[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 151 (Wednesday, October 21, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2301]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page E2301]]
   CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 4328, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION AND 
               RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1999

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                     HON. MARSHALL ``MARK'' SANFORD

                           of south carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, October 20, 1998

  Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill for a 
number of different reasons. Fundamentally, I rise because this Omnibus 
Bill validates the idea that we are running surpluses in Washington, 
when in fact, by any normal accounting standards, we are not. This year 
we will borrow $100 billion from the Social Security Trust Fund that 
will, in turn, yield what Washington calls a surplus. This bill will 
take $20 billion, one-third of that ``protected surplus'' and spend it, 
and yet doing so would break the President's commitment to saving every 
dime of the surplus for Social Security. If Congress is unwilling to 
pass the tax cut, and I took the President at his word because we want 
to save this so-called surplus for Social Security, how can we possibly 
take that money and spend it? I do not think we can and that is 
fundamentally why we should vote against this bill.
  It, as well, establishes a horrible precedence of going over budget. 
When people back home write an overdraft on their checking account, 
they have to pay the finance costs. They are normal repercussions for 
families or businesses when they exceed a budget, and yet Congress just 
creates a new category called Emergency Spending and says, ``Oops,'' 
and moves on. $20 billion is hardly an ``oops'' by the definition 
passed to me from people along the coast of South Carolina. Even what 
has been thrown into this emergency category is a stretch by any 
imagination. The Inman Report, in 1985, listed 126 embassy facilities 
that should be improved to thwart attack. Forty buildings were improved 
upon, the rest were left as they are. While the attacks this year in 
Africa were tragic, they were hardly an emergency in that the 
possibility has been talked about for over 13 years. Similarly, the Y2K 
problem, of which billions are in this bill, is certainly a great 
problem, but not an emergency. Connie Morella and Stephen Horn have 
held numerous hearings on the Y2K problem facing this Nation. There are 
other examples like that, and in fact, within the embassy section $100 
million is there for a Capitol Hill Visitor Center. The Capitol Hill 
Visitors Center has been the subject of much debate over the last 2 
years. How a topic of conversation for 10 years becomes an emergency, I 
do not quite understand.
  Finally, this bill offers sham offsets and sham reforms that I do not 
think pass the litmus test of common sense. The offsets are peculiar. 
For instance, in this bill, the Federal Government takes over the 
pension fund liabilities of the District of Columbia. The District of 
Columbia now invests in conventional investments like stock and bonds, 
and will take those assets, sell them in the marketplace and use that 
money to pay for current spending and call that an offset. Meanwhile, 
we ignore the fact that the pension one day will have to be paid as 
people retire. That is not really an offset, that is picking up a 
liability and yet we call it ``offset'' in this bill.
  Similarly with the IMF, while it has a real expenditure of $18 
billion, which I think is basically disguised foreign aid, its reforms 
are no more than fig leaves in substance. We had a very small amendment 
that would simply list IMF expenditure like every other expenditure in 
the Federal Government. My own leadership, for some odd reason, yielded 
to the views of the Executive Branch and prevented this reform. I think 
it makes sense because right now if the Federal Government buys 100 
thousand acres of land in Wyoming or buys a new Federal building, it is 
viewed as an expense. However, if we invest $18 billion in the IMF, it 
is viewed as picking up an asset as we pick up the drawing rights. Most 
people I know would much rather have as collateral 100 thousand acres 
in Wyoming or the Federal building in Georgia than drawing rights for a 
loan made to the Soviet Union. In fact, the last $4 billion the IMF 
sent to the Soviet Union, by all accounts, has been squandered. There 
are other reasons this bill does not make a lot of sense. Particularly, 
the fact that we are not seeing what we are voting on. The idea of 
voting for something you can't see is, I think, a particular disservice 
to your constituents that you represent in Washington and I think it is 
a gross act of mismanagement to fund a third of all government spending 
in a process that is jammed into a 2 or 3 week time frame. I don't know 
of any businesses that could survive if they operated in this fashion.
  For these reasons, it's validating a surplus when we do not have one, 
setting a precedent of going over budget, incorrectly defining non-
emergency spending as emergency, and its sham offsets say to me that a 
``no'' vote is a vote that makes common sense. It is also one that does 
not rob from the Social Security Trust Fund, which I thought was 
something that the Democrats and the President were serious about.

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