[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 6 (Tuesday, February 1, 2000)]
[House]
[Page H139]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           THE B.E.S.T AGENDA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Biggert). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Madam Speaker, I wanted to talk to the House tonight 
about the agenda which the Republican Conference is moving. We have 
worked closely with the White House and some Members of the Democratic 
Caucus on the BEST agenda, B-E-S-T. It is kind of easy to remember if 
we keep it in mind.
  B: Building up the military.
  One of the big problems we have is we are still in a dangerous world, 
and although the Soviet Union has fallen, we can still see, if we have 
watched Russia and Chechnya, that Russia really has not changed. Their 
political system has, but their philosophy of being an aggressive 
nation certainly has not. And they have a lot of military nuclear 
weapons over there. The question is what are they doing with that 
nuclear arsenal? One of the things is they are selling it to renegade 
countries. We need to keep an eye on them.
  Madam Speaker, we cannot disengage from the world military scene. The 
world is still an unstable place. There are too many Saddam Husseins 
and North Koreas out there.
  Also, we lose lots of soldiers because of the deployments. From World 
War II until 1989, there were 11 deployments. But since 1989, there 
have been 33 deployments. And all we have to do as a Member, and I 
recommend to all of the Members of Congress to do this, they should go 
talk to some of the military posts and bases in their district and find 
out how the recruitment is doing and the reenlistment is doing. They 
are losing lots of good soldiers.
  Another reason is, despite the Republican 4.8 percent pay raise that 
we passed in this Congress last year, there is still a 13 percent pay 
gap between military and civilian pay.
  These things have to be addressed, so the ``B'' in BEST is to build 
up the military.
  E: E is for education.
  The idea behind that is to return education to the local control. 
Think, Madam Speaker, about those great classic teachers that we were 
able to grow up and experience in our educational careers. The teachers 
who were just commander of the ship when we went in their classroom. 
They may have had a few extra rules. They worked us hard and were 
disciplinarians, but they changed our lives. And if we got a B in their 
class, it was worth an A in half a dozen other classes because that 
teacher got the best out of us.
  Madam Speaker, those teachers are rare these days because they are 
tired of the bureaucracy. Is somebody up on the sixth floor or the 
third office down to the right in the cubical telling teachers in 
Georgia and Illinois and in Maine and in California and Miami how to 
teach? Come on. There is not a bureaucrat that smart in our town.
  Return education to the local control. Let the teacher in the 
classroom get the dollars. Let the teacher run the show.
  The S in BEST: Saving Social Security.
  Last year in his State of the Union address, the President said let 
us spend 38 percent of the Social Security surplus on non-Social 
Security items. Actually, he said let us only save 62 percent, but 
doing the math, that would mean spending 38 percent of the Social 
Security surplus. That is not good enough.
  We need to protect and preserve 100 percent of the Social Security 
surplus. Last year this Congress left town with $147 billion in the 
surplus trust fund so that our loved ones can retire to an income that 
is there because of the money they put in it.
  And the T is tax relief.
  Every day another couple gets married and when they do, they get a 
bill, $1400 for walking down the aisle together. We need tax relief for 
working America.
  Madam Speaker, that is what it is. The BEST agenda.
  There is one other angle in there that I want to say. Despite all the 
great prosperity and despite all the millionaires that have been made 
in the high-tech industry, one industry that has been left behind is 
agriculture. We need to reach out to America's farmers. Less than 2 
percent of the population now feeds 100 percent of America, plus a 
great percentage of the whole world.
  We need to make sure that our farm families are not left behind. How 
can they grow oats in Millen, Georgia, and compete against the foreign 
market that is subsidizing their farmer 30 percent in another country? 
They cannot do that. And yet we let our farmers get beat to death by 
foreign farmers whose governments subsidize them.
  We need to try to close that. We need to help balance things. We need 
to have tough trade negotiations when we are negotiating multinational 
trade agreements. So these are things that we have worked on. We are 
going to continue to work on.

  I believe that it is important for Democrats and Republicans to put 
aside partisan politics and, despite the hot air that is coming out of 
the cold State of New Hampshire, do what is best for America and do it 
here in Washington, D.C.

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