[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 136 (Friday, September 27, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H11579-H11580]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          ISSUES OF CONCERN AT THE CLOSE OF THE 104TH CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Duncan] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, as we wrap up the 104th Congress, there are 
three unrelated things which have come up this week which I would like 
to mention, all of which touch on important political issues.
  First, just yesterday this House overwhelmingly passed by a 3 to 1, 
75 percent margin, a bill attempting to crack down on illegal aliens. 
The immigration reform bill passed the other body 97 to 3. Almost 
everyone wants us to get tougher on illegal aliens.
  We had already given the INS a 72 percent increase in funding over 
the

[[Page H11580]]

last 3 years, 8 times the rate of inflation. Our appropriation bill 
this year gives them a 25.6 percent increase to $2.2 billion for the 
fiscal year starting October 1. Yet in spite of all this money, the INS 
is shirking its duty and it refusing to enforce the law and do the job 
it is supposed to be doing.
  Just 2 days ago a state trooper in Knox County, Tennessee, my home 
county, stopped a van, a regular-sized small van, containing 25 illegal 
aliens. The people were piled on top of each other. They were on their 
way to North Carolina. Our local law enforcement officer called the INS 
office in Memphis and could not even get an answer, even though this 
was during regular working hours.

  One of our local radio stations has attempted several times to get 
through, repeatedly, and has been unable to do so.
  This was the 6th time in recent months that the INS has either 
refused to act or even has at times told our local law enforcement 
officials in Tennessee to let a van of illegal aliens go.
  The problem is not money. No other agency in the Federal Government 
has received such a huge increase in the last 3 or 4 years. The problem 
is the system, Mr. Speaker. These people are paid the same whether they 
work hard or whether they work easy. Apparently, we have many in the 
INS who are wanting to do as little as they possibly can. Because our 
civil service system protects even lazy and incompetent workers, bad 
Federal employees can get away with almost anything.
  This is one of the reasons why so many people are so fed up with the 
Federal Government today and why we so desperately need to reform our 
civil service laws so that some of these Federal employees will have to 
start working at least half as hard as those in the private sector.
  Secondly, Mr. Speaker, a member of the Committee on National Security 
told me this week that our Bosnian adventure will ultimately cost us 
$10 billion. We have spent $4 billion in Haiti and, according to the 
Washington Post, have had our troops down there picking up garbage and 
settling domestic disputes. We have turned our men and women in our 
armed forces into international social workers, and we have spent and 
are spending billions in Bosnia, Haiti, Rwanda, Somalia, and 
especially, of course, in the former Soviet Union, where we even spent 
hundreds of millions constructing homes for returning members of the 
Soviet military.
  This does not even count our regular foreign aid. Any time anyone 
opposes throwing away all these billions overseas, they are insulted 
with the false label of isolationist. Yet, anyone who fairly looks at 
this would have to admit that the United States could carry on many 
close, active, friendly relationships with all nations without pouring 
billions and billions down foreign black holes.
  Let us be friends with everyone, Mr. Speaker, but you should not have 
to buy friends, especially with billions that we are taking away from 
our own children, putting their futures very much in jeopardy. We need 
to remember, Mr. Speaker, that we are over $5 trillion in debt and we 
are spending money that we do not have. We should not send our troops 
overseas unless there is a serious threat to our own national security 
or a definite U.S. vital interest involved, and neither of these is 
present in Bosnia.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, I want to briefly mention or briefly touch on 
one other incident which received national publicity this week. A 6-
year-old boy in Lexington, N.C., was charged with sexual harassment 
because he gave a 6-year-old girl a peck of a kiss on the cheek after 
she asked him to do so. This little boy, who knows nothing about sex, 
was held away from his classmates for the entire day and missed an ice 
cream party with his fellow students.
  This is taking political correctness to a ridiculous extreme. Surely, 
we can operate our schools with a little common sense. The school 
system in Lexington justified its actions based on a manual that this 
little boy could not have understood even if he had been told about it.
  Some of these extremists, I say extreme women's libbers, seem to want 
to turn men and women into enemies in this country, but we need to 
resist this. We need to stand up to this and say that some of this is 
wrong and ridiculous, and surely we should not have done this to this 
little 6-year-old boy.

                          ____________________