[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 37 (Tuesday, March 9, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H1065-H1067]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               TODAY WE HAVE AN ECONOMY THAT IS EXPLODING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Scarborough) is 
recognized for 30 minutes.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Mr. Speaker, I have got to say, I was running across 
the road today and coming over to speak in this House Chamber and saw a 
blizzard outside and one of the people

[[Page H1066]]

that I spoke to asked me, they said, what do you think about the 
groundhog now?
  I said, well, I am not real pleased with the groundhog's prediction, 
and this person suggested that the groundhog that predicted that we 
would have no more winter should be taken out and shot.
  I suggested, though, that maybe we should not be so tough on the 
groundhog for this faulty prediction as Washington is receiving its 
toughest winter storm of the year, because of the fact that sometimes 
in Washington, D.C. politicians and economists are not much better with 
their predictions.
  I remember 4 years ago when we first came up to Washington, D.C. I 
heard over and over again that this government could not balance its 
budget and that our plan to restore fiscal responsibility and fiscal 
sanity to the way that Congress and Washington and the White House ran 
its business, I heard that we could not get it done.
  Let us look at what happened 4 years later. Today we have an economy 
that is exploding. Some say that it is an economy that is stronger than 
any American economy ever before, and there are a lot of people that 
are lining up, taking credit and assigning responsibility to these 
great economic times.
  It is very important that we remember, back over the 4 years, about 
what we did and what sacrifices we took to make America as strong as it 
is going into the new millennium.
  Mr. Speaker, I remember when I first ran for Congress in 1994 talking 
about the need of balancing the budget, talking about the need for 
Americans to have a government that handled their checkbook as well as 
Americans handled their checkbook at home, because if we have a Federal 
Government that continued and continued to spend more money than it 
took in, it would not only damage our credibility here in Washington, 
it would also damage our children's possibility of pursuing the 
American dream that we were all able to pursue in our life.
  When I first got to Washington, D.C., the deficit was at $300 billion 
and the debt was approaching $5 trillion. Now, we throw out numbers. 
Everybody loves throwing out numbers in Washington, D.C., and few 
people really understand what those numbers mean, but I can say this, 
what a $300 billion deficit meant was that interest rates were up 
because the markets were jittery.
  I remember getting elected, coming here and talking about how we were 
going to balance the budget in 7 years, and I remember how the 
President and the liberals in his administration and the liberals in 
this House said that balancing the budget was irresponsible and saying 
that it would destroy the economy.
  In fact, they said balancing the budget in 7 years would wreck the 
United States economy, cause the markets to collapse and cause 
widespread unemployment and recession.
  Let us look just 5 years later and see what our results were. We now 
have a Dow Jones average that was not at 3900 like it was when we first 
got here but is now at 9500. We have unemployment rates that are lower 
than they have been in years and years, and we have an economy that is 
growing at a faster rate than ever before, and it is all because we 
were able to discipline ourselves to do what we ask every middle class 
American to do, and that is spend only as much money as you take in.
  So what did Alan Greenspan say back in 1995? He actually came to the 
Committee on the Budget, chaired by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. 
Kasich), and he said if the Republicans are serious about balancing the 
budget, and if they pass this plan to balance the budget, I will 
predict that interest rates will drop and the economy will grow at a 
faster rate than it has since the end of World War II.
  That is what the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board said, Alan 
Greenspan. All the while I love hearing columnists and pundits and 
pollsters saying, you cannot do it; Washington cannot balance its 
budget. It sounded like what people said about me when I first ran for 
Congress 4 years ago. They told me there was no way I could win. Well, 
I learned then, never say never.
  We learned in the budget fight, sometimes you just kind of have to 
turn off your hearing aid to these pollsters and pundits, because if 
they were right all along we would have never even tried to balance the 
budget.
  Now, of course, 4 years later everybody is lining up and saying what 
a great job they did, but it is important for us to remember who was 
for the balanced budget and who fought it, and what philosophy was 
underlying those of us who supported the balanced budget plan.

                              {time}  1715

  And what philosophy underlies those people that opposed the balanced 
budget plan? Let us start with the people that were against it. 
Unfortunately, the administration and the people on the left of this 
Chamber had a government and had a Congress that they controlled for 40 
years, and for 40 years they believed in bigger government, more 
oppressive taxes, and less freedom for Americans.
  In fact, we saw deficits explode well up into $300 billion, and the 
way they proposed bringing the deficit down was by raising America's 
taxes. In fact, in 1993, they passed the largest single tax increase in 
the history of this great republic, and believed that they could not 
cut government spending. Well, we believed otherwise, and we still 
believe otherwise, that the Federal Government spends too much of 
American taxpayers' dollars. But taxes kept exploding. We came in and 
tried to cut them down; we passed some tax cuts, but all along the 
administration has fought us and the liberals have fought us time and 
time again. Now, they say they are for tax cuts, but when push comes to 
shove, they just will not propose them.
  Why is that? It is because at the heart of their philosophy, at the 
heart of the philosophy that ran Washington for 40 years, they believe 
that big government is the solution. We believe, Mr. Speaker, that the 
big hearts of America, that the communities of America, that the 
families and individuals in America are the ones who should make the 
decision on how to spend their money.
  I remember right after the President left Washington a few weeks ago, 
he went up to Buffalo, and up in Buffalo, he spoke to a crowd about tax 
cuts, and he was highly critical of Republicans' plans to cut America's 
taxes. What the President said I think really, really was insightful 
and revealing in that it offered us a very small window into his core 
beliefs regarding government. Because the President has been very good 
lately engaging in what he calls triangulation, taking Republican 
issues and trying to make them his own without really doing anything 
significant on it. But the President said to this crowd in Buffalo, 
sure, we can do what the Republicans are proposing to do. We could cut 
your taxes, let you keep more of your money and hope you spend your 
money wisely. But the President went on to say that this just could not 
be so because Americans might spend their money irresponsibly.
  I think therein lies the difference, therein really is the crux of 
the problem of big government liberalism. There is this belief that 
politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. know how to spend 
Americans' money better than Americans. There is also a belief that 
Washington bureaucrats and politicians know how to teach our children 
better than we do, and there is also a belief that Washington 
politicians and bureaucrats know how to run our communities better than 
we do.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a philosophy of the past. In much the same way 
that socialism has collapsed across the globe throughout the latter 
half of the 20th century, I believe that this more refined American 
version of socialism that started some time back will soon collapse as 
we enter the new millennium. Why? Because we are a Nation of 
individuals. We have always been a Nation of individuals, and in this 
new generation and this new millennium that we are about to enter, the 
technologies that are going to free us will make us more 
individualistic and make us more free, and make us less reliant on an 
oppressive, centralized State.
  It is about freedom. It is about the freedom of Americans to work as 
hard as they want to work without the fear of being punished by 
Washington, D.C. It is about the belief that Americans can school their 
children the way they want to school their children, without 
bureaucrats in the Department of Education coming in and oppressing 
them. It is about the belief that in America,

[[Page H1067]]

a young entrepreneur can still start with $5,000 in his garage and 
begin a company that grows into a huge organization like Microsoft.
  Only in America can that still happen.
  Unfortunately, only in America do we find a Federal Government that 
is so opposed to this entrepreneurial spirit. Why, the Justice 
Department has been hammering against Microsoft over the past months 
and years, because Microsoft works. Just like capital gains taxes 
continue to go up, because these people who are the most productive are 
the ones that our Federal Government punishes.
  My gosh, ask anybody in Seattle, Washington what this little start-up 
company that started with 2 men and $5,000 in a garage has meant to the 
economy, not only of the Pacific Northwest, not only of America, but of 
the world. And yet all they get is harassment from the Federal 
Government and a Justice Department that should be spending more time 
looking at how the Chinese influenced the 1996 presidential elections 
than how one or two young men's dreams created a company and a force 
that has literally changed western civilization and eastern 
civilization.
  But only in America. Only in America do we say to people that dare to 
go out and work hard, if you work hard, we are going to tax you hard. 
And if you work harder, and if you create more jobs and more 
opportunity and more wealth and more hope for all Americans, we are 
going to punish you more. You are going to pay more in capital gains 
taxes. And heaven forbid, if you are a mother and a father that starts 
a mom and pop store, or own a farm, you get your hands down in the dirt 
everyday and work hard every single day of your adult life, with the 
hopes of one day passing this dream on to your children, in America we 
say, good for you, just do not die. Because when you die, we are going 
to tax you 55 percent on all of your property, on all of your property 
that we have already taxed 8 or 9 times while you were alive, and we 
will make it impossible for your children to take your family business 
and to take your family farm and to support themselves and to support 
their children.
  That does not make sense. The death tax does not make sense, Mr. 
Speaker. The capital gains tax that punishes creativity and punishes 
job growth does not make sense. Mr. Speaker, something else that does 
not make sense is a tax system that makes middle class American 
families making between $40,000 and $60,000 pay 28 percent of their 
income to the Federal Government. I have no idea why we cannot move 
that bracket up to have people making from $40,000 to $65,000 pay in a 
tax bracket of 15 percent. How much money will be lost to the Federal 
Government that it cannot do without? How much money of hard-working 
Americans does the Federal Government need to continue to grow its 
operations? How much more money are we going to raise in taxes from the 
sweat and the toil of middle class Americans?
  Mr. Speaker, I hear the tired, worn-out arguments of class warfare 
every single week that I take to this House floor, and I know this. I 
know the simple truth of Abraham Lincoln that one cannot punish the 
wage-maker without hurting the wage-earner. But that is what our 
government does.
  I also know that we cannot continue to allow this Federal Government 
to grow and grow and grow without destroying the economy. We have 
learned the lessons of 1995 and 1996 to find ourselves in 1999 with an 
exploding economy. Sure, cutting taxes helps the economy grow, but 
cutting government spending also helps the economy grow, and we have 
learned that lesson. And to hear people take to the floor from the 
extreme left talking about the spade of new government programs they 
want to start to help Americans makes one scratch one's head and 
wonder, where have they been the past 4 years? Because they had a 
chance for 40 years to balance the budget and they did not do it. They 
had their chance in 1995 to help conservatives balance the budget. They 
did not do it. They had the chance in 1996 to climb on board and help 
us balance the budget. They did not do it. And they have a chance in 
1999 to help us stay on the road, to stay within the budget caps, to 
balance the budget. The question is, will they do it?

  Mr. Speaker, I hope they will, but I have to say, the past 40 years 
does not offer us much hope.
  Mr. Speaker, I recall coming here, being shown this wonderful House 
Chamber by a Member of the House, and he took out his voting card and 
it has a picture, the voting card has a picture on it and you slip it 
in the back of one of these seats and one's vote is automatically 
recorded. And he showed it to me and he says, Joe, this is our $5 
trillion credit card. And he laughed a little laugh, as did I.
  Mr. Speaker, if we think about it, it is not really that funny, 
because that $5 trillion, now $5.4 trillion that this government has 
spent into the red is $5.4 trillion that we borrowed from our children 
and from our children's children. We are now told that if we are 
responsible; in fact, the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office says if 
we do nothing but be responsible and live by the Balanced Budget Act, 
we will see the end of that $5 trillion debt in the next 15 years.
  Mr. Speaker, that is something worth fighting for. Certainly 
something that provides hope not only to my 2 boys in Pensacola, 
Florida, but to children across this country, to parents that hope for 
a better life, and for immigrants that come from other shores coming to 
America. That city that Ronald Reagan talked about shining brightly on 
the Hill for all the world to see, that is the hope. If only we in this 
House and Members in the Senate and people in the administration 
understand that we gave our word in 1997 with the Balanced Budget Act, 
and now is not the time, nor is it the place, for us to break our word.

                              {time}  1730

  If we spend one cent more than we promised to spend in 1997, that is 
one cent too much, because that is a violation of our word to the 
American people, and most importantly, to ourselves.
  Mr. Speaker, I believe that we in Washington can get by on less so 
Americans can get by with more. I believe, like Thomas Jefferson, that 
the government that governs least governs best. I believe, in the words 
of James Madison, that we have staked the entire future of the American 
civilization, not upon the power of government but upon the power of 
the American people.
  It is time for us to renew our vow and our pledge, not only to the 
Balanced Budget Act of 1997, but to the vision and the wisdom and the 
courage of the George Washingtons and the Thomas Jeffersons and the Ben 
Franklins and the James Madisons, and to those great patriots that 
fought so fiercely for all Americans' liberties over 222 years ago.
  Mr. Speaker, if we are true to our word and true to their memory, 
then I know that the next century will also be the next great American 
century.

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