[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 63 (Wednesday, May 14, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H2674-H2676]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    A LEGITIMATE DEBATE: HOW WILL AMERICA GET TO A BALANCED BUDGET?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Latham). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, the importance of the budget agreement is 
that we are saying that America is no longer going to debate having a 
balanced budget. We are going to have a balanced budget.
  Now that we have answered that question, the next part of it is how 
are we going to get that. I think that is a legitimate debate: What is 
the role of government going to be; what are the roles of these 
bureaucracies; is the expenditure something that the private sector 
could do better? Is it something a nonprofit organization could do, or 
is it something that the government should do, but on a State or local 
level, or is it the domain of the Federal Government? These are all 
relevant questions as we fight to balance our budget.
  The vision of America is what the actual debate is about. It is not 
just a matter of liberals versus conservatives or urban versus rural, 
it is a matter of what is it that we think the Federal Government 
should be doing, should be offering. Should it be involved with your 
life to the Nth degree, or should it kind of stand back, and so forth. 
All this ties into the money debate.
  As we have it right now, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich], the 
gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Gingrich], and Mr. Domenici and Mr. Clinton 
and the various players in the House and Senate and the White House 
have agreed that we will balance the budget by 2002. We have agreed on 
a number. We have agreed on a downward slope toward it.
  The beneficiaries of this will be the American families. When the 
budget is balanced, interest rates, according to Alan Greenspan, will 
go down. When interest rates go down that means we will have less 
interest that we will have to pay on our home mortgages. A 2 percent 
interest rate on a $75,000 home mortgage could mean over a 30-year 
period of time that you pay $37,000 less; on a $15,000 car loan, it 
could mean that you are paying $900 less. On student loans, anything 
else you want to borrow, that would be a benefit to the American 
families.
  The other thing about the benefit of a balanced budget to the 
American family is it would give tax relief. Mr. Speaker, right now we 
are taxed higher than any generation of Americans in the history of our 
country. The average tax burden in America today is 38 percent. When 
you have a tax burden of 38 percent, if you look at this figure just 
roughly, a two-income family with a combined income of $55,000, one 
spouse is making $22,000, that means that that income is going to pay 
taxes. That means that that spouse is working for the Federal 
Government. We might not call it the Federal Government, we might call 
it a shoe store, we might call it the insurance agency, we might call 
it clerking at a law firm or working at a hospital, but the fact is 
that 100 percent of that income goes to pay taxes.
  That is higher than what the average Americans are paying for food, 
shelter, clothing, and transportation. It is an

[[Page H2675]]

astronomical figure. In the 1950's the average American family was 
paying 5 percent Federal income tax. Today they are paying 24 percent 
Federal income tax. I am only talking about income tax, not all the 
other taxes combined.
  If we balance the budget, Americans can move toward tax relief and 
lower taxes. In the balanced budget agreement there is capital gains 
tax relief. The capital gains works like this. If you are an elderly 
couple and you bought your house 20 years ago, and the husband, let us 
say, because this is very common where I live, the husband is dead and 
the woman lives on Whitmarsh Island, or Wilmington Island, because we 
have a lot of waterfront property in the area that I represent in 
Savannah, the house they paid for in the 1970s, they paid $30,000, 
today it is worth $400,000.
  But she is living alone. She is on a fixed income of maybe $10,000, 
maybe $15,000 a year. If she sells that house, because she may need the 
money for long-term health care, or for medical reasons or whatever, if 
she sells that house she is taxed as if she makes $400,000 a year. 
Capital gains tax relief will help that widow. It will also give death 
tax relief.
  Death tax relief works this way, Mr. Speaker. If you have saved all 
your money and you have a good, frugal lifestyle, and you bought IBM 
stock in the 1960's, in the 1970's, and even the 1980s, and today the 
value of that stock has tripled, and you have foregone nice vacations 
or boats or fancy clothes because you are a saver, not many left in 
America but there are still a lot of them out there, but you have saved 
your money and now you want to sell that IBM stock or pass it on to 
your children, if you try to sell it you have a capital gains tax 
problem. If you try to pass it on to your children, you are limited to 
$10,000 per child per year.
  So generally what happens is our seniors, our savers, die. Then Uncle 
Sam makes his move. For the amount of money over $600,000, about 40 
percent of it is going to go to Uncle Sam. That is not fair. You have 
paid taxes on the stock already when you purchased it, and if you have 
that stock you are not going to be able to pass it on to your children 
because Uncle Sam is going to get his fair share. That is the death 
tax. You cannot escape taxes even when you die, in the United States of 
America.
  The final tax that is given in the balanced budget agreement, the tax 
relief is a $500 per child tax credit. That would help people who have 
small children.
  I have a couple of charts, but just to show this, Mr. Speaker, this 
chart says so much. Balancing the budget is good for America because it 
is good for American families. Balancing the budget is not about 
numbers, it is about people. It is about Dad and Mom and little Jane or 
little Bob and whoever else, because it is very important that we look 
after American families.
  When was the last time that the budget was balanced? In 1969, and Mr. 
Speaker, you were a young man back then, and so was I. In 1969 the 
Beatles had just released Abbey Road, Nixon began the SALT talks with 
the former Soviet Union, the Smothers Brothers and the Mod Squad were 
still on TV, and Apollo 11 had men on the moon in July, 1969. That was 
1969.
  Pocket calculators were not even on the drawing board in those days, 
Mr. Speaker. Pocket calculators were not even a pipe dream back then. 
Computers were not. In 1969 probably not a school in the United States 
of America had a computer in it. Look at today. We have computers in 
just about every school.
  What does the balanced budget agreement have? It has these 
components, very important: The budget will be balanced by the year 
2002; it will provide tax relief for American families, and we have 
talked about that; it will provide entitlement reform; it will save 
Medicare from bankruptcy.
  I have already talked about this date, the year 2002. You have to 
have a deadline on these things. We have talked a little bit about tax 
relief. Let me talk a little bit about entitlement reform. Entitlements 
take up about 50 percent of the entire budget. Entitlements are 
generally known as programs that are automatic. They benefit people. It 
includes anything from VA to Medicare to Medicaid, Social Security, all 
types of programs. But if that is where 50 percent of the budget is, or 
where the expenditures are, we have to know we get the best bang for 
the buck.
  We have a debate going on right now about WIC. WIC stands for women, 
infants, and children. It is a formula program. It is a program, a 
nutrition program, that everybody agrees on on a bipartisan basis, 
generally.
  Last year, as Members know, the Republican conference funded WIC at a 
full $3.7 billion. It passed on a bipartisan basis. Everybody was in 
favor of it. This year, on the emergency supplemental, Members of 
Congress decided that WIC needed a little bit more money. WIC has an 
escrow account of about $100 million, and that has not even been 
touched. But nonetheless, the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. 
Livingston], chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, increased WIC 
funding by $38 million. What do some of the liberals do? They turn 
around and say, you have increased WIC, but not as much as we wanted 
you to. Therefore, you have cut.
  Follow me closely, Mr. Speaker. If we increase a program $38 million 
and people call it a cut, it is a new assault on truth in debate by the 
rhetorical terrorists of Congress. We are seeing this over and over 
again. When it comes to making difficult decisions that involve 
important programs for seniors, for children, for education or the 
environment, rhetorical terrorists in Congress parade out the person 
involved in the benefit and use them as a pawn to increase the size of 
Government and increase the size of bureaucracy.
  Never mind that in this case the USDA has told us that $38 million is 
sufficient for WIC, and that there is another escrow account, along 
with the $100 million, of about $40 million that is available. The 
numbers are already there. Yet, some Members of Congress want to use 
WIC as a political issue, and have misconstrued the debate one more 
time in Congress to increase funding, and therefore, most importantly, 
increase the bureaucracy. Twenty-five percent of WIC goes to the 
bureaucracy, Mr. Speaker.
  It is interesting that the liberals who are pushing this do not want 
to study the program. I am on the Committee on Appropriations, as the 
Speaker pro tempore is, and we have recommended, let us study it, 
because there is genuine concern about this. The concern even was 
brought up by Democrat Members, liberal members of the committee, about 
are these numbers real or not.
  We had said, let us study it. The same people who say the numbers are 
wrong refuse to sign off on a study of WIC. I say, if we are going to 
have entitlement reform, we have to have truth in debate. We have to 
agree that we can improve programs without being against children or 
being against the elderly or whatever.
  Remember, Mr. Speaker, last year on Medicare funding when the 
Republican Congress went from $190 to $270 billion, it was called a 
cut. When we went from $89 to $124 billion in Medicaid funding, it was 
called a cut.

                              {time}  1945

  When we went from $26 to $40 billion in student loans, it was called 
a cut. If America wants a balanced budget, America has to be mature 
enough to say this is worth a truthful debate. We can have an honest 
disagreement and have studies that find better ways to get more money 
to the children back home.
  But I am worried about, Mr. Speaker, a friend of mine. I am going to 
call her Jane. She is a real person. She has two kids. She is a single 
mama. Sometimes she gets child support, and sometimes she does not. Our 
office has been involved in it; and having been involved in child 
support battles, it is real hard to get child support from somebody who 
does not want to give it. We have all kinds of deadbeat-dad laws in 
Georgia, and sometimes they work and sometimes they do not.
  Mr. Speaker, Jane is out there with two kids. She is not on public 
assistance. She is not on WIC. She is not on food stamps. She is not on 
public housing. Yet, she is paying over and over again for people who 
are not on public assistance, many who have the financial ability or 
physical ability to get off of it. She is paying for 25-year-old men 
who are able-bodied to be on welfare, while she is out busting her tail 
working 40 and 50 hours a week at her

[[Page H2676]]

job to come home and to cook and to sew and to do the dishes and to 
wash the clothes and drive the car pools.
  That woman deserves better than what we are giving her, Mr. Speaker. 
She is getting abused by the big government crowds who favor 
bureaucrats over people, and it is time that we change it. So I think 
on so many of these programs we do have to take a look and find out how 
we can make the program better. We should be able to do that without 
crying foul from either side.
  Let me show a Medicare chart. In the balanced budget agreement, the 
5-year Medicare spending does go up. This is the balanced budget 
agreement. Medicare is approximately level. I am sure, Mr. Speaker, we 
are going to be hearing over and over again that balancing the budget 
will cut Medicare. Do my colleagues know why we are going to hear that? 
Because it is easy to hoodwink America's seniors. We have people who 
only have Medicare and Social Security. It is easy to scare them. It is 
not fair. It is not right. But we have a lot of people who are willing 
to do that in the U.S. Congress.
  Mr. Speaker, I think again, when it comes to seniors, when it comes 
to the elderly, we owe them truth, but we also owe them good 
government. And if we can reform Medicare and keep it from going 
bankrupt by strengthening it and preserving it and protecting it, not 
for the next election, but for the next generation, then we have served 
the elderly well.
  I am going to touch base on about one more thing, Mr. Speaker, if I 
could find my chart; and that is one other program that we need to take 
a very, very close look at, and that is AmeriCorps. AmeriCorps is the 
program that, at minimum, changes the definition from volunteer, 
volunteer meaning somebody who works who does something for free, to 
being a volunteer as somebody who gets paid from a government 
bureaucracy.
  AmeriCorps is President Clinton's domestic Peace Corps. Now who could 
argue with that? It sounds great, right? Well, consider this. When the 
President started AmeriCorps in 1993, he said we are only going to give 
it seed money; this is not going to become a bureaucracy; this is going 
to become a lean mean venture capital type outfit.
  Well, here we are 3 years later, 4 years later. AmeriCorps is $400 
million a year. AmeriCorps spends $1.7 million a year on PR, public 
relations, so that they can get people to write Members of Congress and 
say keep this important program going. AmeriCorps volunteers costs 
taxpayers anywhere from $26,000 to $31,000 per child per year. And the 
child is a 16-, 17-, 18-year-old and they get $1,500. Sometimes they 
get uniforms. Uniforms cost anywhere from about $150 to as high as a 
thousand dollars. It is pure waste.
  There was one case in Texas along the border that the program issued 
a $2.8 million grant, and the director of that program received an 
$85,000 a year salary. Again, Mr. Speaker, what a volunteer. They have 
cars. They have expense accounts. They go out for lunch on the 
taxpayers. It is absolutely ridiculous. So Congress says, let us audit 
AmeriCorps. We cannot do it. The books are too messed up. There are too 
many different disjointed records. It is in shambles. And AmeriCorps 
could not be audited.
  It is time, Mr. Speaker, that we tell the truth that, look, this 
program is not working. I have one other story. A friend of mine is 
volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, and he is a good friend of mine. 
He does lots of volunteer work for churches, for other churches, for 
other causes. He is volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, as he always 
has. And AmeriCorps sends their crew out there, their paid volunteers, 
to go work side-by-side with the regular, the real volunteers. And he 
says half the kids are over there listening to the radio talking back 
and forth, smoking cigarettes, goofing off and playing. And here we 
have got part-time volunteers, executives that make $200,000 or 
$300,000 a year. And they are working their tail off. And over here 
sitting on the floor is a 17-year-old getting paid and he will not even 
work while he is getting paid.
  That is a horrible message because what my friend told me, the 
Habitat for Humanity real volunteer, he said: I have about had it, and 
I am not going to go out there and work my tail off while some kid is 
getting paid for it. He refuses to.
  That is the type of program that we have to deal with, Mr. Speaker, 
and we ought to be able to say: You know, America, we cannot afford to 
do everything for everybody all the time as we have been doing. It is 
time to balance the budget.
  I close with this, definition of a trillion. We are $5 trillion in 
debt. If we pulled $65 million in train cars, $65 million per boxcar, 
how long would the train have to be to have $1 trillion in it? It would 
have to be 240 miles long.
  Mr. Speaker, we have got a debt right now of over $5 trillion. It is 
time to balance the budget and do something for America's children, 
America's family, and America's future.

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