[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 35 (Tuesday, March 18, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H1096-H1103]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               ISSUES OF IMPORTANCE TO THE 105TH CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gibbons). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox] is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to 
address my colleagues tonight on a number of issues that are of 
importance not only to the 105th Congress in the House, but to the 
Senate and the American people as well. I asked that the opportunity be 
given to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra] to join me in this 
dialog, and we will be discussing a number of topics, not the least of 
which, Mr. Speaker, is one important to everyone in each State, and 
that would be the balanced budget.
  By what we have seen in the last 12 to 24 months, Mr. Speaker, is no 
longer are we just talking about whether we are going to balance the 
budget. Now it is going to be, how we do it? And one realizes that 
there are great advantages to balancing the budget.
  We know the State governments have to balance their budgets. Home 
budgets are balanced. Local governments are balanced, school districts, 
small townships, boroughs, cities all across America have to balance 
the budget. Only in the U.S. Federal Government do we not balance our 
budget. That is how we have acquired a $5 trillion debt.
  So, hopefully, in a continuing dialog with the American people, we 
can make those kinds of meaningful changes where valuable and important 
government programs continue but those best left to the private sector 
will be maintained. And we can have the kind of economy that is going 
to thrive, because with lower interest rates that will be the direct 
result of a balanced budget, we will be able to reduce home mortgage 
costs for each

[[Page H1097]]

family. We will be able to reduce college loan costs and, as well, be 
able to reduce our monthly vehicle loan costs.
  So I really believe that we are on the threshold here in the 105th 
Congress of being able to get our budget in a situation which is in 
control, is going to do right by the American people as far as the 
Federal Government's interrelationship with the State governments in 
providing services that do not duplicate but actually enhance the 
quality of life, quality of each life here in the United States.
  I now call on my colleague, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. 
Hoekstra], to join me and to give us his perspective as a more senior 
Member of Congress, as chairman of the reform caucus, a gentleman who 
has been at the cutting edge of the debate in Congress on how we can 
achieve this balanced budget and from his perspective why it is so 
important for his district and from his personal perspective.
  I yield to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra].
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding to me 
and for allowing us to really have this dialog this evening about the 
need for, and I have moved away from the term, I do not know what works 
for you, but I have moved away from the term ``balanced budget''. When 
you are talking about $1.6 trillion, $1.5, we will never get it into 
balance. In reality, we will either be at deficit or we will be at 
surplus. And I think it is important for us to move to a position where 
we are in a surplus budget and not in a deficit mode.
  I think the thing is, I had three town meetings over the weekend, and 
it really becomes an issue of talking about how we can save the 
American family, the traditional American family which over the last 
number of years has really come under attack.
  One of the biggest reasons that the American family has come under 
attack is that we develop a brochure which we call the Tale of Two 
Visions. It is a tale that has one vision which says our future is by 
growing Washington. And we use this and say, you know, the street that 
you and I cross each and every day when we come to the Capitol and we 
have the opportunity to vote is called Independence Avenue. And over 
the last number of years, it may have become more appropriate to call 
it Dependence Avenue. Because when you take a look down the street and 
you see who is lined up along that street, it is a whole series of 
Federal bureaucracies that have assumed control and power and tax 
dollars away from the American citizens and have moved it here to 
Washington.
  Last year, we together were engaged in a historic debate on welfare 
and moving control and power back to the States and the local level. 
And it appears in many ways that this welfare reform bill is working 
exceedingly well. So this is more of a story of getting to a surplus 
budget, but it is also very much a story of taking a look at problems 
that America faces and trying to design a more effective way to solve 
those problems.
  When we talk about the budget, some things that we talk about in our 
tale of two visions, the case for saving America's families, is that we 
move from what we call now a two-wage requirement back to where it is a 
one-wage earner.

                              {time}  2130

  And that a two-wage-earner family is an option, it is not a 
requirement. Think about the number of families today that one of the 
parents might want to stay home, but they really believe that they have 
to go to work. The primary reason is one of them is working for 
Government and one of them is supporting the family.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, the fact is the gentleman's 
vision, and the correct vision for America, is where he is headed by 
saying instead of having two parents both forced to be working, not 
only do they not have a chance to get the family together and time to 
be with the children, but we have lost that independence of being able 
to make the choice because we have created, I think, to some extent, so 
much bureaucracy here in Washington of telling people how to run their 
lives instead of, as we did last year with our welfare reform 
legislation, take that back to the States, let them run it closer to 
the people, closer to where the local Government is, less expensively, 
and in this case, obviously, where direct services can go right to the 
people they want to serve.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. That is right. I think the Republican vision, I think 
Congress' vision for where we need to go with the budget is more than a 
surplus budget. For all we know the Soviet Union ran surplus budgets. I 
do not know what their budget was, but our vision is to get to a 
surplus budget, but a surplus budget that can be funded by a one-wage-
earner family and not a requirement that we need two wage earners in 
the family to support this government and this bureaucracy in 
Washington.
  I think another key debate that we have as we work toward getting to 
a surplus budget is the whole question of whether new spending equals 
new tax burdens.
  One of the major things that we see in the budget that the President 
has presented to us, and that the gentleman and I are concerned about 
when we take a look at this budget, under the best of circumstances, 
the most optimistic economic assumptions, we believe that this budget 
barely comes into a surplus mode. But under a more realistic 
assumption, the most likely set of assumptions, this budget is still 
going to be $70 billion in the red in the year 2002.
  One of the primary reasons that this is happening is that this 
President has decided to move more power to this town by significant 
new increases in the number of programs that we have. This is not about 
slow growth and increasing the spending on Social Security because we 
have more seniors, or increasing the spending on Medicare because we 
have more seniors and those kinds of things. This is a conscious effort 
by this President to have an overlay of significant new programs on 
what we already have in Washington.
  I have taken a look at roughly the baseline between where the 
President is and where our conference may come out with a budget, and 
it looks like the President is somewhere between $250 and $300 billion 
above our baseline. The vast majority of that spending is new programs.
  There may be issues that we have to deal with, but when we have a 
$1.6 trillion budget, over 5 years we are going to spend $8 trillion, 
one would think that we could find, for new priorities, $250 billion 
out of that $8 trillion and just say there are some programs that we 
have had for years that are not working anymore, they are not as 
effective, we have a better way of solving the problem. Let us stop 
that program and move the money to this new priority rather than 
overlaying on what already exists.
  If this President would just be disciplined, and I think this is 
where I am, and the gentleman and I have not had the opportunity, but 
where I am, this Congress is going to have to be measured by the 
statement of ``Just say no.'' Just say no to new spending. If we just 
say no to new spending, if we kick the habit of new programs and new 
spending, we will be well on our way toward getting to a surplus budget 
without doing anything else.
  We can deal with tax cuts and those other kinds of things in the 
process, but what we talk about now, the biggest tax savings, the 
biggest reduction in tax burden to the American taxpayer is to stop the 
$250 to $300 billion of new spending that this President wants.
  I know exactly what we will do. We will not ask the American people 
to pay for it. We will put this $300 billion of new spending onto our 
kids and we will increase the debt and we will hope that we will get to 
a balanced budget or a surplus budget by the year 2002. This Congress 
should really say no to new spending until we get to a surplus.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. I think the American people want what the 
gentleman is talking about. They want to make sure we maintain Social 
Security and that it is there to take care of our grandparents and our 
parents and eventually our generation. They want to make sure that 
Medicare is fully funded to take care of the health care for seniors.
  But when it comes to those new programs the gentleman is speaking 
about, our communities are reaching out to do things on their own. 
There are corporations, there are civic associations. We are about to 
have, in

[[Page H1098]]

Philadelphia in April, a national volunteer conference with several of 
our past Presidents and our current President, for the purpose of 
reaching out.
  The best programs I have found, and we are speaking of some of these 
new programs the President is talking about, can best be accomplished 
by a public-private partnership, where universities, schools, civic 
groups, hospitals all work together to provide the kind of networking 
and the American spirit that Alexis de Toqueville spoke of many years 
ago. That is the America I dream about. And I think our constituents 
want us to let them be part of that American dream and not have to take 
so much of their dollars. Because, frankly, we spend more on paying the 
interest on the debt than we pay for all our Defense Department, and 
that is an alarming figure.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I am glad the gentleman brought that up. We have a 
sheet on that.
  Our choice is between new or expanded government programs or new or 
expanded nonprofit faith-based organizations. It is not a dream, what 
the gentleman was talking about: Corporations and individuals and 
churches and nonprofits being involved. It is happening every day.
  Last night I had the opportunity to speak to a group in a church that 
has reached out, and 1 hour every week a number of the members from 
this congregation go into their local school and they tutor the 
children in that school, one-on-one, 1 hour every week, and they form a 
lasting and an important relationship with that child. Some of them 
have been involved for 3 years.
  That is how we make the difference. The question is, are we going to 
suck the money out of the local community, creating more two-wage-
earner families, and create these programs that are run out of these 
buildings here in Washington; or are we going to leave some of the 
money in the local community, and a parent or an adult saying, ``I have 
some free time, I am going to go to that school and I am going to help. 
I will go out and reach out and form a personal relationship with a 
child in that school.''

  It is a wonderful way to improve the community. We help the child but 
we also personally get a great benefit out of that kind of an activity.
  So it is a choice between more new government programs versus some 
more free time that enables our nonprofits and our faith-based and our 
individuals to step up in the community.
  I see we have been joined. The gentleman from Pennsylvania may want 
to yield to our colleague from Georgia.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I do want to yield to the 
gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston], to give us his perspective on 
what he sees not only in his State but in the country, the value of 
balancing the budget, the value of giving back in tax decreases to our 
families a chance to realize the American dream.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania. I 
want to reinforce what the gentleman from Michigan was saying, because 
there is often, I would say, a Washington, big government bias toward 
the government running something as opposed to the nonprofit private 
sector doing it. It is similar to the accusation of saying, ``Well, I 
have the Boy Scouts and they do a good job, but if you want to win a 
war, you send in the U.S. Army.'' That is not an accurate comparison 
when we are talking about charity and the private sector.
  In 1995, Americans donated $147 billion to charity, to churches, to 
museums, to just private causes of all nature, and that does not count 
the casseroles, the cakes, the soft costs that happen when a neighbor 
is sick or someone has died and people step forward in that good old 
American way, as we have done for over 200 years. So we have a hard 
cost of $147 billion in direct donations to charity. In addition to 
that, we have 90 million Americans donating 4 hours each and every week 
to charity.
  Now, if we do the math on that, we will find we have donated each 
year about $19 billion manhours, each year, running T-ball, running the 
hospice, running the United Way, running all kinds of church 
institutions and faith-based charities that the gentleman has already 
mentioned. If we do the math on 19 billion manhours times $10 an hour, 
some of it will be worth less, some of it, though, far more, and we 
will find $190 billion that would be donated through hours.
  If we add the two of those together, America is not new at handling 
problems, at having volunteers go out and doing all sorts of things. 
Yet there is this Washington bias that unless there is a government 
program and unless there is legislation, unless there is law, that it 
cannot happen. There is just no way it can go without the blessing of 
Congress.
  So I certainly think that the budget that deemphasizes command 
control problem solving out of Washington, returning it back to the 
streets of America, I think, is absolutely the right direction to move 
to.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. If I can carry forward, Mr. Speaker, with 
what the gentleman from Georgia was just saying, the fact is that not 
only do we have to have a balanced budget, which will have the 
opportunity for the economy to grow, we also need to reduce the taxes 
on our American families, whether it is a $500-per-child tax credit, 
reducing capital gains for individuals and businesses to encourage 
investment, savings and jobs, or reducing inheritance taxes.
  How many family farms across the country cannot be exchanged or given 
to the next generation without fear that all the taxes are going to 
take away the lands and take away the farm? We need to make sure that 
we unbridle some of the regulations that we have that are stifling 
America's businesses from growing, America's families from achieving 
the American dream.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield once again to the gentleman from Michigan.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. The gentleman is a pretty good lead. We are developing 
two other segments in what we call our tale of two visions, because one 
of the things that we talk about when we talk about more government 
spending, whether it is increasing spending or reducing taxes, the 
choice is pretty clear. The choice is between government spending 
versus family savings. A very clear choice.
  We take a friend with us almost wherever we go just to talk about 
this, and the choice is sending money to a Washington bureaucrat or 
leaving it with a family. It is a decision between Washington 
bureaucracy versus our children.
  What we are going to do in each of the next few weeks is build on 
this tale of two visions and discuss each one of those: Washington 
bureaucracy versus our children; government spending versus family 
savings; a one-wage option versus a two-wage requirement; deficit 
spending versus surplus savings; and new government programs versus new 
nonprofits.
  Those are things that are important. That is what a budget sets. A 
budget tells us who we are, what is important to us. We are more than 
about a surplus budget. We are about strengthening families; restoring 
and strengthening our families and designing a system.
  I think in a few minutes we are going to talk about education. I have 
had the opportunity to go around the country, in my oversight 
capabilities, to schools in New York and California and Arizona and 
Delaware, and talk about education. Somebody said, ``Well, Mr. 
Hoekstra, maybe you should come to my classroom and you can see what is 
really going on in the classroom.'' I said I do not know if I will ever 
be an expert in the classroom, but what we in Washington and what 
people in the State bureaucracy are supposed to be good at doing is 
designing systems that empower teachers and parents to help their 
children at a classroom level, at the local level.
  Soon we will talk about the kind of systems that we currently have in 
place. We are about empowering people at the local level to make a 
difference because systems at the local level, most often, are the ones 
that have the greatest impact.

                              {time}  2145

  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. The fact of the matter is the gentleman from 
Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra] hit the nail on the head. Because the school 
districts back home in each of our States, we elected those people, in 
some cases they may have been appointed in certain cities, and they are 
the ones who have been entrusted locally to take

[[Page H1099]]

care of the local educational policy. And while they may receive, and 
should, funds from the Federal Government for transportation for the 
students, schoolbooks and maybe even school lunches, of course, the 
policy implementation of what is important for that district and what 
is important for that State should be left to the local district. That 
is really integral, I believe, to the American education system.
  Mr. KINGSTON. On that subject, I am fascinated with the hard work the 
gentleman has done in his subcommittee because you have certainly been 
all over the country.
  One of the stories the gentleman came out with is that the Federal 
Government has a kitty litter policy. Perhaps the Federal Government 
should have a manure policy, for obvious reasons, but kitty litter 
seems to be stretching it a little bit. As I understand it, it had to 
do with the housing, a HUD program that you gentlemen unearthed, and I 
have it with me. I am cheating a little bit on the gentleman from 
Michigan, but I am a fan of your newsletter, as I told you earlier 
today. Section 5.350 part 2 of the HUD manual of the Federal----
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, I encourage my colleague 
from Pennsylvania to listen to this very closely, because there are 
some bureaucrats in HUD who thought that this was a very important 
regulation, and you can see the wisdom of some of the people in our 
bureaucracies and the kind of issues that they are dealing with.
  Mr. KINGSTON. This is none other from the Secretary of Housing and 
Urban Development, Secretary Henry Cisneros, created rules regarding 
pet ownership by the elderly and disabled in public housing.
  It says under section 5.350:

       In the case of cats and other pets using litter boxes, the 
     pet rules may require the pet owner to change the litter but 
     not more than twice each week; may require pet owners to 
     separate pet waste from litter, but not more than once a day; 
     and may prescribe methods for the disposal of pet waste and 
     used litter.
  I am so glad that the Federal Government is finally addressing the 
kitty litter problem. We have got a $5.1 trillion debt, and we are 
getting into the kitty litter business.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. It seems to me that we have to make sure we 
have quality housing and make sure those who are coming from shelters 
for the homeless have transition housing, and first-time home buyers, 
but I do not understand how we are spending time in the Government 
working on kitty litter when that is something that probably could be 
left to homeowners and individuals on their own. It just occurs to me, 
but maybe that is a new idea.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, we have two cats at home, 
and it is not too difficult to tell when you need to change the kitty 
litter. I am not sure we need a Federal regulation for doing it in 
public housing. I think in public housing they can tell as quickly as 
what we can at home about what happens.
  Mr. KINGSTON. What I am concerned about is what about hamster owners? 
Why do they not have to have the same regulations? And what about 
people with goldfish, should they not be required to change the water? 
And Mynah birds. Do you know anybody with a Mynah bird? They are 
filthy.
  In this era when the end of big government has come, it just seems 
amazing to me that we are so inconsistent with administering the pet 
policy. And when I say us, let us make sure that the folks understand, 
this is not the U.S. Congress, these are the unelected bureaucracies 
who never have to have town meetings, never have to have their name on 
the ballot and never have to answer constituent mail. They are the ones 
making these rules.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Perhaps in our housing subcommittee, we can 
certainly address that. It seems to me that one of the items of 
legislation that I have introduced that I think would address this is 
sunset review of Federal agencies, to say if they are not really 
fulfilling their original purpose, maybe they need to be downsized, 
privatized, or eliminated. The fact is while we need to have a housing 
policy to take care of assisting those in need, I do not think it goes 
to the assistance on pet deportment.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, in the same issue, the 
February issue of Tale of Two Visions, if my colleague from Georgia 
read on, he would know that we took care of the kitty litter. We also 
went on in the Federal Government to take care of rabbits. This gets to 
be interesting. The National Institutes of Health required one 
university to replace all of the school's rabbit cages. This carried a 
price tag of $250,000. We care about rabbits as much as we care about 
kitties. However, less than a year later, the Agriculture Department 
declared that the cages were the wrong size. The university had to once 
again replace the cages.
  We should feel really good that we have two agencies in Washington 
that are caring about rabbits. The frustrating thing is, I think, and 
the gentleman has talked about the sunset legislation for rules and 
regulations. There are a couple of other bills that have been 
introduced, one of which would require congressional review of rules 
and regulations before they actually go into effect, and I have 
introduced a piece of legislation. Can you imagine how frustrated this 
university was after they had just spent $250,000 on rabbit cages and 
another department came in and said, ``You've got to change it.'' We 
have said where you have got conflicting regulations, we have to 
provide an expedited way to review that and you are held harmless for 
following one set of guidelines when another agency comes in and tries 
to tell you that you did the wrong thing, so we protect the people in 
those cases.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield, I have heard, and Georgia 
has a lot of poultry processing and poultry processing is very water 
intensive and you have to keep the area very, very clean for the USDA 
inspectors. You have to have it clean. But then the Occupational Safety 
and Health Administration comes in and they say the place is too wet. 
So you clean it enough to process the food and then it gets too 
dangerous for the workers and you have two Federal agencies once again 
responding to the same problem that many times they are creating.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. The key to this is, it is not that these rules or 
regulations are good or bad, I think they go too far. This is taxpayer 
dollars. This is why we have too many families in America today that 
are two-wage-earner families as a requirement, not by choice, not by 
option, to support these kinds of activities.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. I would point out that some of these two-
wage-earner families actually have more than one job apiece.

  Mr. HOEKSTRA. The gentleman is correct.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I know the gentleman has done a lot of study on the 
U.S. Department of Education, how big it is, but before we get to that 
I want to mention another bureaucracy that has 111,000 employees, and 
that is the IRS.
  Listen to this story that was from an article written by Dan Gifford 
in Insight magazine, April 29, 1996:
  A man's brother was killed in the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am 
Flight 103. The IRS demanded that he pay $64 million to them because 
they had guessed that he had received about $11 million in a 
settlement.
  They wanted $64 million from the guy because they had guessed he had 
received $11 million, and the fact was that he had never received one 
dime for the settlement at the time the IRS wanted it.
  Another story said there was a 10-year-old girl, the daughter of a 
man, and the IRS claimed he owed $1,000 in taxes, $600 paper route 
savings since she had a little paper route, $600 in her savings were 
seized by the IRS. This is a 10-year-old girl. I have an 11-year-old 
son. This is somebody who rides bicycles. So the IRS seizes $600 in a 
paper route savings and would not give it back to her until her father 
paid the $1,000 on taxes that he owed. It is just absurd. It is a 
bureaucracy out of control and out of touch.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Going back to the Tale of Two Visions, we all know how 
complex our Tax Code is. It is so complex that the IRS has spent in the 
neighborhood of $8 billion trying to design and automate and 
computerize the system. They now acknowledge that $4 billion of this 
will never be able to be used. When you talk about a two-wage-

[[Page H1100]]

earner family, that is 2 million families where the second wage earner 
paid $2,000 to the Federal Government and did not get one dime of 
value. Two million families where the second wage earner paid $2,000 in 
taxes and the Government threw it away, because our Tax Code is too 
complex. That is why 2 million men or women went to work for a year and 
got absolutely no value. That is waste, that is wrong, and that is what 
is killing America's families today.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. There are two other points I want to add. 
Both the gentlemen have made good points about the need for the IRS 
reform. It seems to me we need a couple of other areas of reform. We 
have the problem with IRS in that we do not have a simplified form. 
There are so many complications to the IRS Tax Code that we do not even 
have a simplified form that people can use. I do not think that is 
fair. No. 2, we have a situation where most of our Anglo-American law, 
the person who is involved in court is presumed to be innocent, whether 
it is a defendant involved in one court case or another, the Government 
has the burden of proof and the defendant in a criminal case, my God, 
is presumed innocent.
  Here you have a taxpayer, there can be no presumption he did anything 
wrong, but the current code says they are presumed to be wrong and the 
IRS Commissioner is presumed to be right. I think this Congress has got 
to take the bull by the horns and switch that presumption and put the 
burden back on the Federal Government and not on the taxpayer.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Here is another interesting statistic. From 1954 to 
1994, the number of words in the section of the IRS code relating just 
to income taxes, not all the other taxes but just to income taxes went 
from less than 200,000 to over 800,000.
  In 1994, businesses across America spent more than 3.6 billion hours 
preparing their tax returns, and individuals spent more than 1.8 
billion hours preparing their tax returns. Looking at it this way, that 
approximates to 3 million people working full-time 12 months a year 
just to comply with the Tax Code. You talk about wasted energy and 
wasted manpower. That is absolutely ridiculous. We have got to move 
toward a simplified tax system. I do not know if the answer is the flat 
tax, but we have got to give it serious debate, and we have got to do 
it very soon.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. If the gentleman from Michigan would 
continue for the benefit of our colleagues of what he has learned in 
his educational survey, I know that the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. 
Kingston] and I would certainly like to hear more about it.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. We are going to be coming to your States. What we are 
doing is we are working on a project which we call Education at a 
Crossroads: What's Working and What's Wasted. We have evidence that 
there are problems in education around the country, but we know that 
there has been a Federal response. It is kind of interesting. We have 
kind of gotten into a debate with how many programs are there really. 
Nobody can really tell us. Are there 500 programs? Are there 700 
programs? We started this process a year ago and we went to this book, 
which is called the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance. This is one 
big book.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Was it good reading?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I have some very qualified staff people who have the 
opportunity to read these.
  But this Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance, you go to the 
section that is called Education, and this is all in fine print, and 
you read this, and you count them, and you find in this document that 
there are at least 660 education programs just under the Education 
title.
  You then go on to the Office of Management and Budget, and you ask 
them how many programs there are, and you go to the Congressional 
Research Service, and they say, ``Well, we think you maybe don't have 
all the programs,'' so they find about another 116 programs. Here is 
what the Congressional Research says, and the Department says:
  ``As is noted below, these counts do not include possible additions 
of education-related programs in the areas of foreign aid, educational 
or cultural exchanges bringing foreign citizens to the United States.''
  They also go on to say that they cannot verify the completeness of 
this information.
  ``We are aware of no listing or other source of information on 
Federal education-related programs that is sufficiently comprehensive 
in detail to fully meet your needs.''
  Remember, our need was a very simple question: How many Federal 
education programs are there? That was our need. They said there is not 
an exhaustive list. ``At the same time we are aware of no better source 
of this information than the CFDA,'' which is the big binder that I 
held up.
  So we know that, according to Government documents, there are well 
over 750, 760 programs that go through 39 different agencies and spend 
over $120 billion per year. What it means is that for a long time, 
Washington has been working on a program, and we are doing different 
lessons in education every week, but this is lesson No. 2, that we like 
kids, we care about kids in Washington, but we have designed a system 
that has given us this kind of mechanism and this kind of cottage 
industry.

                              {time}  2200

  And this is two binders, OK? These are two big binders, and the title 
of this binder is Guide to Federal Funding for Education. And so what 
we have done is we have just developed layer on layer of education 
programs, and you know as the gentleman from Pennsylvania said earlier, 
we recognize we need to help kids. But when we put together this kind 
of process, and this tells you who to go to and how to apply for the 
grant and how to write your grant, and then there is an interesting 
thing in here that is called--what is this called? It is called the 
Funding Opportunity Rating System. The following system rates programs 
for most competitive, which is one star, to least competitive, which is 
five stars, to tell you that the feasibility and the probability of 
getting Federal funding, and what we have done is we have created a 
complex system that means we are friends at the IRS; you know, 110,000 
plus are out there taking taxpayer dollars, taking dollars away from 
families. We design a complex system so that you have got to have these 
kinds of binders to find out exactly how to get the money. Then they go 
back to the classroom with all kinds of rules and regulations.
  The end result is we are going through this process, and we will find 
out more when we go to Pennsylvania and when we go to Georgia. Our 
expectation is that maybe only 65 or 70 cents gets to the child. That 
is not good enough.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Where is the rest of it; in bureaucracy?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. The rest of it is in applying for the funds, finding 
out about the funds, promoting the programs, the bureaucracy, 
administration, all of those kinds of things, and you know as we are 
talking about some of these new programs that the President wants to 
do, the debate here on some of these programs is not going to be about 
whether these are things that we should be doing. We need to be in 
certain cases helping improve education. The debate will be if we are 
only getting 65 cents of the dollar to the child, are we going to 
increase spending to $1.20 to get up to 70 cents or 75 cents to the 
child, or are we going to take a look at that 30 to 35 cents and say 
that is too much going to bureaucrats and bureaucracy? Let us see if we 
cannot cut the overhead like we did in welfare, if we cannot cut the 
overhead in the bureaucracy and get the money to the child and get it 
to the classroom without having to increase taxes or increase deficit 
spending.
  Mr. KINGSTON. You know, it is interesting during this period of time, 
and I generally attribute most of it since the conception of the 
Department of Education in Washington, and the gentleman may know the 
exact year. I believe it was 1978; but was it not 1978?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Anyway our colleague in the back might--1978 or 1979?
  Mr. KINGSTON. I am certain it was when Jimmy Carter was President, 
and so let us just say thereabouts. But what is interesting, during 
that same period of time that we have had this absolute explosion in 
programs, which has also taken away the flexibility and

[[Page H1101]]

freedom for the teacher to teach in her or his own classroom, what has 
also happened is the SAT scores have fallen from approximately 937 to 
about 910 points, if not more than that, and the interesting thing as 
you know, the SAT scores have been recalibrated, and 900 in 1975 would 
equal about a thousand today. So in reality the SAT scores have fallen 
more than 30 points, but to probably about a hundred despite all of 
this Federal Government help to States which has proven not to be help 
but hindrance.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. I would ask Congressman Hoekstra, how do we 
get education to be more child centered?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Well, this is exactly what we are talking about. I 
think our vision of education, the vision that we see, and you know the 
exciting thing about going around the country and in some cases going 
to some of the most troubled areas and some of the roughest areas in 
the country, education in many of those areas is working. There are 
entrepreneurs, there are strong, driven individuals, there are parents 
that are going in and they are making a difference. And you know this 
is our vision for education. Our vision for education is a child-
centered approach where the programs that we have in place are focused 
on helping the child, they are empowering parents, they are recognizing 
the importance of teachers in this process, that it is a partnership 
with teachers and parents and the student coming together to help that 
child learn.
  You know, one of the exciting things about this is we have seen lots 
of innovations in getting to a child-centered education. Charter 
schools; we have got them in Michigan, we saw them in California, we 
visited them in Phoenix. And when we had our hearing in Phoenix, the 
National Education Association came out and said they are going to be 
doing four charter schools around the country.
  I think that is exciting. I think it is wonderful that the teachers' 
unions are accepting the challenge of charter schools which provide 
them a new flexibility to try to redesign and recreate what goes on in 
a school outside of the bureaucratic maze, and I am, you know, I am 
excited that they are taking that challenge because if anybody can work 
and design a good school, it should be teachers in the local community 
working with parents and designing what that community needs.
  I am looking forward to where they establish them. I am hoping and 
expecting that they will establish a charter school in the State of 
Michigan so that we can learn from their experience and their 
expertise. But the focus is this model right here along the bottom. It 
is parents focused on the student, it is teachers focused on the 
student, and the important thing is here the teachers know the name of 
the kids, the parents know the names of the kids; and it is an 
alternative to what the Washington Senate approach is, which is where 
we are today, which is at the end of the stream is the student, at the 
top of the stream is the bureaucrat. The bureaucrat does not know the 
name of the kids.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. The gentleman from Michigan is right on 
target because the fact is that each district knows best what is good 
for their students, what the needs are, special programs that relate to 
industry in the district that relates to industry maybe having adopt-a-
school programs to bring in community scholars. There are all kinds of 
innovations. If we tap into the private sector, there is no telling how 
far we can go. And education, just like every other area of life, 
business, the arts, everything is being questioned of how can we 
improve, how can we spend less by getting our money's worth, getting 
the taxpayer what they want, quality education at a reasonable price, 
making sure we maximize dollars but minimize waste.
  Mr. KINGSTON. The gentleman in your newsletter, and I am attributing 
everything to you that I am plagiarizing here, but you pointed out in 
Washington, DC, a 57-year-old grandmother who started a program called 
Children of Mine, and the program in Washington, DC, provides hot 
meals, homework help, tutoring, computer instruction, Bible study, and 
a safe place for at-risk children to play, go to after school, to know 
that they are safe and have security and so forth. And the interesting 
thing is as this woman, Miss Hannah Hawkins, has turned around the 
lives of so many children since--well, I am not sure she started it in 
1970 or how long she has been doing it, but not one dime comes from the 
Federal Government.

  And you are finding all kinds of programs similar to this Children of 
Mine.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the gentleman for yielding. That is exactly 
what we are doing with A Tale of Two Visions, and you know the earlier 
examples that we cited were examples of Government inefficiency, 
Government being asked to do things that maybe it could not do or that 
it should not do, and in the same issue of every edition of this 
newsletter we also publish success stories, nonprofits, individuals, 
private enterprise, churches going out and making a difference in their 
community so that people can get a sense of actually what is going on 
in the country.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. If the gentleman will yield, I have seen 
back in my home area of Montgomery County, PA, just how what you talked 
about is happening. Whether it is churches or synagogues or civic 
groups or boys and girls clubs, they have done the thing which is 
related to education in community youth groups. Whether it is the DARE 
Program, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education, through our sheriff's 
office, our town watch programs; no Government funding there. It is the 
eyes and ears of local police departments. Community policing; it is an 
idea where local police departments work with the community, work with 
the civic organizations, and that is really where we are making a great 
difference because it is not the Government trying to solve all 
problems. We are part of the solution, and that whole idea is, I think, 
coming to fruition.
  Mr. KINGSTON. We have an example in Savannah, GA, which I mentioned 
to Mr. Hoekstra about, of a weight lifting coach named Michael Cone who 
actually had been an Olympic weight lifter, and he went to work in the 
school, worked in the school system for 10 years, and under his 
jurisdiction was the Presidential Fitness Program, and we all took the 
Presidential Fitness Program when we were growing up, and, as he 
described it very accurately, you go to the class and you say:
  All right kids, everybody come up here and do a pullup.
  Well, children really cannot do pull-ups. There are a few who can, 
but the majority of kids cannot. So what happens? One kid goes up and 
cannot do a pullup. The other 29 in the class say we are not trying 
because they know not trying is better than failure. And so you got one 
kid who has been humiliated, and 29 say we are not going to touch that 
ball. And what happened is the Presidential Fitness Program has become 
somewhat humiliating to some kids. It has also become cumbersome in 
terms of testing the children, and the results do not lead to anything.
  And so what Mr. Cone did in Savannah, GA, he went in with a local 
hospital and got them to underwrite and say: Why don't we prepare a 
physical fitness program for kids, a measurement so that each child 
could do something of the test? And let's don't throw in an 11-year-old 
who is 140 pounds with an 11-year-old who is 90 pounds because 
physically they are not equal. Why have their measurement tested the 
same way? Let's do it by weight more than age and so forth; just some 
practical commonsense approaches.
  As a result of Mr. Cone working with the local hospitals, they now 
had an ongoing physical measurement program for kids all over Chatham 
County where they can find out if these kids have any physical 
problems, if they changed from the year before. If they are overweight 
they can make recommendations and so forth. But the best part is it is 
less extensive than the Federal program and it goes a lot quicker. They 
can test it in about a third of the time that the Presidential Fitness 
Training Program does, and again it is an example of local initiative.
  But you know Mr. Cone told me the unbelievable part is he had to 
fight the bureaucracy to get this thing approved and get it running.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. The system that I think we are looking forward to is 
developing and bringing back in balance a role for Government, 
highlighting

[[Page H1102]]

the role that individuals can play, highlighting the role that private 
enterprise can play and highlighting the role, the responsibility of 
nonprofit faith-based types of organizations that American society 
where there is an equal balance between those four is when we really 
excel, and that when one of those becomes too dominant is when maybe we 
encounter most of our problems.
  And I think what we have seen over the last number of years is where 
the role of the Federal Government has gotten so big and where we are 
spending $1.6 trillion per year and we are $5, approaching $6 trillion 
in debt, and we are saddling our kids with interest payments of $258 
billion per year. We are out of whack. You know when a two-wage earner 
family is a requirement and not an option, we are out of whack and we 
have got to bring that back into focus.
  I ask my colleague, and I know my colleague from Pennsylvania has a 
passion for higher education, and I ask my colleague if he saw this 
last edition of Time Magazine talking about the cost of higher 
education, whether you have had an opportunity to read that article?
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Briefly; yes, sir.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. And I think, you know, as we really take a look at how 
we help young people for those that select and believe that they want 
to go to higher education, I think that article points out that before 
we throw a lot more money and programs at some of this we need to take 
a look at the correlation and the dynamics between Federal spending and 
the cost of education. And it is kind of a complex issue, but we ought 
to at least have some hearings and have some debate and dialog on that 
to make sure that when we fund higher education programs and we are 
trying to help kids, that is exactly the result that we are going to 
have, and we do not fuel a price war in the wrong direction toward 
increased prices.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. If the gentleman yields, I believe that, you 
know, there is a greater role for the Federal Government in this area. 
There are many students who I found in my district who are qualified to 
go to school but yet do not have the financial means. So they need the 
loans and grant program.
  One of the important pieces of legislation that is before us during 
this session that I hope in fact has passed will improve the 
opportunity for students. One will last; for instance, the 
reinstatement for employers, the deductibility for helping the students 
pay the tuition, and it will not be treated as a gift to the student to 
provide a disincentive.
  The fact is we have to provide the incentives for qualified students 
to go into higher education not only to take over positions of 
government but to discover things in medicine to help us live longer 
and better, and our universities provide that kind of opportunity, and 
I understand what you are saying. Obviously we need accountability, 
too, that we are not overcharging our students for what a quality 
education should be, and that is part of what your committee will 
continue doing, and I hope that will give Congressman Kingston and me a 
chance to weigh in and be a part of your crusade.

                              {time}  2215

  Mr. KINGSTON. One of the things that is interesting in one of the 
statistics your committee came out with is that 30 percent of the 
American students entering higher education, entering colleges and 
universities have to take remedial courses.
  I believe one of the reasons that they have to take remedial courses 
is because this bureaucracy that we are throwing on local school 
systems makes teachers spend far more time in paperwork than they 
should be and far less time helping students, because when they are 
filling out paperwork they cannot help that marginal student who needs 
just a little extra help in math that day. I mean a C student, C-plus 
student who might come up to a B or B-plus or an A, but instead moves 
in the opposite direction because the teachers are not there any more.
  So what does the President do? He says we need tutors, so let us go 
in with these $20,000 a year volunteers from AmeriCorps to solve this 
problem. It is absolutely absurd. We do not need more Federal programs, 
we need less, and more flexibility for the teachers; we need less 
paperwork for them.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, my 
subcommittee also has oversight on the Corporation for National 
Service, which is the parent corporation for AmeriCorps.
  There is debate about whether AmeriCorps works or whether it does 
not. I originally voted for the program, and as I have now had 
oversight over the program for the last 3 years, I have some questions 
about the program and exactly how it has worked, and it is working 
different than what I maybe anticipated it was going to do. There are 
two fundamental facts. Their books are not auditable, and we have known 
that for about 12, 18 months, that we really do not get a full 
accounting of where the money goes.
  We have had hearings on this and there has been some explanation that 
the corporation came together and it had some old programs with dirty 
books and they had to kind of clean those up, and they are getting 
there. But more disturbingly, within the last 10 days, the auditors 
have come out and said that their trust fund is not auditable, which 
means that there is not an integrity to the system that the 
scholarships for the kids that worked, that will actually be able to 
match up the scholarship money to the kids that actually did the work. 
So it is kind of disturbing that there is not that integrity in the 
system.
  I also wanted to build off on what my colleague from Pennsylvania is 
talking about, the tax deductibility for corporations to enable their 
employees to go to college. But in my State, it is important for them 
to get additional training, but it is also very important because being 
a huge automotive producing State, we need machinists, we need 
journeymen, and so we need the kids to go into the basic trades, which 
are great jobs, which certain kids have a great aptitude for and they 
love doing.
  I could not do it. My colleagues would not want to take a look at the 
parts that came off the machine after I spent a few hours on them. But 
we need those kids, because it is part of the heart of our industrial 
strength, is having the journeymen and the people talented and skilled 
in those areas. It is really an art, and so we need the flexibility and 
the programs that we design that say if you are going to go to a 4-year 
college, if you are going to go to medical school, or if you are going 
to go and be a journeyman, we are going to support you in getting that 
additional learning, because we need that full range and that full 
breadth of skills, and we need to empower young people to match the 
skills that they want to get with the love and the profession that they 
have a passion for, and we cannot use these Government programs to 
coerce them into doing something that maybe they would not do 
otherwise.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I think one of the other things 
that we need to do, for the students 18 and under, they have no direct 
voice here in Congress in the sense that there is someone their age, 
and I think of the youth Congress when they take over the 435 seats in 
this House, they elect a Speaker and they pass some legislation that 
they tell us about. Because while student loans are important, reducing 
crime is important, their dreams and aspirations are important also. We 
get this reflectively sometimes through their parents, and sometimes in 
our town meetings, and sometimes I hear about them when I go to visit a 
school, but I would love to have a youth Congress sometime this summer 
and hear directly from them, because sometimes I do not think we hear 
enough from them.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, that is a 
wonderful idea, having a youth Congress for a week where maybe every 
Member of Congress has the opportunity to select one member to 
represent them in this youth Congress for a week, where we could define 
a range of issues, maybe two or three or four issues that we would like 
them to work on and debate for a week. The biggest fear that I would 
have is that at the end of the week, the American people might be more 
impressed with the youth Congress than what they are with us.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. I think we can afford that risk to make the 
country stronger and better.

[[Page H1103]]

  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, one of the great parts about this job is 
that we do get lots of students come and visiting our offices and I am 
always inspired. It is interesting that there are a lot of folks who 
are down on students, but I look at the kids who are in our classes 
today and I feel very, very optimistic. But often, it is because of 
their own effort or their parents more than it is because of the 
education system.
  We were talking about preparing kids for the future. One of the 
realities that children of today will face a lot more than our 
generation is that they will be competing directly against German, 
Japanese, British, Canadian children and so forth.
  The question is, are we preparing them best? Of the 760 different 
Federal education programs, it is interesting to note that there are 14 
programs that deal with reading, but 39 deal with art. There are 11 
that deal with mathematics, but 27 that deal with environment.
  Now, I think it is important to know about art and it is important to 
know about environment, but when you are talking about competing in a 
global economy, you better know your math and you better know how to 
read. But because the Federal Government passes things based on 
politics and emotion far more than logic, it is a lot more popular to 
vote for art and environmental programs rather than math and reading 
because they are somewhat lackluster. But are we cheating our children 
when we do that? I think we are. We have to prepare them for the global 
marketplace.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I know we are running close to the end of our time, and 
I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox], for taking the hour 
tonight.
  The gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] is absolutely right. We 
need to prepare our kids. But the bigger responsibility that we have is 
we need to prepare this country, which means I think that we have to 
carry forward on our vision toward getting a surplus budget and a 
government that can be funded by a one-wage-earner family, that a two-
wage-earner family is an option, and that we get a government and we 
get it in a size and a scale that no longer sucks strength away from 
our families, but is in balance with what our families need.

  If we can do that, we will prepare the proper environment for our 
children to be successful.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's 
comments. I think that the gentleman's whole theme has been one that 
rings true for America, and that is to make our families stronger, and 
by doing that we make America stronger.
  I did want to make one parenthetical comment, discussing AmeriCorps. 
I can tell my colleagues about a couple of programs that frankly in 
relationship back to what the Congressman from Georgia, Mr. Kingston, 
was talking about, the RSVP and the foster grandparent programs have 
been outstanding examples, and I will have to look into the tutor 
program you spoke of to see whether it is as accountable and as 
beneficial. But I think the overall theme that the gentleman from 
Michigan has presented tonight, balancing our budget, getting tax 
relief to families, letting them become one-wage-earner families, if 
that is what they want, so that they can again spend more time 
together, enjoy the quality of life, build their communities, and I 
think that kind of vision of America's dream is certainly one that 
people from my district will want to embrace.
  I yield to the gentleman from Georgia for a concluding comment.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, let me just say, I appreciate the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania and the gentleman from Michigan for letting 
me join them this evening, and I do agree with the title of the 
gentleman from Michigan's newsletter. We have two missions here, one of 
a command-control bureaucratic government where Washington experts tell 
the whole world how to run their lives, how to run education, and how 
to run their businesses and families and so forth, or we have a 
government that is smaller and based on common sense. The gentleman has 
an excellent newsletter, and if the gentleman would, could we get his 
Net page number and so forth.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. For my colleagues, this newsletter is delivered on a 
monthly basis, and they can get it from 1122 Longworth House Office 
Building.

               [From the Atlanta Journal, Oct. 14, 1996]

               Wasteful AmeriCorps Survives Another Year

       AmeriCorps, President Clinton's much-vaunted ``volunteer'' 
     program, has survived another year. Too bad. It's past time 
     to kill this costly program before it becomes a permanent 
     government fixture. It is fast-growing and expensive, it eats 
     away at the very definition of volunteerism, and it's costing 
     taxpayers a huge amount per participant without any 
     measurable gains.
       In announcing AmeriCorps in 1993, the president spoke of a 
     largely privately funded program that would engage the 
     nation's young people in volunteerism and community service:
       ``While the federal government will provide the seed money 
     for national service,'' the president wrote in a New York 
     Times op-ed article, ``we are determined that the 
     participants--the individuals who serve and the groups that 
     sponsor their service--will guide the process. Spending tens 
     of millions of tax dollars to build a massive bureaucracy 
     would be self-defeating.''
       But it has been the federal government ``guiding the 
     process'' with tax dollars. The program cost $217.3 million 
     in 1994, but $427.3 million in 1995. Congress put the brakes 
     on the president's effort to pump even more into the program 
     this year. Undaunted, Clinton is now seeking $1 billion over 
     the next five years.
       The notion of private funding for AmeriCorps was also an 
     illusion: Just 7 percent of the program is funded privately. 
     National and state governments pick up the rest of the tab.
       The General Accounting Office has discovered the program 
     costs taxpayers $26,700 per participant for 10 months of 
     volunteer work.
       And the type of ``work'' is not always what taxpayers would 
     have paid for. In San Francisco last year, AmeriCorps 
     volunteers organized 40 groups to fight the federal crime 
     bill's ``three strikes and you're out'' provision. In Denver, 
     ``volunteers'' who were supposed to be helping neighborhoods 
     instead were passing out fliers attacking a city 
     councilperson. In Orange county, Calif., AmeriCorps 
     volunteers were paid to knit a memorial quilt for victims of 
     the Oklahoma City bombing--a chore they never even finished.
       And AmeriCorps destroys the healthy notion of volunteerism 
     by paying participants to ``volunteer.'' Participants receive 
     a stipend of $650 per month--about $7.50 per hour--and $4,725 
     a year for college costs. This even though more than half of 
     Americans over 18 volunteer in the real sense--for free.
       Neither are the benefits of AmeriCorps limited to the poor 
     in need of financial aid for college. America's wealthiest 
     are just as eligible--and far more likely to participate. 
     While the program is supposed to give young people a chance 
     to go to college, the cost of a single AmeriCorps participant 
     would send 18 students to college with Pell Grants.
       The president needs to look back at his original statement 
     and ask if the program is indeed ``self-defeating.'' It is, 
     and it's an incredible waste of taxpayer dollars.

                          ____________________