[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 115 (Wednesday, July 31, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H9458-H9465]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     A DIFFERENT VISION OF AMERICA

  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 wanted to talk tonight about a different 
vision of America, a vision that we are not really seeing from the 
Washington bureaucracy, but one that this Congress is trying to form 
and trying to achieve and move our Nation towards.
  We have asked ourselves some fundamental questions: What kind of 
America do we want? Do we want an America where illegal drug use is up? 
Do we want an America where taxes are up and wages are down? Do we want 
an America where welfare traps families and despairs generation after 
generation? And do we want an America where illegal immigration is up? 
And do we want one where a White House has more scandals than Hollywood 
has disaster films?
  Look at that vision of America. That is somehow what many of the 
Washington bureaucrats see and administer today.
  Think about another kind of America. Would we like one that has 
stronger and safer families through a real fight against crime and 
illegal drugs? Do we want an America where there are more opportunities 
through lower taxes, higher wages, better jobs and more free time? Do 
we want an American where illegal immigration is down and English is 
truly our common and unifying language? Do we want an America where 
welfare is replaced by work? And do we want an America where the White 
House is the moral leader of the country, not just the political 
issues.
  These are the things that we are going to talk about tonight, and I 
have

[[Page H9459]]

with me our esteemed colleague from Pennsylvania, Mr. Curt Weldon.
  Mr. Weldon, if you have any comments, let me yield to you.
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding, and I am pleased to join with him this evening in a portion 
of his special order. As he knows, I will be taking a special order 
following this to discuss our defense bill that will be on the floor 
this week. But I thought it very important to highlight the key areas 
the gentleman has raised that are really, I think, going to frame the 
debate as we move into the final 3 months of the election cycle into 
September and October and talk about what is the status of this country 
today in five key areas and what is the vision for the future and which 
party and which candidate can offer the best vision for America.

  I start out by saying to the gentleman and my friend, I ran for 
office and got involved in public life because of drug use in my 
hometown and my county. I come from a town that was one of our most 
distressed communities in Pennsylvania. I was born and raised, the 
youngest of nine children, there, was active in the community a number 
of ways, including the volunteer fire company and the Red Cross and the 
Boy Scout troop, and was upset because our town had become the national 
headquarters of one of the five largest motorcycle gangs in America.
  That gang controlled all the drug trafficking along the east coast of 
this country. They had 65 members living there, and the national 
president lives there and because we were just a small town, we had no 
resources of coping with the problem of drug abuse.
  We have continuously seen since that point in time, approximately 20 
years ago, a declining use of drugs in America. During the era of 
Ronald Reagan and George Bush, we saw a marked decrease in the use of 
drugs in this country.
  The gentleman has some factual information that he might want to 
insert in the Record. My understanding is that in the past 3 years the 
use of drugs in this country has in fact reversed, and we are now 
seeing an increase in the amount of drug use by 14-year-old's. Is that 
correct?
  Mr. KINGSTON. You have made a very good point. For 11 straight years, 
until 1992, illegal drug use fell in all categories of drugs except, 
for some reason, heroin, but everything else had fallen.

                              {time}  2100

  Now, since 1992, when a lot of these drug education programs and a 
lot of the interdiction programs and enforcement programs were cut, 
under the Clinton administration drug use has gone back up to the 
extent now that, just to give some numbers, marijuana use among 
teenagers has dropped, excuse me, has since 1992 increased 137 percent 
amongst 12- and 13-year-olds. Now, for 14- to 15-year-olds there has 
been a 200 percent increase.
  Of the graduating class of 1995, statistically half of the will have 
experienced some sort of illegal drug, and a drug like LSD which we 
really had not been talking about at all in recent years is now back 
strong on the streets and LSD use has increased 62 percent since 1992.
  One of the things that we have been fighting is the fact that the 
President had slashed the funding for the Office of National Drug 
Control Policy by 80 percent. I am on the Treasury-Post Office 
Committee. We are doing everything we can to work with General 
McCaffrey, the new drug czar, to restore much of this funding and do 
everything we can, but along with government funding there are some 
other things that we can do to fight drugs.

  And I do believe in these interdiction programs. I do believe in 
local policing in States like Georgia where, for example, the police 
opened up a satellite station in the middle of one of the biggest 
housing projects, where they had the high drug use and they had crime 
and teenage dropout and teenage pregnancy problems. As a result of them 
doing that, the children got to know the police officers. The families 
came out of the house and the streets got to be safe. And in 
Statesboro, GA, in that high crime area, drug use has dropped.
  That is the sort of thing that we are trying to encourage with our 
budget is local policies to fight drugs.
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. The gentleman makes an excellent point. 
Two key considerations here. First of all, while the administration 
puts out the rhetoric of being concerned about drug use and supposedly 
doing something about it, the facts and this is typically the case 
throughout this administration, just do not bear out the rhetoric.
  As the gentleman and my friend pointed out, the office of Drug 
Enforcement Administration reporting to the White House has in fact 
been cut by, I think the figure used was 84 percent. In fact, it has 
been decimated. But this President, knowing that he can use perception 
as opposed to substance, in his last State of the Union Speech 
appointed one of this Nation's heroes, General Barry McCaffrey, to head 
up the drug effort because he wanted to give the people the perception 
that he in fact is really doing something substantive. So he appoints a 
genuine hero in this country, whom all of us have the highest respect 
for and whom all of us want to help, while at the same time he is 
decimating the funding to allow the programs under the control of that 
individual and that agency in fact to go forward.
  Furthermore, perceptually, this administration has created a casual 
atmosphere about drug use. That casual atmosphere then gets translated 
to our teenagers across the country, and they then think maybe it is 
okay to do some drugs or limited use and we see the numbers start to go 
up, as our colleague has pointed out. We saw descending use of drugs in 
this country for the previous 12 years, and in the last 3 years we have 
seen an increase in drug use by the use of this country.
  While we cannot blame any one person for that, we can look at the 
factors that may in fact be causing that increase and the fact that we 
have to be doing more substantively to deal with that increase. As the 
gentleman points out, that is one of the issues that we have been 
fighting to have as a top priority for the past 2 years since the 
Republican Party has controlled this institution.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I want to conclude this section of our five-part 
discussion with this comment. Two other things we want to do with drugs 
is to have severe penalties, pressure; if you are pushing drugs to 
school kids on basketball courts or playgrounds, you go to jail. You 
stay in jail. We need to have that.
  Then finally for the addicts, why not have a 24-hour a day hotline 
that says if a drug addict says I am ready to kill myself, I have hit 
bottom, I want to bounce back up, give a 24-hour hotline that we will 
get you help the next day, we will get you help on the spot, because 
once an individual has made up his or her mind to kick the habit, then 
they are the easiest to cure.
  We are going to talk again about in a second on illegal immigration, 
but in the meantime let me yield to the distinguished chairman of the 
Committee on Rules, Mr. Solomon.
  Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I just came from a Committee on Rules meeting and heard 
what my colleagues were doing on this proliferation of drug use in 
America. It is such a sad, sad thing. The gentleman over here from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon] mentioned casual attitude. Let me tell how 
bad that casual attitude is coming out of the White House and what is 
happening to our children and our grandchildren.
  Seventy-five percent of all violent crime in America today that is 
committed against women and children, 75 percent that is committed 
against women and children are drug-related. What has this casual 
attitude done? It is the most pathetic thing. Today among 12- and 13-
year olds, marijuana use is up 137 percent. And in the 14- and 15-year-
old range, it is up 200 percent. Among young adults, it has doubled 
just in the last four years. The worst part of it is these kinds of 
drugs today, because of this casual attitude coming out of the White 
House and other places, means that drugs now are being used as weapons 
against women and children. A drug like Rohypnol, for instance, is used 
as a weapon where, after young women have been plied with marijuana or 
with alcohol, they have had a Rohypnol tablet slipped into their drink. 
It renders them unconscious, but awake, so that they cannot

[[Page H9460]]

defend themselves but they can see what is going on when the rape is 
taking place. This is a whole new generation that is now exposed to 
this.
  When we compare this to Nancy Reagan's ``Just Say No'' and Ronald 
Reagan when he sponsored, when he approved my legislation which had 
random drug testing for our military, we had use of drugs in our 
military that was running at 25 percent back in the early 1980s, and 
once we implemented that random drug testing system, it dropped to 4.5 
percent. Drug use all over America began to drop.
  Now look what has happened. It has turned around and it is just 
ruining these kids. Is a terrible thing.
  I thank the gentleman for bringing this to our attention and we need 
to focus on this all the way. There better be a change at the White 
House in this casual attitude.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to go on to the next topic that 
Mr. Weldon and I wanted to bring up, the subject of illegal 
immigration.
  First, let me recognize Mr. Bob Ehrlich of Maryland, who is here with 
us tonight. Before I yield to the gentleman, let me throw out some 
statistics on how bad the illegal immigration problem is, because most 
Americans know that we have a lot of illegal aliens in America but they 
do not know how extensive the problem is.
  There are an estimated 4.5 million illegal aliens in America now, 
that is about the size of the State of Indiana; 300,000 new illegal 
aliens come each year and so the problem is getting bigger and bigger. 
In many cases, they are using false documents to get American welfare 
benefits, American jobs and so forth, and it is displacing people and 
putting a further tax drain on us.
  One of the huge tax drains is in the Federal penal system where right 
now approximately 22 percent of the prisoners in the Federal 
penitentiaries are illegal aliens, and about 80 percent of them are 
violent offenders which are the most expensive to incarcerate.
  We have a lot of direct and indirect costs because of the strain of 
illegal aliens, but one of them is now that school systems must offer 
not just bilingual education but multi-lingual education. In Seattle, 
for example, there are 75 different languages spoken in the school 
system; in Los Angeles, 80; 100 in Chicago.
  Now, we are all sons and daughters of immigrants, most of us sons and 
daughters of legal immigrants. But what they did when they came to 
America is they learned American culture and they learned English as 
our common language. They did not turn their back on the home country 
great traditions. Savannah, GA, where I live, has ethnic celebrations 
all through the year, because we have a strong ethnic heritage. We want 
to keep that in mind and celebrate it.
  I know where I was raised, not in Savannah but in Athens, GA, a lot 
of Cuban families came after Castro took over and in most of their 
homes they spoke Spanish. But their children were raised in the school 
systems where they learned English. Now those children are in very good 
jobs because they were not trained to be special. They were trained--
well, I take that back. They were trained to be special because all 
Americans are special. But now our school systems have all these 
ridiculous requirements. I have heard that the voting ballot in 
California is in seven different languages. Can you imagine voting but 
not knowing English?

  I yield to the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Ehrlich].
  Mr. EHRLICH. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman said an awful lot of truth 
here. It really speaks to the fact that we are a multi-ethnic culture 
and we revel in that fact.
  The gentleman just recited that fact, but we are one culture. And 
that one culture has a common language, which is English. Of course, 
the English bill will certainly dominate the debate on this floor over 
the next couple days. But I know the gentleman has put it very well. 
What better means to you achieve economic mobility in this country 
other than by a common language? Does it make any sense that any other 
options--look what is happening in Quebec right to the north?
  Multi-ethnic but one single culture, that is the way to the American 
dream. That is the way to economic prosperity. That is certainly the 
message that should go out from this Congress.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If you will remember the biblical story about the tower 
of Babel, the story is that the villagers decided to build a tower to 
heaven. And the Lord did not want that done and, as a preemptive 
measure, gave them all different languages. And then they could not 
work together, and they broke up and they started all the other 
nations.
  I am not saying that we cannot work with each other when we speak 
different languages, but the fact is, it is interesting that thousands 
and thousands of years ago, in a Bible story we all learned as 
children, the way to break up a nation was to have different languages. 
I believe, to say it in a positive light, the way to unify America 
further is having one common language. Today there are 320 languages 
spoken in the United States of America.
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, on the issue of immigration, 
again, this administration wants to create the perception among the 
American people that Republicans do not care, that we are not 
sensitive, that we are not compassionate. And we have to rise up and we 
have to shout as loud as we can the facts, because that is not the 
case.
  What we are trying to do is to stop the abuse. I think the best case 
that I can point to of what is going haywire in this country was 
brought to my attention by a good friend and colleague from California, 
Elton Gallegly, who has been the leader in this Congress in terms of 
immigration. Elton Gallegly showed me a brochure, I think it was the 
last session of Congress, printed in Spanish, paid for by the U.S. 
taxpayers.

  This four-page brochure was being handed out in southern California 
to anyone who was Spanish speaking that needed health care. And what it 
said was that if you are pregnant, you can go to any hospital within 
the jurisdiction of the brochure being given out, I think it was Orange 
County, and you can get prenatal care, postnatal care, and have the 
cost of delivering your child borne by the taxpayers of this country.
  If you are a young Mexican mother and you know in a brochure printed 
in your native language that you can come across the border to America, 
where health care is the best in the world, and you can go to any 
hospital and have your prenatal care provided, your baby delivered and 
your postnatal care provided, what are you going to do? You are going 
to do everything you can to come across that border.
  Here is the real rub. The person also knows, the mother also knows 
when that child is born in America, guess what, that child is an 
American citizen. Even though that child is born to an illegal 
immigrant in this country, that child becomes a full U.S. citizen with 
the same rights as any other child born here.
  But what really bothered me about this brochure, which should bother 
every Member of this institution, was a paragraph in the bottom of the 
third page that said, you cannot be turned into the immigration service 
even if you are here illegally.

                              {time}  2115

  Now we wonder why we have an immigration problem. Here is a brochure 
printed by the taxpayers of this country in Spanish given to people all 
over the southern part of California and in Mexico, and we wonder why 
they are all coming across the border. We just cannot continue to be 
the health care resource center for the world. That is what we are 
talking about, immigration reform that stops that.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Well, let me give some numbers on that:
  1996 taxpayers will spend $26 billion to provide welfare benefits to 
noncitizens which includes 11 billion in Medicaid benefits, which is 
basically free insurance, health care, free health care; 4.4 billion in 
Supplemental Security Income, which is up, incidentally, 825 percent.
  Now remember we are just talking about noncitizens.
  There is 2.9 billion in food stamps; 2.3 billion in Aid to Families 
with Dependent Children; 3.89 billion in housing cash assistance and 
other subsidies. And that is from a Harvard University study; that is 
not exactly, you know, a conservative group up there. But this

[[Page H9461]]

is putting an additional tax strain on American middle class taxpayers.

  I believe we need to strengthen our border patrols. We need to crack 
down on deportation of criminals aliens. We need to have sponsorship, 
legally binding; so if you want to bring your family member or whoever 
in, fine, but you need to be responsible for that person to make sure 
he or she is independent of government benefits.
  We also need to protect American jobs. There are a lot of American 
jobs that have been displaced.
  Then finally tomorrow this House will vote on English-first as a 
language. I believe we have enough votes to pass it. I think the 
President is probably going to veto it, but I am not discouraged 
because the liberal Governor of Georgia vetoed it two or three times 
himself. Finally this year, because of election year pressures, he 
signed it. As we saw today with welfare, our President is very 
sensitive to election year pressures, and maybe we can get his 
attention on it.
  Mr. EHRLICH. If the gentleman will yield, I think the message is well 
taken.
  I hear this term sensitivity used in this House so much. But I never 
hear that term used in the context of the American taxpayer.
  The gentleman cited an interesting statistic early on; I think it 
bears repeating. The gentleman, I believe, said that 22 percent of the 
population in the Federal penal system in this country, is illegal 
aliens; is that correct?
  Mr. KINGSTON. That is absolutely correct.
  Mr. EHRLICH. This free ride on the American taxpayer has to end. That 
is the bottom line to illegal drugs. That is the bottom line to illegal 
immigration. That is the bottom line to reforming our legal immigration 
system. That is the bottom line to welfare reform as we have discussed. 
It is the bottom line to almost every issue in this town because, as 
the gentleman just said, working Americans are just tired of it. They 
are tired of the free ride.
  We have a very hospitable people in this country. We are a Nation of 
immigrants, as the gentleman has said. We are sensitive to the concerns 
and the plights of people. But at some point this Congress has to say:
  You know what, folks? You know what, world? There is a limit to what 
we can do, and we expect you to abide by our laws.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Our compassion does not rule out common sense, and we 
have to just put a little bit more common sense in it. Just as we have 
said, we are going to address this illegal immigration, this English-
first issue. This Congress is going to move in that direction.
  The other thing that we all mention is $26 billion is the direct cost 
of illegal immigration. There are other indirect costs, but that tax 
strain is further adding to the third issue that we wanted to discuss. 
That is the fact that this Congress, this Republican agenda, wants to 
have for our middle class citizens lower taxes, higher wages and more 
free time.
  I am going to show you some of the statistics on taxes, but right now 
we know that the average middle class family is paying 38 percent of 
the total household income in taxes, which basically means the second 
income earner is working for the government. That is just, you know, 
what is happening. Right now we all work until May 7 to have the tax-
free independence. So from January 1 to May 7 every year, people are 
working just to pay the IRS and State and local taxes.
  Now, if you add on the cost of government regulations and other 
taxes, you are going until July 3d for Independence Day.
  Now people will say, well, what are you talking about? Let me show 
you this chart.
  This is a gas pump. On $1.20 for a gallon of gas--fortunately I am 
paying a little bit less in Georgia, but I know the folks in Maryland, 
they all are paying more than $1.20. But on a $1.20 gallon of gas, 56 
cents goes to taxes, and that includes--I am just going to read:
  FICA tax, corporate income tax, individual tax, capital gains tax, 
customs, ad valorem taxes, State taxes, corporate income, unemployment 
taxes, motor fuel taxes, excise taxes, used oil disposal taxes, 
business property taxes, pipeline throughput taxes. It is ridiculous. 
When people buy 10 gallons worth of gas, they are paying $5.60. They do 
not even think about taxes on top of what has already been taken out of 
their paycheck.
  Now let us talk about a bottle of beer, 43 cents on a dollar bottle--
well a little over a dollar, but 43 cents on a bottle of beer goes to 
taxes, basically the same kind of thing.
  On a loaf of bread there are 118 different taxes that you and I and 
our families pay when we go to the grocery store to buy a loaf of 
bread. Hidden in the cost of that bread are 118 different taxes. That 
is why the middle class families are working their tails off. The 
harder they work, the less time they have because the more taxes they 
have to pay, and we do not have that family fellowship that we so 
desperately need to impart values to our next generation.
  Mr. EHRLICH. That is why the middle class in this country is nervous. 
When working folks get nervous, this place feels it. The gentleman has 
raised a very interesting point. The gentleman talked about, what was 
it, 120 different taxes on a loaf of bread?
  Mr. KINGSTON. One hundred eighteen.
  Mr. EHRLICH. One hundred eighteen. But when we go to the grocery 
store, what do we see? One price, one price. We never think about it.
  And I love this term ``takehome pay.'' What does takehome pay mean to 
you, to the average person?
  Well, after you work until what, July 3d this year, you get your 
takehome pay. You work the rest of the year for yourself; right?
  Mr. KINGSTON. Well now, actually your direct tax burden--you work 
from January 1 to May 7, and then the indirect tax in regulatory 
burden, you go on to July 3d.
  Mr. EHRLICH. But the rest of the year you are really not taking home 
the rest of your paycheck because, despite your takehome pay, you take 
your takehome pay, your cash, and you go out and you buy things which 
are taxes.
  So I think we really need to understand the dramatic way in which 
taxes impact the average working person in this country.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Now to give my colleagues an idea of the Federal 
Government Washington command control bureaucracy view on taxes versus 
drugs, when we talked about earlier 13- and 14-year-olds using 
marijuana higher than ever before, I think, in history, but it is up 
anywhere from 137 to 200 percent depending on what age group in that 
12-to-14 range, here is what we have fighting drugs.
  Now this chart, I hope you can see it.
  The DEA has 6,700 employees, and that is to fight drugs. The Border 
Patrol, immigration folks, 5,800 employees. So that is what we have 
got. You know, we will just round this up and say about 13,000 
employees for fighting drugs and illegal immigration.

  For the IRS we have 111,000 employees. Now, of those 111,000 
employees, for every 3,000 citizens of America there is one criminal 
investigator.
  So what we are saying is, no, we cannot fight drugs, we cannot fight 
illegal immigration, but we can audit you, and we can make sure that 
you are paying your taxes, and people should pay their taxes, and IRS 
should be able to collect it.
  But it shows a disproportionate value rendered when you have 110,000 
IRS employees versus 13,000 Border Patrol and drug enforcement.
  Mr. EHRLICH. If the gentleman will yield, it reflects the values that 
have held sway in this town for at least 30 to 40 years. That is 
exactly what it reflects.
  I know the gentleman is very anxious to talk about the topic of the 
day, the issue of the day, welfare reform.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I am. But before we leave that, I do want to get one 
other thing on taxes.
  There was a big discussion about the Clinton tax increase went to 
balancing the budget 1993, when Clinton passed the largest tax increase 
in the history of America, $245 billion. That money did not go into 
deficit reduction. That money went into more Federal Government.
  Now, you know, the thinking that Americans do not deserve tax relief 
right after the President just passed such a huge tax credit--what the 
Republican Party was trying to do was

[[Page H9462]]

basically say we want to give you back some of the money that the 
President took from you in 1993, and one of those was a $500 per child 
tax credit.
  So, working person, and I love to tell the story about John Johnson 
who works for UPS, U-P-S, in my district, and he said to me:
  You know, I make pretty good money. I do a lot of overtime. I worked 
hard. My wife is a school teacher, and between the two of us we do OK. 
But we have got three kids. And at the end of the month we are not able 
to go down to Florida or go up to Atlanta and see a Braves game or do 
some of the nice things because we have got to buy a new set of tires, 
a new dryer. We have got to spend money on groceries, and so forth, and 
we cannot get ahead.
  And this is a real story.
  Now, with the $500 per child tax credit, he and his wife could have 
had $1,500 in their pocket that they could have spent any way they 
wanted to. And I think they know how to do it a heck of a lot better 
than Washington bureaucrats.

  Mr. EHRLICH. If the gentleman will yield, what is so dangerous, what 
is so radical, and my favorite term in this Congress, what is so 
extreme about working people in this country taking home just a little 
bit more money? And I think I have the answer to that question: Class 
warfare works in elections.
  How much class warfare do we see on this floor every day? How many 
times do we hear this phrase, the rich, the rich? And you know what? 
Those folks you just mentioned in your district, they are rich. They do 
not know it.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Yes, they are, because under the liberal Washington 
definition of rich, that means you hold a job and you pay taxes.
  You know another thing: marriage tax penalty. Two people living 
together doing everything that a married couple does pay less taxes 
than if they go down to the chapel and get a ring around their finger. 
That is absurd. Marriage is the key foundation block of the family in 
America, and here the first thing we do right off the bat is tell a 
couple:
  Hey, it is cheaper to live together than it is to get married.
  Mr. EHRLICH. If the gentleman will yield, what is the basic fabric of 
the free enterprise system in America? Small business people, small 
businessmen, and particularly small business women. Yet, we make it 
extremely difficult for these small business folks, who create 80 to 85 
percent of the jobs in this country, to transfer their small businesses 
to the next generation. We punish success.
  Of course, that is what class warfare is all about, punishing 
success. And I rally think it is incumbent upon this Congress--and now 
we have been joined by the President of the freshman class, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Radanovich], and I know he has very 
strong views on this issue, being a business man himself.
  We make it for some reason part of the political atmosphere in this 
country to practice this class warfare, generation warfare to make that 
person who is making $25,000 a year jealous of that person making 
$38,000 a year, which is not the way it is supposed to be. Yet every 
day in this House we hear from across the aisle:
  Class warfare.
  Tired of it.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I have a friend of mine named Ted Fox, and Ted says 
this is what Congress' basic mentality is, that it is the three of us 
right here. We are walking down the street together, and one had more 
money than the other two. The other two could vote to take your money, 
and it would be morally fine and justified.

                              {time}  2130

  That is exactly, that is the whole left-wing premise: It is okay to 
steal, as long as you vote it as law in Congress. That is their whole 
mentality.
  I want to yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. Radanovich] 
because he has been involved in so many of these good changes we have 
done. First, I want to say this, the idea behind class warfare is a 
loser. You are just bashing people.
  The other day we had a leading Democrat say in the Congressional 
Record, and I will give you both and anybody else interested a copy of 
this, that the employer-employee relationship is similar to the jailer 
and prisoner relationship or the slave and the master relationship. 
That was from a leading Democrat, in one of the pro-family debates we 
were having.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California [Mr. 
Radanovich].
  Mr. RADANOVICH. My thanks to the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Speaker, 
I was interested in the debate and wanted to come down and share the 
gentleman's comments and concerns.
  In my perception, I think, of what we have seen in the brief year and 
a half and a little bit more that we have been in Washington as 
freshmen, it has been one of continual amazement in our dialog with the 
American people and how we think our Government relates to society in 
general, and how we are coming up against some pretty old ideas that 
have been around town for the last 40 years about government and its 
relationship with the people, as if that is the only relationship that 
is in America today.
  It kind of epitomizes the Great Society and some of the ways of 
thinking of the last 40 years, in that the only relationship in America 
is Americans, with their government, and that there is only a two-way 
street there.
  In coming to Washington and having to develop ideas on how to solve 
complex problems, like the deficit that we have, the up to $200 billion 
deficit and $5 trillion worth of debt, we have to begin to think in 
terms of other relationships that comprise America; that there are 
other institutions out there that are perhaps fundamentally more suited 
to the solving of some of our society's problems.
  So when we get people coming on the House floor debating class 
warfare and this idea that there is a pot with only so much in it and 
you have to divvy it up among the people in the United States, and the 
only relationship that Americans have is with their Government, they 
are some of the ideas we have to begin to defuse. In so doing, we have 
to remind the American people that there are other institutions out 
there that are perhaps more suited to taking up the responsibilities 
that we have seen fit over the last 40 years to assume.
  There are family units, there is business, legitimate business, and 
there are religious and civic institutions. Some of those jobs that 
government is doing right now are far more suited to these other 
institutions. Rather than get into this dialog about there being finite 
resources and we have to promote class warfare to get our piece of the 
pie, and that government should be involved in doing all these things 
and that is the only way we are going to solve our problem, I think 
what we need to do is to speak in terms of what other institutions in 
this country are better suited to solving these problems. If we were 
thinking in those terms we would probably not be $5 trillion in debt 
right now.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I will say one thing, Mr. Speaker, that we all who are 
parents know the joy of holding our own child for the first time. You 
can hold your nephew or niece, you can hold a friend's baby, and you 
can love that baby and go to bat for him time and time again and care 
for him very deeply, but when you hold your own baby it is a whole new 
ball game.
  The difference is we have Washington bureaucrats, and as well-minded 
as they may be about the children in California, in Maryland, in 
Georgia, and I am sure they love them to death, and I am sure they 
would never use children as political pawns, but the fact is the folks 
in Georgia, California, and Maryland love our kids a heck of a lot 
better than Washington bureaucrats, regardless of how great they may be 
up here.


                                welfare

  Mr. Speaker, we want to move to our next topic, which ties into the 
family. It ties into the tax burden. That is that of welfare. The 
gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Ehrlich] had mentioned that earlier. I 
could tell he was chomping at the bit. I need to congratulate the two 
gentlemen for their leadership on this issue, because it is truly 
because their freshman class has been so persistent when the President 
has twice vetoed welfare reform, and you two have fought hard to bring 
it back to the floor time and time again.
  Mr. Speaker, I am disappointed the President vetoed welfare twice, 
but that is part of the process. The fact is in our American system, 
hey, it is 3 months away from election, and he is

[[Page H9463]]

going to sign it. He is going to sign it for that reason. I understand 
that, and I will not complain about it if we get a bill and we help get 
children out of the poverty trap, so they can enjoy the social and 
economic mainstream.
  Mr. EHRLICH. If the gentleman will continue to yield, once we think 
about getting some other bills on which we have had vetoes in the past, 
maybe a clean products liability bill, maybe we can get that signed. 
The president of the class is here and I know he would love that.
  Before I begin my remarks on welfare, I have to be maybe the first in 
the entire House to congratulate my friend on his engagement, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Radanovich]. I am very proud of the 
gentleman, and so is my wife.
  Welfare reform. It is a great day, a great day for America. Substance 
triumphs over politics: Real work requirements, real reform of our 
legal immigration system, real time limits. It really leads into what 
the gentleman from California [Mr. Radanovich] was talking about just 2 
minutes ago: what institutions do when we realize finally that 
government cannot do everything; that $5 trillion to $6 trillion in 
debt has made us at this point a permanent debtor nation, and we all 
know no superpower can live on for very long being a permanent debtor 
nation.
  What institutions will take over for government? One is the private 
sector: jobs, real work, a quid pro quo for the Federal taxpayer. You 
want hard-earned tax money to live? Fine. It is a legitimate thing for 
government to do, to provide temporary assistance to folks. No one 
argues that. It should not be generational, it should not be 
multigenerational. Look what it has done to the society.
  What is part of the answer? Work. The very foundation, the 
philosophical foundation of our welfare bill, which is quite similar to 
what the President vetoed last year, is work.
  Mr. RADANOVICH. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, 
it also is fair in saying too that when we are dealing with generations 
of people who are used to being on the welfare rolls, we have to be 
concerned a little more about conscience-building among those ranks to 
get them off. Work is a moral responsibility. It really is not 
something that government should be teaching right now.
  Every citizen in this country has the obligation of work, but it is 
very hard to instill those values, being a government institution. That 
is why block granting and getting these ideas away from government and 
starting to think about religious and civic institutions instilling 
those morals, and in the business institutions learning to work, so 
people go out and get the job and get the satisfaction of a day's pay 
for a day's work. It will be a wonderful thing. Government cannot teach 
those things.
  Mr. KINGSTON. One of the things that is dear to the heart of every 
American citizen, Mr. Speaker, and particularly Virginia legislators, 
because it has the first House of Burgesses, which was the first 
legislative body in America, Jamestown, as the gentleman recalls from 
our history, the Jamestown Colony, many of the people who came over had 
their job classification as gentlemen. They thought they were coming to 
America, to the streets of gold, and so forth, the land of opportunity. 
They did not realize it had a work requirement to it. As a result, I 
think half of the crew perished that first and very harsh winter. Then 
Captain John Smith said, all right, there is going to be a new game. 
Everybody is going to work. When they did, the colony survived.
  What we are saying is that if you are able to work, you are going to 
be required to work, and you are going to be better for it because you 
can join the socioeconomic mainstream. President Clinton loves to tell 
the story about the little boy who says, ``The best thing about my Mama 
being off welfare is because when people ask me what she does, I can 
say she has a job,'' so we are very much in line, here.
  Mr. Speaker, I wanted to recognize the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. 
Shadegg], who is here to join us, and I will yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. EHRLICH. Mr. Speaker, we have our classmate outnumbered, 3 to 1. 
The gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Shadegg] is a good friend of all of us 
and a great leader in our class. Before he speaks, I just want to say 
one thing.
  All of us go back to our districts every weekend and talk to our 
constituents. That is part of the job. The modern House has evolved 
into that. It is such an important part of our jobs. Housing policy is 
a major issue in my district, particularly a settlement in Baltimore, 
which I know my friends in the class know about too well; welfare 
reform, personal responsibility as a concept.
  What I see as the common denominator to all these issues is just a 
working class interest in having people work. It is a working class 
resentment toward those who will not, not cannot, but will not. I see 
it time and time again in comments from people I represent who stop me 
in shopping malls, gas stations, the hardware store, wherever, and they 
say, ``We work very hard to send our kids to school, to pay our 
mortgage, to buy our car. We do everything, Ehrlich, you want us to do. 
Yet we see in the newspaper every day people who will not who are 
rewarded for it.''
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker let me apologize to the gentleman who I 
said earlier was from Nevada. We have so many good-looking freshmen 
faces that sometimes I just assume they are from all out West 
somewhere, and throw all those categories out there. I apologize, and I 
yield to the gentleman from Arizona.
  Mr. SHADEGG. No apology necessary, Mr. Speaker. I am just pleased to 
join you all in celebrating what I think is a great victory for America 
today.
  Today really is not a day for partisanship, it is a day for 
celebration. The truth is all across America, Americans understand that 
the welfare system we have, though well-intended, simply is not 
working. It is not working for the Americans that are at work and 
paying taxes, now paying taxes of close to half of their income, 
supporting those people. It is not working for them.
  But even more importantly, the welfare system that we have created in 
this Nation, out of a desire to help our fellow man and our fellow 
women and the poor children in this country, simply is not benefiting 
them. I think the beauty of it, and it is well put in the gentleman's 
quote about the young boy who says, ``Now I can say that my mother has 
a job, or is not on welfare any longer,'' is the benefit for those 
people who are right now trapped in the system.

  In a way, God created us to respond to incentives. The incentives in 
the current system are very bad. The incentives encourage people not to 
go back to work. They encourage people to have multiple illegitimate 
births. They encourage people to engage in lifestyles which are self-
destructive.
  All Americans recognize that there ought to be a safety net there to 
help those in need, but the safety net we have built has become not 
only a safety net but a trap. People try to climb out of that net and 
are caught up in it. Indeed, they spend way too long in it. It destroys 
them, it destroys their self-respect, and it destroys their families.
  What we have done with this welfare bill, and I commend the 
President. I do not really care what his reasons are. He opposed it 
twice before. Now he has joined us. The bottom line point is we are 
going to make America better. We are fulfilling his promise to end 
welfare as we know it, because way back 3 years ago when he made that 
promise Americans understood welfare as we know it was a failure.
  Now we are embarked on a program which will redesign welfare in 
America to help those that need help, but not just help them at their 
down point in their lives, help them get back into the job market, help 
them make themselves productive citizens again, help them attain back 
that point in their lives when they can respect what they do and when 
they can feel good about it, and when they can hold their head high and 
become participants in this economy and in the great experiment which 
is America, which is that we are going to reward initiative, that we 
are going to reward hard work. That is what this Nation was built on.
  We have been cutting a whole block of Americans out from under that 
dream, saying to them, ``No, you really cannot work. We know you are 
not able to work, so we are going to take care of you.'' That is not an 
answer, and that

[[Page H9464]]

is not giving them hope, it is not giving them a future.
  I just think it is a tremendous day to celebrate the fact that we are 
in fact revising a failed system and making the Nation better, not only 
for the people trapped in the system but for those of us who are 
picking up the tab, as well.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, we now have with us another freshman, the 
gentleman from Washington, Mr. Randy Tate, and I will attribute him to 
the State of Washington, rightly or wrongly. I know it is west of the 
Mississippi.
  Mr. TATE. I would like to thank the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. 
Speaker. To folks out in the real Washington, this is an exciting day. 
To me welfare reform is not about balancing the budget. It has nothing 
to do with that, from my perspective. It is about helping people that 
are trapped in a system that has destroyed their self-esteem, that is 
taking their initiative away, that has trapped families and hurt 
children. We have spent, I have heard that number many times, $5 
trillion since the 1960s. If we put that in real dollars, that is more 
than we spent fighting the Japanese and Germans during World War II, 
and we won that battle.
  Everyone agrees welfare has failed. President Clinton said just right 
here during his State of the Union that this is the year to end welfare 
as we know it. Today, in the House of Representatives, we began to end 
welfare as we know it, not for the sake of balancing the budget, not 
sitting there and counting beans. It is about helping people. That is 
what this whole debate is about, breaking down the system to make it 
work for people again, to help families, to help moms, to help dads, to 
help kids have a better future.

                              {time}  2145

  Mr. EHRLICH. The gentleman has really brought up the fifth topic of 
the evening, which is words and actions.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Before going to the fifth topic, I want to make it very 
abundantly clear for the record that we would not be in a position of 
having a welfare bill today if not for the action of the freshman class 
and the leadership of the 4 of you and many of your colleagues, because 
I can say this having come the previous term. We all talked about 
welfare, we never could get a bill on the floor of the House. You have 
been persistent.
  I would like to say also, I do not think there is anything extreme 
about saying able-bodied people who can work would be required to work, 
and I do not think there is anything extreme about getting people out 
of the poverty trap, and I do not think there is anything extreme about 
saying to noncitizens, you cannot have our welfare benefits if that is 
the reason you have come into the country.
  I know your class has caught lots of criticism, but this victory 
today belongs to your class. I think that is very important.
  Mr. RADANOVICH. If the gentleman would yield, I would like to add to 
that comment and appreciate the sentiment. Before saying what I am 
going to say, there are two things that need to be said. One is that it 
does not matter who gets credit for this, it passed and it was good for 
America. So it does not make any difference if the President gets 
credit or Congress gets credit.
  However, having said that, I would say one thing, and that is during 
the dark times of late December, early January, when we were struck in 
the middle of a Government shutdown, when the freshmen were getting a 
lot of flak for standing on resolve and keeping certain people to their 
word, this is the fruit of that.
  I think that I am not at all out of line to say that had we not gone 
through a Government shutdown, we would not have had the President of 
the United States in the Chamber saying that the era of big Government 
is over and we would not have a President in here signing welfare 
reform that changes welfare as we know it simply because he knew that 
there were people in the House of Representatives that were going to 
keep him to his word, come heck or high water.
  I think that that needs to be said. We are seeing the fruits of that 
shutdown. I know it is a tough subject, I know it is not what people 
want to go back to and talk about, but the American people know that 
that was absolutely necessary in order to get the changes that we are 
beginning to see the fruit of now.
  Mr. EHRLICH. The President of the class just used the word 
``fortitude,'' and the word ``integrity'' gets brought up, and the word 
``consistency.'' Now you are joined by 4 freshman, the gentleman from 
Georgia is really surrounded; five actually with the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Bilbray]. There is a quote right next to the gentleman. 
One of the President's closest advisers made that quote recently, I 
believe on Larry King Live, in February 1996. It is really interesting 
for the freshmen and certainly for the non-freshmen in this Congress to 
look at quotes like this and wonder what is meant.
  I know when I go back home on weekends, people come up to me, and I 
get a lot of credit for doing the easiest thing in the world, what no 
politician should get credit for in any legislative body anywhere, 
which is keeping his or her word. We should not get credit for it, yet 
we all get credit for it every weekend, every day, and in talking to my 
colleagues, I know we do. It is somewhat of a symbol of how far we have 
fallen, and this institution has fallen, our profession. We hate to 
admit it now, but we are full-time politicians, Members of Congress.

  ``For this President, words are actions.'' Mr. Stephanopoulos, words 
are not actions. Words are cheap, words are meaningless. Words, whether 
it is the State of the Union, these words we are speaking tonight, if 
they are not backed up with real actions, are without meaning.
  I know the gentleman from Arizona is chomping at the bit over there.
  Mr. SHADEGG. If the gentleman will yield, let me just make this 
point. If Mr. Stephanopoulos said this, ``For this President, words are 
actions,'' it pretty well defines the situation. I guess then saying 
that we should end welfare as we know it means that you have ended it. 
And yet in the first 3 years of this administration, nothing changed 
for America, not until the rubber hit the road, not until the votes 
were cast on the floor of this House to actually change the welfare 
system as written in the law did anything meaningful ever happen.
  I would like to add one point to that. The victory, while it may been 
driven in part by the freshman class, as our colleague from Georgia has 
just pointed out, it was really driven by Main Street, America. This 
today was and is, and I guess we can claim victory today because the 
President has come forward and to his credit he has said he will sign 
this bill, that is victory for Main Street, America, because the values 
that freshmen have been advocating, the ideas of changing welfare to 
make it work for all Americans, those in the system and those paying 
for the system, those ideas came not from freshmen, they came from Main 
Street, America. They came from the people that we went to and asked 
what they wanted to see happen in this country and they want change. 
That is the point.
  Mr. BILBRAY. If the gentleman will yield, I think the word was used 
quite appropriately, ``integrity.'' There are those that have been in 
this town for a long time who think that the freshmen and the new 
majority is somehow radical because we have brought with us from 
mainstream America the concept of integrity, that words without 
commitment, words without action, words that are said without the 
intent to perform lack integrity. And yet there are those in Washington 
who are terrified of the 73 freshmen who came here and said, I will not 
sacrifice either my integrity personally or the integrity of the 
commitment to the people of the United States. Frankly, I have to sort 
of chuckle at the fact that Washington is so terrified of a group that 
is finally bringing some integrity to the House floor.
  I want to say this about the welfare reform. I served as the chairman 
of San Diego County, which has a welfare system larger than 32 States 
in the Union. We in 1978 proposed a concept that at that time they 
called cruel and mean-spirited. That concept in 1978 was workfare. 
Every bureaucrat and every obstructionist tried to stop us from 
executing a concept that would bring dignity back into the public 
assistance programs. When we were fighting on things like welfare 
fraud, as an administrator I looked at it, at the cards and

[[Page H9465]]

said ``There is not even a picture on the ID. Let's put a picture on 
the ID.'' Common sense. Washington said no, because they said it would 
violate the privacy of the welfare recipient.
  These are just a few of many stories where every time you try to do 
something right with welfare, Washington stood in the way. Tonight we 
finally brought the integrity of the system before the American people 
and said if you want to promise that we are going to change welfare as 
we know it, then you have got to have the guts to change it.

  Mr. KINGSTON. Let me reclaim the time just to remind everybody we 
have about 4 minutes left. So if each of you want to have a closing 
statement of 1 minute each.
  Mr. EHRLICH. Just to back up what the gentleman from California had 
to say, I know the gentleman has another quote right next to him: ``The 
President has kept all the promises he meant to keep.''
  What does that mean? The American people deserve to know what that 
means. They deserve to know when the President makes a promise which 
promise he means and which promise he does not mean. I do not care if 
you are liberal, conservative, Republican, Democrat. Your words should 
have meaning. Your words should have, as the gentleman said, integrity 
behind them if you sit in any legislative body, particularly the 
Congress of the United States.
  Mr. TATE. I could not agree more. What does that mean? Are there 
promises you did not mean to keep, Mr. President? That is the question 
that I think is quite clear. The President did not mean to keep his tax 
cut for the middle class because he never provided a plan to do that. 
He never meant to balance the budget.
  We had to bring him kicking and screaming all the way to the dance, 
so to speak, all the way to actually provide a plan finally, 3 years 
into his term, and, lastly, welfare reform today. It was not until the 
last moment, after he had already vetoed it twice, did he finally agree 
to sign welfare reform.
  So I think I know exactly what it meant. Say one thing when you run, 
do another thing when you get elected. That is not what this Republican 
Congress is all about.
  Mr. BILBRAY. I think the sad part about it is America and this 
Congress knows that if it was not election year, we would not have 
gotten three-quarters of Congress supporting what the American people 
are demanding. We operate a welfare system in this society that we 
would not do to our own children. But we justify it under the guise of 
being merciful. It would be illegal for us to do to our own children 
what we do on welfare. We pay underage children to live alone and send 
them a check. If you and I did that to our own children, it would not 
only be child abandonment, it would be child abuse.
  But there are those here who claim they care about the children and 
hide behind the words they care about the children when in fact what 
they are doing is government-subsidized child abuse.
  Tonight we had a great victory, and the American people had the great 
victory of making politics work for the American people, changing the 
system. I worry that without the American people keeping a clear 
message in the next election, that there are those who will try to go 
back to the old, worn-out, corrupt systems of the old Washington rather 
than moving forward with the integrity of the new majority.
  Mr. Kingston. Let me reclaim the time just to yield to the president 
of the freshman class that has made all these changes possible. We are 
closing our discussion of illegal immigration, drug use, higher wages, 
lower taxes and, of course, welfare reform. I yield to the gentleman 
from California [Mr. Radanovich].
  Mr. RADANOVICH. I thank the gentleman. My final words are promises 
made, promises kept; the promise to the American people that until we 
start keeping word and following through in Washington, it will be a 
long time even then before they begin to feel the results on Main 
Street, America. This is really truly where is happens. That is the 
commitment that we intend to keep to the American people.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. 
Shadegg], the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Tate], the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Bilbray], the gentleman from California [Mr. 
Radanovich], the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Weldon], and the 
Gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Ehrlich] for participating in this special 
order.

                          ____________________