[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 84 (Monday, June 10, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H6104-H6108]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     CONCERNS FOR AMERICA'S FUTURE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Souder] is recognized for 60 
minutes as the designee of the majority leader.

[[Page H6105]]

  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, Saturday was a historic day in America, 
well, at least in Indiana or at least in my house, because my daughter 
graduated from high school and it was a big event. I do not feel like I 
should have a daughter graduating from high school. It makes one feel 
older. It makes one reflective about when they graduated and what their 
hopes and dreams were at that point in life. Everything seems like it 
is going to go on forever, that the risks are small, that the 
adventures are great.
  I remember my dad gave a plaque to my band instructor in my little 
high school in Leo. He thought it was the most hilarious thing, and the 
band director thought it was the most hilarious thing, and they posted 
it up over the band director's office so that every day when we 
practiced we had to see this sign that said, ``Why can't all of life's 
problems come when we are young and know all the answers?'' I think 
that is the way many young people feel.
  At the same time, we get the sense that many of them are very 
concerned about their future as well. I think any parent, and many 
children, who look at what is going on around them, wonder what is 
going to happen in the next, 10, 20, 30 years. What if the vision on 
MTV actually becomes the complete reality in a few years? What if the 
attitudes towards the opposite sex that are reflected in those music 
videos, the rape, the abuse, the derogatory language towards women, 
would become the standard in our society? What if the violence that we 
see in the movies, and in those videos, and the talk of suicide that is 
rampant in today's rock music would become the reality of the society, 
even more than it is today?
  What if the TV show families, very few of which represent the 
majority of America, were to become the reality of America for my 
daughter and my two sons? The Internet and computers have brought an 
incredible opportunity for all Americans in the education area. We, on 
our home computer, to be able to tap into the encyclopedias, to be able 
to tap into the type of educational games and the many things that all 
of us can go through Internet and other things is miraculous. But on 
the other hand one can get manuals on how to perform rape and all sorts 
of pornography right into our house, where we have little or no control 
as a family, and some of us can get accidentally into our house even 
when we want to try to control it.
  In addition to that, what about the incredible national debt that has 
just been dumped on my daughter? We just heard a special order which 
illustrates why we cannot get real change in America. Medicare is going 
broke. They can talk around it as much as they want to talk around it, 
but the fact is that it is going broke and every report brings its 
final reckoning day another year closer in spite of the 
administration's attempts to cover it up.
  And what do we do? We come up with this excuse and this kind of 
rhetoric, and we do not address it. We have all this big fuss about 
whether or not the Republicans were mean-spirited and shut down the 
government because of trying to cut government for senior citizens, 
when in fact our program was 75 cents a month different from the 
President's program, when in fact the President had proposed less 
growth in Medicare spending than the Republicans did just 2 years 
before we came into office; when in fact the President's proposal 
wanted to wait and delay those changes until after the election.
  The ultimate of the problem that we came to try to Washington to try 
to change, we in the freshman class, yet we just heard an hour about 
there not being a problem in Medicare and whistling in the dark as the 
program goes broke.
  My daughter is being struck with a long-term national debt because 
this government and the people in Washington do not get what the people 
in America do, which is, unless we change our behavior and start 
transferring some of the power back to Indiana and back to the homes 
and individuals and businesses and communities where they can take 
control of their lives, my daughter and my sons are going to be stuck 
with everybody else's debt from their irresponsible spending and lack 
of willingness to gain control of that.
  And, furthermore, as we watch our freedoms being eroded, both because 
of the breakdown of moral values in our society and the breakdown of 
the willingness of local communities to handle the problems and the 
general takeover by Washington over our lives and our decisions and our 
flexibility, and see that power come here to Washington, what type of 
society is my daughter going to have? How much freedom is she going to 
have to maneuver?

  Are we going to have so killed our market that we are only going to 
have a few oligopolistic companies or monopolistic companies from which 
to choose for a career? Is it going to be such a government that we 
have no economic growth because the government takes such a huge 
percentage of the taxes or runs up the deficit so high that the 
interest rates absorb a phenomenal number?
  Unless we somehow change the inflationary nature of the health care 
for senior citizens from 10 percent down to more approximating the 2 
percent of the health care growth rate that occurs in the rest of 
society, our entire Nation is going to go broke.
  Unless we deal with Social Security, 43 percent of my daughter's 
income, 43 percent, will be going to FICA taxes within the next 15 
years. We have to deal with these questions, and we in Washington 
cannot just keep trying to excuse it so we can get elected to the next 
one and hope we can retire before we have to deal with it and stock our 
children with it.
  But these are not even the main concerns that I want to talk here 
about tonight. I came here to talk about two, and they are not directly 
related but they affect our families and our society. One is welfare, 
and the other is drug abuse.
  One of the problems in our society is that we cannot really have 
freedom unless we have personal responsibility. If people do not 
exercise personal responsibility, freedom is gradually eroded.
  Mr. Speaker, I do not think that putting a policeman on every street 
corner and building prisons everywhere is going to solve the problem of 
crime. But the people in America and the people in Indiana are not 
going to stand for the inability to walk in their neighborhood, the 
inability to go shopping, the inability to talk to their neighbors 
without fear of being shot. So they will demand that we put a policeman 
in every corner and build more prisons if we have to. Freedom gets 
eroded.
  The same if we do not control the pornography and the sexual 
appetites in this country. If we have to worry whether our daughters 
and wives and our families and single women are concerned whether they 
are going to get raped, then we are going to have more crime protection 
and more liberties will be restricted. If we do not get control of the 
budget and more and more money goes to taxes, more liberties will be 
restricted there. With freedom comes responsibility.
  I believe that one of the dangers of what this administration is 
doing is they talk the conservative talk. When the President was here 
early this year, he sounded like the former occupant of my 
congressional seat, Dan Quayle. He sounded like somebody who was going 
to promote family values.
  He said the era of big government was over. He talked about balancing 
the budget. In fact, he has gone around the country running all of 
these different ads about what a great conservative he is, but the 
problem is that the actions do not match.
  Let us look particularly at welfare. We can have an honest difference 
in policy as to what the Federal Government should do and what the 
government should do on welfare, but what really frustrated me, I was a 
staffer here on the House side for 4 years and on the Senate side for 4 
years and 2 years in the district, so I have been around. But to be in 
the middle of it, it is really disappointing to see how much posturing 
there is and how little really comes often from the heart.
  There are honest liberals and honest conservatives, but much of it is 
just reelection gimmicks, and the rhetoric on the House floor gets very 
disturbing when we see that. It is one thing if a person says, ``Look, 
I believe we need a welfare program, we need to expand that welfare 
program.'' I believe that we have at least one Member of the House who 
is a member of the Socialist Party and is open about what he believes. 
One should stand up and say, ``I believe the Federal Government should 
do this.''

[[Page H6106]]

  But it is another thing to say, ``I do not believe the Federal 
Government should do it,'' but then, as the President does, veto every 
welfare reform bill that comes to him and try to say in TV commercials 
that in fact he supports welfare reform.
  We have been trying to do some welfare reform, but quite frankly part 
of the reason we are vulnerable when we do things like oppose the 
minimum wage--which I opposed not because I am not concerned about 
working families who are trying to make it on a low income, but I am 
concerned about the people who are going to be laid off because of this 
bill--but part of the reason many of my friends in the Republican Party 
voted for the minimum wage bill and why Republicans do not seem to know 
how to handle the welfare issue, is that we have not articulated a 
vision for how working families and those people struggling to get out 
of poverty, those people who are working poor and trying to move up to 
the next level, we as Republicans have been remiss in trying to 
articulate a vision. So, we become vulnerable when some of these 
controversies occur.

  Let me start with a very simple point which to me seems so basic, 
that it is amazing that here in Washington we have to debate it.
  That simple point is this: I do not believe that anybody on welfare 
should be making more or have any more take-home income than somebody 
working full-time on minimum wage. That seems so simple, does it not? 
That if somebody is working 40 hours a week for minimum wage, why 
should somebody not working be making more money through government 
transfer payments?
  I had in our family business in my small town, this has been a number 
of years ago, we had what we called the second spot on one of our 
delivery trucks. It was an entry level position, a turnover slot that 
paid just slightly more than the minimum wage at that time.
  I had a college graduate come in looking for a job, and at that point 
he was getting welfare benefits and his wife had a baby. He said that 
he would really like to work. He believed that it was the right thing 
to do to work, but in fact he could bring in this many more dollars 
staying on welfare than he could working, and would I meet the 
difference? He said if I came within a thousand dollars of the 
difference he would take the job, and I did.
  There is something wrong with a society where that is the case. Right 
now, depending on your family mix and what State one is in and a few 
variables, somebody on welfare can usually get around $15,000. A 
minimum wage is more like $10,000.
  I would take that differential, and by this I do not mean AFDC. We 
hear Aid to Families with Dependent Children as the welfare program. We 
have housing programs, we have Medicaid with health care, we have child 
care programs, we have transportation programs, we have job training 
programs. I mean the whole range of those benefits. We ought to have a 
basic point that says it is not going to be above minimum wage, take 
the dollar differential and help those who are working.
  The people who are working should be getting the health benefits in 
the transition, so that each dollar they make, they get to keep most of 
it, so that we have the change in the Federal benefit level being 
slightly less than the change in what they are earning, so there is 
always an incentive to earn more which we do not currently have in our 
system.
  It seems so eminently logical that we think somewhere along the line 
someone would try to do this, that instead of rewarding not working we 
would reward working, and we would build that incentive in for the 
working families and try to encourage people to work rather than order 
them to work. We can continue to try to order people to work but we 
also need to encourage people to work.
  We also need to trust more in the people back home. Quite frankly, 
the people in Indiana, in fact the people in northeast Indiana, know a 
whole lot more about how to deal with the welfare problem than the 
people here in Washington know how to deal with the problem in 
northeast Indiana. This is generally true but it is not just rhetoric 
anyone.
  We have Governors all across this Nation who have been innovative in 
their attempts to handle the welfare question, whereas Washington has 
floundered and been ineffective on the welfare question here in 
Washington.
  We had the President praise the Wisconsin program and he said he 
would try to grant them a waiver, and he was a bit stunned when we 
actually passed it through the House. We are tired of the talk; we want 
to see the walk. We passed it through last week and now the Wisconsin 
model can go forward.

                              {time}  1945

  Furthermore, we heard a little bit more about Medicaid a little bit 
earlier tonight. Do you know in a Government Reform subcommittee that 
has oversight of this, what stunned me was, do you know that in the 
Medicaid Program, even though it has been increasing, the actual 
dollars to poor children and the actual dollars to the seniors have 
been declining. Do you know why? Because this Congress made--not this 
particular Congress, but the Congress here in Washington over the last 
couple years--made people who abuse drugs and alcohol eligible for 
Medicaid.
  A tremendous growth in the Medicaid Program was mandated out of 
Washington that the State of Indiana and other States, Indiana, for 
example, did not cover that, had to absorb the cost of drug and alcohol 
abusers.
  So we hear rhetoric about Medicaid helping poor children and rhetoric 
about Medicaid helping seniors, but in fact a Washington mandate said 
that they had to cover drug and alcohol abusers. Part of the reason, in 
fact a major reason why we are giving flexibility to the States on the 
question of Medicaid is so they can set their standards. And in 
Indiana, there will be more dollars for low income children and more 
dollars for seniors under the Republican plan because not every drug 
abuser and everybody who is abusing alcohol, who I feel very sorry for 
them, but there is a little bit of a question here, when working 
families cannot get health coverage and people who choose life styles 
that are self-destructive can get health coverage, there is some kind 
of a mismatch. It is your tax dollars that are being spent this way.
  So my first point, and I will not belabor this first point any 
further, is that I think we can generally agree that the welfare 
program, as it currently stands, is not working.
  Let me move to the drug issue. I have talked here on the House floor 
a number of times, and my friend from Florida, John Mica, earlier 
talked about this tonight. But in Fort Wayne and in northeast Indiana 
we have had a tremendous problem with crack cocaine, in particular, as 
well as other forms of cocaine. We have had a huge increase in LSD, and 
we have been battling this problem for longer than most cities. It came 
down from Detroit 12 to 14 years ago and has been expanding.
  This mentality of the drug abuse, particularly, and it is not just in 
the, while much of the activity is taking place in the central city of 
Fort Wayne, those who are abusing it are not just those residents 
there. The people from the suburbs and small towns have come in and 
they destroy those neighborhoods by patronizing the dealers in those 
neighborhoods. It has now started to expand outside of the central city 
of Fort Wayne. It is concentrated in the central city of Fort Wayne.
  There that culture of crime and the desire for quick money has--not 
every case of these have been proven to be drug related, but they are 
usually drug abusers and the culture has infected it. We see at two 
different times about a year apart pizza delivery boys being shot for 
the cash they have on them. We had a 13 year old shot by a younger 
child. Police Chief Neil Moore in Fort Wayne told me a terrible story 
about a little girl who he found naked in a crack house, who had been 
selling her body for rocks of crack cocaine. And she was so small that 
they could fit a, they cut holes out of a burlap bag to put her arms 
and legs through and she was selling her body for drugs.
  Yet what do we see coming out of Washington? We see, if you are going 
to smoke, do not smoke cigarettes, smoke marijuana. I did not inhale. 
Oh, we are going to take the things that we are using down there and 
divert one of the AWACS things up to Alaska to look for oil spills. We 
are going to send one over to Bosnia. And relax some of

[[Page H6107]]

the interdiction efforts of the drugs are pouring into my home town and 
around this country.
  And it is not surprising that we have seen an increase in the amount 
of cocaine coming into America. We have seen an increase in the purity 
of that cocaine coming into America. And we have seen a decline in the 
price. While Washington is talking and posturing in other ways, we have 
been drowning. And we have reversed, instead of going down as we were 
for years in drug abuse, we are going back up. Instead of young people 
going down in their approval of marijuana and cocaine, it has gone back 
up. We are inundated again when you to go the mall, it feels like I am 
back in the late 1960's again. You see marijuana leaves on hats and on 
shirts and on the front of album covers. All of a sudden we are back in 
a drug culture.
  I was fortunate enough to go with Congressmen Hastert and Zeliff and 
Mica down to Mexico and Central America and South America. And we met 
with the leaders of those countries and were saying that they needed to 
crack down on the cocaine and the coca leaves and the coca growing and 
all the transit into America. But do you know what else they said, they 
said, your appetite for drugs in America is also destroying our 
countries. And while they need to work harder at interdiction efforts, 
we also need to realize that we are not just destroying America, we are 
destroying the countries who want that money that our abuse and 
insatiable demand for drugs is causing.
  When we look at this soaring drug and alcohol abuse in our society 
and the terrorism that it is causing in our neighborhoods and when you 
go in, have I visited a number of African-American schools in inner 
city Fort Wayne. One thing that always strikes me is almost every 
student there will have some story about how they are scared to go out 
at night, how a cousin was shot, how somebody was going through the 
neighborhood and got shot, that their lives are filled with terror 
because we are refusing to grapple with this problem in America.
  So drug abuse is a big problem. So what are we going to do? Well, the 
first thing is we need growth and opportunity. Yes, that means one of 
the things we need is tax cuts. I know that that just drives the other 
side of the aisle crazy, but it works. And we need various types, both 
in the general society so there is economic growth, also in the urban 
areas and places where unemployment is high. That is not my focus 
tonight. But tax cuts do work. If the Government sucks all the dollars 
here to Washington and does not turn it into industries where you have 
high productivity rates, where you have a high velocity of the money, 
to use the business term sense, I have both an undergraduate business 
degree and a master's degree and velocity of money is one of the key 
things that you can get out of private sector that you do not get out 
of public sector. Unless we have that economic growth we can sit here 
and talk and we can play money shuffle games all we want, but unless 
that money grows, all we are doing is reshuffling a deck rather than, 
as Kennedy and Kemp, would say having a rising tide that lifts all 
boats.

  Then I also agree, I think it was Congressman Rangel who has said 
that we also have to worry about those boats that got stuck on the 
shoals. In other words, while a rising tide might lift most boats, some 
do not lift. And I am not going to argue that there should not be a 
minimal safety net.
  In think, as Nicholas Eberstat has argued in an eloquent paper that I 
heard him present a number of years ago, there is a difference between 
destitution and poverty. Poverty is a relative term. You will never get 
rid of poverty. But destitution is an absolute term. Nobody should 
freeze; nobody should die of hunger; nobody should not have some sort 
of a roof over their heads. They do not necessarily need a color TV. 
They do not necessarily need individual private rooms for each of the 
kids. There is a standard here. But we ought to have the decency to say 
there is going to be a minimal safety net in society.
  Furthermore, for those people who want to move up, for those people 
who want to work, we need some job training programs. I differ from 
some of my Republican colleagues, I think we have a lot of problems 
with affirmative action, but I believe affirmative action has played an 
important role. And I believe it would be a mistake to suddenly 
eliminate all these programs.
  I also believe in certain things we need reach out efforts to reach 
out to particular minority communities often who felt disenfranchised 
in society and when all of a sudden you say here is an opportunity does 
not mean they necessarily rise up. They may have faced past 
discrimination. They may have faced past persecution, or they may 
simply not have had the family exposure around them to see how to 
capitalize on those opportunities. I do not believe it is inappropriate 
for Government to sometimes help give a hand up. But the goal needs to 
be how do we move somebody with the hand up. How do we move them into 
the workplace? How do we make them productive citizens? How do they 
become full and participating members of society, not to breed the 
dependence which the current government programs have largely done.
  Furthermore, I believe that we need to look at some of the innovative 
proposals that have been put out. I am a cosponsor of Congressman 
Talent of Missouri and Congressman Watts of Oklahoma's different 
package to promote urban opportunity. I also, my former boss in the 
U.S. Senate, Dan Coats, has an initiative to do that. I think we should 
encourage and the party should encourage those.
  I myself have pushed the charitable deduction, an increase in the 
charitable deduction. Let me tell you why. I have seen programs in 
urban centers around this Nation that have had a huge impact. Very 
seldom have they been Government programs. Let me give you a couple 
examples.
  Rev. Lee Earl of Detroit, who is now working with Bob Woodson at the 
National Center on Neighborhood Enterprise, at one conference where 
they had grass roots activists, foundations, people from the 
government, he was getting this pitch about why religious groups should 
not have any access to the funds.
  He said, let me tell you, and this is a paraphrase, I do not want to 
pull all these words in Lee's mouth, but the paraphrase is this. He 
said, my church operates a child care center. My church does job 
training. We have housing. We do drug rehab. We do all these different 
things, and we are having an impact on the city. Yet what I see out of 
the Federal Government, talking to HUD in particular, are housing 
projects that are crumbling, drug treatment programs that do not work, 
job training programs that do not work, and I see the whole range of 
failed programs. Yet you tell me that unless I do it your way we do not 
get access to the funds.
  Part of the problem here is that I, like many Americans, am nervous 
about who might get the dollars if you do it through the regular 
Government transfer programs.
  Let me give you another problem with the Government transfer 
programs. I just spoke at the Abundant Life Ministries, a jail ministry 
program, about 2 weeks ago. They have turned down a big Government 
grant. They have been tremendously effective. I have met with a couple 
of individuals who have been through 13 different drug treatment 
programs and they know how to beat every system. But when they gave 
their life to Jesus Christ they changed. And Abundant Life Ministries 
can get the Government money to help more people like them as long as 
they do not mention Jesus Christ. As long as they take out the 
components that works, they can have the money.
  Now, this is going to be the way the Government operates. So one of 
the things we need to do--let me give you another example. There is a 
teen pregnancy program in northeast Indiana operated by a Christian 
organization that just got a grant. They can only talk about teen 
pregnancy if they do not mention anything about religious in the teen 
pregnancy. Excuse me?
  If this is going to be the way the Government grants programs work, 
we need to make sure that more of the dollars get into the private 
sector where they are actually having an impact.

  In San Antonio alone, with Juan Rivers and Freddie Garcia's program 
down there, I personally met over 200 addicts and dealers who have now 
become Christians, who are back in their communities, who have been 
working and

[[Page H6108]]

having an impact on drug abuse. Yet the department of alcohol and 
mental health in Texas for awhile was considering shutting them down 
because they do not have degrees. They are not licensed drug 
counselors.
  Do you know what? The magic of this is they were not doing drug 
counseling. They were changing people's lives. When people's lives 
changed, they got rid of drugs.
  We need to figure out how we balance the rights of individuals not to 
fund churches on the other side and at the same time get money into the 
hands of programs that are actually working.
  In my home district, for example, Rev. Ternae Jordan's son was at a 
music lesson at a local YMCA. He was sitting on the couch out by the 
door and was shot in the back of the head by two kids who were shooting 
outside. The whole city was traumatized by the event. The son 
recovered, but it led to Reverend Jordan starting a program called Stop 
the Madness, trying to crack down and encourage neighborhood groups to 
work on the drug program.
  Mr. Speaker, recently I was privileged to attend the seventh 
anniversary celebration at the Greater Progressive Baptist Church in 
Fort Wayne, IN honoring Rev. Ternae Jordan. Pastor Jordan has been a 
leader in Fort Wayne in many ways, not the least being through his 
antidrug organization, Stop the Madness. I particularly enjoyed this 
eloquent tribute by Cheryl Story, which I now include in the Record.

                    Now, Let's Talk About the Pastor

                           (By Cheryl Story)

       As a Pastor, Rev. Jordan, along with Angela, must not only 
     have Faith, (belief without proof, but they must have Hope: 
     Desire joined with expectation, the opposite of doubt with an 
     anticipated promise of expected benefits and blessings.)
       Now Rev. Jordan's substance material is ordained by God. 
     Therefore, regardless of the magnitude of the metamorphosis 
     of his physiological structure, that is whether he gets old, 
     his hair turn gray, if his teeth fall out, whether he gets 
     ugly or remains handsome, Ternae Sr.'s substance will not 
     change. It does not matter how much he accomplishes and 
     achieves in this life or how many mistakes he makes, how much 
     good he does or how many lies you tell on him, his substance 
     remains the same for he will always be a Preacher and a 
     Pastor.
       The Pastor is on duty 24 hrs. Day & Night. He polices the 
     Community, he provides assistance/comfort to those in need. 
     He must be an Educational Instructor, Therapist/Counselor, 
     Philosopher/Psychiatrist, Mediator, some folk's 1st Attorney, 
     a Marriage Officiator, a Funeral Eulogist, a Sick Room 
     Specialist and a Dying Hour Confidant.
       The Pastor must be a Persuaded Preacher, for he is a 
     Salvation Salesman, a Paradise Pusher, a Jesus Junkie, a 
     gansta for God, a Jehovah Witness, your best friend and 
     satan's worse enemy. For Faith can and will move Mountains.
       What is it that turns an ordinary man into an Addictive 
     Apostle who is obviously strung out on a Jesus, who hung out 
     on a Hill, who sends us a comforter, who calls himself The 
     Holy Ghost, that runs with a Spirit that spoke Himself into 
     being GOD, who ordained this man before he entered his 
     mother's womb? I tell ya it was ``Faith!'' For March of 1989, 
     Rev. & Angela took leave of their home, accepted the Greater 
     Progressive Baptist Family, stepped out on Faith and told 
     their God, ``Send me, I'll go,'' and left their Comfort Zone 
     behind them.


                  ``THE EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN''

       Evidence is the Proof of a Pastor's Faith. Let me give you 
     a little documentation and you can determine the truth. When 
     Pastor arrived, if you joined one of the four Auxiliaries you 
     were guaranteed to automatically become an officer. Now we 
     grown spiritually from skeletal Auxiliaries to full scale 
     Ministries. We've got an up-front discipled Deacon Brd., a 
     unified Trustee Brd., morning & night Bible Study & Prayer 
     Meetings. I remember when our one choir consisted of the 
     Nelson & Trice families with 5 or 6 others mixed in, now God 
     has blessed us to have a full choirstand of children's choir, 
     a dynamic young adult choir, a 30 & over Generation choir a 
     full Mass Choir. We got Pam, 2 Dres, Tony, 2 Pianists, 
     Gor'don and Sheila all in the same House. I'm talking about 
     Faith & Evidence now.
       The Lord has blessed us with CWF, a Brotherhood Men's 
     Support Group and Promisekeepers. We had an old organ and 
     ragged mikes, now we got high tech equipment and state of the 
     art sound room. Sometimes we couldn't even make payroll or 
     pay our bills and God has given us financial increase thru 
     tithing members. Seven years ago, if you came to Church at 
     12:30 p.m. you could pick & choose your own ``Praying 
     ground'' now it's standing room only by 11:00 a.m. We got 
     Birthing of a Vision and Stop the Madness now has nationwide 
     video presentations.
       We've got an intergrated Congregation and we participated 
     in inter-racial Church Fellowhips. Pastor Jordan is a 
     Jefferson Community Service Award winner, the NAACP's Golden 
     Anniversary Man of the Year and everybody else's Man of the 
     Year. Certainly God has ordered the Steps of Rev. Ternae 
     Tsgarias Jordan and We've Come This Far by Faith!

  Also in addition to the Stop the Madness program in Fort Wayne, I 
just visited a couple of weeks ago with Rev. Jesse White and his 
daughter's wonderful computer program. Rather than just talk about the 
problems, Rev. John Perkins from Pasadena, CA, said too many people get 
their satisfaction from feeling good about talking about the problems 
rather than doing something about the problems.
  Reverend White has a computer program where people come back, get the 
training and then either get a job or move up in their jobs because 
they have the skills with which to work in the job market.
  It is one thing to whine about stuff; it is another thing to do it. 
People like their church and their program need to be encouraged, as 
another pastor in Fort Wayne, who is a friend of mine, Rev. Otha Aden 
has a similar program in the southeast side of Fort Wayne working with 
kids in the after school southside opportunities program where he, too, 
has working with local businesses, has computers there and is trying to 
promote among the young people in that hard hit area the importance of 
getting the training so that they can be important factors in the 
growth of Fort Wayne and in their neighborhoods and their families.
  Another friend of mine, Shirley Woods, has started a center right in 
the middle of an area. There are five different crack houses in the 
immediate vicinity of where she started this neighborhood center for 
Saturdays and afternoons after school and in the summer, and it is not 
just an activities center for the kids. She also has some educational 
training and family training programs with the families and trying to 
work with the virtues and the things that families need to rehabilitate 
their families.
  There are just a few. Another program in Fort Wayne at the Cooper 
Teen Center, they have been out here a couple times to visit with me. 
Andre Patterson and Carl Johnson have a program, Simba, of black pride 
and self-esteem with these kids and giving them training skills.
  There is hope. I have been into Newark, South Bronx, I have been in 
the center of, just after the riots in LA, into San Antonio, inner city 
Chicago, some of the toughest housing projects, as well as in a rural 
area in Appalachia for multiple days, that everywhere you go, even 
where it seems most dismal, somebody is having an impact.
  There are these little flower gardens in the middle of the toughest 
area where people are having an impact. What we need to do in America 
is figure out how to encourage those little gardens, how to give them 
the funds and encourage people to give them the funds so that they 
grow.

                              {time}  2000

  Rather than stomping them out through massive government from 
implying to America that the solution to America's problems is the 
Federal Government, or any government really, that it can be a 
supplement, it can be a time to be there when you are in great need, it 
can give a stimulus and some training. But it is not the ultimate 
answer to our problems.
  That is the vision that we Republicans are trying to communicate, 
that the answers to America lie in people's heart, they lie in the 
families, they lie in the communities, they lie in the local 
governments, and only then to Washington, and hopefully we can 
accomplish that, and we will continue to try to communicate that 
message, and I thank the people in northeast Indiana for giving me the 
chance and for having so many of us here who share these views, and 
hopefully for my daughter who just graduated and for my sons who are 
still coming up, that they can look at America with hope and with 
opportunity rather than the type of America that we can see on MTV and 
the type of pessimism I fear we are going to have if we fall back into 
the trap of the deficit spending in the collapse of the families and 
morality.

                          ____________________