to close, but the other day I was speaking to a chamber of
commerce for the gentleman from Columbus, Mr. Collins, and he was kind
enough to get a good bipartisan group of speakers. He had somebody from
the administration talking, and he was talking about the wonderfulness
of Government partnerships.
A small business, independent business person raised his hand and
said:
I tell you what. I do not want the government to be my
partner. In fact, the less I see, the less I have to do with
the government, the better for me and for my business.
I think that said so much, because people do not want the Government
in their lives setting up, as you just mentioned, these obstacles and
then coming up and saying, ``But I will get you through them.''
``Well, why do you not just remove the obstacles and get out of my
life, too, and that would be better.''
But it is about time to wrap up, so let me yield to the gentleman
from California first for a closing comment.
Mr. Hunter. Let me just say I appreciate the gentleman from Georgia,
whose tenacity and eloquence has really kept these very educational
sessions alive, and also my great friend from Arizona, who is so
articulate and who is so concerned about this country.
I have got one thing I would like to ask you both. Speaking of single
moms, we did a Boy Scout hike from sea to shining sea, from the Salton
Sea to the Pacific Ocean, a couple months ago. We are going to take
this walk. We had a lot of single moms, and there were Cub Scouts and
Boy Scouts on this walk. 100 miles. We are going to take this walk
literally from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic ocean, from the real
sea to shining sea next year. I want the gentleman who has so much of
Arizona, and the gentleman who has so much of Georgia to get their
Scout troops to participate in this sea to shining sea walk.
Mr. HAYWORTH. I cannot pause or hesitate to say as an Eagle Scout,
and I search out my card here in my pocket, as an Eagle Scout, I am
happy to take that challenge. Goodness knows I need the walk for my own
physical fitness. But having just participated in the Grand Canyon
Council Scout-a-rama at Papago Peaks, I am happy to do that. I trust
during our time in San Diego this summer we might have an opportunity
to involve some of the youth groups in San Diego to see what is
transpiring in your city and again to reinforce this notion that we
trust the American people, and it is not so much a case of being
hostile toward Government but instead embracing that Jeffersonian ideal
of a limited but effective Government, not as a partner, not as a
mechanism to be reinvented, but simply as the fabric of our
constitutional Republic that enables us and empowers us to provide for
the common defense and in the classical true sense, to promote the
general welfare of everyone.
That is the challenge we confront as we face the next century,
whether arm in arm with the Boy Scouts or other members of every
generation in this country, to work together to trust one another, to
understand it is our people who lead us and our Government which exists
to help empower people, rather than partner with them or simply be
reinvented to grow ever larger, to grow ever more intrusive, and to
require ever more of the hard-earned money the people of the United
States of America richly earn and richly deserve.
Mr. HUNTER. As a second class Scout, I salute my Eagle leader.
Mr. HAYWORTH. You far eclipse me my friend, in other endeavors.
Mr. KINGSTON. Let me say this to the gentleman from Arizona [Mr.
Hayworth], the gentleman from California [Mr. Hunter], I am looking
forward to your west coast boy scouts coming our way and we will show
them what a real ocean and a real beach looks like. I just want you to
remember that since I control the time, I can say that last.
[[Page H5499]]
Mr. Speaker, what we are trying to do, what we have been talking
about tonight is having a good welfare system, one that helps those who
need a helping hand but puts able-bodied recipients to work; a criminal
justice system that gets the thugs off the streets so that American
families can walk down the streets without having to look over their
shoulder and be scared; having a budget that is balanced so that
interest rates go down, having the waste cut out of it. Above all,
changing this Washington bureaucracy, rocking it, changing it
permanently so that we can have a government that is limited and one
that responds.
Mr. Speaker, I include the following material for the Record:
Jobs Lost
The following is a very conservative State-by-State
estimate of the number of jobs lost if the minimum wage is
raised to $5.15:
Number of
State jobs lost
Alabama..........................................................15,300
Alaska..............................................................300
Arizona...........................................................8,900
Arkansas..........................................................8,800
California.......................................................63,100
Colorado..........................................................8,000
Connecticut.......................................................4,000
Delaware..........................................................1,300
District of Columbia................................................600
Florida..........................................................35,500
Georgia..........................................................18,000
Hawaii..........................................................( \1\ )
Idaho.............................................................3,200
Illinois.........................................................29,200
Indiana..........................................................16,400
Iowa..............................................................4,200
Kansas............................................................7,300
Kentucky.........................................................12,100
Louisiana........................................................15,400
Maine.............................................................2,800
Maryland..........................................................7,400
Massachusetts.....................................................4,000
Michigan.........................................................23,000
Minnesota........................................................10,100
Mississippi......................................................10,500
Missouri.........................................................16,200
Montana...........................................................2,800
Nebraska..........................................................5,100
Nevada............................................................2,500
New Hampshire.....................................................2,200
New Jersey..........................................................900
New Mexico........................................................4,600
New York.........................................................29,900
North Carolina...................................................19,100
North Dakota......................................................2,400
Ohio.............................................................28,000
Oklahoma.........................................................10,800
Oregon............................................................2,100
Pennsylvania.....................................................27,400
Rhode Island......................................................1,300
South Carolina...................................................11,900
South Dakota......................................................2,400
Tennessee........................................................17,700
Texas............................................................60,600
Utah..............................................................5,400
Vermont.............................................................400
Virginia.........................................................15,000
Washington........................................................1,700
West Virginia.....................................................5,800
Wisconsin........................................................11,800
Wyoming...........................................................1,700
__________
National total................................................621,000
\1\ $5.25 is minimum wage.
Prepared by: The Employment Policies Institute.
____________________