[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 101 (Wednesday, July 10, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H7247-H7251]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   ISSUES OF THE DAY AMONG AMERICANS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Jones] is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted tonight to ask the gentleman 
from Minnesota [Mr. Gutknecht] and the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. 
Kingston] to join me in probably about 30 or 35 minutes of a dialog 
regarding issues facing the American people today. With that, I have 
asked my friend, the gentleman from Minnesota, if he would be the floor 
manager of this discussion. With that, I will ask him to initiate the 
discussion.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, we have just returned from some time back 
in our districts, and I do not know about the rest of my colleagues, 
but we have had a chance to hear what some people have had to say on 
the issues of the day. I had, I think, eight different town meetings, I 
was involved in about nine parades, did one special meeting with 
seniors in my district, and so I think I got pretty good feedback, and 

[[Page H7248]]

I thought maybe we could talk a little bit about some of the things we 
heard during the district break.
  But I know that the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] has some 
points that he wants to make and so I would like to yield to him for as 
much time as he may consume, if that would be all right, then we can 
get more into a discussion.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I 
wanted to address something that I think is dear to your heart, and 
that is the label that Republican freshmen have been getting hit with 
about being called extremists. Your class came to Washington with a 
spirit of reform and yet the press and the Washington establishment, 
who likes the status quo, has called you extremist, mean-spirited, 
callous, and so forth. The reason why is because you have tried to do 
this thing called the Contract With America. The Contract With America 
is a legislative package designed to reduce the size of government, cut 
waste, lower taxes, balance the budget, reform welfare and increase 
personal freedom.
  Now, my friends and neighbors that I see at the grocery store at 
checkout lines do not consider those extreme ideas. But let us examine 
this in detail. First of all, do you think it is a good idea to balance 
the budget? Do you think we should do something about the $20 billion 
in interest we pay each month on the national debt? Do you think we 
should pass this legacy on to our children? Do you think it is extreme 
to try to balance the budget in a 7-year period of time? I think not. I 
think that is a responsible legislative agenda, and I am glad that you 
are taking it. I applaud the gentleman for it.
  What did the Democrats do before when they were in the majority? 
Well, they increased domestic spending another $300 billion. They 
created over a period of time 163 different Federal jobs training 
programs, 26 different food and nutrition programs, 180 education 
programs. We may need more than one, but do we need all that 
duplication in Washington? Do we need all that bureaucracy?
  What did the Democrats do about taxes? Well, in 1993, President 
Clinton passed a $245 billion tax increase, which included a four cents 
per gallon gas tax, a tax on Social Security, a tax on small businesses 
and partnerships.
  What do the Republicans want to do? Well, we extremists have been 
accused of wanting to give tax breaks for the rich and the elderly. One 
of these taxes is a $500 per child tax credit. I ask the Members, is it 
extreme to give the working families of America a $500 per child tax 
credit so that they can buy a few more tennis shoes, a few more lunch 
boxes, a few more books, a few more clothes and so forth? I do not 
think that is so extreme.

  What about our seniors, shouldn't they be able to work longer without 
being penalized on their Social Security? That is one of the tax relief 
ideas that we had, allowing seniors to work longer.
  What about the capital gains tax cut? Now, will Ted Turner benefit 
from a capital gains tax cut, and all the wealthy people? Yes, this he 
will. Do you know who else will? All the widows in my district who 
bought property in a growth area during the 1960's. They bought a house 
that was worth maybe $35,000 at the time, and today it is worth 
$200,000, and they can sell that money for long-term personal care home 
or a medical emergency and not be taxed at the highest tax bracket 
because of this thing called the capital gains tax.
  What about the marriage tax penalties? Should we give the same tax 
rate to people who are married as we do to the people who live 
together? Right now, a couple can live together and they pay less taxes 
than a couple that gets married. Is that right? Is it extreme that 
Republican freshmen want to change that? And what about welfare? 
Members know, we tried to change that.
  Mr. JONES. The gentleman from Georgia, I just wanted to further 
refine and clarify something he said about working people. Is it not 
true in America today that the average working family will spend more 
on paying taxes than that same average working family will spend on 
clothing, housing or food? Have you heard that?
  Mr. KINGSTON. That is absolutely right. Another statistic I have 
heard is that the real Independence Day is July 3 instead of July 4th, 
because from January 1 to July 3, that is when you are working to pay 
for all the cost of the government at every level plus the cost of 
regulation at every level, and that is right out of working people's 
pocket.
  Mr. JONES. Is it not true also, according to the General Accounting 
Office, known as the GAO, that in 17 years without a balanced budget, 
which the Republican Party is committed to achieving, without a 
balanced budget in 17 years, according to the GAO that average working 
person will pay 80 cents out of a dollar to taxes? Have your heard 
that?
  Mr. KINGSTON. I have heard that, and all I can say is that family 
will quit working.
  Mr. JONES. Absolutely.
  Mr. KINGSTON. There comes a point when the mule cannot pull the load 
anymore.
  Mr. Speaker, let us talk about welfare. The President promised to end 
welfare as we know it, never introduced a bill when the Democrats held 
the Senate and the House, and yet when the Republicans did, what were 
we accused of? And these were quotes, actual quotes that I got out of 
the Congressional Record that we were accused of by our Democrat 
colleagues: These people, the Republicans, are practicing genocide with 
a smile. They are worse than Hitler.
  And here is another quote: There is a similarity between Newt and 
Hitler; Hitler started getting rid of the poor and those he said were a 
drag on society, and Newt is starting out the same way.
  Here is another quote: But not since the biblical day of King Herod 
have our children been in such grave danger. But unlike King Herod, who 
went only at the male child, the Republicans are going after all 
children.
  Now, what is it that we were doing that was so extreme, so hard for 
the Democrats to take, so that they were accusing us of declaring war 
on the children? Well, the main thing we are trying to do is say able-
bodied people who are on welfare who can work are required to work. Is 
that extreme? Is it fair for a guy who is out there working 40, 50, 60 
hours a week paying for somebody to stay at home, is it extreme to say 
to the guy who is able to get to work and join him to be required to 
work? I do not think it is.
  What about illegal immigrations? We said no more permanent benefits 
for illegal aliens, people who are not American citizens. Is that 
extreme? I would say it isn't. That was part and that was one of the 
things the President vetoed.
  Mr. JONES. I would like to ask the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. 
Kingston] or the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Gutknecht], we recently, 
as you were talking about welfare reform, if my colleagues remember, 
the House of Representatives passed a bill, and I am going a little bit 
off your subject but it does tie in, about we are talking about late-
term abortions, and the President of the United States, the highest 
office in this land, when the majority of people in America said, even 
women and men that were pro-choice said, that late-term abortions are 
wrong when a child in the 7th and 8th month of life in the womb of a 
mother, is murdered, and yet the President vetoed a bill that Democrats 
on that side and Republicans on this side said that we need to ban 
late-term abortions in America.

                              {time}  2230

  And yet the President vetoed it. Now, I want to ask the gentleman 
from Minnesota how his people in Minnesota feel about that issue.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Well, I think it ties together with what we are 
talking about, because when we are advancing what I think is a 
commonsense agenda, and I think it is commonsense whether you are from 
North Carolina or Georgia or Minnesota, of putting the Federal 
Government on a diet, making the Federal Government live within its 
means in advancing policies, whether it is the Defense of Marriage Act 
or eliminating or making illegal these diabolical late-term abortions 
where the baby is literally pulled from the mother's womb, all except 
the head, the head is left in, scissors are inserted in the back of the 
baby's brain and literally the baby's brains are sucked out

[[Page H7249]]

with a suction device, I think everywhere outside this Beltway that is 
considered extreme.
  The agenda we have advanced is commonsense. The extremism, if there 
is any here in Washington, DC, is I think confined to our liberal 
friends.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Is it not true that two of the most liberal Democrat 
leaders, the gentleman from Missouri, Dick Gephardt, and the gentleman 
from Michigan, David Bonior, voted to ban these partial birth 
abortions?

  Mr. JONES. Absolutely.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Yet the President still vetoed it.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. That is a good point. Many of our friends on the other 
side, who you would consider liberal, joined us in that particular 
vote, and hopefully this Congress is going to have another opportunity 
to revisit that issue and we are going to have a chance to override 
that veto.
  Because I do not know about you, and we have talked about going home 
over the Fourth of July, I was at one county fair, and I must tell you 
that was the number one issue that people wanted to talk to me about, 
because they had learned the facts about this procedure and they said 
you have to do everything in your power to override that veto, to make 
certain that that stops.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Is it not true this procedure is so gruesome that the 
extremists who are against the legislation did not want to allow the 
sponsor to have a postor, a chart that actually showed the procedure, 
and they tried to vote not to allow it on the floor? Is that not the 
case?
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. That is exactly right. And it was a very simple 
medical type diagram to demonstrate exactly what happens in this 
procedure. But again it comes back to what the gentleman has been 
talking about what we have been advancing, whether we are talking about 
regulatory reform, balancing the budget, or allowing families to keep 
more of what they earn. And your point was made as well that back in 
the 1950's when we were growing up, I am not sure about you, Mr. 
Kingston, you are quite a bit younger than us, but when we were growing 
up, my parents, and we talked a little too about working families, my 
dad worked in a factory all his life, union man, member of the AFL-CIO, 
and my folks raised three boys and my mother did not work. She stayed 
home.
  Now, we did not have a lot of the things that people think that they 
have to have today, I am sure, but we never considered ourselves poor. 
But there was a big difference back in the fifties. Most of the 
families raised their kids on one income. And why couldn't they? They 
got to keep 95 percent of what they earned. The average family today 
has to raise their kids on less than 60 percent of what they earn. Huge 
difference.
  Mr. JONES. In my district, as a candidate for Congress and now as an 
elected Member of Congress, and going back in my district every weekend 
since I have been here 17, 18 months, except for about four, the people 
keep telling me, Congressman, we are tired, we are working harder, we 
are working longer, but we are taking home less money, what can you do 
to help us?
  I think the Congresses of the past that have been the Democratic 
controlled Congresses kept increasing programs, increasing the size of 
government, and when we increase the size of government programs we are 
taking more money out of working people's pockets.
  What has happened in America is that frustration. That is why I think 
we are the majority now. People are looking for us to reduce programs, 
particularly those that do not work, which there are plenty, and they 
are looking to us to say please give us a chance, let us work harder 
but let us keep more of our money.
  I see this frustration every time, every weekend I go home, because I 
see people at the grocery stores, I see people at church, I see people 
down the street and they say to me, Congressman, we like what you all 
are doing, please give us a chance to earn and to have a chance to do 
for our families what we think we should have a chance to do.
  Mr. KINGSTON. One of the examples I like to point out in terms of the 
Federal registration, which is the book of all the Federal regulations, 
and so forth, it has grown from 41,000 pages 10 years ago to 68,000 
pages today, and we have over 130,000 Federal bureaucrats that 
basically just look over your shoulder to make sure that you are 
behaving right and telling you how to do things from educating kids, 
running a poverty program, to health care, to running your business, to 
your home. Everything.
  Some of it is good. I certainly want to have a safe and sound 
government, but I want to have a commonsense government, one that is 
balanced. And is that not what we are saying? Is it not that we want to 
give the people back home more decisionmaking power and more personal 
freedom, and is that an extreme position?
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. I think the two fundamental questions, and this comes 
up in my town meetings as well, and I am sure you hear it, and it comes 
down to two very important questions. The first question is who 
decides? Is it going to be the Federal Government or is it going to be 
decided by local units of government and, more importantly, by 
families?

  And second, and I think it is almost the same question, but who knows 
best? And I think an attitude has developed here in Washington, and I 
agree that is one of the reasons they sent so many of us here in the 
last election cycle, was that the attitude that had developed here in 
Washington that Washington knows best, whether you are talking about 
raising broccoli or raising kids, there is this attitude that somehow 
Washington knows best.
  I think it was exemplified a few months ago in a hearing in the 
Senate when one of the education experts ultimately said to one of the 
Senators that he really felt that he cared more about children than the 
average parent. And the Senator finally stopped him and he said, well, 
if you care more about my kids than I do, then please tell me their 
names.
  And when you get right down to it, the truth of the matter is parents 
care more about kids than bureaucrats and it really is a question of 
who decides and who knows best. And we have tried to say that we think 
families know best. We think we ought to allow them to keep more of 
their own money, to make more of their own decisions so that they can 
do more for their kids, so that they can save more, so that they can 
take mom out for supper on Saturday night and leave a little more in 
the collection plate on Sunday morning.
  That is what this is all about. This is not some mean-spirited 
accounting exercise; it is about renewing the American dream. And for 
too many Americans that dream is dying today.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I had a town meet in the little town of Darien, GA. A 
teacher came there and she said, you know, each week, or each day I 
spend 2 to 3 hours on paperwork, most of it for the Federal Government. 
Now, that is 2 to 3 hours a day, equaling 10 to 15 hours each week, 10 
to 15 hours a week she is not teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic 
to the kids.
  Now, the question is, who do you think best knows how to educate the 
kids in Darien, GA, that teacher or Washington bureaucrats down the 
street from where we stand right now? And as you have pointed out, as 
much as these bureaucrats love children all over America, I still think 
because they are in Washington they might not be able to teach them as 
well as the teacher who is right there in Darien, GA.
  And I do not know why everybody outside of Washington, DC, 
understands that, but the bureaucrats here just do not get it.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. But the story gets twisted. The unfortunate thing is 
the story gets twisted somehow between what we are trying to do and as 
it goes through this cycle here and as it gets filtered through 
sometimes the dominant media culture out there that somehow if we 
decide to reduce the size of the bureaucracy, the educational 
bureaucracy, for example, to follow up your point, that if we vote to 
reduce the size of the educational bureaucracy then we are hurting 
kids, when in fact there is no real proof that what we are doing right 
now is helping kids. Test scores have gone down as we have increased 
the size of the educational bureaucracy here in Washington.
  Mr. JONES. During the week at home during July Fourth, just like I am 
sure you as well as the gentleman

[[Page H7250]]

from Georgia, I attend four or five church services that were called 
God and Country Day.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield, I am glad to hear that 
now. You deserve it. You need that.
  Mr. JONES. I am going to give this back to you in a moment.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I did 15 services myself.
  Mr. JONES. Well, I want you to speak about yours in just a moment. I 
attended four or five church services about God and Country Day and 
Return to Glory Day, and I must say that it helped, it inspired me for 
this reason. As you know, both you gentlemen know, and I am on the bill 
and maybe you both are, I am on the bill introduced by the gentleman 
from Oklahoma, Ernest Istook, called the Religious Liberties 
Amendments, and I had this discussed many times. Why do you in 
Congress, when you have behind the Speaker's chair ``In God we trust,'' 
why do you not allow our students to have voluntary prayer in school?
  And I was pleased to tell them that Ernest Istook, a second or third 
termer from the State of Oklahoma, has introduced a constitutional 
amendment, and that is the way it should be, to give voluntary prayer 
back to the States and the schools. And these people applauded in 
church when I told them that I was on a bill that would help, if it 
passes the House and the Senate and goes back to the legislatures.
  As you and I, all three of us know, and those listening, 38 out of 50 
State legislatures have to pass the legislation before it becomes an 
amendment to the Constitution. But people in America are ready for the 
clarification of our religious freedoms that the writers of the 
Constitution promised us, whether you are a Jew, Catholic, Protestant 
or Moslem.
  I will share this and then I will yield to you, the gentleman from 
Minnesota or the gentleman from Georgia. It so happens that last year, 
in 1995, a Federal judge in Santa Fe, TX, I think his name was Kent, I 
apologize if I am mistaken, sent a notice to a high school graduating 
class that if you were going to use the word ``Jesus'' in a prayer, and 
it was a Protestant-Catholic group, 90 percent of it, then he would 
have to have you removed by the Federal marshals.
  So what Ernest Istook and those of us who have joined in this 
legislation have done is to say all we are asking is that we clarify 
our constitutional rights to practice religious freedom in America, 
whether you are a Jew, Catholic or Protestant or Moslem.
  So I am pleased to tell you that back home in my district, in eastern 
North Carolina, and I am proud of this district, we care about 
religious freedoms in this country, and that is what I think the 
Constitution is all about.
  Mr. KINGSTON. All I will say about that Federal judge is he obviously 
wanted to go to hell and he did not want to wait in line.
  I think it is real important that we understand that what we are 
trying to do is just get decisionmaking out of Washington. Think about 
this. In Minnesota, North Carolina, if your county welfare agency knew 
that it was in their hands and in their power to end poverty in your 
home county, what a difference it would make, because really we do not 
look at poverty as our problem.
  The thing about Americans is we see a problem, we want to fix it. And 
so what we have found ourselves subconsciously doing in many cases is 
ignoring problems because we see something like poverty and we think, 
well, we cannot fix that. You know why we cannot fix it? Because there 
are too many rules and regulations.
  If somebody is on welfare, a 16-year-old with a baby, she needs 
health care, she has education needs, she has transportation needs, she 
has child care needs, and under our current welfare bureaucracy 
different agencies do different things, and so if you wanted to you 
cannot solve her problem because there are too many bureaucrats who are 
telling you this is my territory; this is my territory, and I get her 
here and I get her here and we do not want you just to have one A to Z 
program to get this young woman independent.
  So, as a result, we all kind of tend to back away from it. But if you 
knew in your hometown you could make a difference, then you would make 
a difference.
  Mr. JONES. Is it not true that since the mid-1960's, when the Great 
Society program was established under the leadership of Lyndon Johnson, 
that it has cost the American people $5 trillion? This Nation today is 
about $5.3 trillion in debt. So welfare has cost the American people $5 
trillion.
  In addition to that, what the Republican majority has proposed that 
even Democrats supported and the President vetoed is a program that 
would save the taxpayers in 7 years in outlays about $58 billion and 
lend the programs, or I should say direct the programs back to the 
States, which most of them want, and the President vetoed it.

                              {time}  2245

  Is that not correct, please?
  Mr. KINGSTON. It is correct. I think, there again, the President was 
acting from an extreme point. There is nothing extreme about requiring 
able-bodied people to work. There is nothing extreme about 
discontinuing permanent benefits for illegal aliens or telling local 
folks they can get involved in their own poverty program through State 
grants.
  But the President decided to go for the status quo, and if the 
American taxpayers have paid $5 trillion, is it not time that we tried 
something different because of no results?
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I think that is the important point. We 
have spent $5.2 trillion on the war on poverty. It is terrible in terms 
of the cost in dollars, but the real tragedy of the welfare system we 
have created in the United States is not the cost in terms of dollars; 
it is the cost in terms of human potential.
  As I say so many times, we do not have to walk very far from this 
Capitol building to see the effects of what we have done on people. Go 
to any of the housing projects. In fact, 85 percent of the violent 
crime in this city is committed within 3 blocks of a Federal housing 
project.
  We see the despair and despondency and dependency that we have 
created. The cost is astronomical in terms of dollars, but the cost is 
so much higher in the cost of human potential. The real reason is when 
we try to substitute Washington-run welfare systems for those old-
fashioned traditional values that really made this country work, things 
like work, and family, and faith, personal responsibility, those are 
the cornerstone values that really have made this society work. The 
problem with the welfare system is not the cost in terms of taxes; it 
is that it erodes and destroys and eats away at those cornerstone 
values.
  That is why we need to reform the welfare system, not just to save 
money for taxpayers this generation or the next. We need to reform the 
welfare system and move away from a Washington-run welfare system 
because we have destroyed all of those basic values. Look at the 
families that have broken up, and people do not see themselves as 
personally responsible anymore. We do not encourage faith. All of those 
things made this country work.
  In the 1840s there was a French gentleman who traveled the United 
States and he wrote several important books. One was called ``Democracy 
in America.'' I am talking about Alexis de Tocqueville, and he said it 
in so many ways so beautifully. It was this volunteerism that really 
made America work. He talked about religion.

  The gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Jones] talked about Ernest 
Istook's bill that I am cosponsoring as well. De Tocqueville said 
religion is the first instrument of democracy. Yet somehow we have 
driven religion and faith from the public square. The only welfare 
system was through the churches and faith institutions, and now we have 
said they cannot participate.
  I do believe that we have to reform the welfare system and help the 
President keep his campaign promise. It is much more about human 
potential and the waste that the Washington-based welfare system has 
created.
  Mr. KINGSTON. One of the things about welfare, in preparation for 
Father's Day I was doing some research and found out that police 
departments unfortunately use as an indicator of crime in the 
neighborhood, not the drug use and not the location or the geography 
but how many fathers live at

[[Page H7251]]

home. Ninety-two percent of the children on welfare do not have a 
father at home. Those are the kids that do drop out of school, do have 
teenage pregnancy situations, do have violent crime and so forth.
  The fact was unbelievable, but it is that breakup of the family unit. 
Why is the dad not at home? Because we have a stupid, insane government 
policy that says if he stays at home, they get kicked out of the 
housing project because their income will make them ineligible. Does 
that make any sense?
  Would it not make sense to have a housing project where we have 
stable mom-and-dad relationships, where we can have some model citizens 
that other folks who live in the housing project can look up to? Does 
common sense not dictate that we do that?
  Instead, we have a Federal Government that says, ``No, dad, you are 
out of here. If you stay here, she is going to lose her benefits,'' and 
she cannot go out and find a job and get the benefits and the child 
care and the health insurance, and she needs that. I do not blame her.
  Mr. JONES. The points have been well made. What we are trying to do 
is to give a program to the States with a financial support because we 
believe the States throughout America, the 50 States, as has been 
proven in Michigan and Wisconsin, that the people of the State know 
what will help those that are dependent on welfare.

  The gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] is right. Most of the 
people on welfare would like to have an opportunity to get off of 
welfare, but we have a system that punishes them, whether it be that 
they live in public housing and they go out and get a job and start 
making a little more money, and they raise the rent and they cannot get 
caught up. It is the same way with those that want to work.
  The point is that we have got to develop a system. I think the States 
can do a better job--that has been proven--than the Federal Government 
of saying what works in my country, Pitt County, North Carolina. The 
State of North Carolina knows better than some bureaucrat that we made 
reference to 10 minutes ago telling North Carolina or Georgia or 
Minnesota what works better in their State. Let the people decide. Let 
the people help people. That is what it is all about.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. If the gentleman would yield, I have had 75 town 
meetings since I was elected. I did not realize that until we counted.
  Mr. KINGSTON. That is extreme.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. That is extreme, but every one of them, I feel better. 
Certainly we have a few people that disagree with us, and that is part 
of a democracy as well.
  But there is so much common sense among the American people, and they 
understand exactly what was just said. They understand that the 
Washington-based, one-size-fits-all, whether we are talking about 
education, the environment, whether we are talking about welfare, we 
can take any issue and they know instinctively that it can probably be 
run much more efficiently and frankly more compassionately if it is run 
locally and if we allow people to volunteer and to work together. They 
know that.
  It comes up at my town meetings and I suspect it comes up at every 
town meeting, that the common sense, the decency and the compassion of 
the American people is overwhelming. But somehow all of that that we 
talk about here in Washington is called extreme by some of our friends 
here in the Congress and by some of the folks in the media, and 
certainly by the people down in the White House.
  But outside of this beltway there is tremendous good common sense 
among the American people. They understand this. Frankly, I have said 
this before, I think they are way out in front of us. The things that 
we are talking about I think the American people understand 
instinctively.
  I know that the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher] wants to 
share some thoughts with us tonight. I wonder if we can kind of wrap 
up. I do want to talk about some of the other things that we may have 
heard or learned while we were back in our districts over the Fourth of 
July break. Does the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] have any? I 
have a couple of other points I might share.
  While my colleagues think about it, I will share a couple. I was 
surprised in my district how often the issue of the FBI files came up. 
Frankly, again, I think the American people are out in front of us and 
I think they put their fingers on the correct questions.
  The first question that they cannot seem to understand and I do not 
understand is how people could be heard in the White House and not know 
who hired them.
  Mr. JONES. Would the gentleman yield? I am not going to take his 
time, but I must tell him that is the question that was asked of me 
numerous times. How could Mr. Livingston have such an important job and 
nobody knows who hired him? That is the point he is making.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman would yield, I want to make sure we 
are all on the same page. The question is who hired Mr. Livingston, and 
he is the political operative who illegally obtained over 900 FBI files 
on private citizens and invaded their privacy by looking into those 
files illegally, and has yet to give us an explanation of what he was 
doing with them, why and who ordered them, and how he is saying he did 
not even know who hired him.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. One of my constituents raised a point that I had 
forgotten, and that is that a number of years ago a guy by the name of 
Chuck Colson went to jail for mishandling one FBI file, and he went to 
jail for 3 years.
  I think there is an instinctive understanding among the American 
people that if they can misuse the FBI against Republicans here in 
Washington, that they can misuse the FBI against anybody. It can happen 
to them. It is a grave concern to the American people.
  They are happy that Congress is looking into it, but they also 
suggested that we have to be very careful that this does not become 
just a partisan political witch-hunt. I think we have to do our jobs 
and exercise oversight without becoming overly partisan.
  Mr. JONES. If the gentleman would yield, because we may in 1 minute 
yield the time to the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher] so he 
can have a full hour, but I would like to add to the point very quickly 
that you, with a badge on your lapel that says that you are a Member of 
Congress, and the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston], you will have 
a very difficult time, as I would or anyone else in this membership, to 
get into the White House. Yet we have a man running a security that 
nobody knows how he got there. It is absolutely ridiculous and crazy.
  I think I have about 2 or 3 minutes left. I would like to yield, if 
the gentlemen would agree, the remainder of my time.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. If I could, just for 1 minute, one other very 
important question was raised. I think this is one of the best 
questions that I heard. I am embarrassed that I did not think of it. If 
this is an innocent bureaucratic snafu, why is it that the bureaucrat 
who was most responsible when he was called before the Senate, why did 
he take the fifth amendment? There are a lot of unanswered questions 
and I think the American people are expecting us to get to the bottom 
of it.
  Mr. JONES. I thank the gentleman from Minnesota and the gentleman 
from Georgia for participating with me tonight.

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