[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 139 (Wednesday, October 8, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H8694]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                CONGRESS SHOULD DO MORE PROBLEM SOLVING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Paul] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, frequently I am asked, when I am in my 
district, if Congress is making any progress in solving the problems 
that this country faces. I wish I could be more optimistic in my 
answer, yet I am optimistic about the people in the district and the 
people in the country, because I think they are beginning to see the 
problems correctly and they are beginning to sense that we should be 
doing more to solve the problems.
  Truthfully, I cannot give them an optimistic answer about the 
progress we are making here within the House of Representatives and in 
the Senate. For instance, yesterday we had a piece of legislation come 
up rather quickly. It was the FDA legislation. There was no 
announcement the day before. There was no announcement last week. It 
came up suddenly, under suspension, with only minutes to prepare.
  Actually, I came to the floor hoping that I could at least make a 
statement, asking for 1 minute, but because it was managed by both 
majority and minority that supported the bill, there just happened not 
to be any time available to discuss anything in the FDA legislation.
  This legislation involved 177 pages. It was not available to me on 
the Internet. It is a complex piece of legislation, and something that 
I think is a very important piece of legislation. I had received 
numerous pieces of correspondence critical of this legislation and 
urging caution on its passage. The bill was rushed through rather 
quickly. There was no vote taken on this and, actually, not one single 
thing said in a negative manner about this particular legislation.
  The pretense of the legislation is to speed up the process, to get 
drugs approved more quickly, to avoid the bureaucracy of the Food and 
Drug Administration and, quite frankly, there probably is plenty of 
bureaucracy over there that slows up the process. But if they are not 
doing a good job, why would speeding up the process necessarily be 
helpful?
  If they speeded up the process to get drugs out, like 
Dexfenfluramine, which is a drug now known to cause heart valve 
disease, I cannot see the purpose of trying to speed up a process that 
guarantees very little to the consumer. Quite frankly, the Good 
Housekeeping seal of approval that the FDA puts on it I question. I 
favor the original Good Housekeeping seal of approval, something done 
more privately.
  But the serious parts of this legislation, which I believe will come 
back to haunt many in this Congress, and I am predicting they will hear 
from the constituents and from many groups interested in this issue, in 
the first way the bill itself internationalized regulations for the 
first time. The regulations are to conform with all other nations when 
possible. I do not see this as a positive step in any way.
  Unfortunately, it diminishes the State's role in regulation and in 
food labeling and it allows more Federal regulation rather than less. 
This, to me, is not going in the right direction. We talk a lot about 
reducing the Federal control, but here is a piece of legislation that 
comes up rather quickly, no debate, no chance to really debate the 
issue at all and, at the same time, it enhances and empowers the 
Federal Government over the States and, at the same time, it introduces 
this notion that some of these regulations may well become 
internationalized.
  In another area that I think we have done a poor job has to do with 
the budget. If the American people would go by what is said from here, 
so much optimism, that we are on the verge of having surpluses and we 
are running around arguing about how to spend the surpluses, I have to 
take a different side to that argument. I do not see the surpluses.
  For instance, this past year they say the national debt is down to 
$30 billion, approximately. Well, $30 billion to a lot of people is 
still a significant amount of money. So a $30 billion deficit should 
not be ignored and, quite frankly, I think it is lower than was 
anticipated more by accident than by what we have done, especially if 
we look at the budget resolution, which actually introduced more 
welfare programs, not less. So the fact that we have a smaller deficit 
is not too reassuring to me.
  If we look at the increase in the national debt, it suggests another 
story. The national debt has actually gone up nearly $200 billion in 
this past year. The national debt went from $5.22 trillion to $5.41 
trillion. So why the discrepancy? Why is the deficit so small and yet 
the national debt is increasing rapidly? There is a very specific 
reason for this. More money is being borrowed from the trust funds, 
such as Social Security. That is not the solution. That is a problem.

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