Congressional Record, Volume 143 Issue 35 (Tuesday, March 18, 1997)

[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.

____________________