[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 144 (Monday, October 12, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H10647-H10648]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    ON THE PRESIDENT'S TRAVEL PLANS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I want to make a brief comment on the census 
and some of the education things before I make my major points here. It 
used to be years ago in the schools they taught the Constitution. 
Constitution said you actually have to count people. You cannot guess.
  I have a business undergraduate degree, a business graduate degree as 
well. I have worked in the private sector before I came into 
government. It is far too important and constitutional that we have to 
count people. We cannot use statistical sampling. It can be part of a 
procedure to try to establish parameters, but you actually have to have 
real people to know how to assign block grants and dollars, how to 
assign congressional districts.
  Furthermore, we seem to have lost, in the whole education debate, 
what our Founding Fathers intended and what we have done here. That is 
that local parents and local school boards are going to make the 
decisions on education, not some fountain of wisdom in Washington, 
where they do not know our kids names, where they do know the 
differences between the school districts. We cannot micromanage 
decisions here in Washington.
  For the past number of days we have been in session here, we have 
been waiting to try to get a budget agreement. We have known for months 
what the final things were going to be that were going to be 
negotiated. But we have not had those meetings. The President has not 
been engaged. We have not seen the White House engaged. They have had 
lots of other matters on their mind. But one of the fundamental 
questions that we have to ask about this administration in general is, 
are they focused on the task at hand?
  The President has traveled 153 days this year, 32 on vacation, 57 for 
fund-raisers. He has only held two cabinet meetings. Those cabinet 
meetings, the focus was, well, let us just say the focus of the two 
cabinet meetings was not on the pending crisis at hand and on the 
budget debate.
  I want to go through, while we are here trying to keep the government 
open, while we are here trying to negotiate the final settlement, this 
is what the President did today.
  At 2:45, he made a statement which I saw on the south lawn, saying we 
need to get down to business. We need to get an agreement. Then he 
boarded the helicopter to get over to Andrews Air Force base. At 4:55 
he landed on Wall Street. A 5:05 he boarded a motorcade and departed 
the Wall Street landing zone en route to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, 
Park Avenue, East 50th Street, New York. At 5:15 he arrives at the 
Waldorf Astoria hotel and proceeds to a private event. At 5:55 he 
greets a reception in honor of New York gubernatorial candidate Peter 
Vallone at the Waldorf Astoria still up on Park Avenue. At 6:45 he 
boards a motorcade and departs the hotel en route to the Hilton New 
York Towers, 6th Avenue and West 53rd Street. At 7:30 he greets 
Democratic Senate Campaign Committee reception in honor of the 
Democratic senatorial candidate and Congressman Charles Schumer of New 
York at the Hilton Tower, by the way, a member of the Committee on the 
Judiciary that is supposed to be neutral in this, potentially a member 
of the

[[Page H10648]]

jury that will sit on the President, basically jury tampering. At 8:15 
he concludes remarks and proceeds to the motorcade. At 8:30 he arrives 
at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers in New York. This is while we 
are supposed to be negotiating the budget. Where is he? At 8:35 greets 
the first gala benefit for the GMP charitable foundation for cancer 
research. At 9:25 he boards the motorcade and departs the Sheraton 
Hotel and Towers en route to a private residence. At 9:35 he arrives at 
the private residence Manhattan, proceeds inside to private event. A 
10:15 he greets the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee reception in 
honor of of Congressman Charles Schumer, a private residence in 
Manhattan. At 11:55 he arrives at Kennedy International Airport, boards 
Air Force One. At 12:10 he leaves for Andrews, arrives at 1:05. At 1:20 
departs for the White House, at 1:30 lands.
  Where is the Vice President? The Vice President left this morning to 
go down to Palm Beach, Florida because the President cancelled his 
fund-raiser at Palm Beach, Florida so the Vice President went down 
there.
  Where is the First Lady? She has no direct line of responsibility 
here but she is usually involved in a lot of discussions, particularly 
has been very outspoken on social issues. She is over in Bulgaria and 
the Czech Republic.
  But supposedly we are a do-nothing Congress. Supposedly we are the 
ones holding up everything. I would suggest that if we are indeed in a 
crisis in our government and if we are on the border, borderline of a 
government shutdown, the least the President could do is stay in town 
and talk. Maybe we should have been doing this in the summer, during 
the August break, since we knew that the final issues were going to be 
education funding, pro-life concerns, IMF, emergency spending on year 
2000 computers, and the farm crisis. We knew that. There is no shock 
here. We have known this for months.
  But everybody has been so preoccupied with other things that they 
have not sat down and dealt with it. Now that we are down here, we are 
in extra days. We are trying to negotiate the final budget. The 
appropriations bills are over there. The House and Senate leaders are 
negotiating. In fact, some of what they have been negotiating on the 
drug issue, for example, they worked out with General McCaffrey, the 
White House drifts in and says, oh, by the way, he does not speak for 
us. Well, if your staff cannot speak for you, if the people you appoint 
cannot speak for you, stay in town. Do not go trotting around to the 
Waldorf Astoria for candidates who indeed actually sit on the Committee 
on the Judiciary. Do not go trotting over to the Hilton and into 
private receptions raising money when we are supposed to be trying to 
figure out how do the people's business.

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