[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 147 (Thursday, October 15, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H10989-H10990]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            DETAILS OF THE FINAL OMNIBUS APPROPRIATIONS BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Tiahrt) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. TIAHRT. Mr. Speaker, we are coming to the end of the session here 
and we have a tentative agreement reached on how we are going to 
continue this government for fiscal year 1999. We found out that we can 
agree with this President.
  Now, he did think that he got his way on the 100,000 teachers program 
and IMF funding, and we are glad that the $18 billion is there for IMF 
funding with the needed reforms that were associated with it, and we 
are glad that we have additional money for teachers.
  But I wonder if anybody has actually done the math. The President 
said that he wants 100,000 teachers and we set aside a billion dollars 
to do that. If we divide 100,000 teachers into a billion dollars, I 
know this is high level math for some, if we divide it out we get 
$10,000 per teacher. I would ask my colleagues to go back to their 
districts and ask any teacher if they are willing to start a new full-
time job for $10,000 a year. I know that when my wife was teaching in 
the public schools in the late 1970s, she was willing to teach for 
$10,000 a year in southwest Missouri, and the cost of living was not 
nearly as high as it is today. I think at best we will get 30,000 
teachers out of this program, and they will be paid some reasonable 
sum.
  But more importantly, the Republicans insisted on and won the 
provision that says that this money will go directly to the classroom. 
This money will not be spent in Washington, D.C. on the bureaucracy. 
Right now we have a Department of Education bureaucracy and the average 
salary at the Department of Education is $52,000 per year. There are 
millions of people across the United States that would like to teach 
for $52,000 a year. I can think of a lot of them in Wichita, Kansas, 
where the average salary is below $30,000. I think rather than waste 
the

[[Page H10990]]

money here, it is much more important that we send that money directly 
to the school districts.
  One other thing that we agreed on with the President is that there is 
a surplus that can be spent on something other than saving Social 
Security. I think we need to keep in mind that the Republicans have put 
at the top of their list that we need to save Social Security and we 
passed a bill that said that 90 percent of the surplus would be set 
aside for saving Social Security and 10 percent would go to tax relief.
  The President has insisted that we do not have any tax relief this 
time, but we wanted to make sure that we did have that money available. 
He has agreed that it is available, except he wants to spend it on the 
bureaucracy. So, we have agreed, in order to get some type of 
compromise, we have agreed with the President that we would take the 
Republican priorities and spend some of that on emergency spending.
  One of those things that we did for emergency spending was provide 
tax relief for the financially strapped farmers. If my colleagues have 
been following the nationwide news, and certainly in Kansas it has been 
followed closely, farmers have been having a hard time this year. 
Weather has been a problem. Around the world prices have been depressed 
and that has caused a lower demand for farm commodities and so the 
prices have been down. Combine that with the natural problems that we 
had with the weather, and it has been a tough year.
  We have also provided tax relief for farmers and other self-employed 
individuals by allowing 100 percent deductibility of their insurance 
premiums.
  One of the other things that was a great victory for the Republicans 
in this settlement is that we now have much-needed increased funds for 
national defense. About $9 billion of emergency spending for defense 
and intelligence needs.
  This administration has increased the work level of the Department of 
Defense much more than any other bureaucracy that we have here in 
Washington, D.C., and yet they have limited the funds. They have tried 
to divert the funds. They have allowed much of it to be wasted, and 
they have sent people overseas on numerous missions. Bosnia comes to 
mind, and now we are looking at Kosovo. We have had intervention in 
Haiti and in Africa and different places.
  Mr. Speaker, all of this costs money and the administration has been 
more than willing to send our young men and women abroad and not fund 
it. Well, because of that, we have created an emergency in our national 
defense system. We are going to now, with this final bill, be able to 
do something for our young men and women who are willing to risk their 
lives.
  We also have some relief here for the need that we have to provide 
for our national defense. We have about a billion dollars that have 
been set aside for missile defense. Most people do not realize that we 
have no defense for incoming ballistic missiles. We have had in the 
past a policy of mutually assured destruction. We would not fire on 
anybody else because they would fire back on us and vice versa. If 
someone was to fire an intercontinental ballistic missile on the United 
States, they could be assured that we would enjoy their country too. 
And so this mutually assured destruction has been our policy.
  Now, with the breakdown of the USSR and other Third World countries 
becoming nuclear powers, we find that we have no policy that is working 
and this mutually assured destruction cannot be guaranteed when we have 
terrorists that we are dealing with. So, it is very important that our 
country provide for a missile defense system.
  We have now, because of the Republicans in our negotiation, our 
leadership in negotiations, we have provided the first step in 
continuing this missile defense program that is much-needed.
  There are other provisions in here that were very important that we 
see become law. We are now protecting children from pornography on the 
Internet. We are now going to stop needle exchange programs, which have 
been proven not to work.
  So we think that we have a good settlement and a good agreement and 
it shows that our system of democracy does work. Nobody got 100 percent 
of what they wanted, but we got an agreement and we are moving forward 
to make sure that this country is safe and secure and that our needs 
are met.

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