[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 83 (Tuesday, June 23, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H5044-H5052]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         UNITED STATES ECONOMY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Neumann) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to encourage my colleagues 
to take a deep breath and slow down, because things are happening very, 
very fast out here. When things start happening very, very fast in 
Washington, D.C., what happens is we lose track and we lose sight of 
what is going on; and the next thing you know, the taxpayers' money 
starts disappearing like it has done for a generation out here, and it 
starts disappearing very, very fast.
  When this gets out of control, when spending gets out of control in 
this city, when we forget what had happened before 1995, we quickly get 
to a point where the idea of reducing taxes or paying off debt or 
restoring Social Security become impossibilities.
  So I rise tonight, and I have not done this presentation in quite 
some time, but I think it is important, I think it is very important 
that we remember where it is we are at in this Nation; and that, even 
though we have come a long way, we have still got some problems facing 
our country.
  This first chart that I brought with me tonight shows that the debt 
from 1960 to 1980 did not grow very much. But from 1980 forward, this 
debt has grown right off the wall. Although we made some good progress 
on it, now we need to remember that, even when we get to a balanced 
budget, we are here in this picture, and it is still a very, very, very 
serious problem facing our Nation. When we start talking about spending 
bills in this community, we cannot let ourselves lose sight of the fact 
that we are still deeply in debt.
  For those that have not seen the number, we are currently $5\1/2\ 
trillion in debt. The number looks like this. It is 5,500, and then it 
has three, six, nine more zeros after that. It is a huge, huge number.
  I used to teach math, and I tried to translate this number so it 
would mean something to an average person watching this presentation 
and to my colleagues. If you take that number, 5\1/2\ trillion, and you 
divide it by the number of people in the United States of America, if 
every, man, woman, and child in the United States were going to pay off 
just their share of this debt, it would be $20,400 for every man, 
woman, and child in the United States of America.
  For a family of five like mine, I have got three kids, and of course 
my wife at home, they have literally borrowed $102,000 and again 
basically over the last 15 years.
  Let me put that another way. In this community, they have made the 
decision to spend $102,000 for every family of five more than they 
collected in taxes basically over the last 15 years.
  The kicker is this bottom number down here, because, you see, this is 
not just funny money in Washington, D.C. They have to pay interest on 
this money. The average family of five in the United States of America 
today is paying $580 a month every month to do absolutely nothing but 
pay the interest on this Federal debt.
  When we think about the mess that we have been given or what has 
happened in this country, in this legacy that we are about to pass on 
to the next generation, it is this idea that we are paying this $580 a 
month; that money belongs out there in the families. It should be the 
American people's money. When somebody goes to work to earn that money, 
it is their money. We should not be using it to pay interest on this 
debt that has been run up.
  A lot of people go, well, shoot, that is not me. I do not have to 
worry about it. I do not have to pay $580 a month in taxes, so it is 
not me. The reality of this is that, when you look at what you do in 
society, when you go in the store and buy a loaf of bread, when you buy 
your kids a pair of shoes, the store owner makes a profit selling the 
pair of shoes or selling that loaf of bread; or at least we hope they 
do, because if they do not, they are going out of business.
  When they make a profit selling that loaf of bread or selling that 
pair of shoes, part of that profit gets sent out here to Washington 
D.C. in taxes. In fact, every group of five people in the United States 
of America, every family of five or every group of five is in fact 
paying $580 a month one way or another to allow the interest on this 
debt to be paid.
  When I came out here in 1995, when I was first elected, I came out of 
the private sector. I came out to this office, the first office I ever 
held of public office. In the private sector, I was a home builder. I 
started as a math teacher, and then we started a business in the 
basement of our home. We wound up building 120 homes a year, providing 
about 250 job opportunities here in America. It is really what our 
country is all about.
  When I came out here, I came out here with an idea. I came out here 
with the idea, if we could get government spending under control, we 
could fix this problem. That idea was very different than the people 
that were here before.
  What I brought with me is a chart that shows the old Gramm-Rudman-

[[Page H5045]]

Hollings and the promises that were made. The only reason I got elected 
in the first place is because all of these problems that were made; 
1985, Gramm-Rudman-Hollings the first time. In 1987, when they could 
not make it in the 1985 bill, they fixed it. In 1990, they promised the 
American people a balanced budget again. They promised the balanced 
budget, and promised it and promised it and promised it, and they did 
not do it.

                              {time}  1830

  This is just one picture. This is the Gramm-Rudman bill of 1987. This 
blue line shows what they said they were going to do. The red line 
shows where the deficit went. They kept making these promises and 
breaking these promises and the American people got more and more and 
more upset with what was happening in this institution. Finally they 
got to 1993. They realized that this problem had to be fixed. So the 
decision that was made out here in this community looking at this chart 
is that the right solution was to raise the taxes on the American 
people.
  Just think about this. We got to 1993, they had broken the Gramm-
Rudman-Hollings promise of 1985, of 1987, the budget deal of 1990, now 
they were going to promise a balanced budget by reaching into the 
pockets of the American taxpayers and getting more money out here to 
Washington D.C.
  What did they do? Well, they raised the gasoline tax. They raised the 
tax on senior citizens on their Social Security benefits. They raised 
taxes. The American people rejected that vision. And in 1995 they sent 
a new group of people out here. They said, ``We don't want this done by 
raising taxes. We want this done by controlling spending.'' We laid a 
plan into place out here in 1995 to get to a balanced budget, also.
  This blue line shows what we were going to do. We promised a balanced 
budget by the year 2002. Well, the American people looked at that and 
said, ``Yeah, sure, I'll believe it when I see it.'' Frankly I do not 
blame them a bit. If it was me, I would have had the same reaction. But 
the reality is that we are now 3 years into that plan. Not only are we 
on track but notice where the red line is in the bottom picture versus 
the red line in the top picture. We are not only on track to balancing 
the budget but in fact we are going to run a surplus for the first time 
since 1969 in 1998. It is the first time in a generation, nearly 30 
years, that the United States Government has actually taken in more 
money than what it wrote out in checks in a given year.
  That is good news on the surface. But I think as we go further in 
this, we need to understand what it is that has led us to this point 
and what the pressures are that are causing us to go away from it as we 
fight back day after day in this city the urge to spend more money.
  The reason we have reached this point is shown in this picture. We 
have had good economies between 1969 and today. When we have had good 
economies, that means more money flows into Washington because people 
make higher profit and higher salaries, and, of course, then they pay 
more taxes. Every time we have had a good economy between 1969 and 
today, Washington simply spent the extra money. But this Congress has 
been different. Spending was growing at 5.2 percent per year when we 
got here. But in the face of this strong economy, instead of having 
spending grow at a faster rate, we got our arms around spending and we 
slowed the growth rate of Washington spending to a point where it was 
only going up at 3.2. In fact, we have actually done better this year. 
It only went up by 2.6 this year, the first year in a long time that we 
have actually seen spending growth in Washington under the rate of 
inflation.
  So what is really going on out here? It is not draconian cuts that 
people have been told about, but what has happened is that instead of 
Washington spending going up at twice the rate of inflation, this 
Congress has got their arms around it and simply slowed the growth rate 
of Washington spending to the rate of inflation. It is that slowing of 
the growth rate of Washington spending, it is this distance between 
here and here, that has both got us to a balanced budget and put us in 
a position to cut taxes for the first time in 16 years.
  Let me just go through a couple of the tax cuts so it is clear what 
has happened. Again it is very, very important that my colleagues slow 
down in this community, take a deep breath, and remember that if we 
just keep the lid on spending, we can keep doing the good things like 
balancing the budget, starting to pay down debt, restoring the Social 
Security system, and, of course, lowering the tax burden on the 
American people.
  The tax cuts that have been passed, last year we reduced capital 
gains from 28 to 20 percent. If you are a family with children under 
the age of 17, for each child in that family under the age of 17, you 
are now able to keep $400 per child more in your own home to spend as 
you see fit instead of sending it here. If you have got a college 
student, it is up to a $1,500 tax credit. Let me slow down and 
translate that into what that really means.
  We have some friends back home in Janesville, Wisconsin. They have 
two kids at home and one is a freshman in college. They are a middle-
income family, about a $50,000 a year family. For the two kids at home, 
next year they will reduce their taxes by $400 and $400 or $800 total; 
and for their freshman in college they will get a college tuition 
credit of $1,500. That family of five literally gets to keep $2,300 in 
their home instead of sending it to Washington, D.C. I think that is a 
significant move forward for our country. That is all pretty good 
stuff.
  I would like to talk about some of the problems that we still have 
really staring us in the face. I would like to bring the Social 
Security issue to the forefront because there has been a lot of 
discussion on Social Security and how it impacts the budget and is 
there really a surplus or are we using the Social Security money to 
make the surplus. There has been a lot of this discussion going on. I 
would like to make it as clear as possible as we look at the Social 
Security system.
  This year if you look at your paycheck, Social Security is going to 
be paid to Washington, D.C. Washington is collecting about $480 billion 
out of the taxpayers' paychecks. They are bringing that $480 billion 
out here to Washington. They are writing out checks to our senior 
citizens of about $382 billion. If you think about this for a second, 
if you have $480 in your checkbook and you write out a check for $382, 
you would have $98 left over. That is Social Security. They have $480 
billion coming in, $382 billion going out, and they have got $98 
billion then left over.
  The idea is this. It is not any different than it would be in 
virtually any home across America. This extra money coming in is 
supposed to go into a savings account. We all know the baby boom 
generation is rapidly heading toward retirement. There are a lot of us. 
Since there are so many people in the baby boom generation, there will 
not be enough money coming in to make good on the Social Security 
payments. Again if we look at this chart, the money in is 480, the 
money out is 382. When the baby boom generation gets there, those two 
numbers turn around and there would be more money going out and not 
enough money coming in. The idea is that this extra money coming in 
today is supposed to be in a savings account, and then when the numbers 
turn around, you go to the savings account, get the money and make good 
on Social Security.

  It is funny that when I am in town hall meetings and I ask the 
question, ``Now, Washington has this extra $98 billion. What do you 
suppose Washington is doing with the $98 billion?'' Everybody in the 
town hall meeting says, ``They're spending it.'' In fact, that is 
exactly right.
  Washington takes that money, if you think of this center circle as a 
big government checkbook, they take that $98 billion, they put it in 
the big government checkbook, they spend everything out of the big 
government checkbook, and, of course, since there is nothing left they 
cannot write a check out to the pension fund, to the Social Security 
fund, so at the end of the year they simply write an IOU so they do not 
have to write a check out of their checkbook. That is wrong. That 
practice needs to be stopped.
  It is important to understand that when people in Washington are 
talking about a surplus, they are talking about this circle over here. 
The $98 billion is in the checkbook and when they write out all the 
checks but not a check to the Social Security trust fund, if there

[[Page H5046]]

is some money left they call that a surplus. The good news is that we 
are currently in surplus in an amount that it is actually more than 
enough to write the check down here to the Social Security trust fund. 
That is the first time in a generation.
  We have introduced legislation out here, it is called the Social 
Security Preservation Act, it is H.R. 857. It is pretty 
straightforward. I think it is pretty commonsense stuff. It simply says 
that the money collected for Social Security, that $98 billion surplus, 
it goes directly into the Social Security trust fund. If that does not 
seem like Einstein kind of stuff to any of my colleagues or any of the 
folks that might be watching this tonight, it really is not, because in 
the private sector where I come from, if I would have bought a new car 
instead of putting the money in the pension fund and then wrote an IOU 
to the pension fund for my employees, they would have arrested me for 
doing it. Any executive of any company in America that is responsible 
for a pension fund cannot spend the money to buy a new executive car 
and then write an IOU to the pension fund. You have to put real money 
in the pension fund in any company in America, and certainly any hard-
working American would expect that the pension fund actually has money 
in it. This legislation is called the Social Security Preservation Act. 
It is very straightforward. It simply says put the money down and into 
the Social Security trust fund.
  Let us talk about tax cuts for a minute. Let us talk about the 
opportunity to have additional tax cuts for American people. Because 
there has been a lot of discussion that some people want to use this 
Social Security surplus for either tax cuts or new Washington spending. 
That is unacceptable. The Social Security trust fund money belongs in 
the Social Security trust fund. What if, however, in the general fund, 
without the Social Security money, there was some money left in the big 
government checkbook? If there is money left in the general fund, 
independent of Social Security, or if Washington could find some 
wasteful government spending that they could get rid of, certainly that 
is where the opportunity to reduce taxes further comes.
  I would like to go to that issue, because what is really at the heart 
of this thing is if we can find wasteful Washington spending, we can 
eliminate the wasteful Washington spending and simply return that money 
to the hard-working people that earn the tax dollars before they send 
them out to Washington. That is how you get the tax cuts.
  Could you do $100 billion of tax cuts? Yes. Could you do $200 billion 
of tax cuts or even more? Yes. The trick to this thing is understanding 
that there are two separate accounts here. One is the big government 
checkbook and one is the Social Security. Government ought to leave 
their hands off the Social Security money. But if we have got a surplus 
up here in the general fund, that ought to either be returned to the 
American people or used to pay off debt.
  A lot of people say, ``Well, look, you guys, you have been out there 
for 3 years, all of the government waste is gone and certainly you 
can't still find some wasteful government spending.'' I am going to go 
into that by entering into a little discussion on our audit.
  Mr. Speaker, I see the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) has 
joined me. I would be happy to yield to him.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the gentleman for yielding. As an introduction 
to I think where you are headed and what you want to talk about is a 
GAO report.
  Just to give a little bit of background, I think you know that we 
have been working on a project which we call the American Worker at a 
Crossroads. It parallels an activity that we have which is Education at 
a Crossroads. For the last 6 to 8 months, we have had a special group 
of people taking a look at what is going on in the American workplace 
and taking a look at the appropriateness of American labor law. Another 
thing that we asked the staff to do is we said, ``Take a look at our 
spending in the Labor Department.''
  The Labor Department gets about 29 to $30 billion a year, of which 
about $12 billion is discretionary, meaning that you and I every year 
have to vote on where that money is going to be spent and approve it on 
an annual basis. The staff got together. They met with the different 
departments within the Labor Department. They had staff interviews. 
They went to a number of different agencies to get a handle on where 
this $12 billion goes.
  After a period of time we were reviewing this, and they said, ``Pete, 
we've got a problem. We've taken a look at the $12 billion of spending, 
we've met with the Labor Department, we've talked to a lot of different 
people, and we can only account for about 75 to 80 percent. Nobody can 
tell us where 100 percent of this money goes.''
  It is kind of like, ``Whoa.'' This is 3 to $4 billion a year that 
nobody really knows where it goes. This is not talking about 
effectiveness or efficiency or anything like that. ``They just cannot 
tell us, Mr. Hoekstra, this money goes to this department for this 
agency to do this thing, and these are the people who receive the 
money.''
  So we said, ``Let's call the General Accounting Office.'' We called 
the General Accounting Office. They came over, because I thought maybe 
I got the wrong staff. I mean, how can you not know where 3 or $4 
billion goes?
  Mr. NEUMANN. How much is 3 or $4 billion? It is $300,000,000,000. 
This is a big number.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. The company I used to work for, it was always the fifth 
year of our annual plan, we would be a billion-dollar company. They 
finally reached it a couple of years after I left there. But a billion-
dollar company makes the Fortune 500 list. There are probably about 
270, 280 on the Fortune 500 list. A billion-dollar company employs, at 
least in the industry that I was in, employs somewhere in the 
neighborhood of 5 to 6, 7,000 people, not counting the people who 
distributed the products, not counting the people who supplied to our 
company. A billion dollars is a big number.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Would it be fair to say when we look at the Labor 
Department, they are missing $3 billion, and if we could cut out that 
part where they cannot find any, we could apply that $3 billion to tax 
reductions to the American people?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think that is right. I think this leads to where you 
are going. We then called in the General Accounting Office. I had my 
staff there. I said, ``We've got a problem. I think we have a problem. 
We've taken a look at the Labor Department. We've taken a look at their 
discretionary spending. We have met with the Labor Department. We can't 
account for about 3 to $4 billion.''
  The response from GAO was, ``Yeah.''
  It is kind of like, ``What do you mean, yeah?"
  It is kind of like, ``Well, what's the problem?"
  ``Well, we can't find 3 to $4 billion. They can't tell us where it 
went. We'd like to know who got the money, what they were going to do 
with it, and whether they actually accomplished the goal and the 
objectives that we had set here from Congress.''
  They said, ``Well, we're actually completing a report, and we're not 
surprised that you can't find 3 to $4 billion. We can't find it, 
either.''
  It is kind of like, ``Oh?"
  They said, ``This is not just a Labor Department problem. When our 
report gets issued, you will find that this problem crosses all the 
different Cabinet posts here in Washington.''

                              {time}  1845

  Mr. NEUMANN. Reclaiming my time, I want to show you why that is, 
because again I come from the private sector, and having run a 
business, I really thought when I got out here that I was going to 
find, and these are each account numbers in the government. The 
national defense, for example, is 050, and international affairs is 
150. I really thought what I was going to find is somebody responsible 
for the money being spent in the national Defense Department, so I 
thought what we would do is go talk to the folks that were responsible 
for the money in the 050 category, the national defense committee, and 
they would actually be responsible for spending that money. So I 
expected a chart to look kind of like this where we had a category and 
then somebody actually responsible for spending the money.

[[Page H5047]]

  Well, I took some time and I put together what it actually looks like 
out here. Here is what it actually looks like. There is no account that 
has a particular responsibility across. The lines are all crisscrossing 
all over the place, and since there are so many different lines for 
this thing to go to, nobody really knows where the money is going to, 
and of course that is exactly what led to the GAO report that you got 
in your hands.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman would yield, I think when we have been 
out here before, because we are also, we are going to be issuing a 
report in July that was initiated before we started the Labor 
Department, because I have also got oversight responsibility for the 
education department. And I think you may remember over the last year, 
you know, your spaghetti chart that shows all these lines 
crisscrossing.
  We came up with the same thing in education because we wanted to take 
a look and say who really has responsibility for helping kids in 
Washington and helping kids get a good education. That is, I am not 
debating the point whether we can actually do that in Washington. I am 
just saying, who in Washington believes that it is their 
responsibility? Where is this coordinated? We asked the Executive 
Branch.
  We said, ``How many education programs are there?'' Tabulated them 
up, we went to GAO, we went to the Congressional Research Service. 
About 760 different education programs.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Just for a second, when you have got 760 different 
education programs run by the United States Government.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. That is right.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Along with every one of those 760 is a huge bureaucracy 
to run the program, and what is happening is the bureaucrats are 
getting the money that is supposed to be in the schools helping our 
kids.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. That is right.
  Mr. NEUMANN. And how much would you say out of every dollar?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Well, we have calculated that because the other, you 
know, the train of thought is 760, and the first thing is hallelujah, 
that is why we got an education department, so that we can take these 
programs and run them through one place, because that is what I would 
think: Education; education programs. Put them in one place.
  Thirty-nine different agencies. Many were programs that sound very, 
very similar.
  So, as we have taken a look at it, as the gentleman has asked, as we 
have gone around and we have taken a look, where does the money really 
make a difference? The money makes a difference when it is in the hands 
of a teacher in a classroom directly benefiting a child. The 
bureaucrats do not help the child one bit.
  So when a dollar comes from Wisconsin or a dollar comes from Michigan 
for education and goes to Washington, we are estimating that about 60 
to 70 cents gets back to a child, gets back to a teacher, gets back to 
a classroom. Thirty to 40 cents gets eaten up in this, you know, 
bureaucracy maze here, and we know that the dollar has to get to the 
child if it is going to make a difference.
  So I mean when we talk about reforming education, and we are going to 
talk about some other things, we can get lots more dollars to the child 
in the classroom without spending any more money in Washington. All we 
have to say is we are going to do it different, we are going to take 
the money, we are not going to feed a bureaucratic machine. We are 
going to get the money to a teacher and to a child and to a classroom, 
and the money is going to be there, and we are going to have some 
proposals, we are making them up tomorrow in committee, to start doing 
that. It is only $3 billion, only $3 billion.
  Mr. NEUMANN. I was just going to object.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Yes, only $3 billion out of, you know, the $40 to $50 
billion that the Education Department spends every year, but, you know, 
we are starting, and we are going to take it and we are going to put it 
into opportunity grants, which says we are going to get the money to a 
child and we are not going to give it to a bureaucrat.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Just reclaiming my time, I cannot help but point out 
that the great State of Wisconsin is out in front of the country again 
on this issue, as they were with welfare reform under Governor Tommy 
Thompson. They are now out in front in terms of having parents have the 
opportunity to choose where their children go to school, what they are 
taught and how it is taught.
  Wisconsin just passed school choice, and of course it is going to be 
run much like a Pell grant system. I know even in some of the parochial 
schools there is a lot of concern with the school choice topic, but 
when we stop and think about it, the United States Government already 
gives college scholarships called Pell grants even to students that are 
attending teacher and pastor training schools in a Christian education 
center.
  So the idea that the government could possibly give these 
scholarships, like Pell grants, without attaching strings is something 
we are already doing at the college level, and it is now just a matter 
of expanding that program down so it applies to secondary and 
eventually K-12 education.
  I look forward to it. I think it is a good move forward for 
Wisconsin. And you know the survey that we just looked at, there were 
12,000 teenagers looked at, and they found the single most important 
thing for crime, for teen smoking, teen pregnancy, for drug use and for 
education, most important for education, parental involvement with 
their student. Parental involvement with that teenager is the single 
most important thing that we can possibly do to bring our kids and 
bring our education level back up in this country, and I sincerely hope 
that we figure out how at the national level to allow some of the same 
things to happen that have happened in Wisconsin.
  I do want to jump to a couple of these others because this audit is 
something the American people should hear about.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman could yield for just a second.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Go ahead.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. And, as we go through this audit, I just want to let 
the gentleman from Wisconsin know that for the last year and a half we 
have gone through this process at the education department, we have 
gone through this process at the Labor Department, we have gone through 
this process at the Corporation for National Service where we have 
audited them or we, you know, found out. We have done this for the 
National Endowment for the Arts, and it is very, very consistent. The 
money does not get to the places that it is intended to go, that we are 
not making the difference.

  So anybody who believes, even if we agreed with every mission that 
the Federal Government has taken on, and I think you and I probably do 
not necessarily agree that everything the Federal Government is doing 
is something that the Federal Government ought to be doing, but even if 
you agreed with every mission that Washington has assumed today, there 
is no doubt in my mind that there is a lot of waste, fraud and abuse in 
the system, that we could deliver better results with the money that we 
have today and at the same time deliver a tax cut back to the American 
people. We can do it in the Education Department, we can do it in the 
Labor Department, we can do it in the Corporation for National Service, 
and I think the gentleman is going to share some other examples with 
me.
  But we have done this work here on the House side. We have got the 
background and the data that backs up exactly what this GAO study is 
going to show.
  Mr. NEUMANN. And I think that is the point of this whole discussion. 
We can do tax cuts without touching the Social Security money. There is 
absolutely no reason in the world that this government should take the 
money coming in from Social Security and use it for tax cuts or 
anything else. That money belongs in the Social Security Trust Fund, 
but that does not mean we cannot do tax cuts. There is so much waste, 
fraud and abuse to go out.
  I want to again slow down a little bit and just make sure everybody 
understands what an audit is.
  Again, I come out of the private sector. We ran our company, and I 
will never forget the first time that we wanted to borrow money in a 
bank, and the bank said you have to have an audit first. And I went: 
``What's an audit?''

[[Page H5048]]

  And they said, ``Well, an accountant has got to come in, and they got 
to look at your books, and they got to actually make sure that the 
money you say you're spending to build that house is actually being 
spent on, the money, on the house that you say you are building. And 
not only that, they would like to know that the revenue that you say 
you're getting from the sale of that house is actually enough to cover 
the money that you spent on that house.''
  So what happens is an accountant comes in and he looks at all your 
home sales over the course of the year, and he pulls out one or two, or 
she pulls out one or two or three of them. So if you are selling 120 
homes a year, they pull out maybe a half dozen total, and they really 
go through them with a fine-toothed comb to actually make sure that the 
drywall check that went out for $3,200 actually went to the drywall 
company and not my rich uncle someplace or whatever.
  They actually double check to see that what you say happened in your 
books actually happened, and that when you get to the bottom line the 
money in and the money out is actually what you reported on your taxes, 
and hopefully if the bank is going to lend you money, it made a profit, 
because if you do not make a profit you are going bankrupt.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman would yield for just a second, it is 
no different than what happens to an individual when they go apply for 
a mortgage.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Exactly.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. The bank will go and they will verify, they will want 
to be able to verify your income, they will want to verify the balances 
on the other loans that you have outstanding, they will want to verify 
that what you want to buy is actually worth the amount that you want to 
borrow, and they will audit your records.
  Mr. NEUMANN. The difference between a personal audit, though, and a 
company audit or between a personal audit and this government audit is, 
in a personal audit when you going to buy a house they verify virtually 
everything. And I just like to make the point that when they went 
through this government audit, they pulled out a random sampling to do 
these lookings. So these examples that I have got here of what they 
found in the audit, it is not like they audited the entire Navy and 
looked for every ship the Navy had. They pulled out a limited number.
  As a matter of fact, this first one I got a picture of here, they 
pulled out 79 ships. They could not find 21 out of 79 ships that were 
supposed to be available. Just think about this for a minute. The Navy 
says these ships are there and they are waiting to be used. They are 
called inactive status at this point. Seventy-nine of these ships are 
supposed to be there. They went looking for these things. They could 
not find 21.
  I mean we are not talking about a rubber ducky here in a bathtub. We 
are talking about a naval ship that they could not find. Think about 
what that means if there were ever a serious conflict in this Nation.
  That is just one. Let me keep going a little bit.
  The Air Force reported that they had this C-130 transport plane, and 
this is important to understand what this is, and I want to emphasize 
that this is a statement of concern for the well-being of our young men 
and women in uniform because just think about this for a minute:
  If we were to enter into some sort of military conflict and this C-
130 is supposed to be out there, and a C-130 is what they use to move 
troops around. So you now have these troops in a conflict situation, 
and we are supposed to take this C-130, and we are supposed to haul 
more troops up there so that they can be reinforced and not get overrun 
and literally injured, hurt or injured or killed.
  Well, they went looking for this C-130, and it turns out it was 
destroyed back in 1994. It is almost inconceivable to me that you have 
a C-130, a transport plane for moving troops around, on your records as 
available, and you go looking for the thing and you cannot find it.
  There is more. This one is really scary.
  We are supposed to have a missile launcher, and if you do not 
recognize what this is, this is what you launch a series of missiles 
off of. They could not find the missile launcher.
  Now since they think they have found it, but we have not verified at 
this point that they found the right one, and again it is so important 
to understand how significant this is to the safety and well-being of 
our men and women in uniform.
  But it was not just the military, and I want to make that very clear.
  This is the Department of Energy, and what you see here is a Hewitt 
Packard 3000 corporate business server, weighs 825 pounds, 825 pounds. 
The thing is 5 feet 2\1/2\ inches wide, 3 feet deep. I mean this is a 
huge piece of equipment. So they went looking for this $141,000 
computer, and they could not find the computer either.

  It did not stop there. We dug into this audit, and again coming from 
the private sector, I took some time to really start going through, and 
this caught my attention obviously. And you know this whole concept 
that there is no waste in the government and there is no more room for 
improvement in this government, that is ridiculous. We have got a long 
ways to go to get this place straightened out, but when I started 
digging into this some more, I would just like to read a few excerpts.
  We had the GAO prepare a special report for my audit. This is what 
they said about Medicare. Now think about this number, and then think 
about the Medicare attacks last year. This is what they say on Medicare 
regarding improper payments: $23 billion, for reasons ranging from 
inadvertent mistakes to outright fraud and abuse, $23 billion missing 
out of one agency.
  Let me translate into English.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman would yield for just a second, of 
course the way we calculate here in Washington, I am sure that is $23 
billion over 5 years.
  Mr. NEUMANN. No, sir, that is $23 billion in a single year. That is 
almost $100 for every man, woman and child in the whole United States 
of America, to put this in perspective. You know we throw these 
billions around like basically speaking that $1 billion is $4 per 
person. This is nearly $100 for every man, woman and child in the 
United States of America that is gone, for reasons ranging from 
inadvertent mistakes to outright fraud and abuse in one single agency.
  But listen to this one. If anybody out there is not concerned with 
these pictures, listen to this. This is what the Air Force Logistics 
System found, and again now I am quoting word for word from the report 
that they sent back to my office. Three databases included in the Air 
Force's central logistics system contained discrepancies on the 
equipment, on the number of assets on hand, including ground-launched 
and air-launched cruise missiles, aircraft and helicopters.
  Let me translate that into English. They went into the Pentagon, they 
looked at their central logistics system to try and figure out how many 
of these missiles they were supposed to have. When they went out in the 
field to find them, the number they found versus the number they were 
supposed to have was different numbers.
  Let me read this one again, because of all of these things, this one 
scares the living daylights out of me.
  Three databases included in the Air Force's central logistics system 
contained discrepancies on equipment, on the number of assets on hand, 
including ground-launched and air-launched cruise missiles.

                              {time}  1900

  When you really go looking for this stuff, they cannot even find the 
air-launched and ground-launched Cruise Missiles.
  Let me give you one more, and I know the gentleman from Michigan 
would like to jump in on this. The Forest Service, and again we have 
talked about the Air Force, we have talked about the Navy, we have 
talked about the Energy Department, we have talked about Medicare and 
the Air Force again. Let me give you another one. Here is Forest 
Service. The Forest Service could not determine for what purposes it 
spent $215 million.
  When we look at this government and we look at the tax rate on the 
American people, and then we go into this sort of thing and we find out 
what

[[Page H5049]]

a mixed-up state of affairs we have out here, it is very, very clear to 
me that if they get their act together to a point where they actually 
know what they have and know where the money is going to, we can 
clearly find enough ways to reduce the tax burden on the American 
worker and accomplish all three of our goals, and that is leaving the 
government's hands off of Social Security, reduced taxes, and start 
paying down the Federal debt. But the way you do that is you go after 
these wasteful government programs.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think the gentleman is exactly right. When we have 
taken a look at the Education Department and when we have taken a look 
at the Labor Department, they cannot find or tell us where all the 
money went, and then we come back and we ask them specifically on 
program-by-program, give us some indication as to whether we are 
achieving the kind of results, the kind of effectiveness that we would 
like to have, and there are no benchmarks. We cannot go in and say this 
is what we are trying to do and these are the kinds of results that we 
are getting, so that the money we are actually spending is actually 
making a difference.
  So you are identifying, I think, some pretty scary stuff, because you 
are again identifying, we could not know where the money is going, so 
that is almost an immediate savings that you could identify that says 
if we do not know where the money is going, we cannot be getting a 
whole lot of results for it.
  Then the second thing is you can overlay that even when we know where 
the money is being spent, we do not know the kind of results that we 
are getting. So if you put that in the context of the Labor Department, 
we do not know where 25 percent of the money goes, and for 75 percent 
we do not know whether we are getting the kind of results we want to 
have.
  In education we are spending $100 billion a year. We know that a good 
portion of that money stays with bureaucrats and bureaucracies, so that 
we know that that is not helping kids. And then you take a look the 
money that is actually filtering down with the strings that are 
attached to it. And, again, it may be a barrier to a local school, a 
teacher doing what they feel they need to do in their classroom, 
because the money comes and tells them what to do. So, again, we do not 
have an idea as to how effective those dollars are.
  Mr. NEUMANN. I think it is very important in this discussion that we 
point out there is something being done about this. I would just like 
to walk you through what has happened so far, since we found this, and 
where we are going next with this thing.
  I have to tell you, if this was my home building company and the 
person responsible for building 79 homes walked in my office and said, 
``Mark, I have good news for you; I found all but 21 of the 79 homes we 
built last year,'' I have to tell you, I would not have the patience 
for what we are proposing in this legislation.
  But when I proposed the legislation and we had our first hearing, we 
start hearing people concerned that we have gone too far here.
  So let me say what has already been done. We brought a resolution to 
the floor stating this should have consequences to each one of the 24 
agencies. That was relatively easy, because when you say 
``consequence,'' nobody is hurt because nobody knows what consequences 
are.
  We have gone the next step and I have written a piece of legislation, 
and here is what it does. It says in each one of the 234 agencies, we 
are going to identify the group of people responsible for knowing where 
the money is coming from and knowing where the money is going to and 
knowing where the equipment is. So we are going to identify the people 
who are actually responsible for the information contained in these 
audits.
  We are going to give them 12 months. At the end of 12 months, if they 
cannot pass an audit, that group of people is going to have to find 
something else to do with their lives other than work for the United 
States Government. Also the agency will at that point lose 5 percent of 
their funding.
  Now, the idea behind this proposal is twofold. First, we would like 
to identify the people responsible and actually place responsibility on 
someone, instead of saying it is that agency over there with no face 
attached to it. We with like to point out specifically who it is with 
responsibility for it.
  We would like to also empower those people to have the people at the 
agency work with them to solve the problem. So we want to go at this, 
and, understand, they have already had four years in this whole thing. 
The bill started four years ago. So they have had four years already to 
bring the thing up to speed.
  So when we say 12 months, what we are really saying is, we do not 
want to be heartless about this and go, you are fired tomorrow, 
although maybe that is what I would do in my own company. You have 12 
months to get your act together. You specifically have the 
responsibility for it, and, if you are not successful, not only are you 
going to have consequences, but the agency itself should expect to have 
5 percent of their funding withheld.
  Now, what that should do is get the employees and the agency to work 
with the people responsible for straightening this mess out to a point 
where we actually can track the money that is going through, and not 
only track the money going through, but also track the assets of a 
particular agency.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, we are doing some of the 
same types of things in the whole area of education. You start with a 
resolution, kind of like what you said, there will be consequences. In 
the education area we set a goal.
  We said that as a Republican Conference, or as a House, we passed a 
resolution here saying we want 95 cents of every education dollar to 
reach the classroom.
  Tomorrow in committee, we are going to be working on a dollars-to-
the-classroom piece of legislation, which is going to take a number of 
programs and put them into opportunity grants so that the dollars now 
flow to the classroom, flow to the child, rather than flowing through 
bureaucracy.
  So we are making progress in moving along, in getting at these 
issues. So it is not just an issue of hey, look, it is broke. It is 
broke. We are working at constructively going after these problems, 
identifying why they have come up, how we can fix them, and now we are 
going through the legislative process of actually making a difference 
and changing the way things work in Washington.

  Mr. NEUMANN. I just want to keep coming back to that point. The key 
here is as we eliminate this waste, it provides us with the dollars 
necessary to reduce the tax burden on the American people, while, at 
the same time, leaving our hands off of Social Security, which is what 
the Social Security Preservation Act does, and, at the same time, 
starting to make some payments on the Federal debt.
  This is the bright optimistic vision for the future, a debt-free 
America for our children, Social Security restored for our senior 
citizens, and a lower tax burden on the American people.
  I see that my good friend Mr. Kingston has joined us.
  Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I have been 
listening with much interest on what you two have been doing on this, 
and I know you have been at it for many years and making progress. One 
of the things we have come across on the Committee on Appropriations, 
as you know, is plain out inefficiency, which is what this is, and the 
biggest example that we hear the most complaints about is the IRS.
  One of the examples that was testified is the IRS went into a 
restaurant in New York, asked the patrons to leave, put down their 
forks and knives, leave, because the restaurant was behind in their 
payroll taxes. A month later it was proven that it was a mistake.
  So what does the IRS do? They say gee, whiz, we are sorry. Think 
about that in the private sector, if you had somebody in charge of 
enforcing a law, a rule or whatever, in your company, and they blew it, 
just completely blew it.
  We are on the verge of passing a bill in on the IRS which is similar 
to the legislation you are working on for an intangible efficiency, if 
you will, but of saying that if you are dragged before the IRS, you are 
innocent until proven guilty, and it will do the same thing

[[Page H5050]]

that your legislation does and what you are trying to do in education. 
It makes the individual frontline employee a little more careful to 
make sure he or she knows exactly what the goal is, what the rules are, 
and who the victim is. They put their rights out there and makes folks 
think twice.
  As you know, another interesting thing about the IRS is they could 
not be audited, because their books were in such disarray no one knew 
where the head of the snake was. But we are taking steps to change 
that.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Reclaiming my time, I would just like to bring you a 
personal experience from the private sector, because I have had one of 
these IRS experiences. It is almost like an out-of-body experience when 
you are done with it, because it is so bad.
  When I first started in business, they assigned us two separate 
Federal tax ID numbers. Now if you want an absolute nightmare, get two 
Federal tax ID numbers. Because what would happen is we would file the 
appropriate tax forms under the appropriate tax ID number, but since we 
had a second tax ID number, the IRS came after us for not filing the 
forms that we had just filed.
  So then we would then refile the forms under the new tax ID number, 
and, of course, then they would immediately come back after us for the 
old tax ID number that they still had assigned to my company.
  This went on for months. I would pay taxes and they would send me a 
bill, and I would pay taxes and they would send me another bill. I 
would look at the bill and say I know I do not owe that money, but it 
is easier to pay them $600 that they are asking for than to fight with 
the people. So you would send them another check for $600, and then 
they would send you another bill a few months later on the other tax ID 
number.
  This went only for a period of I do not remember how long, until 
finally we got sick of paying them the double tax rate and said we are 
not going to pay you anymore. We, of course, would pay them the one 
under one number, but we would not pay under both numbers anymore. It 
was going to bankrupt us, for crying out loud.
  So we finally said we were not going to pay it anymore, and it got 
within two weeks of them posting a tax notice on my door saying you had 
not paid your taxes.
  Finally, that was back long before I ever thought of Congress, I 
called the Congressional person, and the Congressional person actually 
made the IRS people actually sit down and look at the records and how 
much taxes we paid, and, if my recollection is right, they did send us 
some of the overpayment back. But it was an absolute nightmare from 
start to finish.
  If you are a small business owner, you cannot afford the time to go 
fight with the IRS. You got enough to do to keep your head above water 
and keep from going bankrupt in the first place. This is our early 
days. We were just out of our basement. We had started a business in 
the basement of our home and we were in our first office struggling to 
make it. I will never forget the hassle we went through as they gave us 
these two separate ID numbers. So I have some personal experience with 
it.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, what we are talking about 
here is putting accountability into government. I will give you an 
example. The gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) and I came here in 
1993, and one of the first pieces of legislation that came out of the 
committee that I serve on was called Education and Labor, was the 
Corporation for National Service, AmeriCorp, a brand new agency.
  In 1995, I got responsibility for oversight for the Corporation for 
National Service. A brand new agency. It filtered in a couple of 
smaller agencies. In 1997 we did oversight. Because the President 
promised us this organization would be set up like the best in the 
private sector, I voted for this bill.

  1997, none of their books were auditable, meaning that you could not 
take in an outside auditor and say that the money that came in from the 
American people and went to the Corporation for National Service was 
spent the way that it was intended to be spent. They could not tell us 
where the money went. It also set aside money for the scholarships that 
these kids earn for college. That was not auditable. It did not have 
integrity.
  What is the response you get? If you say we want to put 
accountability in, it is like you are against AmeriCorp. It is kind of 
like, no, we want to know where the American taxpayer money went. We 
are doing what you had to do in the private sector, what I had to do in 
the private sector; we had to put accountability into our 
organizations, and we had to put integrity into the financial 
structure, because if you do not have accountability and if you do not 
have integrity, you are out of business. And in Washington, these 
programs just run on forever.
  Mr. NEUMANN. As we talk about this, and I mentioned it earlier in the 
hour, I do think it is very, very important to keep this in 
perspective. When we came here three years ago, when all of a sudden it 
was a different group of people in control the House of 
Representatives, we had to first stop the bleeding.
  We had a deficit of $200 billion a year, plus they were stealing the 
money out of the Social Security trust fund. We had to stop the 
bleeding before we could go and look at the next step and start getting 
into some of these older problems that had to be dealt with.
  It is only because we have stopped the bleeding that we have gotten 
to a balanced budget, we have slowed the growth rate of Washington 
spending. It is only because we have slowed that bleeding, so-to-speak, 
or at least dramatically slowed it down, that we are able to now go to 
the next level and start solving some of the internal injuries, if you 
like, in this thing.
  You first have to get spending under control to get to a point where 
you can take a look at the next level here, and that is what has been 
accomplished in three years.
  The only reservation I have in this discussion, clearly all of this 
is wrong, but I think it is very, very important that we keep in 
perspective how far we have come in three short years, and then how far 
we still have yet to go.

                              {time}  1915

  The gentleman will remember, when our class came here 3 years ago, 
one of the projects was to sell a building, and we all worked very hard 
on that. The gentleman from Michigan I know remembers our group who 
came 2 years before, we were 100 percent there. But as I recall, we 
were told that in this massive $1.7 trillion Federal Government, that 
there were no buildings that they could spare to sell.
  I do not remember what actually happened to that. I remember there 
was a tremendous fight to try to sell one building in the name of 
symbolism. Did one actually transfer, does the gentleman remember?
  Mr. NEUMANN. Mr. Speaker, all I know is in the appropriations process 
right now we have made the decision to go forward with building more 
buildings.
  In the debate we have had here in the 3 years since I have been here 
about the draconian cuts imposed on America by the Republican Party, 
what people have failed to mention is that in fact, spending has kept 
going up faster than the rate of inflation.
  What they actually meant by ``draconian cuts'' is that instead of 
letting spending go up at twice the rate of inflation, we were going to 
stop the growth rate and at least hold it to the rate of inflation. 
When the gentleman talks about selling a building or building new 
buildings and so on, we need to understand that government spending is 
still going up at the rate of inflation. That is why they are 
struggling to sell off a building.
  If we actually got to a point where we went after this waste and 
fraud and abuse in this government so we actually could reduce spending 
in real dollars, so that it was no longer going up as fast as 
inflation, which is what I think all 3 of us standing here would like 
to see, that is when we can actually do some tax reduction for the 
American people that is real, and we can also start doing things like 
eliminating some of the government property that we no longer need.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, Mr. Speaker, I just want 
to really thank the gentleman for putting it in perspective, what our 
priorities are: saving Social Security, paying down the debt, and 
reducing the tax burden.

[[Page H5051]]

  Then when we take a look at not discussing the role or the mission of 
the Federal Government, because that is another debate, but just saying 
if we collectively decide that we are going to do everything that the 
government does today, but we are committed to do it more effectively 
and more efficiently, we can do those three objectives. We can save 
Social Security, we can pay down the debt, and we can lower taxes, just 
by saying we are going to be more effective and more efficient.
  Then if we decide that certain of these things no longer need to be 
done by the Federal Government, we can even go faster towards those 
objectives.
  Mr. NEUMANN. I get excited when we get to this point, because all of 
a sudden we begin to understand that we are no longer in 1993, whining 
and crying that we cannot do anything other than raise taxes on the 
American people to solve government problems.
  All of a sudden, we understand that if we just get spending under 
control, we get our arms around some of this stuff and get it stopped, 
we can actually have this vision for the next generation, that the best 
days of America can be out in front of us instead of behind us.
  If we can start looking, if we think about this for a minute, at 
controlling spending to the point where we can start paying down the 
debt, when we pay down the debt, $1 out of every $6 this government 
spends does nothing but pay interest on the debt. As we pay down the 
debt, it is easier to put the money aside for Social Security that 
should be put away for Social Security, and all of a sudden Social 
Security is safe for our senior citizens.
  Of course, as we pay down the debt and the interest goes down all of 
a sudden, and we do not need that $1 out of $6, we can reduce the tax 
burden. Think about this vision for the next generation. We pay off the 
debt and give this Nation to our children debt-free. We stop stealing 
the Social Security money and in fact put the money back in that has 
been taken out. Social Security is safe and secure for our senior 
citizens.
  We can reduce the tax burden, so when we look at a family, we do not 
have to have two people working two jobs each in order to make ends 
meet, when all of a sudden they do not have to be at that second and 
third jobs in order to pay their bills because the tax burden is so 
high.
  I get going on this, but it is so important to remember, a generation 
ago the government, in all the different forms, only took $25 out of 
every $100 a person earned. Today they take $37 out. That extra $12 
they are taking forces people to get a second and a third job, and when 
they get a second and third job, they spend less time with their kids.
  It leads me right back to the education problem the gentleman has 
been talking about. When parents spend less time with their kids, the 
outcome is a poorer education, the outcome is more crime problems, more 
drug problems, more teen pregnancy, more teen smoking. All of the 
things wrong with our society happen when the folks have to take the 
second and third job, instead of having at least the opportunity to 
spend more time with their kids.
  Again, I am not naive enough to think that if we simply reduce taxes 
all of the problems are going to go away. That is not going to happen. 
If we reduce taxes, at least parents will have the opportunity to make 
the decision to spend more time with their kids. In education, we need 
to empower the parents to have a role in the process of deciding what 
their kids are taught, where it is taught, and how it is taught.
  As with we empower parents to make those decisions, they become more 
involved with their kids' lives, and we should expect a reduction in 
crime rate, a reduction in teen pregnancy, a reduction in drug use and 
teen smoking. That is the vision for the next generation we are talking 
about here.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, Mr. Speaker, even with the 
small tax cuts we did last year, the family that the gentleman talked 
about earlier, it is $2,300 per year that they are going to save. It is 
$2,300 after taxes.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Yes, sir.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. That is about $40 to $50 a week that this family is 
going to have in increased disposable income. Somebody can say, maybe I 
will work a few less hours, but it is a choice they can now make that 
they did not have before.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Let me put this in very real terms. That family of 5 I 
am talking about, they are a $50,000 a year kind of family. When 
Christmas comes they want to buy presents for their kids, but they are 
living paycheck to paycheck as they go along. All of a sudden when they 
get to Christmastime, what happens? The mother takes a second job so 
they can buy Christmas presents for the kids.
  If we get the tax down, they have already the $2,300, we hope to go 
further, the taxes are down $2,300, she may still take the job and put 
the money in retirement, but the bottom line is, it is now her choice. 
It is not done out of necessity to be able to buy the Christmas 
presents, it is now being done out of choice as opposed to necessity. 
We have empowered that mother to make the decision at Christmastime to 
not go out and get a second job so she can pay for the Christmas 
presents.

  How have we done that? We have simply let them keep more of their own 
money that they earned anyhow, instead of government spending it.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. The gentleman has just said it, not as much for 
Washington.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Exactly.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield, let us take that a step 
further. That is what I find so offensive and so absurd about what to 
do with the surplus. Both Members have outlined, and I am in 100 
percent, there is really not a surplus. We have just taken the excess 
collected for Social Security, mixed it in the general revenues, to 
hide the deficit that is in the general revenues.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Reclaiming my time momentarily, I have good news. I did 
not bring this out as clearly as I should have. We are now in surplus 
in both the general fund and in the Social Security fund. There is such 
good news on the economic front here. We now have a surplus in both 
funds, both general and Social Security. It is good news.
  Mr. KINGSTON. That is excellent news. Let us take the Social Security 
completely out and do what the gentleman is proposing in his 
legislation, build a wall around it.
  The point I am really getting to, if you are walking down the street 
and you find a wallet with $100 in it, you do not immediately start 
thinking, how am I going to spend this? You think about, who does this 
belong to? How do I get it back to them? That is what we in Washington 
should be doing with any surplus, saying, whose money is this? How do 
we get it back to them?
  That should be our number one question in the context of let us pay 
off debt, money we have borrowed; but mostly, let us figure out whose 
money it is, which is not a hard question to answer, and how do we get 
it back to them, instead of what new programs should we start and what 
new buildings, airplanes should we buy, particularly when we are losing 
objects, large objects, like the gentleman has outlined.
  Mr. NEUMANN. Is this not an exciting conversation, especially when we 
put it in the perspective of where we were 3 or 4 short years ago, 
where it was the wringing of our hands, and how are we going to get 
more money out of the pockets of the American taxpayer to give us 
enough to spend out here?
  Now, here we are, standing here having this debate about, well, we 
are going to be able to put the Social Security money aside. This will 
be the first year, by the way. This will be the first year that we are 
actually able to put the Social Security money aside the way it is 
supposed to be, and it now appears that there is a surplus in the 
general fund besides. That is the $100 the gentleman is talking about, 
that surplus in the general fund, not the Social Security fund. That is 
the money that ought to be used for both tax reduction and restoring 
the Social Security, paying down the debt as we move forward.
  What a wonderful generational objective or goal here, if we could pay 
off the debt, give the kids a debt-free Nation, restore Social Security 
so it is safe for today's seniors and the baby boomers, and also lower 
the tax burden on working Americans. Is that not really--does that not 
make our congressional service here worth it, if we

[[Page H5052]]

can bring the country back in that direction, especially when put in 
the perspective of where we got it 3 or 4 short years ago?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the gentleman.

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