[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 46 (Tuesday, March 23, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H1586-H1593]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2215
               ISSUES THAT DEFINE THE REPUBLICAN MAJORITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, I want to spend this evening's Republican 
special order hour talking about a number of issues that define our 
Republican majority and what we are trying to accomplish here in the 
United States Congress. I want to invite any of our conference members 
who may be monitoring today's proceedings and this special order to 
come down on the floor and join in this discussion if they have 
anything to add to it or to relate to the rest of the Members of this 
great body.
  One of the topics that I wanted to discuss tonight is an effort by 
the administration to greatly expand the percentage of land in America 
that is owned and possessed by the government as opposed to private 
landowners.
  I recently had a chance to go to Russia with an 8-member delegation, 
the purpose of which was to discuss national missile defense and the 
legislation that we just passed last week relative to establishing a 
missile defense policy. The absence of property rights there captured 
my attention.
  In Russia, all land is owned by the government. Even since the fall 
of Communism, Russian politicians have failed to make the transition to 
private land ownership, despite growing public fondness for this 
dramatic step. As more Russians exchange ideas with the rest of the 
world, they are collectively coming to an obvious conclusion that 
government is a poor steward of the land. The sad irony is the 
propensity of our own Federal Government to ignore so self-evident a 
truth.
  The White House has proposed a virtual real estate spending spree 
involving the government snatching up private land faster than one can 
say glasnost or perestroika. Well, perhaps it is time for a little 
honesty, openness and restructuring here at home, too.
  Westerners bristled during the State of the Union performance when 
the President announced his land legacy initiative, a ten and a quarter 
billion dollar land grab. Remember, the Federal Government already owns 
30 percent of all land in the United States and a staggering 50 percent 
of all land in the west.
  Now add to the Federal estate, expanding land acquisitions by State 
and local government, and it is not hard to conclude that America's 
destination is the very point of Russia's departure. The Clinton 
administration seems bent on breaking this bond between the American 
people and the earth, the very stricture of President Teddy Roosevelt's 
1902 Reclamation Act which opened the door for water development, 
irrigation and agriculture in the west.
  The Federal Government is notoriously ill-suited to manage the land 
it now holds, let alone more. For example, last year, the General 
Accounting Office reported to Congress widespread financial 
mismanagement, fraud, abuse

[[Page H1587]]

and so on, in the United States Forest Service. The Service could not 
even identify how it spent $215 million of its operations and program 
funds.
  Similar abuses have been reported within the National Park Service, 
which spent $784,000 of taxpayer money on the construction of a single 
outhouse in Pennsylvania. The Park Service has built similar royal 
commodes in Montana's Glacier National Park, and last year 
congressional hearings focused on the devastating impact of Federal 
land use policies on rural communities. Testimony from county 
commissioners documented how designating more Federal land erodes the 
tax base for schools and other critical services.
  The Federal payment in lieu of taxes program designed to alleviate 
these burdens does not work well, they said. Historically, America's 
land policy has always favored private property ownership but under the 
lands legacy initiative, choice private lands currently thriving in the 
capable hands of America's farmers and ranchers will be relinquished to 
the control of Federal land managers with Washington, D.C. agendas.
  At a time when the agriculture economy is enduring record low 
commodity prices, Congress should instead encourage private land 
management through positive incentives and tax relief. Indeed, this is 
why I introduced the Family Farm Preservation Act in the 106th 
Congress, to keep family farms and ranchers productive and in the 
family, keep their ranches in the family. The bill exempts family farms 
from the death tax when passed to succeeding generations.
  Congress should address capital gains and other tax burdens, reform 
the Endangered Species Act and more aggressively expand trade markets. 
These steps would enable America's farmers to continue providing open 
space and the world's safest and most efficient food supply. In 
America, the right to liberty entails the right to hold property, 
especially land.
  American politicians and their Russian counterparts would do well to 
consider John C. Freemont's 1856 observation that the valves upon which 
this Nation rests are, quote, free soil, free men and free speech; or 
we could all learn to speak Russian.
  Growing the size of the Federal Government is a general theme that 
more than defines just the administration's efforts on acquiring 
additional public lands throughout America and restricting the 
available lands for private ownership. Growing the size of the Federal 
Government is really what divides both sides of the aisle here in the 
United States Congress.
  We heard the previous Members engaged in a Democrat special order 
hour on the House Floor this evening talking about the United States 
census as though the Constitution as it relates to the census is 
somehow irrelevant but what matters more is the amount of the public 
wealth that is redistributed to the rest of the American people on the 
basis of how one counts bodies. That is a huge difference of vision in 
what constitutes real freedom and real liberty as we head into the next 
century.
  Our plan is something that is very, very different. It entails a bold 
agenda here on the floor of the House of Representatives, to talk about 
smaller government, to talk about lower taxes, to talk about reducing 
the Federal burden of regulatory law in the lives of Americans on a 
daily basis. It is a pro-freedom agenda, a pro-liberty agenda. First 
and foremost in that agenda is our efforts to strength Social Security.
  The Republican budget proposal sets aside every penny of the $1.8 
trillion surplus in the Social Security trust fund to provide 
retirement security to three generations of Americans. Seniors, baby 
boomers and their children can all count on retirement security without 
a cut in benefits or an increase in taxes.
  This is the first time since Congress passed the Social Security Act 
back in 1935 that 100 percent of the money going into that trust fund 
is being set aside for retiring Americans. We, the Republicans, are 
putting the trust back into the Social Security trust fund. House 
Republicans plan to create what is called a safe deposit box, to put 
that money off-limits legally for the first time in more than 60 years. 
The Social Security trust fund will no longer be a slush fund for 
wasteful government spending.

  The Clinton-Gore plan only sets aside 62 percent of payroll revenues 
for retirement security over the next 10 years, again, compared to 100 
percent that the Republicans are proposing.
  The White House proposal on Social Security and Medicare totals only 
$1.68 trillion over the next 10 years compared to $1.8 trillion 
proposed by Republicans for retirement security on both Social Security 
and Medicare. I point out, Mr. Speaker, we accomplish this not by 
talking about proposals on the House Floor as we just heard a little 
while ago from our Democrat friends to grow the size of the Federal 
Government, to spend more money, to enlarge the size of the Federal 
bureaucracy. We talk about just the opposite and we do so because 
allowing the revenue that the Federal Government collects to be set 
aside for real priorities matters more to us, real priorities like 
saving Social Security and creating a solvent Medicare program as well.
  In the fiscal year 2000 alone, the President's plan, their 62 percent 
plan, sets aside only $85 billion. The Republican plan, again, sets 
aside 100 percent, $137 billion.
  Let me talk about how we accomplish this because we do so within an 
overall budget framework and a blueprint to allow retirement security 
for three generations, and historic tax relief.
  When the American public put the Republican Party in charge of 
Congress in 1995, the annual Federal deficit was $175 billion and 
growing as far as the eye could see. In 1995, we promised the American 
people we would balance the budget and reduce the Federal debt. In 
1997, we passed the balanced budget resolution and in 1998, just last 
year, we balanced the Federal budget. This was the first year the 
budget was in balance since 1969, the year man first walked on the 
moon.
  We have begun paying down the $5.1 trillion national debt. In 1998, 
we paid the debt down by $51 billion, the first time in a generation a 
payment has been made on the Federal debt.
  Just 4 years after being elected to the majority, we expect Federal 
revenue surpluses as far as the eye can see. With a strong economy, and 
the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, we expect over $130 billion in surpluses 
in the year 2000, and $2.6 trillion over the next 10 years.
  This is only possible, Mr. Speaker, if we continue on our plan to 
shrink the size of the Federal Government, to slow the rate of growth 
in Federal budgeting, to stand in the way of efforts of our 
counterparts on the opposite side of the aisle and their liberal 
friends down in the White House to grow the size of the bureaucracy, to 
expand the scope of Federal regulation; and instead leave a greater 
quantity of the American people's wealth back home where it belongs, in 
the hands and in the pockets of those who work hard to earn it.
  By shrinking the size of the Federal Government and by allowing the 
public wealth to be reinvested into the economy and in the American 
people, we allow for economic growth to occur at greater rates so that 
lower tax rates actually collect more revenue, not through higher tax 
percentages and higher tax rates but through a stronger, more vibrant 
economy, where private capital, private cash, is circulated over and 
over and over again to create jobs, to create economic growth and 
investments and other kinds of wealth and to allow our government to 
function as our Founders once envisioned it should.
  That is how we create a budget surplus. That is how economists 
throughout the country have concluded that under a plan of smaller 
Federal budgeting and lower tax rates, we can expect a $2.6 trillion 
surplus over the next 10 years. That $2.6 trillion surplus is comprised 
of two elements. One, the on-budget surplus of approximately $800 
billion as a result of working Americans paying Federal income taxes 
and other revenues. Under the budget plan, this 10-year surplus will be 
returned to working Americans as tax relief.
  The second element, the off-budget surplus, comes from working 
Americans paying payroll taxes into the Social Security trust fund, 
money they expect will be there for them when they retire. The payroll 
tax revenues and interest total $1.8 trillion over 10

[[Page H1588]]

years. We are setting aside every penny of that surplus, the $1.8 
trillion in the Social Security trust fund, to provide retirement 
security to three generations of Americans: Seniors, baby boomers and 
their children, who we believe should be able to count on retirement 
security without a cut in benefits or an increase in taxes.
  I want to reiterate that this is the first time since Congress passed 
the Social Security Act in 1935 that every penny of money going to that 
trust fund is being set aside for retiring Americans.

                              {time}  2230

  I would like to ask Members to compare that with the White House plan 
on retirement security. The White House plan, and again, I mentioned 
this earlier, only sets aside 62 percent of payroll revenues for 
retirement security over the next 10 years compared to the 100 percent 
that the Republicans put aside.
  The President of the United States himself just a few months ago 
stood right at the rostrum just in front of me and disclosed this plan 
as though it were something the American people should celebrate. In 
fact, many Members on the House floor rose to their feet in wild 
applause, suggesting that setting aside only 62 percent of the social 
security trust fund to save social security was somehow a good idea. I 
think for a day or two the American people may have actually bought it.
  But as soon as the veneer was peeled back on that plan that the 
President put forward, economists and the American people in general 
realized that what the President had done was the same old Washington 
trick, the same old ploy of political partisans here in Washington, 
D.C., and that is to double-count imaginary money.
  On the Republican side, we are convinced that the American people are 
fed up and sick and tired of that kind of accounting, playing fast and 
loose with their money. It is why we are so completely devoted to the 
cause of walling off the social security trust fund, keeping the 
Federal spenders' hands off of it, and preventing that social security 
trust fund from ever being raided by this government again. We want to 
set aside the full 100 percent, and leave it in the account of the 
social security trust fund for future generations.
  The President's proposal, the combined proposal to strengthen both 
social security and Medicare, totals only $1.68 trillion over the next 
10 years, compared to our plan of $1.8 trillion proposed by the 
Republicans for retirement security. That difference is a significant 
one, and it is one that every senior, every baby boomer, and every baby 
boomer concerned about the retirement prospects for their children 
should watch very closely.
  Let me add two more points. When it comes to taxes, the White House 
has proposed a budget that raises taxes and fees by $172 billion over 
the next 5 years, which disproportionately affects agriculture, I might 
add, a number of agricultural financial institutions, insurance funds, 
as well as many of the supporting industries that farmers and ranchers 
rely upon; for example, herbicide and pesticide manufacturers and so 
on.
  Now, the Republican tax cuts, our proposal is for tax cuts between 
$10 billion and $15 billion this year, between $150 billion and $200 
billion over the next 5 years, and $800 billion; when we add all that 
up, $800 billion over a 10-year period; once again, a dramatic 
difference between what the Democrats represent on the House Floor and 
what the Republicans represent in the House of Representatives.
  The second key element of our agenda in Congress, particularly on the 
House side, is education flexibility, creating world class schools, 
schools that are second to none, and reclaiming our international 
prominence as a Nation of excellent educational institutions.
  We will give local schools and school districts more flexibility to 
spend education dollars as they see fit. More decisions will be made at 
the local level where parents are involved, not here in Washington, 
D.C.; again, a dramatic departure from what we have seen represented 
through the U.S. Department of Education, under the leadership of the 
White House, and a new, bold Republican agenda that moves forward in a 
way that honors parents as real customers, teachers as real 
professionals, administrators and school board members as real leaders, 
and children as real Americans.
  Too often Federal education funds are tied to the special interests 
of Washington, not to the best interests of children and teachers. 
Schools can teach our children more by cutting Washington's red tape 
and spending our Federal education dollars where the children need it, 
not where bureaucrats 2,000 miles away say it should go.
  The Ed-Flex program, for example, a piece of legislation that we 
discussed again on the floor today with respect to some of the changes 
that the Senate made in a similar proposal, currently provides 12 
States with the flexibility to wave certain Federal and State 
regulations.
  Now, this is important. It is important because every schoolchild, 
every administrator, every school board member, knows the agony of 
complying with the rules, the regulations, the red tape handed down on 
high from Washington, D.C. to their local institutions.
  The amount of Federal funds that go to schools is relatively small, 
on the order of maybe 7 or 8 percent at the most in certain schools, 
usually 6 to 7 percent in the average school district around the 
country. But in exchange for that relatively small percentage of 
Federal funds in an overall school budget, these administrators, 
teachers, and school board members are fade with an insurmountable 
burden of complying with mountains of paperwork that comes along with 
those dollars.
  We want to cut those strings. We want to cut that red tape. We want 
to untangle the education quagmire that this Federal Government has 
created across the country, and move forward on an education agenda 
that is about the freedom to teach, the liberty to learn, treating 
parents like real customers and teachers like real professionals.
  Mr. Speaker, I am joined by my good friend the gentleman from 
California, and I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Cunningham) to add to the discussion.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I was all the way down on my boat on which I live, 
Mr. Speaker, and I heard the gentleman talk about private property in 
some of the agenda, so I put my tie back on, I think I got it on 
straight, and I even buttoned my tab.
  I want to thank the gentleman for holding this special order, because 
there are a couple of areas which I want to the gentleman to talk 
about. One, I heard the gentleman on the social security issue. The 
other is where the President claims to put a percentage in Medicare, 
and actually draws out $9 billion out of Medicare.
  When we talk about double-using figures in a budget, and the 
President takes out $9 billion and then puts in money, and then takes 
money out of social security and then puts 62 percent in, and he takes 
those billions of dollars and spends them on programs, then when it 
comes to our budget time he claims that we are cutting programs.
  First of all, we believe in maintaining the caps. A balanced budget 
to us is very, very important. For those, it is not. We will see in 
every single bill except for defense that our liberal colleagues over 
here will increase spending, regardless of what the program is. They 
will pay for anything, a chicken in every pot. That is where our big 
disagreement is.

  In the field of education, I was chairman of the Committee on K 
through 12 before I went on the Committee on Appropriations. GAO said 
that for direct lending programs, when it was capped at 10 percent, it 
cost $1 billion annually, $1 billion, not a million, just to administer 
it out of the government. That was when it was capped at 10 percent. It 
cost $4 billion to $5 billion to collect because the Department of 
Education did not have the collection funds.
  The President wanted the direct lending program to go to 100 percent. 
I absolutely fought tooth, hook, and nail from doing that because of 
the waste, rather than letting it go to private.
  The government shut down at that time. That was one of the 
President's key points. We got blamed for it. But at the same time, our 
leadership said, Duke, we need to let this go to 40 percent. I said no, 
I want to zero, because

[[Page H1589]]

we can get more student loans out of the private sector at reduced 
cost, instead of having Uncle Sam here do it.
  They negotiated, they let it go to 40 percent. They put in just a few 
language words in the bill that neither the President nor the Democrats 
saw, but it limited the amount of money that went to the bureaucracy. 
We added and paid additional money to the Eisenhower grants. We 
increased IDEA for special education to the highest level ever that was 
possible. As a matter of fact, I was the chairman that started the IDEA 
program, along with the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Bill 
Goodling), and when I was subcommittee chairman we enhanced and 
increased student loans by 50 percent by limiting the amount of 
bureaucracy.
  I think the overall aspect of the differences, as the gentleman said 
it right, we want to give people the freedom, instead of having 
government control their lives.
  I had a committee hearing. We had 16 different groups come in, and 
each of them had one of the best ideas in the whole world for education 
programs in their district. At the end of the hearing, I asked which of 
the 16 had any one of the other 15 in their districts, and not a single 
one.
  I said, that is the whole point. What we want is to get you the money 
directly, let you decide what is good for your particular district, 
because there may be a difference from San Diego, where the Speaker is 
from, and Maryland, or the gentleman from Colorado, and let the 
teachers, the families, and the community make those kinds of 
decisions.
  Yet, the big government way would be to take all 16 of them, spread 
them out, give very little money for them, and defuse all of them. That 
is what has happened over the last 40 years here.
  In the field of education, we want to get the money to the classroom. 
There is a bureaucracy group here that wants to keep it. I would ask 
the gentleman and I would ask the Speaker, I want to Members to look up 
on the Web page, and I will say it very slowly, www.dsausa.org. That 
stands for the Democrat Socialists of America.
  In there, their socialist agenda is government control of private 
property, just as the gentleman spoke of, where the government owns 
over 50 percent of the State where I belong, California. Yet, they want 
to enhance it even more. They want government-controlled health care, 
they want government control of education, they want the unions to have 
power over small business, because they support big government 
dominance. They want to pay for it by increasing our taxes to the 
highest progressive tax ever, and they want to pay for it also by 
cutting defense by one-half.
  In there is the Progressive Caucus. There are 58 Democrat members in 
the Democrat Caucus that are poster children in the Web page for the 
Democrat socialists of America, 58 of them on my left side.
  They want government control of health care. They want to tie up all 
the government lands, privately owned, to government control. If they 
cannot control it directly, they want to control it with the endangered 
species, they want to control it with OSHA, they want to control it 
with EPA, whatever. This is not the gentleman from California (Mr. Duke 
Cunningham) speaking, but on the Web page what their 12-point agenda 
is.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. If the gentleman would yield for a question, I just 
want to make sure I heard that correctly. He said there were how many 
Members?
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Fifty eight Members, Democrats, in the Progressive 
Caucus that are listed under the Democrat Socialists of America.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. They have allowed their names to be used in that 
official capacity?
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Their leadership is by the gentleman from Vermont 
(Mr. Bernie Sanders). He was elected as an Independent but is a 
practicing socialist. It is scary.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. I want to talk about really the bright line that 
separates the kind of direction in government, almost the kind of 
government that defines us as citizens in America by its definition and 
by its action versus what the gentleman and I stand for on the House 
Floor as members of the Republican Party, because with that line, many, 
many people are persuaded by the media and others that somehow we are 
all very similar around here; that Republicans and Democrats, there is 
very little difference among them.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Eighty-five percent of the media around here voted 
for Bill Clinton.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Quite right. My point is that with respect to 
education, for example, if we just use that example for a moment, we 
agree in the United States that there is a legitimate role for 
government to play in educating the American people; that utilizing 
public resources for the purpose of educating children, the poor, the 
rich, and those in between, is a worthwhile public goal and objective.
  Where we differ, however, is when it comes to the one-size-fits-all 
style of rules and regulations that treat the child in Washington, D.C. 
as though he is the same, as though he may live in Colorado or perhaps 
even in California; that across this great country, the same 
bureaucrats apply the same rules in the same way to the same level of 
expense, and it results not only in an economic model that cannot 
succeed and is doomed to failure from the beginning, but it robs the 
children of America of a rightful claim they have to a first rate 
education and freedom-based schools, and schools that deploy the 
concept of liberty in providing a whole assortment of educational 
objectives inspired by competition.

                              {time}  2245

  That is something that is very different between the two sides. That 
is the bright line, I would suggest, that separates the two parties.
  I am sure there are folks who are monitoring today's discussion here 
now who believe this is some kind of exaggeration. But the gentleman is 
right, there are individuals who primarily come from the opposite party 
who, on a daily basis, move forward on an agenda to consolidate the 
power of the people in Washington, D.C., to empower bureaucrats at the 
expense of American people, and to establish these gigantic 
bureaucracies that provide rewards for themselves politically at 
election time, but which are very, very different from the traditions 
that we have established in America over the 223 years since 
Independence Hall.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, look at the 
historical voting pattern of some of my colleagues on the other side. 
The President, when they took the majority, tried to get government 
health care. Not a single Republican or Democrat voted for it, it was 
so bad.
  Throughout the years, they have cut defense by almost half, and they 
still want to cut it even more. If we take a look at their control over 
the public lands like the gentleman talks about, where over 30 percent 
in the country and over 50 percent in the West is owned by the Federal 
Government, but, yet, they want it expanded by more.
  If we go down to Maryland and Virginia, we see expansive lands being 
soaked into conservancies which basically locks hunters and fishers and 
ranchers out of the land.
  Then we take a look at education, the direct lending program. We look 
at why most of us were against Goals 2000. Send the money to a State. 
If they want to run in that local school district a Goals 2000 without 
all the reporting, then that is fine. But then even under Goals 2000 
what happened, how they changed it when the Democrats took control, 
there were 14 ``wills'' in there. Under legal terms, ``will'' means you 
must. They said it was only voluntary. It is only voluntary if one 
wants the money.
  Then they tied other grants that say, for example, if one did not 
have Goals 2000, one did not have all these other voluntary grants, one 
never qualified for these other grants.
  I heard the gentleman say that Federal dollars only accounted for 7 
percent. But that 7 percent, with all those rules and regulations, 
controls a large percentage of the State money.
  IDEA is a classic example of how it is destroying and trial lawyers 
are destroying the public education system through establishing cottage 
organizations. Talk to Alan Burson. He was a former Clinton appointee, 
now the superintendent of schools. He said his biggest trouble is with 
trial lawyers and the unions trying to progress the California schools.

[[Page H1590]]

  Gray Davis is trying to make some changes, the new Governor, 
Democrat, in California. I am doing everything I can to help them both, 
because they are moving in the right direction of freeing up our 
schools, of making a transition when, over 40 years, they want to 
continue the same thing.
  We are 20th of all the industrialized nations, Mr. Speaker, 20th in 
math and science. California is last in literacy. For example, the 
President wanted a new literacy program. Three billion dollars in the 
last budget. It sounds great when one is last in literacy. There are 14 
of them in the Department of Education. Title I is one of those. We are 
saying let us eliminate 11 or 12 of them.
  Let us focus, instead of authorizing them here and funding them here, 
let us fund the ones that work up here and get rid of all the 
bureaucracy, because one is paying the salaries, one is paying the 
retirement, one is paying for the building, one is paying for the 
paperwork and the overhead; and that keeps the money going down to the 
classroom.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, the functional 
leverage that the Federal Government utilizes in many of these programs 
is something the gentleman from California referred to, or I guess the 
phrase he used earlier, and can be described in the following way: the 
Federal Government describes these programs as voluntary.
  If a school district or a State or an individual school wants to use 
the Federal funds that are set aside for a particular program, then 
they have to comply with the rules. But if they do not want the rules, 
they do not have to take the money.
  Now the fallacy of that is the origin of the money, because the money 
is confiscated from taxpayers back in the gentleman's home State and my 
home State of Colorado. We just have to visualize this.
  If we had to draw it out on a flowchart and look at it on an 
organizational chart or a map, the Federal Government taxes the income 
of the American people back home in our home States. That money comes 
back here to the Federal Government. It comes to us as policy makers in 
a budget in an appropriations process. We approve that money for the 
Federal Government, for the Clinton administration. That fund has grown 
over the years. They take that money, which rightfully belongs to the 
people, back home in our States and say, ``if you want it back, then 
you have to accept these rules. But you do not have to get the money 
back.''
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Oh, and by the way, Mr. Speaker, we are only going to 
give them 50 cents on the dollar because the other 50 cents funds the 
bureaucracy.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, it is already soaked up by bureaucracy. If 
one wants a portion of one's money back, then one has to play by our 
rules.
  They are more than willing to have one decline the rules in the 
program, because that just means they are able to give one's cash to 
somebody else and make them happy.
  So that really is the fallacy that I think many on the liberal side 
of the aisle, the Democrat side, fail to see; and that is, this money 
does not belong to the government. It did not originate here in 
Washington, D.C.
  We are talking about the hard-earned cash of the American people who 
work hard every day to make ends meet, to put food on their table, to 
put a roof over their head, to raise their children in a country that 
they believe to be an honorable and noble place in all the world. That 
is who owns that money. That is where it comes from.
  The people in Washington take it from them and give it back and 
suggest that we are going to give it back with strings attached, and it 
just does not work. We are for moving authority out of Washington, 
D.C., empowering States which have the rightful constitutional 
authority, by the way, to manage public schools and to establish school 
districts.
  I come to this microphone all the time and defy my Democrat friends 
on the other side of the aisle to show any reference in the 
Constitution to the Federal Government's authority to manage local 
schools. I submit it is not there. Not a single one has ever been able 
to come to these microphones and show where the Constitution 
specifically enumerates authority to this Congress to manage local 
schools. Yet we do it every day through these pseudo voluntary programs 
which are nothing more than Federal blackmail.

  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, let me give 
my colleagues another point. The President, when the gentleman was 
talking about taxes, I thought the height of conceit was the President 
first, when we wanted to give tax breaks back, called the American 
people selfish if they wanted their tax money back.
  Just 3 months ago, the President, when he heard we were going to give 
tax relief to working families, said that he is opposed to giving money 
back to working families because ``they may not know how to spend it 
wisely.'' That implies government knows how to do it better. I just 
totally disagree with that. It is not their money. It is the people's 
money that send it here in the first place, and we should give it back.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, it was not government that created a great 
country in America. It was always faith and belief in the American 
people, the ingenuity of the American individual, and the abundant 
spirit of those early pioneers and colonists and so on that defined our 
country as different than the rest of the world.
  It is an interesting thing that we often do not get a chance to 
consider too often here on the floor except for perhaps in these 
special orders, but in the Declaration of Independence, it was laid out 
very differently than the rest of the world had experienced up until 
that time, where we held certain truths to be self-evident, that we are 
all created equal and that we are all endowed by God with certain 
inalienable rights.
  This is different than what the people of England had known, and it 
is different than, frankly, anywhere in Europe had ever acknowledged or 
any other great political civilization up to that time. For them, power 
always came from the government, and it was distributed to the people 
usually based on a system of favoritism of sorts.
  But we decided it was very different here, that the people ultimately 
run the country. The gentleman from California and I, as individuals, 
not Members of Congress, but as individual citizens back home have a 
tremendous amount of authority that is loaned to representatives at 
election time.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield for just a 
second?
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Certainly I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I see we have been joined by the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), a member of the Committee on 
Education and the Workforce. I used to serve on the committee with the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) who is chairman of the 
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.
  The gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), along with GAO, the 
President's own department, identified 760 Federal education programs 
that take away, which is the reason we get less than half of every 
dollar down to education.
  I hope the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer) will yield to the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), because I think, of all of the 
people in this body, as far as seeing the waste and fraud that goes on 
in education from the Federal Government, the gentleman from Michigan 
(Mr. Hoekstra) has been there to find it out.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, it is my great pleasure to yield to the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra).
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman and apologize for 
being a little late. I had the opportunity to listen to some of the 
gentleman's discussion on education. I think he was talking about land 
use earlier.
  I thought it would be helpful for me to come and participate only so 
that I can in some ways learn from the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. 
Schaffer) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham), my 
colleague that we miss on the Committee on Education and the Workforce 
but who is now on the Committee on Appropriations. We actually have a 
great partnership in making sure that the dollars that we spend here in 
Washington actually get down to the local level.
  The gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer) and myself have had the 
opportunity to go around the country,

[[Page H1591]]

and we have been in 16 different States, we have been in the district 
of the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer), we have been in my 
district, where we have built a record of the good things that are 
happening in education. There are a lot of good things that are 
happening in education.
  As we have been in Colorado, as we have been in Michigan, as we have 
been in California, Ohio, Illinois, Milwaukee, New York, we have been 
in Kentucky, the thing that we have seen consistently is that education 
excels when people at the local level are given the freedom and the 
latitude to take the money that we give them, and they all come back 
and they say ``your dollars are critical, and they help us do some 
things that we might otherwise not be able to do,'' but they say, ``get 
the dollars down here, but then let us have the flexibility.''
  As the gentleman said, all these programs do not go to K through 12, 
the 760 programs. Some of them have nothing to do with K through 12 or 
higher ed. But we think that there is well over 500 programs that do go 
to K through 12 or higher ed. Each one of these are the funding stream. 
We call it a funnel or a silo. Each silo comes with a whole series of 
rules and regulations and applications. Once one gets the money, one 
has got to report back. Then one is audited.
  That is why, like the gentleman indicated, we believe that, when the 
American people send a dollar to Washington for education, somewhere 
between 60 cents or 70 cents, maybe as low as 50 cents, only 50 cents 
gets into a local classroom and an immediate impact to a child. Fifty 
cents, 60 cents gets lost in the bureaucracy. It gets lost in the red 
tape.
  We just appointed the conference committee today on Ed-Flex, which is 
intended to eliminate some of the bureaucracy, some of the red tape, 
and allow local school districts to make the decisions for the kids in 
their classrooms.
  I think it is a real step forward and a real opportunity and one that 
I hope we can build on through this Congress. Ed-Flex is only the 
beginning of a process of not eliminating Federal involvement, but 
really recognizing where the power and this partnership is. The power 
and the partnership is at the local level.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I would like the 
gentleman from Michigan maybe to discuss a little further, the Ed-Flex 
concept is one of essentially turning those dollars that we talked 
about earlier back to the States with fewer strings, fewer regulations 
attached. We are, perhaps, not to the point that some Americans would 
hope we are at where we could just leave that cash back at home in the 
States' pockets and let the States distribute these dollars directly 
without having them funneled through Washington and turn around and go 
back home to the States. But it is, it does signal a new direction.
  Trying to accomplish things in this body is sometimes like steering a 
barge. It takes a long time to make the turn. But it does signal, the 
Ed-Flex bill that we voted on today, the conference report, it does 
signal a new direction in where the Republican is taking the country 
with respect to education, realizing that States, school board members, 
State legislators, Governors, teachers, principals, administrators of 
all sorts have better ideas than we do here in Washington, better ideas 
than the administration does in the Department of Education.
  We can get these dollars directly to kids in a way that helps those 
children without encumbering those dollars and stealing them and having 
them lost in this mountain of bureaucracy back here in Washington. It 
is a new direction and an exciting one.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Cunningham).

                              {time}  2300

  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I know that firsthand, not secondhand. My wife is the 
Director of Administration at Encinitas Union School Districts in the 
State of California; my sister-in-law is the director for all special 
education for all San Diego City schools under Alan Burson, who I just 
spoke about.
  But charter schools were an initiative to try to do that same thing, 
to take away some of the rules and bureaucracy. The National Education 
Association fought us tooth, hook and nail against charter schools when 
they started, and Governor Wilson really pushed those in the State of 
California, and they have been successful.
  Another freedom that we would like to use is, and the President 
talked about our welfare reform bill, which he vetoed twice and he 
finally signed it, but we have less than half of welfare recipients on 
the roll now than we had before. Instead of the taxpayers having to pay 
out billions of dollars for welfare recipients, which the average was 
16 years on welfare, that is how bad it was, now those people are 
working, pridefully working, their children have a chance in society, 
and they are paying into the revenue stream. And guess what? The 
States, the governors, who do not have the flexibility right now, since 
they have one-half the welfare rolls and they have the dollars, they 
cannot take those welfare dollars and apply them to education. We want 
to allow the States to use that, the governors, to take that money and 
use it for education.
  I think those kinds of initiatives are going to improve our education 
system; freeing up the States to allow them to do these things without 
the red tape from Washington, D.C.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will further yield, we are shifting 
the barge, but there are powerful currents that are trying to put us 
back on the track that we have been in for the last 15 years.
  Take a look at the debate we had on the floor of the House here 
today. In the Senate, on Ed-Flex, they added a very simple amendment. 
They said for those school districts, or for the school districts that 
are getting money for reducing class size, for hiring additional 
teachers, there is another mandate out there from the Federal 
Government, which is funding for children with special needs. We 
promised local school districts in the State, we did not, I do not 
think any of us were here when that mandate went through, but 
Washington said we will cover 40 percent of that cost for these 
children with special needs. That is a priority for us in Washington. 
We are going to mandate that the States do it and we will pick up 40 
percent of the cost.
  Last year, we had a record percentage that we cover the cost. We were 
all the way up to, what, 11, maybe 12 percent? Somewhere between 11 and 
12 percent.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. The highest in over 30 years.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. The highest in over 30 years. And all they did in the 
Senate was, on the teacher funding, we know there is a tremendous 
burden on the local school for special ed, so we will give them the 
flexibility of either hiring teachers, because maybe they have already 
taken care of the class size issue, or they are struggling with a 
couple of different priorities. But rather than Washington coming in 
and saying they can only use the money for teachers, they wanted to say 
they can use the money for teachers or they can use the money for their 
special ed program.
  And we had a fairly spirited debate here on the floor of the House 
with one group saying hiring teachers is exactly what they should do 
with that money and they should not be able to use it for anything 
else. Luckily, we prevailed today in saying they have the flexibility 
of using it for teachers or using it for special ed so that the local 
school district can make that decision.
  I would think that local administrators, a local school board with 
parental involvement, is better equipped to make that very basic 
decision: Are we going to take this money and use it for addressing 
some of the needs in our special ed program or are we going to use it 
to reduce class size? Let the people at the local level decide.
  We won a skirmish in that process of moving the money and the 
decision-making back to the local level, but there are many here who 
believe that we know best what needs to go on in the local school 
districts. I have this litany that says we have a group of people here 
in Washington who believe that Washington ought to build our schools, 
hire our teachers, develop the curriculum, test our kids, buy 
technology, teach them about the arts, teach them about sex, teach them 
about drugs, feed them lunch, feed them breakfast, provide them with an 
after-school snack and have midnight

[[Page H1592]]

basketball. But other than that, it is their local school.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. If the gentleman will continue to yield to me for two 
quick examples. I want to give two quick examples in the way Federal 
regulations take the money away from the schools.
  First of all, the IDEA program. We could put in more money. We could 
put the 40 percent. But according to Alan Burson, a Clinton appointee, 
now the superintendent of San Diego City schools, he said the trial 
lawyers are eating up the money that we are giving special education 
and we are losing good teachers because they are having to go to the 
courts. They are not lawyers, but they are being forced out of special 
education. Teachers that just want to help kids.
  The second is that we had a bill that offered construction companies 
a tax incentive for school construction. The President vetoed that. We 
talk about smoke and mirrors, and they say, well, we are for the 
children. I asked them in the D.C. bill and also in the President's 
bill. He wants construction. He wants the Federal dollars to pay for 
it, not local dollars or tax breaks, because then it falls under Davis-
Bacon. The union wage. That costs 35 percent more than letting private 
contractors do it.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield only so that we can explain 
what Davis-Bacon is. Davis-Bacon means that there are bureaucrats here 
in the Labor Department who send out forms all around the country and 
say that in Detroit the prevailing wage for an asphalt layer is X 
amount of dollars, and in Holland, Michigan, where I am from, it is X 
amount of dollars. And then if the school builds a project using even 
$1 dollar of Federal money, they have to pay these ``prevailing 
wages''. They are inflated wages.
  I believe that the average age of one of these surveys is 7 years 
old. I mean it is not even up-to-date data.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. The point that is important is that it is an inflated 
wage. In Washington, D.C. we could have saved millions of dollars for 
waiving Davis-Bacon for school construction here because the schools 
were falling apart.
  What I am going to do is offer an amendment. The President wants 
school construction. If he really wants to help the children, let us 
waive Davis-Bacon for school construction. Let the schools on the local 
level save the 35 percent and let them decide if they need more 
teachers, or if they need more school construction, of if they need 
money for special education. Give them the freedom.

  Do my colleagues think the unions and the trial lawyers are going to 
support that? No. They will tell everyone they are for the children, 
but when it comes down to it, they will support the unions and the 
trial lawyers over the children, and that is what is upsetting about 
this. We want people to do it. They want to waste the money here 
through bureaucracy and they want to waste it through unions and they 
want to waste it through trial lawyers that take away the money we give 
to the schools.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think we need to take the same kind of fresh approach 
on education that we took on welfare.
  In the welfare debate, if my colleagues will remember, the governors 
came to us and said we have plans and ideas to help those people who 
are on welfare, but we have to go to Health and Human Services and we 
have to ask for waivers. We have plans that are approved by our State 
legislature, a lot of times in a bipartisan way. The executive in the 
State has agreed to it, and we come here to Washington and we have a 
bureaucrat who says, no, we cannot do that.
  Now, I have to say, wait a minute, who do we think is going to take 
better care of the people in our States, those who are elected and 
serving in that State legislature or in the Governor's mansion or some 
bureaucrat here in Washington?
  We really need to do the same kind of thing on education, where there 
are governors that are coming here and they are saying we get 7 to 10 
percent of our money from Washington and we get 50 percent of our 
paperwork, all of our rules and regulations, from Washington. We have 
some States that are experimenting with one form of charter schools, 
others are experimenting with scholarships to students or tax credits 
for extra instructional assistance, and they say we have great ideas 
that are having an impact, but the Federal Government is holding us 
back from what we really think will help our kids.
  So we need to bring the same kind of fresh thinking to reforming 
education or the education monster here in Washington so that we can 
actually go out and effectively help children at the local level.

                              {time}  2310

  I think we are on our way to begin that process, but we do definitely 
have a significant way to go.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. I would like to point out, my colleague mentioned the 
welfare model as a perfect example of what we can anticipate by 
focusing on a decentralized strong State approach to education reform. 
Again, using welfare as a model, just even a year or so after the 
Welfare Reform Bill was passed, we saw headlines like these that I 
saved from Colorado: ``Welfare Rolls Dropped 25 Percent.'' That was in 
one year. Welfare rolls have now dropped 43 percent in 18 months.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman would continue to yield, would it not 
be great if we did education reform and we started reading headlines 
that said, test scores improve by 25 percent, math and science scores 
up by 25 percent?
  Mr. SCHAFFER. That was my point exactly. 6,730 fewer families on 
welfare. This was in Colorado. And this was just 12 months after the 
Welfare Reform Bill pass. ``Workers Coming Off Welfare to Get Job 
Help'' is another of headline.
  I just use these as examples. Because what we saw is, when the 
Congress moved authority out of Washington with respect to welfare, put 
governors and state legislators in charge to apply local values, local 
solutions to local problems, we saw welfare numbers drop dramatically 
throughout the country, about a 35 percent reduction in the welfare 
case load nationwide, 43 percent in Colorado.
  I again use that as an example to show that freedom works, that 
liberating States works. And we can see our low test scores come up if 
we give States the authority to help them come up. We can see crime in 
schools and discipline problems in schools be reduced if we give local 
authorities the ability to create and design programs that they know 
will work locally.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I want to play off the welfare thing, because as we are 
doing welfare correctly and improving the system, I really want the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham) to reinforce the point that 
he made earlier that says, as we are reducing the amount of money that 
we are spending in welfare, maybe we are freeing up some of that money 
so that it can be used on education.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I would. And not a single one of the 
Members that I spoke about on that DSAUSA.org and the 58 Members that 
are listed in that in the progressive caucus, not a single one of them 
voted for the balanced budget. Not a single one of them voted for 
welfare reform. They all voted against tax relief. And that is there 
agenda.
  Mr. Speaker, this is an easy way to remember what we are going to do 
over the next 2 years, and I want my colleagues to remember this. It is 
called best schools in military. B is for balanced budget. E is for 
education reform. S is for saving Social Security. T is for tax relief. 
Schools, different from education, is the infrastructure in schools 
construction to get the money there to do that. And military is to beef 
up, which we have not talked about, which is in sad shape and emergency 
shape. It is our defense. Those are the agenda items that we are going 
to focus on in this next Congress.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, I once again want to reemphasize the 
general theme that we have spoken about tonight, whether it was the 
opening remarks I had made about property rights or discussion about 
Social Security, balancing the budget, tax reform, fixing our schools, 
or even providing a national defense, which is something we did not 
discuss much tonight.
  But that is the focus of a Republican party who has taken the 
majority here since 1995 and moving forward boldly in an effort to get 
our Government back to its constitutional authority, to move authority 
out of Washington, D.C., return authority back to the

[[Page H1593]]

States and to the people ultimately, to talk about strategies to 
decentralize education bureaucracy and move real decision-making back 
to our parents and school board members and administrators.
  In the end, that is the truest expression of compassion and a caring, 
humanitarian, conservative agenda that we stand for here on the House 
floor, to treat families as though they matter, to treat children like 
real Americans, and treat teachers like real professionals.

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