[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 14 (Tuesday, February 24, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H509]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      PRIORITIZING SPENDING AND FOCUSING ON DEFENDING OUR BORDERS

  (Mr. GIBBONS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GIBBONS. Mr. Speaker, it is often said that those who do not 
learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. Today, this Nation stands 
on the edge and the threshold of runaway drug use and rising violence 
against all Americans. So how do our liberal colleagues plan to counter 
this most dangerous trend? Well, my colleagues can guess it, $120 
billion in new taxes and more Washington-knows-best, unworkable big 
government programs. They are proposing that we make the Federal social 
bureaucracies larger and more invasive into the lives of American 
people.
  To them I say, enough is enough. What does it say about our 
government when the IRS employs five times as many as the FBI and 14 
times as many people as the DEA? When did policing the American 
taxpayer become more important than policing America's drug dealers and 
criminal thugs?
  Now more than ever we must practice fiscal discipline and common 
sense by reprioritizing spending and focusing our government on 
defending the borders of this Nation and the safety of the American 
citizens.

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