[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 131 (Friday, September 20, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H10757-H10761]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        NEW REPUBLICAN MAJORITY CHANGES DIRECTION OF THE NATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Miller of Florida). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. 
Shays] is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to follow my 
colleague from California, and also appreciate your willingness to take 
your time. I know you probably are getting ready to get back to your 
district. I will not take my full hour. I am not going to tell you how 
much time I will take, but I think it will be significantly less than 
that.
  Mr. Speaker, I cannot tell you what it is like to think about what we 
have done in the last 2 years, because I have tremendous pride and 
satisfaction and gratitude that I have had the opportunity to serve in 
Congress and to be part of this new majority that really has attempted, 
and I think succeeded, in changing the direction that this country is 
headed.
  I think we are starting to end 40 years of bloated government, 
inefficient government, ineffective government and starting to turn the 
power and the money and the influence back home where it belongs. That 
is where we are attempting to empower people back home, because we 
have, one, faith in their ability to make the right decisions but, 
also, that they will make the decisions that are necessary for them in 
their own local communities.
  When we set out on this journey almost a year ago today, we were 
running on a Contract With America; 8 reforms on the opening day of the 
session and 10 reforms in the first 100 days. I remember some in the 
editorial boards would say how could I be part of this ``Contract With 
America,'' as if I had done something wrong. The more I thought about 
it, I thought what an absurdity. We are passing eight reforms. We are 
passing 10 major issues in the first 100 days; and it does not 
criticize President Clinton, it does not criticize then the majority in 
Congress, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. It is a 
positive plan for America.
  So I wondered whey they asked the question. I proceeded to respond by 
simply asking them: What do you think of the majority party's Contract 
With America, the 8 things they want to do on the opening day of 
Congress; the 10 things they want to do in the first 100 days? And I 
just enjoyed the silence. And I said is it not amazing that the 
minority party then, this Republican Party, knew what it wanted to do, 
said then it would do, and was proud of that effort?
  When we got elected people said we used this contract to get elected 
but we would not seek to implement it because it might be too 
controversial and take on some of the special interests that had been 
entrenched so long in Washington and we might stir up some things. We 
clearly stirred up some things, but for the good of the Nation.
  Mr. Rabin, for former Prime Minister of Israel said: Politicians are 
elected by adults to represent the children. This is about what kind of 
world they going to have.
  Mr. Speaker, we set out to implement these eight reforms the first 
day of Congress. The first was a bill that, Mr. Speaker, you and I 
worked on closely: Getting Congress under all the laws that we impose 
on everyone else. We were exempted for OSHA, civil rights, fair labor 
practices, the 40-hour work week. We put ourselves under the same laws 
as everyone else. What a great way to start that Congress.
  We also reduced the size of committees by a third, reducing the staff 
by a third. We reduced by $220 million the size of our budget. So we 
started to set the example. We were going to ask government to do with 
less. We were going to start with our own Congress.

  And so we saved in the last 2 years $420 million. Our budget is 
actually $220 million less than it was 2 years ago. So not only did we 
not add money for inflation, we actually are spending $220 million 
less; and over 2 years saved the taxpayers almost a half a billion in 
expenditures.

[[Page H10758]]

  We got rid of absurd perks like the ice bucket. I am embarrassed to 
suggest that we even had the ice buckets, but before the refrigerators 
we had ice, but after the refrigerators we had ice. We had 28 people in 
this Congress that would go around and drop off an ice bucket to 
everyone, even though we had ice in our refrigerators. We eliminated 
that kind of absurdity and others as well.
  We privatized some of the operations of Congress, making it more 
efficient and effective and making it more logical. There were times 
when we needed to use an office for extreme times of mail going out, 
and other times there was not enough mail going out. Yet we hired 
enough people to maximize for when we had that kind of workload.
  We got rid of proxy voting. Proxy voting was an interesting concept. 
It was a sheet of paper that the chairman had in his pocket and he 
would take the sheet out of his pocket and when an amendment was 
offered by his own party that he did not like, the chairman--I say 
``he'' because until this year there was never a woman that was chair 
of a committee--and the chairman would take it out, and he would have 
the list of all of his committee members and he would vote for them.
  That was called proxy voting. It was right on his list. So the 
chairman was so powerful that he could even thwart the will of his own 
party and the will of his members because he always had enough in his 
pocket to defeat the amendment. So we did that, and we proceeded after 
the opening day of the session to do things like voting for a balanced 
budget amendment.
  The press got back into it. They said how could we be for what was 
really a positive plan for America. Those 8 reforms on opening day; the 
10 reforms in the first 100 days; asking how we could be supportive of 
something that did not criticize Congress or the President. A positive 
plan. We said we would do it and we started to do it. And then they 
said, ``Well, you used it to get elected but you are not going to 
implement it.''
  Mr. Speaker, we voted for a balanced budget amendment. They said that 
was easy. Anyone could vote for an amendment. But you are not going to 
vote to balance the budget. And then we started to vote to balance the 
budget.
  We dealt with tort reform and malpractice reform of some of these 
issues that the President vetoed, saving Medicare and so on. We 
proceeded to balance the Federal budget and make some tough decisions.
  We have three primary objectives. We want to get our financial house 
in order and balance the Federal budget; we want to save our trust 
funds, particularly Medicare, for future generations; and, we want to 
transform this caretaking social and corporate and agricultural welfare 
state into a caring opportunity society. That is what we wanted to do, 
and that is what we set out to do.
  Now, why would we balance the budget? Because in the last 22 years 
our national debt has gone up 10 times, from $480 billion to $5.2 
trillion. Not doubled, not tripled, not quadrupled; 10 times in 22 
years in a time of relative peace.

  And getting back to Mr. Rabin, he said we are elected to represent 
our children. Just think what we are doing by ignoring that. We have 
taken a debt that was $480 billion and allowed it to grow to $5.2 
trillion, and guess who pays for it? Our kids. That is the problem of 
deficit spending. We are asking someone else to pay for what we get to 
enjoy and what we get to consume.
  Now, we do not have a fetish with balancing the budget. In other 
words this is not the end-all and be-all. That is simply not it. But 
how do you build a strong structure on a foundation that is crumbling? 
Getting our financial house in order is the financial basis on which we 
built smart, sensible, caring programs.
  So that is what we are about. We are about building smart, caring, 
sensible programs and getting rid of a whole host of programs that have 
been there for so long that they do not make sense. They are just kind 
of like that ice bucket that we got rid of. It is symbolic, but think 
of how stupid it was to have the ice bucket every day coming to our 
office when we have refrigeration in our office. Spending $400,000 a 
year for those ice buckets times two, $800,000 in the course of 2 years 
for something dumb.
  Now, you can relate to getting rid of an ice bucket because it did 
not have a particularly good sounding name, but there are a host of 
programs that we have.
  The point about the ice bucket is simply this: Most people can 
understand the waste that exists there. But then there are programs 
that we have in a variety of departments and agencies that are just as 
wasteful. They have good-sounding names. They may be in the Education 
Department or they may be in HUD, but they end up being very small 
programs that have no critical mass and most of the money gets gobbled 
up by the administration and gets consumed by the executive branch.
  I am not blaming this Government, I am blaming the process, and I am 
actually critical of the fact that we failed to eliminate these 
programs for so long until now. We are getting rid of some programs 
with good-sounding names that simply have no critical mass and do not 
accomplish anything. So we are balancing the Federal budget to get our 
financial house in order so that we have a strong foundation to do 
smart, sensible programs.
  We are trying to save our trust funds, particularly Medicare. 
Medicare is fascinating. We are told in this political environment we 
are never to talk about Medicare, because it is called the third rail. 
You talk about Medicare, people on the other side can demagog it, and 
then you get hurt and you lost the election. Case closed. 
Unfortunately, with that kind of attitude, Medicare will continue to go 
deeper and deeper into the direction that it is headed which is 
literally bankruptcy.

                              {time}  1100

  How do I know that? Because we have one report from the 
administration that says, last year, that Medicare would go bankrupt in 
the year 2002. We then had them come back to us and then so what did we 
do? What did this Congress do? This Congress tried to save Medicare, to 
preserve and protect, basically to defend the system against 
bankruptcy. Medicare is health care for the elderly and for the 
disabled, and so what did we do? We devised a very important plan that 
saves this program. In the process, we did not cut, but allowed the 
program to increase.
  This is the most important thing I think I need to say. We allowed 
Medicare to grow from about $178 to $289 billion, a 60-percent increase 
from last year now to the 6th year in the year 2002. We allowed it to 
grow 60 percent. Some said, you have a lot more seniors. It is true. On 
a per senior basis we allow it to grow 49 percent. From $4,800, to 
$7,100.
  So on a per person basis we are allowing Medicare to grow 
significantly in terms of total dollars, 7 percent more each year, 60 
percent total in the course of the difference between last year to the 
7th year, and on a per person basis it is going from $4,800 to $7,100. 
So we put lots more money into the program. But we were able to save 
the program.
  How did we save the program? We did not save it by increasing the 
copayment. We did not save it by increasing the deductible. And we did 
not save it by increasing the premium. Seniors were going to be asked 
to pay 31.5 percent of their premium. We did not ask that that increase 
and the taxpayers would continue to pay 68.5 percent. What did we do to 
save the program? We allowed the private sector to come in and compete 
on a fair basis with a fee-for-service system and offer better 
programs. If a senior wanted to, a senior could continue to get their 
traditional fee-for-service program with no increase in copayment, no 
increase in the deductible or the premium. But we allowed the private 
sector to come in, and the only way the private sector was allowed to 
come into the program under our legislation was if they offered eye 
care, if they offered dental care, if they offered maybe a rebate on 
the copayment, deductible. Some were going to pay the premium and some 
even said they could pay the Medigap in some parts of the country. 
There is so much money in Medicare that the private sector said they 
knew that they could offer better programs than the traditional 
Medicare system.
  Then we could have seniors simply say, I like my Medicare system, but 
if I can get eye care and dental care under the new Medicare system and 
I

[[Page H10759]]

can get a rebate on the copayment or the premium and actually maybe 
even have my Medigap covered, I am going to go into that program.
  A senior goes into that program. They get the eye care, the dental 
care. They get the rebate on their copayment and deductible. They have 
more money. They even get money for prescription drugs. Not a bad deal, 
the co-payment and deductible and premium did not go up.
  But let us say for some reason they did not like the new program. 
Maybe they did not like that HMO. Maybe they did not like the doctors. 
Maybe they did not like the attitude or the billing process. Maybe 
there was a reason they did not like it. For the next 24 months we 
allowed seniors to go back into their traditional fee-for-service 
program.
  I suspect someone may have said, I am staying in my fee-for-service. 
I do not want to think about getting anything better. So they would 
never have gone into the program to start with. But say someone who is 
younger might have gone into the program. Then they did not like it, 
they could go back. Then they could get another program that they 
thought was better.
  What was the big mistake that we had in our program. We made a big 
mistake. One big mistake. We saved $270 billion. I thought, that is a 
mistake? But that is what the President said. He did not call it a 
savings. He called it a cut. So did my colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle. Instead of allowing the program to grow at 10 percent a year 
we said it would grow at 7 percent a year. We put 60 percent more into 
the system. We gave a 49-percent increase per beneficiary. But we saved 
$270 billion. That is, in my judgment, something we should be very, 
very proud of.
  I am happy about the bill that the chairman, the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Lewis], is bringing forward. There is more money in it 
for HOPWA, housing opportunities for people with AIDS. He had said on 
the floor of the House that we would try to address that problem. I 
understand there is more money for EPA that both sides could agree on 
and a program that I am very supportive of, national service. I look 
forward to getting this bill and debating it because at the same time 
we are still slowing the growth and saving significant sums.

  Mr. Speaker, just to conclude my point about Medicare, we did not 
increase the copayment, the deductible, or the premium. We gave seniors 
choice just like we have as Federal employees and we saved $270 
billion. That $270 billion, half of which, as the Speaker knows because 
he led this fight, of the $270 billion, we put $132 billion right back 
into Medicare, part A and the $138 billion was available for Medicare, 
part B. We were looking to save the program.
  As the Speaker knows, because he has been a leader in this field and 
has spoken out so often, we know today that Medicare is losing $22 
million each day, $22 million each day. We know that next year it will 
lose $36 million each day and in the year after it will lose $60 
million each day unless we save this program by slowing its growth and 
taking the money that we slow, that $270 million, that savings, and 
plow it right back into the program. That is what we are doing.
  We did not increase the copayment, the deductible, or the premium and 
we saved Medicare until at least the year 2010. What to me was really 
surprising was how the President could call $270 billion a cut. I 
illustrate it, whatever opportunity I get, in saying that if I told my 
daughter that she could buy a car for $18,000 but I told her it had to 
be a full-sized car for $18,000, she could not have bucket seats, she 
could not have power windows and she could not have a CD, she could not 
have those things. I did not want her to buy a smaller car with those 
things. It had to be a good, large car that I wanted her to own. So I 
said, consistent with my trying to teach you how to do your own thing, 
you will go buy your own car.
  So I give her the $18,000 or tell her it is available. She spends a 
week looking and comes back all excited and says, ``Dad, I found the 
car of my dreams. I just love it, Dad, And, Dad, it has a sun roof and 
leather seats and it even has a CD.'' And I say to her, my daughter 
Jeramy, I say, ``Jeramy, I told you you could not do those things. I 
told you not to get a car with all those extras. I told you to get a 
full-sized car.'' She says, ``Dad, I did, I got a full-sized car but I 
got all those extras and here is $2,000 back because I did not spend 
$18,000, I only spent $16,000.'' And it would have been just as absurd 
if I had done this: I am ashamed of you for getting all these extras in 
the car and doing it and cutting $2,000. That would be absurd. That is 
no different than what the President did.
  We did not cut Medicare. It grew 7 percent a year, 60 percent from 
the last year to the 7th year, 49 percent per beneficiary from $4,800 
to $7,100, but we gave them no increase in copayment or deductible, no 
increase in the premium, but what did we do? We gave them choice, lots 
of choice. They will get better care, and we saved the program because 
we got $270 billion of savings, not cuts, $132 million of it to go into 
Medicare, part A and $138 million to do and be available for Medicare, 
part B, which gets me to the third area of concern.
  The third area of concern is simply that we are trying to change this 
caretaking society into a caring society. The way we do that is to make 
government smaller and to empower people. All of those in our own 
family that we love dearly, we try to teach them to grow the seeds. The 
people we love the most, the people we care about the most, we do not 
give them something. We teach them, we help them, we push them. We 
encourage them to grow as individuals.
  I would certainly never say to my daughter, ``you do not need an 
education,'' and I certainly would not say to her, ``you do not need a 
job because I will be there.'' What a destructive thing to do. But that 
is what government does. We do not do it for welfare, for people who do 
not have education and the poor who have children. We do it for 
corporations. We have certain tax write-offs, which I call corporate 
loopholes, and others call it that as well. It is really, in my 
judgment, programs that make large corporations dependent on 
government, and they do not need to be. It is the reason why lobbyists 
become so important in this country, because if government was not so 
important, if it was not doing things for welfare, for businesses and 
agriculture, et cetera, and it was not so intrusive in your life, 
lobbyists would not be so important in our life.
  We want to make government less intrusive. We want to make it 
smaller. And we simply want to end the welfare that is destroying 
individuals. It is destroying corporations, and it is destroying the 
farmer. We are trying to help each become independent. That is why we 
passed the freedom to farm bill. We are allowing farmers to farm, not 
telling them they do not have to farm and then they are given a 
subsidy. They can compete. They can maximize the return on their farm. 
We are getting the Government out of the way.

  We are getting the government to be less supportive of things that 
are simply not necessary for corporations because we want them to 
compete without a lot of rules and regulations, except for health and 
safety and environmental reasons. In the process, we are trying to 
strengthen people. We are trying to help individuals grow the seeds and 
not give them the food.
  That is why I am so supportive of our welfare reform bill. What a 
destructive thing to have four, not three, four generations of people 
on welfare. They are doing what their parents did and they are doing 
what their grandparents did. They are staying on welfare because they 
were never taught to dream. They were not given the kind of push they 
needed and they were not given the kind of care they needed.
  We had job training programs that did not work because these were job 
training programs that said, you come in here and stay a bit of time. 
We teach you something and then you are out on your own. Our job 
training programs, our career bill is designed so differently. It is 
designed to say, we want to give you the day care, the job training, 
and we are going to follow you through work. Six months from now we are 
still going to be on your back. We are going to be pushing, encouraging 
you.
  The State of Connecticut has welfare reform, and it is very caring 
legislation. It is the kind of reason why we passed our bill in 
Washington. The caring legislation is this. We have 2 tracks, those who 
we think are employable and those who are not. Maybe

[[Page H10760]]

they have mental challenges. Maybe they do not speak English well 
enough now so we have to teach them English. They have reasons why it 
may not be easy for them to get a job right away. But for the vast 
majority, we say, you are going to have to work. And Connecticut says, 
21 months. And it does it this way: It helps people get the job. It 
allows them, this is really terrific, it does not penalize them for 
getting a job. They still can keep their entire welfare cash payment, 
they still keep their health care for the 21 months. So they get a job, 
they establish themselves for 2 years, they have this extra money 
coming in because they have their jobs plus they have the actual 
welfare benefits plus they get the health care benefits.
  Mr. Speaker, I remember in a Committee on the Budget meeting one time 
you pointed out one reason why people do not get off welfare is because 
they lose their health care. I remember in the dialogue that we had on 
the Committee on the Budget, the point was made that people should be 
able to keep their health care when they are pushed off of welfare so 
that they are not tempted to stay on welfare. So we push them in that 
direction.
  One bill that was controversial in this session was the minimum wage 
bill. I am so proud of how the Republican Party dealt with that issue 
because two-thirds of our party does not agree with that issue. They 
think that the minimum wage is too much of an intrusion on business. 
One-third supported it and a vast majority of people on the other side 
supported it. But we know that we had to do something else if we were 
going to pass the minimum wage, and that was to have some significant 
and meaningful tax cuts to small businesses who employ those who are 
considered the most unemployable, tax credits for those on welfare, tax 
credits for those who simply do not have the work experience to 
actually be yet credible to the employer.
  They know they might have to spend a year or two to train that person 
because they are not well-educated and not well-trained and they need 
the training. It is a cost to the business. They actually are 
discouraged from doing it under the present system until we passed our 
tax cut bill, $8 billion. Our tax cut bill took some of the things that 
we had in terms of our tax cuts when we were trying to pass the tax cut 
legislation earlier, which the President vetoed. Because the President 
did veto our 7-year balanced budget bill, he did veto our changes to 
Medicare with no increase in the copayment, the deductible, the premium 
and lots of choice and a savings of $270 billion, put right back into 
Medicare. He vetoed it. He vetoed Medicaid reform. He vetoed welfare 
reform, but finally the third time he decided he could support it. That 
bill we passed was basically the same bill that we had given him the 
first two times.

                              {time}  1115

  So we have that bill, and he finally signed it.
  Well, we want to help people off of dependency in government, 
corporations and agriculture; we want to give them the job training as 
it relates to individuals, we want to give them the day care, and we 
want to allow them to work in their business, still keeping some of 
their welfare benefits for a period of time in health care.
  I am kind of drawing to a close, Mr. Speaker, but I do want to 
address this whole issue because we have had a lot of people 
criticizing this Congress, and for me, it is probably one of the most 
difficult things to contemplate. For the first time in the history of 
Congress, Congress is doing major heavy lifting. We are taking on some 
of the biggest and most powerful special interest groups to move this 
country to be more caring and less a caretaker. Those who want this 
Government to continue to be a caretaker are objecting to changes that 
we are making.
  Now, we passed and slowed the growth of some of our entitlements, but 
one of the ways that we are going to balance the budget is to slow some 
runaway programs, and in the process of slowing these runaway programs, 
like the Earned Income Tax Credit, the school lunch program, the 
student loan program, Medicare, Medicaid, the student loan program 
actually is not running away. We are actually going along with exact 
numbers of loans that we did schedule to do; we are just continuing it.
  But let us take the Earned Income Tax Credit. It is a payment made to 
people who do not make enough money, but are working to really support 
themselves, so instead of paying taxes to the Federal Government, they 
pay Social Security, but instead of paying other taxes, they actually 
get a cash payment from the Government that, if they do not pay enough 
taxes or any taxes, they do not just get a reduction in their tax, they 
actually get a payment from the Federal Government.
  We allow that program to go from 19 billion to 25 billion, but our 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle say that program, the Earned 
Income Tax Credit, tax credits for the working poor, that we are 
destroying the program, cutting the program. Only in Washington when 
you go from 19 million to 25 million do people call it a ``cut.''
  I mean, it is absurd. It is a growing program and a very important 
program. We did decide that it should apply to income levels of $28,000 
or less, not income levels of $36,000 or less.
  The school lunch program: I will never forget watching the President 
visit a school, trying to frighten the students and also the American 
people that we were cutting the school lunch program. I got pretty 
upset that we would cut the school lunch program, thinking we had done 
it. When I got back, I could not wait to speak to some of my colleagues 
who serve on the committees that would have done that, and this is what 
I found. What they were recommending and ultimately what we did until 
the President vetoed it: We allowed the school lunch program to grow 
from $5.2 to $6.8 billion. Only in Washington when you go from $5.2 to 
$6.8 billion do people call it a ``cut.'' The President calls it a cut, 
I have constituents who think I cut it, but when the learned it grew 
from $5.2 to $6.8 billion, they find that that is very acceptable.
  What did we do? The program is to grow at 5.2 percent more a year. We 
said, it should grow at 4.5 percent more a year, seven-tenths of a 
percent reduction in the growth. And what did we allow local 
communities to do? We cut the bureaucracy in Washington, which saved 
more than the money that we reduced in the growth. Then we gave to 
local communities and we allowed the State of Connecticut to say, for 
instance, that the school where my daughter goes to school and where 
her dad, who makes a good salary, and her mother, who makes a good 
salary, can find we do very well, my daughter's lunch is subsidized 17 
cents by the Federal Government, every student in the country, 17 
cents, rich or poor, wealthy communities and poor communities, 17 
cents.

  We allowed the State of Connecticut and every other State to say, we 
want the money that is going to the wealthy communities to continue for 
the poor kids in the wealthy communities, but not for the wealthy kids 
in the wealthy communities. We then allow them to take that money and 
put it into Bridgeport and Norwalk and Stamford, for instance, in my 
Fourth Congressional District, the district I represent, for kids who 
are poor in relatively poor communities.
  Bridgeport is a working class, middle-income community, but it has a 
lot of poor people, and some kids do not get a breakfast, some kids do 
not get a dinner, they get that lunch. We do not want to take away that 
lunch. We want to give them a breakfast, and we want to give them a 
lunch and a dinner for those kids, and a kid in one of my suburban 
communities who is well-to-do should not be subsidized.
  So we did not cut the school lunch program. We allowed it to grow 
from $5.2 to $6.8 billion.
  The student loan program is the one that really gets me. $24 billion 
last year; that is what we spent, $36 billion in the seventh year. 
Those of you who are thinking mathematically know we increased it 50 
percent. Only in Washington when you go from $24 billion to $36 billion 
would people call it a ``cut.'' But my colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle call it a ``cut,'' the President calls it a ``cut.'' It is 
simply not true.
  There is another word for when you say things are not true. It is not 
right for the President of the United States to go around the country 
and simply not say things that are not factually

[[Page H10761]]

incorrect, in fact, factually so incorrect that he knows that. He knows 
that the student loan program is going from $24 to $36 billion.
  Now what we did do to save money is, we got rid of the direct student 
loan program. This was a government student program that, basically, we 
tied it down by getting rid of it? No, we clamped it down to 10 percent 
of all student loans. That is what we did, and this is a direct student 
loan program that the administration tried to tell us was cheaper than 
doing it through the banks.
  The only problem was they had not factored in all the people that the 
government had to hire to manage the student loans. So when you had a 
local college give a direct student loan bypassing the bank, you would 
think it would save money. But then who had to administer that student 
loan? You got it, the Federal Government, and the Federal Government 
did it with twice as many people as the banks and at twice the cost.
  So we just simply said, we have got to make sure we do not get too 
deep into that program because it is going to be so expensive that we 
are going to be spending more on administrative costs than we should. 
We saved billions of dollars by slowing and condensing that program. We 
did try and failed. We did try and failed to say that from graduation 
to the first 6 months, when you do not pay back the loan yet, your 
grace period, the taxpayers pay the interest on that loan. We said the 
students should.
  I am proud of the fact that we asked students to play a role in this 
process. Six months after they graduate they start paying back their 
10-year or 15-year loan. In a basic 10-year loan, for the average loan, 
we were asking the students to pay $9 more a month. That is the price 
of a pizza. But where I live, it is the price of a movie and a small 
Coke. I have no problem saying to someone after they graduated from 
college or graduate school, 6 months after they graduate, they start to 
pay the loan back. It costs them $9 more a month.
  I have no problem saying you do not have to go to a movie maybe once 
a month. You may not be going to get that pizza, for the good of the 
country, so you do not have to pay a big debt later on.
  We are trying to get our financial house in order. It ends with the 
two points: Medicaid has grown from $89 to $127 billion. Again, only in 
Washington when you go from $89 to $127 billion do people call it a 
``cut,'' but my colleagues on the other side of the aisle call it a 
``cut.'' It is a significant increase in spending, and then, as I have 
already pointed out, Medicare is growing from $178 billion to $289 
billion, $4,800 per senior to $7,100 per senior.
  Mr. Speaker, you have been very patient. I am drawing to a close. My 
biggest concern of all is that I have colleagues on this side of the 
aisle who have done some very, very heavy lifting. They have put, in a 
sense, their political careers on the line for the good of the country.
  We were told early on, when we got elected, the best way to get 
reelected is to avoid controversy, controversy is conceived as the 
enemy of the incumbent. We had a freshman class and a number of senior 
members and rank and file members of this conference that said, I do 
not want to be back if being back means we continue to allow the 
country to go bankrupt, if coming back means we ignore saving Medicare 
from bankruptcy, because, remember now, the President vetoed our 
Medicare plan.
  He vetoed it last year when we thought the plan was going to go 
bankrupt by the year 2002. Now we know it is going to go bankrupt by 
the end of the year 2000. We know we are losing $22 million a day in 
Medicare, we are losing $36 billion next year, projected, and $60 
billion the year after that, every day.
  Who is going to deal with that problem? Are my colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle going to do that kind of heavy lifting? How 
could they possibly when they demagogue? How can they possibly do that 
if they simply oppose getting our financial house in order and 
balancing the budget and taking on the tough decisions?
  And so, Mr. Speaker, I just would like to end with the basic concept 
that the people we love the most, the people we care about the most, we 
try to teach them to grow the seed and to be better Americans. We try 
to free them up to compete in a very competitive environment. We try to 
help those who cannot help themselves, but not help those who can help 
themselves. Those that can help themselves need to be encouraged to be 
on their own, to work and to study and to grow as individuals.
  This Congress has taken on heavy lifting, and I hope and pray, 
whether they are Republicans or Democrats, I will say it this way: 
Those who have done the heavy lifting, those who have dealt squarely 
with the problems, those who have not demagogued the issues, those who 
have tried to serve this country with courage, those are the people who 
should be reelected and returned here; and if those are the people who 
are defeated, think of what the message will be. Those who survive, who 
were doing the heavy lifting, will say: ``I had better not do that 
again,'' and those who were critical of this heavy lifting, those who 
may demagogue the issue, are in there saying, ``Well, I had better just 
continue what I am doing,'' and that unfortunately is what has happened 
for the last 20 years.
  This is a crossroad in our country. I hope, I pray, that the true 
story will get out about the extraordinary job this Congress has done. 
We passed congressional accountability, we pass gift ban, we passed 
lobby disclosure, we passed the line item veto, we passed not imposing 
expenditures on local governments and State governments, the so-called 
unfunded mandate, bill, we passed welfare reform. We have changed 
welfare as we know it; it happened under our watch because of what we 
did. We have passed major changes in health care. We have passed the 
telecomm bill that will create 3 million jobs. We passed the Freedom to 
Farm bill. There are just so many other bills, the immigration bill 
that we hope to pass before we adjourn, and we have helped get our 
country's financial house in order.
  I have never ever been more proud to be part of this institution.

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