[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 148 (Wednesday, October 27, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H10914-H10920]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          ONE-PERCENT SOLUTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Hayworth) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues from North Dakota 
and North Carolina for the conclusion of their time on this floor as 
they renewed their calls for something quite needed.
  As a North Carolinian by birth, but now proud to represent the State 
of Arizona, Mr. Speaker, I would assure those North Carolinians and all 
Americans who have been affected by Nature's wrath and fury that we are 
acutely concerned for their plight. And I believe that we can work in a 
bipartisan way to solve those problems of an emergency nature, although 
one cannot help but note, Mr. Speaker, how much better it would have 
been if some $20 billion in American taxpayers' money had not been used 
for foreign adventurism in the Balkans, but instead that money remained 
in the Treasury of the United States to help Americans when they were 
put in harm's way.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise this afternoon to respond to some of the other 
less bipartisan statements made earlier by my colleagues on the left. I 
think it is important to offer straight talk, Mr. Speaker, to the 
American people about what we can call the 1-percent solution.
  First we must celebrate our achievement. And my former colleagues in 
journalism, as I spent many years in radio and television covering the 
news before I was honored to be sent by the people of the Sixth 
District of Arizona to this chamber, I would commend to my former 
colleagues and, Mr. Speaker, to the American people news that may have 
escaped the notice of the American people over the last 10 days as the 
budgeteers in both the White House and the Congress sat done and 
reevaluated what has transpired.
  The fact is there is very, very, very good news. Because, for the 
first time since 1960, for the first time since Dwight David Eisenhower 
served as our President, this Congress has not only balanced the 
budget, this Congress did so without using one penny of the Social 
Security surplus. And moreover, Mr. Speaker, this Congress generated a 
surplus for the American people of $1 billion over and above the 
reports we received today of close to $124 billion of Social Security 
surplus money. So that is indeed good news.
  But it does not change the fact, Mr. Speaker, that good people can 
disagree. And even as we welcome former President Ford and his lovely 
wife, Betty, today to receive jointly the Congressional Gold Medal and, 
in so doing that ceremony, we welcome the current President of the 
United States, it is worth noting that there are profound differences 
in our approaches.

  Even as we celebrate the achievement of not raiding the Social 
Security Trust Fund for the first time in 40 years, we must remain 
steadfast in our resolve to stop that raid. And accordingly, those of 
us in the common sense conservative majority have offered the 1-percent 
solution.
  I am holding in my hand, Mr. Speaker, a shiny new penny, no doubt 
made with copper from my home State of Arizona; and I hold this up, Mr. 
Speaker, to symbolize the 1-percent solution that we offer. Because we 
in the majority, to preserve and make sacrosanct the Social Security 
Trust Fund, say to the American people, Mr. Speaker, we simply need to 
have savings of one penny out of every Federal dollar in discretionary 
spending, a 1-percent savings; and in so doing, Mr. Speaker, we will 
continue to protect the Social Security surplus.
  Now, sadly, from time to time in the discussion of public policy and 
different philosophical approaches, there is a casualty. The casualty 
is truth. And perhaps there were mistakes offered unintentionally by 
the House minority leader earlier today. Perhaps there were mistakes, 
misunderstandings offered by the White House press spokespeople today. 
But as former President Reagan used to say, ``Facts are stubborn 
things.''

                              {time}  1700

  Here are the facts with all due respect to Education Secretary Dick 
Riley, a former governor of South Carolina who stated yesterday that 
there would be massive cuts in education. Let us state for the record 
the fact, our majority budget plan spends $34.8 billion on education. 
The President's proposal was $34.7 billion. In other words, Mr. 
Speaker, our common sense conservative majority is prepared to spend an 
additional $100 million on education but to put those funds in the hand 
of the people who can make the difference, teachers in the classroom 
locally. Because while we understand that education is a national 
priority, it fundamentally remains a local concern. And again the math 
lesson is quite simple and unequivocal and apparent to all. We are 
using more resources and more dollars for education but we are using 
them at the local level. There is no cut. And quite frankly, Mr. 
Speaker, I wish the fear and smear and the failure of the Education 
Secretary to apparently learn his own mathematical lessons, well, I 
wish he would simply pay attention to this particular lesson: More 
funds than the President even requested but spent where it counts, in 
local classrooms, in local school districts, by local teachers and 
local school boards.
  Mr. Speaker, I must also confess my surprise and remorse at the 
statements of General Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 
General Shelton, a fellow alumnus of North Carolina State University, 
Mr. Speaker, was quite simply wrong in his testimony to the Senate 
Armed Services Committee yesterday. I find it amazing that the minority 
leader claims that there would be military layoffs. Again, Mr. Speaker, 
facts are stubborn things.
  Here are the facts. This common sense conservative majority in 
Congress has sought time and time and time again to increase our 
spending for national defense and indeed a check of the budget requests 
will bear this out. Our majority has devoted $265.1 billion. The 
President proposed expenditures of $263 billion. Simple mathematics 
points out that our common sense conservative Congress offers more than 
2 billion additional dollars to keep America strong. It is unfortunate 
that those relied upon to lead our American fighting men and women have 
somehow descended into the realm of politics. I regret that, but I 
offer this criticism candidly and publicly to General Henry Hugh 
Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Mr. Speaker, General Shelton is 
wrong. Mr. Speaker, the administration and the minority on the Hill is 
engaged in a game of fear and smear.
  I mentioned earlier, Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States 
joined us for a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda just a few minutes ago. 
I appreciate the bipartisan sentiment there, and I would ask the 
President in a true spirit of bipartisanship to join with us in leading 
through example. Because, Mr. Speaker, this House is prepared to reduce 
its salary, the men and women who serve in the Congress of the United 
States within our common sense conservative majority, have pledged to 
reduce salaries by 1 percent. Constitutionally, we cannot do that for 
the executive branch at this juncture, but,

[[Page H10915]]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask the President, does he share that commitment? 
Will he voluntarily reduce his salary by 1 percent? Will he ask his 
Cabinet secretaries and other employees of his administration to reduce 
their salaries by 1 percent? Indeed, the 1 percent solution while we 
are intent on wiping out Washington waste, fraud and abuse, there are 
actions we can take to lead by example. How refreshing it would be, how 
truly bipartisan it would be if the minority in this House, Mr. 
Speaker, if our President at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue would 
in fact join with us. We are happy to hear legitimate criticism. We 
took the remarks to heart, Mr. Speaker, and we hope the President would 
join us.

  While I was meeting the press along with many of my colleagues who 
will join me here in short order in this special order, White House 
spokesman Joe Lockhart was meeting with the White House press at the 
other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Let me quote from his press briefing 
today. The question comes on Social Security. The question for Mr. 
Lockhart is as follows:
  ``Just to be clear, the third option, you would under no 
circumstances accept going to the Social Security surplus at this 
point, is that correct?''
  Mr. Speaker, listen to Press Secretary Lockhart's answer:
  ``We have put forward a better way. We hope they'll consider it. 
We'll be here. They understand what our ideas are.''
  Mr. Speaker, the ideas are encapsulated in the President's budget 
plan. The ideas have been borne out in a veto of some of our 
appropriations bills. Indeed, Mr. Speaker, we have the sad and sorry 
spectacle of the President of the United States vetoing a foreign aid 
bill because he says it does not spend enough money. He wants to 
increase those foreign expenditures by 30 percent, by some $4 billion, 
and, Mr. Speaker, he offers no plan of where to find that money. Quite 
the contrary. The implication is clear, Mr. Speaker, for all to see. He 
has made a choice to take those funds out of Social Security, to take 
the retirement funds of American taxpayers who have paid into that 
system for years and years and years and use those funds, not for 
Americans but for others around the world. Facts are stubborn things. 
And in this day and age where we have to parse statements, where we 
fail to see a clear answer to the questions, we have to parse the 
statements. Again let me repeat the question from a member of the 
fourth estate from the journalistic fraternity at the White House:
  ``Just to be clear, the third option, you would under no 
circumstances accept going to the Social Security surplus at this 
point, is that correct?''
  Lockhart's answer:
  ``We have put forward a better way. We hope they'll consider it. 
We'll be here. They understand what our ideas are.''
  Mr. Speaker, it would be refreshing if those who seek to offer 
variations on the definition of what ``is'' is, if those who parse so 
many different statements could simply offer to the American people 
what President Ford gave us in his time of healing, what he in his 
first televised address to the American people called ``A Little 
Straight Talk Among Friends.'' How refreshing it would be if this White 
House could say ``yes'' means ``yes'' and ``no'' means ``no'' and 
``is'' means ``is.'' The sad fact, Mr. Speaker, is clear. There is a 
clear and present danger to the Social Security funds of America's 
retirees because this administration in its budget pronouncements, in 
its veto messages, is prepared once again to raid the Social Security 
trust fund. Mr. Speaker, ``no'' means ``no.''
  Mr. Speaker, I am honored to be joined on this floor for this hour by 
three hardworking Members of Congress. I would yield at this point to a 
gentleman who has served capably as an educator, who understands 
educational administration, who comes to this Chamber from the great 
State of Colorado, I yield now to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. 
Tancredo).
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I am a freshman Member of the Congress. I 
have been here all of 10 months. I must say that in that time, I have 
witnessed a number of strange things, of course. I am sure that has 
been the case of all of my predecessors who came in. In their first 
time around this particular hall they saw things that were astounding 
to them. Recently, we put forward a plan, what I consider to be a very 
modest plan to achieve a very important goal. That goal, of course, is 
to hold inviolate the Social Security trust fund. In order to do that, 
we have to reduce some spending of the Federal Government. About $600 
billion worth of spending that the Federal Government now undertakes in 
discretionary programs alone, that is what we are going to have to 
reduce, by about 1 percent, or $6 billion, in order to achieve the 
laudable goal that I described earlier. And the amazing thing that I 
have seen as a freshman is this reaction, the reaction of the 
administration, the reaction of my colleagues on the other side of the 
House, the reaction to a proposal to save 1 percent. Because people use 
the term ``cut,'' and we get into that weird sort of definition of what 
a cut is. Are we really cutting any agency of the Federal Government if 
we were to reduce the budget by 1 percent? No, of course not. Because 
all of them, what we are talking about is next year's budget and all of 
the budgets have been increased fairly dramatically. So to cut from a 
proposed increase is not truly a cut. It is a savings. So we are 
talking about a savings of 1 percent.

  You would think, of course, that we had proposed the end of 
civilization as we know it. You would think that the results of a 1 
percent savings in the departments of the government that spend $600 
billion, you would think that it would mean blood in the streets if it 
were to be accomplished. That is what is incredible to me as a 
freshman, to observe something like this. Then you see statements, 
statements of the President's Cabinet, members of the President's 
Cabinet. This one is just another amazing thing. Here is a statement by 
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt just yesterday. Pool reporters asked 
Secretary Babbitt, ``Can I just say based on your answers generally 
that there really, as a practical matter, there is no more waste in 
government in your department?'' To which Secretary Babbitt replied, 
``Well, it would take a magician to say there was no waste in 
government, we are constantly ferreting it out, but the answer 
otherwise is yes, you got it exactly right, that there is no waste in 
the Department of Interior.''
  Now, what is really incredible about this, on its face it is idiotic, 
that is for starters, but beyond that, at the same time that the 
Secretary of the Interior was telling the pool reporter that there was 
no waste in his department, a member of his department was telling the 
Committee on Resources that in fact they had lost $7 million. The 
Committee on Resources heard testimony by Assistant Secretary Don Barry 
of the Fish and Wildlife Service explaining that his department could 
not account for $7 million. Beyond that, the Department of Interior 
officials in the Department of Insular Affairs have used Federal 
property. Right now there is a major investigation going on because 
government employees in that department have used time and resources to 
assist the campaigns of Members of the Congress, Democrat Members of 
the Congress. I would say to my colleague, is that not a waste?
  Mr. HAYWORTH. If the gentleman will yield on that point, I think, Mr. 
Speaker, that this bears amplification. What the gentleman from 
Colorado is telling this House at this hour, based on investigations by 
the House Committee on Resources, officials within the administration, 
on government time, using taxpayer dollars, were involved in partisan 
political campaigns.
  Mr. TANCREDO. That is exactly what has happened. And it has happened 
to an extent that is quite extraordinary. I think we see these kinds of 
things periodically where someone might put up a poster in their office 
or something like that and maybe that is a technical violation but in 
fact it is no big deal and there is not a major case made.

                              {time}  1715

  What has happened in this particular department is egregious, the 
violations are egregious, and there are certainly going to be 
ramifications to it, and there is an ongoing investigation. But already 
people have left the government.
  As my colleagues know, they have seen this happen before when 
somebody accuses this administration, when facts are uncovered about 
what this administration does. All of a sudden people

[[Page H10916]]

start leaving the country, are no longer to be found. Well, that is 
what is happening now in this particular case.
  Remember this is the same gentleman, Secretary of Interior, telling 
us there is no waste in his department.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. It would seem to me that the gentleman from Colorado 
has not only pointed out wasteful spending, but something that is 
equally, if not more, troubling, the blatant disregard for simple 
ethics and honest stewardship of the organs of government.
  Indeed my friend from Colorado mentions his experience now as a 
freshman. I can harken back to my first term in office, honored to come 
here as part of a new majority, also serving at that point in time on 
the House Committee on Resources; and let me tell you this waste notion 
is nothing new. I can remember our first hearing on the subcommittee 
dealing with parks.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, government does this, and my friend from Colorado 
can bear this out with his past administrative experience because 
government gives an interesting name to accountants. The Federal 
Government calls them inspectors general.
  And so the Inspector General for the Interior Department was seated 
besides at that time the Director of the National Park Service, and the 
audit offered by the Inspector General at that time said that the 
National Park Service could not account for over 70 million dollars of 
taxpayer funds; and indeed, as we have seen from the latest study 
offered by our budgeteers and the General Accounting Office, the folks 
who do this to check on the business of government, if you will, there 
is waste and a lack of accountability to the tune of $800 billion, and 
yet there are those in this administration who refuse to stand up and 
offer straight talk, who sadly, as agents that are in essence political 
provocateurs, abuse government property and taxpayer funds for 
political endeavors and still cannot seem to come to grips with a 1 
percent solution that we need now more than ever to save Social 
Security and make sure that the raid is not renewed, a raid that will 
come based on the insistence of this President who vetoed a foreign aid 
bill saying he wanted to spend $4 billion more on non-Americans. One 
penny out of every dollar of discretionary spending is all we ask.
  And I appreciate the service of the gentleman from Colorado who will 
offer us more thoughts on his past experience in a moment, but I must 
turn now to a gentleman in his second term in office who honors us and 
honors the people of the Lone Star State of Texas. I yield now to the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Brady).
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. I appreciate the gentleman's leadership in trying 
to cut the waste and fraud and abuse from our government, working hard 
as a Member, esteemed Member, of this body that has tried to get more 
bang for the buck, to be the first Congress to balance the budget 
without using the Social Security Trust Fund to rebuild the defense we 
all know has us so vulnerable today and to start, finally, after so 
many decades of deep digging such a deep hole for Social Security, 
being the first Congress to stop digging, to stop digging a deeper hole 
and to start rebuilding it; and I thank the gentleman from Arizona for 
his leadership.
  During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln received a report 
from one of the generals that the President suspected was probably 
exaggerating the damage that he had inflicted upon the confederate 
soldiers in battle. Lincoln said the report reminded him of a man he 
knew who used to lecture about his travels abroad, but in his lectures 
often played sort of fast and loose with the facts. Well, the lecturer, 
knowing he was prone to exaggeration, asked a friend of his to yank on 
his coattails every time he drifted from the truth.
  Well, soon after that, the other was telling an audience about a tall 
building he had seen in his recent trip to Europe. He was describing 
it, and he said, ``and this building must have been a mile high and a 
mile and a half long.''
  Now just then, feeling a tug on his coattails, someone in the 
audience called, ``And how wide was the building?''
  Scrambling, the lecturer replied quickly, ``Oh, about a foot wide.''
  There must be a lot of coattails being tugged over at the White House 
these days as the President, his dutiful military leaders and agency 
heads scramble to outdo each other in exaggerating the impact of our 
tiny 1 percent savings in this large and growing Federal 
budget. America, I think though, knows best because here is the real 
question we are facing:

  Is there anyone in America who does not think Washington cannot 
become 1 percent more efficient? Is there a taxpayer anywhere who 
believes that we cannot work 1 percent smarter, 1 percent better? 
Because these taxpayers know they have, and even government employees 
we have got, well, we have got a big bureaucracy. We have got some very 
good people in these agencies, and even they are frustrated with the 
money they see wasted at work each day.
  As my local constable, David Hill of Magnolia, told me Monday 
following a drug awareness program we had before one of our schools for 
Red Ribbon Week, he said, ``One percent is nothing. Anyone can do that 
and especially to save Social Security.'' Well, David Hill is right; 1 
percent is nothing. Anyone can do that, Mr. Speaker, and especially 
because we have Social Security at stake.
  Look at some of the duplication we have. As my colleagues know, just 
look at some of the duplication we have here in Washington. Despite our 
best efforts, and I think we are just getting started, we still have 
more than 500 inner-city programs, 500 different urban aid programs, 
more than 300 different economic development programs, more than 200 
education programs, and recently people were congratulating us because 
we had consolidated down to only 100 different job training programs. 
That duplication has a real cost to taxpayers, Mr. Speaker; and it 
means that we are not helping the people the way we can.
  In the Committee on Resources, which I serve on, it is the House 
Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, I was shocked recently to 
learn that each year government spends about 1 billion, that is with a 
``B,'' $1 billion, helping about 5,000 salmon swim upstream, back 
upstream each year. The Federal Government share for each fish each 
year is between 2,000 and $20,000 each year. Literally it is cheaper 
for us to rent a limousine for each fish or to put them in a first-
class airplane seat and fly them to the top of the river each year. 
That would be cheaper than the way we go about saving these fish today, 
if indeed we need to.
  The bottom line, as we all know, there is enough money for defense 
and health care and Social Security and the essentials here in 
Washington. There is not enough money for the foolishness. Despite our 
best efforts, we still have pork barrel projects, and they are real 
stinkers that we want to root out.
  People want money left here in Washington so that votes can be 
traded. Well, last year during the Fast Track debate, one of the 
Democratic Members of Congress went to the White House to have his arm 
twisted to support Fast Track, and as he left, he quipped to reporters, 
``Well, the good news is I have six new bridges. Now if I only had a 
river.''
  The fact of the matter is that if we leave these dollars in 
Washington, they are going to go for pork barrel projects, they are 
going to go for trading votes, and again families and businesses have 
had to trim their budgets, set priorities. In Texas we all made it 
through a recession recently. It was not much fun. We all hunkered 
down, and we did it.
  But government in Washington has never had to make the tough 
decisions. In government, Washington does not want to have to tell no 
to anyone. We do not want to make those tough decisions.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. I thank my colleague from Texas (Mr. Brady) because he 
points out something that there are so many examples of, and some of 
these examples, quite frankly, you laugh to keep from crying, Mr. 
Speaker.
  For example, the Agency for International Development. Now remember, 
the President has just vetoed a foreign aid bill saying we are not 
spending enough on other folks around the world, we need to take $4 
billion of the Social Security Trust Fund, or I guess

[[Page H10917]]

he is suggesting we ought to raise taxes, to take care of this. But 
here is an example of international development, the Inspector General, 
the accountant, checking that from the report.
  Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, the folks up in Vermont; they have a few 
stores in Arizona, a couple of stores in the Sixth District, but also 
they have an interest in the former Soviet Union, the Russian Republic. 
In fact, the Agency for International Development, Mr. Speaker, gave 
Ben and Jerry's $850,000 to develop and distribute ice cream in Russia. 
Now the folks at Ben and Jerry's wrote our majority in Congress and 
told us, ``Oh, this is a pretty good idea to use taxpayers' money for 
ice cream going to Russians, and instead of following the free market 
route, to have taxpayers pay for the marketing of Ben and Jerry's ice 
cream.''
  Oh, there was something else, Mr. Speaker, that the Ben and Jerry's 
folks added in their letter; their belief, Mr. Speaker, that we should 
completely zero out defense spending and defense capabilities.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope I can arrange an introduction of General Henry 
Hugh Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to Ben and Jerry and their 
ice cream, and I would just like to clear up any rumor, Mr. Speaker. 
There apparently is no truth to the rumor that Ben and Jerry want to 
develop a new flavor in honor of their pacifist leanings, even as they 
are happy to take American tax dollars to market ice cream in Russia. 
There was some talk going around that they had developed a new flavor: 
surrender sarsaparilla. But I do not think that is going to happen.
  I gladly yield to my friend from Texas.
  Mr. BRADY of Texas. I agree so much with what you are saying and 
examples of duplication and waste that we have here in Washington. Let 
me conclude with this:
  My constable back in Magnolia, Texas, is right: 1 percent is nothing, 
and we can do that especially to save Social Security. It seems to me 
that this is kind of a hopeful start, to start to trim the fat here in 
Washington, to start to eliminate obsolete agencies and duplication, 
just to give people a better bang, a bigger bang for the buck that they 
send up here because 1 percent savings is so small. And I am convinced 
that because we are dealing with Social Security and our kids' futures, 
their retirement, and our neighbors' future and retirement, I guess I 
would ask that the President rather than the President acting like a 
Democratic President and perhaps trying to make us just conduct 
ourselves a Republican Congress, I am convinced that if we acted as an 
American President, an American Congress, worked together on this, that 
would solve this.
  So I ask, Mr. President, join us in cutting wasteful spending that 
tiny little bit, 1 percent; and we will join with you together, 
Republicans in Congress and a Democratic President, to save Social 
Security. But let us stop digging now.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. I thank my colleague from Texas, and I think, Mr. 
Speaker, the American people reflect the sentiment expressed by my 
friend from Texas (Mr. Brady). We need to approach this not as 
Republicans or as Democrats, but as Americans; and yet even as we 
celebrate that notion of nonpartisanship, we cannot help but note a 
difference that, Mr. Speaker, we need to inform the American people 
about.
  You see, to us we have taken the commitment. No means no, hands off 
Social Security funds, Social Security funds should be used exclusively 
for Social Security. No means no to this common sense conservative 
majority, and yet to my friends in the minority and the folks at the 
other end of Pennsylvania Avenue no means maybe.
  Here is the minority leader, the gentleman from Missouri, on ABC's 
This Week last Sunday. The gentleman from Missouri says, quote:
  ``We need to save the Social Security surplus as much as we possibly 
can.''

                              {time}  1730

  Again, Mr. Speaker, why can he not join with us to say let us save 
100 percent of the Social Security surplus?
  Mr. Speaker, I am pleased now to yield to another newcomer to this 
Chamber, the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Biggert).
  Mrs. BIGGERT. I thank the gentleman from Arizona and appreciate the 
opportunity to join him here tonight to discuss waste, fraud and abuse.
  Yesterday House Minority Whip Tom Delay and Republican Conference 
Chairman J.C. Watts gave the American people specific examples of 
wasteful spending in the Federal Government. These examples included 
the construction of a $1 million outhouse in Glacier National Park and 
the Department of Defense misplacement of two tugboats.
  Continuing with this theme of promoting and advancing better and more 
efficient government by rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in Federal 
agencies, I come to the floor this evening to speak about management's 
problems that permeate the Federal student loan program.
  American taxpayers currently provide through the Department of 
Education more than $48 billion annually in Federal finance aid to 
roughly 8.5 million students. Unfortunately, the Department has serious 
problems monitoring these dollars and the individuals to whom they are 
awarded.
  For almost 10 consecutive years, the General Accounting Office has 
put the Department of Education on its high risk list for waste, fraud 
and abuse because of its management shortcomings. Among other things, 
the GAO has reported that, first, the Department does not adequately 
oversee schools that participate in student loan programs; second, that 
the Department uses inadequate management information systems that 
contain unreliable data; third, that the Department has too little 
information on the program's effectiveness to meet the information 
needs of Congress and other decision makers; and, finally, it cannot 
determine the taxpayer liability associated with almost $150 billion in 
outstanding student loans.
  These problems were outlined in a report released earlier this year 
by the Department's own Inspector General. The Department's Inspector 
General found that the Department of Education has forgiven over $3.8 
million in loans to individuals who were reported dead, but in fact 
were alive. The Department's Inspector General also found that roughly 
$73 million in loans were forgiven to individuals who claimed to be 
permanently disabled when in fact they were not. That is what I call 
fraud.
  Congress and the Department have taken steps to correct problems in 
this program by creating the Federal Government's first performance-
based organization within the Office of Student Financial Assistance. 
While I applaud this effort and recognize the progress made by the 
Department, problems persist. A recent Associated Press article 
outlined errors made by the Department on 3.5 million college financial 
aid forms, 100 of which were distributed to colleges across the 
country.
  Fixing this problem, which included recalling, destroying and 
reprinting these forms, will cost the American taxpayer another 
$480,000, a half a million dollar mail mistake. That is what I call 
waste.
  At a time when Congress is struggling to find the dollars needed to 
fund so many important programs, waste and mismanagement similar to the 
examples mentioned are unacceptable. Not only do the Department's 
management deficiencies hurt the taxpayer, but they also take away from 
the parents and students who legitimately need this aid. The millions 
lost by the Department's mismanagement might have been used to fund 
other critical programs such as educating homeless children and youth. 
This is a program that has not seen so much as a dollar increase for 
the past few years. Yet the $4 million the Department lost by forgiving 
loans to the living dead would have gone a long way to helping homeless 
children across the country to succeed in school.

  The millions lost by the Department's mismanagement could have been 
part of the saving of the 1 percent across the board efficiency we are 
looking for, not the wasteful spending that has occurred.
  Mr. Speaker, we all understand the difficult funding circumstances 
under which this Congress and the administration are working. We can 
begin to ease these problems by working with

[[Page H10918]]

the Federal agencies to identify and to root out and then correct the 
problems that waste hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money.
  While the Federal student loan programs would be a good place to 
start this process, every other area of spending needs to be looked at 
as well, which we are doing tonight on several of the issues. But the 
education of our children is one of our top priorities, if not the top 
priority, and, as a matter of fact, this side of the aisle is spending 
$34.8 billion on education in our appropriation bills versus the 
President's proposal of $34.7 billion. So there will be no cuts to our 
children's needs. In fact, there will be more money than the President 
even requested. But we must be ever-vigilant to ensure that there is no 
fraud, waste and abuse so that we will have the money to spend on those 
critical programs that are necessary.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Illinois, 
because she points out the vital human equation at stake here. Not a 
mere recitation of facts and figures, though they are important, but 
the question becomes not only how much is set aside in terms of 
funding, and a substantial amount more by this common sense 
conservative majority in Congress than even proposed by the President 
in his budget when it came to education, but more how it is spent in 
local communities, for more accountability at home, and also honoring 
the commitments this Congress made when it was in the hands of the left 
back in the mid-seventies with reference to special education, the IDEA 
program that was left unfunded for so many years. This Congress stepped 
up. That is true compassion, when you couple a sense of commitment with 
accountability, and we are indebted to the gentlewoman from Illinois 
for sharing those very cogent points about inaccuracies, and, yes, 
fraud in terms of student loans and a breach of trust that goes beyond 
simple inefficiency, simple negligence, to in essence be a crime 
against the American taxpayer. We are indebted for her point.
  Again, we should reaffirm this. We are talking about a 1 percent 
solution. One penny out of every dollar, one penny out of every Federal 
dollar spent will keep the budget balanced, stop this raid on Social 
Security and pay down $2 trillion in public debt.
  Mr. Speaker, my colleagues, can we not save a penny for grandma, 
because, in so doing, Mr. Speaker, we are helping her grandchildren.
  Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be joined by another newcomer to 
Congress. He is a gentleman who has learned his lessons well in the 
field of business, a noted restaurateur and a capable new 
representative from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I yield now to my 
good friend, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey).
  Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Arizona for 
yielding. I want to commend the gentleman for the effort he has made 
consistently to establish and reiterate the importance of fiscal 
discipline and the opportunity we have before us, which is truly 
remarkable. But I wanted to suggest that we consider that there 
are three alternatives, really, to resolving this dispute that we have 
with the current administration versus Congress in how we are going to 
end up in this appropriation process this budget process.

  The first is the easy way out. The first way would be to follow the 
suggestion, the budget that the President presented back in February. 
The easy way out, that has been done for the last three decades at 
least, and that would be simply raid that Social Security trust fund. 
That is what has happened so many times in the past. That would be the 
easy and, I would argue, irresponsible and the wrong way out. We have 
made it such an important priority of this Congress that we are not 
going to take that easy, irresponsible way out, that I am delighted to 
see that it appears that the President has come around to our point of 
view on this, and it appears that the President recognizes that it 
would be wrong to spend that Social Security surplus.
  There is another way that Congress could get out of this apparent 
dilemma. That would be to raise taxes. Let us consider this for a 
moment. This year Federal spending will be higher than it has ever been 
in the history of this great Nation. This year Federal taxes are higher 
than they have ever been in the peacetime history of this Nation. The 
Federal tax burden on working Americans is consuming almost 21 percent 
of the entire output of our economy.
  Now, even after we set aside all the Social Security funds for the 
next decade, for the purpose of either reforming Social Security or 
retiring debt, without a penny of that being in the calculations, we 
still have unprecedented surpluses, projected as far as the eye can see 
by administration budget forecasts, Congressional budget forecasts, 
private forecasts.
  Mr. Speaker, it strikes me that when taxpayers are paying more than 
it takes to fund the biggest Federal Government in history, and in 
addition to that taxpayers are paying Social Security benefits for the 
next 10 years and then $2 trillion above and beyond that, which is 
going to be used for the Social Security trust fund and for retiring 
debt, when in fact taxpayers are paying $1 trillion above and beyond 
all of that over the course of the next 10 years, it seems obvious to 
me that taxes are simply too high. For the President or anyone else to 
seriously consider raising taxes in that context is an outrageous 
infringement upon the freedom of working Americans.
  We need to lower taxes, and I am happy that yesterday this body voted 
on a resolution which I authored which expressed the sense of Congress 
that we will not raise Federal taxes. That resolution passed with a 
vote of 371 to 48. I think it is worth noting, however, that there were 
48 Members of this Chamber who felt that despite a record high tax 
burden on the American people, we should make it an even higher tax 
burden.
  Well, we do not have to worry about that, I do not think, because an 
overwhelming majority said no, we are not going to raise taxes. So we 
have established that we are not going to spend that Social Security 
money on the President's spending wishes.
  I think we have established that we are not going to raise taxes to 
do it. How else do we deal with this issue? We do it from the spending 
side. This is the common sense solution that we have before us.
  Frankly, the fact that a 1 percent across-the-board reduction in 
waste and fraud and abuse that is in so many of our government programs 
can solve this problem, can solve this entire budget problem, makes it 
the obvious solution to me.
  As my colleague from Arizona pointed out, my background is in 
business. I am to this day an owner of two restaurants. Prior to 
getting in the restaurant business I was in the business of finance.

  I can tell you that despite the incredibly intense pressures in the 
private sector, the pressure that comes from competition, the pressure 
that comes from another operator, whether it is a restaurant or a shoe 
store or you name it, despite enormous pressure to be efficient, to 
lower your costs, any halfway decent business manager can find 1 
percent of his budget to trim when he has to. That is despite the 
enormous ongoing pressures that he already faces.
  Now, the government, of course, does not live under the same kind of 
economic pressures. The Department of Energy, for instance, does not 
have a competitive Department of Energy down the road against which it 
has to compete, against which it has to demonstrate consistently that 
it can lower its costs. The government just does not face those kinds 
of pressures, which only means it is even easier in government to find 
out opportunities to eliminate some waste, some excess costs.
  That is the opportunity before us. This is a no-brainer. This is an 
easy opportunity for us to do the right thing, not the irresponsible 
thing, but to go ahead and allow 1 percent, just 1 percent across the 
board, of the waste and excesses and frivolous expenses that we know we 
spend in virtually every government program to be taken out and to 
achieve the fiscal discipline, the fiscal responsibility, that comes 
with that.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Pennsylvania, 
and I congratulate him on the overwhelming passage of House Concurrent 
Resolution 208. I was honored as a member of the Committee on Ways

[[Page H10919]]

and Means to bring that legislation to the floor and then yield the 
time to my friend from Pennsylvania to manage, which he did quite 
capably, and, Mr. Speaker, we saw evidence of his expertise in the real 
world dealing with budgets, being responsible for employees offering 
services to his clients and customers, lessons that served him well in 
the private sector, Mr. Speaker, lessons that serve us well in the 
Congress of the United States.
  Mr. Speaker, before I yield to one of my friends who preceded all of 
us in this Chamber, another former broadcaster, in fact, let me just 
point out again something that the American people may have missed, 
because on Sundays Americans are at church, enjoying time with their 
families. The truth be told, Mr. Speaker, a lot of folks do not hunker 
down for all the public affairs programming that exists, no matter what 
may happen within the banks of the Potomac.

                              {time}  1745

  The gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), the House Minority 
Leader, on ABC's ``This Week,'' when asked about the Social Security 
Trust Fund and keeping those funds off limits for spending, said this, 
``There is a feeling now that, since we have a surplus, and since we 
have got to get ready for the baby boomers, that we really ought to try 
to spend as little of it as possible.'' He later said, ``Oh, we need to 
save the Social Security surplus as much as we possibly can.''
  Again, Mr. Speaker, even though I heard the gentleman from Missouri 
(Mr. Gephardt) offer a wonderful tribute to President Ford, where he 
called on the need for bipartisanship, I would note the gulf between 
rhetoric and reality, how he has instructed every Member of the 
minority to vote no on our appropriations bills, how he has said that, 
while no means no on the constructive business of governing in terms of 
the appropriations bills, when it comes to keeping the Social Security 
Trust Fund off limits, no means maybe.
  Mr. Speaker, no means no. All we are saying is this, one penny out of 
every dollar spent, realize those savings, and my colleagues will save 
Social Security in the process. They will pay down $2 trillion in 
public debt. We will continue to balance the budget.
  Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield to the gentleman from Oklahoma 
(Mr. Istook), the man who has to make so many challenging decisions as 
the chairman of the Subcommittee on District of Columbia of the 
Committee on Appropriations, the gentleman who will have some action on 
this floor, dare I say, tomorrow as we vote for this 1 percent 
solution.
  Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Speaker, I was watching as the gentleman from Arizona 
(Mr. Hayworth) was making some of the comments. Tomorrow on the floor 
of this House, as the gentleman has mentioned and so many other Members 
have mentioned, we are going to have a very, very important vote.
  I will be the one that will be handling this particular bill on the 
House floor, because it is a bill that not only appropriates money for 
operation of Federal agencies, but it says, okay, what is the final 
thing we need to do to make sure that the budget being passed by 
Congress, one, is a balanced budget? It does not spend more than we 
take in. Secondly, it does not spend any of this Social Security 
surplus to make sure that the money that we spend is only the money 
that comes from the other revenues of the Federal Government.
  Somebody said this is kind of like sanding a block of wood. When one 
is trying to make something and one has to get all the pieces to fit 
in, one gets that last piece, and maybe it does not quite fit right, so 
one sands it down and gets it down to the right size so it does fit in.
  This is going to be sanding down the Federal Government so it fits 
within the goals of balancing the budget and making sure that we do not 
spend Social Security money in the process. I think that is a worthy 
goal.
  I have heard my friends on the other side of the aisle say, oh, we 
share that goal. We want to balance the budget and not touch Social 
Security. The President of the United States stood here in this House 
chamber in January and said he was going to save 68 percent of the 
Social Security surplus and not spend it.
  Now, I know math; and I know that if one saves 68 percent, one spends 
32 percent. So the President's plan was let us spend 32 percent of this 
Social Security Trust Fund.
  We as Republicans, the majority party in the Congress, said, Mr. 
President, the right thing is do not spend any of it. We know that for 
years it has been normal in Washington, D.C. under Democrats and then 
as Republicans as we were taking those final steps to balance the 
budget, yes, Social Security money was used in the process for far too 
long. But that time is over.
  Now we can balance the Federal budget without using any of that 
Social Security Trust Fund, without jeopardizing the future security of 
people who are now retired or who may be retiring in the future. At the 
same time, this will be reducing the national debt, so that people who 
are younger today will have the security of knowing that the national 
debt either will be smaller or nonexistent so they will not be stuck 
with paying it off; so people today will know that the size of 
government has shrunk. Now, that seems to me like that is what 
everybody is saying.
  Yet we had the meeting on the conferees of the bill this morning, the 
bill that comes up tomorrow, the meeting of the conferees; and I could 
not believe it, the things I heard from some other person. I will not 
even name the person who said this. One of the Members of Congress on 
the other side of the aisle today, he said, ``One, we cannot afford 
these cuts. We cannot do this 1 percent across the board cut.'' Then he 
said, ``And, by golly, you are spending money out of Social Security.''
  I called him on the carpet, frankly. I said, ``One, I think everybody 
can afford a 1 percent cut. But, two, if you think that is not enough, 
if you think we would have to cut further to make sure we do not dip 
into Social Security, why are you not proposing larger cuts instead of 
opposing the 1 percent cut?'' He got kind of speechless at that point.
  I notice this same rationale or lack of logic in the President's 
comments. I was reading the transcript of his comments today, saying 
that he does believe in balancing the budget without using Social 
Security money, and he wants to claim that Republicans are dipping into 
Social Security.
  So we would think, therefore, he would say cut spending further. No, 
he says raise spending more. Wait a minute. If they claim we are 
spending Social Security money at this level, and they want to spend 
more, they would be spending more Social Security money.
  They ought to be helping us. They ought to be helping us reduce the 
size of government. They ought to be proposing more than 1 percent 
across the board to save money. But, instead, they want it both ways. 
That is not right. That is Alice in Wonderland-type thinking. I grew up 
knowing better.
  I remember all the meals that we had in my family, and it was a 
family of five kids, my mom, my dad. My dad was hard working. He would 
go to work during the day, come home for dinner, and go back to work.
  What we would commonly have for dinner, my favorite dinner when I was 
growing up, was beans and cornbread. If it was not that, it was sliced 
diced potatoes and white gravy or Kraft dinners, we called them, the 
macaroni and cheese.
  I thought that we had those meals so often because they were so good. 
Well, it took a while, until I had five kids myself, that I realized we 
had those meals so often because they were so economical. They were 
healthy. They were nourishing. We got by fine, but it saved money. The 
family needed to save.
  Maybe we have some Federal bureaucrats that need to be talking about 
beans and cornbread instead of doing the things that I have heard them 
say, Cabinet officers on TV, oh, there is no way that we can do a 1 
percent cut. Tell that to Mr. And Mrs. America. Tell that to them when 
they have to sit around the table and have to balance the family 
budget, and they have to make decisions a lot bigger than cutting 1 
percent.
  I remember when Jimmy Carter was President of the United States, and 
he said we cannot spend so much money and so much expense on energy. He 
said, turn down your thermostats in

[[Page H10920]]

the winter. Turn them up in the summer. Do not use so many lights. 
Conserve electricity. Families do that all the time.
  Maybe bureaucrats need some leadership at the top saying conserve 
things instead of spending more. The President took 1,700 people on a 
trip to Africa, announced all these government give-aways, and, on top 
of that, spent, what was it, $50 million, $70 million for that huge 
entourage.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, for three trips, Africa, Chile, China, the 
grand total was in excess of $70 million with thousands accompanying 
the President, well over 1,000 in his entourage. That is not taking 
into account the justifiable needs for security, secret service, and 
the like for the President of the United States.
  I agree with the gentleman from Oklahoma. We need at long last, Mr. 
Speaker, leadership by example. Part of that bill that the gentleman 
from Oklahoma will be talking about and helping to manage on this floor 
tomorrow includes a 1 percent reduction in salary for Members of 
Congress. Again, I would renew my challenge to the President. He should 
reduce his salary. Cabinet level officials should reduce their 
salaries. They should lead by example.

  Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, it is 
especially appalling to see the Clinton-run Pentagon using Clinton-
speak. We are putting more money into the Pentagon, even after the 1 
percent cut, more money than the President proposed. He had the 
Pentagon people come to the Congress and say, under the President's 
budget, they can get along just fine. But now, under the larger budget 
they will be getting from Congress, the President has been claiming 
they cannot get by. That does not make sense. They can get by on less 
from the President. They can get by on more from Congress. They can 
handle this 1 percent cut like everybody else.
  I speak as a member of the Subcommittee on Defense that wants to 
strengthen our defense, and we are doing it because we are still 
strengthening it even after applying the same standard to them as to 
the rest of government.
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, again, we are actually adding $2 billion 
more to this defense budget than this White House and the Pentagon 
requested.
  Facts are stubborn things. No means no. But to the minority party in 
this chamber and to the folks at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, 
no apparently means maybe when it comes to the Social Security Trust 
Fund.
  Mr. Speaker, let me repeat, the transcript of what transpired today 
in the White House press room, a journalist to Joe Lockhart, the Press 
Secretary, question: ``Just to be clear, the third option you would 
consider, you would under no circumstances accept going to the Social 
Security surplus at this point; is that correct?'' Mr. Lockhart 
responds, ``We have put forward a better way. We hope they will 
consider it. We will be here. They understand what our ideas are.''
  This President stood in the well. He said save 62 percent of the 
Social Security surplus, implying he would spend 38 percent of it on 
other programs. He outlined various new ways to raise revenue. We 
brought it to the floor of this House. Not a single Member voted for 
the Clinton tax-hike package, not anyone on that side. So no meant no 
when it came to raising taxes.
  All we say is this, Mr. Speaker, our 1 percent solution, one penny 
out of every dollar in savings will save Social Security and stop the 
raid. A penny saved is a retirement secured.

                          ____________________