[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 105 (Wednesday, July 17, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H7773-H7777]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MORE ON REFORM WEEK
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May
12, 1995, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] is recognized for
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time and wanted to say
first of all a couple of things about the, and I am not going to call
it a debate, my friends from the other side of the aisle who would
yield 1 minute and then go off on a tirade. I do not think that is
quite a debate, but then again I am not from their districts.
But I want to point out one thing, Mr. Speaker. The Clinton
administration came to office, and they have been in office for 3\1/2\
years. They enjoyed 2 years of majority rule in the Senate and in the
House. During that period of time, campaign finance reform was not
passed. I have heard that Phil Gramm was the problem.
Who controlled the Senate during that period of time? Obviously the
Democrats did. If they are going to bring in partisan politics, then it
certainly stands to reason it should have passed under their watch the
first 2 years.
I know this, Mr. Speaker, because I worked with Tillie Fowler and
Peter Torkildsen on a campaign finance bill that we introduced as a
freshman class.
{time} 2215
announcement by the speaker pro tempore
The SPEAKER pro tempore. If the gentleman from Georgia would suspend,
the Chair would remind all those assembled that it is inappropriate to
discuss individual Members of the other body or action or inaction they
may have taken with regard to legislation.
Mr. KINGSTON. I understand that, Mr. Speaker, and I appreciate that
point.
Let the record be clear that the Senate and the House were controlled
by Democrats for the 2-year period of time. The House Republicans have
been working on campaign finance reform on a bipartisan basis for some
time now, and one of the issues that we are trying to get bipartisan
support on but we cannot is the issue of soft money and the practice of
unions and big union PACs to participate in elections and not even to
have to report that money even though it is spent on behalf of a
candidate. They can come into a district and spend under the label of
soft money, an independent expenditure of money on ads, money directed
toward the incumbent Republican, almost unlimited, and there is no
check on that.
True campaign finance reform would account for all political money,
not just the reportable money, and I hope that we do get some Democrats
who are willing to stand up to the big union bosses. I know that they
are raising $35 million on behalf of Democrat candidates right now and
Democrats are somewhat very reluctant to take on such a cash cow, but
it would be great if they would.
Just to give Members some idea, AFL-CIO in 1994 spent $804,000 on
Democrat congressional candidates, 99 percent of their contributions.
The American Federation of Teachers spent $1,053,000; 99.3 percent of
their total contributions went to Democrats. The American Trial Lawyers
Association spent 94 percent of their campaign contributions on
Democrat candidates, $1,759,000. The Human Rights folks spent 96.5
percent of their money on Democrats. That is $470,000. The Community
Action Program spent 96 percent of their money on Democrats, $42,000.
The International Longshoreman's, $300,000, which was 96 percent going
to Democrats. The IUE, this is some other union, I am not sure which,
$204,000, 100 percent going to Democrats. The International Union of
Bricklayers, $143,000 going to Democrat candidates, 98.9 percent of
their entire budget of contributions. The National Education
Association, $1,968,000; 99 percent of it going to Democrats. And one
more, the UAW union PAC, $1,914,000, 99 percent going to Democrat
candidates. I would say if you want true campaign finance reform, this
has to be included in the formula.
Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Massachusetts wanted some time, and
let me yield to him.
Mr. MEEHAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I was just going to make the point that the bipartisan
bill, which I have been working on with Chris Shays and with Linda
Smith, would in fact limit, in fact the first provision is to abolish
PAC money. The second fall-back provision because of constitutional
problems is to limit PAC's to $1,000 per primary, $1,000 for general.
And there are 21 Democrats on that particular bill so I think the
characterization of Democrats is inaccurate.
Mr. KINGSTON. Reclaiming the time just a minute with the intent of
yielding back to you for further explanation, does your bill also limit
or eliminate independent expenditures, such as those that have been
targeted
[[Page H7774]]
by the AFL-CIO to the tune of $35 million?
Mr. MEEHAN. The U.S. Supreme Court has just recently ruled that one
cannot limit the independent expenditures in these races. But what we
do is require more accurate recordkeeping so that we know where the
money is coming from and where it is going.
One of the difficulties with campaign finance reform is the U.S.
Supreme Court decisions which make it impossible to limit independent
contributions.
Mr. KINGSTON. Reclaiming my time for a minute, I understand that and
I think that is a good point. Let me ask the gentleman this, though, in
terms of individual union members who are not necessarily buying the
big labor union Democrat embrace, should they not have the right to
know where their dues are going? For example, here is a union, the
Democrat-Republican Independent Voter Education Committee. I am not
sure which union this is, maybe the gentleman can tell me. But just the
name, Democrat-Republican Independent Voter Education Committee would
lead me as a rank and file union member to think that my money was
going everywhere when in fact $2,131,000 went to Democrats which
represented 97.8 percent of the entire expenditures. Clearly that is a
Democrat PAC. It would be fair to tell the people who have to
contribute where their money is going.
So my question is, do you support that worker contributor's right to
know clause, which we have been working very hard with in our campaign
finance reform to try to get in there?
Mr. FARR. May I respond?
Mr. KINGSTON. I yield.
Mr. FARR. I think that every worker has a right to know where their
contribution is going. I do not think that your provision is the one
that I support because it does not apply equally to corporate as well.
A PAC contribution is a PAC contribution. It is a check-off system,
whether you work for a corporation or whether you work for a union.
Mr. KINGSTON. Reclaiming the time for a second, I agree with you
absolutely. PAC contributors, people who work for banks or insurance
companies or manufacturers, they should know also because clearly some
of those PAC's are lopsided, also.
Now, none of them are as lopsided as the labor union PAC's, but I
mean, for example, even NRA and tobacco PAC's, the tobacco PAC's gave
more to Democrat candidates in 1994 than they did to Republicans. NRA
is on like maybe a 60-40 split. I do not have the number with me but I
did look at it. I truly believe anybody who contributes to a PAC needs
to know to the dollar where that money went. So I am in complete
agreement with you on that.
Mr. MEEHAN. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. KINGSTON. Yes.
Mr. MEEHAN. I just ask the question, why do you think big tobacco
decided to stop contributing more to Democrats and retool their efforts
contributing to Republicans after Newt Gingrich and the Republicans
took over?
Mr. KINGSTON. That is a good question. Reclaiming the time, this is
the way I understand it as a student of campaign finance reform. In
1972, when PAC's started because of the large, individual contributor,
the gentleman may remember the man, he was in the life insurance
business, gave over $1 million to Richard Nixon's campaign, and one of
the reactions were to have PAC's and PAC's were originally supposed to
be a campaign finance tool, a way to get around the influence of a guy
who can write a million-dollar check. And so what happened is that
PAC's, people thought back in the early 1970's, would be ideological,
and the gentleman knows there are some that are truly ideological. For
example, a lot of the women's group PAC's they will give to a pro-
choice candidate who has no chance of winning, whereas a lot of the
pro-life groups hold back and want to make sure that they are winning.
Let me even take that back. I would say the abortion PAC's are more
ideological. The business PAC's are absolute pragmatists. They do not
truly have an ideological philosophy except their own special interest.
So what they do, and the gentleman knows well, they contribute to the
majority, and a lot of those tobacco contributions that have come in
have come in because they best against the freshmen who knocked out
incumbents, and the first thing that happens, as the gentleman is well
aware of, is PAC's that bet on the wrong horse try to make amends early
on in the game and that was part of the thing that was going on.
Had you guys kept the majority, there is no doubt the money would
have stayed with you on that.
I agree, let us fix it. Let us have more worker right to know,
contributor right to know, and let us get into it. There is plenty of
room here for finance reform.
Another thing that I am interested in, and I believe the gentleman is
too, is making sure that the money comes from the district. I think 75
percent of the money ought to come from somebody's individual district.
But we are willing to settle on 50 percent plus $1. But that is more to
your side than our side.
Mr. FARR. The difficulty with your plan is you have no limits. If you
are concerned about PAC contributions influencing, whether they be
labor PAC's or business PAC's or whatever the ideological framework of
a PAC may be, you put no limits on them, none, absolutely none. We put
limits, we say all right, candidate, if you are going to run with a
limit on yourself, then you cannot take more than one-kind of your
money, $200,000 maximum from a PAC and no PAC can give you more than,
in a 2-year cycle, $6,000. That is what you are missing. You are
missing this sort of idea of putting any kind of limits on an
individual.
Mr. KINGSTON. Reclaiming my time, I agree with that and I know you
are supporting the one-third limitation. I would support that.
In my race generally I am well under that. Let me give the gentleman
some live true-to-life examples, Members of your party. I will share
this list with you. I am not going to tell their names at this point.
This one here is one of your leadership, $77,000 from PAC`s, $281,000
from individuals. Seventy percent PAC contributions. Here is another
one, 80 percent from PAC's, $229,000, $63,000 from individuals, or 16
percent.
Going through your list, here is one who is in your leadership,
$753,000 from PACs or 78 percent and $167,000 from individuals, or 17
percent.
The list goes on and on. I could tell the gentleman, as a
conservative Republican, I would love to limit this because I think it
would help my party a lot more than it would help your Members.
If you want to be partisan about it, and I am not trying to be, I
know the gentleman and I are both trying to clean up the system.
Let me yield to the gentleman.
Mr. FARR. In response to your question, if I knew you were going to
bring your list, I would have brought my list. I think there is
probably a list of similar sorts with your leadership as well. The
point of the fact is this is not about what has occurred in the past
because we are trying to clean that up. We are trying to put some
limits on it. You cannot put limits on a bill that, frankly, the
Committee on Rules has just reported to the floor. Your leadership's
bill does not reform campaign finance.
Mr. KINGSTON. Well, there are a lot of things that are not in that
bill. My freshman class bill that we introduced in January 1993 reached
a lot further. The gentleman's freshman class bill when he first came
here or the bills that the gentleman worked on reached further, also. I
think that what we are trying to do is get this done, maybe plank by
plank.
There is a big debate when it comes to campaign finance reform: Do
you have a big bill that is a delicately stacked thing that you know
winner-take-all, and if it goes down, you get nothing, or do you do
piece-by-piece and does it take years to accomplish?
Before I was in Congress, I was in the State legislature. Just about
every year we had a campaign finance bill. We always had to add to it,
we always had to tighten it up, and I would say over a 10-year period
of time, there have been dramatic changes in the Georgia campaign
finance laws. So I have seen it both ways where you try a big,
comprehensive bill, then it falls flat, then I have seen the smaller
bills. I am not going to tell the gentleman
[[Page H7775]]
one is better than the other, but we have got to get, as you know, a
lot of folks on the other side to pass it.
We have got to get the President to sign it. We have got to get 218
votes here. We always want it to be bipartisan.
{time} 2300
And I overheard you say earlier tonight one of the big problems is
everybody is an expert, because the way he or she won his or her race,
they believe is the absolute for everybody.
Mr. FARR of California. I, like you, served in a State legislature
for 13 years and was very active in campaign finance reform in the
State of California. It is a very complex system. You have 6,000 local
governments in the State besides the 58 counties and the State
legislature, and your are dealing with an awful lot of campaign filings
and technical process.
Unfortunately, you cannot reform campaign financing piecemeal because
it has so many different versions. It has amounts of money that people
can give, whether they can give them to a candidate, whether they can
give them to a party, whether they can give them to a PAC, whether they
can give them to a national party.
So just the individual giving money, how much, how often, whether
each of those organizations, a PAC, how much money they can give, what
they have to report, in California you still have what we call
corporate contributions to campaigns. You can give either an in-kind
contribution. You may be a corporation that has a lot of telephones
and, therefore, on election night you can give your office for people
to come down and make calls. Under Federal laws you cannot do that.
Mr. KINGSTON. Reclaiming my time, I want to say normal PAC's cannot
do it, but union PAC's can do it. And union PAC's provide manpower,
whereas banks or a Chamber of Commerce, they cannot. In terms of the
lopsidedness, in terms of a big union PAC, it is incredible.
I also want to throw out something that I consider campaign finance
reform. Many Members around here do not, on both sides of the aisle,
mostly on your side, which has to do with Federal Government agencies
lobbying.
I served with you on the Committee on Agriculture last session and
this session moved over to the Committee on Appropriations. I can tell
you, Mr. Farr, anybody who thinks Federal Government agencies do not
lobby has never served on the Committee on Appropriations because that
is all they seem to do.
They come up to our office, they have money for conferences, they
have money to fax themselves around their offices and so forth. I
believe a key portion and one of the stumbling blocks in balancing the
budget is the fact we have agencies who are feeding out of the
taxpayers' trough and they do not want to have finance reform that
would stop them from lobbying.
Maybe this is more in the lobbying category, but, see, I would still
consider it under that general topic of cleaning up the House.
Mr. FARR of California. Well, I think we have to address lobbying
reform separately from campaign reform. Lobbying reform is essentially
people who make their living there in Washington, whether it be on the
public payroll or the private payroll, trying to convince Members of
Congress that their opinion is the right one.
I frankly believe that lobbying is good. I do not think that lobbying
is bad, because these are complex decisions that we have to make, and,
as the gentleman knows, we need to have all the information that we
possibly can, both sides, pro and con, and, fortunately, people are
supposed to be independent after getting all that knowledge.
We know the decisions are complex. A lot of it deals with minutia and
the only way we can get a grasp on it is listen to people who have
vested interest in it. That does not mean because they come see you
that they have our vote.
I think if we are to address campaign and lobbying reform, we have to
do it, but we have to do it in such a way that it does not cut off
getting good information to make a tough decision.
Mr. KINGSTON. I agree with the gentleman, and I agree it certainly
can be done. Having again served in the State legislature, I would say
that the State agencies also lobby, some more than others. For example
social service agencies I think lobby a lot more than something like
the natural resources or the fish and wildlife agencies in the State of
Georgia. And that kind of model, where we do see two different
agencies, one that is very aggressive, one that is passive but there
with good information, but you as the legislator had to initiate the
conversation as opposed to fax machines and working networks and
conferences, and so forth, and bringing people into town and so forth
like that. I just think that that should be part of the process.
I would love to have campaign finance reform and lobbying reform,
because I think they are twin sisters. I think it should be one bill.
Now, I have learned, there again going back to piecemeal, you have to
take what you can get passed. So there has to be a practical side to
it.
Mr. FARR of California. Under your scenario of piecemeal, the
campaign reform would be piecemeal and lobbying reform would be
piecemeal, but as you know, under each of those tents there is a
tremendous amount of technical law that has to be developed.
My point of it is that you are not going to get campaign reform. You
may get technical adjustments along the way; for example, the issue you
brought up about requiring people who contribute, PAC's who annually
have to go through the process of committing that, that is I think a
technical adjustment. That is not campaign reform.
Campaign reform is really the whole comprehensive effort of trying to
control how money comes in and how it is spent. I do not think we will
do that unless we put limits on what people can do. Otherwise it is
just a feeding frenzy of getting money from wherever you can get it and
trying to influence the outcome.
Mr. KINGSTON. There again I think it is important that people at
least have a requirement that at least 50 percent of the money come
from their own district, because you can be elected from one district
and then gallivant around the globe, going to Hollywood, going up to
New York, meeting with big labor bosses in Washington and then going
back home and your opponent has raised 100 grand on local
contributions, you have raised $800,000 with the Washington big money
types, and you can spend and annihilate your opponent. You can make
yourself look conservative, a liberal, a moderate; you can target
women, you can target minorities, or white middle class, people with
blue suits, people with red hair, anything you want with that kind of
money, and that is what lopsides this thing in favor of incumbents. We
need to level the playing field more.
Mr. FARR of California. May I share with you the concerns I have by
limiting 50 percent of your contributions just to your district? And I
can probably do that and I am sure if I looked at it, I do, but it is
not something I really support.
When I first ran, I ran against a very wealthy individual and when I
was interested in running for office, I did what I think everybody
does, you sit down and say where do I start. And what do you start
with? You start with your friends and your relatives and you write
everybody you ever knew, everybody you went to school with. I happened
to serve in the Peace Corps so I went and wrote all my Peace Corps
colleagues.
I wrote my relatives around the country and said, hey, I am running
for public office and you know I am better than anybody because I have
grown up and worked with you, will you help me with your initial
contributions? And I think that is where everybody every candidate
starts.
What disarms them is if they cannot do that and only the person who
has a lot of money, a person of wealth, and by the way we limit the
person----
Mr. KINGSTON. Hold on 1 minute. I want to reclaim the time and I want
to admonish you. Have you ever read Robert Mitchum, who wrote
``Alaska''? Have you ever read any of his books? He always starts at
the very beginning, and I am interested.
But I do have something else to talk about, and so I want to say if
you can quickly get to the point, I would appreciate it, so that I can
talk about this other issue.
I do also want you to acknowledge the fact you guys did not yield us
any time, and I do want you to remember that.
[[Page H7776]]
Mr. FARR of California. I appreciate your allowing me to dialog with
you.
Mr. KINGSTON. I had to slap myself on the back since you are not
volunteering to do it.
Mr. FARR of California. I appreciate your allowing us to have this
colloquy. Without people talking, sometimes it is kind of lonely in
this chamber. But my point is limiting raising that money in your
district will put the advantage on a wealthy person versus a person who
really has the passion to run for office, and I think we should be very
careful before we do that because you do not put any limits on what a
wealthy person can spend. Our bill does. It says you cannot contribute
more than $50,000 of your own money.
Mr. KINGSTON. Well, now, the bill that I have cosponsored with the
gentleman from Tennessee, Zach Wamp, which is a bipartisan bill, does
put individual limits on there. We do not want anybody or any
organization to have undue influence.
Taking your situation and saying you have to take money where you can
get it. The other problem is, though, if there is going to be
influence, and if influence and money are related, should that not be
district driven rather an outside interest driven?
Mr. FARR of California. I think that is for the voters to decide in
your district, frankly. If they do not like where your money is coming
from, you have to publicize it. It is a public record, and the
newspapers pick it up the moment it is of public record. And we see
that because our campaign reports, everybody in this House had to file
them, and I think they become public record any day now, and you will
see the stories all next week about where contributions are coming
from. That gives the voters in the District an ability to decide
whether they like what they are seeing or not.
I am not sure that is so broken that it needs that kind of fixing,
because I think that if you do not put limits on what the individual
can contribute, the advantage all goes to the wealthy, and I do not
think that is fair.
I do not want to take any more of the gentleman's time. I really
appreciate this colloquy with you tonight.
Mr. KINGSTON. Well, listen, I appreciate what you guys are doing, and
I know you appreciate what we are doing. I think that what we will do,
as we do have these genuine disagreements on just different portions or
sections of campaign finance reform, as long as we can identify those
that we do agree with and keep the ball moving, then we will continue
haggling over some of the other parts.
And, again, that might take a while, but I believe Democrats and
Republicans all realize on an issue like this we have to have each
other, we have to work forward if we want it to move down the road.
Mr. FARR of California. We have a bill on the floor, as the Committee
on Rules just indicated, and I hope we can gain your support. Thank you
very much.
Mr. KINGSTON. Thank you, Mr. Farr.
Mr. Speaker, I wanted to talk a little bit in regards to tax relief
and economic issues and jobs. I got a call last night from a gentleman,
a father from Pennsylvania, had two kids, and I could tell he was a lot
like my middle-class friends back home, struggling to make the ends
meet. And he just left a message, ``Please keep us in mind; keep
working.''
I think about this man. I think about the women I see that are my
wife's friends, who are around the neighborhood raising those 3-year-
olds, those 5-year-olds. I drive the carpool every Monday when school
is in, and when I am driving the carpool, quite often I get out and I
talk to people. Mostly it is women. There are a few other dads, but,
fortunately, one of the good benefits about this job is we do have some
odd hours during the day and we are a little more flexible when we are
home.
I see these families struggling. They save a little money, but at the
end of the month instead of going down to Florida for the weekend, they
have to spend it on a new dryer, or they have a car payment, or the
house mortgage is payable. And they can manage it, but then they want
to do something else to the house, a little modification, or they have
to put in a new stove or oven, or something like that, and there is no
money at the end of the month.
We passed a $500-per-child tax credit. If you had two kids, this
gentleman, this family in Pennsylvania, that would have been $1,000
more that they could have. Is that a tax cut for the rich? I do not
think so, Mr. Speaker. What that thousand dollars would have meant for
this middle-class man is that he and his wife could have bought a few
more pairs of tennis shoes, a few more clothes, or maybe they could
have gone to another ball game this summer and seen the Philadelphia
Phillies do something. It just would have been a good thing for them.
That was vetoed. We are going to keep working on that, Mr. Speaker,
because that $500-per-child middle-class tax cut is important.
Another thing that we have passed is an increased deduction for the
home-office tax. In this day and age, with two-income families and
high-technology, men and women have an opportunity to work at home. I
think of Liz Simpson. She is a neighbor of mine, a friend of mine, an
underwriter with an insurance company, and she was able to hook up by
modem to her business and stay at home with their little boy, John, and
their other child so that she could spend a little more time but also
continue earning a living there at home. It gave her a lot of
flexibility, and I am glad we increased this home-office tax deduction.
We also had a thousand dollar elder deduction so that if your elderly
mom or dad, because of medical or economic necessity, has to move in
with you, you can deduct up to $1,000, again, helping that sandwich
generation, you know the ones who have dependent children and dependent
parents. And they are getting squeezed one more time.
We need to do things like this for the American middle class.
Above all, Mr. Speaker, of course we have to balance that budget. We
are paying $20 billion each month interest on the national debt, and
that money could be going to education, could be going to health care,
could be going to crime prevention.
{time} 2315
All it is doing is paying the bondholders on the national debt. If we
balance the budget, we can bring down interest rates, which would bring
down the cost of home mortgages and automobile payments. It would
stimulate the economy.
On small business entrepreneurs, do my colleagues know, Mr. Speaker,
that one-third of the small businesses in America are owned by women?
If they could get money cheaper, borrow money at lower interest rates,
then these female entrepreneurs could create more jobs, expand their
businesses, create more opportunities and in turn earn more and be able
to spend more leisure time at home, which is very important to the
American family these days.
In terms of other family issues, we have got to increase security
back home. A friend of mine called me. Obviously, I am not going to
mention her name, but this woman was in her house. It was about 10:00
in the morning, mid-morning, washing her 3-year-old. The door bell
rang. She goes to the door bell. She sees somebody through the curtain
and does not open the door and goes back to the bathroom where she is
bathing the baby. The guy kicks in the door, comes in and rapes her.
Does not hurt the child, fortunately.
Do you know, Mr. Speaker, that this rapist only was sentenced for 3
years. They caught him but he was sentenced for 3 years. I never would
have known about the story except she called me because she was
notified that he was getting out. They have a law in Georgia that you
notify the victims when somebody on probation is coming. That just
makes your stomach cringe, Mr. Speaker. This thug, this deadbeat who
kicks down the door on a housewife at home and then only gets 3 years,
that is why we need truth in sentencing. Mr. Speaker, it says, if you
are sentenced for 10 years, 15 years, then you serve 10 years or 15
years. You serve your full sentence.
I want to say this, that when folks are in prison, they ought to have
work requirements and they ought to have education requirements. They
ought to be out there busting bricks. Hard work, 40 hours a week.
Education, 20 hours a week. That adds up to 60 hours. And do you know
what, Mr. Speaker? That is what my middle-class friends are working
anyhow. The people who are paying
[[Page H7777]]
the taxes, they are not doing it on 40 hours a week anymore. They are
running around doing all kinds of things. Sixty hours a week for a
prisoner, that is nothing.
Another case, heart breaker, a man calls me at home. His daughter, 12
years old, was spending the night at a friend's house and was raped by
the friend's older brother who was 19 years old. He called me, Mr.
Speaker, because it had been 3 or 4 weeks and the police had yet to
pick up the rapist.
When the daughter was raped, they took her to the hospital. They got
the fluid samples and all the necessary identifications for this
horrible experience. Yet it was 3 weeks. The reason why it was 3 weeks,
I talked to the authorities about this, is that the police were so
afraid of messing the case up because of all the loopholes that we now
have in our court system that allows trial lawyers to bend and
manipulate the system to get rapists, 19-year-old rapists who rape 12-
year-olds, get them off because a police officer did not dot an I or
cross a T, or the arrest papers.
So in the meanwhile, while the police are out very carefully,
meticulously building up a case on this, guess what? The 19-year-old is
still driving by the house every day. The little 12-year-old who is now
in trauma, who is now in therapy, she still sees this guy out walking
the streets.
We have an absurd court system right now, Mr. Speaker. We have got to
get common sense back in it. We have got to say common sense is that we
want to give everybody a fair trial, but it has got to be one that is
governed by common sense, not by technicalities and loopholes.
Justice should not be determined by money and whoever is the
cleverest. It should be determined by what is right. So in this
Congress, we have worked hard to crack down on criminal thugs and in
lawsuits.
Another problem, Mr. Speaker, that is adding to the stress of the
middle class has to do with the fact that drugs are just going crazy on
our streets. Earlier tonight the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Mica] had
a chart that showed how drug usage has been going up in the last 3 or 4
years. One of the reasons is because we had cut funding on drug
awareness programs.
Mr. Speaker, I have been in a lot of schools in my district, the
First District of Georgia. I have spoken to the DARE classes, drug
education for eighth graders and seventh graders and sixth graders and
fifth graders, telling them what illegal drugs are all about, what the
consequences are about.
Do you know, Mr. Speaker, that the average age right now nationwide
for trying marijuana is 13 years old? That is the bad news. The good
news is, if we can keep a child drug-free until he or she is 19 years
old, then, Mr. Speaker, they have a 95-percent chance of being drug-
free the rest of their life. So what we have got to do as families, as
educators and as government officials and as a society is keep our kids
drug-free until they are 19. If we can do that, they are 95-percent
home free, and that is one of the things we have got to do.
I believe drug education is extremely important for the youth of
today.
Now, in terms of the pushers, we have got to be very tough on
sentencing for pushers. Let us get them off the street. Let us protect
our families again.
Health care is one more security issue that we have got to deal with
as a society. We right now are trying to pass a bill that gets
portability on health care. Very important for people who have job lock
because of some situation that they can switch from job to job. My
wife, Libby, her college roommate, a young lady named Kathy Haggard,
was working for a bank when she discovered that she had cancer. And God
rest her, she lost the battle. But during the period that she was
fighting it, she went into remission for a short period of time. She
was engaged. She, I think, was living in Atlanta and her fiance was
living in Birmingham.
They, Mr. Speaker, could not get married because Kathy could not quit
working for her bank in Atlanta because, if she did, she could not get
insurance through her fiance's insurer in Birmingham. So this young
lady sadly lost the battle to cancer. She went to her grave without
ever being able to marry, which is, as you know, probably one of the
most wonderful things that anybody can experience.
And if we had portability on health care, people like that would be
helped by it, Mr. Speaker. That is something very important.
Medical savings accounts. Something that I am very big on, and I know
you have worked hard on it. Medical savings accounts would allow
middle-class people to take health care with a high deduction and with
that deduction it would be funded through a special account, kind of an
escrow account. And out of that escrow, middle-class people would pay
for their kids stitches, for pediatric shots, for their glasses, the
small things.
And at the end of the year, the middle-class families would get the
money out of the account and get to keep it. They could use it for a
college education account, if they wanted to, or they could put it in
their pocket. They could spend it for Christmas money. This is a tool
that middle-class families need all over America, Mr. Speaker. It is
something that we are working on, and we have got to keep working for.
The breast cancer situation. Breast cancer now gets, I believe, it
was a couple years ago the statistic was one out of every nine women.
Now it is even higher than that. And we have increased funding on
breast cancer research in this Congress. We have also expanded Medicare
coverage to include breast cancer. It is something that we have to do
to make sure that our mothers and our sisters are well protected,
because so much of it, if detected early, we could prevent.
Our colleagues, John Myers and Barbara Vucanovich, have been great
champions on this because of personal family situations. John Myers
brought to the Committee on Agriculture, the ag subcommittee that
overseas FDA, this plastic looking device. It was a circle about this
big. And he put a grain of salt on the committee table and he put this
on it and he said, find the salt with your hands. And you could feel
the spec.
This was a device that would not substitute for a medical exam, but
it is something that in their own houses women could use for just kind
of a home breast cancer analysis. And, Mr. Speaker, the FDA fought us
on that. They did not want to approve the device.
I believe that American women would know that a home analysis is no
substitute for a doctor's analysis. But give them the tool. Because not
only could the tool detect it, but it would raise the interest level,
raise the awareness level. And you and I know, as men, when we are over
40, we have to start testing for prostate cancer and so forth.
Preventative medicine has got to be part of the health care planning. I
truly support the efforts to increase awareness of health in the school
systems and so forth, because if we can get our kids exercising and
eating right early, we will have less problems down the road.
Mr. Speaker, I am going to just close with this. Another thing we can
do for the middle class is to have good education systems. We have
increased student loans from $24 to $36 billion in this Congress in our
budget. That is going to expand the availability of a college education
for many middle-class kids. I think that that would be good. But to the
classrooms back home, Mr. Speaker, we want to get the bureaucracy out.
A school teacher in Darien, GA, told me at a town meeting recently
that she spends 2 to 3 hours a day each day on paperwork. That is 10
hours a week that she cannot spend teaching children in her own class
reading, writing, and arithmetic.
We want to take the bureaucracy in Washington out of the American
classroom and let the parents and the teachers teach their own
children. And we believe that that local control will help us compete
in the world market.
Mr. Speaker, these are some of the things that we are working on and
have worked on and have accomplished in this Congress. We need to keep
the commitment for the American family and for the American middle
class.
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