[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 95 (Tuesday, July 8, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H4894]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 VOLUNTEERS AND OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Tiahrt] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, I believe that we are all aware that we need 
to balance the Federal budget, and the reason it is no longer being 
argued is because the Republican Party heard the cries of the American 
public who said we must balance the Federal budget. It really is common 
sense, but it has been a generation since we have balanced the budget.
  For a long time the Democrats were in control and they did not even 
consider it, would not even consider a balanced budget. The same with 
tax relief. It was not considered until the Republicans got control and 
took the cries of the American people to the floor of the House and 
made them heard, and now we are talking about how big the tax relief 
should be and who should get it.

                              {time}  1945

  And it is very clear that when you give $500 per child tax relief, 
that goes to the most poor as well as those who are making more.
  Now when we talk about capital gains, the IRS has told us that tax 
relief in capital gains, 75 percent of the recipients will make less 
than $75,000. So there has been a lot of bad information about who is 
getting tax relief and who is not.
  The Treasury Department is trying to manipulate the numbers to push 
more people into the wealthy category than actually exist there so they 
can focus on bogus numbers. But the truth is, the Republican Party is 
going to provide tax relief for middle-class people, for working poor, 
for people who need the tax relief. Because people do two things with 
their money once they get tax relief. They either spend it or save it. 
Both are good for our economy.
  In an era when we are balancing the budget and we have limited 
spending, I think it is important that we take time to set national 
priorities. One of those national priorities that I think we need to 
set is the need for research for the gulf war illness that has plagued 
tens of thousands of our servicemen and women.
  We really do not know how many Americans are affected by exposure to 
chemical warfare agents. Some 700,000 men and women served America in 
the gulf war. According to the Department of Defense, at least as a 
minimum, 20,000 soldiers were exposed to a chemical agent at 
Khamisiyah, according to the DOD. However, as many as 120,000 gulf war 
veterans may have been exposed, according to the CIA.
  The real truth is we have no idea how many people are suffering from 
gulf war illness. We do not know how many were even exposed. And as 
time goes by, more and more of those are showing up with symptoms. 
According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, the 
symptoms are fatigue, joint pain, gastrointestinal complaints, memory 
loss, emotional changes, impotence, and insomnia. This is just some of 
what gulf war vets are living through every day. And so far, we have 
not given priority to finding the cure for this, finding the cure for 
our servicemen and women who served in the gulf war.
  Thanks to people like Representative Dan Thimesch, from the 93rd 
District of the Kansas House of Representatives, he has brought this 
issue to my attention and to the attention of the entire State of 
Kansas, and made it a priority there that we address the needs of 
people who are suffering from this illness.
  When we establish these higher priorities, we need to shift money. 
When we are trying to get to balance the budget, we have these 
priorities that we have so many efficient programs, so we need to take 
the money from inefficient programs and move it to higher priorities 
like curing Gulf War illness.
  Americorp is one of those programs that is very inefficient. We all 
know that it was designed as paid volunteers. The problem that we are 
having in Americorp is that we cannot keep people on the job. They sign 
up, start drawing their pay, and then quit showing up to do their paid 
volunteer work.
  According to the Corporation of National Service, the annual direct 
compensation package for an Americorp volunteer is $15,900. Now, if 
this is an accurate figure, this is more than 42 percent of what the 
young people with real jobs between the ages of 15 and 24 make every 
year.
  Incidentally, the directors of the Americorp program do not even use 
the word ``volunteers.'' They prefer to call them ``members,'' because 
if you go to the dictionary and look up the definition of 
``volunteer,'' you will see that there is nothing to do with pay. It is 
only when we get to a big government approach to volunteers that we 
decide to pay them to do what 89 million volunteers do every year.
  In Kansas we had an interesting situation at the Cheney Reservoir. A 
dozen Americorp paid volunteers showed up to help clean up around the 
lake by request of the Cheney Lake Association. By the end of the first 
week, more than one half of the paid volunteers simply quit showing up 
for work.
  In Colorado, Americorp built hornos. Hornos is a mud oven that was 
used by the residents of Colorado some 4,000 years ago to cook their 
food. But now this mud oven is available to travelers to stop by, 
collect some wood, cook their food in this primitive oven.
  So Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, I would say that we need to establish 
higher priority, eliminate Americorp, and shift the money to curing 
gulf war illness.

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