[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 95 (Wednesday, June 30, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H5170-H5176]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
COLORADO CATTLE CONCERNS
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Terry). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer)
is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to invite those Members of
the Republican Conference who may be monitoring tonight's proceedings
and have something that they would like to add in the next hour during
this special order to come on down to the floor and join in. I secure
this hour every now and then on behalf of the Republican Conference
just for that purpose.
One of the topics I wanted to discuss was with respect to some good
news in agriculture over the last couple of weeks. Because while the
bull is still loose on Wall Street, months after the analysts and
pundits first began warning in ernest of overpriced stocks and
certainly financial meltdowns, another young crop of fresh-from-
college-20-somethings with a computer and a catchy slogan has launched
their initial public offerings and made millions.
Granted, short of cashing in their stock options, their net worth is
only on paper and few Internet start-ups have yet to post real profits.
But the investor cash fueling the IPO madness is real, and leading
economic indicators suggest no predicted slowdown in the economy.
{time} 1845
Consumer spending is up while unemployment rates are down. Business
sector productivity, personal income and new home starts, all important
indicators, are all on the rise.
Yet while that bull stampedes through the streets of New York, many
of the cattle along the dusty cattle roads of eastern Colorado are
going nowhere. That just might change soon. Until this month, the
Clinton administration has done little to help America's cattle
industry and cattle ranchers in their decades-long trade dispute with
the European Union over U.S. growth hormones which meant that
Colorado's cattle intended for slaughter and export to European
consumers were banned and banned on the basis of dubious science.
Under prior World Trade Organization rulings, the European Union was
required to drop its ban on U.S. beef imports absent risk assessments
and scientific justificaton by May 13, 1999. The European Union refused
to do so and in response the United States was notified of the World
Trade Organization's intent to impose a 100 percent retaliatory tariff
on approximately $202 million of European Union products. This level of
retaliation is estimated to be far short of the true value of U.S. beef
that would be exported to the European Union absent the ban, but it is
enough to get the attention of those nations which might utilize unfair
trade tactics in the future.
Colorado agriculture increasingly depends upon the export market to
expand sales and increase revenues and to expand world trade and
agriculture has a significant impact on both the U.S. trade balance and
on specific commodities and individual farmers. The cards are stacked
against farmers and ranchers to begin with. No sector of the economy is
subject to more international trade barriers than agriculture. The
import quotas, high tariffs, government-buying monopolies and import
bans imposed by other nations coupled with the overwhelming number of
trade sanctions and embargoes imposed on other countries by our own
government cost the American agriculture industry billions of dollars
each year in lost export opportunities. These barriers continue to grow
despite the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, GATT, and the North
American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. Without question, they are
devastating the ability for American producers to compete effectively,
particularly at a time when exports now account for over 30 percent of
U.S. farm cash receipts and nearly 40 percent of all agricultural
production.
This particular dispute over the presence of growth-promoting
hormones dates back to 1989 when the European Union put into effect a
ban on the production and importation of meat containing such
compounds. Growth-promoting hormones are widely used in the United
States as well as other top meat exporting countries to speed up growth
rates and produce leaner meat for consumers who display an increasing
preference for reduced fat and cholesterol diets. Hormones used within
the U.S. are regulated by the United States Department of Agriculture
and are ones which occur naturally in an animal's body or that mimic
naturally occurring compounds. The European Union banned the production
and importation of meat derived from animals treated with hormones
following an incident where a young boy was harmed after ingesting a
concentrated quantity of an unregulated hormone produced in Europe.
Citing extensive scientific evidence that U.S. growth hormones have
been proven safe, the United States challenged the European Union's ban
on the basis that it violates a 1994 Uruguay Round agreement on
sanitary and phytosanitary measures. The sanitary and phytosanitary
standards agreement requires a scientific basis for measures which
restrict trade based on health or safety concerns. The World Trade
Organization ruled in 1997 that the ban did indeed violate several
provisions of those sanitary and phytosanitary standards agreements and
ordered the European Union to eliminate the meat hormone ban by May 13,
1999. When the ban was not lifted last month, the United States decided
to take action in the form of retaliatory tariffs.
Mr. Speaker, it is difficult to pick up a newspaper today without
reading about the extraordinary resilience of the United States economy
and the significant profits being reaped by corporations and investors
alike. Yet it is also difficult for me and other Members of Congress
representing rural districts to talk with our neighbors back home,
conduct town meetings or read through our constituent mail without
learning of yet more foreclosures, defaults and farm auctions. Most of
these people are not sharing in the windfall. Indeed, farm country is
still in serious trouble and there is no evidence things are getting
better. Low commodity prices, disease, weather-related problems,
coupled with declining export opportunities, weak demand and
overregulation have taken a devastating toll on agriculture. Real farm
income has fallen dramatically over the last 2 years and real families
are feeling the effects. While Congress recently helped
[[Page H5171]]
stave off disaster in rural America with an emergency assistance
package, it is evident that more needs to be done and more needs to be
done to establish real long-term solutions across the board. That is
why the decision to retaliate against the European Union for its unfair
ban on U.S. beef, even if for just a fraction of the overall monetary
damage to the U.S. and U.S. producers, is a step in the right direction
and a significant win for Colorado ranchers and farmers, and I would
submit for ranchers and farmers throughout the rest of the country.
It is abundantly clear that in addition to free trade, America must
guarantee fair trade. If I, other members of the majority and my
colleagues on the House Committee on Agriculture can continue to compel
the Clinton administration to pursue additional rightful corrective
actions like this one, it might just give our farmers and ranchers back
home a fighting chance and allow them to run with the bulls.
I recently had an opportunity to hear back from a number of State
legislators in Colorado. Their concern on the floor of the Colorado
House of Representatives was one for another economic issue, in this
case the cause of balancing our Federal budget. As State legislators,
my former colleagues and current friends in the General Assembly
realize that it is important for the Federal Government to get its
financial house in order. The State legislature recently sent to
Congress a resolution that it adopted in both houses of the State
legislature. It is a House Joint Resolution, 99-1016. It is based on a
number of items. The resolution was drafted and offered by State
Representative Penn Pfiffner from Colorado and also State Senator Ken
Arnold from Adams County in Colorado. It concerns the General
Assembly's support for legislation that would require a balanced
Federal budget and the repayment of the national debt.
They cite a number of statistics, that the Federal Government has
accumulated a $70 billion budget surplus in 1998, the first surplus
since 1969, and is considering policies for using that 1998 surplus and
expected surpluses for 1999 and future years.
The Federal Government has amassed a national debt of more than $5.7
trillion and in 1999 Federal tax dollars will be used to pay $357
billion in interest just to the national debt.
The costs of servicing the national debt have become an increasingly
large portion of the Federal budget, rising from under 10 percent of
the budget back in 1978 to 22 percent of the budget in 1997.
Paying down the national debt will relieve future generations of the
burden of paying the costs of servicing the national debt, says the
Colorado State General Assembly, and they are right.
Paying down the national debt does not exclude the use of Federal
moneys for tax relief or for saving Social Security for future
generations.
Paying down the national debt will foster economic growth and
stability.
The American Debt Repayment Act which provides for budgetary reform
by requiring a balanced Federal budget for each year beginning with
Federal fiscal year 2000 and requiring a repayment of the entire
national debt by the end of Federal fiscal year 2029 has been
introduced in both houses, here and in the other body across the hall.
The Colorado General Assembly urges the Congress in the following
way. It says:
Be it resolved by the House of Representatives of the 62nd General
Assembly of the State of Colorado, the Senate concurring herein:
Number one, that we, the members of the General Assembly, support the
objectives of the American Debt Repayment Act to pay down the national
debt and maintain a balanced Federal budget; and, two, that the members
of the General Assembly strongly urge the United States Congress to
commit to a plan to repay the national debt before approving a budget
resolution.
These kinds of resolutions, Mr. Speaker, are important. States adopt
these kinds of resolutions in their State General Assemblies on a
routine basis. This is just one example. It is signed in this case by
the Speaker of the House, Russell George, and the President of the
Colorado State Senate, Ray Powers. These resolutions are taken to heart
and utilized by many of us here in Washington. These are the voices of
the front lines when it comes to government. In our strong tradition of
federalism, we, of course, have separated the duties and
responsibilities of governing our great Nation into generally three
levels, the local level, the State level and the Federal level, and I
am one who fundamentally believes as the 10th amendment to the U.S.
Constitution suggests that it is States that bear the greatest
responsibility in organizing and leading our societies through the
political process. And so when States issue memorandum such as these
and memorialize Congress to act in a certain way, Members of Congress
should take heed, Members of Congress should pay attention, Members of
Congress should respect the opinions of those who truly are on the
front lines of leading our society. Those 50, as a Supreme Court
Justice once observed, laboratories of democracy, the States, really do
understand the importance of a strong economy and a responsible Federal
budget and a responsible Congress when it comes to managing the fiscal
affairs of the entire Nation.
I want to jump to another subject for a moment. This is a much more
personal one but one that is being carried out in a public way. I met a
woman recently, I was speaking at an education conference in the State
of Florida and a woman after the conference came up and gave me her
business card and gave me some information about a program that she
runs, because in the discussion about education and looking out for the
future and the well-being of our children, she has a program that she
has initiated and is carrying out with great success in Florida that
she told me about and asked me if I would not come to this floor at
some point in time and share her thoughts and her objectives of her
program with my colleagues. Her name is Tina Hesse. She is the
abstinence coordinator for the Brandon Crisis Pregnancy Center in
Brandon, Florida. She is one who comes to this particular mission of
hers with tremendous commitment and compassion. She is one who has a
personal story to tell and one who found herself at a young age to be
with child and her credibility on the matter is one that she utilizes
in a very positive way now to reach out to a number of young children
all across Florida and hopefully even tonight throughout the country,
because when she gives her presentation on teen sexual abstinence in
high schools, her message is a personal one.
She says, and I quote, I had a teen pregnancy when I was in high
school, so I know where kids are in terms of their contemplation of
sexual activity.
She is 31 years old now and delivers a very powerful message to
children, primarily in schools but in other settings as well. Her
program is called ``Be the One'' which began as a West Palm Beach
pregnancy center program in the early 1990s. Hesse said the program
title means be the one to wait to have sex.
There is a quote in an article that I am referencing here from the
Tampa Tribune, May 20, 1999:
Hillsborough Secondary Education Supervisor Tom Schlarbaum, who
approved the abstinence program, describes Hillsborough's present sex
education program as abstinence-based compared to the abstinence-only
approach of ``Be the One'' but he says, ``The abstinence-only focus
gives teachers another way to get a different message across.'' In his
opinion it is an important one.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.
Mr. KINGSTON. I wanted to point out on the subject of welfare reform
just how well our country has done since the welfare reform.
Approximately 42 percent of the people who were on welfare in 1994
are off welfare now. We kind of take it for granted, well, welfare
reform is working, but if we go back and we look at the struggle we had
getting common sense welfare reform that was compassionate in that it
wanted to help people, not push anybody out the door, not cut off
anybody's insurance benefit or transportation or housing, yet at the
same time say if you are able to work, you ought to be required to
work. Yet despite that, the President vetoed the bill twice. The
minority leader, Dick Gephardt, said this on the floor of the House in
March 1995:
``A Republican welfare bill will throw millions of children out on
the street
[[Page H5172]]
without doing anything to move people from welfare to work.''
{time} 1900
The gentlewoman from Hawaii (Mrs. Mink) said on July 17, 1996, it
grieves me to be here this evening to see the end of a period of almost
60 years in which this country's belief in its responsibility to the
poor is going to be shattered. This is not reform. This is destruction
of the basic guarantees of our democracy.
Here is Representative Sam Gibbons on the floor, March 21, 1995: If
Attilla the Hun were alive today and elected to Congress, he would be
delighted with this bill that is here before us, and proud to cast his
vote for H.R. 4, the Personal Responsibility Act. It is the most
callous, cold-hearted, just listen to this rhetoric, the most callous,
cold-hearted and mean-spirited attack on this country that I have ever
seen in my life; just fighting that kind of irresponsible rhetoric to
the rolls decreasing that were on welfare, people working, people
feeling good about themselves, the teen pregnancy rates going down, the
crime rates going down; people like this woman who are back in the
education system or back in the workforce feeling good, happy,
independent, no longer shackled by this government system which
encourages dependence.
Mr. SCHAFFER. If the gentleman remembers, at the time when that
debate was unfolding here on the House Floor, the gentleman is right
that a number of the more liberal Members of Congress, who view the
government as the primary entity in organizing our society, believed
that the American people really would not rally around the cause of
helping the poor, of helping those who have become dependent on a
welfare system, not just dependent but locked into a cycle of poverty
that seemed to be never ending; that these liberals on the House floor
who came to believe and approached the debate from the perspective
that, my goodness, nobody else will be able to stand in the balance.
I appreciate the comments about the reduction in teen pregnancy and
what a positive result that has had. People like Tina Hess have really
filled the void where government once was viewed as the sole provider
of these kinds of services. She is one who has found a way, through a
nonprofit corporation, to go into schools and deliver a curriculum that
is helping to continue to reduce these numbers.
Let me read one more final quote from one of the students. She said
that the slides on sexually transmitted diseases show students how
their lives can become miserable. A lot of teens think AIDS, or STDs,
sexually transmitted diseases, will never happen to them but after a
presentation at a school called Bloomingdale last week, one student
wrote, and I am quoting the letter from the student, all this talk
about pregnancy and STDs is going to make me stay a virgin until I am
ready.
Now that is the kind of response that has really flourished
throughout the country where those who have made some poor decisions,
but who also take their role as citizens seriously, have managed to
provide a real leadership role in the community to help drive these
welfare case numbers down. It is remarkable.
In States like mine out in Colorado, over the last 2 years there are
now 50 percent fewer families on welfare than there were just 2 years
ago.
Mr. KINGSTON. In the testimony of the people, here is a bus driver in
Milwaukee, when welfare reform first started there were a lot of
complaints; people were afraid how they would fit in. Everything was
new and different, but now many people have gotten into it and the
morale and self-esteem has been boosted. We can tell they feel good.
Most of the people are happy, too. Look into their eyes. They are
happy. The eyes tell no lies.
Here is a former welfare mother: I could have succeeded long ago but
I had kids and I was an over protective mother. I did take advantage of
the welfare system, but now we are not living month-to-month running
out of food. I earn $11.49 an hour. I am still in poverty but I know it
is not going to last forever. Just a total turnaround.
Here is an article from the New York Times, July 27, 1998: With
caseloads falling at a startling pace for minorities as well as whites,
taxpayers seem well satisfied with the new ethos of time limits and
work demands, and yet here again going back to 1995 here was a quote
from one of our colleagues, they are coming for the sick, the elderly,
the disabled. I say to my colleagues, we have the ability, the
capacity, the power to stop this onslaught. Another one said that
welfare reform was like Nazi Germany.
So often we in our society seem to work ourselves up into a froth;
fear of the unknown. What we need to do is to have a little more self-
confidence and self-reliance.
I love the story from the gentleman about this educator also.
We have passed in this Congress, under Speaker Hastert, the
Educational Flexibility Act, which has already passed the Senate and
signed by the President, but the ed-flex bill gives local school
systems more control, less Washington micromanagement, less bureaucracy
breathing down their necks. Now, even though that is successful, we are
starting it and most school systems say, yes, we want to run our show
locally, we are trying to go a little bit further and do something
called Straight A. What the Straight A program calls for is a charter
between individual States and the Federal Government, and basically the
Federal Government says that if the States meet certain outcomes and
have high results, then we will free them from certain Federal
regulations.
My school boards in the 18 counties that I represent in southeast
Georgia, they are ready for that. They know they have the ability to
educate children better in Georgia than Washington can educate Georgia
children. So they are confident about it.
I am sure in Colorado, and I visited the gentleman's people, they are
full of that good old western pride that made our country so strong and
they are as independent as anybody. I am sure they are going to be
delighted to get into this Straight As program.
Mr. SCHAFFER. Absolutely.
Our governor, Governor Bill Owens, is one who is looking forward to a
day when there is greater flexibility to allow not only him but the
rest of the Colorado General Assembly, and not to mention our school
board leaders who are elected officials accountable directly to the
people, these are the folks where they actually know the names of the
students and the teachers and the administrators, all of these folks
are looking forward to the day when they will be unleashed from the
Federal rules and regulations that hamper their ability to teach
children in an effective way.
We spend billions of dollars here in Washington and yet for the
billions we spend the actual proportion of Federal funds that actually
reach a classroom is relatively small, somewhere on the order of 7, 6,
sometimes as high as 9 percent, in some needy or poorer school
districts, but for that small, relatively small, portion of Federal
funds that make up an overall classroom budget, the strings and the red
tape and the requirements and mandates attached to that minority of
cash is overpowering.
There are school districts in my State that have to hire people just
to fill out the Federal paperwork so that they can get the money.
This is money that comes to Washington. The American taxpayers are
working hard every day and paying their taxes. The money comes here to
Washington, D.C. The Congress then, through its formulas and so on,
divvies up this cash in a variety of ways and then there is this huge
bureaucracy not too far from where we are now that then goes to work on
this money. By the time that cash makes its way back to Colorado and
back to the State of Georgia and every other State in the Union, there
is just a fraction left for the kids.
That is what our Straight As proposal is designed to resolve, not to
spend more money in Washington. We do not need to do that. We can
actually increase the proportion of dollars that make it to a child by
cutting all these silly rules and regulations.
I know there are people over there in the Department of Education who
are nervous about this discussion, nervous about the debate and they
oppose straight As, and with good reason. Our goal is to get rid of a
lot of those people. I will be candid and frank with the gentleman and
with them and with the American people. I frankly care more about my
children in public schools
[[Page H5173]]
and all of the children of my friends and neighbors back in Colorado
than I do about these people down the street here in the Department of
Education. I want the money to get to the kids and to the teachers who
know how to teach, rather than the bureaucrats who know how to provide
paperwork and produce more headaches for communities around the
country.
This Straight As proposal, it is a big thing. There are 760 Federal
education programs. The ed-flex bill that we passed dealt with, I
think, 9 of them; 9 significant ones. It was a big step in the right
direction.
To follow up, to take the next logical step, to show the American
people that we are serious about moving authority out of Washington and
empowering our local communities, this Straight As proposal is a
significant one.
I might add that we have almost 100 cosponsors now in this Congress,
including on our side of the aisle, the Republican side, every Member
of that committee is on board, every Member of our Republican
leadership is on board. It is a bipartisan bill. We have Democrats who
are cosponsors of Straight As. This is a big initiative and an exciting
one, and the gentleman is right, before I turn it back over to the
gentleman, to suggest that the education leaders in my State, and I
would bet in the State of the gentleman also, and the other 48 states,
are really getting excited about the prospect of receiving their cash
back without Federal strings attached.
Mr. KINGSTON. I think that the question also on the subject of money
is, do we want the dollars that we earn, that we work hard 40, 50, 60
hours a week for, do we want that money, those tax dollars, that
portion of our income, to go to a bureaucrat in Washington or do we
want it to go to a teacher in a classroom?
One of the things we have been pushing are more dollars to the
classroom, not tripling the bureaucracy in Washington who is
micromanaging our school system, and I think that is important. I think
the local flexibility is the key, though.
In Colorado, the gentleman certainly had the big tragedy in Littleton
that we are all aggrieved about, but we need to ask ourselves, maybe
Washington is, in fact, part of the problem. Maybe pushing large,
impersonal schools, where the teachers do not know the students as
well, maybe the teachers are afraid to question kids who are acting
suspicious or odd or peculiar because they are afraid of being sued
themselves, and this kind of atmosphere really has been fostered by
this large centralized government that has grown in the last 10 years
in our country.
If people could run their own communities, their own schools and
their own lives, I think we would have a much better society.
It is interesting, while this administration rushes out after the
Littleton tragedy to pass more gun control laws, they have completely
ignored the fact that last year there were only 8 prosecutions for
possession or discharge of a firearm in a school zone, and only 8
prosecutions for possession of a handgun or ammunition by a juvenile,
and 6 prosecutions for the transfer of a handgun or ammunition to a
juvenile.
As the gentleman knows, in Littleton 23 existing gun control laws
were broken. We have all of these on the books, but this administration
is not prosecuting. What a difference it would make if they would
prosecute. We do not know how it would have affected Littleton, but we
do know that there are a lot of laws on the books that this
administration, this Justice Department, has chosen not to enforce.
Mr. SCHAFFER. Right.
Mr. KINGSTON. I think it could make a tremendous difference.
Mr. SCHAFFER. The whole theme here is one of local government. Local
government is the closest to the people, the most accountable to those
who are paying the taxes, and all three of these topics that we have
discussed here really center around the theme of local authority and
the notion that centralizing power and decision-making in Washington is
a recipe for failure.
Going back to the welfare issue, when the debate took place on
whether to reform the welfare system, the gentleman is right, there are
people who said we cannot watch Washington give this authority up; it
will hurt people.
We are seeing now in the debate on education reform the exact same
dynamics. People here in Washington are saying, wait a minute; we
cannot cut the Federal bureaucracy in Washington. That will hurt
schools.
Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will stop there.
Mr. SCHAFFER. Sure.
Mr. KINGSTON. This particular president has been very wise in
appealing to the population of the country. He talks about less
Washington power and welfare reform, even though he vetoed the bill
twice. He talks about more control of education locally. Now,
unfortunately, we know, after 7 years that he does not always do what
he says he is going to do, but maybe all politicians are that way, at
least a little bit.
{time} 1915
But it is interesting that members of his party are often out of step
with what he is in fact saying himself.
In a case in point, in social security, we had a long debate about
the lockbox concept, and the concept of a lockbox is so that the
Federal government would quit mixing social security funds for peoples'
retirement with operating expenses to run government agencies. We
passed that after a long debate. There were a lot of procedural tactics
to keep the bill off the floor, but once it got on the floor it was
passed on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis.
It went to the Senate, which up until this week has not moved on the
bill and had no plans to move on it until the President finally came
around and said it. But it is that fear, the fear-mongering that we
hear over and over again. It is the same people saying the same
irresponsible things to scare America's educators, America's children,
America's seniors, the environment, and whatever. It is just a fear-
mongering tactic.
Somehow, once we get through there, it is not as bad as they thought,
for some reason.
Mr. SCHAFFER. It is the culture of Washington that suggests to all of
us here when we become a Member of Congress that no one in America can
lead a successful life without somebody from the Federal government
getting involved in their day-to-day affairs.
The gentleman and I came here as part of a new Republican majority to
throw that type of mentality out of the city. It is taking a long time.
That mentality that I just described has deep roots in this town. But
systematically, day by day, we are proving them wrong. We are showing
that trusting the American people is a recipe for success, and we are
seeing it now with an economy that is just cruising along and doing
extraordinarily well. We are seeing that now with a discussion on the
House floor and over in the White House about what to do with surplus
revenues, if Members can imagine that.
We are now talking about millions of Americans who are no longer
dependent on the welfare system because we trusted local and State
governments and the ingenuity of the American people to pull themselves
up by their bootstraps. We just helped the Federal government get out
of the way. That works.
Listen to this quote, going back to the welfare discussion for a
moment. ``The AFDC world is very insular.'' I am reading a quote from a
high school counselor in Milwaukee, AFDC being the Aid to Families With
Dependent Children program, which is really one of the primary programs
in welfare.
Mr. KINGSTON. Which incidentally is now temporary aid to needy
families.
Mr. SCHAFFER. He says the AFDC world was very insular. ``I don't
think people left their neighborhoods. Now we are seeing a lot of
mobility, people getting out more, families having a lot more exposure
to services, like counseling and parenting classes. It seems like
everywhere I go there is a sense of business in the streets, a lot of
activity.''
For a high school guidance counselor to make these observations in
Milwaukee tells us where he is making these observations. He is seeing
this in his children that he is serving. He is seeing this in the
neighborhoods, where education becomes the important order of the day.
I think the message of this high school guidance counselor and others
who make these same observations is a
[[Page H5174]]
message that needs to be told at the time we are debating education
reform. It is the next step. If welfare reform worked by getting the
Federal government out of the way, by empowering States, empowering
local communities, and treating Americans like Americans again, perhaps
we ought to try the same thing when it comes to schools: Get the
Federal government and its 760 Federal programs out of the way, and let
those principals and administrators and locally-elected school board
members and teachers and parents do what they know how to do, which is
teach children and care about them and build strong communities.
Mr. KINGSTON. I think it has worked for welfare reform, and we need
to, I think, be bold in our initiatives with social security, with
Medicare, with tax relief, and all of our other issues that we are
dealing with in this Congress.
The agenda, as the gentleman knows, that we are working on under the
gentleman from Illinois (Speaker Hastert) is the BEST agenda.
B is for building a strong military, one that can fight a war on two
fronts, defend our country, one that is ready and modernized and has a
good quality of life for the soldiers; E, E is for education, local
control, excellence in education; S is for saving social security; and
T is for lowering taxes through spending reductions and through revenue
that does not go to social security.
One of the interesting things on the tax relief is that right now
Federal taxes currently consume 21 percent of America's gross domestic
product, the highest percentage in the history of our country.
Last year tax revenues grew by about 9 percent, and the average
American now works 129 days in order to pay off their total tax bill.
This is an all-time high. When the gentleman and I were raised, our
parents, say in the fifties, paid 5 percent Federal income tax on
average. In the 1970s it was 16 percent. Today it is 25 percent Federal
income taxes.
What is really telling to me is that individuals and families who are
earning $50,000 a year pay about 82 percent of the total Federal income
tax revenue. Let me repeat that. Individuals and families earning
$50,000, and I suspect that would probably be about 90 percent of the
people who watch C-Span, they are paying 82 percent of the total income
revenue, income tax revenues to the Federal government. That is a huge
disproportionate tax burden.
Mr. SCHAFFER. They are overpaying, too. The interesting thing about
Washington, and what may frustrate many of these taxpayers who are
working hard and know where every dollar of their income goes and where
their taxes hurt, I turned on the news yesterday and discovered that
the President of the United States woke up yesterday and found $1
trillion laying around, discovered that there is $1 trillion in
additional surplus revenue that the Federal government has all of a
sudden found.
That is a great thing, I think. What it shows is that the economy was
even stronger than they realized over at the White House; that the
entrepreneurial spirit of the American people is even more inspired
than perhaps the White House gave it credit for.
Mr. KINGSTON. Let me say this about that surplus that people often
are missing in Washington. That surplus is projected on unrealistic
spending restraints. We can say, we are going to have this surplus, but
that is making a huge, a huge assumption that we are going to continue
on a very moderate spending path which the gentleman and I know every
day a new special interest group comes to us and says, break these
spending caps, spend more than projected.
To me, that is one thing that is wrong with the surplus. The other
thing is, as the gentleman has already pointed out, it makes a big
assumption that the economy is going to continue to roll along at the
current rate.
Mr. SCHAFFER. That is right. In order to make that happen and to
encourage that kind of economic growth, the kind that we have
experienced over the last 6 years, we have to make sure we do the right
things that help foster economic growth.
I want to ask the gentleman, just in terms of speculation and knowing
the nature of the city, when there are extra dollars laying around,
whether they are real or perceived extra dollars, can the gentleman
define for the House what the gentleman thinks the debate will be over
the next few months or years around this $1 trillion surplus that the
President tripped over yesterday and accidentally discovered?
What does the gentleman think will happen next on the House floor?
Does the gentleman think we will have the courage to give that money
back to the taxpayers?
Mr. KINGSTON. There is a double-edged sword to bragging about the
surplus. Number one, when we go out and talk about the surplus, we feel
good politically because we say, look, some of our policies have
worked, and for the first time since 1969 when Woodstock was held at
Yasgur's farm, the budget now is balanced, or it is not in deficit.
There is still this huge Federal debt, but just the annual spending is
not a deficit. So there is a political punch to Democrats and
Republicans about it.
But the down side is that we are also sending a signal out to the
special interest groups that, hey, there is plenty of money here, come
and get it, and wink wink, nobody will mind if we break our spending
caps, the bipartisan budget agreement of 1997, because we have new
money, and no one likes new money better than Washington's special
interest groups.
I am a member of the Committee on Appropriations, but it is not
unique to us at all. Every single day a new group comes up and asks us
to break that spending cap, that 1997 agreement. There are legitimate
concerns. It is not just coming up with frivolous things, it is just
that hey, we have legitimate concerns, and do we really have to go back
and do the hard work of reinventing government or reinventing the
status quo and figure out a better way to build a mousetrap? Can't you
just give us more money this year? We hear it from health care, from
education, from all kind of government bureaucracies.
I am very, very concerned that that anticipated surplus is not going
to be as large as we want it to be because we are going to use it as an
excuse to relax our austerity.
Mr. SCHAFFER. That is actually the point I wanted to make, because I
do not care who we are, whether we are a liberal over there in the
White House or on the other side from where we stand, we do not just
find $1 trillion laying around. We either know it was there, or maybe a
portion of it. We just do not magically wake up one day and discover,
hey, we have $1 trillion more cash than we thought.
The point I was intending to get to here is this: That waving that $1
trillion surplus figure around to the American people really does send
the green light, it sends the go signal to all of the lobbyists, all of
the special interests, and even to many Members of this very Congress
that, start smiling, it is time to spend again. We have money laying
around.
We really do not have huge piles of cash laying around Washington,
D.C. There are lots of games and lots of manipulations that go into
bragging about the size of this debt.
There is no question that over the past few years, since the
Republicans have taken over the control of Congress, we have slowed the
rate of growth in Federal budgeting. We have done so to the extent that
we have allowed the economy to catch up with us. But we do not have the
trillions and trillions of dollars laying around Washington, D.C. to
begin to start celebrating and spending.
Mr. KINGSTON. The odd part is, and just in a personal home, it is fun
to buy a new boat or a new car. I have had one new car in my life, and
I have never owned a new boat, so I really do not know the feeling, but
I know it is a lot more fun to buy maybe a new TV or a new stereo than
it is to buy a new drier or to get a new set of tires for your car.
In politics it is the same way, it is far more glamorous and sexy to
go out and create a new government arts program or a new program for
some special interest group that is going to help a limited number of
people but it is going to sound real good to all, and we rush out and
do that rather than pay down the debt.
With a $5.4 trillion debt, I strongly urge, and I know the gentleman
has been fighting for it, that we include not just debt service but
debt payment
[[Page H5175]]
in every budget that we have. We should have, and last year our
colleague, Mark Neumann, advocated I think it was a 25-year budget debt
pay-down that would have paid off the national debt I think by the year
2025, or maybe even sooner than that.
That should be the center of the debate, not what are we going to do
with this new money.
That debt right now, we do pay interest on it, and that interest I
think is something like I believe $500 per person, so a family of four
pays about $2,000 a year in taxes servicing the national debt. That is
$2,000 a year that could be used for college tuition, for groceries,
for a vacation, for a couple of months of house payments.
That money is absolutely gone to the bondholders. It does not buy
better education, better health care, better national security, it is
just gone.
Mr. SCHAFFER. People in Washington like to take the credit for the
strong economy and take credit for balancing the budget, and we deserve
some credit, I think. As I mentioned, we did slow the rate of growth in
Federal budgeting over the last 6 years. That has allowed the economy
to catch up. But the American people are the ones that really deserve
the credit.
We can help in a number of ways. There are many people here in
Washington who believe that we were wrong to cut taxes over the last
couple of years. We reduced the capital gains tax, we reduced
inheritance taxes, we managed to provide a $500 per child tax credit.
There are an assortment of other taxes that we managed to knock down
just a little bit.
We have not repealed them or pulled back the overall tax rate nearly
as much as we can and perhaps should. But those people who criticized
us for trying to reduce the tax burden and provide tax relief are also
wrong, because what we found was that by leaving more cash back home in
the hands and pockets of those people who earn it, we have inspired
those individuals to become more productive with their own capital,
with their own wealth. They have created more jobs. They have made
wiser investments.
{time} 1930
It is, in fact, that heightened level of economic activity that is
saving the country today. That is the reason we balanced the budget.
That is the reason the President believes that, if those American
people continue to do the same things, make the same wise investments,
perform strong economically as they have been, over the next 15 years,
that there will be the surplus.
But it really means for us, I think, that we need to find more ways
to ease the burden on American families and American business owners
and people who are creating wealth and continue to shrink this
government. Those are the assumptions the President has built into his
numbers, but I do not believe that he has the commitment that the
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) and I do and the rest of the
Republican majority to actually stick to those budget caps and actually
see the surplus grow.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, we do not see any signs of it in the
rhetoric that we are going to stick with this bipartisan agreement that
everybody signed off on.
But to get back in terms of tax reduction, one of the big problems,
and the gentleman from Colorado knows the expression, I think it is
attributed to Jesse James, but I am not sure, ``Why do you rob banks?''
``Because that is where the money is.'' Why do the rich get tax
reductions? Because they are the ones paying the taxes.
Now, I know that is real hard to accept when one builds political
careers on class warfare and class division, as many politicians do.
But the reality is, if one wants to give tax relief, one has got to
give it also to the people who are paying the big taxes.
As I pointed out before, households earning more than $50,000 are
paying 82 percent of the income taxes right now. We have got to let
them have some tax relief. But what is the benefit of that? Job
creation. The entrepreneurs that the gentleman is talking about.
Ted Turner in Georgia makes a tremendous amount of money. Do my
colleagues know what, in schools all over America, they should be
teaching kids how they want to be an entrepreneur, they want to grow,
they want to have capitalization, they want to be independent.
Now, not everybody is going to do that, be able to do that, and we
want to have all kinds of jobs and options for people. We want to help
those who never will be independent. But the reality is, let us do not
punish Ted Turner when he gets to be where he is.
I mean, has it been good for the state of Georgia and Atlanta for CNN
to be located there? Absolutely yes. Is it good, all those jobs? Yes.
Are those people also, many of them who work for him, wealthy? Yes. Is
that good? Yes. They buy lots of shoes and cars and stereos. They spend
all kinds of money which creates jobs in Atlanta, Georgia.
But we go at this thing with the myopic that they are rich. It can
only be attributed to luck, not hard work and enterprise. Therefore,
there is an injustice about it, and we have got to punish them for
being rich. We hear that over and over again.
But in this time of the surplus and the surplus, not all of it is
coming from Social Security, but Americans are paying about $500 a year
more than the government needs to operate.
Now, I do not know anybody who likes overpaying a bill. I do not care
who it is, if it is Bill Gates or the gentleman from Colorado (Mr.
Schaffer), nobody like overpaying.
Mr. SCHAFFER. That is right.
Mr. KINGSTON. So one are overpaying one's taxes by $500 more a year
if one is an average family than we need in this room, in this Chamber,
in this Congress to operate one's government with.
Mr. SCHAFFER. It was Willie Sutton, by the way. Willie Sutton was the
bank robber who told the judge, when the judge asked, ``Why do you rob
banks?''
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, is the gentleman from Colorado intimate
with bank robbers? How does he know these fine things?
Mr. SCHAFFER. I remember that. It was Willie Sutton.
Mr. KINGSTON. Well, I only remember Shakespeare and Winston
Churchill, so the gentleman can correct me any time on bank robbers.
Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, I remember that in particular because
there is another Willie in this town who looks at obtaining cash in
much the same way. When asked why he prefers taxes to be high rather
than low and why he prefers additional spending rather than less, the
answer is much the same way. We are going to continue to tax the
American people $500 more than they need to be paying because that is
where the money is.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I know the gentleman has heard the old
story about the man is driving down the road and sees a pig, and three
of the pig's legs are wrapped up in bandages. Actually, he has three
wooden legs. He says, what is the story about this pig.
He says, oh, that pig is a magic pig. It has really done a lot. He
said, one time the family was burning, the House was burning, and that
pig ran in and pulled us all out of bed and saved the entire family.
Another time, my son was drowning, that pig dove in the lake, swam out
there and picked him up and kept him from drowning and pulled him back
from shore. On another occasion, my little girl was in an automobile
accident, and the car was burning, and the pig leaped through the
window and pulled her out and saved her.
The guy from the city said, well, that is amazing. That is a
remarkable pig. But tell me, what about the bandages.
He said, well, it is obvious. You do not eat a pig like that all at
once.
That is what the government is doing to the American entrepreneur,
the American small business person, and the hard-working taxpayer in
general, just grinding them down.
Some statistics that I wanted to say, the Census Bureau says that the
average household now pays $9,445 in Federal income taxes, which is
twice as much as it was in 1985. The typical American family pays more
in taxes than we spend on food, clothing, housing, and transportation
combined. It is very similar to the story. You just do not eat a pig
like that all at once, you grind them down.
Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, the people who have the most at stake in
this debate really are those American families earning less than
$50,000. They
[[Page H5176]]
already pay above 82 percent of the overall tax burden, and they
constitute 91 percent of incomes.
When we talk about providing tax relief, trying to ease the burden on
these very individuals, it will be the Democrats on the other side of
the aisle that will come up here to these podiums and try to suggest
that we are trying to reduce taxes on only the wealthy. Well, it is not
the wealthy. It is 91 percent of all income taxes and 82 percent of the
total burden being paid by those who earned $50,000 or less.
I received a letter from a woman in Fort Collins who understands this
full well. She says in one paragraph in this letter that she sent me, a
woman from Fort Collins, Colorado, she says, ``Although my family is
not wealthy, it makes sense to me to give the extra money back to the
people who paid it.''
I think that she accurately sums up the sentiment of most Americans
if we ask, where should this tax relief go? Where should this
overpayment and cash revenues go? It should go back to those who
overpaid.
Eighty-two percent of the taxpayers in America are those earning
$50,000 or less, and those are the ones that we think deserve their
money back.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I know that the gentleman's time is about
to expire, so I will just close with this, that, again, under the
leadership of Speaker Hastert, we are working on what we call the Best
agenda. Again, the B is for the best, strongest military. E is for
excellence in education. S is for saving Social Security. And T is for
reducing taxes.
We are making a lot of progress. This year, for the first year in
many years, the appropriations bills will be passed out of the House
ahead of the cycle, ahead of the calendar, and we are making a lot of
progress.
I appreciate the gentleman from Colorado allowing me to share some of
his time tonight, and I look forward to working with him in the balance
of the year.
Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Georgia in
joining this special order. America is good, not so much because of the
Congress or our laws or things here in Washington. America is a great
country because of the people and because of the philosophy of life
that we have here in the United States. It is that philosophy and those
people that we in order to honor more by not talking so much about
growing Washington, but by shrinking the power of the Federal
Government and encouraging and strengthen the lot of the American
people.
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