[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 6 (Wednesday, February 4, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H323-H327]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           REPUBLICAN AGENDA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Taylor of North Carolina). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from 
Colorado (Mr. Bob Schaffer) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, this evening I wanted to 
come before the body tonight and talk a little bit about the freshman 
Republican class, that group which was elected in 1996 and has now 
finished 1 year serving here in Congress and is embarking on the second 
year. I recently became elected President by that body, and tonight is 
one of those opportunities where I wanted to talk about our agenda and 
some of the things we are trying to accomplish here in Washington as a 
new freshman body.
  This group is 34 Members strong, and over the 3-month break that we 
took recently, from which we just returned, the 34 Members of the 
Republican freshman class endeavored to spread out across the country 
in our respective districts holding a number of town meetings and 
visits and so on. I wanted to talk about some that I had occasion to 
conduct and also those that had been reported back to me, and other 
Members perhaps will be here.
  The 34 Members also have been involved in putting together a number 
of projects and proposals that we are trying to push through this 
Congress. One of those which we unveiled just 3 weeks ago entails a 
Republican freshman tax relief package. It is spearheaded by the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Pitts), and this package has four 
basic provisions that I would suggest that the House ought to consider 
quite seriously, and in fact these proposals are becoming the basis for 
further discussions of tax relief that are occurring in the Committee 
on Ways and Means, by the chairman, and being supported with the effort 
of our Speaker and other Members of leadership.
  The first of those provisions is a provision that involves 100 
percent deductibility of health care programs or the benefits that 
small employers provide for their employees. Under today's current tax 
structure, section 106 of the Internal Revenue Service code, section 
106 provides for a 100 percent deductibility of health insurance 
benefits for large employers, but small employers, the small 
entrepreneurs, those individuals who provide the majority of jobs and 
entrepreneurial spirit of our country, have not achieved that parity 
yet. That has been a long-term stated goal, but at this particular 
point in time, again taking a look at where the real strength of our 
economy comes from and where the expected growth is likely to occur, it 
is quite clear that this benefit, this tax advantage, ought to occur to 
all entrepreneurs in America, all those who would propose to create 
economic activity, create opportunity to create jobs in fact for our 
country.
  This second provision of the bill is the elimination of the marriage 
tax penalty. The notion that families should suffer additional tax 
burdens simply due to their decision to become married is one that is 
particularly onerous and seems in many ways to be un-American certainly 
and really violates our strong regard for the strength of the American 
family as the most basic central and essential social unit in our 
Nation. Eliminating the marriage tax penalty is a goal and an objective 
that we take quite seriously, and we will be pushing for it quite 
vigorously in the coming months until we achieve success in arriving at 
moving the legislation forward and eventually putting it on the 
President's desk.

                              {time}  2230

  The third provision is one that involves education. Currently, there 
are many States throughout the country that are setting up educational 
accounts where parents are able to prepay college tuition for children. 
Now, on a State level, and certainly at the Federal level there are 
significant number of advantages that are companion with that goal and 
objective, too, but in many cases seems to be isolated.
  This provision is one that, in fact, broadens the number of choices 
of educational institutions that families might choose for their 
children in setting dollars aside now while their children are very 
young and allowing these funds to grow in a way that is unmolested by 
our tax code to that point in time when they would decide to go ahead 
and go to college and get accepted at the school of their choice. That 
is an important provision of the overall tax bill that we have moved 
forward.
  The fourth provision is one that really moves us toward our goal of 
encouraging savings and investment. The Republican Congress last year 
provided significant advantages for those who do save money and savings 
on earnings, but the tax on interest earnings still, in our opinion, is 
prohibitive.
  And there is a lot more that this Congress can do to relieve the tax 
burden on savings and investments and the earnings of those investments 
in a way that will allow our economy to grow, to encourage more and 
more people to put more money into savings, and to providing capital 
for other entrepreneurs and others who are in the business of creating 
wealth, creating jobs and moving our country forward economically.
  Those four provisions outline the proposal that we have put forward 
and is one that has been warmly received here in Washington but, more 
importantly, has been warmly received by the taxpayers throughout the 
country and throughout the districts that are represented by those 
Members who have put the plan forward and others who have joined us in 
the effort.
  I want to tell my colleagues about some of the things that I had 
heard over the three months that I traveled throughout my district in 
the eastern plains of Colorado. There were a number of news stories 
that occurred over that time period suggesting that, it was some 
polling data actually, that revealed that young people in America have 
somehow lost interest in citizenship and the whole concept of their 
role as citizens in our country.
  Here are some articles I brought with me, one from the Washington 
Times that says that college freshmen have the blahs, survey indicates. 
Academic civic apathy reached record levels. Student poll finds soaring 
apathy levels. College freshmen aiming high for marks in income but 
developing a philosophy of life can wait. This article in The New York 
Times.
  The National Report further highlights this apparent trend that some 
pollsters seem to have found that young people are interested in other 
things but not civic virtue in contemplating their roles as actual 
leaders of our country.
  USA Today reports that money, not learning, is freshmen's top goal, a 
freshman in college. And it talks about how the research again 
confirms, according to USA Today, that young people are not focusing on 
their eventual roles as leaders of the country and do not think in 
patriotic terms.
  Los Angeles Times, freshmen get high marks in apathy and so on. And 
there are several more here too from Boston. Boston Globe, college 
freshmen called more detached.
  I have to tell my colleagues that I found just the opposite in my 
travels, to the places I went. I spent a lot of time visiting local 
schools and talking with lots of young people. I want to talk about one 
person in particular, who I have had a chance to get to know. She lives 
in Limon, Colorado, which is a small town out in the eastern plains of 
my State.
  Amanda King is her name. She is 16 years old. I had a chance to go 
visit her school and spoke with a number of her classmates and 
acquaintances and teachers as well. They are very proud of her. She is 
one who has been involved very directly in the political process and 
one who does take her role as citizen quite seriously.
  Her goal is to go on to college and, in fact, to learn about 
government, to learn about political science, and to learn about the 
political system that allows each and every individual, including 
individuals her age, to play a meaningful role in moving our country 
forward. When I asked her what her goals and objectives are, what she 
wants to do with this degree at some point in time and how she wants to

[[Page H324]]

serve the country, she said she just generally wanted to help make 
government better, to make life in America a little more positive than 
it is today.
  She said that she believes that there are great opportunities for 
young people to be involved in the political process and to set high 
standards for themselves and establish ambitious dreams and to achieve 
them.
  I asked her what motivated her in that regard; what gave her the 
interest and how was she inspired in such a way to think in such terms 
about her country. She credited her teacher, Mr. Fiedler, who was the 
7th grade teacher, at Limon High School. Now, Mr. Fiedler is no longer 
the 7th grade teacher, he has become the principal. And it is teachers 
like that, I have met several of them over the course of the several 
years I have been privileged to serve in public office, to meet 
individuals like this who have inspired young people, who have found 
ways to use the lecture forum of their classrooms to talk about our 
great country, to talk about how academic success in a classroom leads 
to economic success for the country over time.
  Several other places that I visited, a lot of other classrooms that I 
visited in Fort Collins and Loveland and Greeley, Colorado, out in 
Sterling and Flagler, in Limon, down in the town of Las Animas, in the 
southern part of my district in Colorado, had similar experiences with 
many of these young people. And it was, in fact, refreshing. It was 
something that suggests that these polls, while they may be true in 
some quarters and some segments of the country are certainly not true 
in rural America. Again, indeed it was very gratifying.
  People are concerned about taxes, Mr. Speaker. Most of the town 
meetings that I attended and the people that I spoke with believe that 
at a point in time when our economy seems to be most productive and our 
economy seems to be very good, that this is the time we ought to 
consider not only reforming our prohibitive Tax Code, one that is a 
confiscatory strategy that, from the regulatory perspective, treats 
taxpayers as though they are guilty until they prove their innocence, 
if they are questioned and audited on tax matters, but also, again, in 
addition to reining in the abuses that seem to occur at the Internal 
Revenue Service on the enforcement side, was a call for wide scale 
reform of our income Tax Code.
  The graduated system of income tax collection that we have today and 
income tax assessment is one that punishes hard work and punishes those 
who seek to achieve more economically in our country. And those who 
have been confronted with that kind of a tax system for so long are 
crying for relief and demanding that politicians take them quite 
seriously and commit themselves to devoting the time and the attention 
and the energy to reforming the tax system.

  As the Speaker knows, we have two prevailing proposals for wholescale 
reform of the income tax structures, a national consumption tax that 
has been supported by the other gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Dan 
Schaefer), another Schaefer from Colorado, and promoted primarily by 
the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Bill Archer), the Committee on Ways and 
Means chairman, here in the House; and also a competing version of tax 
reform pushed primarily by another gentleman from Texas (Mr. Dick 
Armey), our majority leader, and that provision calls for a flat tax. 
That tax would flatten out the graduated nature of our income Tax Code 
as we know it today and eventually arrive at one low, flat, fair rate 
which would treat all taxpayers equally and begin to reward 
entrepreneurial success, reward investment and so on.
  Both tax proposals try to achieve the same thing in that regard, and 
it is a matter of strategy and tactics as to how we move them forward 
and which seems to be the most successful in earning overall support 
here in the Congress and throughout the country.
  These discussions ought to take place right now, especially when we 
have headlines that we have seen about a supposed budget surplus that 
we are anticipating and expecting. Over the 10-month period from 
November of 1996 until November of 1997, we actually accumulated an 
approximately $2.4 billion surplus. This is the first time this has 
occurred in many years, certainly in the length of time that I have 
been involved in the political process and following politics. And so 
the question occurs as to whether this is the right time to strike, 
while the iron, as they say, is hot.
  Sustaining our economic growth seems to me to be the most important 
thing that we as Americans can do to move toward not only balancing the 
budget but getting us toward real debt relief. Resolving our question 
of a mounting Federal national debt is a far bigger problem that looms 
over us and costs us more than anything else in terms of jobs and in 
terms of economic growth. Sustaining the level of economic growth that 
the American taxpayers have been able to achieve and the American 
entrepreneurs have been able to sustain in spite of poor tax policy 
that we maintain right now is an objective of a very high order, in my 
estimation.
  The fact of the matter is that the impact of high Federal debt is no 
different than high Federal taxation. With the debt-based currency that 
we have in the United States, high debt effectively reduces the value 
of every single dollar that every American carries around with them 
today. And manipulating the management of that debt has the ability to 
effectively tax citizens to higher or lesser degrees, depending on 
decisions that are made, in many cases, without any scrutiny of elected 
officials or Members of Congress or people in the White House, for that 
matter.
  But there is a very positive side to strong economic growth that we 
see right now. I want to share with Members who may be watching a few 
comments that appeared in our local papers. There was an article back 
at the end of December how economic success in America today is 
filtering its way down to local charities. There was a man named Jerry 
Langley, who is vice president of a McDonald's corporation, this is in 
Illinois, and he said he helped soften the tax bite on his investments 
by donating shares of stocks to selected charities. Now, his business 
seems to be doing fairly well at the present time and he is finding 
that his ability to engage in charitable contributions is better now 
than it has been in some years.
  For instance, here is another example. The American Red Cross said 
that contributions were up 120 percent to that organization over the 
previous year. And the United Way noted that they had realized a 17 
percent growth in gifts of more than $1,000. Don Struke, who was a 
spokesman for the United Way Foundation, says what we are seeing is 
definitely an upturn in giving.
  Now, I would point out, Mr. Speaker, that when it comes to real 
humanitarian and compassionate concern that we have and that we express 
here on the floor of the House from time to time, that this is real 
charity. When individuals are able to put the fruits of their economic 
growth, their productivity toward the charities of their choice, a 
number of things occur. One is there is no bureaucracy.
  When Mr. Langley here makes a contribution directly to the American 
Red Cross, these dollars are not filtered through Washington, they are 
not filtered through various State capitals, they are not filtered 
through various bureaucracies that are involved in the distribution of 
public funds for government charities. No, these dollars go directly 
from charitable donor to charitable organization and make their way 
directly to the individual who is in need, the poor person who is the 
beneficiary of some of these organizations or those who are confronted 
with the tragedy in the case of the Red Cross.
  It is without question a time in which we are able to help more 
people with fewer dollars and less government. That ought to be our 
message that we move forward in this Congress when it comes to how we 
deal with budget surpluses, how we deal with a huge bureaucracy that 
still needs to be dealt with, and a strategy toward shrinking the size 
of Washington's influence in the lives of Americans.
  Here is another story. Workers coming off welfare to get job help. 
Volunteers in new county program to provide circles of support for 2 
years. This is a story out of Larimer County, Colorado. There is a 
program that has been established by county commissioners at a local 
level called Larimer County Builds Community, and it will match

[[Page H325]]

former recipients of welfare with advocates from local faith-based 
organizations, service groups, and help these recipients make the 
transition into sustaining employment.

                              {time}  2245

  Now imagine that, Mr. Speaker. Imagine a welfare system that utilizes 
faith-based and spiritual organizations and charitable groups in a way 
that is helping people come off of welfare and achieve self-
sufficiency.
  A strong economy is certainly making this possible. Individual 
contributions and donations that come directly from these groups and 
organizations is adding to the momentum that welfare reform has 
established in the country.
  But, more than anything else, the message that the Republican 
Congress has sent by crafting a responsible welfare reform provision is 
this, that self-sufficiency makes more sense, it is more rewarding, it 
is by far a better way to achieve a high degree of human dignity than 
any more levels of government spending, higher levels of spending, or 
greater degrees of bureaucratic management of the way in which people 
live.
  This is a great story. This is an American success story. This is a 
real testimonial to the strength of local governments and local 
entities getting involved in welfare reform that they were never 
allowed to do previous to welfare reform coming out of Congress.
  By providing that level of freedom and liberty at the local level, we 
are helping real people get on their feet, helping them re-enter the 
job market, helping them become self-sufficient, helping them enjoy 
life in America as Americans ought to be able to. It is a real cause 
for celebration, not only by those that are associated with welfare 
programs and with these charities but for the actual individuals 
themselves who are no longer dependent on bureaucrats, no longer 
dependent on taxpayer subsidies, no longer are dependent on a welfare 
system that over the last several years has been so cruel and so 
heartless.
  A strong economy, a compassionate welfare reform program is by far 
more humanitarian, more charitable, more compassionate than large 
government and the solutions of big bureaucracy.
  ``Consumers Are Upbeat'' is another news story that many people in my 
district were talking about. ``Consumers were upbeat so much so that it 
is a high,'' the article says. This is an Associated Press story that 
made big news out in Colorado.

       Consumer confidence surged to a 28-year high in December, a 
     milestone for an economy embarking on its eighth year of 
     expansion. Growth is up. People are employed. We are 
     competitive with the rest of the world. What's not to be 
     confident about?

  That is again something that we had heard repeated over and over 
again at our various town meetings and voiced as a strong indicator of 
why we ought to move forward on further tax relief for our country and 
do so in a way that will sustain economic growth and allow us to bring 
down our looming debt that looms over us even today.
  Here is another one, Mr. Speaker.

       Today Colorado income studies shows that the poor did 
     better. Did you hear that, that the poor did better? What a 
     strong economy does in a capitalist society like ours is 
     allows those who have been struggling for years and years to 
     move from one income category to another, a final chance to 
     actually achieve that. The average income of Colorado's 
     poorest families increased faster than the average income of 
     the State's richest family over the last decade, a new study 
     says.

  Now, this is a national study that focused on every State and 
highlighted the particular features of this study in all States. But in 
Colorado, where we have enjoyed wonderful economic growth for a number 
of years, we have seen that this has not been something that only 
benefits the rich, as we will sometimes hear the left and the Democrats 
here in Congress suggest, but a strong, vibrant economy and, in this 
case, actually raised the income of the poor faster and more 
conclusively than income levels for the rich.
  The average income for the poorest 20 percent of Colorado families 
increased by $4,050, from $10,280 to $14,330, or a 39-percent increase 
in income for the poorest 20 percent of Colorado families. Average 
income for the middle 20 percent increased by $5,150, from $42,650 to 
$47,800, or a 12-percent increase. And average income for the top 20 
percent increased again over this 10-year period by $17,860, from 
$113,510 to $131,370, or 16 percent.
  Again, the wealthiest and middle-income families saw income increases 
over the last 10 years between 12 and 16 percent, but the poorest 20 
percent of our economy in my State realized income growth of 39 
percent.
  Once again, when we think of how this Government and this Congress 
can exercise real compassion, can exercise real humanitarianism, can 
exercise real concern for those that we care most about, our friends 
and our neighbors, those who are in need, those who face certain 
unfortunate occasions in their life that make economic participation 
difficult, the best way to assist those individuals and to be concerned 
about them is by fighting for a strong economy, by fighting to remove 
the impediment to economic growth, by fighting to remove the tax 
disadvantages toward job creation and instead replace them with 
advantages that motivate and move job creation forward.
  In response to all of this, of course, over at the White House they 
suggested that no tax cuts will be considered, that providing 
additional tax relief for American families is something that they are 
not interested in discussing. We suggest that we can expect a vigorous 
debate and ensuing battle that will take place over whether we ought to 
continue to tax the American people at high rates, tax American job 
producers at high rates and continue to force the jobs overseas in a 
way that does not allow us as a country to achieve the economic 
progression parity that we ought to, to the degree that we ought to.
  Failure by this Government and our Congress to move forward on tax 
relief and relieving debt will erase stories like this.
  It will in the end be cruel to individuals who are today realizing 
greater income. It will be cruel to those who are presently upbeat and 
excited about our economic promise. It would be cruel and heartless 
whether it comes to those who are leaving the welfare roles, finding 
jobs on their own. It will be cruel to those charities who are finding 
great economic success because of that certain amount of progress that 
we have made.
  What we need is more economic growth. What we need are lower levels 
of tax rates. What we need are more provisions in our business laws and 
regulatory laws that make entrepreneurism more within the grasp of more 
and more Americans.
  People out West are also very concerned, Mr. Speaker, about an 
executive order that has been put forward by the Clinton administration 
called the American Heritage Rivers Initiative. This is an initiative 
that is established by executive order without the consent, without the 
review of the Congress.
  Water in the West is one of the most precious natural resources that 
we have. If you take my State, Colorado, for example, it is one of two 
headwater States in the entire country. All of our water, all of our 
usable water and that which has been appropriated flows out of our 
State. The other one is Hawaii, by the way.
  Managing, reusing, conserving water is something we know an awful lot 
about in the West. Colorado's water law has been developed over the 
entire history of our State. It is a model that the rest of the country 
has used in developing their water law.
  It is based on the notion that water and a water right is a property 
right and that if you want to acquire water or purchase one of those 
rights you need to stand in line and purchase it from a willing seller.
  The Federal Government does not understand that, Mr. Speaker, when it 
comes right down to it. The United States Forest Service, other Federal 
agencies, are very envious of the precious resources that are held in 
many cases by private owners, by ranchers and farmers, by private 
conservationists, by foresters, by municipalities, by industry and by 
other private water users.
  The Federal Government would like to have their hands on that water, 
and they try with a voracious thirst to try to acquire it. They do not 
understand that you have to stand in line like everyone else, that you 
have to put up the cash to purchase water rights like everybody else. 
They have devised

[[Page H326]]

many ingenious strategies to impede the ability of water rights owners, 
water users, to use their own water in a way that they see fit and that 
is of beneficial use for their economic activities.

  The American Heritage Rivers Initiative put forward by the Clinton 
administration is one more example of this lack of understanding that 
we see coming out of Washington and threatening the West. It is the 
next stage being waged in the war on the West. It is one that makes 
people in the West quite nervous, in fact quite angry; and we do not 
intend to sit by and watch the administration by executive order, I 
remind my colleagues again, to move forward in a way that will only 
constitute confiscation potentially of such a precious resource.
  The American Heritage Rivers Initiative would establish 10 rivers per 
year that would be designated by the Federal Government as Heritage 
Rivers, and that sounds lake a nice thing. But it is not, I assure you, 
once you get into the details and review the testimony that was given 
by the Clinton administration in front of the Committee on Resources 
and in other correspondence that took place between various members of 
the Congress and the administration itself.
  Certainly it sounds like the American Heritage Rivers Initiative 
suggests that we are going to feature and preserve some unique quality 
of river systems throughout the country, perhaps clean up river front, 
perhaps remove various levels of pollution or degradation in streams. 
And some of that, in fact, may occur. That is a very positive thing.
  The fact of the matter is that all of those can occur today. There is 
no need for this initiative being put forward by the Clinton 
administration unless you buy their silly notion that there is so much 
regulation that their agencies, their Federal Government, their 
bureaucracy has created that we need to hire more bureaucrats to help 
local communities untangle all that red tape and assist them in that 
way.
  Well, we are concerned about a number of things, first and foremost 
that this initiative seems to have gone forward without any level of 
meaningful scrutiny by the United States Congress. An executive order 
is not a law, it is not a law suggested, as the Constitution lays out, 
that is to be established by the Congress on such an important topic. 
An executive order is a set of instructions to the executive branch, 
its bureaucracies, and its agents to behave in a certain way, in this 
case to behave in a way that has the ability in a way that enables 
these agencies to restrict not only water rights but property rights, 
usages and to elevate priorities in the distribution of these assets 
through a certain level of Federal meddling and intervention.
  What the Clinton administration is proposing is not only to designate 
these rivers but to hire somebody called a river navigator, that would 
be their job title, have a river navigator actually move into your 
State, move on your river system and manage the resources associated 
with river management and water management.
  This person would be employed at a cost of approximately $120,000 per 
year, and I assume there will be staff associated with that. There is a 
pending proposal here in the Congress that has made its way right here 
to the floor that would pull the cash out from underneath this 
expenditure, again bearing in mind that this new function of government 
has not been approved by Congress ever. The attempts in the White House 
to direct the taxpayers' cash towards this new activity is 
inappropriate. That proposal ought to be taken up swiftly on the House 
floor and hopefully passed.
  But, in the meantime, I would suggest that we ought to be charged, as 
a conscientious body, with seeing to it that the administration is not 
permitted through the appropriations process to draw funds from the 
various and several agencies associated with water management in order 
to implement the American Heritage Rivers Initiative.

                              {time}  2300

  We ought to make absolutely certain that no dollars are appropriated 
by this Congress unless we first of all approve of the activity that is 
taking place and upon which those dollars would be spent.
  Western states, most States, Colorado in particular, understand very 
well how to manage water in our State. Our law is good. It has a long 
tradition of working well.
  We secure agreements with neighboring States through interstate 
compacts on the distribution of water and the allocation of shares. 
Those agreements are negotiated at the State level, under Federal 
guidelines, and insured through a Federal water court system. But they 
are devised by States, nonetheless, by Governors and their agents, who 
sit down and negotiate these agreements, sometimes at great cost.
  Then they are signed, they are approved by States, and they become 
effectively the law, a contract on how water ought to be distributed.
  The very notion that the Federal Government will elevate its level of 
meddling in that age-old traditional process is one that Westerners are 
not willing to stand for. Time after time after time, when I asked 
constituents in my district what they really care about and what they 
want to be addressed here by this Congress, over the last 3 months that 
I conducted these kinds of hearings and these kinds of meetings, 
maintaining and preserving and protecting Colorado water was always 
high on the list.
  There are four Members of Congress, myself included, who have chosen 
to file a lawsuit against the President himself as a defendant over the 
American Heritage Rivers Initiative. That lawsuit has been filed in the 
District of Columbia Federal Court. We also filed an injunction 
recently and in fact expect a judgment to be rendered within days on an 
injunction. It is hopeful that that injunction will allow Colorado's 
water rights laws and history to stand while the lawsuit that is 
pending is considered.
  We also have a big crisis out in the State when it comes to forestry 
and forest health. People are very concerned about what would happen if 
we have another dry summer, as some suggest we may. The level of forest 
fire potential in Western States is higher than it has ever been 
before. The state of forest health is very poor.
  There are large problems with infestations and disease that are 
spreading across western forests, and this is no accident of nature. In 
fact, it is a very understandable response, when you take into account 
the poor management strategies that the Forest Service has been 
responsible for over the last several years.
  In fact, there is a great battle going on internally within the 
Forest Service presently, where foresters are quite concerned. Their 
ability to apply accurate scientific data and knowledge about how to 
manage our National Forests is something that the Forest Service here 
in Washington, D.C. seems to be disinterested in.
  There is another agenda that seems to be driven by economic goals and 
objectives that would suggest to the White House and the people here in 
the Clinton Administration that forests should not be managed, that 
they should be allowed to be confronted with infestation, with 
continued disease.
  When this occurs and when overgrowth occurs as well, another big 
problem, forests are not properly thinned and cared for, these trees 
become stressed. They run out of water, they compete for nutrients, 
they compete for water resources. They do get stressed, they do get 
infested and get diseased. They become brittle, they become very dry, 
and all it takes is one flash of lightning or one careless activity of 
a camper or somebody watching wildlife or a hunter or somebody along 
those lines, or somebody who happens to be living in a forested area, 
and these fires burn far more intensely, and they burn with such 
intensity, as a matter of fact, that they effectively sterilize the 
soil.
  These are forests that have a much more difficult time recovering and 
coming back from these kinds of devastating fires. It is much different 
than the natural fires that occurred long before humans showed up. 
These are fires that burn far more intensely, precisely because they 
have been poorly managed and poorly treated by our Forest Service when 
it comes to public lands.
  That is another big problem that I had heard of, another big concern 
that people suggested to me over the

[[Page H327]]

months that I was able to travel throughout the district.
  Mr. Speaker, let me conclude once again by talking about the freshman 
class. When I first got elected to Congress, I had heard a little bit 
about this class status, I heard a little bit about the freshman class, 
the sophomore class and so on.
  It works almost like high school. Those that got elected in a certain 
year, they would come here and have to go through the orientation 
process, learn about the institution at the same pace and learn about 
it together. But they are also elected under the pretense of a certain 
set of issues.
  Every election year seems to define for itself a certain mood that is 
prevalent throughout the country. What we discovered is that 34 Members 
came here from throughout the country, unified in our belief that the 
American people are taxed in excess, that our government at the Federal 
level is far too big, and, as such, threatens real freedom and real 
liberty throughout the country, and that the best way to ensure real 
freedom and real liberty and real participation, economically and 
politically, is not through bigger Federal involvement and a bigger 
Federal Government, but by a smaller one, one which defers to the 
wisdom of states, all 50 of them, including territories, and local 
governments, and, even more so, defers to the people themselves.
  We are unified in our vision that the size of the Federal Government 
needs to be contained, it needs to be reduced, and that we do need to 
empower people back home in ways that historically and traditionally we 
know leads to more prosperity in the country.
  Those are the issues that define our class, the 34 Members that got 
elected in 1996. Those are the issues that define the projects that we 
are moving forward on, that define the issues that we fight for 
passionately here on the House floor, and it defines the issues that we 
speak about frequently and that we discuss often.
  Our agenda is one that we are very committed to. It is an agenda that 
we believe is playing a primary role in driving the overall message we 
are sending as a majority Republican party here in Washington, and it 
is one that we look forward to engaging in vigorously with those on the 
left side, the Democratic side of the floor, who would disagree.

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