[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 143 (Sunday, October 11, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H10540-H10546]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   MOST OF OUR PROBLEMS CAME FROM WHEN THE DEMOCRATS CONTROLLED THE 
                                CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hayworth). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I commend the gentleman from Arizona, sitting 
in the chair, for his endurance on a Sunday afternoon in listening to 
what has just gone on.
  I listened to the discussion all this day, and I find it rather 
fascinating. The shrillness of my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle I think reflects their sense of denial. Most of what they have 
said is that they are trying to continue the policies so that they can 
continue to support their philosophy of government that has failed. We 
have tried their way for well over 50 years, and most of the problems 
that they describe, the problems with our public school system, with 
our government, with health care, most of that came from when they 
controlled this Congress.

                              {time}  1730

  They have controlled most of the local governments, the state 
governments, this Congress, for the last 30 to 40 years, and the result 
are the problems that they have described.
  The problem is that their solutions are more of the same, more money, 
more big government. ``We know better.'' You heard just 15 minutes ago, 
the gentleman from New Jersey, talking about the fact that ``I know 
what my local school boards need more than they do.'' Well, he ought to 
run for the school board, because that is where the decisions ought to 
be made, not here on this floor and not by the President of the United 
States.
  For my colleagues and others, let me try to kind of put in 
perspective where we are today. I find it fascinating that the 
President of the United States showed up for the first time to talk to 
his budget people the day before the targeted date of adjournment, last 
Thursday. That is the first time that I have heard or read about that 
the President has met with his budget people about the spending and 
appropriations bills that we are trying to pass. That is the first time 
I have heard that this President has been engaged this year on anything 
that is going on in the Congress of the United States.
  The day of adjournment, on Friday, the President announces that he is 
not going to accept the work of this House or the Senate unless he gets 
his education package. That is the first time since his State of the 
Union message that I have heard that he has been engaged in the 
process.
  This President has been totally disengaged this whole year. In fact, 
I can contend that this year is nothing more than a reflection of what 
we have been going through for the last four years. This President's 
normal method of operation is he does not get engaged at all until the 
end, and then he comes in and demands more spending and bigger 
government and more programs. And, because he is President, he could 
shut down the government like he did in 1995. We have to deal with this 
President to get him to sign the legislation. Yet during the whole 
process, he is not engaged.
  The American people need to really understand what is going on here. 
The President himself today in a meeting with Democrat leadership, I 
find it very strange, he has not this entire year, in fact I think if 
we go back two years, has not called on the Republicans, the majority 
leadership, to meet with him at all. But today he meets with the 
Democrat leadership, and he announces that he has been engaged in this 
educational program all along. All he could cite was he talked about it 
in his State of the Union message and he sent it up in his budget.
  I defy anyone to bring to me one bill written that was initiated by 
this President this year. One bill. Just show me the bill. Show me the 
bill. This President has not initiated one thing.
  Now, he has taken credit for the economy, but I also challenge you to 
show me one thing he has initiated in

[[Page H10541]]

this Congress and followed through on and got passed that was good for 
the economy. I deny anyone. The only thing I could think of was that he 
wanted Fast Track authority, negotiating authority for Fast Track. A 
little less than a year ago we tried to pass that. He could only 
deliver 32 of his Democrats to vote for fast track. I found out, 
because I am the Whip and working the votes, that many Democrats that 
wanted to vote for fast track did not trust this President, so they 
voted against it.
  But this year he has not lifted a finger for education, not a finger 
for education, yet on the targeted adjournment date, Friday, he stands 
up and says, ``I want my education bill,'' and he makes veiled 
inferences that he will shut down the government unless he gets what he 
wants.
  This is the same President that has not even met with his cabinet but 
twice this year. He has only met with his cabinet twice in this whole 
year. The first time he met with them was to explain to them that he 
had no sexual relations, and the second time he met with them was to 
apologize to them for having sexual relations. That is the only time he 
has met with his cabinet. Now, during these meetings he did not meet on 
the world economic problems with Secretary Rubin. In the cabinet 
meeting he did not talk with the Secretary of Education.


                Announcement by the Speaker pro tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hayworth). The Chair would remind the 
gentleman that he should not refer to personal charges against the 
President.
  Mr. DeLAY. I apologize, Mr. Speaker.
  In cabinet meetings also he did not discuss his foreign policy, his 
failed foreign policy with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. He 
has only met with his cabinet twice this year.
  Now, he has been out on the campaign trail. He has been to 97 fund-
raisers this year. He has been away from his office attending to other 
things rather than work 152 days out of the 280 days so far in this 
year. This President is not engaged in what is going on.
  I want to talk a little bit about what he is holding us up about.
  Mr. Speaker, I will talk about that in a minute. I am also going to 
try to put this in a little more perspective. Being in leadership, we 
have had to deal with this administration at the end of every year on 
these same things that we have always done, and it is just fascinating 
to watch.
  I remember in 1995 when the President of the United States vetoed the 
continuing resolution and shut down the government. The government shut 
down for a few days. I will never forget, I think it was November 19, 
anyway, it was a Sunday night, an agreement was made with this 
President to reopen the government, and the agreement was that he would 
work with us to balance the budget, to save Medicare from bankruptcy 
and some other issues.
  Within 15 minutes after opening the government, the President and his 
staff walked out, held a press conference, and reneged, reneged, on 
everything in that agreement.
  Now, we have had to deal with that for the last 4 years. In fact, 
just this weekend they sent staff over here to make an agreement on 
drug policy, and there has been a lot of work by the chief deputy whip, 
Dennis Hastert, and others in this House, to put together a very 
comprehensive antidrug policy, but the administration or the staff of 
the administration has fought us every step of the way.
  So they have been negotiating over last week, and finally came to 
some sort of an agreement. Of course, the President sent staff to make 
the agreement. And then after they had an agreement, the staff went 
back to the White House, we were informed that the staff that was 
negotiating with the majority leadership could not negotiate for the 
White House, and, therefore, reneged on the agreement.
  Well, how in the world are we going to do business when you have a 
President of the United States that you cannot trust his word to hold 
an agreement for longer than an hour? That is what we are going through 
right now.

  The other thing too, some of the sticky points with this 
administration is this President is fighting to the death for foreign 
aid to North Korea. That gives me an opportunity to talk about this 
administration's foreign policy.
  It is amazing to me that some people in this House commend the 
President for being such a great and effective President, but when you 
analyze his foreign policy, it is a complete disaster.
  He wants more foreign aid for North Korea. Now, this is the President 
that was concerned, as we all were, with North Korea building nuclear 
weapons and threatening that part of the world. So he went and made an 
agreement with North Korea to stop doing that, and if they would do 
that, then what we would do would be we would give them more foreign 
aid and we would build them electric power plants.
  Well, we have been giving them foreign aid. We find out that most of 
that foreign aid has gone to the military, not to the people of North 
Korea, and we are building their reactors for electricity, but the 
North Koreans are continuing with their building of nuclear weapons, 
and just this last summer shot a missile over the top of Japan.
  You look at the President's policies in Iraq. Now, the President of 
the United States sent aircraft carriers in January and February to 
stand up to Saddam Hussein. He told the American people he was going to 
be tough on Saddam Hussein. Yet this summer we find out that he has 
surrendered to Saddam Hussein.
  The President of the United States moved his trip from November to 
June to China, from November to June, and he goes to China and kow-tows 
with the communist leaders of China. He is accepted in Tiananmen Square 
where freedom fighters were gunned down, and he honored the troops that 
gunned down the freedom fighters in Tiananmen Square. And as he was 
leaving China, by the way, the trip costs about $50 million, while he 
was leaving China, he undermined the democracy on Taiwan and has never 
since then stood up and tried to support the democracy on Taiwan.
  In the Middle East, they now are having photo ops with Arafat and 
Netanyahu in the last few days and weeks, and they are about to have a 
summit on Israel. Well, he has not lifted a finger to enforce the Oslo 
Accords and make Arafat comply with the agreements. That is where the 
problem is.
  Now, all of a sudden, we find out we are going to pull everybody 
together, have a few more photo ops, but undermine what the people of 
Israel are trying to do. In fact, the President's own wife back in May 
said it might be a pretty good idea to have a Palestinian state in 
Israel, which would completely explode that part of the world. Yet the 
President of the United States has not emphatically stood up and said 
no, we will continue with our policy of opposing a unilateral move to 
create a Palestinian state in Israel.
  I could go on and on. Russia was a complete fiasco. Nothing came out 
of Russia. This President, who wants to be treated different than any 
other American in this country and undermine the rule of law, went to 
Russia and demanded that they institute the rule of law. He was laughed 
at by the world because of that.
  So part of the hangup and the reason we are here on Sunday afternoon 
negotiating with staff, not with the President, negotiating with staff, 
is that the President is holding us up. He could have come to us weeks 
ago and told us exactly what he needed and we could have been 
negotiating and probably would have met our targeted adjournment date.
  Another hangup is he wants us, us being the American people, to take 
our hard-earned taxpayer money and give it to the International 
Monetary Fund, a failed agency, an agency that has undermined the 
economies of Russia and Indonesia, now is trying to undermine the 
economies of Brazil, a failed agency, they want to continue their 
failed programs by funding the IMF, and they do not want any reforms. 
They want the American people to give up their hard-earned taxpayer 
money and give it to the International Monetary Fund with no reforms so 
they can make secret loans at below market rates to failing economies 
of countries that ought to be moving towards a free market system, and 
what they want to do is prop up the kinds of political systems that 
have failed, and that is part of the problem of the economy in the 
world.

[[Page H10542]]

  The other thing too that really grates on me a little bit, when we 
are trying to get our work done, you have the President sending out his 
attack dogs. Again, you know, we saw these attack dogs for eight months 
out defending this President, trying to destroy their enemies and 
misleading the American people for eight months. Now they are back out. 
I saw one on CNN late edition this morning, Paul Begala. And the 
misleading statements that Mr. Begala made were unbelievable. He said 
that we did not need a vote of inquiry in this House. He obviously does 
not know how the House operates. In order to proceed with impeachment 
proceedings you absolutely have to have a vote of inquiry to give the 
committee the right to proceed.
  He said that Ken Starr was undermining the process by sending a 
letter right before we voted on the inquiry inferring that there would 
be more referrals coming from Ken Starr and just berated Ken Starr and 
tried to once again destroy the Independent Counsel because of this 
letter.
  That letter was in answer to a bipartisan request coming from Henry 
Hyde, the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, and the ranking 
member John Conyers, asking Ken Starr if there might be some referrals.

                              {time}  1745

  Maybe this is a good time to talk about the 100,000 police officers 
that the gentleman from New Jersey was saying was such a successful 
program, because Paul Begala said that they had hired 100,000 police 
officers.
  Mr. Speaker, that is not true. It has been about 4 or 5 years now 
that the program, another failed program passed by the Democrat 
Congress, was signed by the Democrat president, creating 100,000 police 
officers. The person, Ken Avery, we checked with, who is spokesman for 
the COPS program in the Justice Department, says that the vast majority 
of our jurisdictions have plans in place to retain officers beyond the 
lines of their grant.
  This is a requirement of the grant program, that they agree, upon 
acceptance of the grant, and what that means is if they accept this 
money, it is only money for 3 years. Then the money is shut off and 
they have to keep that police officer on the payroll. In other words, 
they need to raise taxes locally, and that is the Federal Government 
causing local governments to raise taxes for a Federal program.
  Avery himself says that the COPS program has only placed around 
58,000. In 4 years, they have placed 58,000 cops, of this great 100,000 
cop program on the streets of more than 10,000 cities and towns.
  It is absolutely amazing to me that Members can stand here in this 
well and praise a program that not only has failed, because they do 
not, most of the police or law enforcement agencies around the country 
do not want the Federal Government, with their big sticky hands, in 
their business, and they think it is a poorly-designed program in the 
first place, and they do not want any part of it. Now the President is 
holding up the entire process of this Congress in order to put 100,000 
teachers in.
  Do Members really believe a program designed by this president would 
actually put 100,000 teachers in the classroom? They could not, over 4 
years, put 100,000 cops on the street. This whole notion of these 
little things in this education proposal by the President, that these 
will change the educational system and save our schools.
  It was brought up by my good friend, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Sandlin) much earlier in the day, he was talking about the outlandish 
problems that he is seeing in East Texas about the school system. I 
need to remind the gentleman that part of the problem with the public 
schools in my great State of Texas is because the Democrats ruined 
them. I was there in 1984, and I will never forget it, I was in the 
State legislature, in the Texas House, when the Democrat Governor, Mark 
White, petitioned Ross Perot to design education reform in Texas.
  Take what I am about to say and extrapolate it to the Federal 
Government. Before Mark White and Ross Perot ruined education in Texas, 
Texas's local school districts controlled the education of their 
children. Texas, thank goodness, had set up funding for local schools 
way back when Texas was a Republic, and continued it when it became a 
State, so we had good, honest funds coming to our local school 
districts. But the school districts were in control of their local 
schools.
  What did the Democrat, Mark White, do? He took away local control and 
centralized it in Austin, Texas. He created the Texas Education Board. 
All decisions are made in Austin, Texas, for all the local school 
boards. The local school boards now are nothing more than 
administrators for State mandates.
  I submit that my friends on the other side of the aisle and the 
President of United States want to do the same thing. They constantly 
are trying to take away local control. They are trying to take away 
decisions made by parents, elected school boards, and teachers, and put 
them right here in Washington. They do it systematically, one little 
program after another over the years.
  I say to my good friend, the gentleman from Texas, they not only took 
away local control and put it in Austin, Texas, but in order so that 
they could not get to that board, they laid in another layer of 
bureaucracy called the Regional Educational Centers, so that local 
control, the local school districts had to go through one layer of 
bureaucracy before they could ever get to the State Board of Education.
  I just think that we have a very sad situation going on outside this 
Chamber. I think what the basic problem here is that we have two very 
different philosophies of government.
  I think the best example of their philosophy is in the school system 
right here in Washington, D.C. They have piled money on the school 
system of Washington, D.C. so high that it has collapsed under the 
weight. The school system here is bankrupt in ideas, bankrupt in 
substance. The children here, a little over 50 percent of them do not 
even finish high school. The teenage pregnancy rate is at an all-time 
high.
  If we talk about not being able to fix buildings, they have more 
money than any other school district in America, and they have 
crumbling schools in Washington, in our national capital. Why? Because 
the bureaucrats have the money, that is why. The teachers do not have 
the money. The students do not have the money. The bureaucrats have the 
money. They believe it is the government's money. I believe it is the 
American family's money.
  They have created a government so big that over 50 percent of the 
income of American families goes to government. If we add up State, 
local, and Federal taxes and the cost of regulations, 50 cents out of 
every hard-earned dollar that the American family makes today goes to 
the government.
  Would it not be incredible if we could do what we want to do and get 
a president to sign our bills to shrink the size of government, 
eliminate wasteful Washington programs, eliminate some wasteful 
Washington bureaucrats; not create more, eliminate them, so that the 
American family could have more money in their pocket, so that if they 
want better schools to be built, they will have the money to pay the 
taxes in their local school districts, empowered by them, to raise the 
taxes to pay for the schools that they need?
  No, we are going to keep the government growing bigger and bigger. We 
are going to keep it growing, and get more and more bureaucrats. We are 
going to get more and more of the Federal Government sticking their 
sticky fingers into our school districts, because that is what the 
President of the United States demands. But it is not their money.
  It boggles my mind all the time. It is the same pocket that all the 
money comes from, the American family's pocket. That is where this 
money comes from. But why would we take the money out of the families 
in Sugarland, Texas, send it up to Bill Clinton, so that he can send it 
back to Sugarland, Texas, to hire more teachers and build more schools? 
It does not make sense. And it fails, because it is a failed 
philosophy. It is a failed notion.
  We are trying to, to the best of our ability, trying to stop this 
president and we cannot, because he is president. If we are going to do 
the people's business, we have to negotiate with this president.

[[Page H10543]]

  I hope he stays home tomorrow. He is going on another one of those 
fundraising trips. I challenge the President to stay here and work on 
these issues. He is going down to Palm Beach, Florida, to have another 
fundraiser and pina colada with Greg Norman. Then after that he is 
going to New York City, and he is going to raise some more money in New 
York City for a person, by the way, the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Charles Schumer) who happens to be on the Committee on the Judiciary.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope the President stays here. We are going to stay 
here. Many of my colleagues have said we are trying to get out of town 
and we are trying to rush this, and we want the President to give us 
what we want so we can get out of town and go home and campaign.
  Nothing could be farther from the truth. We know what we are about. 
We know what we are locked into. We will stay here all the way through 
the election. I will say it again, we will stay here gladly all the way 
through the election to get the people's business done.
  It is amazing to me that people are complaining about a Congress that 
is not getting its work done, that we are the do-nothing Congress. They 
are partially right, we are the do-nothing-that-the-liberals-like 
Congress. We are in the majority, and we do not buy into the minority's 
philosophy. All their bills that they want us to pass, we are not going 
to pass them, because we do not believe in their philosophy.
  The majority of this House does not believe in paying trial lawyers 
for health care. That is their Patient Bill of Rights. The President 
has not written a patient's bill of rights. We have not seen a bill 
from the President, but that is their Patient Bill of Rights. We have 
not seen a bill from the President on his education policies, but they 
say they have one.
  Mr. Speaker, what we are here to do is what the American people have 
sent us to do. I get a little weary of people speaking for the American 
people. The American people believe this, the American people believe 
that, the American people whispered in my ear this afternoon and told 
me this.
  I watch the American people, and the American people have rejected 
their philosophy. It is not by some poll, it is not by someone 
whispering in my ear, it is by election. The American people have 
rejected their philosophy all across this country.
  The Republican Party has gained over 500 State legislative seats 
since Bill Clinton has been president. It has gained 14 governorships. 
We now have 75 percent of the American people living under a Republican 
Governor. We have taken the United States Senate, we have taken the 
United States House for the first time in 40 years, and held onto it 
for the first time, back-to-back Republican Houses, in 68 years. We 
have even had over 370 Democrats switch to the Republican Party all 
across this Nation. That is the real American people speaking.
  Mr. Speaker, Members can say whatever they want to on this floor 
about who is at fault, back and forth, but we have tried it their way. 
We have tried it Bill Clinton's way.
  Let me just finish with this. It is amazing to me that the President 
of the United States would hold up spending that amounts to about $1.7 
trillion over his little, small education program. The American people 
ought to think about that just a minute, because we know what this is 
about.
  This is another sham. This is another attempt to mislead the American 
people. This is another rhetorical outtake to try to win the election 
in November and take back the House, or give the President some sort of 
credibility and legitimacy. The American people have not bought it in 
the last 2 elections, and they are not going to buy it in this 
election.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. DeLAY. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the distinguished 
majority whip, for yielding to me. Mr. Speaker, as I have had the honor 
and privilege of serving in this House, I am struck by what our 
colleague, the gentleman from Texas, tells us tonight, because we have 
seen example after example, sadly, of this President and this 
administration saying one thing and then doing another.
  In fact, I think about the historic budget agreement that was reached 
last year by this allegedly do-nothing Congress to balance the budget 
for the first time in a generation, to set up budget caps, ceilings 
that were to remain inviolate.
  Now, as my colleague, the gentleman from Texas, points out, in the 
last nanosecond of the 11th hour, perhaps based on focus groups and 
extensive polling, suddenly, education becomes the watchword; sadly, 
not in an effort to improve education, which we believe is too 
important to be left up to Washington bureaucrats, but because of the 
endless posturing and preening and electioneering that continues, 
regardless of the dates on the calendar, but now has grown more 
frenetic and frantic, given the constitutional questions that confront 
us, and also our constitutional heritage of an election that approaches 
the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November. It is very 
insightful.
  Mr. DeLAY. I would just remind the gentleman it did not take the 
President 6 months to break this agreement. In his budget, and the only 
thing he has actually submitted to Congress was his budget, in his 
budget he broke the caps, he expanded government, he raised taxes, and 
created an incredible tax increase.
  What is worse, as the President, who is claiming to be the education 
president, in his own budget he cut the IDEA program. That is the 
program that has been discussed earlier, the mandate from the Federal 
Government on local schools to provide education for our disabled 
students through special education programs.

                              {time}  1800

  Yet they promised they would provide 40 percent of that expense for 
IDEA. In the President's own budget, he cut IDEA.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, indeed, as I 
stand here from this unique vantage point in the House, I note that 
just behind the gentleman is a rostrum. On an annual basis, we invite 
the President of the United States here to offer a State of the Union 
message.
  I remember this year the President's insistence when he said, about 
moving from the politics of deficit to the policies of surplus, not one 
penny out of the surplus unless it goes to save Social Security. Save 
Social Security first.
  Yet, almost within the twinkling of an eye, there was the 
administration petitioning the Congress for close to $3 billion for 
spending in Bosnia. How profound. How prophetic the words of the 
columnist from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Paul Greenberg, who 
instructed all of us years ago, Mr. Speaker, in the case of President 
Clinton, listen not so much to what he says, instead, watch what he 
does.
  And it has been trying, challenging, and ultimately tragic that we 
are beset by a chief executive who so often, in so many different 
circumstances, says one thing and then does another.
  Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on that just a moment, 
saying one thing and doing another. The President evidently wants to 
become the education President in the last week of the 105th Congress.
  He said on the day that was designated as the targeted adjournment 
day, the day that he started this effort, on the day that we had 
targeted to adjourn, ``Members of Congress should not go home until 
they pass a budget that will strengthen our public schools for the 21st 
century.''
  The President, what he does, his record is, he has vetoed a D.C. 
scholarship bill to provide 2,000 of this capital's poorest children a 
chance to escape one of the worst school districts in this Nation. I 
described this school district earlier.
  He vetoed the education savings accounts this year to provide middle 
income families with tax relief for elementary and secondary education 
expenses. He vetoed a back to basics common sense literacy program. He 
vetoed lowering costs for school construction bonds. He vetoed 
incentives for teacher testing and merit pay.
  He vetoed safe schools, a safe school antigun provision. He vetoed a 
tax relief for employer provided education assistance and qualified 
State tuition

[[Page H10544]]

programs. He vetoed seven pro-education bills.
  He was so sinister in paying homage to the National Education 
Association that he would take away 2,000 scholarships from the poorest 
of the poor in the Nation's capital and give those scholarships to the 
parents of those poor children so that they could take those kids and 
put them in a school and hopefully get them an education.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. DeLAY. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, since this White House is so poll driven, 
that is the one time this administration ignored the polling in this 
Federal capital district.
  In the District of Columbia, where over 70 percent, well nigh close 
to 80 percent of parents, when given the choice, said, yes, we want to 
have an option and educational scholarships for our children. That 
should come as no surprise, Mr. Speaker.
  Imagine the dilemma of parents whose heads hit the pillow every night 
knowing that they are sending their children into unsafe, unproductive 
schools, where their safety is threatened, where sadly they are not 
learning.
  Yet, to have that wiped away in a show of allegiance to factions and 
groups who insist they want to improve education but instead seem to 
want to expand the educational bureaucracy is yet another reason why we 
find ourselves in this dilemma of the factually challenged White House 
and a factually challenged President.
  Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of the gentleman 
from a Arizona (Mr. Hayworth).
  Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to yield to the gentleman from Indiana 
(Mr. Souder).
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank our majority whip. He has 
been a leader in pointing out a lot of the inconsistencies and problems 
of this administration as well as being a strong voice for conservative 
principles. It is an honor to be associated with the gentleman in this 
special order.
  I think the gentleman has made the basic point here that, and I 
wanted to elaborate on it and get into it a little bit in detail, 
because I chose when I got elected to Congress in 1994 to pick to go 
onto the Committee on Education and the Workforce and to choose that as 
my first choice, not something that many Republicans do.
  Because I wanted to come in and do battle. My background, besides 
being in the private sector business, I had been a staffer for 10 years 
for first Congressman and then Senator Coats and was Republican staff 
director with the Children, Youth, and Families Committee in the House 
for 4 years, and then worked as legislative director and deputy chief 
of staff for Senator Coats in the Senate where, predominantly, I worked 
with a lot of the difficult social issues.
  I do not think there is anybody that is going to deny the importance 
of education or how we need to deal with education. We may have some 
differences of local, State, and Federal, and we even have differences 
within our party, and the other party has differences.
  We are not really going to question, I do not believe, that the 
President is committed to education. I was over at the White House for 
the higher ed markup the other day, and I think he is very committed to 
certain parts of that education.
  But we do have a fundamental question of what is happening right now 
and why we are here this weekend. The President was up here for the 
State of the Union address. We saw what is coming now. He said, we are 
going to use all the surplus for Social Security. Then, for about 15 or 
20 pages, for about 45 minutes went on with spending program after 
spending program that would have bankrupted this government for the 
next 10 years.
  Just in child care alone, he had, I am forgetting, it was like $20 
billion. It was a phenomenal kind of the twofer approach that we are 
starting to see now.
  Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I think it is called the Clinton pivot.
  Mr. SOUDER. Yes. Mr. Speaker, he is moving so fast, it is hard to 
tell when it is an actual pivot.
  Mr. Speaker, then what happened this year, he sent down a series of 
proposals, as he does regularly, to try to nationalize education. 
Because his philosophy of education is that, unless he does something, 
nothing is happening in education, unless it comes out of the 
President. When he was governor, it had to come out of the governor. 
But now that he is President, it has to come out of the President.
  As they propose these different things, the Democrats did not even 
pick them up. We heard very little about it in the Committee on 
Education and the Workforce; occasionally a whine here or there, 
occasionally a whine on the floor. But basically his policies just lay 
in state almost.
  We went through several major pieces of legislation, the higher 
education bill, where we worked and wound up with a bipartisan bill 
that has many important parts to it that was signed last week. We just 
completed and passed through a bill to reauthorize Head Start, 
community services block grant, and other things.
  We have been working for 4 years trying to get compromises on 
vocational education and job training legislation. We did Dollars to 
the Classroom through here. We have been moving education bills, as has 
been pointed out today numerous times, 25 different bills in this 2-
year term.
  We have been moving education bills, and the President basically 
signs them. In fact, the day after he blasted us for not having an 
education policy, he invited us over to the White House to sign the 
higher ed bill.
  Then yesterday, he blasted us on education. Probably in the next day 
or two, we will have a signing of the Head Start bill. There is a 
disconnect here of what is going on. The gentleman very well prepared, 
I think, the general public for what is going on here.
  In the last couple of days, he has refound these education bills. 
There can only really be two explanations. One is that he realized, 
contrary to all the grandstanding that we hear, because the process 
that we hear is, just give us a clean appropriations bill and put 
nothing on it, and that the Republicans, I heard this on some news 
broadcast yesterday, again the Republicans want to put additional 
things on the spending bills.
  Why would we want to do that? Maybe because he vetoes everything else 
that has substantive reform. The only way to do it is to put it on an 
appropriations bill. But he is doing the same thing. He wants to put 
unauthorized, which is basically not allowed by House rules, new 
programs on appropriations bills.
  Whatever he is saying about Republicans on pro-life principles and 
other things, he is doing on education principles. That is point one.
  Point two is, as I have pointed out several times today, this looks 
very much like the ``Wag The Dog'' movie. I personally do not believe 
that the movie was very realistic. I do not believe a President of the 
United States, including in the terrorism incident, would put American 
lives at stake just for his own political gain.
  But I do believe a President would put something like this to try to 
make us look like we are the bad guys in Congress. I mean, with all due 
respect to our majority whip, and I do not mean this personal to him 
because he is a strong conservative, but some of us believe we have 
already negotiated too much away in this budget, that sometimes our 
negotiators, probably when they were growing up on Halloween, when they 
went to the door and said trick or treat, they gave the people the 
candy rather than the people giving them the candy.
  We seem more than willing to surrender in these appropriations bills, 
yet the President still does not want to deal. Why does he not want to 
deal? Maybe because today's Washington Post and other papers have ``Are 
the Republicans Going to Shut Down the Government'' on the front page, 
instead of whether or not what problems he has with impeachment, with 
Monica Lewinsky, with Chinese contributors, and so on.
  If I can take one more minute before we engage. One of the issues is 
national testing, that national testing is something that neither his 
base likes; teachers do not like it. The blacks and Hispanics are 
worried they are going to discriminate against them.
  Conservatives do not like it because, if you have a national test, 
potentially every home school or every Christian

[[Page H10545]]

school, everybody who has concerns about a national test could all of a 
sudden have a standard that they cannot get into college, they cannot 
get Federal employment, they cannot get into the military. It could 
become the standard around the country. We do not know what are going 
to be in these national tests.
  The President every year wants to fight over this national testing.
  Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, the national tests, therefore, leads to 
involvement of the Federal Government in designing curriculum. The 
gentleman just before us, in the special order before us, was talking 
about, we do not want to get into the curriculum. Yet, the national 
testing is the back doorway of the Federal Government designing 
curriculum for our local schools.
  Mr. SOUDER. Absolutely. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. DeLAY. Certainly, I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, how could you have a national test? Every 
teacher with a right mind and every principal would say teach to the 
test. That means, to teach to the test, they have to have courses that 
have the subject matter that is in the test. It is not even logical. I 
mean, anybody with basically about a first grade or a Head Start or 
preschool education ought to be able to figure that is curriculum.
  But I wanted to give a couple reasons this afternoon why the 
President should actually oppose national testing to see if we can move 
him in the direction. Because this is the report card for President 
Clinton the first semester.
  If the subject is math, he clearly would get a D minus because he 
misses basic arithmetic. For example, he sent over ag. appropriations 
that were less than what he vetoed the other day. I mean, wait a second 
here. Let us look at the math. This is like blaming us for school 
lunches when his bill was actually less than we funded in school 
lunches but then said we tried to cut it.
  His math does not work. He can't be for a balanced budget and say our 
tax cuts are taking away from the surplus. But he can propose surplus. 
His math is D minus, is a little generous.
  In history, we have an incomplete, because, clearly, he is following 
the Nixon parallel well. He has read up on Nixon. He has got all the 
things, yell at the special prosecutor, stonewall them, all that down. 
But he does not understand other parts of history too well. So we gave 
him an incomplete there.
  In citizenship, he gets an F. He fails to grasp the basic concept of 
a respect for the legal process. The perjury, what you tell your staff 
to do, that is a clear F.
  Health. He fails there with an F. He fails to master the dangers of 
illegal drugs. In fact, just the other day, apparently we thought we 
had an agreement on the two drug bills. Senator Lott now says that, 
since General McCaffrey agreed with this, the President apparently said 
General McCaffrey did not speak for this administration, and they want 
to go through the drug bill piece by piece.
  He continues the lack of I did not inhale, all that kind of thing. 
Plus he relies on lawyers instead of doctors. Basic health, he thinks 
the way that we get health care reform in this country is to put it in 
the hands of the lawyers.
  In foreign languages, we did give him an A. He interacts well with 
the Chinese unable to speak English. He has clearly done really well in 
a lot of the fund-raising from overseas. Nonnationals contributed to 
his campaign. So he gets a good A in foreign languages.
  We should have given him an A in English, too, because he really is 
precise. He tries to sort out exactly what ``is'' means. He tries to go 
through the preciseness of the English language to make sure that he is 
avoiding saying anything he did not mean.
  Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, in fact, he is very good. He is trying to 
rewrite the dictionary.
  Mr. SOUDER. Yes. Mr. Speaker, that is a good point.
  In science, we gave him a D. He misimplies census statistics. Clearly 
he does not know how to count and what the Constitution means regarding 
counting and what math means there. Sampling is one thing, but when we 
come down to actually getting a count, sampling does not really work.
  Furthermore, he fails on missile defense. Clearly, Moscow is 80 
percent protected. We do not have anything protected. He does not 
understand some basic science there. We could also throw in 
environmental science in here where he has no real understanding of the 
fundamentals of the environmental science.

                              {time}  1815

  In government, he would get a D. He lacks knowledge of the role of 
Congress. He was elected, he keeps reminding people he was elected 
President. We were elected to control the House and the Senate. At some 
point here, somebody has got to make a deal. We are are all adults. We 
get upset that we cannot see pro basketball right now. We say, why 
cannot adults, knowing they have the differences, sit down. It is not 
like there are any surprises. It is not like they have not been been 
talking and warning each other for two years. Unless one side has a 
posturing point here, we ought to be able to sit down and do that. 
Economics, we give him a C minus. He does not understand tax incentive 
very well. He does understand what a balanced budget is but, then he 
wants to spend the surplus. He signed the agreement. Gave him a C minus 
there.
  Mr. DeLAY. I might also add, you cannot spend the surplus on tax cuts 
for the American family, but it is okay to spend the surplus for all 
his government programs.
  Mr. SOUDER. He clearly does not deserve more than a C minus.
  Mr. DeLAY. You are being magnanimous.
  Mr. SOUDER. I try to be generous to the President when possible. In 
physical education he got an A. He is an excellent golfer and a jogger. 
No comment beyond that.
  In attendance, we have had an attendance problem. We have a serious 
attendance problem. He spent 153 days this year traveling, 32 for 
vacation, 57 for fund-raisers and other extraneous events. He has only 
held two cabinet meetings so clearly we have a focus and attention 
problem. Just out of the kindness of my heart, we did not put a conduct 
rating up. In fact, the question is what exactly would you write in a 
conduct. It would be very hard if you were his teacher to give him a 
conduct rating.
  But given all this, you would think that this would persuade him that 
he should be against national testing, because with a national test he 
himself would not be able to pass.
  Mr. DeLAY. I appreciate the gentleman and his comments. I think he 
puts it so succinctly and directly that the American people can 
understand what is really going on here.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Again, Mr. Speaker, there is another aspect to this 
ongoing saga that we would be remiss if we did not point out. Because 
as my colleague from Indiana just briefly touched on, there seems to be 
a tendency in this town for members of the fourth estate, that is to 
say, the press, to view things with a prism that always and forever 
supplies a benefit of the doubt to the executive branch and to the 
administration.
  You mentioned that in terms of the alleged government shutdown that 
may be formulated at this time.
  I think it is also important, again, to review the itinerary that we 
understand the President will follow tomorrow. Tomorrow the President 
will not be involved in negotiations to end this stalemate. The 
President will instead first go to Palm Beach, Florida and then follow 
up that trip with a trip tomorrow night to New York City to fund raise 
for his political party and for candidates including in New York City a 
gentleman who serves in this House, who also serves on the Committee on 
the Judiciary and who entertains ambitions of moving across this 
Capitol into the other body.
  Now, again, I should point out that we certainly know why Washington 
fancies itself a sophisticated place, sometimes sophisticatedly 
cynical. But even with the collective mindset of journalists and the 
punditocracy in Washington, D.C., certainly, Mr. Speaker, we can detect 
some conflict of interest. Indeed, my colleague from Indiana, in his 
other position in oversight on the yet another committee, we understand 
that given campaign finance difficulties of the minority party in this 
Chamber, apparently in excess of $1 million, some $1.7 million has yet 
to be refunded that the minority party

[[Page H10546]]

in this Chamber claimed they would do given the status of those 
contributions and the apparent illegalities involved. Does the 
gentleman from Indiana have a comment on that?
  Mr. SOUDER. Yes. Hopefully later today we will be talking further 
about that. In fact, this is interesting, the board that I chose to put 
the national testing on is one I had earlier of 94 witnesses who have 
fled the country or pled the fifth.
  The problem is that you have to change this part up here a lot. It is 
now 116 or 118 people. We know that a number of these witnesses, they 
have had to refund the money, but others are still pending. If they 
would talk to us, we probably would have a lot more money that has been 
illegal. As Chairman Hoekstra's oversight investigation of the 
Teamsters, he sees the same money laundering pattern there. As these 
things move up, you start to see the same names pop up in different 
places. They have some real problems. They would like to make this 
whole discussion of what Congress has been focusing on just about the 
legal questions or about personal affairs of the President or people in 
the White House, but the truth is that it is a lot more complicated. It 
would be nice if some people helped come forward to clean up the 
process that this government has sunk into.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. I thank the gentleman for his comments. Again, I am 
somewhat amazed and chagrined that now over 100 people, almost 120 
people have either taken the fifth amendment or fled the country with 
regard to this investigation. It only compounds the difficulty that 
sadly we see in this city within this government, within the executive 
branch.
  As I was looking at the report card offered the President by my 
colleague from Indiana, Mr. Speaker, I thought about my own children, 
their educational experience and the fact that our youngest, John 
Micah, not to be confused with the gentleman in the chair from Florida 
tonight, but John Micah with an ``h'' at the end of his middle name, is 
fond of a new endeavor at school, being a year out of kindergarten and 
being 4\1/2\, something called connect the dots. And it is a metaphor 
for what is transpiring within the executive branch of this government, 
to the point where we have moved past connecting the dots in some areas 
of conduct and, to mix metaphors, we have moved from that endeavor of 
connecting the dots to Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale of the 
emperor's new clothes or the lack thereof.
  It is amazing, again, to see the willingness of people to turn away, 
to actually try, through the punditocracy to distract us, to suggest 
that constitutional procedures should not be followed, that it really 
would be better to try and find an unconstitutional or extra 
constitutional third way that is just as devoid of reality as any 
fanciful tale you could find in children's literature.
  Mr. DeLAY. The gentleman is right. I think he has expounded on his 
premise of where he quoted Paul Greenberg, do not watch what the 
President says, watch what he does. The gentleman from Indiana, as he 
says, is on the Committee on Education and the Workforce.
  My question is, who is in charge? We do not know who to deal with 
anymore. We have been here all weekend. We are going into more 
negotiations tomorrow, and who knows how long we will be here. And 
again, I tell my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, we will 
stay here until we get it done. But this whole notion of who is in 
charge and what he says and how he backs up what he says, we have 
already talked about the fact that having 100,000 teachers being paid 
for by the Federal Government would be as successful as the 100,000 
cops that they have not funded yet. There are only 58,000 that have 
actually been put on the streets because nobody, most people do not 
want to participate.
  The gentleman is on the Education Committee. I seem to remember that 
along with that, the President wants to improve the technology, put 
computers in every classroom, those kinds of things. In fact, I think 
his quote was, the budget should also bring cutting edge technology to 
the classroom, the library.
  Does not the Department of Education have a trust fund and they have 
had a trust fund to bring technology to the classroom and it has been 
in place for over 2 years. And not one dime has been spent on improving 
technology in the classroom. So they have this bunch of money sitting 
out there. That was not good enough.
  The President of the United States got the phone companies to raise 
taxes on phone calls, we call it the Gore tax on long distance, to help 
fund this effort, and that was not even part of the agreement, when the 
bill was actually passed a couple of years ago. Another almost shutdown 
where the President demanded new programs and things like that. But 
there is money there. There is a trust fund set up, and they cannot 
even spend it. So they propose a program for rhetorical reasons. They 
get what they want by negotiating out the final outcome of spending, 
yet when they are given it, they cannot even implement it. They are so 
incompetent they cannot even implement those programs.
  Mr. SOUDER. I think it is important for those who may not be real C-
SPAN junkies who may be watching today, you did not say the President 
is trying to provide Gortex to people. It is a Gore tax. The vice 
president has proposed a tax on all American consumers to pay for one 
of their pet programs. A lot of times when we say it real fast, it 
sounds like Gortex.
  I think you have hit the fundamental point. There is a difference. In 
my heart of hearts, I believe that the President and the First Lady 
have a sincere commitment to education. I believe, however, they want 
to nationalize it. Furthermore, the way they do that is they poll test. 
I had the unusual experience, when I was working with Senator Coats for 
2 years, to work with Dick Morris, who is a very brilliant pollster, 
but he tests different things to see, and these things get the highest 
response, even down to the words with the little things on your arm 
where you try to see which words get the response.
  My daughter is an elementary ed and her secondary emphasis in 
education is preschool education. And as I mentioned, I am on the 
committee. I also am more of a neoconservative than a particular 
libertarian. We may have some differences on this, but there is a 
framework for the Federal Government within to work. That is, if 
certain school districts, say, in inner city Chicago or New York do not 
get covered or do not have the property tax base and they do not get 
covered at their State, we have developed programs at the Federal 
level, chapter 1, TRIO accounts and so on, to say for the very poor 
there is a Federal role. We also, because a lot of States and local 
governments ignore the handicap, have developed a program called IDEA. 
We developed Head Start. It is not that the Federal Government is not 
in education.
  Quite frankly, almost everybody in this body votes for those 
particular programs every year. The question is that that was a very 
particular need. These, I believe, as you stated, are poll driven. Even 
when the money is there, they do not use it. There is no reason that 
every school district has to surrender their sovereignty on computers 
and that type of thing, that there can be, there are plenty of targeted 
funds that can be better used.
  We did far better for this country by balancing the budget, getting 
interest rates down, getting taxes down in local communities and giving 
families more money to work with so they can try to make the decisions 
at the local schools. If we are going to fund Federal programs, it 
takes a lot of gall for the President of the United States to propose 
new programs when he has not funded the programs for the handicapped 
children in this country. If he is going to spend money, he ought to 
give it to those who are hurting and where we have a consensus, not 
come up with new gimmicks.
  Mr. DeLAY. I appreciate the gentlemen from Arizona and Indiana 
participating in this special order. The insight was very valuable.

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