[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 45 (Tuesday, April 11, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H2104-H2110]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             NIGHTSIDE CHAT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to address my 
colleague, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Bishop). Having been here 
for a while and listened to the remarks of the various people, I wish I 
would have had the privilege to meet the gentleman. That was fabulous. 
I thought your presentation was very, very good, and what a remarkable 
man. I just wanted to tell you. I thought it was terrific.
  Mr. Speaker, it is time for another nightside chat from the mountains 
of Colorado, so to speak. As you know, my district is the 3rd 
Congressional District in Colorado. There are a number of different 
areas that I would like to cover this evening.
  We have April 15th coming up, Tax Day. And I think there are a number 
of issues we need to talk about relative to the taxes in this country. 
Now, look, this is not going to be a horse and pony show. What is 
important here is to talk about substantive changes, changes that you 
can take to the bank that have occurred under the Republican 
leadership.
  Mr. Speaker, I can say that tonight it is not my intent to get into a 
partisan battle with my colleagues, but clearly when it comes to taxes, 
that is one of the distinguishing elements between the Democratic party 
and the Republican party.
  I would like to go through a few of those elements. Now, again as I 
said, it is not an attack, but it is a statement to clarify and to 
highlight what the differences between the parties are when it comes to 
many of these tax issues. By the way, I want to go through the tax 
issues, then I would like to cover a little on some of the education 
issues. Of course, we can mix all of that.
  If we have an opportunity this evening, I would like to talk with my 
colleagues about the jobs and the economy. These jobs, even though we 
have a very healthy economy today, we cannot ignore the fact that to 
survive tomorrow, to keep our jobs strong in this kind of an economy, 
we have to work on our education. We have to have the best education.
  This world that we are in is going to become very, very competitive 
in the years ahead. Fortunately, one of the finest tools you can get 
your hands on, the United States has it, and that is that next 
generation behind us.
  On a regular basis, I have many high school students through a 
program called Close-up and 4H programs, programs like that, excellent 
programs. I will tell you they come into my office, they visit with me, 
I give them an opportunity to ask questions. These kids are bright. If 
we can give them the educational opportunities that they need and that 
they deserve and that this country needs to preserve its status as the 
only superpower in the world, we are going to be in pretty good shape, 
but it is a challenge we have to take. I am going to talk a little bit 
about that.
  If we have time, I would like to talk a little about Microsoft, my 
feelings on the Microsoft judgment that came down.


                          Religious Hypocrisy

  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I do want to begin this evening with a 
little concern I have about some hypocrisy that I think has probably 
gone on. As many of you know, in the last few weeks, we have had some 
verbiage, I guess you would say, some talk around the Capitol about the 
issue of Catholics. I am a Roman Catholic. I am no saint, obviously, 
but I know something about the church.
  I also know that the Roman Catholic Church, it does not matter what 
color you are, it does not matter what your nationality is. There are 
Catholics throughout the world. In the last few weeks, there has been 
kind of a focused effort, primarily from the Democrats, saying that for 
some reason the Republicans are biased against Catholics. Obviously, 
you can take a look at that comment on its face, and you know that it 
is typical political rhetoric during an election year.
  I thought it was especially pointed to note, not very many months 
ago, I stood up here in front of my colleagues and I asked for the 
support in condemning a museum in New York City that decided to put up 
a showing of an art piece called Sensation.

                              {time}  2045

  It was a painting, a portrait or some structure, of the Virgin Mary.
  Now, in the Catholic religion the Virgin Mary is a very sacred symbol 
in our church. What happened is this museum allowed, with taxpayer 
dollars, allowed this exhibit to be shown. What the exhibit was was the 
Virgin Mary with dung, or cow pie, so-to-speak, in this particular case 
it was elephant dung, thrown against the picture, clearly degrading, if 
you want to take a shot at Catholic Church degrading that religious 
symbol.
  What was more appalling to me than this particular art exhibit was 
the fact that the Board of Directors and other members affiliated with 
this museum actually stuck up for the artist and said that the artist 
should be entitled to utilize taxpayer dollars to degrade the Catholic 
religion by putting the Virgin Mary up there in a portrait that shows 
the Virgin Mary with crap thrown on the picture. Excuse my language, 
but that is what it is. It was appalling. It was amazing to me.

[[Page H2105]]

  Come on. There is a lot of at the Brooklyn Art Museum. Why would they 
lower themselves to do this? It is not freedom of expression. The issue 
here is should taxpayer dollars be used by this museum, and then should 
this museum endorse that kind of degrading art towards a religion?
  I want you to know that when I brought that issue up, I did not have 
very many, in fact, I cannot remember one, Democrat who came up to me 
and said, ``Boy, we are with you. You talk about bias against the 
Catholic religion. We feel so strongly about protecting the Catholics 
from bias, that we are going to join you in your criticism of the 
Brooklyn Art Museum.'' Not one person on that side of the aisle came 
up.
  I think it is important, not to be overly combative here tonight, but 
I just want to point out, when I hear members on your side of the aisle 
criticizing Republicans because we had a Catholic mass last week, that 
somehow this is some kind after prejudice, and yet when the real test 
comes, when the real McCoy is out there, and that is that kind of 
exhibit degrading it, you sat silent. You sat silent.
  If that would have been a symbol from the Jewish religion, or a 
Buddhist symbol, or would have been a symbol against some other type of 
religion in this country, I suspect all of you would have come off your 
hands, gone to that Brooklyn Art Museum, you would have had protests 
and been protesting violently, or ``strongly'' I guess is a better 
word. But not one. You sat on your hands when we talked about the 
Brooklyn Art Museum and the Catholic church and the degrading of that 
symbol.
  So I hope this pro-Catholic, anti-Catholic stuff kind of dies down, 
because I am telling you, some of you that start to criticize the fact 
that the Republicans had a Catholic mass, I am telling you that you are 
not entering this with clean hands.
  What needs to happen is this issue ought to just resolve itself. Let 
everybody in this chamber practice the religion that they wish to 
practice. I do not think you need to go on an attack, telling a person, 
whether they hold public office or not, that they are biased against 
one religion or another. I just do not think it is necessary.


                      The Budget and the Death Tax

  Let us move off of that issue to an issue that I think is 
fundamentally more important.
  First we have got to talk a little about the process when we work 
through the budget. We have a process back here in the United States 
Congress called the annual budget. The President as a guiding tool for 
Congress proposes his own budget. Now, this is a very complicated 
document, as is the budgetary document that comes out of the House of 
Representatives. The budget is very complex. Obviously it involves a 
lot of money. But when we got the President's budget, of course, and I 
am a Member on the Committee on Ways and Means, and the Committee on 
Ways and Means decides the tax issues. We have the broadest 
jurisdiction probably of any committee in Congress. We decide the trade 
issues, very active in that area this year, Medicare-Medicare issues, 
very active in that area, Social Security issues, very active in that 
area.
  But when the President's budget comes, we analyze that budget. We 
look at the fine print on that budget. We take a look and see, you 
know, what is in that budget that we ought to understand. Is it a wolf 
in sheep's clothing, what is contained in the fine print.
  I will tell you what we found in the fine print, we had a lot of 
debate about it today on the House floor, and that is we discovered 
there are 84, mark this, 84 new, brand new programs, in the Federal 
budget under the President's budget. Eighty-four new programs.
  I need to tell you, our economy is going well and our constituents 
are pretty satisfied with the economy. But let us do not try and throw 
a bunch of new Federal programs on them, because this economy may not 
stay strong forever.

  We know if you look on an historic basis of our economy, you see 
dramatic shifts throughout the years. At some point in time the big 
boom we are having, the strong growth that we have enjoyed, it is going 
to turn. We know that. It is cyclical in its nature and by its nature.
  So when the times are good, you have to practice self-restraint. You 
cannot go out and blow all the money. It is kind of like coming across 
a windfall of money individually in your own budget. I think it would 
be a mistake, personally, for you to take a sudden windfall of money 
and go out and spend it all, or even overcommit yourself to the future, 
assuming at some point in time you are going to come across another 
windfall of money.
  This is not the time to be building up the size of the Federal 
Government. This is the time to start reducing the size of the Federal 
Government and shifting these programs to the state and local 
government, where accountability is much, much better, where management 
of their budget is much more accountable to the taxpayer.
  That is why today we had some pretty heated debate. We had a very 
heated debate about these 84 programs. The Democrats, frankly, were 
trying to defend the programs. In fact, one of the arguments that came 
across was why do you just bring out the fact that 84 new programs are 
there? Why do you not bring out the good things in the budget?
  Look, our job is to point out things that I think are going to create 
some problems. That whole budget is not bad. There are some things in 
that budget that are acceptable, we all know that. But we have an 
obligation, in fact I think we have a fiduciary responsibility to the 
taxpayers of this country, to go through that budget line-by-line and 
point out what is going to happen.
  Somebody said, well, why do you bring it out? The reason we bring it 
out is I want all of our constituents to know that if we adopt the 
President's program, the President's budget, they are going to have 
with the signing of a pen 84 new Federal programs, in addition to what 
we have right now.
  There is also something that I found very alarming in the President's 
budget. It impacts my district significantly, and I venture to say it 
impacts every one of my colleagues' districts significantly. Let me 
tell you what it is about.
  The death tax. When you take a look at the Federal tax system, 
probably the most punitive element of our tax system, the element that 
has the least amount of justification, although it is followed closely 
by the marriage penalty, is the death tax.
  What is the death tax? The death tax means that the Federal 
Government comes to your estate, i.e., the property left after you pass 
on, they come to your estate, and if your estate is valued over a 
certain amount of money, $650,000 or a little more than that, they then 
assess what in essence is a very punitive or punishing tax against your 
estate.
  Now, mind you, this is the United States of America. This is the 
country where we tell our young people, go out and build a fortune, go 
out, and it does not have to be in money, go out and build a farm, go 
out and have a ranch, go out and be a great teacher, go out and find 
the home of your dreams. And yet when they do, if you are too 
successful, all of a sudden you see your own government saying whoa, 
whoa, whoa, you have been too successful. You actually were able to 
build a farm that maybe you can pass on to the next generation. We do 
not want that to happen. We better punish you for success.
  That is exactly what the death tax is about, punishment for success. 
The incentive that makes our country great, that makes the capitalistic 
system work, is that you are rewarded for success. You are not punished 
for success, you are rewarded for success.
  This death tax needs to be eliminated. It is in our system today. How 
did it get in the system? If you look back at the history of taxation, 
what happened was some people decided, hey, that is the way to transfer 
wealth. Instead of transferring wealth through the capitalistic system, 
i.e., you come up with a better idea, or you come up with a product, 
they decided we need to do it by fiat. We need to go ahead and have the 
government waive a magic wand and look at people and say hey, you have 
been too successful, so we are going to penalize you when you die. 
Instead of allowing your family to continue the operation of your small 
business or the operation of a ranch or a

[[Page H2106]]

 farm or for you to have assets, by the way, of which you have paid 
taxes on your entire life, these are not untaxed assets, these are 
assets of which you have already paid your taxes on, you have paid your 
fair share, and the government comes in and says we are going to 
transfer it.
  You know, after a while it begins to bother the person who works, if 
you continue to transfer things of gain from the person who works and 
award it to the person who does not. How long do you think a society 
can continue to operate if you penalize the working person and reward 
the person that is not working, who, by the way is capable of working? 
I am not talking about disabled people. I am talking about fully 
capable of working?

  This is a transfer tax. It is a defiance of the capitalistic system. 
It is a tax that would have Adam Smith turn in his grave. His Wealth of 
Nations has a special chapter devoted to just exactly this problem in a 
capitalistic system.
  But when we discuss the death tax, let us take a look at what the 
President's budget does with the death tax. The Republicans have a 
pretty simple proposal: The Republicans say about the death tax, let it 
meet its death. No pun intended. Let us strike it. Get rid of the death 
tax. You cannot justify it. It is not fair to the taxpayers.
  When you really look at the details of the death tax, the amount of 
revenue that we collect is not a whole lot more than the amount of 
revenue that we put in, and when you take a look what the death tax 
does to the environment in terms of damage, and you say, wait a minute, 
Scott, you are confused. You are saying the death tax has something to 
do with the environment, it hurts the environment?
  I can tell you in Colorado, the 3rd Congressional District, I am 
proud as the dickens of my district out there in Colorado, proud as 
punch of the district and proud as punch of the people out there. But 
our district has been discovered, and we have got a lot of people who 
want to move out into our district.
  I will tell you, we want to sustain our farm and our agriculture base 
and our ranches out there, it is important, and that open space, 
beautiful, spectacular. Any of you that have skied in Colorado, you 
skied in my district, colleagues. You know where it is. It is the 
mountains, the highest district in the Nation. Many of you would love 
to live out there. Many of your constituents do live out there.
  But what is happening, because of the punitive nature of the death 
tax and because of the increasing value of the property in my district, 
we are having families who not in their wildest imagination ever 
thought that the Federal Government would come in, take the ranch or 
the farm or the small business they put together and break it up, and 
break it up. Not because of antitrust, not because of some violation of 
the law by this family, but because that family worked too hard and 
they became, God forbid, successful.
  So our government decides to tax it. That is why the Republicans, and 
there is a distinct line drawn between the parties on this, has said 
get rid of the death tax.
  The President has made it very clear, and the vice president has made 
it very clear, and the Secretary of Treasury has made it very clear, 
the Secretary of Treasury as you might remember said about this: ``This 
is selfish for you to talk about getting rid of that. How selfish of 
you to talk about that.'' How dare you say to the government, why are 
you entitled?
  Maybe somebody else ought to ask the government, why are you entitled 
to take this? What gives you the fundamental right to go into a family 
and take it, a ranching family for example, who for generations 
struggled to make this go, and, all of a sudden the property goes up in 
value, and somebody meets an untimely death and the government is able 
to take it away?
  The President's and vice president's position is hey, we oppose doing 
away with the death tax. The reason? Well, it is unfair. It is unfair. 
You know, it is unfair to the government to do away with it. Not unfair 
to the people, but unfair to the government to do away with it.
  Well, I have accepted the fact that until we have a change in 
administration, that Vice President Gore's and President Clinton's 
policy is going to continue to be to have the death tax. I was not 
caught off guard by that. They made their statements very clear. The 
Republicans have made it very clear they want to eliminate the death 
tax, and President Clinton and Vice President Gore have made it very 
clear they want to sustain, they want to keep the death tax.

                              {time}  2100

  So I was not caught off guard until I read that budget, the 
President's budget. I feel like they have sold us down the river on 
this.
  Do Members know what they do with the death tax? They keep it, all 
right. They keep it. They increase it, they do not cross it out. They 
do not cross it out, they keep it. Then do Members know what they do? 
Look at this word: Increase the death tax. That is exactly what the 
President's budget does.
  That caught us off guard. We knew the President was going to defend 
this tax, which I think is indefensible. We knew the Vice President was 
going to stand right by him, as he has with all the other troubles that 
the President has had. But we did not expect it, and I am not sure, 
maybe the Democratic Party expected it, maybe they knew about it in 
advance, but it caught us off guard.
  Today several Members on that side of the aisle got very aggressive. 
When we brought that up, they said, why do you bring up the death tax 
in the President's budget? Why do Members not bring up the good 
programs in the President's budget? Because there are a lot of programs 
that are good programs in the President's budget that we may not have a 
problem with.
  But the Republicans have a real problem with, one, the existence of 
the death tax, and two, the audacity of the administration through its 
policies, and the Vice President through his policies, to increase the 
death tax, increase it.
  If we talk about an insult to the working people of America, come on, 
government. Back off. Do we want to destroy these ranches and family 
businesses?
  It has always been a father's and mother's dreams that some day they 
could be in a business they could pass on to the next generation, or to 
the next 50 generations. We all work at that. Every one of us in these 
chambers think of our demise at some point in the future and we want to 
build something for our kids. We want to build something to give to 
them, whether it is a small business or something of a value to help 
them get a start. We all want that.
  The government ought not to be stepping in there to take it away from 
us, and they sure as heck should not be increasing it. I would hope 
that every one on the Democratic side would join us on the Republican 
side and say no to any further increase in the death tax.
  It does not take a hero to say no on this thing. It is an easy policy 
question. It should not have occurred.
  I want to move on a little and talk about some of the taxes and the 
tax breaks and things we talked about.
  Every time we have tax season, we hear people get up on both sides 
and they talk about, well, this is how much taxes have raised. It is 
true, the biggest bite in the history of the country, I think, or since 
World War II, the biggest percentage of tax bite in the country exists 
today. There are a lot of statistics I can tell Members about.
  But what I think we need to do, I think we need to say, hey, let us 
face the music. Let us talk about really what kind of substantive tax 
changes have taken place that benefit our constituents, the people out 
there who are working for a living; what really have we done?
  I want to take an example of what the Republicans have done. I am 
very proud of the Republican leadership on taxes. I can tell the 
Members that there has been a diversion, a red herring thrown out 
there, so to speak, by the Democrats talking about, well, the 
Republicans want to cut taxes and they are going to ruin social 
security, or the Republicans want to cut taxes and it is going to ruin 
Medicaid or Medicare, or the seniors are not going to be able to eat 
tomorrow. We hear all that rhetoric.
  Let us, though, put the rhetoric aside. Let us talk about the 
differences, because it is a fair discussion.

[[Page H2107]]

 It is not under-the-belt politics, it is a fair discussion, what are 
the differences in taxes.
  Another fair question is, since control of the House of 
Representatives is going to be up in November, another fair question to 
ask of the Republicans, all right, Republicans, where is your proof in 
the pudding? What is the proof in the pudding? What have you done for 
the American people about taxes? What have you done?
  Let us go through a few things. The one that I am probably the most 
proud of is the House. When we took control of the United States 
Congress, despite opposition from the Democratic Party, we looked out 
there and said, what is a reasonable tax reduction program that we can 
do to help the average Jane and the average Joe out there working away? 
What can we do to give them some help?
  We sat down and we had lots of discussions about this. The conclusion 
we came up with is that there are a lot of people in American that own 
homes. Even since we had that discussion, the amount of home ownership 
has gone like this. What a great country. It is a wonderful country 
that people, most people in this country have the opportunity to own 
their own home.

  That opportunity starts at a very young age. I have employees who 
owned their own home when they were in their early twenties, 21 or 22 
years old. That is great news. But what happens with this house? How 
can we help the homeowner in this country, which are most of Members' 
constituents? Most of our constituents own homes out in our districts.
  So the Republicans decided as a priority we should get some kind of 
tax relief for the homeowner. Does it amount to anything more than a 
hill of beans? You bet it does. You bet it does. This tax reduction 
that we put in place a couple of years ago is probably the largest tax 
break that any of our constituents have gotten in the last 20 years. It 
is a huge tax break if someone owns a home in this country.
  What are we talking about? Let us go through a little history on 
this. Let me talk about the old law before the Republicans changed it. 
It was our leadership, and I am proud of that. Again, let me just 
caution, I am not trying to get partisan here, but I am describing 
somebody that deserves a pat on the back and a distinguishment between 
the parties. That is fair game, as I said.
  The old law on home ownership is that if you bought a home say, for 
example, for $100,000, and you were in an area of growth 15 or 20 years 
ago, although today with the kind of economy we have we see this 
appreciation in value occurring at a much faster rate, but let us say 
over 15 or 20 years you bought a $100,000 house and you sold it for 
$350,000. Unless you were over 55 years of age, and even then only once 
in a lifetime, then you would get an exemption up to, I think, 
$125,000.
  But what happened, you bought the home for $100,000. Let us say you 
are under 55, or maybe over, but you already took your once-in-a-
lifetime exemption. Let us say this is a 40-year-old couple. Let us say 
they bought a home, using this example here, they bought the home for 
$200,000. They bought it 20 years ago. The years are not important, but 
let us just give the years for appreciation and value of the home.
  They sold the home for $700,000. That means their profit on the home 
was $500,000. They made $500,000 on the profit of their home. Under the 
old law, they were taxed on the $500,000 net profit. Under the law that 
the Republicans passed, and we did have, by the way, support, and 
initially we had opposition by the Democratic leadership, but they came 
around when they saw it was going to be a done deal. We did have some 
support from some Democrats, and some conservative Democrats helped us 
all along, by the way.
  What we did is passed a bill that goes out to couples, individual 
homeowners as well. It says, we are going to allow you the first 
$250,000. The first $250,000 of profit that you make on the sale of 
your home, we are going to allow you to have that tax-free. You get to 
put that first $250,000 per person, and now remember, most homes are 
owned by couples, so it is $500,000 per couple, you get to take that 
money, put it in your pocket, no taxes.
  Under the old law, the only way one could defer the taxes, and they 
still had to pay the taxes, but the only way to defer the taxes was to 
go ahead and buy a home of at least the same cost or a greater cost 
than the price that you sold your home for.
  So what we did is went out to every homeowner in this country, and we 
have said, if you have had any kind of value growth in your home and 
you sell that home recognizing that value growth, or in other words, 
you sell that home for a profit, that profit, up to $250,000 goes right 
into your pocket.
  Mr. Speaker, my colleagues have had many of their constituents, 
probably, who have sold homes in the last 2 years. Members ought to go 
see what kind of smile is on their face because of the fact we went out 
to the homeowner, and it did not break the government, and despite what 
the administration says, it did not break social security, it did not 
cost us money in education, it did not impact in any kind of negative 
fashion the health care delivery in this country.
  What it did do is it went out to people, and in most cases this is 
our constituents' largest asset in their holdings, is their home. We 
went out to their largest asset for the average American and said, 
look, when the time comes that you can sell that home for a profit, you 
get to keep as an individual up to $250,000, and you get to put it 
right in your pocket and walk away from the deal. If you are married, 
you each get to keep up to $250,000.
  What else is great about this? It does not happen once in a lifetime. 
The old law says you get to do it once. The new law says you get to do 
it every 2 years. You can take the money, go buy another home, and let 
us say a more reasonable approach, let us say you sell a home today as 
a couple, you make a couple of hundred thousand dollars profit, tax-
free, put it in your pocket. Let us say you go buy another home. You 
buy a $100,000 home. You live in that home for the next 2 years. Let us 
say that the economy continues to grow stronger and you sell it for 
$175,000, so you have made $75,000 profit.

  Two years have gone by, you get to take that $75,000, which, by the 
way, it is your money, and you get to put it in your pocket tax-free. 
That is probably the most significant tax break that our constituents 
have received in the last 20 years. By gosh, I am proud to be a 
Republican and I am proud to say it was under our leadership that we 
got that done.
  Let us talk about another tax bill that we got done out of this 
House, and I am confident it is going to move out of the Senate. It was 
done under Republican leadership, despite opposition by the 
administration, although now the administration says they will sign it. 
Why? They see the writing on the wall. It is fair. How can anyone argue 
against it? That is the conclusion, in my opinion, that the White House 
reached.
  What is it? Remember some of the great things that have made our 
country such a superpower, a superpower in many definitions of the 
word? We can start it by talking about family. Family is a fundamental 
pillar in this country. Religion is a fundamental pillar in this 
country. Freedom is a fundamental pillar in this country. Education is 
a fundamental pillar in this country.
  Let us talk about one of those pillars: Marriage. This country as a 
policy should encourage marriage, should encourage families. Families 
are what have made this country great. We have an obligation to build 
as strong families as we can. In the government, we have an obligation 
to encourage families, encourage marriage.
  What did this government do? They penalized people who got married. 
Our tax rate in many cases was higher simply because of the fact that 
you were married. For no other reason besides the fact that you were 
married you paid a higher tax than if you were to file as two single 
individuals.
  Is that intelligent thinking? Is that how we encourage people to go 
out and get married, is to penalize them for getting married? We just 
talked about what we do, we penalize people, their survivors, when they 
die. But that was not enough for this government. They had to go out 
and hit in the other end, as soon as they die, and in between we are 
going to nail them again and again.
  The marriage penalty, this House passed it. Again, I am proud of the 
Republican leadership. We took the lead

[[Page H2108]]

on that. We should feel no shame in going out to our constituents and 
talking about the fact that we want to get rid of that death tax, that 
it is unfair; that the marriage penalty that we lead on, we are going 
to get rid of that. The homeowner tax break that we put in place, there 
was that. We are giving homeowners an opportunity. Those are three 
major pieces of legislation that have been accomplished under 
Republican leadership.
  But we are not done. We are not done. What else happened in the last 
couple of years?

                              {time}  2215

  A big factor, a big thing. Almost it is somewhere pushing, I think 
certainly over 50 percent, but years ago not very many people owned 
stock in the stock market. That really was kind of a rich man's, a rich 
woman's, game. It was a sophisticated operation. It still is 
sophisticated, but really one only saw the upper echelon of our society 
in economic categories investing in the stock market. That has changed 
dramatically just in the last 10 years.
  Today, Mr. Speaker, well over 50 percent of our constituents have 
investments in the stock market. Now a lot of them may not realize they 
have investments in the stock market because they own shares of a 
mutual fund or they do not know that their retirement monies are 
invested in a stock market, but they are. They also do not realize that 
when these investments are sold that this government has another tax 
they pull out of the sky called the capital gains taxation.
  Where did this tax come from? Let me say, first of all, most of the 
European countries do not have it or if they have it it is at a much 
lower rate. Why? Because it does not create capital. It defies the 
system of capitalism. It encourages nonproduction. It encourages people 
to sit on their duff and not do anything because if they do do 
something the government comes in as a partner that did not participate 
much and takes a big chunk out of it, what is called capital gains 
taxation.
  What we did in the Republican leadership, and again I am proud of it, 
and I do have to say there were some conservative Democrats that joined 
us, but frankly the Democratic leadership did not. They opposed us. 
They said it was a rich man's game. Well, let me say, if this is a rich 
man's game I have a lot of rich people in my district playing a rich 
man's game, and these rich people happen to be everything from stocker 
at the local grocery store to teachers and so on and so forth. They are 
not wealthy as far as an asset category is concerned. They may be 
wealthy in their profession and wealthy in love and so on, but this 
covers a lot of people.
  We felt an obligation to lower that tax which at one time was 28 
percent. It was 28 percent when we got our hands on it. We lowered it 
to 20 percent. We wanted to get rid of it but the President would not 
hear of it. The President insisted it stay at 28 percent. We were able 
to compromise. We got it down to 20 percent and it was signed into law.
  Now one says 8 percent. Come on, what is 8 percent? What kind of a 
difference does 8 percent make? It makes a lot of difference and it 
makes a lot of difference to our constituents. Take 8 percent off that 
tax bite and that means something. Those are a lot of dollars.
  I have had several constituents come up to me and say, wow, thanks. 
That was terrific. Know what happened when we lowered the capital gains 
taxation rate? We did not break Social Security. We did not cause 
anyone to get less delivery in health care. We did not have all of 
these kind of nightmare scenarios that people that are opposed to 
legitimate, logical tax reductions, we did not see the sky fall in, not 
at all.
  Now let me say, some of the people who criticized some of the ideas 
for tax reduction, some of their criticisms are right with particular 
ideas. Some ideas work the opposite way. I mean, our government has to 
have taxes to operate. We all acknowledge that, but we acknowledge that 
the government ought to be accountable with those tax dollars. We think 
the government ought to have individual responsibility in this country 
and the government should not go under the days of the great society 
like we had under Lyndon Johnson where the government provided for 
everything; that they felt that the individual power and responsibility 
should be shifted to a central government in Washington, D.C. It was a 
huge failure. It was an experiment that failed.
  There are some ideas that are pretty wild about tax reduction. Some 
people would like to have no taxes at all. Logic, your gut, your gut 
reaction says that is not going to work. We have to approach this in a 
fair and in a balanced manner. That is what we have done.
  Let me again go through these tax reductions. Number one, we need to 
get rid of that death tax summarily. That death tax is punitive and it 
is unfair, and eliminating the death tax, certainly opposing the 
President and vice president's proposal in their budget this year to 
raise the death tax, to increase the death tax, is a non-starter.
  I wish the vice president and the President would work towards 
elimination of the death tax, not towards increasing their dependence 
on it and hiking it up. We are going to continue that fight. With the 
proper changes in November, I hope we can eliminate the death tax but 
in the meantime we have to fight this proposed increase by the Clinton-
Gore team to raise the death tax.
  The second thing we have done, we repealed the capital gains tax on 
the sale of that home. Remember I talked about that, the capital gains, 
when someone sells their home we give them a $250,000 per person 
renewable every two years tax break. One gets to keep that income, gets 
to put it in their pocket.
  Take a look at the marriage penalty. Out of this House we said and it 
was under Republican leadership, it is not fair to punish people that 
are getting married. We eliminate that marriage penalty tax. It is not 
right. I think we are going to get that to the President in the not too 
distant future and I think the President who originally opposed it is 
going to sign it.
  Our capital gains reduction program, remember that we have taken 
capital gains from 28 percent down to 20. It was a logical move.
  If one wants to see what had a major impact and boosted this economy 
over the last 3 or 4 years, I think we can tie a great portion of that 
gain directly to the fact that we freed up capital by reducing the 
capital gains taxation. That was a smart, logical tax reduction.
  The sale of one's own personal residence is a smart, logical tax 
deduction. Elimination of the death tax is not only smart, it is not 
only logical, it is punitive to keep it. It is unfair to keep it. The 
marriage penalty, if we want to encourage families, it is a logical, 
fundamentally fair path to take by eliminating that.
  Now some people have said, hey, what about seniors? What is going to 
be done about seniors, Republicans? It is interesting how in an 
election year all of a sudden we hear bashing, Republicans do not care 
about seniors. That is ridiculous. I do not know one Member on this 
floor, Democrat or Republican, I do not know one Democrat or 
Republican, in fact I do not know anybody anywhere, who is going to 
stand up and say I do not care about seniors. Yet that statement is a 
political statement that actually picks up some votes, perhaps, for 
people making the statement.
  I mean really, think about it. How many people do any of us know, Mr. 
Speaker, that do not want to help seniors; that want to just abandon 
seniors; that do not want seniors to have health care? Well, I can say 
that in the 40 years when the Democrats held control of this House, 
they did not eliminate the death tax. In fact, it was put in place. 
They did not eliminate the homeowner tax. In fact, it was put in place. 
They did not eliminate the marriage penalty. In fact, it was put in 
place. Now when they talk about seniors, there is a delineation again.
  It is the Republicans, after repeated opposition by the President and 
the vice president and the Democratic leadership on the floor, it is 
the Republicans who stepped forward and said, wait a minute, we have 
something wrong in our tax system as it deals with seniors. Let us talk 
about what is happening to seniors out there, specifically seniors 
between 65 and 69 years old.
  Under the current tax system, if one is a senior and there are 
800,000 out of

[[Page H2109]]

them out there, if one is a senior in that age bracket and they go to 
work, the government, after they make more than $17,000, punishes them 
for working. What? Yes. Let us repeat that. The government says if 
seniors want to work and they are between 65 and 69 years old, we are 
only going to allow them to make $17,000 and no matter how hard they 
work, no matter how badly they need seniors to fill this job, we are 
going to penalize them $1 for every $3 they make. That is right, we are 
going to penalize them $1 for every $3 that they make.
  How can something like that come into being? Logically, what brought 
that about? What happened is many, many decades ago there were not 
enough jobs. Today we face just exactly the opposite scenario; there 
are too many jobs. I guess we can never have too many jobs. Let us say 
there are too many jobs that are not filled. Back then, there were not 
enough jobs so once again Washington, the think-tank back here in the 
Potomac, turned on the light and said, well, this is what we will do, 
let us penalize, let us force seniors, let us push them out of the job 
market. Let us get those old fogies, let us move them out of there, by 
gosh.
  It is not right, but that is what happened. The policy adopted just 
like the great society in the sixties, which was a great failure, and I 
guess we cannot call a failure great, it was a huge failure, this, too, 
has become a huge failure. Why would we push senior citizens out of the 
labor market?
  Well, under Republican leadership I am proud to say, and it is 
interesting to note, that after all of the years that we have tried to 
get this done and we have had objections from the other side of the 
aisle, from the Democrats, it is interesting to note that when we 
finally, when we finally put it up so that this bill could face the 
music, when we really put the challenge up there and the vote had to be 
registered on this board up here, I think that left the House a week or 
so ago unanimously. I do not think there was a no vote in the Chamber. 
I do not think there was a no vote in the Chamber.
  What does it do? We now say to seniors between 65 and 69 years old, 
guess what? The government has changed its policy. We have determined 
that it is not a good policy to punish seniors for staying in the labor 
market. So every one of us on both sides of the aisle can go back, but 
I have to say while I say on both sides of the aisle, in fairness when 
my colleagues go back to their constituents they ought to say it was 
Republican leadership that got it done. Democrats had 40 years to do 
some of these things: The house credit, the capital gains reduction, 
the death tax, the marriage penalty and now the seniors. But they 
deserve some of the credit. After all, they voted for it when it came 
up. We did not have any no votes on the House Floor.
  The fact is this: Seniors, 800,000 of them between 65 and 69, they 
have good news headed their way. The President is going to sign that 
bill and they are not going to pay taxes, they are not going to be 
punished because they want to work in the labor force. In fact, we 
encourage them to be in the labor force. I think it makes them live 
longer. I think it is great for them and I think they provide a 
terrific asset to our economy.
  Well, let me move from all of these taxes. The reason I have hit 
taxes in our night side chat this evening so intensely is because we 
have April 15 coming up but it is time for a new topic.


               America, The Only Superpower in the World

  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I have had an opportunity to travel fairly 
extensively throughout the world, and there are a few things I want to 
talk about regarding the United States of America, Mr. Speaker. First 
of all, we are the only superpower in the world, and we are the 
superpower because of American ingenuity, because of American energy, 
because of patriotism within our borders and friendliness and strength 
demonstrated outside of our borders. That is why we are a superpower.
  When I travel in the world I carry a little index card about a fourth 
the size of this, and on that index card I have an American flag; 
actually, a little picture of an American flag. When I travel to 
different countries, I make it a point of getting away off the regular 
path and kind of going down an unknown path. As they say, never walk 
the same path twice. I go down an alley or find a merchant and show 
them that index card. I have yet to find one person anywhere in the 
world that cannot identify the flag of the United States of America.
  People know the strength of the United States of America, but it did 
not just fall out of the skies. Many of our European colleagues have a 
much, much longer history. Speaking from an industrial aspect, they 
have a lot longer history. Most of the countries in the world are much 
older than our country but no country in the world even comes close to 
matching our country. Why? Because we have a few principle beliefs that 
we push, and one of them, one of the fundamental ones, happens to be 
education. There are others. Health care, a strong military. One can 
never be number two in the military. The stronger one is in the 
military, the less fights they are going to get into. Religion, family, 
we could talk and on about those, but let us just go down to a couple 
of them.
  First of all, let me say that also in my travels throughout the world 
I have an opportunity not because of Scott McInnis but because of the 
position as a U.S. Congressman, I have an opportunity to meet people in 
other countries that are very wealthy. I have had opportunities to meet 
kings and queens and members of parliament and members of respected 
governments and prime ministers. I have had those opportunities. To the 
best of my recollection, when I have asked the question, whenever 
somebody in some other country other than the United States wants to 
send their kids to college, a lot of the time they send those kids to 
be educated where? In the United States of America.
  What else? When those families have somebody who has a deadly disease 
or a terrible disease like cancer, most of those wealthy people, what 
their choice is, they send them for health care to the United States of 
America.
  Our country is a leader in health care. We are number one in the 
world. Our country is number one in the world on education. Now, sure, 
we have test score problems, we have areas we have to shore up on. We 
have to rededicate ourself to the proposition that the most important 
person in the classroom is the student and that the resources going to 
that classroom should be focused on the student, not on all kinds of 
Federal programs, not on all kinds of Federal bureaucracies that we 
find in the Department of Education and other areas. We have to focus 
on the student. Education is an important issue but there are some 
concerns that I have out there.

                              {time}  2130

  One of the concerns that I have about education in our country is 
discipline in the classroom. Our country, again, another fundamental 
pillar to our success, is that we exercise and we expect individual 
responsibility; and that if an individual did not carry out that 
responsibility, there were consequences. There were consequences for 
their lack of action.
  It is the same thing in the classroom. There was a book, and for the 
life of me, I cannot think of the title of it, a lot of my colleagues 
out here will remember this book, I cannot remember, but anyway the 
book compared the 10 most serious discipline problems 30 years ago or 
40 years ago. In that list, chewing gum, talking out loud in the 
classroom, talking out of turn, not answering the teacher ``yes, 
ma'am'', ``yes, sir''. It was those kind of things. I remember that. 
That is what I used to get in trouble for.
  Then it talked about the 10 most common discipline problems in 
today's classroom. I will tell my colleagues, I think one can draw a 
coalition between chewing gum and drugs. I think one can look in there 
and see that the government, not the teachers, the teachers, in my 
opinion, for the most part, have done a commendable job. Unfortunately, 
we keep bad teachers, and we are not rewarding the good teachers in my 
opinion. But if one drew a line, I think one can draw a direct 
coalition between the discipline, between the fact that our society, 
our government all of a sudden is starting to say, look, we should not 
have consequences.
  It is interesting, the other day I read about or heard about some 
students

[[Page H2110]]

that got in a fight at their school. For the first time, I heard a 
term, ``third-year freshman''. I thought, third-year freshman? What is 
a third-year freshman?
  I asked my sister Kathleen, she is a school counselor, what is a 
third-year freshman? Oh, that is somebody who has been in high school 
three years and does not have any high school credits. What? In the old 
days, look, if one did not want to try in school, if one were not going 
to make an effort at it, get out. We have got a lot of students in our 
schools that want to make an effort at it. We have got a lot of 
students in our schools that want to succeed.
  Our society has become so politically correct in education that 
discipline has almost all but been taken away from our teachers. How 
can we expect teachers and instructors that will deliver the kind of 
product that will continue to make this country a superpower if we do 
not give them the tools they need? One of those tools happens to be 
discipline, to make our students accept responsibility for their 
actions and to have consequences for the actions that they take. That 
is where we are going to increase production out of our schools.
  I have been very excited lately because, frankly, in the State of 
Colorado, in my opinion, we have ended up with a darn good Governor, 
and he has been very aggressive on education reform. It is very 
interesting. He came out and said we are going to grade schools.
  What was interesting about the criticism, a number of people from 
schools, school administrators, and people dealing with the schools 
came out and said, ``Governor, how could you possibly use grades, grade 
schools?'' It is pretty interesting. I always thought, ``Wait a minute, 
schools. That is what you do. You use grades to grade students. Why 
should we not use grades to see whether your school is doing what it 
ought to be doing?''
  We have got a Governor in Colorado who stood up to some pretty tough 
opposition from people in my opinion who do not want to change the 
status quo and people in my opinion that I would question whether the 
focus is on the student or on the well-being of some bureaucrats 
that have opposed this plan.

  But this plan was signed into law. This is a good plan. Who is the 
winner? The winner are the students. When students win, who else wins? 
The teacher wins. The teachers. I will tell my colleagues, most 
teachers I know are very proud. Most teachers dedicate a lifetime to a 
career of seeing success in their students.
  My sister, for example, or my aunt, Jewel Geiger, down there in 
Walsenburg, Colorado, they take great pride, not in the money they 
make, they do not make much money as teachers, they take great pride 
when years after they have sent a student on their way, the student 
comes back and has a remarkable pattern of success because they were 
taught responsibility at the lower levels of school.
  I will tell my colleagues I am excited about education. I have got to 
tell my colleagues I had a group of students in today. We had some 
students from Ouray, Colorado. We had some students from Steamboat 
Springs, Colorado. I had some 4-H students, one from Grand Junction, 
Delta. So I had several communities in my district represented today, 
and not all at once. So I had three or four meetings with these 
students. Canyon City students.
  I asked the students, I said, let us open it up for questions. I am 
telling my colleagues, they have experienced it, my gosh, these 
questions were solid, well-thought-out questions. Their thoughts on 
policy were well thought out.
  We have got a great bunch of young people coming up behind us. This 
next generation is going to have multitudes of more opportunities than 
any generation that has ever preceded them. This generation has more 
possibilities, more capabilities than any other generation that 
preceded them. But this generation could be handicapped by being too 
politically correct in our schools, by being too politically correct to 
say to our students they have individual responsibility. They have 
certain behavior that they have to recognize. There are consequences 
for misbehavior.
  If we can give this generation with so much hope and so much promise, 
if we can set aside the politically correct stuff and just react from 
our gut and let our local people work on their school boards, I will 
tell my colleagues this, there is nothing that will stop this next 
generation. They will lead our country to continue to be the greatest 
country the world has ever known.
  We can be safe knowing that, when we turn our country over to this 
next generation, that we are turning it over to a better management 
team, to a management team that will make our results look somewhat 
slow.
  But we have got to give these young people the tools. It is as good 
for them as it is for our society to teach individual responsibility.
  Mr. Speaker, let me wrap up, then, by my conclusion. Number one, I 
want to caution my colleagues, I am not trying to use this floor for a 
partisan attack, but we do have in this country, we do have a balance 
of powers. I spoke tonight about the Republican program, the tax 
reduction on capital gains, the tax reduction for the homeowners in 
this country, the tax reduction on the marriage penalty, our pursuit to 
eliminate the death tax and our elimination of the earnings limit on 
seniors. We have hit every category out there that I can think of. I am 
proud of that as a Republican. I think that we should go out, and when 
we talk to our constituents, we should remember these programs, because 
what we have done is give incentive to the capitalistic system.
  Now, everybody out there, regardless of their economic category, 
wants success. Government only impedes success with taxes that are 
unfair or punitive or have no sense on their face. We have recognized 
that, and the Republicans have taken the lead to do something about it.
  I thank my conservative colleagues on the Democratic side who have 
joined us. I also thank all of my colleagues who, when the real vote 
came up there, when it came time to face the music, we had all ``yes'' 
votes to eliminate for the seniors that earnings limitation.
  This country is a great country. But we must resolve to be fair to 
our taxpayers. We must resolve to deliver the best educational product 
that we can to our next generation, our young people. We must resolve 
to keep the foundations, the pillars in our foundations strong, those 
of a strong military, of a strong education system, of a strong health 
care system, and of a strong military.

                          ____________________