[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 148 (Wednesday, October 29, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H9712]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                  SHOWCASING OUR STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from South Dakota [Mr. Thune] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. Speaker, when I came here to Washington, it was for 
the purpose of trying to bring some common sense to this institution 
and to this city. I believe that it is infinitely better for my 
children and for the children of this country and our grandchildren if 
we can have a Federal Government that is more efficient, that is more 
responsive, that is smaller, and if we can restore discussion and 
debate about values to our culture.
  Somehow we have gotten to a point in this country where we can accept 
the fact that if we are willing to write a check to the IRS, it removes 
us from the responsibility that we have to be good citizens, to work in 
our communities and our churches, to be good strong family leaders. 
That is a trend that I believe we need to change and something that we 
are making progress on. Significant progress.
  Progress on issues like welfare reform; the first balanced budget for 
some 30 years; the first tax cuts in 16 years, since 1981; Medicare 
reform; important reforms in the area of education that address values 
that we share, values like parental choice, like trying to give the 
taxpayers the best value for their dollar and provide the very highest 
quality education that we can for our young people.
  Mr. Speaker, this weekend I had the opportunity to go back to my home 
State of South Dakota and to hunt pheasants on a beautiful, crisp, 
clear day. I should not say it was entirely clear; it was crisp. We 
were out in the fall of our State and enjoying something that has 
become a ritual and tradition in South Dakota, and something where 
government has worked together in a constructive way with landowners, 
with conservationists, with sportsmen's groups, with our State 
government, local government, farmers, ranchers to do something that 
has been very, very important to the economy of our State of South 
Dakota.
  Mr. Speaker, we have seen growth in that industry that has nearly 
doubled the revenues that are generated in our State; some $70 million 
a year from the process of pheasant hunting in South Dakota. And $70 
million in South Dakota is a lot of money. I think that stands as a 
model of the way we can work together to address some of these issues 
on areas where we have common conflicts.
  Sometimes we get crosswise between environmental groups and between 
landowners in certainly our State of South Dakota, but it was a great 
experience and we had a wonderful time and we had an opportunity to 
showcase our State.

                              {time}  2145

  We have a number of other important challenges ahead of us, if we are 
going to complete the task of trying to make government simpler and 
less complicated for the people of this country.
  I had an opportunity to visit with someone in my State who is a small 
business person whose business was just acquired by another business. I 
was listening to, as a condition of the sale, I was listening to the 
discussions that he held that they had to do an environmental analysis. 
In this environmental analysis they found that the air conditioner that 
was sitting outside the building was dripping onto the ground and they 
decided that that was causing distress to vegetation. So what was the 
solution?
  Because it was dripping onto the ground in one spot, they decided to 
take a 12-inch-by-12-inch concrete slab, 2 inches thick, and to place 
it on the ground there. And somehow that was the solution that there 
would be less distressed vegetation with a 12-by-12 concrete slab than 
there would be with the drip drip that was a pinpoint drip from the air 
conditioner. I thought to myself, that is a perfect example of a 
regulation that certainly goes beyond the pail in terms of any 
rationale or common sense that might be there.
  One of the areas that we are going to talk about in the next few 
weeks and something that I think is long overdue is a discussion of how 
we can reform the IRS, restructure it and generate a long-term 
discussion about how we make our Tax Code simpler, less complicated and 
fairer and hopefully eliminate the enormous amount of time and energy 
and resources that are spent each year by the people of this country in 
trying to comply with a Tax Code that clearly has gotten out of 
control.
  Just as an example, we have 480 tax forms in this country. The form 
EZ, which is the simple form, that has some 31 pages, 7\1/2\ million 
words in our Tax Code. In fact, the estimates have been, the Kemp 
Commission found that we spent over 5 billion man-hours a year doing 
nothing but filling out tax returns, some 3 million people in the 
process of filling out returns which, interestingly enough, is more 
people than we have in our entire armed services, which means one 
thing, that is, we spend more time, energy and resources and dollars 
defending ourselves from our own Tax Code than we do from foreign 
enemies.
  I think that is ironic. I think it speaks volumes for the need for 
change in this country. I think that one of the reasons we have this 
complicated Tax Code is that command and control here in Washington, 
DC; there is so much internal resistance to change in this city.
  I was reading recently, as well, that in 1964 there were some 16,000 
lobbyists in Washington. Today there are over 64,000. The proliferation 
of lobbyists, in my view, I believe supports the fact that we have a 
complicated government and a complex Tax Code and most lobbyists spend 
their time trying to figure out loopholes and exemptions from our 
current Tax Code.
  So it is high time we engage in this debate. It is happening around 
the country. It is happening in a way which I think hopefully will give 
us some solutions that come from the ground up, where the people of 
this country engage in this issue and say, this is what we want to do. 
I am proud to be a part of that debate. I look forward to having some 
discussions of that in my home State of South Dakota.

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