[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 40 (Tuesday, April 8, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H1318-H1326]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                SOCIAL SECURITY AND BALANCING THE BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Manzullo). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Neumann] 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Mr. Speaker, in the interest of bipartisanship, I yield 
to the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Minge].


                         Flooding in Minnesota

  Mr. MINGE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to first thank the gentleman 
from

[[Page H1319]]

Wisconsin for yielding to me and indicate that I dearly appreciate the 
strong and cordial bipartisan working relationship that we are trying 
to establish in the House. Almost 200 of us went to Hershey, PA, the 
sweetest place on Earth for a bipartisan retreat to work on building 
civility and strong, positive working relationships in this Chamber on 
both sides of the aisle. This is a task I think that all of us need to 
continue to address.
  Mr. Speaker, this evening I wish to address the House with respect to 
a matter of great concern and interest to me. The Minnesota River, the 
Red River of the North and several other streams and rivers in the 
upper Midwest are experiencing flooding problems on a scale that has 
never before occurred in the recorded history of this region of the 
country.
  The impact that this is having on dozens of communities is 
overwhelming. However, through a coordinated effort of State, local, 
and Federal officials, what appeared to be the impossible is being 
achieved in many of these communities. I have lived just outside the 
city of Montevideo, MN, for the last 20 years.
  I have members of my family in a community downstream called Granite 
Falls, MN. Never before have these communities received national 
attention. But now in April 1997, they have been the initial stories on 
network news, evening after evening. And why? It is because of the 
harrowing battle that is being waged. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 
has come in and helped build dikes on streets and highways. Hundreds of 
volunteers have come from as many as 150 miles away with trucks and 
strong backs to load and place sandbags to fight the river.
  The river is like a raging bull. It is coursing down a narrow channel 
in one of these communities, and you look at that raging stream and you 
wonder, is that going to jump the banks. How can we control it. Thanks 
only to the strength of these levees that have been constructed by the 
Corps and the force of gravity is this river as a threat contained.
  Local residents of these communities have been working, toiling for 
as much as 20 hours a day constructing these dikes and levees and 
protecting property. In some cases residents have been forced to 
evacuate their homes with as little as 5 minutes notice. Yet they are 
succeeding.
  I am also pleased to report that the Federal Emergency Management 
Agency, working with the Governor of our State and the President, has 
already released the report that these communities and these areas have 
been designated as Presidential disaster areas and that FEMA will be 
quickly moving into the region along with other agencies to provide the 
type of assistance that is necessary to enable them to both clean up 
and recover.
  This is not a handout. These are programs that we have established 
over many decades. They are programs which the Federal Emergency 
Management Agency has earned a reputation, a well-deserved reputation 
in the last 5 years, of very capably administering. I think that we can 
all be proud as Americans of what this agency is doing and what it is 
contributing to the well-being of small communities who have been 
afflicted by these natural disasters.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like again to express the appreciation that all 
of us in Congress have for the volunteerism, for the hard work and the 
sacrifice and the community spirit that is alive and well in America 
and what this is doing to renew the faith of people in our ability to 
respond to the challenges that face us in pulling together and pulling 
ahead.


                Social Security and Balancing the Budget

  Mr. NEUMANN. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota 
[Mr. Gutknecht]. May I say it was a pleasure to visit Winona at Winona 
State and have the privilege of joining you at a town hall meeting.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. It was our 
privilege to host the gentleman in Winona.
  If I could just say that we want to do a special order tonight and 
talk about Social Security and balancing the budget. And my colleague 
from Minnesota and our fellow Committee on the Budget member [Mr. 
Minge] recently just alluded to the unbelievable problems being faced, 
especially in western Minnesota and the Dakotas. I would just like to 
say that on behalf of all Members of Congress, particularly this one 
from Minnesota, I want to make certain that we here at the Federal 
level are doing all that we possibly can for those people.
  It is really hard for some of us to imagine what it must have been 
like to wake up and find that much water on your streets and in your 
neighborhoods and then have 40- to 50-degree-below wind chill factors 
blowing ice and water and then on top of that many of the homes being 
without electrical power. So we really cannot imagine how tough it has 
been on some of the people in those communities. The only thing I guess 
we can say to them is that we are going to do everything we can here at 
the Federal level to make certain that we get things right.
  I might also mention though that when we talk about floods, what we 
want to talk about tonight is this flood of red ink which threatens not 
only to drown us but, worse than that, to drown our children. And I am 
going to yield back to the gentleman so we can have a discussion about 
really the size, dimensions, and ultimately what the implications are 
of this debt and of the deficit spending that has been going on in this 
body and in this Congress for most of the last 40 years.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Mr. Speaker, I also want to talk about the budget 
process and that debt that is drowning us as a nation.
  Before I get into that this evening I would like to recognize a very 
special group of people that are out here in Washington this week. We 
talk so much about education and we hear so many cases where education 
is not working the way it should be working. But I would like to just 
recognize a good friend of mine, John Eyster, a teacher from Janesville 
Parker High School who is out here with a group of students 
illustrating just how education does work and setting an example for 
young people all across America, showing us how education can and does 
work in Janesville, WI. He brought these students out here. I had the 
chance to spend about an hour with them today. And I have got to say, 
they are some of the best educated students that I have ever talked to.
  John consistently brings his class out here every year and it is just 
a privilege to meet and talk with these folks and to see how far along 
they are in the educational process and, in all fairness, how well 
versed they are on the issues facing this great Nation of ours.

                              {time}  1930

  With that, I will start into why I came to Washington and what I 
think the budget process needs to get back to. I start by referring to 
this chart I brought with me because it is about the best chart I have 
ever seen in terms of talking about that debt that we are all drowning 
in as a nation.
  What it shows is the growth of the Federal debt facing this Nation 
and it shows, starting in 1960 all the way to the year 2000, where we 
are at in this growth in debt. It is important to note that from 1960 
to 1980 we have a relatively flat line. There has been very little 
growth in debt. But in 1980, from there forward, this thing has grown 
and grown and grown.
  And you know, what really bothers me about this is when I hear all of 
the Democrats in America say that was the year Ronald Reagan took 
office and all the Republicans say, well, that was the year the 
Democrats in Congress could not control spending. But the bottom line 
is if we are really going to solve this problem we will have to accept 
and recognize it as an American problem and that we as the American 
people have to solve it, not as Democrats and Republicans but as 
Americans.
  I want to point out that as we look from here forward we are no 
longer in a position where we can fight about Democrats and 
Republicans. We are all the way up here on this chart right now. And 
when we think about what that is doing to our Nation, we need to 
understand that it is not just about this chart, it is about the fact 
that the government goes into the private sector and borrows that money 
out.
  Because that is what is happening with this, this is what the deficit 
spending leads to. When the government goes into the private sector and 
borrows the money out to pay for its

[[Page H1320]]

deficit spending, that makes for a tighter money supply. Government 
borrowing out of the private sector tightens the money supply and 
raises interest rates. And when you raise interest rates it hits home 
quickly, because it means many Americans cannot afford to buy houses or 
cars.
  And that is really a problem in this Nation. That is why in the past 
years, here, as the deficit has come down until this year, for the 
first time in 4 years, as the deficit has been coming down, the 
interest rates have held steady and we have literally been in a 
position where the economy has boomed. And it has boomed because of the 
fact if interest rates are steady, the government is not confiscating 
as much of the private people's money out of the private sector, there 
is more money available and lower interest rates, which keeps the home 
building business going strong, the auto industry going strong, and a 
lot of people able to borrow money to buy things.
  And of course when people buy houses and cars, that means other 
people go to work to build the houses and cars and that really, folks, 
is what this budget battle is all about, about getting the government 
to stop borrowing the money out of the private sector so it stays out 
there and the interest rates stay down and people can afford to buy 
houses and cars.
  I have a son, currently a sophomore in college, and my good friend 
from Minnesota, I believe he is going to school in his district, as a 
matter of fact, and I think about the young people like Andy and all 
the others like him across this country as he graduates from college, 
takes his first job, starts his own family, starts thinking about 
buying a house and a car, and I think about how important the interest 
rate is to him in terms of being able to afford that house and car.
  There is another issue that most people do not relate to the young 
people in this country and that is Social Security. Most people think 
the Social Security discussion is about just the senior citizens. It is 
not. It is about the people in their 40's and 50's hoping to get Social 
Security, and it is about the young people who are paying $15 out of 
every $100 they earn into the Social Security System with literally no 
hope of getting any of that money back.
  So I want to talk about Social Security as it relates to the overall 
budget process. And I have noticed, and the gentleman from Minnesota, 
[Mr. Gutknecht], I think maybe he has too this week, that as we look at 
the budget proposals currently in Washington, none of them deal with 
the fact that Washington is currently spending the Social Security 
Trust Fund's money.
  The Social Security System is taking money out of every paycheck in 
America today. As a matter of fact, if you look at all the money being 
collected by the Social Security Trust Fund today, they are collecting 
$418 billion. This is pretty straightforward. They are writing checks 
back out to our senior citizens in the amount of $353 billion. Well, it 
is much like a checkbook. If you take $418 in and spend $353 out, you 
are in pretty good shape, and that is good news for the Social Security 
System today.
  But that $65 billion is supposed to be set aside in a savings 
account. The idea is this. Everybody sees the baby boom generation 
headed toward retirement. So the idea was to collect extra money now, 
put it into a savings account, and when these two numbers turn around, 
they are no longer collecting enough to make good on the Social 
Security checks, at that point in time they would go into the savings 
account, get the money out, and fulfill our commitment and make good on 
the Social Security checks.
  The problem we have is that is not what Washington is doing with the 
money. When Washington saw this $65 billion sitting there, Washington 
did the Washington thing and they spent it. As a matter of fact, that 
$65 billion today is going directly into the big government checkbook. 
It is called the General Fund. But you can think about it like the big 
government checkbook. When they are done writing out checks in this 
government, of course, the checkbook is overdrawn and that is what we 
call the deficit. So they are taking the $65 billion, they are putting 
it in the big government checkbook, and when they are all done writing 
checks out of the big government checkbook there is no money left. So 
they put an IOU in the trust fund. They do not count that IOU toward 
the deficit.
  This is a huge problem as we move forward. We have proposed 
legislation in our office, and I am happy to say we have bipartisan 
support for this legislation at this point in time. The legislation is 
very straightforward. It simply says that the $65 billion it has 
collected from the Social Security Trust Fund should simply be put down 
in the Social Security Trust Fund.
  It is straightforward, the legislation, and I am happy to say we have 
bipartisan support for it and we now have 60 cosponsors on the Social 
Security Preservation Act.
  This week we are out here talking about budgeting. It is real 
important to understand how this Social Security System issue affects 
the overall budgeting process. This picture really kind of says it all. 
When the Federal Government, when Washington, talks about the deficit, 
they talk about this blue area. They talk about how much they have 
overdrawn their checkbook and they forget to tell you in addition to 
the amount they overdrew their checkbook they have also taken that $65 
billion out of the Social Security trust fund.

  So the deficit, when they talk about it being $107 billion, the 
reality is the deficit is in fact $107 plus 65, or $172 billion 
overall.
  I think it is real important to look at how that affects the overall 
budget process and what we are talking about when we say we are going 
to balance the budget by the year 2002. When we talk about balancing 
the budget by the year 2002, virtually every budget plan out here, 
President Clinton, the Republican plans in some cases, they all talk 
about getting rid of this blue area. But what they actually mean when 
they say they are going to balance the budget in the year 2002, what 
they mean is they are going to go into the Social Security trust fund, 
pull out $104 billion, put it in their checkbook and say their 
checkbook is balanced.
  So when the people in Washington talk about balancing the budget, 
they are not telling you that when they say they are going to balance 
the budget they are still going to be going into that Social Security 
trust fund taking the money out, putting it in their checkbook and 
saying my checkbook is now balanced. That is ridiculous, and if it was 
done in the private sector they would be arrested for it. It is that 
simple; that cut and dried.
  The answer is the Social Security Preservation Act needs to be 
passed. And to my colleagues who might be watching this evening, the 
important thing is when we pass a budget plan this year, we must 
address the fact that balance means balance without using the Social 
Security trust fund's money. When we say we are going to balance the 
budget to the American people, we should go about balancing the budget, 
not balancing the budget by stealing the money out of the Social 
Security trust fund.
  What does this mean to the people of this Nation? Well, if we do not 
fix this problem, by the year 2005, 2006, maybe 2012, if we are very, 
very lucky, when there is not enough money coming into the Social 
Security trust fund, we will have to either tell our senior citizens 
they cannot have the benefits they have been promised, and the 
likelihood of that happening in Washington, DC, is near zero, or we 
will have to go to young people, like my Andy in college in your 
district, or my Tricia, a high school senior, or my younger son, who 
will then be in the work force, and all the other kids like them, we 
will have to go to them when they are just beginning to form their 
families, and say to them we could not do this right in 1997 when we 
were in Congress. We just could not get the job done. We could not put 
the Social Security trust fund's money aside, so now we have a 
shortfall in Social Security and we only have one choice, young people, 
we are coming into your paychecks to take more money out to make good 
on our promises to our seniors.
  That is a sad situation and not right for the future of our country. 
We need to pass the Social Security Preservation Act as soon as 
possible.
  We have expanded what has been talked about in the budget process, 
and I think this is real important, because even if we do get to a 
balance, and even if we do not spend the Social Security

[[Page H1321]]

trust fund's money by the year 2002, we still have a $6.5 trillion debt 
hanging over our heads, a debt that is costing our children and young 
people, a family of five in America, $600 a month to do nothing but pay 
the interest on the Federal debt.
  In the budget plan that we have put together we go a step further. I 
want to expand the vision of this Congress and expand the vision for 
America over what we can actually do. I want to show very simply how we 
can pay off the Federal debt, restore the Social Security trust fund 
money and, most important of all, pass this Nation on to our children 
debt free instead of under the burden of a debt that costs our families 
$600 a month to do nothing but pay the interest on the Federal debt.
  Our plan is really pretty straightforward and simple. After we get to 
balance in the year 2002, we take a look at how much revenues are going 
out to the Federal Government. Now, revenues to the Federal Government 
go up for two reasons: They go up because of inflation and because of 
real growth in the economy. Now, currently we have an inflation rate of 
roughly 3 percent and real growth of roughly 2 percent. That means we 
would expect revenues to go up by 5 percent total next year.
  Our plan is very simple. It says that if revenues are going to go up 
by 5 percent, we only let spending go up by 4 percent. So spending is 
allowed to go up at a rate 1 percent slower than the rate of revenue 
growth to the Federal Government.
  I might add, and much to the chagrin of some of the folks listening 
this evening, that is still faster than the rate of inflation. So 
spending at the Federal Government level going up faster than the rate 
of inflation, but 1 percent slower than the rate of revenue growth puts 
us in a position where we could literally pay off the Federal debt by 
the year 2023.
  This is important for a whole bunch of reasons. No. 1, it frees our 
young people to raise their families without this tax burden. No. 2, 
and equally important, is it restores the money that is supposed to be 
in the Social Security trust fund. So instead of the Social Security 
trust fund being out of the money in the year 2005, 2006 maybe 2012, it 
extends the Social Security trust fund to the year 2029 so our senior 
citizens can count on their money. And our people in their forties and 
fifties can count on getting their money out of the Social Security 
System also because the trust fund has been restored.
  This is a plan that we need to embrace in this Congress. I understand 
the Speaker has started talking about this. Newt Gingrich has started 
presenting some of these ideas in some of his speeches, and it is an 
idea we need to embrace, to expand our horizons beyond just balancing 
the budget, beyond 2002, and into the years 2010, 2020 so we can give 
this Nation to our children debt free.

  I see my good friend, the gentleman from Michigan, has joined us, Mr. 
Hoekstra.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding. I am 
encouraged by the work my colleague has done and that he has completed 
on working toward, not a balanced budget but actually working toward a 
surplus budget as soon as possible, and actually developing a plan to 
pay off the national debt so that our children can look to a much 
brighter future.
  I would like to just refer my colleagues to an article that was in 
USA Today on Monday, April 7. It talked about what we in the Committee 
on the Budget have discussed as a vision, where a one-income family is 
where we want to get to, where a one-income family can derive enough 
income to support a family and support government, and where a two-
income family becomes an option.
  It is kind of interesting. In USA Today yesterday they cited that the 
number of two-parent working families in 1995 has increased to 64 
percent of the population. They then took a look at what we get with 64 
percent of our families having two incomes. The second wage earner 
basically ends up working, as our majority leader would say, we have 
one person working for the government and one person working to support 
the family.
  Mr. NEUMANN. If the gentleman would yield, I would point out that if 
we were to enact this and we were to actually carry this plan out, if 
the people in Washington were to do what is right for the future of 
America, we would be looking at $600 a month that would not have to be 
collected from a family of five. That goes a long ways toward that 
second wage earner's income.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. That is right and provides them with either the 
opportunity to take the income to improve the quality of life for their 
family or to take that time away from working and invest it in the 
family.
  I would yield to my colleague from Minnesota.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. You gentlemen are right on the money. I want to point 
out a couple of things, and I want to congratulate both of you. I do 
not know of any members of the Committee on the Budget who have worked 
harder to try to preserve the American dream and guaranteeing that we 
pass on to our kids a legacy of hope and opportunity rather than a 
legacy of debt and dependency.
  I want to point out something that I think is important, that Mr. 
Neumann suggested earlier. There was a famous architect from Chicago, 
and he once said ``Make no small plans.'' I think the beauty and the 
simplicity of what we are talking about tonight is that if we have the 
discipline as a Congress to embrace a plan which actually will allow 
Federal spending to increase at greater than what we project the 
inflation rate to be but less than what we think the total growth in 
revenues will be, if we have the courage to do that, say, all right, we 
will let government grow, slightly, but not as fast, not nearly as fast 
as it has grown over the last 40 years, we can literally create a 
system that will guarantee that our seniors are protected, that will 
guarantee stronger economic growth for people our age, but more 
important than that, we can give our kids a debt free future.

                              {time}  1945

  I cannot think of anything more compelling, a bigger vision, 
something that is worth fighting for than what I call a generational 
fairness plan, that protects the seniors, that protects working people 
today, and protects our children's future. I think those are the kinds 
of things that, if we can work together and if we have the discipline 
here in Congress, it can clearly happen.
  Mr. Speaker, if I could just make one additional point. Sometimes 
when we start talking about the budget, we throw around terms and there 
are all kinds of CBO and OMB and a lot of things that I think most 
Americans really have a hard time staying with. I think we sometimes 
have to get back to the big picture. Ultimately in the end I think we 
have to say to ourselves and to the American people that balancing the 
budget and stopping this deficit spending really are moral issues, 
because I think we all know down in our bones that it is morally wrong 
to continue to borrow against our kids and our grandkids. And so I 
think we have got to stop that.
  We are making progress but, as you suggested, we are still using that 
Social Security trust fund to sort of mask the size of the deficit. I 
think in this process we have got to expose that, we have got to deal 
with that. Clearly the time to deal with it is now, before it turns 
around, before we have a situation where Social Security is actually 
paying out more than it is taking in.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman is absolutely right, 
it is a moral issue. Saddling our kids with $100 billion, $200 billion 
of additional debt each and every year is the wrong thing to do. The 
other thing, I came out of the business world, as I know my colleague 
from Wisconsin did, and I am not sure, you were in the legislature and 
before that maybe had a real job.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Auctioneer.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Auctioneer. The other thing we look at in business is 
the value you get for your dollar, and the problems we were trying to 
solve for our customers in the business world. We have to take a look 
as we go through this process and take a look at some of the things 
that taxpayers are sending money to Washington for and asking, is that 
really the best place to solve these problems.
  Every day when we cross the street, we come over a street that is 
called Independence Avenue. Me and my staff,

[[Page H1322]]

we have talked about it, we kind of think that maybe we could rename 
the street into Dependence Avenue because that street is littered with 
bureaucracies that we have moved responsibilities from families, from 
local and State government, from churches and nonprofit institutions 
and said we really do not think that you are the most effective place 
to handle these issues and we are going to have bureaucrats in 
Washington address these problems.
  I think my colleague will remember the discussion that we had last 
year during welfare reform where we said, just send the money to 
Wisconsin and let the people in Wisconsin decide how best to help those 
on welfare in Wisconsin and how to escape the welfare trap because 
there are probably people in Washington here who, I think, were we not 
talking about that my colleague had a bunch of waivers from Wisconsin 
that he could not get approved?
  Mr. NEUMANN. Mr. Speaker, we were simply requesting that the people 
in Wisconsin who had already passed a welfare reform bill, passed the 
State assembly and the Senate by a wide majority including both 
Democrats and Republicans, but after we debated this bill for 18 months 
in Wisconsin, reflected welfare the way the people of Wisconsin wanted 
to do it with both Democrats and Republicans agreeing, we had to come 
down here to Washington and ask for permission from a bunch of 
bureaucrats out here, 900 miles from Wisconsin, ask for their 
permission to implement what the people of Wisconsin already wanted. 
What in the world is there that would make us think that the people 
sitting out here in an office know better than the people in Wisconsin 
what is right for them? It just does not make sense.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, we are going to have to go through that 
process. I think that is an exciting debate and discussion to have. I 
know that one of the things that we are spending a tremendous amount of 
time on is an oversight subcommittee that I chair and we absolutely 
agree with the President. The President in March 1996 said, ``We cannot 
ask the American people to spend more on education until we do a better 
job with the money we've got now.'' What was he referring to? He was 
referring to the bureaucracy of education that we currently have, which 
is 760 programs in 39 different agencies spending $120 billion per 
year.
  Mr. NEUMANN. I would just like to point out that during the past week 
in my district back in Wisconsin, they have started running a new 
commercial from our friends at the AFL-CIO, attacking me, and demanding 
that we implement program No. 761. I would just like to warn the 
chairman of the Education Subcommittee that they are going to be 
getting some requests from some folks that think we should have another 
Washington program and another Washington bureaucracy to tell our 
people back in Wisconsin how they should educate their own children.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. When this President gets done, if he gets this 
approved, he will be building our schools, he will be teaching our 
teachers, certifying our teachers, putting in the technology, feeding 
them lunch, feeding them breakfast.
  Mr. NEUMANN. And doing it with our money.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Teaching them about sex education, giving them national 
tests, doing after-school programs, maybe even midnight basketball and 
a couple of other things. Other than that, it is your local school.
  Now, the President has moved away from this. He has now proposed a 
whole new set of programs spending $55 billion more. What we are doing 
in our committees, we are urging this Congress to say before we spend 
another dollar, because we think when we spend a dollar in education 
today, only 65 cents gets to the classroom, gets to your children in 
Wisconsin, gets to my kids in Michigan. Thirty-five cents gets eaten up 
by the bureaucracy.
  Mr. Speaker, before we spend more on education and ask the American 
taxpayers to send more to Washington, we ought to be taking a look at 
what we are doing with that dollar. Instead of saying, let us spend 
$1.10, we ought to be saying instead of 65 cents getting to the 
classroom, let us see if we cannot get it up to 85, 90, 95 cents of 
every dollar, because for bureaucrats to take 10, 15, 35 cents of every 
dollar before it gets to our kids, that might be another moral issue.
  Mr. NEUMANN. I would like to point out it is not only education where 
we are looking at this problem. Our President has looked at this 
growing debt, and he has looked at us near the top of this debt chart. 
Here is what he has concluded in his budget plan because I took it 
apart myself personally and I found out what is in his budget plan. In 
Medicaid alone we are proposing $4 billion in new spending in 1 year 
alone. It is a total of roughly $15 billion over 5 years. In Medicare 
spending, we are proposing $5 billion in 2002 alone, a total of roughly 
$15 billion more.
  Mr. Speaker, these are not like: We have got this in the Medicare 
Program and how are we going to pay the bills of the current Medicare 
Program. These are: Hey, I have got a new idea, and we do not have 
enough Washington programs already, so the President says we need some 
more new Washington spending programs.
  That is where the Social Security trust fund money is going. They are 
taking that money out of the trust fund and spending it on these new 
Washington programs. It is not just education.
  Let me go on one more.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will just yield for a 
second, I have to take leave. I appreciate the gentleman for sharing 
his time and the gentleman from Minnesota for sharing his time. I am 
sure we will be back at this, and I am confident we will present a 
budget that we can be proud of.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. I think just once more for our colleagues who may be 
watching on C-SPAN in their offices, what was the total number of 
dollars being spent currently on education programs and how many 
various Federal programs are we currently operating?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. We are operating at least 760 programs through 39 
different agencies. They are not all in the Department of Education. 
They are in 39 different, distinct agencies, and they spend $120 
billion per year.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Mr. Speaker, how much of that gets to the students?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. We estimate that for the dollar that goes for K through 
12, about 65 cents gets to the children, gets to the classroom. Thirty-
five cents gets eaten up in the bureaucracy and the paperwork. Those 
are not impressive numbers. We can do significantly better than that.
  Mr. NEUMANN. So what my colleague is really telling me is, out of the 
$122 billion we are currently spending on education, only $79 billion 
is actually getting out there to help the students; and the other $45 
billion roughly is going to bureaucracy?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. We know that in the K through 12, which is a portion of 
that $120 billion, that is what we are seeing. In some of those other 
programs, it may be better, it may be worse, but it is not a pretty 
picture.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlemen for allowing me to participate.
  Mr. NEUMANN. To get back a little more on the debt discussion, I held 
20 town hall meetings in addition to the one over in Winona with my 
colleague. At one of the meetings a gentleman, George Wundsam of Salem, 
WI, handed me this thing, and I think it really hits the nail on the 
head as we are talking here this evening. Here is what it says. He 
handed me this quotation:

       I place economy among the first and most important virtues, 
     and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared. To 
     preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us 
     with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we must be 
     taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our 
     comforts, in our labor and in our amusements. If we can 
     prevent our government from wasting the labor of the people, 
     under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.

  Would you like to take a shot at who said that?
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. I think I know who said that, and I think he served in 
the Continental Congress, and I think he helped draft our Declaration 
of Independence. That was the ethic in those particular days. I believe 
his name was Thomas Jefferson.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Thomas Jefferson said that. That is not today. Can you 
imagine if Thomas Jefferson, one of our Founding Fathers, was standing 
here with us today and we were showing him this debt chart, $5.3 
trillion facing the American people, $20,000 for every man, woman, and 
child in the United States of America, $100,000 that our Federal 
Government has borrowed on behalf of a family of five like mine?

[[Page H1323]]

 Each month $600 to do nothing but pay the interest on the Federal 
debt. Can we imagine what our Founding Fathers would say? This is what 
they thought. They recognized that the debt was a huge burden.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. It is interesting that some of our colleagues, who 
like to quote our Founding Fathers when it fits their purposes, tend to 
forget that when Jefferson said that, he did not just mean it for those 
people in those times. He meant it for all people and for all times. I 
think he understood the corrosive effect that the debt would have. I 
think your chart is instructive. The unfortunate thing is, particularly 
when we add in what is going to happen with the demographic change, and 
I have told people this story. I was born in 1951. When I graduated 
from college, the speaker at our commencement address was the Director 
of the U.S. Census. Most people do not remember their college 
commencement addresses and I do not remember all of it, either, but I 
do remember some of the points that were made that day. He said that 
there were more kids born in 1951 than any other single year. I 
represent the peak of the baby boomers. What is going to happen when we 
start to retire makes that chart look like a day at the park, because 
as the baby boomers start to retire, all of a sudden Medicare expenses 
go up dramatically, Social Security goes from a significant surplus to 
huge deficits, and what it is saying, this should be a siren song for 
all of us, that we have got to do something now. If we take modest 
action now, if we take responsible action now, we can save the budget, 
we can save our children, we can save Social Security, we can save 
Medicare, and yet unfortunately there are people in this town who would 
prefer to put their head in the sand and pretend that it is not real, 
that those numbers are not real and that somehow there is a tooth fairy 
out there that is going to save us. The only thing that will save us is 
responsible action. Jefferson was correct. This is a moral issue, and 
the public debt is the greatest of evils to be feared.
  What we are trying to do is awaken some of our colleagues here and 
awaken the American people to say, this has got to stop. All it takes 
is some moral courage to say this is wrong. And we are going to have to 
say no.
  I was so delighted that the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra] 
was with us and talked a little about the Education Department, but as 
the gentleman from Wisconsin has indicated, it is not just education, 
it is all programs.
  In some of my town meetings, I use this little story. If I could, I 
would like to share it. What I ask people to do sometimes is to close 
their eyes and pretend for a minute that they go home from work or they 
go home from school and they open their mailbox and there is a letter 
there from a law office from far away and they open up the letter and 
all of a sudden they realize that they have been named an heir to an 
enormous fortune, from somebody they did not even know was related to 
them and they have left them this enormous fortune. And so I ask them 
to think about that and what it would be like and then think about the 
fact that this is a windfall, and you would like to do something to 
help children or you would like to do something to help your fellow 
human beings and you would like to give a significant portion of this 
windfall to help your fellow human beings or to help children. Think 
about that, envision that. Think about this happening to you. And then 
think about where you would give that money. And after you have thought 
a minute, I ask the people, now, how many of you honestly, liberals, 
conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, independents, whatever, how many 
of you, the first thing that you thought of was, I know, I'll give the 
money to the Federal Government? The answer to that in every town 
meeting is laughter. No one would give the money to the Federal 
Government. Why? Because I think we all instinctively know what the 
gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra] told us a few minutes ago, that 
the Federal Government is a poor bargain and that the Government is one 
of the most inefficient ways to spend money or to help people.
  In fact when we had this great welfare debate over the last year and 
a half, and it is still going on, as you indicated Wisconsin has been 
far ahead of the pack in terms of reforming welfare. What I have said, 
I said then, I say now, the real debate was not about saving money. In 
the end it was really about saving people, saving families, saving 
children from one more generation of dependency and despair.
  What we are really saying is, let us break that cycle, let us slow 
the rate of growth in Government and let us preserve Social Security 
and let us pay down and pay off ultimately that national debt so that 
we can leave our kids a debt-free future. That is what Thomas Jefferson 
believed in, I think that is what most Americans believe in, and 
hopefully we can get more of the Members of Congress to believe in that 
as well.

                              {time}  2000

  Mr. NEUMANN. You know, if the gentleman would yield back, we have 
been talking about these things and why we need to do these things. We 
have talked about the fact that Social Security is bringing in more 
money than what that is paying out to our seniors in benefits and that 
that extra money coming in, that $65 billion this year is supposed to 
be set aside in a savings account, but that actually instead of putting 
it aside in a savings account so it is there when the baby boom 
generation gets to retirements, so it is there to make good on Social 
Security commitments, that we are spending it in Washington in other 
Washington programs, and we have looked at this chart where we 
understand that Washington reports a deficit that is simply their 
overdrawn checkbook, and in fact in addition to overdrawing their 
checkbook they are taking that money out of Social Security trust fund.
  They do not even count that toward the deficit when they report the 
deficit to the American people, and we have talked about the fact that 
in the year 2002, when Washington says they are going to balance the 
budget, what they mean is they are going to go into the Social Security 
trust fund, take out $104 billion, put it in their checkbook and call 
their checkbook balanced. We talked about the fact that in Washington a 
balanced checkbook means taking $104 billion out of the Social Security 
trust fund. That money should not be taken folks. That money should not 
be spent in other Government programs.
  But where is Congress at? And, Congressman, we have gone through now 
100 days of the 105th Congress, and I thought we maybe should just 
address a little bit what is going out and maybe, maybe if nothing else 
just to help us get back on track. During the first 100 days some very 
unique things have happened for the Republican led Congress and things 
that I do not think it is why I came to Washington in the first place, 
and I am anxious to see those things turned around.
  We have seen the deficit go up for the first time in 4 years. We are 
seeing a higher deficit. And that is real, folks, that not only affects 
the people here in Washington, it affects the whole country because 
when the deficit goes up that means Washington is going into the 
private sector, borrowing more money, creating a tighter money supply 
and with the tighter money supply we see exactly what happened last 
week Tuesday, which is higher interest rates. Higher interest rates 
mean people cannot afford to buy houses and cars. When they do not buy 
houses and cars, that means there are not as many job opportunities, 
and that is a problem in this Nation. That is why we need to stay on 
track to a balanced budget.
  So the first thing I point out that this Congress has seen in the 
first 100 days, for in the first time in 4 years is a deficit that has 
gone back up again. I might add that I voted against the bill last 
October, $22 billion that led to this deficit increase this year.
  Second thing we saw when we first got out here, the Republican Party 
should stand for letting the American people keep more of their own 
money. We have had one tax vote in this Congress that was for a tax 
increase. Seventy-three of us voted against that bill. It is time we 
not have 73 but all 227 Republicans get back on track with the idea 
that we do not stand for raising taxes on the American people, we stand 
for letting the American people keep more of their own money. It is not 
like Washington gets this money and it is

[[Page H1324]]

theirs. It is not Washington's money, it is the people's money. So when 
we have tax votes in the future, our second vote is a vote on taxes, it 
was a tax increase. You may remember the airline ticket tax increase. 
We need to stop doing that and get back on track.
  The third vote I would like to talk about during the 100 days: We 
took $340 million out of the pockets of the American citizens and we 
sent it overseas to foreign aid for purposes of family planning. So we 
took $340 million out of the pockets of American citizens, sent it 
overseas for purposes of family planning, including abortions. That is 
not why I came to Washington. So that is another vote that went the 
wrong direction. Of course we voted against it; many of us did.
  But the bottom line is as a party we need to get back on track. No 
more tax increase votes. As a matter of fact, we want to vote to let 
the American people keep more of their own money. No new spending bills 
that are going to allow the deficit to go up. That is not what this 
party is about. This party is about controlling spending.
  The last vote I talk about during the 105th Congress, first 100 days, 
was the last vote we took before the Easter recess. It was a vote to 
raise Washington committee staff spending by 14\1/2\ percent. So our 
first real spending vote of the 105th Congress was for a 14\1/2\-
percent spending increase. I am happy to say that bill did go down to 
defeat and it was reworked, and we got closer to a freeze; maybe not 
what I would like to see exactly but did get closer to a freeze. But I 
think that bill represents for the first time the Republicans once 
again standing for what Republicans stand for, and that is less 
Washington, less bureaucracy, and I think maybe this flow in the wrong 
direction has been stopped and once again we will become the party that 
stands for letting the American people keep more of their own money and 
doing that by reducing the size and scope of Washington. We do not need 
more Washington committee staff, we need the American people keeping 
more of their own money, deciding how to spend their own money.
  Now if Washington is going to take more money from the American 
people, if Washington is going to go into your paycheck and collect 
more taxes, of course they need more people to figure out how to spend 
that money. My suggestion is instead we just let the American people 
keep more of their own money. Then we will not need the additional 
Washington staff.
  Does that mean we have problems in Social Security? No way. Social 
Security, if we just do the right thing, leave our Washington hands off 
of the Social Security money, Social Security is safe and solvent. If 
we keep spending the trust fund, we are in serious trouble, but if we 
keep our hands off that money in Washington, Social Security is fine.
  How about Medicare? Well, the reality is we had a Medicare battle 
about 70 cents for every $100 of spending. We do not need to fight 
about Medicare, and I hear about all these cuts in Medicare spending. I 
have in front of me perhaps the most conservative budget being proposed 
in Washington. Medicare spending has gone from $211 billion in 1997 all 
the way up to $285 billion in the year 2002. So Medicare spending can 
still go up under this budget plan.
  We can balance the budget, we can let the American people keep more 
of their own money, and we can still have Medicare and Social Security 
and the programs that are most important.
  You know, I always enjoy these discussions in Washington because in 
Washington people start wringing their hands and saying, ``Oh, we can't 
do this and we can't do this; we have got to have more of the American 
people's money.'' We sometimes forget that we are already collecting 
$6,500 on behalf of every man, woman, and child in the United States of 
America.

  Just think about this. The Federal Government today spends $6,500 on 
behalf of every man, woman, and child in the United States, and, 
Congressman, you know at our townhall meetings we talked about how much 
spending was being cut, that draconian cut in Washington, and do you 
remember the reaction we got from our folks at the townhall meetings 
when I read those draconian spending cuts that are going on in 
Washington? You remember when I read the numbers of actual spending, 
that spending was being cut from $1,568 billion all the way down to 
$1,629 next year and it was further being draconianly cut to $1,657 
billion the next year, and do you remember what the people did----
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. They could not believe it.
  Mr. NEUMANN. They could not believe it. Spending is not going down 
under these budget plans, spending is going up each and every year. 
From the year 1996 to the year 2002 spending is not going down, 
spending has gone up from $1,568 billion to $1,810 billion. I sometimes 
think that the American people forget that this Government, Washington, 
DC is collecting $6,500 out of their pocket. You know some of them go, 
``Well, I don't have to worry, I don't pay that much out of my 
paycheck.'' But every time a person walks into a store and buys 
something as simple as a loaf of bread the store owner makes a small 
profit on that loaf of bread, and when the store owner makes a profit 
on that loaf of bread part of that profit gets sent down here to 
Washington because of course they are paying taxes on their profit.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. If the gentleman would yield, another point you made 
and I think it may have slipped by some of our colleagues, how much 
interest on the debt each family is required to pay every year. Now 
they may not pay it directly, they may not pay it in direct taxes, but 
they pay it one way or the other. They pay it in the price they pay for 
a loaf of bread, when they want to buy a car, when they want to buy 
something else for the family, when they want to take a vacation. Those 
taxes are there and they have to be paid.
  And I wonder if you can tell us--I know you do not have your chart on 
that, but that is an added burden on every family, and I want to come 
back to the burden on the family and what it means.
  Mr. NEUMANN. It means $600 every month from an average family of 5 to 
do nothing but pay the interest on the Federal debt, 600 bucks a month. 
And you know when you think of a young family starting out in life or 
they maybe had a couple kids and you start thinking about them having 
to pay $600 a month to do nothing but pay the interest and then you 
think about this city where they start describing what it is they have 
to have the money to spend it on.
  I think the worst example I have seen out here is the Russian monkeys 
being sent into space and you and I have had this conversation: I find 
it very frustrating because we brought an amendment last year to the 
floor of the House to prevent this from happening, but the fact is 
there was a Senator who wanted it so it got put back in. We sent $35 
million of the American people's money to Russia so Russia could launch 
monkeys into space to do research on the monkeys. Now we killed that 
here in the House, but when it got over in the Senate they put the 
money back in.
  And I think that is the point. Is it really fair to go to our 
families and ask them to send more money to Washington so that 
Washington can continue these programs, and you know it is a very 
important time out here. We have gone through those first 100 days; 
they are over and behind us. Are we going to get back on track to 
control Washington spending or are we going to keep going as we have 
been for the first 100 days?
  I personally look forward to Newt Gingrich and the leadership of the 
Republican Party getting us back on track of what Republicans stand 
for: Less Washington, smaller Government, still the things necessary 
for our society, a strong defense, take care of the people who are not 
able to take care of themselves and by that I mean the handicapped and 
the disabled, but let us not keep going into our families' pocket and 
taking more and more money out here for all kinds of unimaginable 
things that we keep spending on. It is just a ludicrous thing.
  We are in some very, very difficult times out here because the 
establishment believes that we have to keep spending more money. I 
heard today, for example, that in order to pass the bills what we 
actually have to do is spend another $20 billion.
  Now remember we spent 22 billion extra last year and that 22 billion 
led to the first deficit increase, and 6

[[Page H1325]]

months almost to the day after that vote, 6 months almost to the day 
after that vote to increase the deficit, we saw the interest rates take 
a hike, and now I am hearing that we have got to spend another $20 
billion just to get the bills to a passable form. I personally find it 
offensive that we would even consider such a thing.
  And you know I look at this chart with the Social Security and think 
about the fact that it is new Washington spending that has taken that 
money from the Social Security Trust Fund and blown it in, that has 
taken that money from our children's future and spent it. It has just 
got to be stopped.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. If the gentleman would yield, the story of the Russian 
monkeys going into space, the real sad part of that story if you really 
boil it all down is that we had to borrow that money from our kids and 
every dollar we spend now in new programs or new items in the budget, 
we have got to borrow that money.
  The first time I came out here as a candidate for Congress I wore a 
little pin and it said carpe diem: seize the day. And the one message 
that came through loudly and clearly at most of my townhall meetings 
that I had when we were home for the Easter break was that the American 
people, the people of my district want us to regain the initiative, 
they want us to seize the day. They understand that good habits are 
hard to get a hold of, bad habits are easy to fall into, and they want 
us to get back in those good habits of forcing fiscal discipline, and I 
was proud to be a part of the 104th Congress in spite of some of the 
back sliding we did toward the end. I think we made some real progress, 
but there is a real fear that you have and that I have that it is easy 
to fall back into those old habits of saying yes to all the various 
special interest groups who come out here to Washington and want more 
of our children's money.
  If I could just say this too, and I want to say you know we do not 
want to paint too dark a picture because good things are happening. We 
have gone a long way in terms of reforming our entitlement system. The 
welfare system is a long way down the road to becoming much more what 
Wisconsin wants, what Minnesota wants, what the States want and 
encouraging personal responsibility and encouraging families to stay 
together.
  We are making progress on Medicare. The President's budget and our 
numbers now are not far a part. He has proposed a hundred billion 
dollars' worth of savings, and we think that is good. On Medicaid 
the President has recommended 32 billion dollars' worth of savings.

  But the real issue before us I think in this Congress, and I think as 
you said we can work with the welfare numbers, we can work with the 
Medicare numbers, we can work with the Medicaid numbers, we can work 
with the defense numbers, but the real problem is the discretionary 
spending.
  Mr. NEUMANN. And new----
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. New discretionary spending.
  Mr. NEUMANN. On new programs.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. On new Washington spending programs. And once you 
start a new program you create a new constituency and that is one thing 
that if we have the courage to stand up and say no to any new programs, 
if the President wants new programs then he is going to have to find 
other programs that he is going to have to eliminate, and we all know 
there is wasteful, duplicative programs that are not working.
  Mr. NEUMANN. If the gentleman would yield, I think that is the point. 
If Washington finds a genuine need and it is legitimate and they 
actually need to spend money on something that is legitimate, they need 
to find other programs that are not legitimate or not working and 
cancel those programs that are not working so we can afford to do a 
program that may be needed. Let me give you an example of how this 
might work.
  We just found out that women in their forties should have mammograms 
and we found out that it is a genuine need. We have welfare reform 
where able-bodied welfare recipients are now required to be in the work 
force. So we potentially have a woman in her forties who has gone into 
the work force, taken her first job, is earning someplace between $6 
and $8 an hour or maybe even minimum wage, so she is at the bottom end 
of the pay scale. So Medicaid is going to have to cover--generally 
eligible for Medicaid, Medicaid would have to cover those mammograms. 
You cannot just say we are going to cover all the mammograms because 
the money has to come from somewhere.
  So let me give you an example how this might work. Suppose for 
example we said we are not going to send Russian monkeys into space 
with American tax dollars and instead what we are going to do is pay 
for mammograms for women in their forties who have just left the 
welfare roll and are in their first job and could not afford to have 
them otherwise.

                              {time}  2015

  That is how this thing could work when we find out that there is a 
legitimate need for doing something.
  If I can just speak on one more point here, we were talking about the 
tax increases before, and we both campaigned during the same year when 
we first came here. I remember distinctly campaigning extensively 
against the 1993 tax increase.
  If my colleagues recall, that vote passed this institution, the 
House, by one vote, and it passed over in the Senate by one vote. It 
raised the gasoline tax by 4.3 cents a gallon, and the people in 
Wisconsin were very upset about it. They were especially upset about it 
because they were taking another 4.3 cents a gallon in gasoline tax, 
but they were not using it to construct roads in Wisconsin or Minnesota 
or anywhere else. They were simply pouring on more Washington spending 
programs.
  We came here campaigning against those tax increases and against that 
1993 tax increase that passed here by one vote, of course passed over 
in the Senate by one vote, and the President then signed. But the 
bottom line is, I think our colleagues and I think the American people 
have the right and should know that many of us have not forgotten why 
we came here, and that even though these things seem to be adrift, we 
have not forgotten what we came here to do so our children will have 
opportunities in this great Nation of ours.
  We came here to make sure that Social Security is solvent for our 
parents and for the senior citizens that rely on it. We came here to 
make sure Medicare does not go bankrupt. We came here to fix a broken 
system that was spending too much of our children's money. We have not 
forgotten what we came here to do. We came here to make sure that our 
families, that the American people that go to work every morning, get 
to keep more of their own money.
  Many of us have not forgotten what we came here to do, and I think 
our colleagues and I think the American people should understand that 
there is a large number of us that, even if the rest seem adrift, we 
have not forgotten what the Republican Party stands for and why it was 
that we were elected as Republicans and sent to Washington.
  Mr. GUTKNECHT. Mr. Speaker, we will continue to stand with the 
working families of middle America.
  I would close with just one reminder, because our time has about 
expired here. When I was growing up, when my colleague was growing up, 
most of us grew up in families where only one person had to work, and 
that was because the tax rate was something like 4 to 5 percent of my 
folks' gross income. Today, the average family spends more for taxes 
than they do for food, clothing, and shelter combined. If tax increases 
had been the answer to these growing deficits, we would have had a 
balanced budget years ago.
  The truth of the matter is, the real answer is we have to control our 
appetite for more spending. If we are willing to do that, if we are 
willing to face up to the special interest groups, if we are willing to 
say that if we want new programs we have to eliminate some of the old 
programs that are not working, if we are willing to do that, we can 
solve this budget problem, we can save Social Security without touching 
the CPI adjustment. We can do all of these things, but we have to have 
the courage and we have to seize the day.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Mr. Speaker, I think that is a good way to wrap it up. I 
think it is important to wrap it up by reiterating that we can in fact 
balance

[[Page H1326]]

the budget by the year 2002, while we let the American people keep more 
of their own money and at the same time save the Social Security 
system. If we go past 2002 and we talk about how we pay off the debt, 
as we pay that debt off we are restoring those funds in IOU's and the 
Social Security trust fund now, we can do these things if we just 
control new Washington spending programs.
  This is not even about going into programs that currently exist and 
somehow destroying them or attacking them, because the revenues are so 
much higher than what anybody anticipated, the economy is doing so 
well, that this is no longer about the things that were talked about 2 
years ago. This is now just about controlling our desire in Washington, 
DC to spend and spend and spend in new Washington programs to satisfy 
some constituency.
  We need to regain that initiative. We need to regain what we came 
here to do: Balance the budget so our children have hope and 
opportunities in this great Nation we live in; preserve Social Security 
and Medicare for our senior citizens; and for goodness sakes, let the 
American people keep more of their own money. It is their money, not 
Washington's money. That is how we preserve this Nation for the next 
generation, and that is what I hope our service to this country is all 
about.

                          ____________________