Congressional Record, Volume 142 Issue 115 (Wednesday, July 31, 1996)

[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.

____________________